Sincerely, L Cohen.

Leonard Cohen is in Australia, touring. I saw him the last time he was here, on a hot February evening, the night before the 'Black Saturday' bushfires as it happened. That concert was moving, an almost spiritual experience. Last Friday, I went along to Rod Laver Arena to see his show. Naturally, I was anticipating greatness, but the weather was being overly dramatic and a soggy schlepp through city crowds that evening didn't appeal, so I went in with a slightly laissez faire attitude. You know, being a veteran fan and all...

Of course this is the all-together wrong attitude to have with legends. Because just when you think you've seen and heard what they have to offer...they pull out more. Or better. Legends always have that extra gear that sets them quite apart from the also-rans.

Last Friday's concert was monumental. Expansive. Transcendant. Downright awesome. While many other artists have covered or re-interpreted Cohen's songs, so few have done a good job of it and none are as good as the original. To see 'Hallelujah' performed live by Leonard - backed by his musicians, and the ladies (Sharon Robinson and the Webb sisters) - is an experience beyond words. It is as good as it gets my friends.

Cohen's been writing poetry and songs for some 50 years. So much of his work is now steeped in popular (and high) culture but - I read this somewhere- he's never had a 'hit single' as such. He's 76 now. An old man. And yet he's remains acutely relevant, I think because his songs speak directly to the human condition and his themes are universal and timeless.

'Anthem'

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

Milly Visited Me...

Milly visited me one day in June...

and a week later she came to stay.

The Namesake

The Hollow Men - T.S. Eliot

Mistah Kurtz - he dead.
A penny for the Old Guy.

I

We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw.
Alas! Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us -- if at all -- not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.

II

Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In death's dream kingdom
These do not appear:There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the wind's singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.

Let me be no nearer
In death's dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Rat's coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearer --
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom

III

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.

IV

The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.

V

Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five o'clock in the morning.

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.

How have you been kind today?

Pear Shaped

Hmmm....dear me...that last post, only my bloody SECOND, certainly took a turn for the worse...

Never mind, I will straighten this ship up right now, because guess what – it’s Friday! Yay! All Friday’s deserve a Yay! because they make our little hearts do a little dance right in our little chests.

Here's a song. It's from London artist, the lovely Johnny Flynn. His newest album is Been Listening, worth a checking out (available in Australia from iTunes, Amazon, etc., you know the drill ye young peeps of the internet).

Echo....e c h o...e c h o.....

So, yesterday’s post was my maiden foray into the blog-o-sphere. Good? Bad? I will push on regardless. It seems to me this blogging caper might be the sound of a tree falling in the forest, ie. if no-one reads it then have I actually even written it, etc, yada yada, and so on and so forth... I plan to write about whatever current obsessions and pre-occupations are fizzing about in my brain-o-sphere, for I am an expert on nothing.

An expert on nothing.

Notice I didn’t say ‘I’m not an expert on anything’. Ooh...subtle....

Subtle distinction, but HUGE nonetheless. Are we not all kinda experts on nothing: Twitter. Facebook. TV. Fiddling with our mobile phones. Housework. All of it a whole lotta nothing. And we know it. And we spend monumental slabs of time doing it. And we love it! For what else is there to do?

VLADIMIR: Well? Shall we go?

ESTRAGON: Yes, lets go.

(They do not move.)

CURTAIN

End of Act two, Waiting For Godot by Samuel Beckett

Philistines....

Good one Melbourne city council!

Street art...ppffftt!

Last week they sent in the "anti-grafitti" crew to clean up the walls in Hosier lane, behind the Forum theatre. They painted over a valuable piece of stencil art left by UK street-artist Banksy.

This appeared in Tuesday's The Age:

THOMAS HUNTER, April 27, 2010

In a massive blow to fans of Melbourne's vibrant, CBD street-art scene, City of Melbourne workers have destroyed a little-known piece of stencil art left by world-renowned graffiti artist Banksy.
Local businesspeople were alerted to the mistake this morning, after the image of a parachute-wearing rat floating down the wall of a building behind the Forum Theatre in Hosier Lane was painted over by council workers as part of a maintenance program.
"Our cleaning contractors were instructed to clean the wall as part of their regular street cleaning schedule," City Of Melbourne CEO Kathy Alexander said.

Well here's something that lord mayor Robert Doyle and City of Melbourne CEO Kathy Alexander could do with knowing:

a) Melbourne is the Australian - if not world - capital of stencil art.

b) This is the third, and probably last, Bansky original that has been destroyed in Melbourne.

c) Robert and Kathy, you are idiots.

d) How embarrassing.

Yesterday, Mr. Doyle said this was a shame but "it's not the Mona Lisa, is it"?

He'd probably say this is just a toilet:

But anyone with a passing interest in modern culture knows it as Marcel Duchamp's Fountain (1917), the famous work that shocked and challenged art traditionalists: This is a urinal. Why can it not also be art?

In fact, to Duchamp, the Mona Lisa was not THE Mona Lisa. According to his re-working of Davinci's mysterious lady, he turned her into an ambiguous lady-man by pencilling in a goatee and moustache and renaming her L.H.O.O.Q., 1919. The name when pronounced in French is a coarse French pun — "elle a chaud au cul" - translating colloquially as "She's got a hot ass."

The moral of the story is this: