Every heart to love will come (but like a refugee)

You don’t really care for music, do you?

“Hallelujah” is not, as [contestant Lee]DeWyze conceived it on American Idol, a shout of praise. It is too confused to shout, too self-concerned to praise. Cohen’s song is disturbing stuff. The Buckley version always leaves me reflective and bothered, if aesthetically uplifted. “Hallelujah” manages to be a psalm, a lament, and a paean to romantic ecstasy all at once. And like Psalms, Lamentations, and Song of Songs, it manages to do so while drawing on the rich and messy personal histories of the Bible’s most notables. That’s the hard-fought lyrical production that has sustained the song, and that will—of course—make it outlast Idol. 

 —Patton Dodd, writing in the blog

Killing the Budda

Leonard Cohen World Tour

This summer's Leonard Cohen tour, which I was so excited about, never stops in the USA. Yes, I suppose, I could make the journey to Toronto or Montreal, but that don't seem likely, do it. [That's 200$ Canadian for seats at the Place des Arts!]

Perhaps the stock market will make a miraculous recovery and the value of our horded greenbacks will soar! Ha! Perhaps my father’s investment in Florida’s panhandle will suddenly become beachfront property thanks to melting icecaps and rising seas. More likely.

Most likely, I will hunker down in a dark room this summer with my Austin City Limits DVD of Cohen’s October 1988 concert and revel in the way things used to be. "Take this waltz, take its broken waist in your hand."

Found Images

By some miracle of technology or lucky intervention, these images (and several others) that I created over a decade ago are still readable thanks to my now ancient Zip Drive. I’m wondering what to make of them.

I remember spending countless hours engrossed in the minutia of each picture, fussing over details most viewers would, in all likelihood, never notice. Was I ill or enraptured? The distinction between artistry and insanity is not always that clear to me.

Leonard Cohen says that it can sometimes take years of revision before he is ready to call a song or poem satisfactory. Perhaps my pictures are like that. Will they ever be finished? Do I even want them to be finished? How can a picture ever be finished, if the artist is always changing?

Today’s me is really an emergent form of the old me; not something radically new. That makes sense, doesn’t it? So each version of any one of these pictures reflects the emergent phenomenon* that goes by the same name on each renewed driver’s license.

Even though I be Born Again down by the riverside, I am still born anew as a version of the self that used to be. Yesterday I may have been just a green plant, but today I emerge as a flower nestled in green leaves. Wow!

When the flower fades and the green leaves wither, will I still be me? Will you recognize me in the wrinkled aftermath of earlier glory or disaster?

*See Jim Sherblom's November sermon at the First Parish in Brookline, "You are an emergent phenomenon".

The Anthem video revisited

I have continued my search for more info about Caitlin Davidson and Dylan Cunningham who were responsible for the video of Leonard Cohen’s ‘The Anthem’ that I cited a couple of days ago (see below, Feb 14). As best I can figure out, they put this show together for a Filmapalooza at their high school in New Brunswick, Canada. Dylan put a re-cut version of the video to Soundgarden’s ‘Fell on Black Day” — maybe, he didn’t care for Cohen so much after all... maybe, he just wanted to prove he could do it. The original 48 Hour Filmapalooza is the oldest and largest timed film competition in the US, but I’m guessing this one was strictly Tantramar Regional High School.

In 2007, 31 US cities participated in this now international Filmapalooza project with over 17,000 participants. According to the organizers, "the competition is a race against time. On Friday evening, filmmakers draw a genre from a hat. Before the final kick off at 7 PM, a character, prop, and a line of dialogue are assigned and the filmmakers are off. They rush off to write, shoot, and edit their films. The final masterpiece is due by 7:30 PM sharp, on Sunday. Films screen at local theaters just days later. Everyone on a team must be a volunteer, and although some teams are fiercely competitive, many teams look at this as a chance to have a high-octane get-together with friends. The 48 Hour Film Project was started by Mark Ruppert and Liz Langston in Washington, DC, six years ago."

Maybe Cait or Dylan will write and we will find out more about their project.

The Anthem

In their workshop, 'Soul Signals:The Spirituality of Midlife', the Revs. Martha Niebanck & Larry Peers [First Parish in Brookline] encourage new perspective on the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves. The stories we write reveal the movement of our lives and suggest the particular future toward which we dream or might dare to dream thanks to the crack in everything.

"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
— Leonard Cohen, 1993

Caitlin Davidson and Dylan Wendell Cunningham created the visuals for this video. I wonder who they are and what their story is. Why did you choose this Cohen song?