Me and LC

I am immersing myself in Leonard Cohen this afternoon.
I told you that I am committed to going deeper. In the past week I walked through a door in my mind that I have been wanting to walk through for a very long time.
It happened suddenly, as these things do, but the important thing is that it felt right and continues to feel right. When change happens and you are ready for it, you feel it soul deep. You cannot force it, you cannot fake it.
Believe me I have tried.
And now I am standing in a different place looking at myself from a different angle. I have an idea of what I want, where I want to go, who I want to be. Actually the goal is not who I want to be, it's about becoming me.
I need help. I'm relying on Leonard Cohen.
Available to me On Demand is the 2005 special -  I'm Your man - A Tribute To Leonard Cohen. It is bizarre to me that something so profound is available on something so crass and superficial. But I will take my inspiration from whence it comes.
Today I fast forwarded through all the music and listened only to the things LC had to say. And I took notes. The documentary is cut in with his thoughts and remembrances. I approached it like I was taking a course.
The man is profound.

In discussing the inspiration behind one of his songs, 1000 Kisses Deep, he said about creativity and about life:"Sometimes when you no longer see yourself as the hero of your own drama, expecting victory after victory, and you understand deeply that this is not paradise..somehow we're, especially the privileged ones that we are, we somehow embrace the notion that this veil of tears, that it's perfectable, that you're going to get it all straight. I've found that things became a lot easier when I no longer expected to win. When you abandon your masterpiece and sink into the real masterpiece."

I try too hard. I fight too hard. I expect to win in the game of re-arranging my life. I am obsessed when I have a day off or half a day to myself, I am obsessed with changing my life. And because I put so much pressure on myself, I shrivel up and waste the day. I sit in front of this keyboard and tell myself to write something good and I end up cleaning the kitty litter box.
My spirit has been stripped and tortured over the past year and a half and I didn't realize that I was empty and incapable of evolving because of that.
I walked through that door and realized I had to fill my soul up again. I need a source or sources of inspiration to help me change.
I approach my life is if I am going to die tomorrow, but not in the living with abandon kind of way. It's more of a panicked I have to accomplish something right now kind of way.
I am trying to change that. So today I traded keyboard gridlock for Leonard Cohen 101. Using him as fuel. Because if I die tomorrow I would rather spend today in the company of someone I look up to than to spend it grinding my teeth in front of a computer screen.

"A lot of those songs were the response to what struck me as beauty, whatever that curious emanation from a being, or an object, a situation or a landscape. You know, that had a very powerful effect on me as it does on everyone. And I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me, and they were alive."

I'm talking about a point of view here, a perspective, a way of approaching life. Such a humble approach given such enormous talent and sensitivity. He prayed to be able to express in poetry and song the things that moved him. He didn't just assume that he could crash ahead and slam words on page. He was looking for the inspiration to do it right, to do justice to the beauty that moved him.

LC studied with a Zen Master named Roshi. "Roshi deeply didn't care who I was, and so who I was began to wither. The less I was of who I was, the better I felt."
Boom. Another philosophical point of view I can embrace.

I'm filling the tank. Not to just make myself happy or to tell you what I am thinking or doing. I'm probably boring you anyway.

My goal is to change. I am genuinely searching for depth. I want to express my thoughts more deeply in my words. I don't want to just write about what inspires me, I want my writing to be inspired. I want to bring some weight to my life.

I think me and Leonard Cohen make a pretty damn good team.