'Beautiful Losers' reading #2

[Geoffrey]

http://youtu.be/tqhlxhp24pw

[Cate]

Hi Geoffrey, I’m so glad that you posted these here.

You’ve recited this extremely well and the commentary beforehand gives the piece a wonderful context. Beautiful Losers is one of those books that you can read over and each time there will be something new in it for you. I’m currently on my third copy. Copy one – was literally torn up and thrown away … copy two was lost between moves and copy three was acquired about 10 years later during a Leonard Cohen binge.
This passage, from where you start reading, seems oddly real to me (separate from the story that is being told at that point), like something one might see during a vivid dream or perhaps a vision.

[Geoffrey]

hei cate. it is very nice to get a response from you, and especially one that says such nice things. yes, it was following your advice that these recitations were posted in this column. it was in fact, as we have earlier discussed, after your suggestion that these videos came into existence at all. you had expressed a desire to hear my speaking voice. knowing that the blame for disaster could be put onto someone else allowed me enough confidence to at least make an effort. so thank you, for being there, for being the lovely shining light that you are, and for adding a strong element of encouragement and support to my attempts at honouring and promoting leonard's work. you are a jewel, and i love you.

unlike yourself, i have only ever possessed one old copy of 'beautiful losers'. people have scribbled things across some of the pages, including leonard, anjani and marianne, and it is also very worn down, but i keep it mostly because it is the copy my father and i used together, back in the late 1960s or 70s. one fine memory i have from that time is when i heard his incoherent voice muttering early one morning in the bathroom. i tiptoed closer to the door and caught the words: "In the tiled dawn courtroom a folded man tries a thousand oaths!" he was suffering from constipation, and had aptly remembered that superb line from leonard's novel

gx

[Cate]

that's funny

I love you to Geoffrey x

You have a special book indeed Geoffrey. The guests that have written inside of it are icing on the cake (your book would be worth a pretty penny!) but the connection to your father that’s quite wonderful. Your Dad sounds like he was quite the character!

I love that you recorded these Geoffrey and I thank you selfishly for my own enjoyments sake. I think that this book can be hard to take and you've done it a great deal of justice.

x
cate

Call me Dr. Frankenstein with a deadline. I seemed to wake up in the middle of a car accident, limbs strewn everywhere, detached voices screaming for comfort, severed fingers pointing homeward, all the debris withering like sliced cheese out of Cellophane - and all I had in the wrecked world was a needle and thread, so I got down on my knees, I pulled pieces out of the mess and I started to stitch them together. I had an idea of what a man should look like, but it kept changing. I couldn't devote a lifetime to discovering the ideal physique. All I heard was pain, all I saw was mutilation. My needle going so madly, sometimes I found I'd run the thread right through my own flesh and I was joined to one of my own grotesque creations - I'd rip us apart - and then I heard my own voice howling with the others, and I knew that I was also truly part of the disaster. But I also realized that I was not the only one on my knees sewing frantically. There were others like me, making the same monstrous mistakes, driven by the same impure urgency, stitching themselves into the ruined heap, painfully extracting themselves -

[imaginary friend]

Geoffrey, I agree with Cate, your reading was excellent.

Cate, I agree with Geoffrey, you are a jewel.

BL makes me quite sad, don't know if it was the frame of mind I was in when I first read it, but whenever it comes up again, I still feel that way...

XO to both of you.

[Cate]

xx - you're always so kind I.F.

It's interesting how reading a specific book or listening to a specific song can take you right back to how you may have been feeling the first time you read or heard it. B.L. is a pretty sad book. Everyone is damaged and lost, not mention they all end up dead except for one decrepit man.

[Geoffrey]

it's good to find these messages. i have been online a little bit less recently, due to a number of visitors staying with me. i am not a machine. but it looks like things will be quietening down in a couple of weeks and i will be alone again. there is some grilled chicken in the fridge, and also a dishful of creamed potatoes with garlic. this will be good with the cherry tomatoes and feta cheese salad i made earlier. i need to put a lock on my bedroom door because i need some hours of sleep and to eat properly. people say i am pale and thin. when this one leaves i am going to have one more here for some days and then try to get my strength back and live in celibacy for a while.

[MaryB]

Bravo again Geoffrey! I will never again read this piece again without picturing, in my mind, your wonderful recitation.

I hope you are feeling stronger.

Kindest regards,
Mary

[Geoffrey]

Bravo again Geoffrey! I will never again read this piece again without picturing, in my mind, your wonderful recitation.

thank you, mary. many people learn off by heart long passages of shakespeare or the bible. not me; but i have memorised much of leonard's work. it is useful, when sitting in waiting rooms, to have a good book in your head.
x

[MaryB]

many people learn off by heart long passages of shakespeare or the bible. not me; but i have memorised much of leonard's work. it is useful, when sitting in waiting rooms, to have a good book in your head.
x

I think that as we 'mature', that is so very true for most of us here.