the naked man and woman - just a shining artifact of the past
is either adam & eve, glistening in the sun,
after having worked up a good sweat. (somehow or other.
but not by work. unemployment was 100% in Eden back then. )
or else Boo's suggestion is more on the money.
And I think that the word "shining" makes it hard to account for
in any other way than Boo's.
So that's where I'd put my money.
(If I had any. But, since I don't,
this doesn't change the odds in any way.)
"The plague" referred to was, "in the most physical sense", AIDS.
Interviewer > One of the new songs says,
"Everybody knows the plague is coming...
/ everybody knows the scene is dead".
Cohen> I feel the whole thing's dead, yeah.
The plague in the most physical sense is AIDS.
But there's another kind of plague going on too,
of which AIDS is one of the symptoms.
If indeed disease does have ultimately a psychic
origin, then there's a plague of alienation and
separation and lassitude and panic; a sense of
not being in control.
-
http://www.webheights.net/speakingcohen/mus0788.htm
(aside:
What the "shining" wasn't, as everybody will see,
was some scenes I remember, "through a glass darkly",
from the movie "Suddenly Last Summer',
(-from the summer of '59 - so - not so sudden any more I guess)
- with Elizabeth Taylor, in effect, shining naked in the sun
(in my pre-pubescent imagination at the time)
and Montgomery Clift being reduced to shredded lunch
at the top of the hill by the starving abused kids, with their shining utensils.
I can't find the whole script on line, but some random quotes I could find
can maybe show why I was reminded of this by the lines
"the naked man and woman / just a shining artifact of the past",
- particularly by the word "shining", and by Cohen
mentioning alienation, separation, lassitude, panic,
and "a sense of not being in control."
Catharine >
And before long, when the weather got warmer and the beach so crowded,
he didn’t need me any more for that purpose.
...
So now he let me wear a decent dark suit.
I’d go to a faraway empty end of the beach, write postcards and letters
and keep up my—third-person journal.
...
...white as the weather. He had on a white panama and white shoes,
white--white lizard skin--pumps! He--kept touching his face
and his throat here and there with a white silk handkerchief
and popping little white pills in his mouth.
...
He!--accepted!--All!
as how!--things!--are!--
And thought nobody had any right to complain or interfere in any way whatsoever,
and even though he knew that what was awful was awful...
he was certainly never sure that anything was wrong!
...
It was all white outside. White hot, a blazing white hot, hot blazing white...
It looked as if -- as if a huge white bone had caught on fire in the sky
and blazed so bright it was white and turned the sky and everything
under the sky white with it!
...
the band of naked children pursued us up the steep white street in the sun
that was like a great white bone of a giant beast that had caught on fire in the sky!
...
but of course, as others have pointed out, everyone brings part of themselves into what they read.
. Look how - anyway (and seriously) - a simple picture like that talks loud about the culture of the people who launched the spacecraft. They are white (or at least transperent, pale anyway) to begin with (what if those beings decide to come here and lands in Africa? They will blame it on their shining search engine?). The sex of the woman is considered not important (it is not on the drawing) and the whole female body is like in the background. They are rather young, youth is a great quality in this culture. What if they arrive in a residence for senior citizens? What if they see the two lipsed THIS MESSAGE IS SPAM AND WILL BE DELETED AS SOON AS THE MODERATOR WAKES UP of a woman? Etc. Etc. They will be puzzled.
