On a lighter note, I’ve been thinking about Leonard Cohen a lot recently. His most recent greatest hits album (The Essential Leonard Cohen (Sony 2002) is the one album I keep playing and replaying these days. Just this week I saw a blurb that claimed that he’s Prince Charles’s favorite singer. Yesterday, driving to work, I heard part of an interview Leonard just did with Terry Gross on the NPR show “Fresh Air.” He has just released a new book of poetry, The Book of Longing. He’s moved beyond the Zen monastery in California where he’s been living the past five years. In response to a question that assumed he’d become a Buddhist, he said softly that that was wrong, he wasn’t a Buddhist, wasn’t looking for a religion, already had one.
Over the decades my three favorite singers have always been Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, and Leonard Cohen. I always think of the three as a set. All three are Jewish. All three are brilliant musicians. All three are even better writers. All three put a tremendous amount of explicitly Christian and Christian/mystical symbolism in their songs, although that goes over the heads of some people. Bob Dylan even went through a born-again Christian phase, though he’s gone back to Judaism as far as I know. I’ve never tracked this down for Paul Simon, but as far as I know he’s always been Jewish. I’m a Catholic, and I was a gifted and industrious poet for more years than I’ve been a lawyer, and I’ve always had a special love for Jewish writers and artists.
As I said, I think these three guys are the greatest. I’ve loved all three all the way back to the 1960s. I got Leonard Cohen’s second album Songs From A Room in 1969, when I was 14. My mother used to joke that she asked the people at the store for a record called “Songs From a Womb,” having heard me wrong. The very first album I bought was Sounds of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel in 1967 (the second album I ever got was Sgt. Pepper by the Beatles–setting me up for an exaggerated view of the quality of the average album!). And of course, the 1960s and 1970s were all-Dylan all the time. I’ve never seen Leonard Cohen in person so far, but his 1985 Halloween show on Austin City Limits is my all-time favorite music video. The first I saw in person was Bob Dylan at the Concert for Bangladesh at Madison Square Garden in 1970. I’ve seen Paul Simon many times. His Concert in Central Park is greater than great, and his Rhythm of the Saints is a candidate for all-time greatest single album by anybody.
I was thinking tonight that my ranking of the three has changed over the years. Bob Dylan has certainly had the greatest fame. Paul Simon has possibly had more commercial success. For a very long time I would have said Bob Dylan was the greatest. There was a period in the 1980s and 1990s when I would have said that Paul Simon was the greatest. But since about 1999 I’ve come to think that Leonard Cohen is the real gem of the three, and that impression keeps getting stronger.
Among other things, Leonard Cohen is by far the strongest as a pure poet. His poetry is very strong, very original, very beautiful, and very spiritual.
Of the three, I also think Leonard is the more serious thinker about politics. His song stories of partisan resistance, and explorations of the mind of the extremist, go far beyond anything the other two have written.
It’s a frivolous topic, but I’m curious what the rest of you might think. <more below>
Here are the lyrics of two Leonard Cohen songs I particularly like these days, among many, many others. As you may notice, the second one is extremely serious, and extremely prescient, and extremely timely. It also rocks if you hear it.
Alexandra Leaving
–by Leonard Cohen, Ten New Songs (2001)
Suddenly the night has grown colder
The god of love preparing to depart
Alexandra hoisted on his shoulder
They slip between the sentries of the heart
Upheld by the simplicities of pleasure
They gain the light, they formlessly entwine
And radiant beyond your widest measure
They fall among the voices and the wine
It’s not a trick, your senses all deceiving
A fitful dream, the morning will exhaust
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost
Even though she sleeps upon your satin
Even though she wakes you with a kiss
Do not say the moment was imagined
Do not stoop to strategies like this
As someone long prepared for this to happen
Go firmly to the window. Drink it in
Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing
Your firm commitments tangible again
And you who had the honor of her evening
And by the honor had your own restored
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Alexandra leaving with her lord
Even though she sleeps upon your satin
Even though she wakes you with a kiss
Do not say the moment was imagined
Do not stoop to strategies like this
As someone long prepared for the occasion
In full command of every plan you wrecked
Do not choose a coward’s explanation
that hides behind the cause and the effect
And you who were bewildered by a meaning
Whose code was broken, crucifix uncrossed
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost
Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving
Then say goodbye to Alexandra lost
*****
The future
–by Leonard Cohen, The Future (1992)
Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It’s lonely here,
There’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
That’s an order!
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 st paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
It 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
When they said repent repent
I wonder what they meant
When they said repent repent
I wonder what they meant
You don’t know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I’m the little jew
Who wrote the bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
But love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold:
It’s over, it ain’t going
Any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future:
It is murder
Things are going to slide …
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 a 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’
Give me back the berlin wall
Give me stalin and st paul
Give me christ
Or give me hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby:
It is murder
Things are going to slide …
When they said repent repent …
