Ha!
Hi B4
Somehow Leonard's Absent Mare song analysis took me to Bowies "Space Oddity"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRMZ_5WYmCg
Buddhism ultimately leads to what might be termed "empty space"
The Hebrew Bible via Job also leads to a similar "empty space"
...so somehow I ended up in Bowie's "empty space" in this song linked above.
...so Leonard (and early Dylan) found favour in their fellow-Phoenician sailor, Jesus;
"the iron and the gold
that he nailed to her feet
when he was the lord "
I "wonder what it was" that Leonard saw in Jesus that he couldn't find in Buddhist or Phoenician (Hebrew) viewpoints? ...right up to "The Flame" and his translation/poem, "The Lucky Night".
Maybe it was a certain sort of hope? Hope for eternal transience...Oneness
"before Abraham was, I AM"
and all that stuff.
Who knows!?
yet I saunter.
But the smile he wore when he spoke to Jennifer Warnes in the article above suggests he certainly reached that "high plateau" he sings of in this song, The Ballad of the absent mare".
This song is a song of hope and trust; of transience in Time/space, like his Japanese brother in spirit, Basho, glancing occasionally at a flower or the Moon, and finding a sacred moment in eternity.
"And she steps on the moon when she paws at the sky"
Cohen reminds me a lot of Basho though they were 300 years apart.
(
https://www.google.com/search?q=basho&r ... e&ie=UTF-8)
I love the opening line of this song, "Say a prayer for the Cowboy"; we are told that he thought of himself as a bit of a cowboy...
And I ask myself, "Should I say a prayer for this Cowboy, Leonard?"
But I don't indulge in prayers, very often;
but I will say "thank-you, Leonard !
What a great Song."
"...But my darling says "Leonard, just let it go by...
...And they're gone like the smoke and they're gone like this song..."
Here is what that old Buddhist Poet and Monk, Basho, said about the Leonard Cohen's of the world, 300 years ago:
"Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought."
And in this song we have Leonard following that advice and ending in a very Buddhist manner,
"...gone like the smoke..."
Dissipation into the "blue light" is how the journey to enlightenment ends for the Tibetan masters. Gone like the smoke into the ever-present Blue (some energy-consciousness-electro-magnetic life-force over e=mc squared sort-of dance into no-thing-ness)
...yes, dissolution and re-absorbsion into that lowest common denominator of of is-ness. The end of ego.
And an end to both mare and rider and especially their god.
For what it's worth, I suggest that "...the iron and the gold that he nailed to her feet..." are the symbols of hope that Leonard finds in the teachings of his fellow-Phoenician sailor, Jesus. A "hope" for consciousness-eternal that seems to be absent for him in his alternative religious and philosophical "positions" (Various Positions).
In summary:
...So, of course, the "high plateau" and the "gold", which is divine Union (cowboy/mare/I-Am-ness), are, for me at least, the summa theologica of Leonard Cohen. His "only love".
The "smoke" that's "gone", which dissipates into no-thing-ness-blues, doesn't cut the mustard for this longing troubadour of love, Leonard Cohen.
He wants to keep traveling light, not dissipate into otherness.
Yes, if we are in that "Lucky Night!" as he terms it in his last book, The Flame, then we may just step on that Moon when we paw at the sky...and come back with a grin, as he did with Jennifer Warnes that day...
Inverse
or
maybe something in eternity grins as it enters space-time,
maybe the Grinner is us
us-eternal
entering the Game-mortal
alive at last!
loving, dying, grinning
among wounded dawns
sauntering
through gold and blue...
Mat James
