A Thousand Kisses Deep

[remote1]

I know some of you believe that it is useless trying to guess what the lyrics actually mean (and you may be right), but I have been pondering over this for months now, and I would really like to know what other people are thinking. What can "a thousand kisses deep" mean? Is it love beyond death, i.e. the grave, or simply the physical act of love, or something else?

[Alsiony]

I think it means all of those things and more to be honest with you - but if you also look at the poem 'For Those Who Greeted Me' - what I think it means to me overall, is something like saying... sincerely within/from the soul. Sometimes it is reference to a positive thing, sometimes to a negative thing - but always felt sincerely to the bone nonetheless.
That's how it feels to me anyhows

A
x

[holydove]

I think it could refer to a state of mind that is permeated with very intense emotion - it could be any emotion, or a tangled mix of many emotions; as the word "deep" is often used in connection with water, it could refer to a feeling of being immersed, even drowning, in this very deep, tangled web of emotion.

It kind of reminds me of the verse in So Long Marianne, where Leonard refers to ". . . your fine spider web is fastening my ankle to a stone. . ."

[B4real]

Hi remote1,

The following is a quote by Leonard about his thoughts on A Thousand Kisses Deep:

A Thousand Kisses Deep (Ten New Songs)
"We don't write the play, we don't produce it, we don't direct it and we're not even actors in it... Everybody eventually comes to the conclusion that things are not unfolding exactly the way they wanted, and that the whole enterprise has a basis that you can't penetrate. Nevertheless, you live your life as if it's real. But with the understanding: It's only a thousand kisses deep, that is, with that deep intuitive understanding that this is unfolding according to a pattern that you simply cannot discern."
Toronto Globe and Mail, September 1, 2001

Hope this helps you

("you live your life as if it's real" - so B4real)

[remote1]

I have to admit I am a bit drunk on mulled wine tonight (still snowing out there), so my brain is not working too well, but I am beginning to hear echoes of Shakespeare all over the place...

Macbeth: "Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." - (Act V, Scene V).

The Tempest:
"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep." (Act IV, Scene I)

The Tempest:
"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange." - (Act I, Scene II)

Thanks, I do like your ideas Alsiony and Holydove (I had not thought of them). And your quotation B4real confirms what I very often find; that a writer's explanation of what they meant can be even more obscure than what they originally said: "But with the understanding: It's only a thousand kisses deep, that is, with that deep intuitive understanding that this is unfolding according to a pattern that you simply cannot discern." Either that or I've had one too many!

[imaginary friend]

Remote1 wrote:
Either that or I've had one too many!

Well then – at least you are 'a thousand kisses deep' into mulled wine

these lines I love:
'...And maybe I had miles to drive
and promises to keep;
you ditch it all
to stay alive
a Thousand Kisses Deep.'

Take the risk, abandon all the nagging 'I ought to's', and dive deep (into anything, espec. love) – it's then that we feel really alive.

[GinaDCG]

Life is a contradiction: to the active, inquisitive mind - life is transient. All is grass and all will pass away. What I value as permanent and "real" in my life, really is neither. But here we are -- in this transient reality where G-d put us. We have no choice except to pretend that our life does have substance and a greater reality. We are asked to commit to our own lives and deeds with a passion that is at the same time, not justified by our greater awareness of transcendence. So what better way to define this real, passionate commitment to things which are ephemeral then to say we go "1000 Kisses Deep?"

[GinaDCG]

Remote 1 said: [quote="remote1"]I have to admit I am a bit drunk on mulled wine tonight (still snowing out there), so my brain is not working too well, but I am beginning to hear echoes of Shakespeare all over the place...

A well tuned mind DOES tend to hear echoes of Shakespeare all over the place. Must be good wine.



[

[holydove]

Remote1, I don't think it was just the wine. I knew about Leonard's quote regarding 1000 kisses deep, but I didn't bring it up, because I too find it even more baffling than the lyrics to which that quote refers!

"...that deep intuitive understanding that it is only a thousand kisses deep. . ."

In my perspective, that would seem to contradict the idea that "1000 kisses deep" represents any great depth at all. I guess it is all relative, and it depends on what you are comparing it to. To any given individual, a particular experience/emotion/etc., might feel very intense or deep or real, at that moment, but if one compares it to the intensity of eternity/the source of creation/the highest reality/etc., then we may see that what we thought was so intense is really quite small & insignificant, when compared to the Infinite (or whatever one chooses to call it).

Anyway, that's what I get (so far) from Leonard's quote. I was reluctant to get into that, because I wasn't sure I could verbalize my perspective on it.

Thank you, B4Real, your post of that quote pushed me find a way to verbalize my interpretation.
And thank you, remote1, for asking the question. May we never stop hearing those "funny voices". . .

[holydove]

Just wanted to add, I don't mean to say that those lyrics (or that quote) mean that our experience on this plane of reality is not real or significant; just that it is real and not real at the same time; and it is very significant and not at all significant at the same time. "1000 kisses deep" is perhaps very deep, and perhaps not deep at all. . .

Okay, maybe I should try some of that wine now. . .

[Alsiony]

In my perspective, that would seem to contradict the idea that "1000 kisses deep" represents any great depth at all. I guess it is all relative, and it depends on what you are comparing it to. To any given individual, a particular experience/emotion/etc., might feel very intense or deep or real, at that moment, but if one compares it to the intensity of eternity/the source of creation/the highest reality/etc., then we may see that what we thought was so intense is really quite small & insignificant, when compared to the Infinite (or whatever one chooses to call it).

As an extension to what I wrote earlier - in agree with a lot of what you have said here. My own personal view is that in everything...absolutely everything there is both good and bad - light and dark - however you want to put it. Opposing forces that hold everything together. In the same way all things are 'something' and 'nothing' all at the same time. I think that this 'duality' (for want of a better word because I am sure it is much more complex than that) is a fundamental stone...

OK...could someone pass me the wine now

A
x

[remote1]

Well, many thanks for all these fascinating insights!

I have stolen bits of all your thoughts and I now believe that "a thousand kisses deep" may suggest an alternative level of consciousness, or experience of existence which is driven overwhelmingly by his love for a woman. Holydove expresses what I mean much better when she describes "a state of mind that is permeated with very intense emotion", but I think that "kisses" suggests that the intense emotion is that of loving this woman. In other words, the principle of love for that particular woman defines his being from within its depths, and transcends every other overriding principle, such as the passing of time, ageing, death, distance and separation, inadequacy, imperfection, dishonesty, lust, the vicissitudes of life, the "cracks in everything"... It's a different type of existence which passes through a channel other than that of the logics of time and distance, and which is redeeming ("all the twisted pieces fit").

Holydove, I also like the idea that "a thousand kisses deep" is "perhaps very deep, and perhaps not deep at all. . ."

But thanks to all of you, it is great for me to feel I am finally coming closer to some understanding of this particular image!

Here are my very favourite lines of the more recent versions of the poem:
"The Autumn moved across your skin,
Got something in my eye,
A light that doesn't need to live,
And doesn't need to die."

DO MAKE YOURSELVES SOME MULLED WINE, IT'S THE RIGHT TIME FOR IT!
(And another way of experiencing another type of reality, clearly a Shakespearean one for me!)

[GinaDCG]

"A light that doesn't need to live
And doesn't need to die."

-- is very Zen, but I have yet to wrap my mind coherently around it. If only I could get around with this blasted 5lb hunk of plaster around my leg I'd go mull myself some wine and then doubtless my thoughts would coalesce.

[remote1]

I think it is precisely that this altered state of consciousness allows his mind to free itself of the constraints of time (time, as a concept, is considered by some philosophers, to be a mere construct of the human mind). In that sense, he is able to see her existence beyond the parameters of time, to see her through the light of eternity. There is perhaps a hint of Plato's theory of Ideas in this.

Unfortunately, I know virtually nothing about Buddhism, but I am greatly interested in Buddhist philosophy. I intend to get down to some reading on this perhaps next summer when things calm down. If you have time to tell me why you think these lines are very Zen, I'd love to know!

Sorry about the leg!

[GinaDCG]

I am certainly no expert on Zen. Most of my knowledge is based on a paper I wrote some 35 years ago in which I postulated that Bob Dylan could be best understood by using a zen lens. My high school teachers were pleased (I got an A,) but from then to now my life journey has not lead me to any additional curiosity about the philosophy.

But, according to my very limited (and possibly error-filled) understanding, zen advocates the simplicity of being: no effort need be exerted to try to become something. You are what you are. It is what it is. If you wish to effect some change in yourself, then you need only become that someone else. By my understanding "I think, therfore I am" is very zen. You don't need to define yourself as this or that; you simply are.

I must revise as I compose this and say that during my college days I had a part time book store job and I spent a lot of break times reading THE New Age Enlightenment Book of the 60s and 70s "Be Here Now." But it was years ago and only vague impressions remain. ( I suppose I read this one at the store as my Mom would have given me the 3rd degree if she saw me returning home with such a book. She was not a Puritan, but my elder sisters had dabbled a little too far (in her opinion) into the 60s counter-culture and I knew she was hyper-vigilent for signs that I may be following the same trajectory. I did, but what she didn't know didn't hurt her, now did it? -- of course, my wish to immerse myself in the counter-culture was severely hampered by this multiple drug allergy thing I have -- I'm allergic to marijuana, and this limited the time I could spend with like-minded hippie types.)