God is Alive, Magic is Afoot

[gone]

It’s only just really struck me how I’ve been giving much of my comments here a disproportionate weighting, focusing on the problematic. I should also say that I spend much of the time feeling quite excited about the way the world is going and the (hopefully) impending transformation. I find it remarkable that there may be a good chance that I’ll live through a paradigm-shifting era in the human story. Over the past year or two I’ve found the world increasingly magical (not all the time, but enough) to remind me of childhood wonders –helped of course by having an 18 month-old son. I look forward to dreaming, waking and absorbing more of all the magic that’s out there. For most of the 1990’s I was constantly bored, now I can’t imagine there being a moment when there’s not something worth while to do, read or contemplate.

I got thinking about this a minute ago while listening to ‘God is Alive, Magic is Afoot’ sung by Buffy Sainte-Marie, written by Leonard Cohen.

There’s a funny story behind this song. I wrote the words ‘God is Alive, Magic is Afoot’ as the (rather camp) concluding sentence to an undergraduate essay about an obscure 4th century Church Patriarch, thinking them my own. I got a scorcher of a mark for this essay. Some years later I was talking to my mother about the nature of reality (the usual) when she said, ‘Of course, God is Alive, Magic is Afoot.’ This totally freaked me out. I knew my mother hadn’t read this essay and could therefore only assume she was truly telepathic. She says she’s never seen my face drain of colour as at that moment. Of course, it turns out she used to read me these lyrics while I was a baby and I had somehow absorbed them into my mind; shame that, I was rather proud of them.

I’m sure if I undertook a line-by-line exegesis I might find something I don’t like, but on the whole it’s a cracker. The song goes:

God is alive, magic is afoot
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 lead
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
Magic is afoot, God is alive
Alive is afoot

Alive is in command
Many weak men hungered
Many strong men thrived
Though they boast of 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 would 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
Mmmmm.... 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 tell who healed
Though mountains danced before them
They said that God was dead
Though his shrouds were hoisted
The naked God did live
This I mean to whisper to my mind
This I mean to laugh within 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

[ October 27, 2003, 11:29 AM: Message edited by: gelfer ]

[David Orange]

wow, that is a really great one! i enjoy leonard cohen's music, but i didn't know that one..

it reminds me of a song by another artist; the lyrics of which paraphrase a passage from gabriel garcia marquez' novel 'one hundred years of solitude'...it has always struck me as being quite shamanic--

"Curiosity was far greater than our fear/It felt so simple and so prodigious at the same time

Incredible things are happening in the world
Magical things are happening in this world

Across the river there are all kinds of magical instruments/While really we keep on living like monkeys

Incredible things are happening in the world
Magical things are happening in this world"

[Rob P]

Hi Gelfer!
Thanks for the taste of Buffy!
I just ordered her CD 'Illuminations'
from Amazon...I can't wait to hear it.
seeya
Rob

[fadladder]

Just joined the message board, so please forgive late response to an older thread.

The "God is alive, magic is a foot" piece comes from "Beautiful Losers" one of Cohen's two novels. It's a great book, very much in the visionary novel vein. It is also more explicit about the whole sexual outlaw aspect of Cohen's work.

[daniel]

Please describe the "sexual outlaw aspect" of Cohen's vision. How does it integrate with his Buddhism?

[RobH]

That is an extraordinary poem/song. I haven't heard it in a long time. Though I was thinking about it recently. So Cohen wrote it as part of a novel which Buffy St Marie then turned into a song?

Prayers and Blessings,
Rob

[gone]

Yar, pretty much. It appears in some lesser volumes of collected poetry as well, I think, though its origin was, as fadladder said, ‘Beautiful Losers’ (still a good read).

Buffy’s rendition might be a little off the wall for the contemporary ear – my wife calls her, ‘that warbling hippy.’ It takes all sorts.

[fungus44]

The Leonard Cohen passage is wonderful - - it's adapted from his second novel Beautiful Losers -- an early example of Canadian postmodern writing.

His first novel, The Favourite Game, is also recommended.

On a further note on this song is Buffy St.Marie's photo prints. I saw them several years ago at Toronto's Jane Corkin Gallery, and they were large hyperpsychedelicized reproductions of settler/ethnographic photos of aboriginal peoples. I don't know if she has continued with them, but they were brilliant. In terms of a Benjaminian dialectics at a standstill they were perfect.