some covers are less polyester than others. that said, however, certain other others are well-nigh impossible to sleep under.
broke my own PR watching the Leonard Cohen Movie in 23'07'' flat, fast-forwarding through all the commentary besides that of the scratchy one himself and even-faster-forwarding through the concert numbers that, much to their own disgrace, constituted the bulk of the abomination. it's bad enough when a film purports to stand in for Das Ding an Sich (aka the Song), without Rufus Wainwright butchering the lyrics and flipping his pretty hair. and Bono talking about artistic vision and the abyss? save us all.
this sickening disaster, however, brings up an important point (more so, even, than either of my haggard 60s Jews who play at Buddhism and the New Testament, rendered unable to sing). namely: the inferiority of saying something about in the face of saying something. even when the one doing the saying-about is the one—the only—capable of saying or singing that something in the first place, isn't it an aesthetic (if not ethical) blunder to stoop in this precise way? it's perhaps harder to negotiate this phenomenon literarily (because, there, the medium is, at least on its grossest surface, the same), but as far as music is concerned, The Song is sacred, the singer its slave. and Leonard Cohen knows this better than most.
I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but "Hallelujah"
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znakovi pored puta
4 comments:
But ought we to talk (or write) about The Song, in order that others may be inspired to hear it?
Does your question about the aesthetic blunder of talking-about hold for The Novel and The Poem as well as The Song, or is there something different about Music that makes it particularly resistant to being talked-about?
I'm glad you did get to see the movie at last, though. All praise to Netflix?
Through a long series of associations (and probably not the most obvious ones), your post reminds me of a video of Tom Waits singing Christmas carols. It made a sober Will Wilson cry. And cry. Seen it? Would love to get my hands on it...
Polyester covers have to be covered in cotton. What color is your polyester cover? Maybe that's the real question. Is it too bright? Not bright enough? Doesn't have enough spots and stripes? No animals dancing across it?
Lady Midnight: just to bring the associative circle to its beginning/end—my post, actually, began with a thought of our very same Will Wilson, who, roughly speaking and ignoring a few minor details, brought me to LC himself. no matter where he is (either of them, actually) in realspace, he's always shacking up with Hank Williams. and the answer is: it gets pretty lonely.
g: Music is, i suppose, the easy one. the kind in which the blunder is obvious. as i mentioned, it has a lot to do with the media: talking about music is, by definition, not music. it does get more complicated with literature. but we've had this conversation before. and i maintain my elitism: the only "inspiration" should be The Song itself. arriving by any other route is, well, not arriving.
by the by, i'm glad to not have paid $9 (as was the original idea this fall) for the little viewing. but, then again, when am i not glad to not have paid ___??
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