Canadian singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen has died at the age of 82.
"We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries," said a post on the artist's official Facebook page.
No further details were released, but the announcement comes a month afterthe artist told the New Yorker: "I am ready to die. I hope it's not too uncomfortable. That's about it for me."
A highly-respected artist known for his poetic and lyrical music, Cohen wrote a number of popular songs including the often-covered "Hallelujah."
His 14th studio album, "You Want It Darker," had just been released on October 21.
For more than six decades he has remained a mythical force in music, his gravelly voice and poetic lyrics musing over war, heartbreak, betrayal, death and moral faithlessness in songs that brought beauty to life’s greatest tragedies.
But Bob Dylan’s place as one of the world’s greatest artistic figures was elevated further on Thursday when he was named the surprise winner of the Nobel prize in literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition”.
After the announcement, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, Sara Danius, said it had “not been a difficult decision” and she hoped the academy would not be criticised for its choice.
“We hoped the news would be received with joy, but you never know,” she said, comparing the songs of the American songwriter to the works of Homer and Sappho.
“We’re really giving it to Bob Dylan as a great poet – that’s the reason we awarded him the prize. He’s a great poet in the great English tradition, stretching from Milton and Blake onwards. And he’s a very interesting traditionalist, in a highly original way. Not just the written tradition, but also the oral one; not just high literature, but also low literature.”
Though Dylan is considered by many to be a musician, not a writer, Danius said the artistic reach of his lyrics and poetry could not be put in a single box. “I came to realise that we still read Homer and Sappho from ancient Greece, and they were writing 2,500 years ago,” she said. “They were meant to be performed, often together with instruments, but they have survived, and survived incredibly well, on the book page. We enjoy [their] poetry, and I think Bob Dylan deserves to be read as a poet.”
‘Don’t Look Back’, Bob Dylan, 1967 Photograph: Everett/Rex/Shutterstock
Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1941, Dylan got his first guitar at the age of 14 and performed in rock’n’roll bands in high school. He adopted the name Dylan, after the poet Dylan Thomas, and, drawn to the music of Woody Guthrie, began to perform folk music.
He moved to New York in 1961, and began performing in the clubs and cafes of Greenwich Village. His first album, Bob Dylan, was released in 1962, and he followed it up with a host of albums now regarded as masterpieces, including Blonde on Blonde in 1966, and Blood on the Tracks in 1975.
He is regarded as one of the most influential figures in contemporary popular culture, though his music has always proved divisive. Speaking last year, Dylan said: “Critics have been giving me a hard time since day one.”
His own response to receiving the prize is unknown. He rarely gives interviews, and has a troubled relationship with the fame attached to his decades of popularity. However, he has toured almost non-stop since 1988 and last weekend he played the inaugural Desert Trip festival in California, alongside other giants of the 1960s, the Rolling Stones, the Who, Paul McCartney and Neil Young.
Among the musical, literary and even academic communities, respected figures expressed their delight at Dylan’s Nobel prize. The author Salman Rushdie told the Guardian he was delighted with Dylan’s win and said his lyrics had been “an inspiration to me all my life ever since I first heard a Dylan album at school”.
“The frontiers of literature keep widening, and it’s exciting that the Nobel prize recognises that,” Rushdie said. “I intend to spend the day playing Mr Tambourine Man, Love Minus Zero/No Limit, Like a Rolling Stone, Idiot Wind, Jokerman, Tangled Up in Blue and It’s a Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall.”
Musician Jarvis Cocker said Dylan was a “great choice” and highlighted the 1963 track Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright as a personal favourite. “It’s a great break-up song: he’s making light of it but one or two little digs show that he is actually a bit upset,” Cocker said. “I think Dylan’s sense of humour is often overlooked.”
The story is based on the history of Jones County, Mississippi during the Civil War and the immediately following period. Although the plot of the movie is fiction, the overall story follows the history of Jones County, and many of the events portrayed are true.The film is credited as "based on the books The Free State of Jones by Victoria E. Bynum and The State of Jones by Sally Jenkins and John Stauffer". After surviving the 1862 Battle of Corinth, Newton Knight, a poor farmer from Jones County serving as a battlefield medic in the Confederate Army, deserts and returns home to his farm and his wife, Serena. While there, he befriends Rachel, a slave woman who has secretly learned to read. Newton's disenchantment with the Confederacy grows after learning that troops are seizing crops and livestock for taxes. After helping one family resist such a raid, he is bitten by a slave-catching dog. With the help of abolitionist Aunt Sally and several slaves, he escapes to a swamp where several runaway slaves led by Moses Washington tend to his wounds. After the Siege of Vicksburg, Confederate desertions increase considerably, and many of them find their way to the swamp. Newton organizes the deserters and runaway slaves into a militia, and leads an armed rebellion against the Confederacy. They succeed in capturing a large slice of south-east Mississippi, organizing it as the "Free State of Jones". Although they get little help from the Union, they manage to hold out until the end of the war. Newton continues to fight against racial inequality after the war, helping to free Moses' son from an "apprenticeship" to Rachel's former master and registering freedmen to vote. He and Rachel have a son, Jason. Since they are unable to marry, Newton arranges to deed a parcel of land to her. The story is interspersed with the saga of Newton's great-great-great grandson, who is arrested under Mississippi's miscegenation laws 85 years after the war. Since he is of one-eighth black descent, under Mississippi law of the day he is considered black, and therefore cannot legally marry his long-time sweetheart. He is sentenced to five years in prison, but his conviction is thrown out by the Mississippi Supreme Court rather than risk the law being declared unconstitutional.
Watch this video and answer the following questions: 1. Why does she say muslims can be defined as an airport security-line delay? 2. What happened to her when she was 17? 3. How can she consider that being a muslim is a feminist declaration of independence? 4. Why are September 11th attacks so significant to her community? what was she doing when this happened? Ask your parents... do they remember? 5. What turned her from a citizen to a suspect? 6. What metaphor does she use to explain the role of muslims in American society? 7. Where and how do people usually get radicalized? 8. What does she compare ISIS to? 9. What happens when we are afraid? 10. What happened at the mosque when she went after September 11th attacks? *WRITE YOUR OPINION ABOUT THIS TALK
One ball pit, two people, one city. Take a seat and make a friend.
In the middle of a city square sits a giant tub of colorful balls and above it hangs a sign that says, “Take a Seat & Make a Friend“. Two strangers climb in and talk about life questions, some funny, some serious.
What starts out as what may seem like a weird social experiment turns into the sharing of life stories, laughter, hugs, and even a secret handshake or two. I think that if we could stop long enough to just sit and listen to each other for a while, we’d all be a lot better off.
Discover whether you are guilty of maleficium and/or would have been accused of practicing witchcraft according to the laws and evidence used during the 1692 Salem Witch Trials.
1. YOU ARE FEMALE
Are you a woman of any kind? If so, you are probably one of the devil’s many hellbrides. Since the medieval period, “an aspect of the female has been associated with the witch.” For thousands of years, people have believed women to be more susceptible to sins than men, and sinning is a clear indication of devil worship. In Salem, 13 women and five men were convicted of practicing witchcraft, though historically the numbers dramatically favor accused women over men.
2. YOU ARE POOR/CANNOT SUPPORT YOURSELF FINANCIALLY
The poor, homeless, and those forced to rely on the community for support were among the most vulnerable and often accused of witchcraft. Sarah Good, hanged in 1692, was extremely disliked and distrusted by neighbors because she wandered from house to house begging for food.
3. YOU ARE RICH/FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT
If you’re a grown woman living this life without any additional support, you probably also have a jar of eye of newt in your pantry. Any indication that a woman could live without the help or supervision of a man raised alarm. She would likely have been isolated from the community—until, of course, she was arrested and put on trial. Between 1620 and 1725, women without brothers or sons to share their inheritance comprised 89 percent of the women executed for witchcraft in New England.
4. YOU HAVE ONE OR MORE FEMALE FRIENDS
A note to all popular teens and the cast of Sex and the City: A group of women congregating without a male chaperone was deemed a “coven meeting to worship the Devil.” Ladies be communing with flirty cosmos and the devil.
5. YOU HAVE HAD AN ARGUMENT WITH ONE OR MORE OF YOUR FEMALE FRIENDS
Infamous witchfinders like Matthew Hopkins and John Searne inspired such terror in the community that it didn’t take long for women to accuse other women of witchcraft as a way of deflecting their own indictments. According to author Elizabeth Reis, “women were more likely than men to be convinced of this complicity with the devil, and given such convictions about themselves, they could more easily imagine that other women were equally damned.”
Take the case of Rachel Clinton: “Women of worth and quality accused [her] of hunching them with her elbow” when she walked by them at church. Rachel, herself a former woman of “worth and quality,” had a mentally disturbed mother and a late-in-life marriage that caused her to slip to the bottom rung of the class system. Add to that some finger-wagging biddies screaming about an elbow jab and, double double toil and trouble, Rebecca was convicted of witchcraft.
6. YOU HAVE HAD AN ARGUMENT OR DISAGREEMENT WITH SOMEONE
The important thing to remember is that anyone could accuse anyone. And they did. If you found yourself accused of practicing witchcraft of any kind by any kind of person, you might as well have been seen flying naked over the moon on a broomstick made out of a cursed lover’s ears.
7. YOU ARE VERY OLD
Older women, both married and unmarried, were extremely susceptible to accusations. Rebecca Nurse was a 70-year-old invalid when she was accused by disputing neighbors. At 71, she became the oldest woman tried, convicted, and put to death for being a witch.
8. YOU ARE VERY YOUNG
Dorothy Goode was only 4 years old when she confessed to being a witch (simultaneously implicating her mother, Sarah, who was hanged in 1692). Dorothy was imprisoned for nine months before her release. The experience left her permanently insane.
9. YOU ARE A MIDWIFE
Put simply by writer Joel Southern, a midwife’s “age, social and marital status, autonomy, pagan influences, secret knowledge of herbs and most importantly, the vilification of her profession as unclean and demeaning served to demonize the midwife. In short, the midwife represented everything the Church feared.”
10. YOU ARE MARRIED WITH TOO MANY CHILDREN
You have an unnaturally fertile womb that can only be the result of a dark magic. Add to that a young couple nearby having a difficult time conceiving, and you are almost certainly stealing would-be babies from them. Because you are a witch.
11. YOU ARE MARRIED WITH TOO FEW (OR NO) CHILDREN
The devil cursed your unholy womb with infertility. Plus, if your neighbors and their six children are suffering in any way, they almost certainly believe the jealous crone living next to them has hexed their home.
12. YOU HAVE EXHIBITED “STUBBORN,” “STRANGE,” OR “FORWARD BEHAVIOR"
Let loose any kind of sass or backtalk and ye be a witch, probably. Again, in the trial of Rachel Clinton, her accusers solidified the case against her with the following: “Did she not show the character of an embittered, meddlesome, demanding woman—perhaps in short, the character of a witch? Did she not scold, rail, threaten and fight?”
13. YOU HAVE A MOLE, BIRTHMARK, OR THIRD NIPPLE
Any of these found on the body could be interpreted as the Devil’s mark. This is also where the witch’s familiar—usually a dog, cat, or snake—would attach itself to her to drink her blood. The accused were completely rid of their body hair until some kind of marking was found. Now imagine a tiny puppy guzzling from Marilyn Monroe’s beauty mark.
14. BUTTER OR MILK HAS SPOILED IN YOUR FRIDGE
Several testimonials during the Salem Trials mention spoiled dairy products in connection with the accused. Be honest about the condition of your fridge before you continue.
15. YOU HAVE HAD SEX OUT OF WEDLOCK
Throw yourself directly into a blue hellfire if this one applies to you. In 1651, Alice Lake of Dorchester was tried as a witch for having “played the harlot, and being with Child.” Her guilt was so intense that she eventually confessed to convening with the devil “through the commission of her sin.” She was hanged that same year.
16. YOU HAVE ATTEMPTED TO PREDICT THE IDENTITY OF YOUR FUTURE HUSBAND
Ever daydreamed about your soulmate? Written his name in cursive in your notebook? Then, like Tituba, a slave woman living in Salem, your activities could be construed as witchcraft. Tituba encouraged young girls to predict the identities of their future husbands and became the first woman in Salem accused of practicing the craft. And thanks to dreamy succubi like you, she won’t be the last.
17. YOU HAVE BROKEN VIRTUALLY ANY RULE IN THE BIBLE AND THUS ENTERED INTO A PACT WITH THE DEVIL
Here are a handful of rules the Puritans observed. Breaking any could lead to a witchcraft accusation: -The strict observance of Sabbath, "the training day of military discipline.” This includes no fire, no trading, no traveling, and something called “new showbread In the holy place.” That last one is punishable by death. -No adultery -No leading people to other Gods by prophecy or dreams -No getting raped -No planting more than one type of seed in a field -No touching a pig carcass -No wearing clothing made of more than one kind of cloth or fabric -No round haircuts -No braided hair -And definitely no suffering a witch to live
Did you do any of these things? Then congratulations, you are guilty of practicing witchcraft. You are hellbound, and will likely be hanged, burned, or left to rot in a filthy prison until you die. May the dark shadows cloak you in their wretched embrace. Hail Satan.
All images courtesy of Thinkstock unless otherwise noted.
