The crack in everything

General discussion about Leonard Cohen's songs and albums
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daka
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Location: where clouds come from
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Re: The crack in everything

Post by daka »

Thanks for talking about these 'things', jack

I love flying dreams
I love this forum
I love my day yesterday
The moments with Manna
The train trip
From Madrid

I will post the description here too:
I will probably break another rule
But I don't care
I'm irish

Spain Train

I am traveling in Spain
Four hours yesterday by train
To a noisy city
where the cars woke me
At an un Godly hour
I am sitting at my laptop
Living up to my reputation
The Cyber-monk
Among other things
The 'crack' in this thread
Has me wide awake
But the ladies can relax
There is a friend in need
In this city
There were no signs
To explain
My mountain descent
When I was on the train
From Madrid
Normally there in never
Another person beside me
This time a beautiful young woman
Took that seat
Causing me to think of signs
But it soon became apparent
That she was not interested
In moments
Of any sort
In any language
With me
(And I wasn't wearing robes)
I was relieved
(I think)

daka
Last edited by daka on Fri Feb 01, 2008 3:20 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If you don't become the ocean you will be seasick every day....Jikan (aka Leonard Cohen)

It's comin' from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there! . Jikan
lazariuk
Posts: 1952
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Location: Vancouver

Re: The crack in everything

Post by lazariuk »

Diane wrote:I think this diamond-encrusted skull (it's a 3D sculpture) from Damien Hurst, which I really admire, beautifully illustrates the crack. He titled it, For the Love of God:
I really like that picture Diane. On one side it looks like the light is going in and on the other side it looks like the light is coming out. This makes me consider that we have two blind spots. One involving what we need and the other involving what we have to give. Two very good reasons to be in right relation with our neighbors.
Everything being said to you is true; Imagine of what it is true.
Manna
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Joined: Fri Feb 09, 2007 6:51 am
Location: Where clouds go to die

Re: The crack in everything

Post by Manna »

One of my favourite poems:
Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser
lazariuk
Posts: 1952
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Location: Vancouver

Re: The crack in everything

Post by lazariuk »

Manna wrote:One of my favourite poems:
Flying at Night
One of my favorite books
Night Flight by Antoine de Saint-Exupery
Already, beneath him, through the golden evening, the shadowed hills had dug their furrows and the plains grew luminous with long-enduring light. For in these lands the ground gives off this golden glow persistently, just as, even when winter goes, the whiteness of the snow persists.
Fabien, the pilot bringing the Patagonia air-mail from the far south to Buenos Aires, could mark night coming on by certain signs that called to mind the waters of a harbor - a calm expanse beneath, faintly rippled by lazy clouds - and he seemed to be entering a vast anchorage, an immensity of blessedness.

Or else he might have fancied he was taking a quiet walk in the calm of evening, almost like a shepherd. The Patagonian shepherds move, unhurried, from one flock to another; and he, too, moved from one town to another, the shepherd of those little towns. Every two hours he met another one of them, drinking at its riverside or browsing on its plain.

Sometimes, after a hundred miles of steppes as desolate as the sea, he encountered a lonely farm-house that seemed to be sailing backwards from him in a great prairie sea, with its freight of human lives; and he saluted with his wings this passing ship.
Everything being said to you is true; Imagine of what it is true.
Cate
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Joined: Tue Nov 06, 2007 4:27 am

Re: The crack in everything

Post by Cate »

Manna wrote:One of my favourite poems:
Flying at Night

Above us, stars. Beneath us, constellations.
Five billion miles away, a galaxy dies
like a snowflake falling on water. Below us,
some farmer, feeling the chill of that distant death,
snaps on his yard light, drawing his sheds and barn
back into the little system of his care.
All night, the cities, like shimmering novas,
tug with bright streets at lonely lights like his.

Ted Kooser
Yeah Manna

I like this poem very much, I'm glad you posted it. When I googled Kooser in hopes of finding more his poems, which I found and also liked, I discovered that he wrote a book called "The Poetry Home Repair Manual" . It's a book for beginners which is something I've wanted for a while. I read the first few pages on google books and then ordered it from Chapters AND it was on sale!
A new to me poet and a new book - I'm very happy.

Thank you Manna :D
Last edited by Cate on Sat Feb 02, 2008 3:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
abby
Posts: 386
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 7:41 pm

Re: The crack in everything

Post by abby »

I wrote this eight or nine years ago. It was brought to mind by what Jack and Manna just quoted, both of which I love and are new to me as well. My notebook is filling up quickly with the little gems lying all over the forum.

The wind came fast from your old city tonight
and swept the leaves of old trees into each other,
had no beginning and no end.
That wind is directing a sail now,
and a broken gull.
It is riding itself through whitecaps
and its curtain of teeth tugs at the hem of the ocean.
I thought I saw you running then-
your fingers made a mess of the stars,
and your were bordering the heavens,
not quite sure of the appeal of the angels.
You've come back with a thread from their garments-
you said you thought they should be naked.
You told them how we took our shirts off in the car
and how the moon made us silver-haired and pale,
the deep shadows just the ash of too many cigarettes.
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ragsandfeathers
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Re: The crack in everything

Post by ragsandfeathers »

Wow, Abby --

That's gorgeous! I love the last lines in particular, but it wonderful throughout.

Zoe
....Now that my ladder's gone
I must lie down where all the ladders start
In the foul rag and bone shop of the heart

W.B. Yeats
abby
Posts: 386
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2008 7:41 pm

Re: The crack in everything

Post by abby »

Wow. Thank you Zoe.

Abby
Diane

Re: The crack in everything

Post by Diane »

I really enjoy non-verbal artistic reflections of LC themes. In the Tate Britain in London on the weekend, I was struck by the painting entitled "Hope" by George F Watts:
hope-L.jpg
hope-L.jpg (16.42 KiB) Viewed 5173 times
Blind Hope sits on a globe playing on a lyre which has all its strings broken except one. She bends her head to listen to the faint music, and the feel of the painting is quite forlorn. Critic have said the piece would be better titled "Despair". But Watts explained that 'Hope' need not mean 'expectancy', but that it is about the music which comes from the remaining string.

The painting brought Anthem to mind.
lazariuk
Posts: 1952
Joined: Sun Oct 02, 2005 5:38 am
Location: Vancouver

Re: The crack in everything

Post by lazariuk »

Thanks Diane

What that brought to mind was the words in one of Leonard's songs

I'm all ears.
Everything being said to you is true; Imagine of what it is true.
Diane

Re: The crack in everything

Post by Diane »

Thank you, Jack! Yes. Nice one. I wouldn't have thought of that. You have me grinning from ear to ear.
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daka
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Re: The crack in everything

Post by daka »

Pluck the string
That still
Can sing

sean
If you don't become the ocean you will be seasick every day....Jikan (aka Leonard Cohen)

It's comin' from the feel that this ain't exactly real, or it's real, but it ain't exactly there! . Jikan
Diane

Re: The crack in everything

Post by Diane »

perhaps Hope hears
the secret chord
Diane

Re: The crack in everything

Post by Diane »

Hey Sean I just noticed the way you separated

"that still"

and

"can sing"

suggesting both meanings of 'still'

Nice one!

I had never seen that meaning in Anthem before. Ring the bells that 'still' can ring!
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lizzytysh
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Re: The crack in everything

Post by lizzytysh »

I've never noticed that possible take on that lyric, either, Daka.

That beautiful painting and the concept remind me of our current election year.

With the woman's long braid wound around the side of the wooden structure and the placement and winding of the 'string' relative to her bent head, it looks to me that the painting is of a woman who has wound her own hair to create the 'instrument' that she listens to... and seemingly, completed the resonance of the instrument by winding her braid. It's very intriguing, as she seems to use a part of herself in the creation of that which both brings and attests to hope. Or... it could simply still be a single-stringed lyre, with everything that's already been written. Art has so many possibilities.



~ Lizzy
"Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken."
~ Oscar Wilde
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