My solo evening meal at one of Leonard Cohen’s favorite haunts. Perhaps the main reason why I came was to figure out why I came…
[ Parc du Portugal, in the evening ; Leonard Cohen as an almost-young upstart, from his first album cover circa 1968 ; Moishe’s Rumanian ambience ; Leonard Cohen as an old upstart, performing in London to wide acclaim, aged 75. ]
The Trump fiasco has in part become a raging fire bursting open the seeds in the pinecones of female indignation lying in gestation on the forest floor. Which helped fuel #MeToo. Which will eventually bring him and the testosterone-centric worldview down.
We don’t remember conversations in full tableau. Instead, glistening moments, a bluesy vignette, a mere phrase filled with undisclosed meaning. They shine like supernovae across our lifespan, persistently prodding us to mine their significance with each new contemplation. Gifts which keep on giving.
In the wake of Mark Zuckerberg’s public vacillating over the culpability of Facebook regarding its user base data privacy, a follow-up to last month’s ‘public service announcement‘ about the impact of the web on our social cohesion and culture.
Pretty much I don’t do re-blogging, though I love lots of blog sites. This place is for me; what I think, and what I create. But this wonderful overview of the present technology-mediated crisis Western (and now global) culture is ensnared within — is simply too good and too important not to draw attention to. I hope and wish that some will listen to this short talk, which was given three days ago in Vancouver, and think about it. (Thank you if you do!) This person is “one who knows”, but is practically devoid of egotism.
In a short piece titled “God is Dead; So What?”, Richard Ostrofsky, an acquaintance of mine, lays out his overview of the present culture wars from a perhaps characteristically atheist perspective. He cites Matthew Arnold’s poignant 1867 poem ‘Dover Beach’, which I’d not thought about for over 30 years, and happily revisited. But we subtly disagree about the meaning of the cultural impasse this poem intuits, and about exactly what Arnold sensed over 150 years ago, gazing one night out to sea.
