11-11-2016, 02:53 AM
(This post was last modified: 11-12-2016, 10:16 PM by Dekalb_Blues.)
~~
Cohen and Joni Mitchell at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival (held in the state of Rhode Island, east coast U.S.A.)
Leonard Cohen (21 September 1934 – 10 November 2016)
"One of the most fascinating and enigmatic -- if not the most successful -- singer/songwriters of the late '60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across six decades of music-making, interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the '60s who is still working in the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn't even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties." [He was already a well-respected published poet and novelist.] (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/leonard-c.../biography)
"At the [1967] Newport Folk Festival … Leonard did 'Suzanne.' I’d met him and I went, ‘I love that song. What a great song.’ Really. 'Suzanne' was one of the greatest songs I ever heard. So I was proud to meet an artist. He made me feel humble, because I looked at that song and I went, ‘Woah. All my songs seem so naive by comparison.’ It raised the standard of what I wanted to write."
-- Joni Mitchell, in Joni Mitchell In Her Own Words by Malka Marom (2014)
Of Jewish upbringing, Cohen was ordained in 1996 as a Zen priest.
“Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, expecting victory after victory and you understand deeply that this is not paradise... Somehow, especially the privileged ones that we are, we somehow embrace the notion that this veil of tears, that it’s perfectible, that you can get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. I tried to put this into that song called 'A Thousand Kisses Deep'. When you understand that, you abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece.”
"These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood. What is the appropriate behaviour in a catastrophe, in a flood? You know, while you're clinging to your orange crate in the torrent and you pass somebody else hanging on to a spar of wood. What do you declare yourself? 'Left wing'? 'Right wing'? 'Pro-abortion'? 'Against abortion'? All these things are luxuries which you can no longer afford. What is the proper behaviour in a flood?"
"[font=Verdana]I began the song about democracy in 1988 and I didn't get it out until 1992. Well by the time I got it out, the song was co-opted as a tool for the Democratic party. It was played on radio stations the week of the election. And it seemed to fit in with the president-elect's program. But hopefully my songs, which last as long as Volvos -- that's 30 years. Hopefully my song will outlast this administration.... I have about fifty verses of 'Democracy' that I discarded. It examined many, many themes. It was occasioned by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It is a song where there's no inside and no outside. This is just the life of the democracy. It isn't imposed from above. It isn't connected to a Democratic victory or a Republican victory. It's coming through a hole in the wall, it's coming through a crack, it's coming imperial, mysterious in amorous array. It is the religion of the West. It's just starting. We had this idea of democracy was going to be when the masses will quote Shakespeare and listen to Mozart. But that was popular while the ... we know that one's not going to happen. It is the beginning of a culture, a great culture, because it will affirm other cultures, and a great religion because it affirms other religions. It is part of the appetite for fraternity and for equality that we have that has been animated in our hearts by the whole experiment. But we're just at the beginning, we're just at the edge of it.[/font]
-- Cohen, 1992 interviews
--
"I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country, but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left nor right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I'm junk, but I'm still holding up this wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the U. S. A."
"I like all of Leonard’s songs, early or late, ‘Going Home,’ ‘Show Me the Place,’ ‘The Darkness.’ These are all great songs, deep and truthful as ever and multidimensional, surprisingly melodic, and they make you think and feel. I like some of his later songs even better than his early ones. Yet there’s a simplicity to his early ones that I like, too."
--- Bob Dylan, in Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker by David Remnick (New Yorker: October 17, 2016)
Cohen released his last album, You Want It Darker, a few months ago -- at the age of 82.
In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.
--- Matsuo Basho
(1984)
Without Name and Form
Well-versed in the Buddha way,
[font=Times New Roman]The Great Tao[/font]
The Great Tao has no form,
Truth has no counterpart,
It is motionless like the Void,
It does not wander throuth [the samsara of] life and death,
The Three Worlds do not contain it,
Within it there is neither past, nor present, nor future.
--- Nan'ch'üan P'u-yüan
Light Itself
Dwell!
You are Light itself.
Rely on yourself,
Do not rely on others.
The Dharma is the Light,
Rely on the Dharma.
Do not rely on anything other than Dharma.
--- A Pali verse
Cohen and Joni Mitchell at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival (held in the state of Rhode Island, east coast U.S.A.)
Leonard Cohen (21 September 1934 – 10 November 2016)
"One of the most fascinating and enigmatic -- if not the most successful -- singer/songwriters of the late '60s, Leonard Cohen has retained an audience across six decades of music-making, interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commands the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the '60s who is still working in the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn't even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties." [He was already a well-respected published poet and novelist.] (http://www.allmusic.com/artist/leonard-c.../biography)
"At the [1967] Newport Folk Festival … Leonard did 'Suzanne.' I’d met him and I went, ‘I love that song. What a great song.’ Really. 'Suzanne' was one of the greatest songs I ever heard. So I was proud to meet an artist. He made me feel humble, because I looked at that song and I went, ‘Woah. All my songs seem so naive by comparison.’ It raised the standard of what I wanted to write."
-- Joni Mitchell, in Joni Mitchell In Her Own Words by Malka Marom (2014)
Of Jewish upbringing, Cohen was ordained in 1996 as a Zen priest.
“Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, expecting victory after victory and you understand deeply that this is not paradise... Somehow, especially the privileged ones that we are, we somehow embrace the notion that this veil of tears, that it’s perfectible, that you can get it all straight. I found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. I tried to put this into that song called 'A Thousand Kisses Deep'. When you understand that, you abandon your masterpiece and you sink into the real masterpiece.”
"These are the final days, this is the darkness, this is the flood. What is the appropriate behaviour in a catastrophe, in a flood? You know, while you're clinging to your orange crate in the torrent and you pass somebody else hanging on to a spar of wood. What do you declare yourself? 'Left wing'? 'Right wing'? 'Pro-abortion'? 'Against abortion'? All these things are luxuries which you can no longer afford. What is the proper behaviour in a flood?"
"[font=Verdana]I began the song about democracy in 1988 and I didn't get it out until 1992. Well by the time I got it out, the song was co-opted as a tool for the Democratic party. It was played on radio stations the week of the election. And it seemed to fit in with the president-elect's program. But hopefully my songs, which last as long as Volvos -- that's 30 years. Hopefully my song will outlast this administration.... I have about fifty verses of 'Democracy' that I discarded. It examined many, many themes. It was occasioned by the collapse of the Berlin Wall. It is a song where there's no inside and no outside. This is just the life of the democracy. It isn't imposed from above. It isn't connected to a Democratic victory or a Republican victory. It's coming through a hole in the wall, it's coming through a crack, it's coming imperial, mysterious in amorous array. It is the religion of the West. It's just starting. We had this idea of democracy was going to be when the masses will quote Shakespeare and listen to Mozart. But that was popular while the ... we know that one's not going to happen. It is the beginning of a culture, a great culture, because it will affirm other cultures, and a great religion because it affirms other religions. It is part of the appetite for fraternity and for equality that we have that has been animated in our hearts by the whole experiment. But we're just at the beginning, we're just at the edge of it.[/font]
-- Cohen, 1992 interviews
--
"I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country, but I can't stand the scene
And I'm neither left nor right
I'm just staying home tonight
Getting lost in that hopeless little screen
But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags
That time cannot decay
I'm junk, but I'm still holding up this wild bouquet
Democracy is coming to the U. S. A."
"I like all of Leonard’s songs, early or late, ‘Going Home,’ ‘Show Me the Place,’ ‘The Darkness.’ These are all great songs, deep and truthful as ever and multidimensional, surprisingly melodic, and they make you think and feel. I like some of his later songs even better than his early ones. Yet there’s a simplicity to his early ones that I like, too."
--- Bob Dylan, in Leonard Cohen Makes It Darker by David Remnick (New Yorker: October 17, 2016)
Cohen released his last album, You Want It Darker, a few months ago -- at the age of 82.
In the cicada's cry
No sign can foretell
How soon it must die.
--- Matsuo Basho
(1984)
Without Name and Form
Well-versed in the Buddha way,
I go the non-Way
Without abandoning my
Ordinary person's affairs.
The conditioned and
Name-and-form,
All are flowers in the sky.
Nameless and formless,
I leave birth-and-death.
--- P'ang Yün
[font=Times New Roman]The Great Tao[/font]
The Great Tao has no form,
Truth has no counterpart,
It is motionless like the Void,
It does not wander throuth [the samsara of] life and death,
The Three Worlds do not contain it,
Within it there is neither past, nor present, nor future.
--- Nan'ch'üan P'u-yüan
Light Itself
Dwell!
You are Light itself.
Rely on yourself,
Do not rely on others.
The Dharma is the Light,
Rely on the Dharma.
Do not rely on anything other than Dharma.
--- A Pali verse