'I'm ready my lord' - RIP Leonard Cohen

I'm shaking with the news of this death though with the new album it seemed imminent.


It's like he waited to deliver to the world the darkness we wanted and then left. Another artist who timed his exit impeccably and with bitter irony.




If Bowie signalled the beginning of a terrible year, I hope Cohen's signals the end of it. I hope we've sunk as low as it's possible to go. But I'm not sanguine because only a fool can believe there isn't worse in store.




Hineni, hineni. I'm ready my lord.'

Rest in peace, Leonard.

Scroll Poetry Column 2: Heard melodies

I have been wrestling with the formatting of a poem and if I can't figure it out, I will scan it and put up an image.

In the meantime, what I thought was a fortnightly column for Scroll has apparently been changed into a weekly. The second column is now up here.

In it, I find myself talking once more about a teacher of mine, and Eliot and Leonard Cohen. Oh and AK Ramanujan. 

Wish me luck, admiral

Wish Me Luck

           Leonard Cohen from Book of Longing       

a fresh spiderweb

billowing

like a spinnaker

across the open window

and here he is

the little master

sailing by

on a thread of milk

wish me luck

admiral

I haven’t finished anything

in a long time

*

Haven't finished anything and worse - haven't begun anything - in a long time. Not sure what I need is luck; but who needs luck when there is longing?

Or so I tell myself. Glad to have Leonard by my bedside for now. The sketches are also lovely.

 

'Ideas are what you want to get rid of'

Leonard Cohen, when asked if he learns something from writing songs, if he works out ideas that way:

"I think you work out something. I wouldn't call them ideas. I think ideas are what you want to get rid of. I don't really like songs with ideas. They tend to become slogans. They tend to be on the right side of things: ecology or vegetarianism or antiwar. All these are wonderful ideas but I like to work on a song until those slogans, as wonderful as they are and as wholesome as the ideas they promote are, dissolve into deeper convictions of the heart. I never set out to write a didactic song. It's just my experience. All I've got to put in a song is my own experience."

Also this.