Remembrance

Armistice day is on us again. 98 years since the war to end all wars ended, and the world immediately began preparations for the next war. It's a hard week to find anything good to say. World War I isn't the central event of American history the way it is in modern European history - the Civil War is. But we're still fighting the Civil War - Trump ran and won as much against the results of the Civil War as anything else. When both the Civil War and WWI ended, the losers set about instantly to try to undo the results, and refight the wars if they need to. This country still hasn't accepted the results of the Civil War...

All right. This is about Armistice Day - Veteran's day in the US - we can, should, honor veterans today, but we should also keep the spirit of early remembrances of the day, and the hope that somehow, this horrible cataclysm might move people to work against wars. Remember the sacrifices, remember the sheer horror of The Great War, and try to do something to stop it from happening, over and over again.

And, today - remember Leonard Cohen. This year - it's parade of good and great people dying (as well as a few monsters) just never seems to stop. Cohen was another of those musicians with a long, deep career and a massive body of work that I dipped into almost at random, never quite embracing the whole thing - but loving the parts I knew. So - we're heavy on the early stuff below, because I had them going obsessively there for a while... He's also someone who's songs could absolutely transform a movie: McCabe & Mrs. Miller is the most obvious, but everybody knows in Exotica was a jolt as well... He will be missed; and reading this new, this week, is a fucking stab in the gut...

So: video - start with Cohen doing his part for Remembrance day, from last year - reciting In Flanders Fields:



And songs - the ones that got me, and kept me the longest. Suzanne:



Bird on a Wire:



The Stranger, from McCabe and Mrs Miller (the title sequence):



And the Partisan: