Leonard Cohen has a new record coming out, and at 82, he reveals in a new interview that he is “ready to die.” Meanwhile, Bob Dylan has won the Nobel Prize for literature.

You may not care for either artist but that just means you have no taste or you’re a millennial or something.

I realize today how much both of them mean to me, how much I was influenced and inspired by them, that they are key figures in the soundtrack of my life.

Bod Dylan’s performance of Hallelujah, from 1988, isn’t the best cover of the song, but it’s stirring nonetheless, and it’s cool to hear.

What a great couple of old Jews!

L’chaim, motherfuckers!

(c) Leonard Cohen by Graeme Mitchell

Save

Save

Obviously, the first question is nonsensical. But the other question bothers me. Just now, I followed some fashion links to some new photos of Lindsay Lohan, topless. My first thought upon looking at her face was: This girl is spent. Literally. She’s been used up and she has nothing left to offer but her nude body for the purpose of porn.

The poor girl has been through everything, at such a young age! She looks like she’s at the brink of starvation, but since she still has tits, she’ll flaunt them. I find it very depressing.

Is it pornography to watch a young celebrity flame out and burn? Is Girls Gone Wild pornography? Are kids really posting nude photos of themselves on their mySpace pages? Is porn ever healthy? Is there anything we haven’t seen yet, or shouldn’t see?

When I first learned to use a computer, the girl I worked with immediately set out to show me some notorious video of a woman having sex with a donkey. I hoped she wouldn’t find it. She did show me a photo of an old lady using a dead fish for something….it wasn’t good, although it was somewhat shocking.

Another office, more searches for porn. My (female) boss and I laughed hysterically at photos of women with two cocks in their mouths. We went to massive cocks dot com and laughed some more.

That is really the totality of my experience with online porn. Is there something wrong with me?

I don’t think I’m prudish. I just don’t want to get depressed. Now I hear there’s a very popular website where people upload pictures of their own faces during orgasm. I don’t get why it’s popular! Why would I want to see what some stranger looks like when they come?

I’m wondering if the world is made up of exhibitionists and voyeurs. And of course a third group, where I fit in. I’m wondering if my problem is that I can’t look at porn without thinking about the motives involved. After I laughed at the girl with two cocks in her mouth, I thought about her mother.

Someone once showed me a website where you could look at women covered in shit. I was very upset and wanted to cry for weeks afterward. I know this is not an example of whatever’s considered mainstream or arty porn, but the whole new world of porn at our fingertips is distressing to me. Even more than distressing, it’s sad.

People who enjoy porn should at least have the decency to shut up about it. Insisting that it’s interesting on any other level is just a denial of its primary purpose. Waxing all intellectual about porn is just absurd, like Camille Paglia pontificating about Madonna.

I hope that young people will still be allowed some innocence about sexuality, so they can discover it with a real live person. Mystery and taboos are there to preserve the holy aspect of sex, and by holy I don’t mean to exclude any practices between two human beings of any gender. Speaking   as an atheist, I still think of sex as a religious experience.

Here’s what Leonard Cohen thinks.

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it’s lonely here,
there’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!

When they said REPENT REPENT …

Comments or arguments, anyone out there?

Tonight I finally saw the documentary “Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.” Various singers perform songs by Leonard Cohen, who is shown in snippets, talking about his life and his music.

I revere Leonard Cohen, but he managed to annoy me. Rufus Wainwright was pretty good, Nick Cave was forgettable, but a singer called Antony was a mind blower.

What an amazing voice! It has been compared to Nina Simone, but it’s nothing like anything I’ve ever heard. Check out his performance here. (If you can do without the Goth androgyny and awkward body language, just close your eyes.)