Sofia Coppola At The Venice Film Festival In 2003 And 2023.

hi human baby, I feel so exhausted all the time with the expectations of my desires, but I never act on them because I never feel good enough. I’m so tired of trying to be good enough. I want to write, but it feels so selfish and pointless. But we both know that’s really a flimsy cover for terror. I know I must let go of this desire, but the grief is overwhelming. What do I do?

Do you want to write? Or do you want to be the person that writes? The first sounds like desire. The second sounds more like expectation. Actually, desire is pure, and it overrides any belief about what you should or should not be. Your actions become a map of your desires. Your life becomes it's portrait. Yours tells me that you want to hide. But how am I supposed to love you if I do not know you?

from Leonard Cohen’s final letter to his dying muse, Marianne Ihlen

Irish MEP: Clare Daly Nov 8

"Thanks, President. A month has elapsed since the commencement of the unrelenting mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza.

It's not a spiral of violence Frau Von Der Leyen. It's genocide, openly declared and carried out by the apartheid state of Israel. Starvation, bombing hospitals, ambulances, journalists and humanitarian routes.

10,000 dead. 1 in 200 Gazans killed. A Palestinian child slaughtered every 10 minutes for a month!

And Frau Von Der Leyen's answer to this graveyard for children is to tell Israel to "Avoid civilians. Be as targeted as you can."

Well that displays some neck. You can't even call for it to stop. You can't even call for a ceasefire.

Well, of course you can't, because these crimes against humanity are being carried out with your weapons in your name when you stood with Israel a month ago and you said you'd stand with them now and in the days to come.

So don't come in here trying to wipe the blood off with belated concern. It's not just Israel's genocide, it's yours, and the hague isn't good enough for you."

An incomplete list of Palestinians killed in 2022 labeled by name, age, date and location of death.

nazzalstudio

Tony Russell     Leonard Cohen, Isle of Wight Festival     1970

“It was a dismal evening in New York City… I had a cheeseburger; it didn’t help at all,… I went to the White Horse Tavern looking for Dylan Thomas, but Dylan Thomas was dead.”

It was enough to find Cohen in a dismal state when he crossed the famous lobby of The Chelsea Hotel. Bristling with talent and the electrifying buzz of fame, filled to the brim with rent-money paintings from its guests the Hotel’s lift was notoriously tricky. While Cohen did usual Fonzie impression on the troublesome controls, a wild-haired, fiercely confident woman entered the lift. The current resident of Room 411 – the singer for Big Brother and the Holding Company, and one of the voices of her generation – Janis Joplin.

Cohen gathered his courage and decided to use the slow pace of the lift to engage in some conversation with this shining light of womanhood. He remembered in 1988, “I said to her, ‘Are you looking for someone?’ She said ‘Yes, I’m looking for Kris Kristofferson.’ I said, ‘Little lady, you’re in luck, I am Kris Kristofferson.’ Those were generous times. Even though she knew that I was someone shorter than Kris Kristofferson, she never let on. Great generosity prevailed in those doom decades.”

Leonard Cohen, on his meeting Janis Joplin at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City, in 1968, in Jack Whatley, “The Story Behind The Song: Leonard Cohen’s ode to Janis Joplin, ‘Chelsea Hotel No. 2’” Far Out Magazine, 2019

Alexa Chung for Interview Magazine, November 2024

Kagen No Tsuki