Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.

A. E. Housman

...Cocorosie...


Oceans wept
Moutains slept
Sidewalks crumbled to ash
Your name remains
In children's lullabies
And your eyes forever in the sky


Pull me close
Dear i'm tremblin'
Hold me tight
I'm afraid to the night
Blackness fills the room
Your love burns bright


Oh summer winds
Remind me of your kiss
Soft and warm
I never want to leave this


I never wanted to say goodbye
I'd throw myself to the sea
If god promised you're inside
We'd float to island paradise
And i'd become your bride


The countryside looks bare
Without you lying in her grass
The stream is dry
And the crickets silent
There's no music in the night
I'd become smoke
And hide in your cigarette pack


To be a star
Tossing light
To sparkle in your eyes
I'd become an angel
And kiss this earth goodbye


Destiny
Used to be
Just a word to me
But heaven sure was right
When they said jesus left somethin' behind


Every inch of this body
I'd plate in gold for you
Even though i ain't got no money
I'd do it just to keep you


Your eyes appear
In every one of my dreams
They glitter and they gleam
Like the first time we meet


The chickens crowed
And i knowed you're home
My spirit ran to greet you
Before my feet left the porch

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

- William Butler Yeats

I was walking in New York City and I brushed up against the man in front of
me. I felt a cardboard placard on his back. And when we passed a streetlight,
I could read it, it said "Please don't pass me by - I am blind, but you can
see - I've been blinded totally - Please don't pass me by." I was walking
along 7th Avenue, when I came to 14th Street I saw on the corner curious
mutilations of the human form; it was a school for handicapped people. And
there were cripples, and people in wheelchairs and crutches and it was snowing, and I got this sense that the whole city was singing this:

Oh please don't pass me by,
oh please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
yes, I've been blinded totally,
oh please don't pass me by.

And you know as I was walking I thought it was them who were singing it, I
thought it was they who were singing it, I thought it was the other who was
singing it, I thought it was someone else. But as I moved along I knew it was
me, and that I was singing it to myself. It went:

Please don't pass me by,
oh please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
well, I've been blinded totally,
oh please don't pass me by.

Oh please don't pass me by.

Now I know that you're sitting there deep in your velvet seats and you're
thinking "Uh, he's up there saying something that he thinks about, but I'll
never have to sing that song." But I promise you friends, that you're going
to be singing this song: it may not be tonight, it may not be tomorrow, but
one day you'll be on your knees and I want you to know the words when the
time comes. Because you're going to have to sing it to yourself, or to another,
or to your brother. You're going to have to learn to sing this song, it goes:

Please don't pass me by,
ah you don't have to sing this .. not for you.
Please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
yes, I've been blinded totally,
oh please don't pass me by.

Well I sing this for the Jews and the Gypsies and the smoke that they made.
And I sing this for the children of England, their faces so grave. And I sing
this for a saviour with no one to save. Hey, won't you be naked for me? Hey,
won't you be naked for me? It goes:

Please don't pass me by,
oh please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
yes, I've been blinded totally,
oh now, please don't pass me by.

Now there's nothing that I tell you that will help you connect the blood
tortured night with the day that comes next. But I want it to hurt you, I
want it to end. Oh, won't you be naked for me? Oh now:

Please don't pass me by,
oh please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, but you can see,
but I've been blinded totally,
oh, please don't pass me by.

Well I sing this song for you Blonde Beasts, I sing this song for you Venuses
upon your shells on the foam of the sea. And I sing this for the freaks and
the cripples, and the hunchback, and the burned, and the burning, and the
maimed, and the broken, and the torn, and all of those that you talk about at
the coffee tables, at the meetings, and the demonstrations, on the streets,
in your music, in my songs. I mean the real ones that are burning, I mean the
real ones that are burning

I say, please don't pass me by,
oh now, please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, yeah but you can see,
ah now, I've been blinded totally,
oh no, please don't pass me by.

I know that you still think that its me. I know that you think that there's
somebody else. I know that these words aren't yours. But I tell you friends
that one day

You're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down on your knees,
you're going to get down ..

Oh, please don't pass me by,
oh, please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, yeah but you can see,
yes, I've been blinded totally,
oh, please don't pass me by.

Well you know I have my songs and I have my poems. I have my book and I have
the army, and sometimes I have your applause. I make some money, but you know
what my friends, I'm still out there on the corner. I'm with the freaks, I'm
with the hunted, I'm with the maimed, yes I'm with the torn, I'm with the down,
I'm with the poor. Come on now ...

Ah, please don't pass me by,
well I've got to go now friends,
but, please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, yeah but you can see,
oh, I've been blinded, I've been blinded totally,
oh now, please don't pass me by.

Now I want to take away my dignity, yes take my dignity. My friends, take my
dignity, take my form, take my style, take my honour, take my courage, take
my time, take my time, .. time .. 'Cause you know I'm with you singing this
song. And I wish you would, I wish you would, I wish you would go home with
someone else. Wish you'd go home with someone else. I wish you'd go home with
someone else. Don't be the person that you came with. Oh, don't be the person
that you came with, Oh don't be the person that you came with. Ah, I'm not
going to be. I can't stand him. I can't stand who I am. That's why I've got to
get down on my knees. Because I can't make it by myself. I'm not by myself
anymore because the man I was before he was a tyrant, he was a slave, he was
in chains, he was broken and then he sang:

Oh, please don't pass me by,
oh, please don't pass me by,
for I am blind, yes I am blind, Oh but you can see,
yes, I've been blinded totally,
oh, please don't pass me by.

Well I hope I see you out there on the corner. Yeah I hope as I go by that I
hear you whisper with the breeze. Because I'm going to leave you now, I'm
going to find me someone new. Find someone new.

And please don't pass me by.

- L Cohen

a few things

1) first time editing in final cut pro
2) first time doing a solo project
3) its for my avant-garde literature class so don't expect it to be conventional
4)its based on the poem "il pleut" by guillaume apollinaire
5) yes those are ears

The man who owned the bookstore was not magic. He was not a
three-legged crow on the dandelion side of the mountain.
He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seaman
who had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floated
there day after day until death did not want him. He had a
young wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home in
Marin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, Richard
Aldington and Edmund Wilson.
He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevsky
and then from the whores of New Orleans.
The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards.
Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars.
Most of the kooks were out of print, and no one wanted to
read them any more and the people who had read the books
had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic
process of music the books had become virgins again. They
wore their ancient copyrights like new maidenheads.
I went to the bookstore in the afternoons after I got off
work, during that terrible year of 1959.
He had a kitchen in the back of the store and he brewed
cups of thick Turkish coffee in a copper pan. I drank coffee
and read old books and waited for the year to end. He had a
small room above the kitchen.
It looked down on the bookstore and had Chinese screens
in front of it. The room contained a couch, a glass cabinet
with Chinese things in it and a table and three chairs. There
was a tiny bathroom fastened like a watch fob to the room.
I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoon
reading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The book
had clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read:

Billy
the Kid
born
November 23,
1859
in
New York
City

The owner of the bookstore came up to me, and put his
arm on my shoulder and said, "Would you like to get laid?"
His voice was very kind.
"No, " I said.
"You're wrong, " he said, and then without saying anything
else, he went out in front of the bookstore, and stopped a pair
of total strangers, a man and a woman. He talked to them for
a few moments. I couldn't hear what he was saying. He pointed
at me in the bookstore. The woman nodded her head and
then the man nodded his head.
They came into the bookstore.
I was embarrassed. I could not leave the bookstore because
they were entering by the only door, so I decided to go
upstairs and go to the toilet. I got up abruptly and walked
to the back of the bookstore and went upstairs to the bathroom,
and they followed after me. I could hear them on the stairs.
I waited for a long time in the bathroom and they waited
an equally long time in the other room. They never spoke.
When I came out of the bathroom, the woman was lying naked
on the couch, and the man was sitting in a chair with his
hat on his lap.
"Don't worry about him, " the girl said. "These things
make no difference to him. He's rich. He has 3, 859 Rolls
Royces." The girl was very pretty and her body was like a
clear mountain river of skin and muscle flowing over rocks
of bone and hidden nerves.
"Come to me, " she said. "And come inside me for we are
Aquarius and I love you."
I looked at the man sitting in the chair. He was not smiling
and he did not look sad.
I took off my shoes and all my clothes. The man did not
say a word.
The girl's body moved ever so slightly from side to side.
There was nothing else I could do for my body was like
birds sitting on a telephone wire strung out down the world,
clouds tossing the wires carefully.
I laid the girl.
It was like the eternal 59th second when it becomes a minute
and then looks kind of sheepish.
"Good, " the girl said, and kissed me on the face.
The man sat there without speaking or moving or sending
out any emotion into the room. I guess he was rich and owned
3, 859 Rolls Royces.
Afterwards the girl got dressed and she and the man left.
They walked down the stairs and on their way out, I heard
him say his first words.
"Would you like to go to Emie's for dinner?"
"I don't know, " the girl said. "It's a little early to think
about dinner. "
Then I heard the door close and they were gone. I got
dressed and went downstairs. The flesh about my body felt
soft and relaxed like an experiment in functional background
music.
The owner of the bookstore was sitting at his desk behind
the counter. "I'11 tell you what happened up there, " he said,
in a beautiful anti-three-legged-crow voice, in an anti-dandelion
side of the mountain voice.
"What?"I said.
"You fought in the Spanish Civil War. You were a young
Communist from Cleveland, Ohio. She was a painter. A New
York Jew who was sightseeing in the Spanish Civil War as if
it were the Mardi Gras in New Orleans being acted out by
Greek statues.
"She was drawing a picture of a dead anarchist when you
met her. She asked you to stand beside the anarchist and act
as if you had killed him. You slapped her across the face
and said something that would be embarrassing for me to
repeat.
You both fell very much in love.
"Once while you were at the front she read Anatomy of
Melancholy and did 349 drawings of a lemon.
"Your love for each other was mostly spiritual.Neither
one of you performed like millionaires in bed.
"When Barcelona fell, you and she flew to England, and
then took a ship back to New York. Your love for each other
remained in Spain. It was only a war love. You loved only
yourselves, loving each other in Spain during the war. On
the Atlantic you were different toward each other and became
every day more and more like people lost from each other.
"Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull dragging
its driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon.
"When the ship bumped up against America, you departed
without saying anything and never saw each other again. The
last I heard of you, you were still living in Philadelphia. "
"That's what you think happened up there?" I said.
"Partly, " he said. "Yes, that's part of it. "
He took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco and lit it.
"Do you want me to tell you what else happened up there?"
he said.
"Go ahead."
"You crossed the border into Mexico, " he said. "You
rode your horse into a small town. The people knew who
you were and they were afraid of you. They knew you had
killed many men with that gun you wore at your side. The
town itself was so small that it didn't have a priest.
"When the rurales saw you, they left the town. Tough as
they were, they did not want to have anything to do with you.
The rurales left.
You became the most powerful man in town.
You were seduced by a thirteen-year-old girl, and you
and she lived together in an adobe hut, and practically all
you did was make love.
"She was slender and had long dark hair. You made love
standing, sitting, lying on the dirt floor with pigs and chickens
around you. The walls, the floor and even the roof of the
hut were coated with your sperm and her come.
"You slept on the floor at night and used your sperm for
a pillow and her come for a blanket.
"The people in the town were so afraid of you that they
could do nothing.
"After a while she started going around town without any
clothes on, and the people of the town said that it was not a
good thing, and when you started going around without any
clothes, and when both of you began making love on the back
of your horse in the middle of the zocalo, the people of the
town became so afraid that they abandoned the town. It's
been abandoned ever since. "People won't live there.
"Neither of you lived to be twenty-one. It was not neces-
sary.
"See, I do know what happened upstairs, " he said. He
smiled at me kindly. His eyes were like the shoelaces of a
harpsichord.
I thought about what happened upstairs.
"You know what I say is the truth, " he said. "For you
saw it with your own eyes and traveled it with your own body.
Finish the book you were reading before you were interrupted.
I'm glad you got laid. "
Once resumed the pages of the book began to speed up
and turn faster and faster until they were spinning like wheels
in the sea.

From Trout Fishing in America