Leonard Cohen deprograms her face
citycabn (citycabn@gateway.net)
Tue, 26 Oct 1999 15:35:29 -0700
Now that I might have a reader or two, I'll quickly state this post is not
about you-know-what and is about Leonard Cohen.
It was Colin's listing of "Beautiful Losers" on his 20/20 that got me to
slink over to the mostly untouched part of my LP collection (I'm not a CD
man) and cast a trembling hand at the three dusty LPs of L.C. that I had
bought before Literature swept me (or my wallet) away. (Funny, thinking back
to c. 1970, my Quartet of Masters consisted of Cohen, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan
and John/Paul. In fact, I *dimly* recall once attempting to read part of
"Beautiful Losers" in an extremely illegal state, and not making much
progress before the walls and floor gave way.)
Put on some cuts from: The Songs of LC, Songs from a Room & Songs of Love
and Hate. Talk about a swoosh into the past. No, I won't list them.
Yeah, they sounded awfully good and still am jealous of some of those
rhymes.
But I don't think now I would turn to L. Cohen for insights into *love*.
Yeah, he can open the chest wall with the best of surgeons to reveal the
heart and peel it like an onion to instruct us: See, it's just matter, and
while we are at it in this room, after you and I get through all the rituals
of the mating dance, it's just sex, dear, and don't ever forget we never
did find *love* at the center of that onion.
But one *might* say: No matter how artful or how long between the legs it
doesn't lead to light (or call it love). That light, if it is anywhere
mixed into this strange clay and dust we seem to be sculpted of, might be
found within the eyes, and not some one-in-a-million iris, but there in that
colorless pupil.
Which is not to say I am not going one day to read "Beautiful Losers" in a
legal state of mind. :)
--Bruce