Thursday, September 21, 2017

There's a Lullaby for Suffering and a Paradox to Blame, but It's Written in the Scriptures and It's Not Some Idle Claim, or: Born 83 Years Ago




  • I'm so small Cohen's motherfucking "Hallelujah," 
  • - my most viscerally hated song ever, nothing even close; his original, I fucking hate it, 
  • but it's the motherfucking covers (I love John Cale, fuck his *Hallelujah* cover, it sucks unto suck): 
  • and then when it's porn warble for sobby jerkoffs at the end of shitty movies and TV episodes: 
  • fuck I hate that song - 
  • kept me from Holy Daying his birthday? 
  • or I'm just delighted there's a birthday today here in Egoslavia?
  • D2E/O. 
  • Many more songs from his Death Post last November. Sorry, some youtubes be void.
  • Is strange, reaching that age when more people seem to be dying more every fucking day but it's just your odomotor and worn out shocks.
  • His late stuff, holy the fuck.




 
Also too:


2 comments:

  1. Sometimes it's not clear whether we miss the poet, or a memory of time and place when we heard them, or the connections they were skillful enough to call forth in us; what they reminded us to remember. May not matter.

    But, missed, still. Really missed.

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  2. Is strange, reaching that age when more people seem to be dying more every fucking day but it's just your odometer and worn out shocks.

    1)speaking literally, i wonder about getting new shocks for my 2007 malibu, odometer over 130k - they would cost about a thousand dollars, but the ride is rough these days

    1a)and speaking metaphorically, i wonder about embarking on a late-life physical exercise program - like new shocks for the car, it would be costly (although not in the same way), but probably improve the ride for a while - i admire your ability to clamber about in the wilderness

    2)about your hating "hallelujah" - without giving up his judaism, cohen ordained as a buddhist monk to take care of his master sasaki roshi, of whom he speaks highly but whose misbehavior also became public [not that there's anything unusual about that - one could argue - and i fact, i do argue - that the corruption of the church of rome, e.g., is particularly pernicious because of how hard they have worked to prevent misbehavior from becoming publicly known]

    2a) just guessing, as we've never met - but extrapolating from my own reaction, keeping in mind gurdjieff's aphorism "Judge others according to yourself and you will seldom be mistaken" - your reaction to that song could have two components, as i think mine does - i) a reaction against the falseness and the dependency of the religion taught to children, one's anger at having been lied to ii)and also against one's inner weakness, the temptation to feel and express the longing which remains within oneself for an all-powerful all-loving parent-in-the-sky*

    2b)sasaki roshi also taught shinzen young, who taught michael taft

    2c)in his endorsement of michael taft's book 'the mindful geek', ian welsh (who appears on your blogroll - which may be how i first came to go there) states

    "This book includes quite a few different styles of meditation, but it’s primarily about noting meditation. You introspect, you examine something, you attach a word or phrase to it, you move on. I came to this style late, but it’s very effective and there are people it’s taken, essentially, all the way. (I find it boring, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.) It has a very Theravada Buddhist feel to it, though Taft’s background is mostly Zen and Hindu. And you don’t have to believe a thing about God, spirit, souls or anything else. It’s all completely materialistic. A good first book or a good book for those with some experience looking for other types of meditation to do than what they started off with."

    http://www.ianwelsh.net/meditation-cultivation-and-spirituality-books-part-one/

    *james taylor, sweet baby james
    a song that they sing of their home in the sky,
    maybe you can believe it if it helps you to sleep
    but singing works just fine for me




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