Leonard Cohen

[ffrankwhite]

i think reality is what you make of it. you just have to be obtuse enough to hook onto the first good idea you feel passionate enough about and push it through by any means necessary. There is no single reality, just different ways to approach a kind of healthy self-delusion.

Edited August 12, 2008 by ffrankwhite

[wasted]

That can work out pretty well. But sometimes the bigger picture cramps your style.

"I was just out to have me some fun, but it's easier said than done" - If Mick is struggling, I've got problems.

But yeah you go for what you can and make the best of it.

[ffrankwhite]

That can work out pretty well. But sometimes the bigger picture cramps your style.

"I was just out to have me some fun, but it's easier said than done" - If Mick is struggling, I've got problems.

But yeah you go for what you can and make the best of it.

y'know what the real problem is? we all know too much. again, at the risk of sounding fascist, like Nietschze said, the worst fuckin thing to happen to the human race was literacy its just opened up a can of worms that just didnt need opening. everyones so overinformed they're afraid of their shadow. things need to be a bit more...cavemanish. y'know like...guitar....i like the sound of a guitar...i wanna play guitar...i want guitar playing to be my life...no matter what...there, done deal. Now you gotta go out to the library and get 4,000 books on past masters or else you feel like you're missing the trick somewhere..

[wasted]

Nah, it pretty brutal out there, you just run off the library after you get ur ass kicked a few times. It is made that whatever you do you will have to fight for survival and maybe that's right. After your 10 hour shift you get a beer and a smoke go to bed up at 6. but at least you got a bed and heating. If you get cocky like try to be an artist you get to sleep rough til you get lucky or die of a drugs overdose. If you have the talent, werewithall, luck you get to make it and act like you might know what your doing, then all your family members die and your left with some horrible debt left over from credit crunch and a mortagage the size of japan. so you gather your self up and use what talent you have less and try and haul to the finish line.

"I just want to pay the mortgage and escape with my balls still attached to my body" - Ford in Hollywood Homicide.

I don't even have a mortgage!

I think I'm winning!

"Kids are smart these days. You never see one with a full time job, a mortgage or a wife. They are fucking smart these fuckers!"

[ffrankwhite]

Nah, it pretty brutal out there, you just run off the library after you get ur ass kicked a few times. It is made that whatever you do you will have to fight for survival and maybe that's right. After your 10 hour shift you get a beer and a smoke go to bed up at 6. but at least you got a bed and heating. If you get cocky like try to be an artist you get to sleep rough til you get lucky or die of a drugs overdose. If you have the talent, werewithall, luck you get to make it and act like you might know what your doing, then all your family members die and your left with some horrible debt left over from credit crunch and a mortagage the size of japan. so you gather your self up and use what talent you have less and try and haul to the finish line.

"I just want to pay the mortgage and escape with my balls still attached to my body" - Ford in Hollywood Homicide.

I don't even have a mortgage!

I think I'm winning!

"Kids are smart these days. You never see one with a full time job, a mortgage or a wife. They are fucking smart these fuckers!"

right up until y'said credit crunch that was pretty astute

[wasted]

I never had a credit card so I don't know what the hell they is talking about!

I was just repeating something I heard on the news which surprisingly doesnt seem to effect me.

But I guess I'll have suffer for it in some way.

[ffrankwhite]

I never had a credit card so I don't know what the hell they is talking about!

I was just repeating something I heard on the news which surprisingly doesnt seem to effect me.

But I guess I'll have suffer for it in some way.

ahhh, no y'wont. The price of pot noodles aint going nowhere and neither are social security...theres a comfort in being broke as fuck on the first of the month, the joys of which i cant begin to explain

[wasted]

not having a job and having no money is sort of underated - i mean i had the best time for as long as it lasted. i pay taxes that's what it's for i think, to let me have a month off to find myself here and there. sick pay - how sick do i have to be? how do you afford innernet access. don't tell me your using the dole office computer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFBKV0zVXSE

Some of it is pretty sinister

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OETwbVBPI1U&feature=user

Edited August 12, 2008 by wasted

[ffrankwhite]

not having a job and having no money is sort of underated - i mean i had the best time for as long as it lasted. i pay taxes that's what it's for i think, to let me have a month off to find myself here and there. sick pay - how sick do i have to be? how do you afford innernet access. don't tell me your using the dole office computer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFBKV0zVXSE

no i dont claim welfare, i never have in my life, i can't stomach it, i feel AWFUL if i do. meaning i did try once being that i was unemployed and entitled and filled out the forms and handed em in in that whole receptioney waiting area and i just felt fucking dreadful for some reason. not saying im like, above it or something cuz i'm not, im broke as fuck but i just...i've just never felt so uneasy in all my life. ever notice how nice everybodys sneakers are in there? not to get all cut up on you but thats what i remember really vividly, everybodys sneakers being like top shelf shit i went back the second time, the time where you actually get the welfare check or whatever it is they give you and i was in the queue and i just upped and left, just couldn't do it. Now i think about it my names probably still on their register huh? getting however many bucks a month for the last two years, i should go back and check, the prolly got a sackful of cash for me

but yeah, no, just couldn't hack it, i felt like such a heel..i guess i just have pretty minimal needs, i live with my uncle and he's a pensioner so rents no problem and...yeah, im just pretty much a jeans and t shirt kind of a guy. i'm not broke broke broke but im rarely flush and its cool y'know, its like what the fuck, its not like i got kids to feed..

[wasted]

i used to take a dive in the summers out of college but this is in the uk, it's socialist nightmare - my jobseeker allowance girl told me to wait til winter and she get me a better job. I was like okm see you in 2 weeks!

It's my goddamn right as a freeloader and one of her majesty's prisoners.

I get to do all the work now anyway, which I knew they would.

[Zint]

**double checks thread topic**

[wasted]

Nobody seemed interested in talking about Cohen.

I was actually interested where Cohen was coming from on records like The Future, Waiting for the Miracle - I couldn't find anything on the internet.

The song Democracy, for example.

"The Future" - The basic gist is that the speaker has seen hints of what the world would be like in the future, and has decided that the horrible stuff we've had already is infinitely preferable. The images are quite graphic:

Give me crack and anal sex

Take the only tree that's left

and stuff it up the hole

in your culture

Give me back the Berlin wall

give me Stalin and Saint Paul

I've seen the future, brother:

it is murder.

Without a doubt, Cohen is pulling no punches here. The violent and graphic nature of this song causes problems for Cohen's liberal fan-base. I have read all sorts of desperate theories about what this song is "really" about -- including one claim that it is "really" about the whole world finally achieving the Buddhist state of Nirvana (Cohen did spend some time as a monk in a Buddhist monastery). From what I understand from Buddhism, crack and anal sex are not part of the package.

I don't assume (as every other reviewer I've read has) that Cohen himself is the speaker. Instead, I think this song, taken along with the other five "future" songs on the album, work together to present us with many different views on what the end of the millennium means -- none of which are necessarily the views of Cohen himself.

The important part of this song is the vision the speaker has of the future, which, as he keeps telling us, "is murder:"

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions

Won't be nothing

Nothing you can measure anymore

The blizzard, the blizzard of the world

has crossed the threshold

and it has overturned

the order of the soul

When they said repent, repent

I wonder what they meant.

In short, the horrors of the Cold War are going to be nothing compared to what follows: a complete disintegration of the boundaries between things. Once those boundaries are gone, "things are going to slide ... in all directions," and there "won't be nothing ... you can measure anymore." This could be taken in two ways:

1) Literally -- Cohen could be suggesting that we, as a species, are losing our ability to differentiate between what is good and what is bad, what is important and what is unimportant. This would indeed be the "murder" of our culture.

2) Even More Literally -- The song could be about the Cold War itself, since many of the elements that the speaker wishes to have back are from that era: the Berlin Wall, Stalin, Hiroshima. In other words, he could be bemoaning the fact that our forty-five-year face-off with the Soviet Union was what made the West so strong, and now that we've "won" the Cold War, we no longer have an enemy to define ourselves against. (Enter Islam!)

The last verse of the song seems to bear out the first possibility:

There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code

Your private life will suddenly explode

There'll be phantoms

There'll be fires on the road

and the white man dancing

You'll see your woman

hanging upside down

her features covered by her fallen gown

and all the lousy little poets coming round

tryin' to sound like Charlie Manson

and the white man dancin'.

"Waiting for the Miracle" - Generally, this song is an apology from the speaker to his love interest. He has been isolating himself for "half my life," waiting for this "miracle to come," while she has been trying to get him to pay attention to her:

I know you really loved me.

but, you see, my hands were tied.

I know it must have hurt you,

it must have hurt your pride

to have to stand beneath my window

with your bugle and your drum,

and me I'm up there waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

Cohen, as we will discover later in this analysis, has a weird Madonna/whore complex. There are very few clues about the "miracle" that the speaker is waiting for. It could be that he has rejected the woman's love because he believes that there is a purer, more "miraculous" love out there. Or the miracle could be something more abstract -- like some sort of holy or artistic epiphany. The nature of the miracle doesn't seem to be the real focus of the song. Rather, the song is about him realizing that, in reality, there were things other than this miracle that should have been more important to him. The speaker has a vision:

I dreamed about you, baby.

It was just the other night.

Most of you was naked

Ah but some of you was light.

The sands of time were falling

from your fingers and your thumb,

and you were waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

He seems to realize now that focusing on this future "miracle" had caused him to miss the things that have been going on in the present. His vision tells him that time is literally slipping through their fingers. It is in the very next stanza that he proposes to her. The song ends with some cryptic advice:

When you've fallen on the highway

and you're lying in the rain,

and they ask you how you're doing

of course you'll say you can't complain --

If you're squeezed for information,

that's when you've got to play it dumb:

You just say you're out there waiting

for the miracle, for the miracle to come.

"Closing Time" - This song has that oom-pah, Devil's calliope, "Carnival of Souls" feel to it. You can't help but bounce when you hear it, even though the song itself isn't that particularly upbeat. Basically, the lyrics paint a picture of an amoral free-for-all. And Cohen throws in an even mix of God and Satan imagery for good measure. A simple quote will suffice to capture the flavour of the song:

Ah we're drinking and we're dancing

and the band is really happening

and the Johnny Walker wisdom's running high

And my very sweet companion

she's the Angel of Compassion

she's rubbing half the world against her thigh

And every drinker every dancer

lifts a happy face to thank her

the fiddler fiddles something so sublime

all the women tear their blouses off

and the men they dance on the polka-dots

and it's partner found, it's partner lost

and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops:

it's closing time.

The most interesting thing about this song is to compare its view of the Apocalypse with the one Cohen presents in "The Future." In that song the future was considered to be so horrible that the speaker infinitely preferred the lesser horrors of the Cold War era. In "Closing Time," it's the end of the world as we know it and the speaker feels fine.

"Anthem"- A truly beautiful song. Despite Cohen's generally cynical outlook on life (and his contra-bass voice), this is a song of hope and perseverance. At a pause in the on-going struggles of life, the speaker receives the following advice: "Don't dwell on what has passed away, or what is yet to be." The song has two strong images. The first is a piece of wisdom about the nature of war and peace:

Ah the wars they will

be fought again

The holy dove

She will be caught again

bought and sold

and bought again

the dove is never free.

The second is the refrain of the song -- a beautiful statement about finding glory, not in the perfect, but in the imperfections of the world:

Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything

That's how the light gets in.

Unlike the sadistic speaker in "The Future," the distracted speaker in "Waiting for the Miracle," and the "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we shall die" speaker in "Closing Time," the speaker of "Anthem" is willing to fight against the disintegration of society:

We asked for signs

the signs were sent:

the birth betrayed

the marriage spent

Yeah the widowhood

of every government --

signs for all to see.

I can't run no more

with that lawless crowd

while the killers in high places

say their prayers out loud.

But they've summoned, they've summoned up a thundercloud

and they're going to hear from me.

"Democracy" - "Democracy," the refrain tells us, "is coming to the U.S.A." The song is satirical, of course -- the U.S.A. is the self-proclaimed birthplace of democracy, while still one of the most repressive nations -- but it ends up as a positive statement as well. The subtext is that the United States may finally become the democratic society that it always purported to be (too bad this hasn't happened yet!). Even the jaunty martial character of the song's melody echoes this irony. Of course, some of the things Cohen lists as being the source of this resurgence of democracy are ironic in themselves:

It's coming through a hole in the air,

from those nights in Tiananmen Square.

It's coming from the feel

that this ain't exactly real,

or it's real, but it ain't exactly there.

From the fires of the homeless,

from the ashes of the gay:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

It's coming through a crack in the wall;

on a visionary flood of alcohol;

from the staggering account

of the Sermon on the Mount

which I don't pretend to understand at all.

From the brave, the bold, the battered

heart of Chevrolet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

The final stanza of the song is notable for several reasons. Most strikingly, the song ends with an image of what America is like now, before democracy has come. This could suggest that the whole song is a hopeful projection on the part of the speaker, rather than a well-reasoned forecast. Funny with the recent events, isn't it?

I'm sentimental, if you know what I mean

I love the country but I can't stand the scene.

And I'm neither left or right

I'm just staying home tonight,

getting lost in that hopeless little screen.

But I'm stubborn as those garbage bags

that Time cannot decay,

I'm junk but I'm still holding up this little wild bouquet:

Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.

So what does this all mean? It means that Cohen's album speaks very directly to our times today (2002). These songs can be very easily applied to American imperialism, repressive violence, and the War on Terrorism. Listen to it again, and watch CNN.

OTHER SONGS

"Be For Real" - Written by Frederick Knight, "Be for Real" is one of two songs on the album not by Cohen. In the song, the speaker asks his girlfriend to come back to him, but only if she means it.

"Light As The Breeze" - I read an interesting psychological analysis of Leonard Cohen that made much of the fact that he is basically screwed in the head when it comes to the subject of male-female relationships. This song is a textbook example.

The song begins with a description of the love object -- images of fertility and beauty. But the male of the couple is in a posture of submission and worship. (Note the references in these stanzas -- "delta," "cradle," "river" -- that echo the Egyptian mythos. Plus the obvious sexual reference. Oi.)

She stands before you naked

you can see it, you can taste it,

and she comes to you light as the breeze.

Now you can drink it or you can nurse it,

it don't matter how you worship

as long as you're

down on your knees.

So I knelt there at the delta,

at the alpha and the omega,

at the cradle of the river and the seas.

And like a blessing come from heaven

for something like a second

I was healed and my heart

was at ease.

Note that the feeling of joy lasts "for something like a second." The song quickly turns from images of a fertile spring to those of harsh winter:

It's dark now and it's snowing

O my love I must be going,

The river has started to freeze.

And I'm sick of pretending

I'm broken from bending

I've lived too long on my knees.

(It's his own damn fault for putting her up on a pedestal in the first place! Go get a hooker!)

At the end of the song, the speaker decides to stay with this woman after all, despite the fact that what was once enriching for him has become torture:

Then she dances so graceful

and your heart's hard and hateful

and she's naked

but that's just a tease.

And you turn in disgust

from your hatred and from your love

and comes to you

light as the breeze.

So I knelt there at the delta,

at the alpha and the omega,

I knelt there like one who believes.

These two need to go into some serious couples' therapy and work out their issues.

"Always" - Another lounge-lizard turn, this one by Irving Berlin. The song is just a ditty: "I'll love you always." Ironic, considering the tone of "Light as a Breeze," which precedes it on the album.

Edited August 13, 2008 by wasted