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Jan. 20th, 2012 03:02 pmArticle about Leonard Cohen from today's Grauniad. Am really looking forward to hearing the new album (Guardian review here).
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Jun. 2nd, 2011 05:24 pmDoctor Who fans: go at once and watch this utterly gorgeous vid by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
such_heights. Doctor/ TARDIS, to Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne."
such_heights. Doctor/ TARDIS, to Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne."(no subject)
Jul. 10th, 2009 01:57 pmThe Grauniad has a small, but rather nice, interview with Leonard Cohen: (I always had a notion that I had a tiny garden to cultivate. I never thought I was really one of the big guys. And so the work that was in front of me was just to cultivate this tiny corner of the field that I thought I knew something about, which was something to do with self-investigation without self-indulgence.)
On an unrelated note, but also at the Guardian, Adam Smith is blogging an Alpha course. Must remember to follow that (and not to read the comments, this being CiF); it looks like it could be quite an interesting series, judging from the first post. As far as I can see, the Alpha Course can be quite a good resource, and the most important bit is the discussions it enables, anyway - though it's woefully lacking on the sacramental and ecclesiological side (but then, I would say that, wouldn't I?)
On an unrelated note, but also at the Guardian, Adam Smith is blogging an Alpha course. Must remember to follow that (and not to read the comments, this being CiF); it looks like it could be quite an interesting series, judging from the first post. As far as I can see, the Alpha Course can be quite a good resource, and the most important bit is the discussions it enables, anyway - though it's woefully lacking on the sacramental and ecclesiological side (but then, I would say that, wouldn't I?)
An amusing song meme, via wellinghall
May. 9th, 2009 03:27 pmPick a musical artist whose discography you know fairly well. Using only their song titles, try to answer these questions. Try not to repeat a song title.
Pick your artist: Leonard Cohen
Are you male or female: You Know Who I Am
Describe yourself: Lady Midnight
How do you feel about yourself: The Old Revolution
Describe where you currently live: Chelsea Hotel
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: First we take Manhattan (though to be perfectly honest, I'd sooner start with Berlin)
Your favorite form of transportation: By the Rivers Dark (possibly some sort of ferry?)
Your best friend is: Our Lady of Solitude
Your favorite color is: Famous Blue Raincoat
What's the weather like: Light as the Breeze
Favorite time of the day: Closing Time
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: In My Secret Life
What is life to you: A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes
What is the best advice you have to give: Sing Another Song, Boys
If you could change your name, what would it be: Suzanne (not much choice there!)
Your favorite food is: Bird on a Wire (a song about rotisserie chicken?)
Thought for the day: There Ain't No Cure For Love
How I would like to die: Avalanche
My soul's present condition: Humbled in Love
The faults I can bear: Priests
My motto: Love Calls You By Your Name
Pick your artist: Leonard Cohen
Are you male or female: You Know Who I Am
Describe yourself: Lady Midnight
How do you feel about yourself: The Old Revolution
Describe where you currently live: Chelsea Hotel
If you could go anywhere, where would you go: First we take Manhattan (though to be perfectly honest, I'd sooner start with Berlin)
Your favorite form of transportation: By the Rivers Dark (possibly some sort of ferry?)
Your best friend is: Our Lady of Solitude
Your favorite color is: Famous Blue Raincoat
What's the weather like: Light as the Breeze
Favorite time of the day: Closing Time
If your life was a TV show, what would it be called: In My Secret Life
What is life to you: A Bunch of Lonesome Heroes
What is the best advice you have to give: Sing Another Song, Boys
If you could change your name, what would it be: Suzanne (not much choice there!)
Your favorite food is: Bird on a Wire (a song about rotisserie chicken?)
Thought for the day: There Ain't No Cure For Love
How I would like to die: Avalanche
My soul's present condition: Humbled in Love
The faults I can bear: Priests
My motto: Love Calls You By Your Name
NAPOMO: Anthem, Leonard Cohen
Apr. 17th, 2009 05:41 pmI really do love Cohen, and this one means an awful lot to me in its depiction of a broken world, but one from which the divine is not absent, indeed is found in the brokenness (and is taking names with regard to oppression and violence). I think Cohen's one of the greatest mystic poets of our century (he's a much better poet than Merton, even if I'm closer to Merton theologically. Although - Every heart, every heart/ To love will come/ But like a refugee strikes me as very like the truth and, incidentally, very close to Julian of Norwich ("Sin is behovely, but all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well")
( There is a crack, there is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in )
( There is a crack, there is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in )
I can has books
Apr. 4th, 2009 03:15 pmA trip to the Oxfam bookshop resulted in money being spent, most notably on a modernish reprint of Evelyn Underhill's history of mysticism, Mysticism, which I have wanted to read for ages, Mrs Oliphant's The Perpetual Curate (a narrative of the woes of a Tractarian priest, caught between a rector who thinks he is a dangerous radical, a faction of local opinion who thinks he's only interested in tat, another faction which is suspicious of his work among the working classes, and who has a love interest he can't afford to marry, and a problem with persistent and untrue rumours that he's having an affair with a shop-girl...), and HV Morton's Atlantic Meeting, an eye-witness account of Churchill and Roosevelt's meeting in 1941 off the coast of Newfoundland.
The latter provided an interesting photograph of a card given by Roosevelt to Churchill, which quoted a verse from Longfellow:
"Sail on, o ship of state!
Sail on, o Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all it's fears,
With all its hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
Which stuck me as familiar - because Leonard Cohen refers to it in "Democracy":
"Sail on, sail on, o mighty ship of state
To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.
It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst."
Clever man, Mr Cohen.
The latter provided an interesting photograph of a card given by Roosevelt to Churchill, which quoted a verse from Longfellow:
"Sail on, o ship of state!
Sail on, o Union, strong and great!
Humanity with all it's fears,
With all its hopes of future years,
Is hanging breathless on thy fate!"
Which stuck me as familiar - because Leonard Cohen refers to it in "Democracy":
"Sail on, sail on, o mighty ship of state
To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.
It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It's here they got the range and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst."
Clever man, Mr Cohen.
(no subject)
Oct. 7th, 2008 11:55 amHalf-listening to Leonard Cohen while reading about Eckhart's theology of emptiness and freedom is a very confusing experience: it goes together almost too well, to the point that you end up half convinced that Eckhart wrote "Like a Bird on a Wire" or argued that it doesn't matter which you heard, the holy or the broken hallelujah.
ETA: If you translated 'There's nothing in the world that's pure enough to be a cure for love' into Middle High German, that definitely does sound like mysticism, albeit more like Mechthild - it's got too many erotic overtones to be Eckhart!
ETA: If you translated 'There's nothing in the world that's pure enough to be a cure for love' into Middle High German, that definitely does sound like mysticism, albeit more like Mechthild - it's got too many erotic overtones to be Eckhart!
