Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river
You can hear the boats go by
You can spend the night beside her
And you know that she’s half crazy
But that’s why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges
That come all the way from China
And just when you mean to tell her
That you have no love to give her
Then she gets you on her wavelength
And she lets the river answer
That you’ve always been her lover
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that she will trust you
For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.
(Simple language that means nothing
And everything
A melody simple and hypnotic
A deadpan voice that sings like a nightingale
Angelic voices floating like water on the breeze
The divine mystery that transports one
Into the mundane world of the ideal dream)
And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said “All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them”
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone
And you want to travel with him
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you’ll trust him
For he’s touched your perfect body with his mind.
(Jesus in the world
On the cusp of manhood
And the divine
Slowly being destroyed
By the world he came to save)
Now Suzanne takes your hand
And she leads you to the river
She is wearing rags and feathers
From Salvation Army counters
And the sun pours down like honey
On our lady of the harbour
And she shows you where to look
Among the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed
There are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love
And they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror
And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you know that you can trust her
For she’s touched your perfect body with her mind.
The above are the lyrics (to, in my opinion, the perfect song), originally published as a poem, for Leonard Cohen’s song Suzanne, a song about going to his friend’s house and being served Constant Comment tea (yes I managed to find out what tea it was, a black tea with orange rind and spices) whilst looking out over the Montreal docks at Chapel of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, also known as Sailor’s Church (‘This is the first time I was ever in a city where you couldn’t throw a brick without breaking a church window’- Mark Twain)
Historian Douglas Brinkley said that Jack Kerouac (most famous for On The Road, but my favourite is Big Sur, written after the ‘crack up’ (to use F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words) which came after six long years of trying to get Road published only to become famous- when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers) “inspired an entire generation to look for holiness in the mundane, God in oneself and beauty in every shard of broken glass of a bottle in the street’.
Leonard Cohen was significantly influenced by the Beat Generation saying ‘…One of the things I always liked about the early Beatnik poetry – Ginsberg and Kerouac and Corso – was the use of the word “angel”. I never knew what they meant, except it was a designation for a human being and that it affirmed the light in an individual. I don’t know how I used the word “angel”. I’ve forgotten exactly, but I don’t think I ever got better than the way Ginsberg and Kerouac used the word in the early ‘fifties. I always loved reading their poems where they talked about angels.’
The Beats wrote of the beauty of madmen just looking to get home, of spilt wine and the tenderness of cats drinking milk. The world of the Beats was very holy and, above all, gentle. Leonard Cohen spoke of meeting Kerouac at Allen Ginsberg’s apartment: ‘He was lying under a dining room table, pretending to listen to some jazz record while the party swirled on ’round him.’
The Beats were influenced greatly by the likes of Proust, who would dive into the nuances of situations, and William Blake, who died considered a madman, who wrote
To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.
One of my favourite pastimes is to go on long (essentially pointless) walks. When I am in the ‘civilised’ areas I need my mp3 player but as soon as I get into the wilderness I no longer need it and give myself over to nature. I never realised just how loud birds and crickets are, I’ve also attempted many conversations with rabbits although I don’t think they find my conversation interesting enough to talk back and my aversion to insects, bees etc means that sometimes I cannot relax as much as I would like, not that I ever really approach a state akin to relaxation.
Max Richter released an eight cd set called Sleep, ‘sleep is my personal lullaby for a frenetic world- a manifesto for a slower pace of existence’
With all of the advances in technology and the cheapening of things, it is now easy to become over saturated- with books, music, television, cars, holidays, mass media, which, ironically, has no gravity as it lacks (e)motion, essentially everything. Everything seems to be built around instant gratification. If one follows the correct model then one’s life can be essentially over by twenty-three and the remaining years spent just living out what has already been constructed. Many, it seems, die before they start to live. However, this may just be a coping technique, after all Anton Chekhov said ‘Any idiot can face a crisis – it’s day to day living that wears you out.’
But at what cost? Maybe, as Proust said, ‘The only true paradise is a paradise we have lost,’ and would we really want to go back to a time of no sanitation, where a small infection could kill? No, I don’t think so either. This is the world that we have created but surely progress will be greater if one takes the time to, as Socrates famously did, stop en-route to explore the allure of some attractive young flower for the devil is not in the details, rather the divine is (read Spinoza’s Ethics) and as Franz Kafka said ‘Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.’
thegreaterfool2016 