Book of Mercy #6-7

[mat james]

Is that what they call a Freudian slit ?

[mat james]

enough! enough!

Is there a 1.8 Simon or DB?

Maybe we could look at where that one takes us, or are you still keen on taking the covers (slip) off of 1.7 ?

Matj

[DBCohen]

I agree, Mat, it seems we’ve exhausted the discussion for the moment, and it’s time for I.8. I think it’s Simon’s turn to introduce it, if he’s willing.

[Tchocolatl]

In the contrary he always took all the blame on his shoulders. He did not complain so much about his women than about broken hearts and loss.

You’re right, Tchoc, but as with many other things concerning LC, it is also ambivalent. Although he has no problem with assuming responsibility, he also assumes, on the one hand, the position of the omnipotent male figure with women almost at his feet, and on the other hand, the vulnerable, tormented lover whom women almost trample on.

For the first position see, for example, the speaker in “You Know Who I Am”, who is very arrogant and commanding, and even when he breaks down he will teach her how to repair him.

For the second position there are many examples. “So Long, Marianne” is virtually a long list of complaints; in “Hallelujah” the woman does all kinds of terrible things to him; in “Famous Blue Raincoat” he has a bitter rival for Jane’s favors who turns her into “nobody’s wife”, and so on and so forth.

The notion of sex in psalm I.7 was already mentioned by James way back on p. 14 (how I wish the postings were numbered!), and then picked up by several others, diverging into the two courses of masturbation and copulation, which are not mutually exclusive, of course. But back to my earlier question: why the terrible feeling of sin? Does it necessarily have to do with sex, or are there other causes? We know that abstinence is an ideal for him; a famous example:

We were locked in the kitchen; I took to religion,
And I wondered how long she would stay.
I needed so much to have nothing to touch:
I’ve always been greedy that way.

Bur even here, with the wonderful irony of being “greedy” about abstinence, does he necessarily refer to sex? After all, the next line begins “But my son and my daughter…” and they drag him off to play. So the real ideal would be the absence of any human attachment, total detachment, nirvana perhaps. But this is clearly not something he can live with; he can play with the idea, but not live by it. Even when he goes into a monastery, it is for the human contact with his teacher. So perhaps sin here also has to do with the web of human connections, as well as the distance from God, and not with sex. I think we’d be hard pressed to find any really negative observation on sex in LC’s work.

DBCohen, I make a difference between 1) his persona and his real life which I don't want to know because private life (as much as it can really exist) is sacred even for public personalities 2) and the gap that exists - like for all of us - between what the persona wants to do, and what the persona does.

So, for me, I don't want to go into details in that direction, I mean how LC's was, really was - or not (wink) - with women. I prefer to stick to what he publicly said about that.

But if we use his work to have a little peep into men-women relationships, I feel OK.

Have a look on the lyrics of Never Any Good, it resumes in a fine humorous manner

Like you said, previously here in the discussion, same words have different meaning for people. I see YKHIM as the middle of passionate love-hate relationship, M. as the ending of a rather more friendly-lover and agony of a relationship that could be as painful if not as flamboyant, H. is a pure heart ache in the very first days of a broken love relationship. As for FBR - wow. How I love this song for the feeling of freedom and serenity wisdom and the sense of having touched one aspect of true or pure Love so rarely achieve in any human relationship. Wow.

There is so many other songs that we could bring here.

The fact is that we have both, man and woman, to deal with our culturel heritage and our genetic, which a part of it is moslty inconscious (easy to miss a target that you don't even know the existence) and our always moving present time that is always changing and that we can not always cease how, and that past and present of us are often contradictory in asking from us to be a "real and or good man" or a "real and or good woman".

Trying to live in the middle of all this, I have experienced most of the feelings that are described in his songs and so did people around me in relationships.

Why the terrible feeling of sin? Well first I must say that I like very much Lizzy's job on that piece. For one time, I don't see the other meanings.

Second : masturbation was not so long ago a real sin and a lot of shame and guilt were associated with it, like for the rest of not "natural" ways to have sex, which was considering to have a unique purpose : procreation. Now we know that there is a lot of others utilities, but you know, when it is socially so bad, like now smoking a cigarette, and people feel sinners and experienced feelings of guilt and shame to keep on smoking, well, add to this that to have sexual activities not meant for procreation offense God as it was anti-god-act-of-love, while chastity was, and you have the total.

Third : Put aside all the previous religious taboo, and keep this in this natural state. Not any sexual activities are rewarding even, for the person who having them. I don't talk here about abuses of minors, rapes, those kinds of things, I speak of having compulsory rather "normal" sexual activities. Some people are stuck with compulsive behaviors that make their lives really miserable, it can be in any field (work, alcool, drugs, food, name it) not only a sexual compulsion.

'Must run for now! See you later people!

[lizzytysh]

This is a "WoW" entry, Tchocolatl .

Especially jumping off the page for me were:

DBCohen, I make a difference between 1) his persona and his real life which I don't want to know because private life (as much as it can really exist) is sacred even for public personalities 2) and the gap that exists - like for all of us - between what the persona wants to do, and what the persona does.

So, for me, I don't want to go into details in that direction, I mean how LC's was, really was - or not (wink) - with women. I prefer to stick to what he publicly said about that.

But if we use his work to have a little peep into men-women relationships, I feel OK.

For me, rather than "little peep," I'll go with "picture window" ~ even reenforced by you later with:

Trying to live in the middle of all this, I have experienced most of the feelings that are described in his songs and so did people around me in relationships.

Back to what jumped off the page for me:

The fact is that we have both, man and woman, to deal with our culturel heritage and our genetic, which a part of it is moslty inconscious (easy to miss a target that you don't even know the existence) and our always moving present time that is always changing and that we can not always cease how, and that past and present of us are often contradictory in asking from us to be a "real and or good man" or a "real and or good woman".

I went to the site you linked on Tantric Yoga and read what was said there. A lot of truth. Even without the link, such an apt description of our realities. Leonard continues to try to work his way through all of it.

Second : masturbation was not so long ago a real sin and a lot of shame and guilt were associated with it, like for the rest of not "natural" ways to have sex, which was considering to have a unique purpose : procreation. Now we know that there is a lot of others utilities, but you know, when it is socially so bad, like now smoking a cigarette, and people feel sinners and experienced feelings of guilt and shame to keep on smoking, well, add to this that to have sexual activities not meant for procreation offense God as it was anti-god-act-of-love, while chastity was, and you have the total.

Third : Put aside all the previous religious taboo, and keep this in this natural state. Not any sexual activities are rewarding even, for the person who having them. I don't talk here about abuses of minors, rapes, those kinds of things, I speak of having compulsory rather "normal" sexual activities. Some people are stuck with compulsive behaviors that make their lives really miserable, it can be in any field (work, alcool, drugs, food, name it) not only a sexual compulsion.

In addition to the little I said [and thank you], I wish I'd thought to include all that.

A supportive "WoW" on your entry, Tchocolatl .


~ Lizzy

[DBCohen]

DBCohen, I make a difference between 1) his persona and his real life which I don't want to know because private life (as much as it can really exist) is sacred even for public personalities 2) and the gap that exists - like for all of us - between what the persona wants to do, and what the persona does.

I absolutely agree with you, Tchoc: I’m also thinking about the persona(s) depicted in the songs and other work, and not his private life and relations to specific women. It’s true that when quoting from “The Night Comes On” I also went on to speak about his life in the monastery etc., but that song is so openly autobiographical, that it’s hard to resist. I think that in the early work he was much more often creating personas for himself, and as he grew older he shad off some of his masks. That’s a big generalization, but it may stand scrutiny.

[Tchocolatl]

Matt James, I did not find any interest into being confrontational for nothing - or more accurately, as a sport - anymore in my life, but I was, once upon a time, and I understand in what kind of energy you are, but you know : once something is experienced it is kind of boring to stick into this energy so I did move toward another way of communication and i am in another state of energy. Consequently, I'm afraid that you have to find another playmate than me if you want to go that way. Have fun!

Lazariuk - and this said without any animosity - do you know that the main sexual organ is brain? By your answers to me, it seems that you have no memory and no capacity to understand what you read, as such as discutable capacity of analysis. Phew. Frankly it is worst than I was thinking at the beginning. Speaking to women may seem the secret code to enter from the point of view of somebody looking just to the superficial surface, what it looks like. But. There is the image (what things look like to be) and there is the reality (what things are behind the image). The meaning of the spoken words are the key, as well as the emotions carried by words. You see, it is not so much speaking, like having a real communication. But I repeat, being emotionally intelligent seems more difficult than being intellectually intelligent.

Thanks Lizzy for your supportive wows. The Tantra thread, yes... I agree mostly with her, let say, at 85% as she points out only to society to define roles, but I do believe there is a lot of bio involved in our differences, and testosterone is testosterone in every culture, I do not believe that men are more agressive than woman because they are not sexually happy. I agree with her when she said it is difficult for her to speak for men as she is not one, and I agree with everything she said in regard of both male and female having to return to a state of innocence though I find her poem about the peace warrior schmaltzy, much more too maternal for me in regard of men, I like emotionnaly mature men not big babies that want to return in the mummy's womb and it gives on my nerves when I see women being maternal with grown up people (being male of female, by the way, and paternalism with grown up, it is the same : it gives on my nerves). Well. Am I off topic here? I don't think so : I is a path provided by the discussion. OK. What comes to mind is that learning erotic art as she is teaching it seems not more stupid than any martial art, like karate, for example. It occurs to me that this takes time to practice an art of some sort, and that not everybody has time for that. Slaves we are in regard of time. In any case I wait now for your analysis of the 1.8 to come. From Simon or any other source.

DBcohen, you won't believe me but the radio plays Suzanne presently. What a nice coincidence. It is a (not bad at all) cover by Goeffrey ?? I'll have to look for the second name. Sorry.

I am under the impression that Cohen always take the material at hands to create, whatever it was at the time and whatever it is in the present. I do believe the long practice of zen has something to do with the change in his work as well as other experience a man of 70 has that a man of 30 does not have.

[lazariuk]

Lazariuk - and this said without any animosity - do you know that the main sexual organ is brain? By your answers to me, it seems that you have no memory and no capacity to understand what you read, as such as discutable capacity of analysis. Phew. Frankly it is worst than I was thinking at the beginning. Speaking to women may seem the secret code to enter from the point of view of somebody looking just to the superficial surface, what it looks like. But. There is the image (what things look like to be) and there is the reality (what things are behind the image). The meaning of the spoken words are the key, as well as the emotions carried by words. You see, it is not so much speaking, like having a real communication. But I repeat, being emotionally intelligent seems more difficult than being intellectually intelligent.

Now and again you seem to address things to me and I try to keep an open mind and I look at the words and try to understand what you are saying. I assume that english is not your first language and because of some of the words you choose I imagine that your first language is french. But it doesn't seem to be a language issue. Time and time again I get the feeling that it is someone else you are trying to say something to when you address me. I know authentic dialogue when I hear it and I watch for it and I respond in kind.
I am also not overly swayed by the superstition that words have meaning.

Jack

[mat james]

it is kind of boring to stick into this energy so I did move toward another way of communication and i am in another state of energy

Tchocolatl.

I'm fascinated that you found ripping someone to pieces "boring", after awhile. That's usually associated with teeny-boppor girly behaviours. (or perhaps the psychological Banshee!)
However;
I'm sure we are all pleased you have moved on.
javascript:emoticon(':roll:')
Rolling Eyes

[Tchocolatl]

I am also not overly swayed by the superstition that words have meaning.

This explains everything.

Anyway. Cheers people!

[Tchocolatl]

"Riping someone to pieces" is not what I had in mind when I was writing "being confrontational for nothing - or for sport". It was fare confrontations with people strong enough to talk back to me. You did miss the target, there.

It seems that not only you have to find another playmate but you have to look in the hardcore section, wooo!

Now, please excuse me, gentlemen, but I must leave this forum for now. I am a slave.

[mat james]

[tomsakic]

The original topic was split into smaller cuts and the discussion is continued in Book of Mercy, Part Three:
viewtopic.php?t=8075