Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:12 pm

guruilla » Sat Oct 03, 2015 9:54 am wrote:(I hope the nic "guru" doesn't catch on, since "guruilla" was meant to suggest guru-buster! but hopefully the work speaks for itself...)


Sorry Guruilla. a bit of shorthand. i will type better more efficiently once I have a real key board again. :)

Thanks for the Young Ones reference, I missed it at the time. Frankly, I can't believe I went so long and travelled where I did without hearing about him or his music. Then again, it's likely just as well. It was the angry thrashy stuff that kept me going up and out of rubberstamp flyover. I'm glad not to have 'known' Cohen as a teen, fucking Joy Division nearly did me in as it was.
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby guruilla » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:46 pm

As a maybe entirely unrelated riff, I was in New York staying in the St Mark's Hotel in I guess it would have been 1986 (I remember going to see Hannah & Her Sisters) and I was listening to the local radio one day and they had all-day Bob Dylan play because Dylan had just died! It wasn't a big deal for me coz I was never a Dylan fan, he'd passed me by entirely (I was a Joy Division lover, & Bowie, Cramps, Talking Heads, no time for folk singers). Maybe I am misremembering or I misheard but I still wonder about that: just as with Cohen I went around thinking Dylan was dead for a period, before discovering the reports had been grossly exaggerated....
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby tapitsbo » Sat Oct 03, 2015 1:51 pm

There doesn't need to be a Pop Culture Thought Police Cabal. I'd thought it was pretty obvious the decisions to exert influence would be done discreetly, and, above all other means, via money.
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby guruilla » Sat Oct 03, 2015 2:13 pm

I guess in response to this:
brekin » Fri Oct 02, 2015 7:10 pm wrote:Being a sucker, consumer, fan is a far cry from being an indoctrinated tool of the state. Not saying there isn't a lot of overlap but as we continually see with various political campaigns tapping anti-establishment or liberal songs being used a lot of pop music is about generating cash, not ideals or ideology.

I would agree 100%, separating monetary objectives from ideology is impossible when money IS an ideology, and a key pivot in the entire corporate culture that's creating the popular memes and promoting the figures. A false dichotomy then, if "being a sucker, consumer, fan" isn't "a far cry from being an indoctrinated tool of the state" but a very small step. The main difference is probably financial backing!
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby Twyla LaSarc » Sat Oct 03, 2015 2:24 pm

(I was a Joy Division lover, & Bowie, Cramps, Talking Heads
<3

At 18 I picked up 30 year old lovers who turned me on to all sorts of things. I do not doubt the guy who gave me the keys to that kingdom (JD, Roxy music, TH's et al)was just into picking up young albeit interesting girls at school, but he never schooled me in sex, I knew too much already to be an excitng virgin. The week i spent with him and his record collection was one of the formative experiences of my life. :wink
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby lunarmoth » Sun Oct 04, 2015 9:25 am

I just want to add: this is not about Cohen-bashing. It's about deepening our understanding of what the pop music industry is doing with our minds, and what it's actually about.

#1 making money off youth
#2 channeling thoughts and energy
#3 controlling rebellion, manufacturing consent
#4 creating idols who manipulate the public while in turn being manipulated through contracts, blackmail, extortion, drugs, mind control etc.

It's highly organized and its run by gangsters. Nobody survives for long who doesn't play by the gangsters' rules.

So think about that. Imagine you were Leonard Cohen and Columbia Records just cancelled your record contract. Where would you go looking for money to continue to tour?
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby brekin » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:33 am

lunarmoth wrote:I just want to add: this is not about Cohen-bashing. It's about deepening our understanding of what the pop music industry is doing with our minds, and what it's actually about.

#1 making money off youth
#2 channeling thoughts and energy
#3 controlling rebellion, manufacturing consent
#4 creating idols who manipulate the public while in turn being manipulated through contracts, blackmail, extortion, drugs, mind control etc.

It's highly organized and its run by gangsters. Nobody survives for long who doesn't play by the gangsters' rules.
So think about that. Imagine you were Leonard Cohen and Columbia Records just cancelled your record contract. Where would you go looking for money to continue to tour?


There's no doubt there are all kinds of gangsters involved in the music business. I was watching a Genesis documentary (I think Sum of the Parts) and Peter Gabriel was saying the first Genesis reunion happened because his first WOMAD festival tanked (World Music wasn't really on people's radar then) so bad that he was getting threats against him and his family from the people who fronted the money for the festival and so reached out to his former band mates who basically did it as charity gig for him.

But that I think that is more of the money side of things, the same could happen in the hot dog business. It seems more sinister in the music business because the product is a person and so the "management of a person" carries all kinds of sinister implications and potentials for abuse. But this exploitation can come from anywhere, the artist's husband, wife, manager, creditor, therapist, agent, lawyer, guru, drug dealer, etc when they have or try to take over production of the product. With Cohen, it is more about how does he supposedly fit into the Mighty Wurlitizer of media and cultural manipulation? A producer, composer, band leader, a session musician, errand boy who gets the sandwiches, etc? I'm a third of the way into I'm Your Man, and so far, I'm not seeing anything conclusive, or really explicitly suggestive, just a lot of creepy foreshadowing (its early of course).

And as far as thought control and the rest. This has been going on for millennia. Humans have been bound to myths, superstitions, magical thinking, through their stories and songs (probably even just percussion) since cave man days. There is probably less uniform thought control now as far as ideology (but maybe not content delivery) just because of the internet. If you wanted to you could spend the rest of your life listening to bird sounds if you wanted at home, work, in the car, jogging, etc And there is a large part of personal responsibility that goes with not becoming a automaton in any culture. I'm mean you have to do some active work just to counteract all the influences you are raised with. Do you really need to MKULTRA someone to make them a touring machine when you can basically raise them like the Osmonds/Jacksons/Beach Boys instead? (It would be hilarious, akin to the "failure to launch theory" though, if Cohen was a failed, unmarketable tool of the TPB. "Sorry, Leonard, we had to activate Neil Diamond to super star status instead".)

Any who, if you read up on a lot of bands/artists histories you see how someone usually had a concept that they wanted to create with a band, and went looking for the band later. Cohen's un pop oeuvre and message, spotty acclaim, branding, and bank-ability, (although last tour wise he made serious bank) would seem to preclude him from having much of an successful hand in any conceptual agenda. No one puts on a Leonard Cohen record to get laid, fight the man, or feel like a bad ass and if a teenager wants to feel morose they'd put on Morrissey or the Cure or their derivatives. Cohen, was a sad old man from the beginning and that is a hard sell to the pop and rock world. Conceptually, Ricky Martin has probably been more of a force on the hearts and minds of people globally.

I think it is hard to tease out high level manipulation and the plain old selling the package manipulation to. Obviously the Beatles and The Rolling Stones started out singing in uniforms, but if I recall correctly, even Iggy Pop and the Stooges management (Michael Fields?) wanted to create a more uniform sound and look, which he was able to do more successfully with The Ramones. And the Sex Pistols were basically The Monkees for Malcolm Mclaren's aesthetic. The promise of fame, money, power, freedom have always been pretty good unhidden persuaders. The producers want it, the deliverers of the message want it, the buyers of the messages want it, everyone is pretty much on the same page with the agenda of the illusion.

Note to self: I'm spending too much time on this.
If I knew all mysteries and all knowledge, and have not charity, I am nothing. St. Paul
I hang onto my prejudices, they are the testicles of my mind. Eric Hoffer
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby zangtang » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:40 am

just for the hell, the magisterial Van the Man..........big time operators

Well, they told me to come on over
I made my way to New York
And they tried to have me deported
Stop me from getting work
Blacklisted me all over
They were vicious and they were mean
They were bigtime operators
Baby, on the music business scene

Oh, they looked like politicians
But underneath they were thugs
And they spread malicious rumours
Threatened to have me busted for drugs
They had nothing on me
Oh man, I was really clean
But they were bigtime operators
On the music business scene

They put a bug in my apartment
To listen in on my calls
I was looking for some motivation
I couldn't find any, any motivation at all
They were very desperate people
Riding in long black limousines
But they were bigtime operators
On the music business scene

They were glorified by the media
They were heroes who had names
They said that they would bury me
If I didn't play their game
They said I didn't know the score
And that I was young and green
They were bigtime operators
On the music business scene

Tried to hold me to a phoney contract
I said I didn't agree
Had to get out of the clutches
Had to go underground you see
Now I'm living in another country
But I know exactly just where I've been
Stay away from bigtime operators
Baby, on the music business scene

Well, baby bigtime operators
On the music business scene
Oh baby, bigtime operators
On the music business scene
Well, full of names and places
Baby, you know who I mean
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby guruilla » Sun Oct 04, 2015 7:31 pm

brekin » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:33 am wrote: No one puts on a Leonard Cohen record to get laid, fight the man, or feel like a bad ass and if a teenager wants to feel morose they'd put on Morrissey or the Cure or their derivatives. Cohen, was a sad old man from the beginning and that is a hard sell to the pop and rock world. Conceptually, Ricky Martin has probably been more of a force on the hearts and minds of people globally.

This is so crazily out of whack with the cultural reality that I don't know what to make of it. Did you see the list of Cohen published material at this thread? He is only a notch or two below Bob Dylan at this point, if at all.

As for the first statement that "no one puts on a Leonard Cohen record to get laid," WTF? Maybe not as much now but at one point in time it was probably a toss up between LC and Barry White. Dude!
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby lunarmoth » Sun Oct 04, 2015 10:56 pm

I'm Your Man is a little soporific and chunks of it are not actually true. You won't find many answers there as Simmons admitted somewhere that Cohen made sure she didn't starve while she was writing it.
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby guruilla » Sun Oct 04, 2015 11:01 pm

Think that was a typo, & brekin meant Man Next Door.
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby Nordic » Mon Oct 05, 2015 12:22 am

I distinctly remember getting laid to a Leonard Cohen album. Good times. Happy memories.
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby guruilla » Mon Oct 05, 2015 12:52 am

:lol:

Deep field research! Now we're cookin'
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby km artlu » Mon Oct 05, 2015 1:42 am

Until recently, when I looked up the stats, I mistakenly thought that LC's first album was a smash hit in the US. With rare exceptions, every young woman's apartment in LA that I entered had it playing soon after its release in 1968, sometimes constantly. My associations at the time however were with a rather narrow cohort of doomed hookers and wannabe actresses (sorry, "actors"), so the impression was biased.

Those ladies loved them some Leonard. There's a backstage clip somewhere on Youtube, shot after a gig on the Continent. The young LC had an actual line of stunning Eurobabes outside the dressing room door, each one brazenly and without doubt offering themselves up for a tryst.

So I think the LC as a bummer meme depends on overlooking a wildly passionate minority. Thanks for your tenacity on the topic Guruilla. I have no personal certainty or conclusions regarding those lines of inquiry, but do feel that they merit interest.

Just as I wrote this I thought that without John Hammond, then possibly no LC career as it has been. Hammond was a matrilineal Vanderbilt, a Yale man, a solid American aristocrat. Which assumes nothing, just a flash of connection.
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Re: Leonard Cohen, Operative? (Ann Diamond material)

Postby identity » Mon Oct 05, 2015 3:08 am

I am all for investigating meaningful coincidences/synchronicities (one might, in fact, say that I have eked a career of sorts out of the phenomenon), but investing just-barely-synchronistic or even absolute non-coincidences with Cosmic Significance does no one any favours. If one is presenting material of already questionable veracity/factuality (as Ann Diamond does regarding LC), to mix it up with dreams/portents (one's own and others'), and very loose or even non-existent synchronistic (yet Cosmically Significant!) linkages only serves to weaken the reliability of one's testimony.

Pasted below are excerpts from The Man Next Door, with comments within [ ].

On the night of October 9 [1979], John Lennon’s birthday [in what way is this significant?], I had one of
my dreams that were not “dreams.” In this dream I saw Leonard seated
next to his Japanese Roshi. I had never met the Roshi, but later
recognized him in photographs as the brown-robed, round-faced monk
in my dream. He and Leonard appeared as Light Beings holding a Light
Baby made from the luminous webbing that connected all three of them.
Along with this image came a message, spoken with great authority,
which I wrote down although it made no sense to me.
[Could that be because, it being a dream––even if "not a dream"––it need not make any sense whatsoever,
nor refer to anything outside the ephemeral reality of the dream itself?]

"TWO COLOSSAL ENERGIES OF LIGHT TRIED TO CONVERGE FOR
THE THIRD MILENNIUM, BUT WERE FORCED APART BY
THE THIRD WORLD COAGULATION."

The Iranian revolution was in the news and not long after I
dreamed of an army of angry Muslims carrying portraits of their spiritual
leader Ayatollah Khoumeini. In this dream, the Virgin Mary, in flowing
blue robes, marched alongside the Iranian women in black, chanting
slogans, fist raised in solidarity. The Third World did seem to be
coagulating – or rather, events were polarizing towards war. Who were
the two energies of light? I guessed they were Leonard and Roshi. But
who was the baby?

In New York, at the time, although I didn’t know it, John Lennon
and Mick Jagger had been meeting regularly to plan a new Peace
initiative, a mass movement that would reunite and recharge the sixties
generation. Meanwhile, the military industrial complex was preparing to
unveil its new Star Wars program, aiming at the militarization of space.
I pondered the possible meanings of this dream for some time
afterward, before deciding to act on it in December. I decided I would
go find Leonard in Europe.
[Would not any dream of a Cosmic Destiny involving LC have been sufficient to send Ann
back to Leonard, wherever he might happen to be? In what way does she herself figure in this dream, btw, so that by going to find Leonard she is "acting on the dream"?]

I was not in contact with him or any of his
friends at the time, and had no inkling of his tour schedule. I did not
know what country he was performing in, how long the tour would last,
or even how to find out these things. Hazel might know, but I was not
about to phone her for that information. Instead, I decided to trust my
intuition. Some inner voice was telling me to fly to England in early
December. Acting on the advice of my friend Annu, who read my coffee
grounds one day and told me to fly to London on December 4, I bought
a cheap ticket on Laker Airways which operated between New York and
London.

[...]

Flying to London made absolutely no sense except that
I felt a compulsion to decipher the message in the dream, which had
seemed so momentous, even though it was phrased in the past tense. It
was as if the events referred to had already happened. In that case, how
could I hope to change them? Who were the “two colossal energies of
light?” Apparently, the message referred to Roshi and Leonard. Why
were they holding that baby, composed of the same luminous material? I
felt I was about to discover the meaning of my own life. On the plane I
sat next to a blond American boy who was spending Christmas in
Germany. I told him where I was going and why and he said I might be
crazy, but I was fascinating.


On the morning of December 6 I was in London’s Victoria Station,
hoping to find a ticket agent who would tell me where to look for
Leonard Cohen.

[...]

December 6, the anniversary of the Rolling Stones’ disastrous
Altamont concert in which a fan was stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels.
On that day in history, but ten years later [1989], the Montreal Massacre would
occur as the Rolling Stones were playing a concert in Montreal
[First, the massacre occurred between 5:10 and 5:30 PM––not the time a rock concert would usually be taking place––and in any case, the Stones were actually playing in Indianapolis on Dec. 6th; they only played in Montreal on December 13th and 14th, so I fail utterly to see how a concert by the Rolling Stones on a completely different day can have anything meaningful to do with either the Montreal Massacre or events in her own life ten years earlier on Dec. 6th, 1979] and 14 young women would be shot by a crazed young man who believed feminists were taking over the world.

On December 6, 1980, Mark David Chapman, who felt he was
being guided by voices telling him to go looking for John Lennon [whom he actually shot on Dec. 8th],
would have just arrived in New York [how is when he arrived in NYC meaningful in any way?], where––like me––he checked into
the YMCA [when did she check into that YMCA? She doesn't say in the book, and, again, even if she did at some point, how is it relevant here?]. He would stalk John Lennon outside his home at the Dakota Residence, where Rosemary’s Baby had been shot some years before.

Since two of these events were still in the future, I did not feel that
day was anything special [hint: it wasn't!]. Nor did I know that two months earlier on the
night of October 9-10, when I was jolted from sleep by my dream of
Leonard and the Roshi, these two were in fact meeting in Europe for the
first few days of the tour that would later be named after “Field
Commander Cohen.”

Since I was not a Beatles’ fan I had no idea that John Lennon had
celebrated his 39th birthday – and his son Sean’s fourth – with Yoko
Ono and friends at the Tavern on the Green in New York City on
October 9. Even if I had known Lennon was born on October 9, I
would never have connected him to my dream of the “two colossal
energies” holding the mysterious baby which I wrote down in my
journal on October 10.
[Neither would I, but for some reason she feels it's significant enough to make the connection here; why? What exactly does Lennon's 39th birthday celebration at Tavern on the Green have to do with her dream, besides the fact that they both probably occurred within 24 hours of each other (as did billions of other dreams and events on the planet)?]

Years later, these coincidences strike me as odd, or even
mysteriously meaningful but at the time, as I told the blond Ameican
boy sitting next to me from New York to London, I was merely driven
by curiosity to find out what lay in store for me if I suspended normal
behaviour and ordinary consciousness for a while.


I hadn’t seen
this moment coming. I stayed on the bus with Leonard and two 16-year
old Polish sisters, who had materialized that morning. Leonard sat up
front and chatted with the two girls, who looked to be identical twins.
He said they were young travellers from behind the Iron Curtain who
came to the concert and had asked for a ride into London. I had no
plan, other than to reconnect with my lesbian friends in London at the
Hotel Maree before they took off for India.

The bus came to a final stop at a posh hotel near Hyde Park. I
unloaded my bag, and followed Leonard inside and the two Polish girls
came with us. He motioned me to wait, and said he would be right down
after he helped the two girls check in. After the three of them
disappeared into the elevator along with a bellhop, I sat down in the
lobby with my bag and waited. Ten minutes passed, and no sign of
Leonard. He was taking his time up there with those girls. I was thinking
about my mission. Somehow, over the seven days, I had been too
involved in my strange inner drama, too caught up in the excitement of
the tour, or just too frightened to get through to Leonard that our
relationship was very important, blessed not only by a mysterious Indian
guru who had appeared in a Himalayan cave, but also by the Roshi who
appeared in my dream, offering me a baby. Furthermore, I had meant to
assure him that all I wanted was a normal life. I didn’t want riches, not
even fame. I just wanted to complete my mission. I wanted the two
colossal energies of light to come together so the Baby could be born.
And save the world.


"Makyo" just about sums it up. (Did Roshi not ever bring that up with her?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makyo

edit: link added
We should never forget Galileo being put before the Inquisition.
It would be even worse if we allowed scientific orthodoxy to become the Inquisition.

Richard Smith, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal 1991-2004,
in a published letter to Nature
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