16th-Page-Creative writing class-one page at a time during the pandemic

The lyrics are steady and sure. The letter tears through curtains that are torn open, and the beat of the lines are a continuous trail of story and song merged like the ocean merges into the open rivers. Cohen has the beautiful ability to take the drama in life and put it in the song of expression and emotion that speaks to the audience’s core. I can only guess that he has lived a
life filled with surprise and wonder, death, and life. He is a legend. I must admit some emotions find words that pour through my fingers:

The One Who Stays
by Christine Reeves
Desire can build stone blocks that form.
love molded in concrete is sorrow pushed down too far.
Can lead a soul bound for heaven thrust hard
These are the storms that make
Or break
So much of this life 
I want to warn you and shake.
Despite the bells that call you twice
I cradle the child you rejected; 
I cradle the man you protected
But tell me, my beloved, how far will you go before
You realize the fire is burning below.
Come now, nestle in my breast.
There is no lacking where love rests.

Back to the class discussion on Leonard ‘s song, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’. My thoughts about the song are windows that question the nature of a torn nation. When does a marriage fall into the hands of another? If a countryman sees his beloved share a part of her beauty to another country, is this not betrayal? Surely as it rains in the middle of a storm, the realization of death of one who cannot recover from such a loss is truly one who has no redemption.

I don’t think a person starts by writing; I think art comes when we have a thirst to incorporate
what we don’t dream into lives that take form. Maybe the story builds from there like the
swelling of a lake. We cannot contain the words that flood us, like standing in a puddle. We
either have to take our rubber boots off or keep them on and pour the story down into the page.

Maybe that is what any artist sets out to do. If we look at the artist Marcel Duchamp and his
transformation fountain from a urinal, what is he trying to tell us?

I think it depends on what a person sees. One can can see something to piss on or see a fountain that brings forth water? How do we perceive others? What are we really looking at? I know that judging a person can change a person’s whole life by other’s perceptions. I think art is like that. I can tear a piece apart if I saw it had no value or birth in it. We create for the very art of producing what we love. We love the moment of our lives and everything that functions to sustain us.

Part of that is how our body works. We piss, we poop, we fart and burp, do we focus on the obvious? I often think kids do. I remember my son laughing with his friend in the back seat singing, “beans beans the musical food that makes you toot and not to poop.” I happen to believe that most boys don’t grow up fully until the age of 70. Maybe that is where the ‘grumpy man’ syndrome derives? I know women don’t grow old until they hit their 80s. I say this because that is when the craziness of menopause calms down to a stop.

I think these things are worth talking about when I think of art.

“Tut, Tut, looks like rain”
― A.A. Milne

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/81466.A_A_Milne?page=4