Montreal, Canada
It’s two years ago today since poet/troubadour Leonard Cohen moved on into the next dimension. I came across this insightful tribute by Maria Popova online (with thanks to Brenda Sanderson for the link)…
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There Is a Crack in Everything, That’s How the Light Gets In: Leonard Cohen on Democracy and Its Redemptions
A generous reminder that we must aim for “a revelation in the heart rather than a confrontation or a call-to-arms or a defense.”
Trained as a poet and ordained as a Buddhist monk, Leonard Cohen (September 21, 1934–November 7, 2016) is our patron saint of sorrow and redemption. He wrote songs partway between philosophy and prayer — songs radiating the kind of prayerfulness which Simone Weil celebrated as “the rarest and purest form of generosity.”
One of his most beloved lyric lines, from the song “Anthem” — a song that took Cohen a decade to write — remains what is perhaps the most meaningful message for our troubled and troubling times: “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” It springs from a central concern of Cohen’s life and work, one which he revisited in various guises across various songs — including in “Suzanne,” where he writes “look among the garbage and the flowers / there are heroes in the seaweed,” and in the iconic “Hallelujah”: “There’s a blaze of light / In every word / It doesn’t matter which you heard / The holy or the broken Hallelujah”.
Read the whole post on Brain Pickings…
Winnipeg Beach, Manitoba
My partner Evelin recently took a year’s sabbatical from making sculpture, but says “It’s gratifying to know that there’s still ‘an appetite’ for my work.” Four of her figurative pieces have sold in the past few months — some through the Pulse Gallery (at The Forks, Winnipeg), and some directly to collectors who contacted her through her studio. She’s now back in the atelier sculpting away… timely, as the autumn seems to be turning less favourable for “playing outside.”
Sculptures recently sold: ‘Deep Within‘ (which went to Paris); ‘Carrot & Ginger‘; ‘Believe,’ my homage to aviator Amelia Earhart; and ‘Third Time Lucky,’ the metaphoric piece depicting a stressed, myopic lifeguard.
Out there in cyberspace…
I have recently met an inspiring illustrator/cartoonist on Facebook (yes, it happens). I find his work to be insightful, funny, sardonic, often cheeky — quite brilliant, really — a balm for troubled times. You can see more of Mr. Sparks’ work here.
Most people can see one or the other… and “switch” back and forth.
Source: Bruce MacKinnon | The Chronicle Herald, Halifax
Thanks to Stefan Serezliev, a professor in Sofia, Bulgaria… (who I got to know in a police station in Istanbul 14 years ago — long story). Original image source unknown.
It’s been a while since I shared the (sometimes acerbic) works of Mr. Fish…
Blombos Cave (near Capetown), South Africa
“Nine red lines on a stone flake found in a South African cave may be the earliest known drawing made by Homo sapiens, archaeologists reported on Wednesday. The artifact, which scientists think is about 73,000 years old, predates the oldest previously known modern human abstract drawings from Europe by about 30,000 years.”
“We knew a lot of things Homo sapiens could do, but we didn’t know they could do drawings back then,” said Christopher Henshilwood, an archaeologist from the University of Bergen in Norway and lead author of the study…
(full story here, or here)
(original source unknown)
Poster by Harry Pearce, Pentagram UK… more here.
