bp
Ex Member
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She shrugged. "You have the map." After a moment she reached towards the cassette player and pressed the fast forward key.
"Maybe it's less depressing further on." She hit the play button and returned her attention to the wheel. They were in the middle of nowhere.
"There is a crack, a crack, in everything" sang Leonard, mournfully.
The corner of Mulder's mouth turned upwards. Much less depressing. "God, Scully, this is music to commit suicide by! If we can't pull ourselves out of this, we should at least be listening to something happy."
She shrugged again. "There *is* a crack in everything - that's how the light gets in," she said, matter-of-factly, gesturing toward the tape deck as Leonard sang those very words. "It's an uplifting song." She didn't sound too convinced.
Mulder rubbed his nose. "Scully, we can't keep driving around in the dark like this forever."
Bob Dylan once told Cohen his songs were getting more like prayers. This one bears him out; it's a slow-motion hymn, drawing deep on a tradition much older than rock.
Ring the bells, that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in
Cohen: "If I did have a coherent philosophy, that song articulated it. It took me an awful long time to write. I never could get that last line." It's not a quotation? "No. At least I hope not... The bells are not religious necessarily - it's the bell that announces something; they had that in Hydra [the Greek island where Cohen lived in the early 1970s].
So many of us find ourselves inhabiting interstice futurescapes as intersections of multiple, contradictory, overlapping futures not reducible to 'one' particular paradigm. Perhaps it is these shards that lead to the 'cracks' in the world that Leonard Cohen sees as a necessity for the paradigm to shift. The following music extract relates to paradigm shifts as cracks in the worlds
We learn to let go of past grudges, forgive others, forgive ourselves, open ourselves, break out of the self - centeredness that has, unknowingly, trapped us and kept us disconnected in a deep sense. One of my favorite songs, by Leonard Cohen, has the chorus:
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.
To learn to love better, we need to let go of so much. The spiritual word for that is renouncement. Renouncement not as self-denial, but as a way of relating better; letting go of unnecessary baggage. Symbolically, renouncement is the opening of our grasping hand. Reconciled to being finite, to having a limited lifespan, we connect ever stronger with the great flow that we are a part of. Call it the universe or God or history or nature. It is everywhere.
ANTHEM (from the album 'THE FUTURE')
The birds they sang at the break of day Start again I heard them say Don't dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will be fought again The holy dove She will be caught again bought and sold and bought again the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.
We asked for signs the signs were sent: the birth betrayed the marriage spent Yeah the widowhood of every government -- signs for all to see.
I can't run no more with that lawless crowd while the killers in high places say their prayers out loud. But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud and they're going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring ...
You can add up the parts but you won't have the sum You can strike up the march, there is no drum Every heart, every heart to love will come but like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in. That's how the light gets in.
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