Leonard Cohen, Lisbon Sept.10th 2010

Videos made by Juan Luis Corcobado

Leonard Cohen, songs of despair and hope

Here are some photos of the memorable concert by Leonard Cohen in the Pavilhão Atlântico. They are a bit shaken, but the camera is not to blame, it´s just that I was singing along while photographing.
Leonard Cohen, 75, performed three hours and sang some new songs. I guess this concert could be called "Songs of despair and hope".
He has been writing some of the most beautifull poems about love, about the terrible prospects for humankind, and the possibilities of salvation, be it through love, satori or the comming of the Messiah. I´m among those who listen to him like to an oracle ("I don´t give a dam about the true, except for the naked true") and if the session is served with excelent poetry and virtuoso performers, it´s perfect. I got the impression that some of his most desperate songs were performed in the first half, and the most hopeful ones in the second...
When my time comes and I say to S. Peter that I atended all the concerts Leonard Cohen gave in Portugal, I´m sure he´ll say "Ok, come in."




A sample of hairstyles:



I saw this site specific sculputre in Gulbenkian gardens, by the brasilian artist Barrão:

Peter Matthiessen

Back in 1992 I wrote a letter to Mr. Peter Matthiessen asking him if I could go practice Zen Buddhism in his zen center in Long Island. He was kind enough to write me back saying he didn´t have living quarters there, and he advised me to go to the Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York, which I did, for a month.
Last August, 25, I read an article about him in the spanish-catalan newspaper La Vanguardia. An excert:

If we mention his role in the foundation of the legendary magazine The Paris Review, the first to publish Kerouac and Pkilip Roth, and also important literary interviews, we enter a spies thriler. "Once, when I was studying in Yale, a professor asked me «What do you think of serving your country working for the CIA in Paris?» At the time I had no money nor work, CIA still had a clean name, Paris was the dream of every aspiring writer, and to work as a spy sounded the most exciting. They gave a list of suspects from whom I would have to get informations. I needed a cover up, in case the police would interrogate me, and thus The Paris Review was born. After one year I quit. I was afraid...Even today they could sue me for telling you this, but I doubt this old man is any kind of threat for them."

I knew that many materials and gadgets that make life easier, derive from military investigation and industry (washing machines, the internet, passengers airplanes, toilet paper, tv sets, paints, and the list goes on, althoug I´m not sure of some of the above...). Now, it came as a big surprise to know that even in the art domain we benefit from the military. The Hindus worship a Godess of war and destruction. I feel I´ve been further from converting to Hinduism.






In the photo above, among diferent objects that Peter Matthiessen collected from the shore and fields, I saw some dolphin vertebrae, similar to these I collected from the beach. These bones are beautiful.

A new representation of digits 0 to 9

Some years ago, in a café by the road, I noticed some pack on the shelf where there was writen 5X33. I calculated it and noticed that the 6 in the middle of 165 was the sum of 1 and 5. Then I realised that, in most cases, the same aplyed if I multiplied a single digit by a number with two repeated digits (3X66=198, or 5X55=275...)
Later I made a table like the one in this unfinished canvas. The digits from one to nine are represented by areas defined by diferent colors: the rectangle in the yellow line for 2, the triangle in the white line for 1, the other rectangle in brown for 7, and more irregular areas for the other digits. Notice that all the areas have the same line of simetry. The 3 in light green, the 8 in red... The 9 (in black) is a special case because it seems to have two areas: a square in the middle and a big area ocupying the right lower side. The zero is the perpendicular line (not represented) linking the zeros on the left.
Multiplications with bigger numbers also have interesting results: 4X33=1332, or 3X777=2331, etc.
I don´t know if this is new or if it has already been thought of and writen. This is not complicated mathematics, it is quite simple.
Most of all I like the aesthetics of it, and to imagine a whole crazy and irrelevant branch of mathematics deriving from this, with specific sets of operations, rules, theories, and its own paradoxes.

Clik image to enlarge:

Micro graffiti

A portrait of Leonard Cohen

This is a portrait of Leonard Cohen that I have, painted by Mr. Michael James Maxwell (see a link in my blog).

Leonard Cohen concert in Lisboa, Pavilhão Atlântico, Sept. 10

I´ll be there. Leonard Cohen wrote wrote some songs that are in my memory since I was a teenager, a long long time ago, I can still remember how that music used to make me smile...

"The Traitor"

Now the Swan it floated on the English river
Ah the Rose of High Romance it opened wide
A sun tanned woman yearned me through the summer
and the judges watched us from the other side
I told my mother "Mother I must leave you
preserve my room but do not shed a tear
Should rumour of a shabby ending reach you
it was half my fault and half the atmosphere"

But the Rose I sickened with a scarlet fever
and the Swan I tempted with a sense of shame
She said at last I was her finest lover
and if she withered I would be to blame

The judges said you missed it by a fraction
rise up and brace your troops for the attack
Ah the dreamers ride against the men of action
Oh see the men of action falling back

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
that they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I'm listed with the enemies of love

And long ago she said "I must be leaving,
Ah but keep my body here to lie upon
You can move it up and down and when I'm sleeping
Run some wire through that Rose and wind the Swan"

So daily I renew my idle duty
I touch her here and there -- I know my place
I kiss her open mouth and I praise her beauty
and people call me traitor to my face

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WMehBiX9rz8&feature=related

"Ballad Of The Absent Mare"

Say a prayer for the cowboy
His mare's run away
And he'll walk til he finds her
His darling, his stray
but the river's in flood
and the roads are awash
and the bridges break up
in the panic of loss.
And there's nothing to follow
There's nowhere to go
She's gone like the summer
gone like the snow
And the crickets are breaking
his heart with their song
as the day caves in
and the night is all wrong

Did he dream, was it she
who went galloping past
and bent down the fern
broke open the grass
and printed the mud with
the iron and the gold
that he nailed to her feet
when he was the lord

And although she goes grazing
a minute away
he tracks her all night
he tracks her all day
Oh blind to her presence
except to compare
his injury here
with her punishment there

Then at home on a branch
in the highest tree
a songbird sings out
so suddenly
Ah the sun is warm
and the soft winds ride
on the willow trees
by the river side

Oh the world is sweet
the world is wide
and she's there where
the light and the darkness divide
and the steam's coming off her
she's huge and she's shy
and she steps on the moon
when she paws at the sky

And she comes to his hand
but she's not really tame
She longs to be lost
he longs for the same
and she'll bolt and she'll plunge
through the first open pass
to roll and to feed
in the sweet mountain grass

Or she'll make a break
for the high plateau
where there's nothing above
and there's nothing below
and it's time for the burden
it's time for the whip
Will she walk through the flame
Can he shoot from the hip

So he binds himself
to the galloping mare
and she binds herself
to the rider there
and there is no space
but there's left and right
and there is no time
but there's day and night

And he leans on her neck
and he whispers low
"Whither thou goest
I will go"
And they turn as one
and they head for the plain
No need for the whip
Ah, no need for the rein

Now the clasp of this union
who fastens it tight?
Who snaps it asunder
the very next night
Some say the rider
Some say the mare
Or that love's like the smoke
beyond all repair

But my darling says
"Leonard, just let it go by
That old silhouette
on the great western sky"
So I pick out a tune
and they move right along
and they're gone like the smoke
and they're gone like this song

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbFOiIKVmRA&feature=related

Rob Sato is the grand grand grand grandson of Hieronymus Bosch

See his latest paintings here.

A painting and a book by Paul Hutchinson

This is a painting and a book that Mr Paul Bakker Hutchinson send me all the way from Australia.

A painting from August 2010

It´s called "A diferent holyday"

The Waterboys in concert, Évora, August the 1st 2010

A trip to Alentejo