Leonard Cohen didn't want to be filmed or recorded when he appeared at Glastonbury last weekend, but luckily I caught some of his performance on my daughter's mobile phone. She was there on her 18th birthday, right in front of the stage, waving her phone around, and I think I heard her shout out 'Leonard, I love you!' at one point.
On Sunday I did see Neil Diamond on TV. I noticed someone near the front of the crowd was waving a wig around in time with the music. When he was interviewed afterwards, still on a high, I wondered if he had quite tuned in to the combative, ironic, who's-taking-the-piss-out-who relationship that the British have with their celebrities.
My birthday had been a few days earlier and a dear friend had made me a compilation CD, with some of my favourites - 1,2,3 by Len Barry is as good as Mozart - and some favourites of his own. When his teenage son saw what he had been downloading, he said:
'I have finally lost all respect for you.'
It's mark of the subtle, constantly mutating nature of consciousness how the English middle classes have so totally absorbed black, American notions of what it is to be cool!
It's either a mutating consciousness that believes African American notions are true indicators of cool, or perhaps on another level it's along the lines of the "grass is always cooler on the other side of the pond." A friend of mine started calling his cigarettes "fags" because he may have heard Simon LeBon use the term off hand to a nearby person, and after living in the UK for a few years I now say "a fortnight" instead of saying "two weeks." :D
Posted by: Al | July 04, 2008 at 09:41 AM
In your book Mark you said how esoteric circles spoke of great masters incarnating again to led in times of great diffuclty, or change. What woulf they make of Lorna?
Also, Happy Independence Day Everyone!
Posted by: Nick | July 04, 2008 at 10:36 AM
Thanks for that, Al. I'm surprised but pleased to hear that Englishness can seem cool.
Simon le Bon seems stretching it a bit but..
I think maybe you can pinpoint when black notions of cool took over mainstream white culture. For all his qualities Bing Crosby didn't have a cool bone in his body. His successor as best singer, Frank Sinatra, was totally cool - and wasn't it the influence of jazz, the music of the black man?
Yes, Nick, I think Lorna will be welcomed as new world teacher in esoteric circles. I'm concerned that people only get to find out about her a little at a time, so they're not freaked out.
Posted by: jonathanblack | July 04, 2008 at 03:28 PM
quote Niel from "The Young Ones" here: "I won't say anything because no one ever listens to me anyway. I might as well be a Leonard Cohen record."
Posted by: Mac | November 20, 2008 at 10:07 AM