God is Alive, Magic is Afoot
Leonard Cohen
sung by
Buffy St. Marie
I am posting this because perhaps more than any song I can think of, it deals with Synchronicity.
Synchronicity is probably the best description of that feeling we all have [or get] of MAGIC. That feeling you get that sets you right on THE EDGE of Paranoia.
Deja'Vu remembering itself. Dreams dreaming of dreams that are dreaming of awakening. Being in two places at once. Knowing when the phone is about to ring. Wishing you had loved someone and discoveriing they were wishing it too. Praying for someone and feeling someone praying for YOU.
We get to use about 10% of our brains, conciousness and awareness probably so we don't interfere in what God is doing in our lives.
KCAC Lives! positively REEKS with synchronicity. Do you have any idea what the ODDS are of what's happening now ACTUALLY happening? They are astrnomical and I for one do not KNOW what is happening here but it doesn't matter about explaining it. Synchronicity happens. It's like Dixieland Jazz. Everybody gets to Solo all the way through the song and anything you DO is right.
Bill and I happened to be together at the Scottsdale house on Shaw Butte I believe, when we heard this for the first time. There was nothing but desert all the way to Taliesen West. Nowadays it is all part of a giant honeycomb of houses; "Great hives of bees do I see" - Nostradamus
The effect of the song was like being hit by a truck. Wow. I recognized the etherial effect immediately.. the sound of Buffy trying like God, to "break through". The fade-in-fade-out effect was from tape technology. You record a track, leave it rolling on the deck and then zap it here and there with a bulk tape eraser. It erases just SECTIONS of the recording creating that awesome effect that the song became famous for.
Knowing all that made no difference. All this and Leonard Cohen too?
God is Alive - Magic is afoot. Holy Shit. What's next?
God is alive; Magic is afoot
God is alive; Magic is afoot
God is afoot; Magic is alive
Alive is afoot.....
Magic never died.
God never sickened;
many poor men lied
many sick men lied
Magic never weakened
Magic never hid
Magic always ruled
God is afoot
God never died.
God was ruler
though his funeral lengthened
Though his mourners thickened
Magic never fled
Though his shrouds were hoisted
the naked God did live
Though his words were twisted
the naked Magic thrived
Though his death was published
round and round the world
the heart did not believe
Many hurt men wondered
many struck men bled
Magic never faltered
Magic always led.
Many stones were rolled
but God would not lie down
Many wild men lied
many fat men listened
Though they offered stones
Magic still was fed
Though they locked their coffers
God was always served.
2..
Magic is afoot. God rules.
Alive is afoot. Alive is in command.
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boasted solitude
God was at their side
Nor the dreamer in his cell
nor the captain on the hill
Magic is alive
Though his death was pardoned
round and round the world
the heart did not believe.
Though laws were carved in marble
they could not shelter men
Though altars built in parliaments
they could not order men
Police arrested Magic
and Magic went with them,
for Magic loves the hungry.
But Magic would not tarry
it moves from arm to arm
it would not stay with them
Magic is afoot
it cannot come to harm
it rests in an empty palm
it spawns in an empty mind
but Magic is no instrument
Magic is the end.
Many men drove Magic
but Magic stayed behind
Many strong men lied
they only passed through Magic
and out the other side
Many weak men lied
they came to God in secret
and though they left him nourished
they would not say who healed
Though mountains danced before them
they said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
the naked God did live
3...
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh with in my mind
This I mean my mind to serve 'til
service is but Magic
moving through the world
and mind itself is Magic
coursing through the flesh
and flesh itself is Magic
dancing on a clock
and time itself the magic length of God
NOTE: FOR A BRIEF VIDEO, CLICK THE HEADLINE
6 comments:
Wow i got tears in my eyes... I'm crying like a baby and the synapsis are firing at the speed of life.. god is alive, magic is afoot...that takes me back... a flashback to that same house, in Scottsdale , out Tatum and that same song... the vibes were right, you may have been there, i was somewhere else, perhaps farther than i'd gown before, but i was not afraid and i felt secure there and with Bill on hand as my guide, i guess... thats the night i travaled even beyond my own funeral, i beleave, although it was a kinda impersonal vue ot the event... and i went on and back i guess... just so i could share that with ya'all.
I've looked for that song before on the web, without any luck.... now thats going to be going through my head.
... and i like it.
thank you Ron... were connectin , loopin, firein' and hittin nerves here...
keep on firing
I'm receiving you
Bruce
Hi Bruce I HAD to do that, partly because of Mariah.
Talk about Synchronicity - I think we are maybe all being herded together and PROTECTED right now. We are suddenly gathering between 250-300 hits per day n this blog. That's awesome. We were just in the TEENS a few weeks ago!
Anyway.. safety in numbers. As I am typing this my wife and I suddenly like within the last few days, have SEVERAL members of our extended families in both directions on both sides, IN THE HOSPITAL with heart attacks, strokes, cancers, blindnesses and so on.
Somehow being in the middle of all this, I feel safe. Wish I had a doobie, though.
Ronco
PSS... TATUM - that's the road me and a girlfriend Did It in one night. Right there on the hot asphalt. No cars or traffic for MILES.. Desolate and deserted.
"Why Don't We Do It In The Road"?
Silly-ass idea. Fun, too.
Ronco
Whew, my brothers...how did you know how much I needed to see the words to that song again today? Made me go way back in the blog archives to when you sent me this song after I mentioned it on the blog...around the Parralellograms time too, remember Ron?
It was about this time last year that you sent both those songs to me and this blog. The reason I remember it so well is because it was around the time Lissa was in the hospital the last time. I got a phone call around 5 am from a mutual friend asking 'is it true??" (it was in the early edition of the newspaper and then all over the world in a flash) Mark and I cried and I played God Is Alive, Magic is Afoot over and over and over, for an hour I bawled like a baby but felt comforted by the synchronicity. as you put it. I knew Lissa heard it.
I don't remember if I played Buffy in the 4 hour set Andy let me do in tribute to Lissa on Radio Free Phoenix on the day of Lissa's funeral. But it was there anyway. Andy did such a beautiful job helping me put that tribute together. And Cheryl Sweet was so wonderful and supportive to me during that whole time. It brought us all so close together.
Lissa was so thrilled that I played 'Women With the Strength of 10,000 Men" for her everytime I did my little show. And Andy was so kind and indulgent in many musically spiritiual (for me and for Lissa) ways. He never said hey, you played that for her before and before and before. (o:
God Is Alive, Magic is Afoot, and as I said in a post to Liz way down the scroll, music is the key, RFP is the keeper, Andy is the archangel and to me the djs there are all the angels watching over what is real. It meant so much to Lissa, I hope Andy knew the depth of how that touched her.
I am overcome with emotion right now.
Yes, yes, God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. On last Valentines Day I was rushed to Desert Sam with internal bleeding, and they told me when I finally left ICU and came home that I had come close to dying. I was in there for five nights. I kept thinking and dreaming this song as they kept the morphine trickling through my veins.
For three days they couldn't stop the bleeding and couldn't figure out why it was happening. If it doesn't stop within the next several hours we must do a transfusion and surgery they said. I was weak and it scared the hell out of me. I didn't have the energy to have anyone near me, I said, unplug the phone, keep everyone out, and I prayed and talked to Lissa.
I asked her how she could have gone thru all she did and been so brave when I was crying after a week at the thought of dying so needlessly and to please, ask God for me to stop the bleeding, I have such trouble praying (an 80 year old Irish priest friend of mine who has known me since I was 2, has told me "trying to pray is praying.")
Well, I tried to pray and Lissa somehow heard, I believe, as I literally whispered over and over for my prayer "God is Alive, Magic is Afoot.' And magically just before I was to get the transfusion etc. the bleeding suddenly stopped.
They still don't know why it happened or why it stopped, but God is Alive, Magic is Afoot, and I am strong and healthy and ready to make my life count for something.
I'm listening to the song as I write this and it's just all coming...and dreams are coming again, about people from our past, popping up, saying hello, I am still here...'magic is no instrument, magic is the end." Hope and goodness and love is stronger than all the hate and arrogance in the world. We can't forget that, we must think that, constantly.
Magic always ruled, God is Afoot, God never died. By whatever name and face we give God,
God is Alive, Magic is Afoot. And time alone the magic length of God.
ALIVE IS IN COMMAND.
Wow. That's the best post I've read in a long time, Mariah (no offense to anyone else's awesome sharings here). I'm feelin' it too. Powerful, powerful song, powerful and beautiful post. Thank you, much love to you, sister.
:~)
Indeed. Thanks for sharing that, Mariah. Interestingly, I was in the hospital at about the same time. Heart rate; 47 BPM.
Gotta tell you one more thng about the Scottsdale House. Lots of visitors, several from "yonder" (other parts of the coutry) who did not know the desert and were often discovering their own psychic gifts.
We had one visitor who had dropped some acid or whatever and had come in from an entire afternoon of wandering in the desert. Most of the Sonora was once ocean you know but few people realize that's how Sedona and Papago Park got to be a huge sculted Rock Garden in the first place.
Our friend was desperately holding on to a rock and did not know why. He finally handed it to me and together, we began to figure out its charisma and fascination.
It was petrified wood. It had been baking out there in the sun for thousands of years. But it wasn't just ANY petrified wood. The more we handled it, the more we realized that before it became petrified it had been CARVED. If you held it like the tool it had been, you realized it was the end of the handle of an oar. Like canoes, or fishing boats. An oar. Just like an indian or an ancestor of one would use to paddle a boat.
I have no doubt that there was a spiritual connection to that petrified oar handle and our spaced-out friend. He was holding onto that thing like a GUARDIAN of it, yet he really had no idea WHY.
Synchronicity. It means paying attention to what is about to happen.
"How many of you know you are REALLY alive?" - Jim Morrison
God is Alive - Magic is afoot.
Ronco
Post a Comment