Before You're Sixty-Four.

This is for your own works!!!
abby
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by abby »

The smell of Khiel's coriander body lotion used to double me over, the kind of experience your James Taylor. Donald Hall has a poem that says it's sweet and fitting to lose everything. He changed sweet to delicious in the time between being published in the New Yorker and his own collection- I liked it better the first way.

Precious? I'm not sure what you're referring to, but very precious, always.

Abby
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blonde madonna
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by blonde madonna »

Abby, maybe it's just me but I read the poem you quote as ironic, or at least as a hardboiled summing up of the grief process. It's too cold for me. I am moved more by another of his poems on the loss of Jane Kenyon.

Now he dreamed again of her thick and lavish hair,
of her lush body wetting and loosening beside him.
He remembered ordinary fucking that shone like the sun


BM
the art of longing’s over and it’s never coming back

1980 -- Comedy Theatre, Melbourne
1985 -- State Theatre, Melbourne
2008 -- Hamilton, Toronto, Cardiff
2009 -- Rochford Winery, Yarra Valley
2010 -- Melbourne
2013 -- Melbourne, The Hill Winery, Geelong, Auckland
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Geoffrey
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Geoffrey »

Greg wrote:
>This time - the first time off hand I've noticed him doing it - Geoffrey makes a positive assertion as to what is and what is not obscene. The . . . charge he's making is a serious one. One which it's important that we think about. And I believe that Geoffrey would prefer that people take his point . . . a little more seriously. And perhaps themselves a little less. Geoffrey's charge against Andrew is not easy to prove. And it's all too easy to deny.


Thank you, Greg. I don't feel so alone any more. It is warming, after so long, to discover that I am not a voice crying in the wilderness - that one or two people are speaking up. There is safety in numbers; it's often very tempting to be a member of the flock, to jump safely onto the mindless bulldozer, fall under the majority's comfortable influence. The psychology of mass persuasion, combined with a fear of being different, of being ridiculed, is by no means a modern phenomenon - having been employed with frightening success by Hitler in Nazi Germany. Swimming against the stream can be a lonely, and sometimes risky, business. It's healthy to retain a personal point of view, especially one that upholds decency - an ingredient sadly lacking in Andrew's poem.
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blonde madonna
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by blonde madonna »

Why do you think you're alone Geoffrey?

The seventh commandment says "Thou shalt not commit adultery."
the art of longing’s over and it’s never coming back

1980 -- Comedy Theatre, Melbourne
1985 -- State Theatre, Melbourne
2008 -- Hamilton, Toronto, Cardiff
2009 -- Rochford Winery, Yarra Valley
2010 -- Melbourne
2013 -- Melbourne, The Hill Winery, Geelong, Auckland
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Geoffrey
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Geoffrey »

blonde madonna asked:
>Why do you think you're alone Geoffrey? The seventh commandment says "Thou shalt not commit adultery."

Well, my remark concerned the limitations of this forum. I didn't receive any support in here, from leonard Cohen fans - that is what I meant. I appreciated very much your recent comment - and that of Greg.
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blonde madonna
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by blonde madonna »

That seems to be the nature of this forum - communication is often hit and miss. I suspect you won't let it keep you awake at night.

Here's a word from Mr Love & Justice on marriage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6HRz6pz8WY
the art of longing’s over and it’s never coming back

1980 -- Comedy Theatre, Melbourne
1985 -- State Theatre, Melbourne
2008 -- Hamilton, Toronto, Cardiff
2009 -- Rochford Winery, Yarra Valley
2010 -- Melbourne
2013 -- Melbourne, The Hill Winery, Geelong, Auckland
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~greg
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by ~greg »

Here's an unscratched version
http://relay.twoshakesofalambstail.com/ ... n_Gaye.mp3

It Hurt Me Too - Marvin Gaye

I could have laughed, and said, "I told you so".
I could have told the whole wide world
He'd leave you sad and blue.

I said I could have laughed and said:
"It's good for you",
yeah, now,

But I know when it hurt you,
Don't you know it hurt me too?

I could have said
That you had it coming to you
When you walked out
And turned your back on me.

I pleaded, baby, oh no,
Please, please baby don't go.
'Cause I knew he would hurt you.

Don't you know it hurt me too?

He said he had you dancing on a string.
As far as love goes, you were just another fling.

Oh, I may be a fool, to love you, the way I do.
Don't you realize
Even fools have feelings too?

So baby, come on back,
And let me dry the tears from your eyes,

'Cause I would never hurt you
No, no,
I would never hurt you,

'Cause baby when he hurt you
Don't you know it hurt me too?

It hurts me so bad

I'd never desert you
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~greg
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by ~greg »

(I'm a bit behind here.
But I just want to add my appreciation for the turn in tone the thread has taken.)

(Here's Geoffrey's old Cliff notes for BLs:
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.musi ... 9e59b13890
)


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It is perfectly clear what Abby meant.
The scene in BLs 1:30 is pathetic. And hysterically funny.

True, it wouldn't be, if the narrator didn't think so too.
But he does, and there are two indications:

First,
The whole style between the begining ("A note!...")
and the line: "...Then I was out on the street, 4 a.am",
is self-mocking hyperbole. It is written to be funny. And pathetic.
But not for the hell of it, like a skit. And not to belittle anybody.
The simple fact is, people do behave that way in grief.

Second,
the paragraph from that point on, to the end of the chapter,
is about somebody who realizes he had been out of his mind,
and who has now returned to his senses. ("Gone back to the world".)
Implicit in this is his realization that he had acted pathetically
and must have seemed crazy to the DJ.

Here it is in context ---
TELEPHONE: Click click.

What are you doing? Hey! Hey! Hello, hello, oh, no.
I remembered that there was a telephone booth
a few blocks down. I had to talk to her. My shoes
stuck in the semen as I walked across the linoleum.
I gained the door. I commanded the elevator.
I had so much to tell her, her with her blue voice
and city knowledge.

Then I was out on the street, 4 a.m. in the morning,
the streets damp and dark as newly poured cement,
the streetlamps nearly merely decoration, the moon
given speed by flying scarves of cloud, the thick walled
warehouses with gold family names, the cold blue air
filled with smells of burlap and the river, the sound
of trucks with country vegetables, the creaks of a train
unloading skinned animals from beds of ice, and men
in overalls with great armfuls of traveling food, great
wrestling embraces in the front-line war of survival,
and men would win, and men would tell the grief
in victory - I was outside in the cold ordinary world,
F. had led me here by many compassionate tricks,
a gasp in praise of existence blasted my chest
and unfolded my lungs like a newspaper in the wind.
F. had led me here by many compassionate tricks,
- is central.

A whole book could be written about that one statement!

By which I mean, of course, that I don't know what to say about it.
Except that it is very much like Cohen's song about his mother --
And the night comes on
It is very calm
I want to cross over, I want to go home,
But she says, go back, go back to the World
and ...tell the grief in victory
...in the cold ordinary world,
...a gasp in praise of existence


~~


When someone slips on a banana peel, we don't call them pathetic,
or laugh at them. (Or we try not to.) Until we're sure that they aren't hurt.
Which they normally indicate by laughing at themselves first.
And then we can laugh with them. And In fact we must..
Because if we don't, then they panic. They wonder if maybe their head
isn't cracked open without them realizing it. Or they take it as an insult,
- an indication of how little we must think of them that we can't even
relate to them enough to laugh with them. We don't, after all, laugh
at alcoholics when they fall down. We expect it of them.

When we laugh with someone, it's because we can relate.
We all know what it's like to be so distracted by worrying about
future banana peels, that we can't even see the banana peel
right in front of us on the pavement. And we all know what it's
like to be so carried away that we forget to consider how we
must be coming across to others.

The miscommunication over Abby's use of the word "pathetic"
is of a very common type. There are descriptive words for groups of people
which, when used by outsiders, are insults, but which are not that at all
when used by members of the group to refer to themselves.
A famous example is a certain word that's used sometimes,
almost as an endearment, by blacks, among themselves, which is
impossible for anyone else to use that way.

And it's the same with humor generally. Nothing is intrinsically funny.
What's considered hysterically funny in certain circles leaves
outsiders cold and scratching their heads. Humor depends entirely
on the situation, timing, and social context.

The mistake here is in assuming that Abby was speaking as an outsider
about a group of pathetic people, and therefore must have meant
the word as an insult, deliberately or not. But clearly she didn't mean it that way.
Nor was she characterizing a person or a group of people. She was
characterizing a behavior. A behavior which we can all relate to.
And therefore we can all laugh at. She meant it affectonatly,
because she considers herself to be a member of the group
she was talking about, -a group to which we all happen to belong.
no man is an island
baby, when he hurt you,
Don't cha know it hurt me too
I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together.
The King of France was a man.
I was a man.
Therefore I was the King of France.

~~~

What's "pathetic" (or "funny") about BLs 1:30 is, of course, not the grief.
Nor is it the narrator's irrational behavior. Rather it is something very
specific about the narrator's behavior, vis-a-vis the DJ.

It's like the cartoon character who has run off a cliff,
but doesn't realize it right away. And so he doesn't even begin
to fall until he does realize the situation, several seconds later.
And even then he doesn't fall immediately. The situation has to "sink in" first.
And then all the fall that should have happened already, happens all at once.

(I don't know why that's funny. You'll have to ask a kid.)
TELEPHONE: Click click.
What are you doing? Hey! Hey! Hello, hello, oh, no. ...
That's the narrator going off the cliff and not realizing it right away.
He doesn't begin to fall (or return to the world) until 10 sentences later.

The nature of the running off the cliff in BLs 1:30
is the intrusion of public life into private life, without the narrator realizing it right away.
Which is something that was analyzed, famously, in great detail, by Sartre.
I mean his analysis of "shame", and the "keyhole" incident.
The narrator of BLs 1:30, up to "Then I was out on the street, 4 a.m. in the morning,"
was talking about his pre-reflective cogito. And then after that he was self-reflective.
from Being And Nothingness
Part Three: Being-For-Others
Chapter One: The Existence of Others

-Jean-Paul Sartre

I: The Problem
...
Consider for example shame.
...
...I am ashamed of what I am.
Shame therefore realizes an intimate relation
of myself to myself. Through shame I have discovered
an aspect of my being. Yet although certain
complex forms derived from shame can appear
on the reflective plane, shame is not originally a phenomenon
of reflection. In fact no matter what results one can obtain in solitude
by the religious practice of shame,
it is in its primary structure shame before somebody.
I have just made an awkward or vulgar gesture.
This gesture clings to me; I neither judge it nor blame it.
I simply live it. I realize it in the mode of for-itself.
But now suddenly I raise my head. Somebody was there
and has seen me. Suddenly I realize the vulgarity of my gesture,
and I am ashamed.
It is certain that my shame is not reflective,
for the presence of another in my consciousness, even as a catalyst,
is incompatible with the reflective attitude;
in the field of my reflection I can never meet with anything
but the consciousness which is mine. But the Other
is the indispensable mediator between myself and me.
I am ashamed of myself as I appear to the Other.
By the mere appearance of the Other, I am put in the position
of passing judgment on myself as on an object, for it is as an object
that I appear to the Other.

Yet this object which has appeared to the Other
is not an empty image in the mind of another.
Such an image in fact, would be imputable wholly to the Other
and so could not "touch" me. I could feel irritation,
or anger before it as before a bad portrait of myself
which gives to my expression an ugliness or baseness
which I do not have, but I could not be touched to the quick.

Shame is by nature recognition.
I recognize that I am as the Other sees me.

There is however no question of a comparison
between what I am for myself and what I am for the Other
as if I found in myself, in the mode of being of the For-itself,
an equivalent of what I am for the Other.

In the first place this comparison is not encountered in us
as the result of a concrete psychic operation. Shame is
an immediate shudder which runs through me from head to foot
without any discursive preparation. In addition the comparison
is impossible; I am unable to bring about any relation
between what I am in the intimacy of the For-Itself,
without distance, without recoil, without perspective,
and this unjustifiable being-in-itself which I am for the Other.
There is no standard here, no table of correlation.
Moreover the very notion of vulgarity implies
an inter-monad relation. Nobody can be vulgar all alone!


...
...


IV: The Look

Let us imagine that moved by jealousy, curiosity, or vice
I have just glued my ear to the door and looked through a keyhole.
I am alone and on the level of non-thetic self-consciousness.

This means first of all that there is no self to inhabit my consciousness,
nothing therefore to which I can refer my acts in order to qualify them.
They are in no way known; I am my acts
and hence they carry in themselves their whole justification.
I am a pure consciousness of things,

...This means that behind that door a spectacle is presented
as "to be seen," a conversation as "to be heard."
The door, the keyhole are at once both instruments and obstacles;
they are presented as "to be handled with care";
the keyhole is given as "to be looked through close by and a little to one side,"
etc. Hence from this moment "I do what I have to do."
No transcending view comes to confer upon my acts
the character of a given on which a judgment can be brought to bear.
My consciousness sticks to my acts, it is my acts;
and my acts are commanded only by the ends to be attained
and by the instruments to be employed. My attitude, for example,
has no "outside"; it is a pure process of relating the instrument
(the keyhole) to the end to be attained (the spectacle to be seen),
a pure mode of losing myself in the world, of causing myself
to be drunk in by things as ink is by a blotter ...

...But I am this jealousy; I do not know it.

...Moreover I can not truly define myself as being in a situation;
first because I am not a positional consciousness of myself;
second because I am my own nothingness; ... I can not even
define myself as truly being in the process of listening at doors. ...

There as we have seen is the origin of bad faith.
Thus not only am I unable to know myself,
but my very being escapes - although I am that very escape
from my being - and I am absolutely nothing. ...

But all of a sudden I hear footsteps in the hall. Someone
is looking at me!
What does this mean? It means that I am
suddenly affected in my being and that essential modifications
appear in my structure - modifications which I can apprehend
and fix conceptually by means of the reflective cogito.

First of all, I now exists as myself for my unreflective
consciousness. It is this irruption of the self which has been
most often described; I see myself because somebody
sees me - as it is usually expressed. This way of putting it
is not wholly exact. But let us look more carefully. ...

...
...
Let me just add that the "other" before whom we feel shame
probably has to be physically present for the specific effect
that Sartre's talking about.

But people also have an effect on our behavior when they aren't present.
"F." has an effect on the narrator of BLs.
And Cohen's mother continues to have an effect on him.

There is a great old book by Theodore Rike called
Listening with the Third Ear that begins with
the extremely fertile premise or observation
that our inner voice, -- that with which we
continuously speak to ourselves, - is none other than
a continuation of our parents' (or initial guardians')
voices, ---in much the same style they used
when they scolded and praised us. In that same way,
and with much the same tone of voice, we continue to
scold and praise ourselves. We are our parents,
vis-a-vis ourselves. And the same goes, to some degree ,
for everyone we've ever met. We are everyone
we've ever met.
So grief isn't just loss, as in loosing an umbrella.
Grief is more like an amputation.
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~greg
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by ~greg »

The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre was sitting in a cafe
when a waitress approached him: "Can I get you something to drink, Monsieur Sartre?"

Sartre replied, "Yes, I'd like a cup of coffee with sugar, but no cream".

Nodding agreement, the waitress walked off to fill the order
and Sartre returned to working. A few minutes later, however,
the waitress returned and said, "I'm sorry, Monsieur Sartre,
we are all out of cream. How about with no milk?"


- http://www.workjoke.com/projoke70.htm
Cate
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Cate »

:lol:
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jimbo
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by jimbo »

Gods house ----heaven
Heaven will be on earth
world without end .Amen

how will engines run in 40 years?on love
As Leonard said Loves the only engine of surival..............


hi cate.............
love is not forgotten......
Red Poppy
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Red Poppy »

I think rapeseed and vegetable oil and the like might have something to do with it too, jimbo. And a damn sight easier to get into the tank!
Manna
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Manna »

NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!

Biofuels are B.S.
B.S.
.............................Biofuels are B.S.

(That's my little concrete poem for today. Ha ha - I just took it literally :lol: :lol: :lol: )

I really should probably get used to the idea that no one listens to science, but it takes MORE oil to make enough biofuel to compensate for what gets used in cars. MORE oil. Because farm equipment runs on... chug chugga glugg.

Biofuels = corn disposal
Biofuels = serpent eating its tail and using that food to make babies
Red Poppy
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Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Red Poppy »

Manna
You Americans are way off the mark and behind the times on this one. ;-)
My next- door-neighbour-farmer is running his tractor and jeep on vegetable oil to harvest the elephant grass which he turns into pellets (well not personallly) to run his central heating.
Wake up and smell the vegetables :D :D :D
"Science is what you know. Philosophy is what you don't know. "
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

My neighbour is a philosophic farmer.
Manna
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Location: Where clouds go to die

Re: Before You're Sixty-Four.

Post by Manna »

What happens to make that vegetable oil?
How is it shipped to him?
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