Confessions

[mickey_one]

Manna: Anyone who gets to know our mickey_one at all will soon learn that he plays. The world is his toy. I am his toy, you are his toy, Leonard is his toy. It won't do you any good to take it personally.

Okay, Manna... however...
There are many here who do not know what you have come to know...
And it seems okay not to take things that Mickey_one says personally.... once you come to know him...
But if you don't know him... and take HIM SERIOUSLY, then you are liable to come to grief... and be turned off... and hurt.

It seems to be a matter of forum protocol.

But if you don't know him... and take HIM SERIOUSLYForum protocol ought to state that, this being a largly anonymous site, where we don't actually "know" one another, it is best practice, though boring at first, to behave in a polite and courteous manner.
Then, as we do get to know one another, then we can become less boring... but even then basic human courtesies should apply.

"One would tend to take Mickey_One more seriously, and his criticism more seriously, if one wasn't being attacked in a personal manner. It is the personal nature of his criticism which, though non-boring, is also non-effective... and does not lead to an improvement in the quality of ones poetry.

Jimmy

"But if you don't know him... and take HIM SERIOUSLY then you are liable to come to grief... and be turned off... and hurt."- hey, I do the Grandiosity round here. I'm sure you can find some other more suitable role. And well done to all those Survivors who have thanked me for the crits.

"One would tend to take Mickey_One more seriously, and his criticism more seriously"- experience tells me that one is in trouble when one talks of one. And anyway,if I get a vote, I don't want to be taken more seriously, no thanks. What an antiseptic, dreadful idea. "Seriously" is what I do at work and seriously is the 10 minutes here and the 10 minutes there showing how poems may possibly be changed for the better. This is basically play-time and isn't it great we are not all the same. Hooray for Laurie, Hooray for Greg. Boo for Robots and Stirrers.

and don't you know, my actual writing suggestions diminish in value if you don't like me, it's a sort of reverse magic. thank goodness my crits. are not judged on their merits.

Lighten up. You are fighting a non-battle (and still managing to lose).

mickey_one (observe the lower case of modesty, please)

Hello, Manna. You knew it from the start, I know you didn't need to get to know me to know it, (he says knowingly)because you are the insightful and secure bouncy banjo bunny.

[Manna]

It seems to me that there is a lot of pressure on Mickey to be someone other than the one he is.

Maybe I should say that I find m_1's crits to be pretty good. He's a good reader, and he puts some thought into what he says. How many people have you seen on poetry boards anywhere who'd rather crit than show their own work? This makes him valuable.

~-~ m, I knew it from the start because I had been following a few things you said on the grand ol' ng. Not everyone does so much homework, but I am the world's quintessential student.

[Jimmy O'Connell]

M_1: and don't you know, my actual writing suggestions diminish in value if you don't like me, it's a sort of reverse magic. thank goodness my crits. are not judged on their merits.

Okay....

Enough said... as the bishop said to the actress...

Silence is golden... as the Tremeloes said to the audience... silence...

Jimmy

[che]

"Anyone who gets to know our mickey_one at all will soon learn that he plays. The world is his toy. I am his toy, you are his toy, Leonard is his toy."

So the mickey_one is the toy boy to all us women?

[mickey_one]

"Anyone who gets to know our mickey_one at all will soon learn that he plays. The world is his toy. I am his toy, you are his toy, Leonard is his toy."

So the mickey_one is the toy boy to all us women?

damn, I had high hopes you were a boy, Che!

[blonde madonna]

Must stay out of this crap.

[lizzytysh]

Please add me to the RP/JOC Fan Club ~ Established in 2007 roster. Thanks much.

Hi Manna ~

Actually, I don't ask people to be nice a lot, impassioned pleas or otherwise. I try to be that myself and do what I can to counteract the impact when others aren't and I'm seeing the effects. I've read on the ng [long ago] and even here, where individuals have said, "Can't we all just be nice to each other?" It, unfortunately, tends to come across a bit whiney... instead of asking for it, just do it. I recently posted the video and named the thread "Kindness and Appreciation," and in my own comments made a suggestion along that line for people in their own lives. The nature of the video was rather compelling to cause one to think in those terms. This was a one-on-one request to one person... following what could be considered a request to me.

Impassioned
plea
to everyone
all the time

I simply asked if you might consider taking the Challenge, as I did, at your behest... which would much closer be considered "impassioned" than mine ~ for one thing invoking the notion of "evil."

No... I definitely wasn't agreeing with mickey on the above. I separated them out, by line, as to each component of hyperbole. My request wasn't "impassioned" at all... as his might better be considered, invoking terms and concepts such as "evil." Nor, was it a "plea" ~ I asked him if he'd consider taking the Challenge of it's okay to be nice. I said nothing about "to everyone" ~ it was simply a challenge to him to try it. I didn't say anything about "all the time," either. This doesn't mean that it couldn't work out to be to everyone all the time; I was just hoping to see a willing spirit to try a different approach... instead of being mean. So, his statement of what I was asking was, indeed, hyperbolic.

you must be careful that you don't unwittingly try to shepherd us all into robotic conformity.

I didn't say anything about "us all," nor about "robotic conformity." I was directly addressing him and "robotic conformity" is again nothing more, nothing better, than more hyperbole. My request on the Challenge... reciprocity... was reasonably stated... even in a playful, though obviously serious, way. With the focus being as it has recently, where I have begun to ask someone to be kind, it wasn't unreasonable that it be with newcomers. It's an inconvenient truth that I happened to see another side when I met and exchanged emails with him for awhile... however, the pollutional FUN at others' expense is pretty much all I'm seeing now... and, since this is close to the only section where he spends his spare minutes to dispense the FUN, then if this is PLAY, then this must be the devil's playground... and the "evil" has nothing to do with emoticons. In reality, his choosing to take the Challenge and be otherwise, wouldn't mean his not being himself at all.

To think he would object to emoticons and consider them "evil" [even hyperbolically so]...

I'm curious why the critiquers don't suggest to the submitters here that if they want their poems crit'ed, the Ego-Less site, etc. where they themselves go is a great one. It just doesn't seem to me... and never has... that it's a de facto presumption that people who share a poem here want it 'worked on' by those who 'really do know how poetry should be written.' I'm sure it is unique on poetry boards for someone who isn't interested in posting their own work, but only critiqueing that of others. The only disconnect with that is that this isn't a poetry board. This is the [back to what's obvious, as you mentioned earlier] Leonard Cohen Forum [i.e. board] that happens to have a section for the Poetry and Music of members. There's a difference.

Good, solid posting, non-blonde Madonna.

I'm tired. Going to bed.


~ Lizzy

[jill]

The initiation to this forum is intriguing.

I just ordered Beautiful Losers, Songs of Love and Hate, Songs from a Room from Amazon.
I may also get Book of Mercy and try to join the Book of Mercy thread. Jill





"We must be willing to let go
of the life we have planned,
so as to have the life
that is waiting for us.
E.M.Forster.

[mickey_one]

Hey Mickey,

because it is my Birthday today, I forgive you.

[mickey_one]

~ Lizzy

I forgive you as well.

[mickey_one]

The initiation to this forum is intriguing.

I just ordered Songs of Love and Hate, Songs from a Room

I always feel sorry if anyone discovers Leonard Cohen only through the later albums and misses out on the way betterer early ones. I hope you love them and let us know which your favourite tracks are

michael

[lizzytysh]

Hi mickey ~

In the spirit of your own giving, you may consider it a gift. This means you can also take the day off from forgiveness granting. What a stroke that it also happens to be your birthday. With good luck, our newcomers will still be around for us to wish them happy birthday on theirs. If only everyone had your chutzpah.

Happy Birthday, Michael. I seriously hope you have a good day.


~ Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Hi Jill ~

I'm very glad to see you returning to the original garden of Leonard's work. Please do let us know how you feel about the work that so many of us fell in love with and resulted in our being here today, almost four decades later. I'm excited to hear how you feel when you listen.

Interesting use we've made of your thread's title, isn't it? In our own way, I guess we could be considered confession-making grave robbers. Sorry to have it be your thread, but this is really so typical of how threads tend to go. They meander, they contort, they expand; in one way or another, they diminish or grow.

I may also get Book of Mercy and try to join the Book of Mercy thread.

This is an excellent idea, Jill. I hope to see you do it. Just in case you don't buy it, yet, you can still join in, as we quote the text each time one is being discussed.

[Manna]

Lizzy,
While I want to make it clear that I don't think it's a bad idea to ask folk to be kind, I am also sure your self-assessment is not only accurater but worth-whiler than my assessment of you. It was an impression I had of you, but if it's wrong, then it's wrong.

While I'm here I may as well jump on the "I love RP" bandwagon, though I am still getting to know Jimmy. I stuck up for M_1 b/c no one else was.

[~greg]

Thimk!

Michael's interest in critiquing poetry does not need explaining.
It's just a way he has of getting outside himself.
("Ecstasy" - "ex-stasis" - outside-standing").

Some people do crossword puzzles. Others solve chess-endgames.
Or fill sudoku squares. Or write programs. Or count beads.
There are a million and a half ways to do it. And while most people
can remember early instances of their own particular
interests, and while anybody can come up with more or less plausible
psychoanalytical explanations for other people's interests,
these interests don't really need these explanations.
These interests are simply the ways we have of burning off
our daily residue of intellectual energy, which
would otherwise go into getting ourselves into trouble.

Critiquing poetry is a hell of a better pastime than drinking or doing drugs,
--particularly adrenaline. It is this constant auto-titillation that so many
indulge in around here, with multiple daily injections of
manufactured righteous indignation, - that is truly, staggeringly,
in need of explaining. But you know that whoever goes to explain it
will only use the opportunity to indulge in it some more.
You need only re-read what I just wrote there to see the true of that.

When a child has to be around an adult who is trying to enjoy
his particular hobby, --whether it be building boats inside bottles,
--or packing trophy human body parts in the freezer, (- or whatever)
- then the child invariably acts in a completely predictable way
to try to wrestle attention away from the hobby and onto himself.

Parents, like Michael, know they can't just ignore the kid.
Or else the kid goes into an attention-seeking resonance-feedback loop,
and explodes.

Parents know that they have to give the kid some attention.
But they also know that they can't give the kid too much attention.
Or the kid will never let up.

From what I've seen around here, I'd say that Michael
walks that fine line pretty good. Or as good as anybody could.

And I have never wondered if this means he's arrogant.
Probably because I am not a neurotic jelly-fish.

What I have wondered about is the poetry-competitions.
They've reminded me of nothing so much as Judy Garland - Mickey Rooney
movies, where the day is saved by putting on a show at the end.

But I think I finally get it.
And it's very simple.

Michael really does enjoy critiquing poetry.
As only a few others know why, because they do too.

But very many others don't have a clue about it.
To them the taste is as weird as angostura is to a kid
who only knows milk. And yet they join in anyway,
rather than be left out. And the result is this
thread-meandering. (As I prefer to call it instead of
the more usual 'all the shit that goes on around here all the time'.)

So it's just that simple.
There is so much less meandering during the poetry comps,
that Michael finds this sufficient reason to put in the time
and effort into setting them up and seeing them through.
And it can only be people who can't organize their way
out of a paper bag that find that arrogant.
They are jealous, and they resent anybody who
can do anything they can't do.

Betsy >
Fifteen thousand volunteers is not bad, but the organizational problems!

Travis Bickle >
I know what you mean. I got the same problems.
I gotta get organized. Little things like my apartment, possessions.
I should get a sign : "One of these days I should get 'organezized."'

Betsy >
- You mean organized? -

Travis Bickle >
"Organezized."
Organezized. It's a joke.
O-R-G-A-N-E-Z-l-Z-E-D.

Betsy >
Oh, you mean organezized like those office signs that say ."Thimk"

- from Scorsese "Taxi Driver"