Listen to the 2nd KCRW interview

Everything about Leonard's 2006 book of poetry and Anjani's album
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

I compared the poem and song, and there are few more differences - and I can't quite hear the chnaged two lines, so if someone else could try...

The Book of Longing (song)

Can’t make the hills
The system is shot
I’m living on pills
For which I thank G-d

I used to be strong
Conquer the world

But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock

I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart

My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The hand wouldn’t write
The song wouldn’t sing

My animal howls
My angel’s upset
But I’m not allowed
A trace of regret

For someone will use
What I couldn’t be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally

She’ll step on the path
She’ll see what I mean
My will cut in half
Freedom between

For less than a second
Our hearts will collide
The endless suspended
The door open wide

She will move on?
? (care?)

What no one has done
She’ll heal and repair

I know she is coming
I know she will look
That is my longing
This is my book

I know she is coming
I know she will look
This was my longing
And this was my book
Guest

Post by Guest »

(i dont have time to elaborate : )
... gottago talk to a man about a tooth ... )


but:

"I used to be strong
Conquer the world"

is actually more like: ...

"I used to be strong
Cock 'a the whorl "

Or, in any case, some slight variation on:
"Cock of the walk".

~greg


(ps: I sent a e-mail reply to your e-mail to me, Tom
- a 'thank-you', actually. : )
THANK YOU! )
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~greg
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Post by ~greg »

since that previous "Guest" post can't exist,
since Jarkko instituded the new newbies-must-wait-to-post policy,

here it is again, with feeling
(angry at myself for being such a klutz)

-------------------

(i dont have time to elaborate : )
... gottago talk to a man about a tooth ... )


but:

"I used to be strong
Conquer the world"

is actually more like: ...

"I used to be strong
Cock 'a the whorl "

Or, in any case, some slight variation on:
"Cock of the walk".

~greg


(ps: I sent a e-mail reply to your e-mail to me, Tom
- a 'thank-you', actually. : )
THANK YOU! )
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Dem
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Post by Dem »

What does "The system is shot " mean?

What "But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock "?


Dem
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Dem
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Post by Dem »

What do you think of : free will inside a certain deterministic world?
What do you mean by the word "certain"?

If the world is ABSOLUTELY deterministic then such a thing as "free will"
can't exist.
This is well known in Philosophy as the moral problem of incompatibilism:
http://www.galilean-library.org/int13.html

If you mean (like Castoriadis) that the world is deterministic in
some domains and indeterministic in others then that means it is
not ABSOLUTELY deterministic and then yes, free will is possible
and nobody can claim that is a "puppet" or just"following orders".

The problem is still open though as some physicists dispute that
there are indeed indeterministic phenomena.

Personally I agree with Castoriadis' view.

Dem
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

Hi ~greg, I received your thanks, thank you:-) Now the complete show from hannover 1979 and Birmingham soudnboard from 1979 are on mr. stock's ftp site.

re: Derrida
~greg, it was in "Take This Waltz... Where" thread, when it was resurrected after two years: viewtopic.php?p=66377#66377
Tom Sakic wrote:
johnny7moons wrote:... can anyone explain to me the meaning of, "Cohen re-members the love song, the love song, by performing the ambivalence of its multiple voicings, its polyphonic traces of supplementarity, by reading contingency with his body" ?
Ha! That's the good one. It doesn't mean quite nothing, johnny7moons. The author has probably read the work of Jacques Derrida too much. "Performance", "supplement", "contingency", "body", "multiple voicings", "ambivalence", and "polyphony" (which is the term which comes from Bakhtin) are typical words of Derridian analysis. The good (and meaningfull) example of Derridian approach to Cohen is Stephen Scobie's "The Counterfeiter Begs Forgiveness: Leonard Cohen and Leonard Cohen", from 1993 Red Deer College's Leonard Cohen Conference. Scobie tells how "decentering" in Derridian meaning is at work in Cohen, because he intentionally destroys his authorship and authorial voice, from The Energy of Slaves, till Book of Mercy, where he gives up from his voice, surrendering totally to G-d. Also, Scobie explains Derridian use of "supplement" in approachable way in his article, and uses it on Leonard's work very appropriately. There's no harmful force in his writing.
Charlene Diehl-Jones's article was given at same conference, and it's typical example of terrorizing with theory ("therorizing"). I must admit it's one of rare texts in the Canadian Poetry issue and Scobie's 2001 Writing Leonard Cohen reader I didn't read til the end, and that was two years ago, so I maybe should give it another try. [The other text I never finished was some kind of Freudian analysis of BL, which was way too much for me also. There's nothing worse in theory than when people write uncomprehensible essays full of terms from Lacan or Derrida.)
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

re: Puppets. I think that LC thinks we're not mastering our lives. That was the main point of Ten New Songs, as he proved in dozens of 2001 interviews. Someone did said that we're all wrong thinking it's Zen, that Cohen is actually "channeling the ideas of Ramesh Balsekar". Well, it seems so, Balsekar's ideas are exactly those, how we're not mastering our life, how everything is destined; we can actually only try to live "a thousand kisses deep" in LC's words. But LC did say in 2001 that he suggest Balsekar's books for reading, and I think he's among thanks in Dear Heather and Blue Alert, so he's not hiding that he did found new spiritual way after he left Mt. Baldy.

Self-Realization or Enlightenment is nothing more than the deepest possible understanding that there is no individual doer of any action - neither you nor anyone else. - Leonard often quoted this in 2001. I think this means we're all puppets. We're doing, but there's no doer nor doing.
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dick
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Post by dick »

Thanks for transcription Tom

I agree with greg---
it's I used to be strong, "cock of the walk"

The other stanza goes

she will move on
"with nary a care"
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lightning
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Post by lightning »

At least someone still has the freedom to write a poem and sing a song denying free will, but in time that will go too.
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Post by Tchocolatl »

Castoriadis certainty kind it was.

This said, there is "free will" and "free will" and "deterministic world" and "deterministic world".

My free will is shaped by my deterministic environment and is very different than the free will of another individual.

I would tend to say that only physical laws could be absolutely deterministic. (This does not imply that I think all the physical laws are known yet, despite the scientific anti-scientific credo about that) and that inside those physical laws, we can do anything that we want. Only cultures are shaping the free will in a certain manner - like it does for the body also, if you want a concrete example.

To give another concrete example, in some cultures, free will is shaped like a Japanese bonzaï : very archaic, very twisted, and very small. It may looks highly civilized and it shows huge cultural skills able to harness and control the nature.

I prefer other styles of gardening.
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lightning
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Post by lightning »

Puppets reminds me of Allen Ginsberg's Ballad of the Skeletons, a poem he wrote shortly before he died, in which he saw everyone as the skeleton he or she would become.
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

Hey, it's not much of transcription - I copied The Book of Longing (poem) from Ecco's site, added Dem's corrections, and I tried to hear the other changes. You are right about the "cock of the walk", it rhymes with "stock". Although I'm not quite sure about the meaning of those two lines I didn't hear (and that's why I didn't hear them, logically, it didn't make sense to me). I know what cock is, and what's walk, but cock of the walk, I can only imagine.


The Book of Longing (song) - corrected lyrics

Can’t make the hills
The system is shot
I’m living on pills
For which I thank G-d

I used to be strong
Cock of the walk
But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock

I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart

My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The hand wouldn’t write
The song wouldn’t sing

My animal howls
My angel’s upset
But I’m not allowed
A trace of regret

For someone will use
What I couldn’t be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally

She’ll step on the path
She’ll see what I mean
My will cut in half
Freedom between

For less than a second
Our hearts will collide
The endless suspended
The door open wide

She will move on
with nary a care
What no one has done
She’ll heal and repair

I know she is coming
I know she will look
That is my longing
This is my book

I know she is coming
I know she will look
This was my longing
And this was my book
Last edited by tomsakic on Wed Jul 19, 2006 10:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

Alas,
Cock of the walk, a chief or master; the hero of the hour;
one who has overcrowed, or got the better of, rivals or
competitors.
Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913)

Thank got it's not what I could imagine :lol:
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tomsakic
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Post by tomsakic »

Dem wrote:What "But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock "?
Laughing stock:
Meaning
A figure or object of ridicule and laughter.

Origin
Laughing-stock is now usually written as a single hyphenated word, but it was previously the two-word phrase, 'laughing stock'.

It's moderately old and there are at least two citations of it dating back to the 16th century. John Frith's, 'An other boke against Rastel', 1533:
"Albeit ... I be reputed a laughing stock in this world."

and Sir Philip Sidney's, 'An apologie for poetrie', 1533:
"Poetry ... is fallen to be the laughing stocke of children."

The age of the phrase may be the reason that it is often linked with the practice of putting people into stocks as a punishment. The stocks were a means of punishment in use at the time the phrase was coined, by which people were tortured or ridiculed. Victims were held by having their ankles, and occasionally the wrists too, trapped in holes between two sliding boards. The punishment, although not as harsh as the pillory, in which people were confined by the neck, was severe and certainly not intended to be humorous.

Stocks and pillories are no longer used a means of punishment. More recently, it's become commonplace at school fairs and charity events to put volunteers into stocks and pillories and throw wet sponges at them. This is for humorous effect of course and has no doubt added to the idea that 'laughing-stock' originated this way.

The stock in question isn't that though. It refers to the meaning of stock as 'something solid that things can be fixed to', i.e. a butt or stump. So, 'laughing-stock' is just the same as 'the butt of the joke'.

It may be that the association between 'laughing-stock' and the practise of ridiculing people in the stocks grew over time. There's no reference to that in any of the early citations of the phrase though, and it seems clear that isn't the way the phrase originated.

(Copyright © Gary Martin, 1996 - 2006)
http://www.phrases.org
So, that's laughing stock. But someone can only be the figure or riduculing, or its object (so, others laugh at him/her/it, make him/her ridiculous). So, his time of being laughing stock can be past, gone, but how time can be past my laughing stock? - Maybe genuine speakers could enlighten me?
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Post by tomsakic »

Dem wrote:What does "The system is shot " mean?
1. The system we're living in is shot on that day, they shot him, the system which adjusted to that strict September drum, and now it's gonna be September for many years to come.

2. The system we fought against is shot (did we shot it?), it's finally dead, and we were trying to change it from within, gudied by the signlas in the haven and the beauty of our weapons.
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