Loose Leaf Notes

1. Pandemic or endemic?

2. Is there ever really any such thing as “good grief?”

3. Sometimes when my TV signal for ABC is weak it creates colorful pixel blocks on the screen. I pause to watch for a while because it reminds me of a Gustav Klimt painting.

4. “This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled, but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.’ That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say, ‘Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.’ -Leonard Cohn on his song Hallelujah

5. The album Cohen’s song Hallelujah was on was turned down by the record company. Cohen once explained that when it was rejected a record company exec said, “Leonard, we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.”

6. Writing poetry is like putting a puzzle together.

7. “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.” -Emerson

8. I close my eyes to see / until the drumbeat is silenced / until life’s puzzle is nearly finished / and I can add my piece to the whole.

9. But don’t look too close / or you’ll miss the full picture / where everyone is a beautiful loner / where we all belong to each other / are the parts of the same single truth

10. Indestructible ‘Black Box’ will record our planet’s demise in minute detail – The solar-powered vault will be roughly the length of a school bus and the shape of an upside-down curb stop, and the entire thing will be encased in 3-inch-thick (7.5 centimeters) steel designed to withstand catastrophe… This project, which is a collaboration between the University of Tasmania, a communications firm called Clemenger BBDO, and an art collective called the Glue Society, is slated to begin construction in early 2022. The box will collect temperature measurements, ocean acidification data, data on land use, military spending, energy consumption and human population growth. It will also scrape news headlines, social media posts, and information from key climate change conferences between heads of state… As an art piece, it is undeniably striking…  Its intention is to be a silent observer, constantly absorbing information, to “provide an unbiased account of the events that lead to the demise of the planet, hold accountability for future generations, and inspire urgent action,” according to its website. 

11. “We need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they’re falling in.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu

12. The only advice I have for young songwriters is that if you stick with a song long enough, it will yield. But long enough is not any fixed duration, it’s not a week or two, it’s not a month or two, it’s not necessarily even a year or two. If a song is to yield you might have to stay with it for years and years. Hallelujah was at least five years. I have about 80 verses. I just took verses out of the many that established some sort of coherence.

13. “MUSIC IS SIMPLY decorated time.” Sparrow

__________Thirteen Thursday