Contemplating football and the stories of Sunday on this
Superbowl Sunday. Leonard Cohen's
unmistakably familiar wool bandaged, gravelly, sacramental growl came a callin'
out of Pandora, smoothly and seductively, rockin' and rollin' -- all the evil
and sublime in the world, turned loose or ameliorated by living and lusting
after sweet carnal feeling and spiritual love.
The Canadian Jew Buddhist riffing on King David, Bathsheba,
lovemaking and the transcendence of dogma -- the oneness of the "holy or the
broken hallelujah." A Catholic priest
once said to me, "The spiritual can be dirty or impolite." I wasn't totally sure of this until I
became aware of the paintings of Basquiat, remembering Lenny Bruce's
autobiography.
The recognition of beauty in whichever religion, the
ability to deny casual judgment and revel in the story, the imagery, the
profundity laced amongst the legalities and fluff is a gift to one's self. Cohen is a secular contemplative in a dark
fedora holding church in concert halls.
He's selling your forgiveness of me and my desire for you,
contradictions and mountains of guilt and rancor made flat and easy like his
voice. The Canadian Jew Buddhist looked
us right in the eye and wrote a song about one of the religious beatified, a
love song unapologetic in its sweetness.
Check it out: Click Well, I'm
off to watch the Superbowl -- think I'll suspend judgment this afternoon and
luxuriate in the beer, the wings and the friends, especially the friends, "like
Bernadette would do."
Kevin is an Artist, Writer, Carpenter and Gallerist in Texas.
