Dear all
Is there anyone who can tell me what the significance of the hummingbird, which appears on a couple of Leonard Cohen albums is?
Thanks,
Lars.
Hummingbird?
Hi Lars
I relate the hummingbird logo to Beautiful Losers. From the marvelous concordance that Marie Mazur has posted of Leonard’s works, these passages seem to fit the bill:
1. 3, Section 19, Book One, Beautiful Losers
...the Plague. I want thirteen-year-olds in my life. Bible King David had one to warm his dying bed. Why shouldn't we associate with beautiful people? Tight, tight, tight, oh, I want to be trapped in a thirteen-year-old life. I know, I know about war and business. I am aware of shit. Thirteen-year-old electricity is very sweet to suck, and I am (or let me be) tender as a hummingbird. Don't I have some hummingbird in my soul? Isn't there something timeless and unutterably light in my lust hovering over a young wet crack in a blur of blond air? Oh come, hardy darlings, there is nothing of King Midas in my touch, I freeze nothing into money. I merely graze your hopeless nipples as they grow away from me into business problems. I change nothing as I float and sip under the first bra....
2. 5, Section 19, Book One, Beautiful Losers
...cunt sap of a thirteen-year-old. O Tongue of the Nation! Why don't you speak for yourself? Can't you see what is behind all this teen-age advertising? Is it only money? What does "wooing the teen-age market" really mean? Eh? Look at all the thirteen-year-old legs on the floor spread in front of the tv screen. Is it only to sell them cereals and cosmetics? Madison Avenue is thronged with hummingbirds who want to drink from those little barely haired crevices. Woo them, woo them, suited writers of commercial poems. Dying America wants a thirteen-year-old Abishag to warm its bed. Men who shave want little girls to ravish but sell them high heels instead. The sexual Hit Parade is written by fathers who shave. O suffering child-lust offices of the business world, I feel your blue-balled...
...who smiled all night while she danced with the football star because it is the foam rubber of his car she lies dreaming upon. Charity begins alone, F. used to say. Many long nights have taught me that the Chemistry Teacher is not merely a sneak. He loves youth truly. Advertising courts lovely things. Nobody wants to make life hell. In the hardest hard sell exists a thirsty love-torn hummingbird. F. wouldn't want me to hate forever the men who pursued Edith.
Suggest that everyone book mark this wonderful tool:
http://www.webheights.net/cohenconcordance/index.htm
Welcome to the forum
Dick
I relate the hummingbird logo to Beautiful Losers. From the marvelous concordance that Marie Mazur has posted of Leonard’s works, these passages seem to fit the bill:
1. 3, Section 19, Book One, Beautiful Losers
...the Plague. I want thirteen-year-olds in my life. Bible King David had one to warm his dying bed. Why shouldn't we associate with beautiful people? Tight, tight, tight, oh, I want to be trapped in a thirteen-year-old life. I know, I know about war and business. I am aware of shit. Thirteen-year-old electricity is very sweet to suck, and I am (or let me be) tender as a hummingbird. Don't I have some hummingbird in my soul? Isn't there something timeless and unutterably light in my lust hovering over a young wet crack in a blur of blond air? Oh come, hardy darlings, there is nothing of King Midas in my touch, I freeze nothing into money. I merely graze your hopeless nipples as they grow away from me into business problems. I change nothing as I float and sip under the first bra....
2. 5, Section 19, Book One, Beautiful Losers
...cunt sap of a thirteen-year-old. O Tongue of the Nation! Why don't you speak for yourself? Can't you see what is behind all this teen-age advertising? Is it only money? What does "wooing the teen-age market" really mean? Eh? Look at all the thirteen-year-old legs on the floor spread in front of the tv screen. Is it only to sell them cereals and cosmetics? Madison Avenue is thronged with hummingbirds who want to drink from those little barely haired crevices. Woo them, woo them, suited writers of commercial poems. Dying America wants a thirteen-year-old Abishag to warm its bed. Men who shave want little girls to ravish but sell them high heels instead. The sexual Hit Parade is written by fathers who shave. O suffering child-lust offices of the business world, I feel your blue-balled...
...who smiled all night while she danced with the football star because it is the foam rubber of his car she lies dreaming upon. Charity begins alone, F. used to say. Many long nights have taught me that the Chemistry Teacher is not merely a sneak. He loves youth truly. Advertising courts lovely things. Nobody wants to make life hell. In the hardest hard sell exists a thirsty love-torn hummingbird. F. wouldn't want me to hate forever the men who pursued Edith.
Suggest that everyone book mark this wonderful tool:
http://www.webheights.net/cohenconcordance/index.htm
Welcome to the forum
Dick
-
Young dr. Freud
- Posts: 667
- Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2002 2:41 am
-
Young dr. Freud
- Posts: 667
- Joined: Fri Dec 06, 2002 2:41 am
What bull. It was pervy then and it's pervy now. Maybe the narrators's yen for underage flesh was just an attempt to shock the squares back in the 60s. (Or maybe it's just a little too revealing about you-know-who.) In any case, the times have caught up with BL (and it's author) with a vengence. Oh, Brave New World that has such people in it.I'd say it was "pervy" then; nowadays it's brave.
YdF
I still think that nobody more familiar with ongoing art and literature was shocked in 1960s while today - in time of so-called "political correctness" - they're more shocked or at least equally. What did change in BL's reception, since 1966's "verbal masturbation" to 2005's Chow's shock during CBC's Canada Reads show?
Leonard Cohen Newswire / bookoflonging.com (retired) / leonardcohencroatia.com (retired)
-
Tchocolatl
- Posts: 3805
- Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2003 10:07 pm
Beautiful Looser is shocking.
It is not a nice book.
It is not meant to be comforting or comfortable - on the contraty it is disturbing - it was and it still. It goes on kicking social taboos in the balls, and even literate people can find it unbearable.
It is not just another matter of speaking gross about porno. Of course it could be seen that way and OK from this point of view, it grows old like habits. Like and old issue of any porn manazine. Everybody knows that regular porno custumers need to increase the dose with time. Now we are far away from lit. and from BL.
But anybody who does say that BL is an inoffensive domestic animal just because of this is keeping a tiger at home saying it is a kitten. (pussy would have been too easy).
A tiger is a tiger in 1960 or in 2007. It is difficult to handle.
It is not a nice book.
It is not meant to be comforting or comfortable - on the contraty it is disturbing - it was and it still. It goes on kicking social taboos in the balls, and even literate people can find it unbearable.
It is not just another matter of speaking gross about porno. Of course it could be seen that way and OK from this point of view, it grows old like habits. Like and old issue of any porn manazine. Everybody knows that regular porno custumers need to increase the dose with time. Now we are far away from lit. and from BL.
But anybody who does say that BL is an inoffensive domestic animal just because of this is keeping a tiger at home saying it is a kitten. (pussy would have been too easy).
A tiger is a tiger in 1960 or in 2007. It is difficult to handle.
***
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."
Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."
Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
-
Tchocolatl
- Posts: 3805
- Joined: Wed Apr 02, 2003 10:07 pm
While waiting for your memory to come back with something accurate.
"No special group, no particular individual can change the world. I think the world is changed by the aggregate of people in it. By how they live individually. The great changes come by the things they don't do. By their inertia. It's that failure to live up to themselves that creates bad conditions. We always look for some Hitler, some target to blame. They are not the prime cases; the inert mind, the slothful, lazy mind is. There's the quick and the dead, and most of the world is dead. They're not having the kind of life one enjoys."
- Henry Miller in Conversations with Henry Miller P.171
Or :
Push Bush in the bush - but don't look how you are acting with people who annoy you.
Ole.
Toro!
"No special group, no particular individual can change the world. I think the world is changed by the aggregate of people in it. By how they live individually. The great changes come by the things they don't do. By their inertia. It's that failure to live up to themselves that creates bad conditions. We always look for some Hitler, some target to blame. They are not the prime cases; the inert mind, the slothful, lazy mind is. There's the quick and the dead, and most of the world is dead. They're not having the kind of life one enjoys."
- Henry Miller in Conversations with Henry Miller P.171
Or :
Push Bush in the bush - but don't look how you are acting with people who annoy you.
Ole.
Toro!
***
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."
Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
"He can love the shape of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love."
Leonard Cohen
Beautiful Losers
monsters of love
my memory is just not going to come back with that and i don't have any of miller's books here. it was probably in one of the tropics. but its there "monsters of love" or maybe just "monster of love" i remember reading that and wondering if leonard had read it.