leonardcohenforum.com

You should have seen that post before I edited.

We were merry before being Wily Milo members.
Wily Milo was the name of the band.
He taught me to play banjo.
His name is also Michael/Mickey.
But he is not you, Sir Michael.

michaelmichaelmotorcycle wrote:one minute he's not your husband, the next minute he is?

Yes. That happened on our wedding day, which happened many many long days after that sleevy photo.

Now, your question regarding photos on sleeves and husbands unable to see the woman for the photo. Oh, I'm sorry Michael. I can't seem to come up with anything clever. His attraction to me had nothing to do with a photo of me. He's much more cerebral than that. I was taking a photography class, though, and he helped me learn to see things like a photographer. Our band used to play every Wednesday. Afterward, I would stay and help clean up. There were these long conversations while I sat on his countertop. He sat next to the stove in a chair that was 100 years old. One night as I was leaving, I turned around and hugged him and I said, "I love you." He said, "I love you too." But there was still no kissing. There was a long car ride once with the band when I slept with my head in his lap. He had his hand on my shoulder. We would watch good movies and then talk about them. Or sometimes we'd watch crappy movies.

Well Manna- that seems to have killed off this thread? Where next?

I don't know. I tried to be funyy with Jimbo, but then Mike came in and started talking ssssooooo sssssseeeeeeeerrrrriiiiooooouuuuuussssslllllllyyyyyy about poetry that I think he may have killed that thread. Plus, I started the new job, and it takes time, and I'm still writing and that takes time. I think maybe I should take a break from here for a while.

Manna, I don't know how you do it.
I mean the study, the poetry, the music the forum posting, the working...
When I was at your stage of life I seemed to live in a very small space between work, childcare and bed with little room in my head for thinking about anything but the absolute necessities and praying that things wouldn’t collapse all around me.
Sorry if this sounds impertinent but do you have one of those enlightened, supportive, all purpose, stay at home husbands I hear they have in other parts of the world?

As a matter of fact I do. He is retired, so he even has an income without needing to be involved with any career besides fatherhood. It's a pretty sweet deal.

Ah, that's your secret, lucky girl, enjoy. Also wonderful for your child (is it a boy or girl, have you said elsewhere?)

A girl. She's four and a half. I have about a year remaining where I can still shelter her from the corruptive influences of her peers.

"my poor head is aching
my sad heart is breaking
my body's salivated"
?
: ) : )

Biography - by Richie Unterberger

One of the most noted Appalachian old-time musicians,
banjo player and singer Roscoe Holcomb spent most of
his life in the small town of Daisy, KY, and was one of
the most authentic exponents of American mountain folk
music. Indeed, he never had any professional ambitions
but become a recording artist and participant in the folk
revival circuit after being recorded for the first time in
the late '50s. Holcomb's style is stark, epitomizing the
keening, at times pained vocals associated with
Appalachian music, with a repertoire stuffed with
traditional songs that had passed among generations,
as well as some songs that he likely learned from
early country records. Folk musician and archivist
John Cohen coined the term "high lonesome sound"
to describe Holcomb's music, and the phrase has
since passed into common usage to describe
bluegrass and Appalachian music as a whole.
He cut several albums for Folkways and made
some concert appearances on the college/festival
scene throughout the 1960s and 1970s,
giving his last show in 1978.
- http://www.allmusic.com/

"Roscoe Holcomb has a certain untamed sense of control, which makes him one of the best."
- Bob Dylan.

http://relay.twoshakesofalambstail.com/ ... ng_Boy.mp3
6.5 meg

http://relay.twoshakesofalambstail.com/ ... Bessie.mp3
14 meg

http://relay.twoshakesofalambstail.com/ ... _Pines.mp3
3.3 meg

http://relay.twoshakesofalambstail.com/ ... _Chase.mp3
2 meg

Please forgive me, folks, for being in such an odd mood lately.
This too shall pass. (If the past is any kind of reliable indicator.)

I am in the middle of a muddled metamorphosis,
metaphorically speaking. I am becoming either an
angel, or a bat, depending, I think, on whether I choose
the all-nonsense, or the no-nonsense, way.

anyway,


Jaked,

you have posted lots of little poem-like thingies around here.
And this time this one has gotten a lot of attention (peripherally speaking.)
And yet you haven't responded back.

Have you run out of minimalism?

That could be a big problem with minimalism.
All too quickly there's just too much of it.
~~~

The following poem is very much like yours, in many ways,
but not minimal.

It is maximalism at its finest, I think

LATE RISING - Jacques Prévert
(Translated by Selden Rodman)

TERRIBLE
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound
when it moves in the memory
of a man who is hungry
Terrible also is the head of a man
the head of a man hungry
when he looks at six o'clock in the morning
in a smart shop window and sees
a head the color of dust
But it is not his head he sees
in the window of 'Chez Potin'
he doesn't give a damn
for the head of a man
he doesn't think at all
he dreams
imagining another head
calf's-head for instance
with vinegar sauce
head of anything edible
and slowly he moves his jaws
slowly slowly
grinds his teeth for the world
stands him on his head
without giving him any comeback
so he counts on his fingers one two three
one two three
that makes three days he has been empty
and it's stupid to go on saying It can't
go on It can't go on because
it does
Three days
three nights
without eating
and behind those windows
pâté de foie gras wine preserves
dead fish protected by their boxes
boxes in turn protected by windows
these in turn watched by the police
police protected in turn by fear
How many guards for six sardines . . .
Then he comes to the lunch counter
coffee-with-cream buttered toast
and he begins to flounder
and in the middle of his head
blizzard of words
muddle of words
sardines fed
hardboiled eggs coffee-with-cream
coffee black rum food
coffee-with-cream
coffee-with-cream
coffee crime black blood
A respectable man in his own neighborhood
had his throat cut in broad daylight
the dastardly assassin stole from him
two bits that is to say
exactly the price of a black coffee
two slices of buttered toast
and a nickel left to tip the waiter
Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound when it moves
in the memory
of a man who is hungry.

Empty prairie, empty stomach........now I see.

Hello, ~Greg,

1, I didn't notice this mood as being any more or less odd than any other mood you've portrayed.

zegond, when you quoted that bit from One Morning in May, (aka, The Unfortunate Rake, and for anyone who may not know this song, it's a very sweet song about a woman who is dying of syphilis. She's lying on her death bed, pretty much alone, possibly in a whore house, lamenting her old ways. "My body's salivated" relates to the old treatments for syphilis, which included mercury salts, and made you sweat a lot.) I didn't know if this was a song you knew or if you were quoting me someplace where I might have said this very thing, which I say from time to time, even though I don't have syphilis. But you have been making ~Greg-posts (and what I mean by that is that they are long and generally well-informed) about old music, so of course, you may very well know all this. But this is just a very long way to get the point, which is: Why did you bring up this song?

C., I don't think you can credit one person with authorship of a folk song, as Oh Mary Dontcha Weep and One Morning in May are. Even JP Carter, Alan Lomax, and Waldemar Hille.

ps. thanks for the songs/tunes.

A. )

Manna wrote: didn't notice this mood as being any more or less odd than any other mood you've portrayed.

That is the really weird and scary and odd thing about it.
It never does change.


2. )

Manna wrote:... so of course, you may very well know all this.

no no no,
god no.
Then why on earth would I have asked?

No,
I didn't know anything at all about it.
(Or honestly didn't think so at the time.)

Literally just seconds before I posted that question
I heard sample #8
Blackest Crow, Willy Milo,
from here:
http://cdbaby.com/cd/wilymilo

...and I thought that I was being funny,
...because although it does sound a little bit like "salivated",
I was quite certain that that couldn't possibly be right.

I was sure it had to be a portmanteau,
--something like salvation+saved, maybe,
--with a deep West Virgini accent.

I think maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do.

I am pretty sure that all of my posts have been a homogeneous mixture
of something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.
that is, - of things that I already knew a little bit about, and things
that I only just then learned something more about,
but most of all, of things that I am implicitly asking if anybody else
knows more about than I do, so that I can learn something.

(For example, "The People's Song Book" was very famous
back in "'60 folk-revival". And I finally got a copy of it
(-about 40 years too late.)
The songs in it had to be among the most influential of all
for Leonard Cohen, so that I am always hoping that somebody else
has a copy of it, and has the energy to go through it and locate
all the specific influences on LC from it, in terms of rifts and phrasings etc.
Whenever I mention that book, that is what I am fishing for. )

(Also, I have well over a terabyte of storage connected to my computer,
and it's over 80% full, and I have "Windows Indexing Service" disabled,
so that it is not always easy for me to find things around here,
so that I sometimes post things on the internet mainly because
they then become indexed, and then it's much easier for me
to find them again. I apologize for doing this.)

(Also, all my posts are always relevant to the thread.
But to explain how they are might sometimes make them even
10 times longer. The implicit connections that I'm usually thinking of
are not clever or subtle or puns or anything like that,
but they may have to do with common experiences
of people my age, which I keep forgetting not everybody is. )


Tertiary. )

DR. LECTER >
You're sooo ambitious, aren't you...?
You know what you look like to me,
with your good bag and your cheap
shoes? You look like a rube. A well-
scrubbed, hustling rube with a little,
taste... Good nutrition has given
you some length of bone, but you're
not more than one generation from
poor white trash, are you Officer
Starling...? That accent you're trying
so desperately to shed - pure West
Virginia. What was your father, dear?
Was he a coal miner? Did he stink of
the lamp...? And oh, how quickly the
boys found you! All those tedious,
sticky fumblings, in the back seats
of cars, while you could only dream
of getting out. Getting anywhere -
yes? Getting all the way - to the
F...B...I.

-Silence of the Lambs

So, who was I thinking of by quoting that?

My "x".
She was from West Virginia.
And then she got her doctoral from Yale in Eng Lit.

Sometimes she'd put on the accent,
when she was feeling hoity-toity.

I miss her.

~~

As for "One Morning in May" aka "The Unfortunate Rake",
- the latter rang a bell for me, but it wasn't very clear
until I searched and found this

THE UNFORTUNATE RAKE

As I was a-walking down by St. James' Hospital,
I was a-walking down by there one day,
What should I spy but one of my comrades
All wrapped up in flannel though warm was the day.

- http://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiLAREDST5.html

Now, that's a very loud and clear bell for me.

As I was a-walking...one day

immediately connected to "Streets of Laredo"

As I walked out in the streets of Laredo
As I walked out in Laredo one day
I spied a poor cowboy wrapped up in white linen
All wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay

(the same tune)

A friend of mine in high school, like me, had an absent father
at the time. His came to visit once, and he sang
"Streets of Laredo" the whole time.
Then he died a few months later.

And

As I was a-walking down by St. James' Hospital

immediately connected to "St. James' Infirmary"

I went down to the st james infirmary
Saw my baby there
Stretched out on a long white table
So sweet...so cold...so fair

(same tune)

My father used to sing that when I was very little.

He sang opera, and his a cappela delivery of St. James' Infirmary
scared the hell out of me, and every one else, when I was little.
It still would today.


~greg.

damnmellon wrote:Empty prairie, empty stomach........now I see.

it goes a little deeper than that i think

...and I thought that I was being funny,
...because although it does sound a little bit like "salivated",
I was quite certain that that couldn't possibly be right.

I think maybe you don't know me as well as you think you do.

Ha! I went through the same thing when I first heard it.

I know that I don't know you very well; you haven't been easy to get to know. But I have generally found you to be interesting and often entertaining. Why are you a rocky-gorilla with yellow wings?

(Also, I have well over a terabyte of storage connected to my computer,
and it's over 80% full, and I have "Windows Indexing Service" disabled,

so get a mac, man!! Everything is automatically indexed. Very easy to search for stuff.

(For example, "The People's Song Book" was very famous
back in "'60 folk-revival". And I finally got a copy of it
(-about 40 years too late.)
The songs in it had to be among the most influential of all
for Leonard Cohen, so that I am always hoping that somebody else
has a copy of it, and has the energy to go through it and locate
all the specific influences on LC from it, in terms of rifts and phrasings etc.
Whenever I mention that book, that is what I am fishing for. )

I don't know if I have this book, but I can look. I did notice a while ago that there is a musical phrase in "Can't Help Falling in Love" that is very similar to a musical phrase in "The Faith."

falling in love with you
love aren't you tired yet