#Beautiful Losers

[metamorphesque]

"Beautiful Losers", Leonard Cohen

[woundthatswallows]

excerpt from leonard cohen's 1966 novel beautiful losers, from which buffy sainte marie adapted into her phenomenal song god is alive, magic is afoot 

[agirlnamedbone]

one of the best examples of how comically unfaithful to the work literature/poetry excerpts can be is the mass circulation of the leonard cohen line "how can i begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?" which is an excerpt from his novel beautiful losers, in which the narrator is praying to a saint to relieve him of his constipation. the "yesterday in me" is literal shit. fecal matter. he's literally praying for this saint to unclog his fucking colon so he can take a shit. y'all should read books. read books. read books. read whole-ass books.

[wallsandtrains]

Barry McGee - Clare Rojas - Amaze Cincinnati - 2014

[warhead]

[shilohtx]

sister mary corita kent - god is alive 1 & 2, 1969

[akechi-if-he-slayed]

unhinged shuake

[i-just-sit-in-silence]

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

[henrywinterswhore]

anybody else having a leonard cohen summer?

[localrants]

How can I begin any new thing with all of yesterday in me?

-Leonard Cohen, from beautiful losers.

[fuckyeahmrleonardcohen]

How can I begin anything new with all of yesterday in me?

Leonard Cohen, "Beautiful Losers"

[metamorphesque]

"Beautiful Losers", Leonard Cohen

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape.”

― Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers

[longlistshort]

This tribute to artist Margaret Kilgallen was spotted in Los Angeles in 2014. The quote is paraphrasing what she said during an interview for the PBS program Art21. The full quote reads- “I do spend a lot of time trying to perfect my line work… when you get close up, you can always see the line waver. And I think that’s where the beauty is.” Kilgallen died of cancer in 2001, at only 33, but left behind a remarkable body of work.

You can currently see one of these works at Cantor Arts Center’s as part of the group exhibition, Day Jobs, on view until 7/21/24. The exhibition examines the impact of day jobs in the lives and work of several famous artists.

(Image courtesy of Cantor Arts Center: Margaret Kilgallen, “Money to Loan (Paintings for the San Francisco Bus Shelter Posters)” [detail], 2000. Mixed media on paper and fabric, sheet 68 × 48½ inches Courtesy of the Margaret Kilgallen Estate, photo by Tony Prikryl)

You can learn more about Kilgallen, her husband and fellow artist Barry McGee, and several other artists including Shepard Fairey, Mike Mills, Ed Templeton and Harmony Korine in Aaron Rose’s film Beautiful Losers.

[wallsandtrains]

KR - Cincinnati - 2004

[whisperthatruns]

What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. His house is dangerous and finite, but he is at home in the world. He can love the shapes of human beings, the fine and twisted shapes of the heart. It is good to have among us such men, such balancing monsters of love. It makes me think that the numbers in the bag actually correspond to the numbers on the raffles we have bought so dearly, and so the prize is not an illusion.

Leonard Cohen, Beautiful Losers