Blog Jam
May Paul Harvey rest in peace. You can pay respects and remember his greatness by reading The Rest of The Story or its sequel.
Someone nice told me tonight that a friend of hers googled about the expression "knock on wood" and discovered that it is actually Jewish in origin. My googling did not provide such clear information.
There was recently a Leonard Cohen concert at the Beacon in NYC. The show will be broadcast on 93.9 FM this Saturday night at 8. My inclination is old school - to tape it.
The Times had a front page story about Obama's hair turning gray fast, makes me wonder about many things. US News published an article about a critique this article received from Representative Frank Wolf. The article ends with the FYI that you can follow the authors, Paul and Nikki on Twitter.
Speaking of Twitter, the Times printed an article about it on February 27th. today, in a letter by Julie Engel Manga, in which she criticized twitter and it's cousins for "taking us away from being present in the moment of our own lives and to see the issues that affect our lives." I liked the letter, thought the points were well taken.
In his newest book Rabbi Abraham Twerski cites the Chafetz Chaim as saying that it is propitious to have the table set and everything prepared for Shabbos by chatzot on Friday. That struck me. It's one of those things that sounds so easy but is really so hard, and therefore so powerful.
Always running I
feel like I am standing still.
Stuck in this haiku
!
Who is it owes who?
And what is it that we owe?
And what does "we" mean?
posted by rabbi neil fleischmann @ 11:08 PM
8 Comments:
Maybe you'll post some of the Leonard Cohen audio? I wonder how he sounds these days. I love a lot of Cohen's stuff, but I tried listening to the Dear Heather album a while back, and ugh, awful.
Don't know how to do it, unless I find it on Youtube -I'm still working with cassete tapes.
Many thoughts generated by your thoughts.
It is true that some people seem easily distracted by their hand-held iPhones and other devices. Is it wrong that I feel irritated when I have lunch with a colleague who spends most of the time "texting" rather than talking with me? Maybe I'm being old-fashioned. (But I was fashioned in 1960, so I am old-fashioned. I am a black-and-white television with the bulbous screen set in a wood-grain panel frame.)
I have this image in my mind: aliens land in Times Square, but the human beings are too busy texting to look up and notice. (The aliens follow a stray dog: "Are dogs the only aware beings on this planet?" "Some say cats too.")
i have a similar image but it's G-d not aliens...
all my students text, it's a ubiquitous phenomenon. i asked today how many can text with out looking and they all raised their hands. a friend of mine was enjoying texting his/her high school kid during the day and then realized - wait a minute, he/she's in class! "i've said too much, but not enough."
Oh, in that case, of course not. I thought you were recording on some digital device.
it's on npr.com under concerts.
Just listened to the first couple of songs. Not bad at all! His voice is scratchier, and maybe a bit thinner, but still expressive.
I thought he sounded great. Here are the notes I took as I listened:
There’s a Leonard Cohen concert on 93.9 – NPR - any minute, and I want to tape it… It just started and I am pulled in.
He opened with Dance Me to the End of Love and followed immediately with a song with the line, “It’s lonely here, there’s no-one left to torture,” – a song which definitely had his stamp, but that I haven’t heard before.
My internet is down, hopefully that’s all that’s wrong with the computer… I wonder if the song is called Give Me Back The Berlin Wall, as that’s part of the chorus. It’s a dark song, there’s a surprise (ha). As I was unsuccessfully trying to set up a tape for the show I spilled a full cup of chicken soup (which my four guests last night seemed to enjoy almost as much as I did) onto the computer, desk, floor…
Now he’s singing – it looks like I’m going to hold off going to the library till the concert is over, unless other plans come up, you never know (except when you do) (but you honestly never do, and remembering that can be a key to hope and happiness) – about romance in the Chelsea Hotel. I guess the hotel’s name is the name of the song. “You told me again you preferred handsome men, but for me you’d make an exception.”
He sounds youthful and energetic, even as he lilts, “My friends are gone and my hair is gray, I ache in the places I used to play.” This is The Tower of Song. At the end, he improvises while his backup singers hum and chant and begs them not to stop; saying part jokingly and more than half seriously that within their harmonious singing are the answers to everything.
Now he’s singing Suzanne, what I consider one of his famous songs, but that just means that I’m very familiar with this haunting tune. He is so on.
“These frontiers are my prison,” he sings right into a guitar riff, as if the music and words were one, in The Partisan. Next up, in the Beacon Theater show is Halelukah, first recorded in 1984. Next, he implores, “Take this waltz with it very own brand of brandy and death…”
He thanks everyone and then does an encore, “We met. When was it? We were almost young…” I think the song is called Maryanne.
Now, he’s singing First We Take Manhattan, Then We Take Berlin. “How many nights I prayed for this? – to let my work begin.”
“It’s real, but it aint exactly there.” That line is from Democracy Is Coming To The USA. Great stuff. The announcer now says that’s it and to go to NPR.org for the full playlist.
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