CYOKAMO - The Finest Christian Camp (Song) I Know
You’ll find a bit of heaven there
At old CYOKAMO
Camp CYOKAMO
When DrHGuy was a youngster,1 a week of church camp at CYOKAMO2 was a consistent feature of his summer schedule.
Located near Alba, Missouri,3 CYOKAMO was in those days little more than a collection of sheds, an expanse of soil only suitable for growing rocks, a muddy creek, and hordes of sweaty, obnoxious preadolescents. The gate pictured in the photo atop this post is a recent (i.e., sometime in the past 40 years) addition that would have been considered, in DrHGuy’s camp days, an affectation at best or, more likely, an impediment to the path to salvation.
Nowadays, in fact, Camp CYOKAMO features decent looking buildings and, if this excerpt from the brochure can be believed, two swimming pools.
And, there’s more, including sand volleyball
and paintball.
Two pools? Sand volleyball? Paintball?5 What’s next - Christian Karate?
Well, yes. According to the Southwest Association of Tournaments web site, Camp CYOKAMO is the site of Christian Karate Camp 2007,6 which is apparently affiliated with but not identical to the Karate for Christ World Championships held in Sevierville, Tennessee.7
And it goes on. The dorms, the chapel, and the cafeteria, believe it or not, are now air conditioned.
Going To The Chapel
Moreover, what goes on inside that air conditioned chapel is hardly recognizable to our former camper.
Chapel services were hearty fundamentalist fare when DrHGuy was in attendance. One preacher, for example, was known for his sermon examining the crucifixion of Christ, the climax of which was his presentation of a mallet and railroad spike along with the challenge to the audience for someone to drive the spike through his palms. Being good little Christian boys and girls, we only shuddered at the notion; DrHGuy suspects that this would be an altogether iffier proposition today with an audience of kids jaded to violence by years of watching it on TV and in the movies.
That last point, however, appears moot; judging from the brochure blurb, this type of sermon, let alone such a stunt, would hardly seem to fit the description of chapel services during the 2007 version of Camp CYOKAMO.
OK, DrHGuy is unsure if “Campfire devos” reference the band, Devo, a variation of “divas,” or a Christian alternative to s’mores, and he is aware that certain bands would view a crucifixion as little more than a warm-up act, but the chapel services herein described seem unlikely venues for hardcore hell, fire, and brimstone sermonizing.
Heck, “go deeper in your walk with Christ,” while a tad vague consequent to the mixed meatphor, sounds more like dating than proselytizing.
Well, CYOKAMO isn’t what it used to be8 - and it probably never was.
The Camp CYOKAMO Song
DrHGuy’s irreducible Camp CYOKAMO memory, however, is the camp song. In large part, the memory is irreducible because DrHGuy continues, to this day, to sing the Camp CYOKAMO song on occasions of Christian significance, moments of personal crisis, personal triumph, or both, when overcome by nostalgia, and generally whenever the spirit (Holy or otherwise) moves him.
The melody of the Camp CYOKAMO Song has also been appropriated for the 2006 Eighth Grade Graduation Farewell Ceremony Song at a nearby middle school and the Hilton Head Hymn, a dazzlingly clever and only moderately salacious anthem celebrating the annual vacation now impending for the families of DrHGuy, the Duke of Derm, and the Lord of Leisure.
Sadly, DrHGuy cannot discover whether the Camp CYOKAMO Song for which he serves as unofficial caretaker is still in use. Although emails with this query have been sent to several churches that promote CYOKAMO and to young adults that profess on their blogs to have attended CYOKAMO, none have responded.
So, to preserve this essential melodic hunk of Americana and DrHGuy’s personal history, the lyrics are printed below.
More exciting still, The Heck of a Guy Blog is proud to present a rendition of the Camp CYOKAMO Song by the Lady Lawanda Imbibition, Gaming, and Carnal Gymnastics Society Chorale.
[Click to hear the Camp CYOKAMO Song]
The Camp CYOKAMO Song Lyrics
The finest Christian camp I know
Is old CYOKAMO,
You’ll feel the Christian glow
Right from the first hello.
You’ll find new faith and make new friends
At old CYOKAMO,
C-Y-O-K-A-M-O
You’ll sing and pray and read God’s word
Until at last you know
Your life will surely show
That you love Jesus so
You’ll find a bit of heaven there
At old CYOKAMO
C-Y-O-K-A-M-O
We’ll say goodbye to dream a while
Of old CYOKAMO
And all the joys we know
Like Heaven here below
God keep you till another day
At old CYOKAMO
C-Y-O-K-A-M-O
Footnotes
- Then known simply as HGuy or, by the prescient, as Pre-MedHGuy ~back~
- CYOKAMO is an acronym for Christian Youth Of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri ~back~
- Alba, an former mining town with a population of about 200, is best known as the home of the Boyer brothers, three of whom were high performing big league baseball players in the 50’s and 60’s: Cletis Boyer, third baseman for the Yankees; Ken Boyer, third baseman for the St Louis Cardinals; and Cloyd Boyer, pitcher for the Cardinals. Two other Boyer brothers made it to the minors. ~back~
- ”Coarse” initially appeared to be a typo for “course” but, on consideration, perhaps these modern refinements are a means to “conquer the coarse.” ~back~
- And what’s this about a “friendly staff?” ~back~
- Christian Karate Camp may well be an event only held on the camp grounds rather than a function of the Camp CYOKAMO organization. ~back~
- DrHGuy eagerly awaits the onset of Christian Ultimate Fighting - which may not be long in coming. According to the Boston Herald, Quinton Jackson (AKA “Rampage” AKA “The guy that recently demolished Chuck Liddell” AKA “the ultimate fighting world champion”) describes himself as a born-again Christian whose primary role is that of “a man of God.” ~back~
- There are some standards upheld. The list of items campers are forbidden to bring includes tobacco, drugs, or alcohol, undesirable language, fireworks, two-piece swimsuits, immodest clothing, and, to demonstrate the camp administration’s capacity for fantasy, non-Christian music. ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
Invest In Good, Clean, Wholesome Fun
Just Make The Check Out To “DrHGuy”
The Domain Name Game
According to Search Engine Watch, recent sales of domains have included Porn.com for $9.5 Million and Vodka.com for $3 million. The same source also declares that “Poker.com is about to be or just has been sold and the price mentioned was $27 million.”
Hmmmm.com
The obvious way to go, of course, would be coming up with another vice-associated dot-com domain name, lease the domain for $10 per year, and just wait for the big bucks bids to come rolling in.
That is not, however, the Heck of a Guy way.1
DrHGuy, ever the contrarian, is reversing the field, betting that goodness and mercy, while unlikely to follow him the rest of the days of his life, will make a comeback on the social scene.
After due dalliance, DrHGuy has purchased the rights to GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.com.
Who could resist the promise of GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.COM?
Well, so far, everyone has. But, that’s about to change. Today’s post is the start of the “Sell GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.COM” campaign.
POKER.COM is worth $27 million - does it look like something special?
POKER is just Poker.
GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN, on the other hand, is Good, it’s Clean, it’s Wholesome, and, most of all, it’s Fun.2
As a bonus, POKER.com and GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.com theoretically cost the same amount to register, yet GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN is more than four times longer than POKER.
The list of obvious potential customers is substantial. The Evangelicals, the Religious Right, and the Republican National Committee, for example, have proclaimed the value of good, clean, wholesome fun as the antithesis of depravity, illicit dug use, prostitution, homosexuality, R rated movies, and stream of consciousness novels so they can hardly pass on bidding for GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.com without appearing hypocritical. Walt Disney would be another hot prospect, as would every parent of every teenager. Even more impressive are the less apparent buyer candidates. How better to camouflage an evil empire then with a domain name like GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.com? The new, less demanding attitude of the armed forces might well find its voice as GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.
The Opportunity
Regardless of what you told me at that dinner party, I know you didn’t buy Microsoft at 3.50 or Google at 40. So, lest one be dismayed over yet again missing the boat when the cover of Forbes is dedicated to the first billion dollar domain name purchase for GOODCLEANWHOLE- SOMEFUN.COM, now is the time to jump on the GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN.COM bandwagon.3
Just send money. The check is just symbolic; small, unmarked bills are the way to go. The Heck of a Guy staff will let you know how large a share of the impending bonanza your funds bought.
Besides, how much longer can illicit sex, gambling, and alcohol be more appealing than GOODCLEANWHOLESOMEFUN?
Footnotes
- OK, if one must be picky, it is not the Heck of a Guy way once it became clear that all the classically sinful domain names, such as HOTNASTYSEX.COM, had been taken.
~back~
- For added impact, imagine these lines being spoken in a TV commercial by the Geico gecko. ~back~
- That bandwagon will later rendezvous with that boat that folks keep missing which turns out to be the same ship those same folks are always expecting to come in. ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
Madeleines From Reading If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler
From Summer Reading List to Re-reading If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler
This post began as a list of recommendations for summer reading. As I was writing an introduction, I recalled that the opening paragraphs of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler addressed the same issue - preparing to read a book. After re-reading that section no more than three (four, at most) times, I realized that Heck of a Guy viewers would be better served if the reading list were deferred in favor of this excerpt from Calvino’s book.
For the nonce, consider If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler my recommendation for summer reading.
When publishing a “Madeleines From … ” post, I typically append an elaboration on some aspect of the book under consideration. Other than the explanation of how this post, the summer reading photo, evolved, none will be offered today. Any such exposition would be beyond superfluous and perhaps even counterproductive.
In this case, one either gets the joke or one doesn’t.
An Excerpt From The Opening Of Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler
Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.
Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book propped against the horse’s mane, or maybe tied to the horse’s ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrups, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.
Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion. on two cushions, on the arms of the sofa, on the wings of the chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first. If you want to , put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don’t stand there with your shoes in one hand and the book in the other.
Adjust the light so you won’t strain your eyes. Do it now, because once you’re absorbed in reading there will b no budging you. Make sure the page isn’t in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn’t too strong, doesn’t glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.
It’s not that you expect anything in particular from this particular book. You’re the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. but not you. you know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimately this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can be lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn’t serious.
So, then, you noticed in a newspaper that If on a winter’s night a traveler had appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn’t published for several years. You went to the bookshop and bought the volume. Good for you.
In the shop window you have promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop pas the thick barricade of Books You Haven’t Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there extend for acres and acres the Books You Needn’t Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunately Your Days Are Numbered. With a rapid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of the Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You’ll Wait Till They’re Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Somebody, Books That Everybody’s Read So It’s As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of the fortress, where other troops are holding out:
The Books You’ve Been Planning To Read For Ages,
The Books You’ve Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
The Books Dealing With Something You’re Working On At The Moment,
The Books You Want To Own So They’ll Be Handy Just In Case,
The Books You Could Put Aside Maybe To Read This Summer,
The Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves,
The Books That Fill You With Sudden, Inexplicable Curiosity, Not Easily Justified.
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; but this relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago Which It’s Now Time To Reread and the Books You’ve Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It’s Time To Sit Down And Really Read Them.
With a zigzag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Or Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general) and New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Completely Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new you seek in the new).
All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter’s night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established.
You cast another bewildered look at the books around you (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off on the leash of his master, come to rescue him), and out you went.
You derive a special pleasure from a just-published book, and it isn’t only a book you are taking with you but its novelty as well, which could also be merely that of an object fresh from the factory, the youthful bloom of new books, which lasts until the dust jacked begins to yellow, until a veil of smog settles on the top edge, until the binding becomes dog-eared, in the rapid autumn of libraries.
No, you hope always to encounter true newness, which , having been new once, will continue to be so. Having read the freshly published book, you will take possession of this newness at the first moment, without having to pursue it, to chase it. Will it happen this time? You never can tell. Let’s see how it begins.
Perhaps you started leafing through the book already in the shop. Or were you unable to, because it was wrapped in its cocoon of cellophane? Now you are on the bus, standing in the crowd, hanging from a strap by your arm, and you begin undoing the package with your free hand, making movements something like a monkey, a monkey who wants to peel a banana and at the same time cling to the bough. Watch out, you’re elbowing your neighbors; apologize, at least.
Or perhaps the bookseller didn’t wrap the volume; he gave it to you in a bag. This simplifies matters. You are at the wheel of your car, waiting at a traffic light, you take the book out of the bag, rip off the transparent wrapping, start reading the first lines. A storm of honking breaks over you; the light is green, you’re blocking traffic.
You are at your desk, you have set the book among your business papers as if by chance; at a certain moment you shift a file and you find the book before your eyes, you open it absently, you rest your elbows on the desk, you rest your temples against your hands, curled into fists, you seem to be concentrating on an examination of the papers and instead you are exploring the first pages of the novel. Gradually you settle back in the chair, you raise the book to the level of your nose, you title the chair, poised on its rear legs, you pull out a side drawer of the desk to prop your feet on it; the position of the during reading is of maximum importance, you stretch your legs out on the top of the desk, on the files to be expedited.
But doesn’t this seem to show a lack of respect? Of respect, that is, not for your job (nobody claims to pass judgment on your professional capacities: we assume that your duties are a normal element in the system of unproductive activities that occupies suck a large part of the national and international economy), but for the book. Worse still if you belong–willingly or unwillingly–to the number of those for whom working means really working, performing, whether deliberately or without premeditation, something necessary or at least not useless for others as well as for oneself; then the book you have brought with you to your place of employment like a kind of amulet or talisman exposes you to intermittent temptations, a few seconds at a time subtracted from the principal object of your attention, whether it is the perforations of electronic cards, the burners of a kitchen stove, the controls of a bulldozer, a patient stretched out on the operating table with his guts exposed.
In other words, it’s better for you to restrain you impatience and wait to open the book at home. Now. Yes, you are in your room, calm; you open the book to page one, no, to the last page, first you want to see how long it is. It’s not too long, fortunately. Long novels written today are perhaps a contradiction: the dimension of time has been shattered, we cannot love or think except in fragments of time each of which goes off along its own trajectory and immediately disappears. We can rediscover the continuity of time only in the novels of that period when time no longer seemed stopped and did not yet seem to have exploded, a period that lasted no more than a hundred years.
You turn the book over in your hands, you scan the sentences on the back of the jacket, generic phrases that don’t say a great deal. So much the better, there is no message that indiscreetly outshouts the message that the book itself must communicate directly, that you must extract from the book, however much or little it may be. Of course, this circling of the book, too, this reading around it before reading inside it, is a part of the pleasure in a new book, but like all preliminary pleasures, it has its optimal duration if you want it to serve as a thrust toward the more substantial pleasure of the consummation of the act, namely the reading of the book.
So here you are now, ready to attack the first lines of the first page. you prepare to recognize the unmistakable tone of the author. No. you don’t recognize it at all. But now that you think about it, who ever said this author had an unmistakable tone? On the contrary, he is known as an author who changes greatly from one book to the next. And in these very changes you recognize him as himself. Here, however, he seems to have absolutely no connection with all the rest he has written, at least as far as you can recall. Are you disappointed? Let’s see. Perhaps at first you feel a bit lost, as when a person appears who, from the name, you identified with a certain face, and you try to make the features you are seeing tally with those you had in mind, and it won’t work. but then you go on and you realize that the book is readable nevertheless, independently of what you expected of the author, it’s the book in itself that arouses your curiosity; in fact, on sober reflection, you prefer it this way, confronting something and not quite knowing yet what it is.
Possibly Related Posts:
Greer Springs In The Missouri Ozarks
The Lord of Leisure1 Photo Gallery
Greer Springs In The Missouri Ozarks
[Click on graphic for view of larger image - Highly recommended for this photo]
The Lord of Leisure writes:
Until several years ago the shoreline was private property, and the only access was a steep half-mile trail, which was itself guarded by a caretaker in her eighties, who would allow entry to visitors only after delivering a stern lecture on trail etiquette and administering a pledge that prohibited gum and cigarettes.
Whether because of the caretaker’s pledge or the restricted entrée (which limited the number of sightseers), the land along the spring and the spring itself were pristine, free of the typical detritus and, indeed, any taint of human visitation. Our arrival on the riverbank was accompanied by the sense that we were the first people to come upon this spot, a feeling undiminished by the fact that we knew it to be inaccurate.
This photo was taken in the late afternoon with soft light filtering down through the surrounding forest.
Greer Spring Information2
The Logistics
Located in Oregon County in south central Missouri, the Greer Spring branch of the Eleven Point River has an average flow of 222 million gallons per day, which is equivalent to 344 cubic feet per second, making it the third largest of the Ozarks springs.3
The spring drops 62 feet in its 1.25 mile run from its source to the Eleven Point River, an exceptionally steep gradient that results in a current so powerful that boating is prohibited.4
Historical Highlights
The area was homesteaded by Thomas Simpson in 1845. After purchasing 40 acres in 1859, Samuel Greer and his father operated a mill in the gorge by 1860. Because of the steep grade of the land, oxen were trained to haul grain up and down the hill without a driver.
While the younger Greer was serving with the Confederate troops,5 other Confederates burned the family mill, which was rebuilt after the war.
When demand for milling increased, Greer rebuilt the mill 0.75 miles away, atop the ridge and conveyed power by a series of cables.
Milling continued until 1920. The property was then owned by the Louis Denning family, who used it as a family retreat from 1922 to 1988. After efforts to establish a water bottling plant failed, the property was sold to U.S. Forest Service in 1993.
Current Status Of Greer Spring
Information about camping and hiking in this area, including maps and descriptions of scenery, is available at The Ozark Trail
Credit Due Department: Photo by Neil Ellis
Footnotes
- Lord of Leisure was previously known in these posts as Mr. Science. Both Lord of Leisure and Mr Science spend most of their time disguised as Neil Ellis, mild-mannered, retired teacher at a great suburban school system, who can identify a bird by its call, complete the New York Times Friday Crossword in ink, and snap a heck of a photo. ~back~
- The information in this section is from Large Ozarks Springs ~back~
- Until some time after 1900, Greer Spring, then called Big Ozark Spring, was thought to be the largest spring in the state. ~back~
- This branch has, in fact, been the site of two deaths: prior to 1932, a man attempting to canoe the waters drowned and in 1884, Lewis Greer, son of the mill builder, fell to his death on the rocks of the branch while working on the mill renovation. ~back~
- Missouri was a border state during the Civil War with many of its citizens fighting for the Confederates and many others joining the Union forces ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
Leonard Cohen In Last Week’s Newspapers: The Best Of The Batch
Cohen On Cohen
In poking around further at The Globe & Mail, I happened onto a gallery of Cohen’s drawings and, better yet, a 7-8 minute presentation by Leonard Cohen on his art, both of which are definitely worth checking out.
Possibly Related Posts:
Leonard Cohen, Anjani, Blue Alert, and More In The Telegraph
“Life Of A Ladies’ Man”1 wasn’t the only newspaper Arts section story about Leonard Cohen published on 26 May 2007. Cohen - with a dash of honey, a straight-forward feature story by Neil McCormick in the Telegraph, focuses on the relationship and mutual musical efforts of Leonard Cohen and Anjani Thomas.
The tale of the creation of Blue Alert is well written, and while the story has previously appeared in other publications, this article includes a number of details that were new to me (although they may well be in print somewhere).
As a bonus, there is timely news about the upcoming Leonard Cohen album:
Cohen has been working on his own album (released later this year), and admirers will be pleased to hear that he has responded to Anjani’s more organic recording methods, abandoning the synths and drum machines of recent years to return to the joys of real instrumentation: “He has picked up the guitar again, and swung around to the idea of bringing in people to play.”
In contrast to Blue Alert, however, the subject matter is unlikely to be the human heart. “No one describes pain, loss, despair and grief as well as Leonard does. But it’s not where his intention is right now. The material he is choosing is much more social commentary-driven, which makes this record kind of a miracle, because without it these songs wouldn’t have been born.”
The Telegraph article can be found at Cohen - with a dash of honey
Footnotes
- See previous post: On Considering Leonard Cohen - A Prose Poem By Sarah Hampson ~back~
Possibly Related Posts:
On Considering Leonard Cohen - A Prose Poem By Sarah Hampson
The Lady and The Ladies’ Man
The Arts section of the 26 May 2007 Globe & Mail features Life of a ladies’ man, an extensive article about Leonard Cohen by Sarah Hampson.
One could argue - and I do - that a more accurate characterization would be “an extensive article about Leonard Cohen and Sarah Hampson by Sarah Hampson.” This excerpt contains the lede and second paragraph:
The park is like a poem: self-contained and spare. Smokers sit on benches in the morning drizzle. Pigeons swoop over a small gazebo, under the limbs of stately trees. There is a solemn-looking house, three storeys high with a grey stone facade. It’s the only one that faces this park in the east end of Montreal, and it’s his. There are two big front doors, side by side. No numbers. No bell. No indication which one is right. You just pick, and knock.
There is more than one way into the world of Leonard Cohen, and on this day in late April, they are all open.
The article continues like this for another 3531 words, if my word processor’s statistics function is accurate.
It seems like more.
The article is replete with Ms Hampson’s self-references, thinly and annoyingly veiled by the pseudo-second person voice1 the author affects, perhaps in a failed attempt to camouflage the narcissistic taint of her writing that would be blatantly apparent in a conventional first person narrative.2
He [Cohen] will entrance you in the stillness of a moment that stretches to five hours, and in the end, because you happened to ask, playfully, he will say sure, come back any time for a soak in the claw-footed tub, one of several in his house, that sits in a closet of a bathroom under the slope of the stairs.
One can imagine my disappointment that the next paragraph did not, as I anticipated, begin “You feel pretty, Oh, so pretty, You feel pretty and witty and bright!”
The reader is treated to profundities such as
Every question, he greets like an invitation to make himself understood. Leonard Cohen, the icon, is a concept he likes to toy with, as if it is both him and not.
Translated into prose, these sentences (I think) become When asked what kind of person he is, Leonard Cohen responds with answers about what kind of person he thinks he is. And, he is willing to talk about the difference between the role he plays as a performer and his role as a private individual.
Allusions to a special, shared intimacy stud the paragraphs.
Don’t ask how the subject of casual sex in the sixties came up. It was part of the unfolding of the Saturday afternoon, the laziness of it, like an endless meal of many courses, which you keep expecting to end but never does. You cover one subject, and thank him for his time, thinking he may be tired of talking now, but he doesn’t take the opportunity to say goodbye. “Here, relax, eat,” he will say. “Have more wine. Would you like a piece of cherry pie?” And then the conversation continues.
I, for one, wasn’t going to to ask “how the subject of casual sex in the sixties came up,” rendering this instruction not only rhetorical but also superfluous - oh, and irritating.
I could go on; Ms. Hampson certainly does.
And perhaps I’m just cranky today. Others may enjoy the rococo prose that finds significance in every artifact observed and every name dropped:
Over a bottle of Château Maucaillou, Greek bread, a selection of Quebec cheeses and a fresh cherry pie, bought for the occasion from the local St-Laurent Boulevard merchant