"I CAN BREATHE"

Following is a delightful response from Bersone to the previous posting: The Old Model T.


Email to the Buffalo

04/10/09 10:34 AM: Bersone


el buffalo

I've just watched several of the leonard cohen blips that you linked
in buffloblog and enjoyed them, especially as the years come back
when the camera scans the academic audiences, revealing pretty girls
in tightly groomed hairstyles of the early sixties, the young people
seeming so well-mannered, deliberate and conscientiously thoughtful
as cohen reads his work. so many poems written before his songs which ultimately touched so many makes me realize that the development of an artist is something like a rock being thrown into a pond, the resonance of its path spreading out behind him into larger and larger circles, lapping against strangers, and further vibrations from the rock/artist's fall reverberating below the surface, leaving a wake behind him, causing still further echoes of his silent falling. there is danger in movement below the surface. for example, I saw on a documentary that salamanders, nearly blind, have special sense organs that pick up the slightest vibration of the water and, though prehistorically slow-moving as they are, are blindingly quick to catch minnows when they pick up a vibration from the living fish. to discern the vibration from a living being from the general vibrations of the universe is the artist's trick. amid all the sounds, images, metaphors swirling around us, their plenitude threatening to overwhelm us with choices, we somehow need to detect the ones that are meant for us. and how else to do that except by
diligent regard for who you are, aided my rules of craft or 'what
works'. every doubt, every blank page, every fear, every confusion,
ever tearing feeling of anxiety, every worry is not just a threat to
throw us off track but also an opportunity, an identity crisis: that
cohen seems calm in his journey is deceptive, perhaps. he is
confident of one thing: his road is wide enough for him, and the
universe large enough to receive his songs, with all their inevitable
mistakes and successes, so that all he has to do is to continue, like
the sinking rock or the bird lifting off the branch. you get the
feeling that he will continue. 'you'll be hearing from me, baby, /
long after I'm gone / I'll be speaking to you sweetly / from a window
in the tower of song.'

we sang your old model T to the tune of the red river valley as far
we were able last night. and listened to old cowboy songs, of which
larry has a unique collection. the old model T, being such a
critical memory of your father, conferring a blessing of music even,
can't be trivialized. Corny perhaps, but corn that is earned: how
that corn would disappear in an age old passion for the father, taken
seriously, is the promise. The red river valley tune is haunting,
also. Now here we are at another easter. a celebration of rebirth
and redemption. Songs to redeem us. that's what we're here to earn,
I guess.

yesterday I didn't do shit. and today I feel a bit more on track,
after checking out the LC videos. Why? a feeling of communion in an
effort to sing, the world on the brink, as ever. the cat sleeping in
the chair. the trees have finally stopped ticking. I can go out. and
I will go out because I'm up. I'm up and dressed and can go out, I
can go out and load up some wood into a wheelbarow and push it back under the carport. I can walk down to the mailbox. I can breathe. put that on the front page.