I like it when someone tells it like it is. As long as I agree with them, of course. This week I noticed some new bumper stickers around town, jeering at the "socialist" republic in which we are living, and counting the days until President Obama leaves office. That kind of posturing pisses me off. Let's give the new regime a chance to make the changes it intends to make, okay? This kind of change doesn't happen overnight.
Still, this week on the news, I heard about record losses of US troops in Afghanistan, and I felt a complicated mass of emotions. Sadness, disbelief, impatience, and ignorance -- surely this Middle East mess is more complicated than it seems.
I was driving home from work at lunchtime and ended up at a red light behind a car that most likely belonged to a college kid -- a decade-old Honda Civic, plastered with bumper stickers. I had time to read them all. One in particular made me smile with a fond recognition.
"There is a crack in everything,
That's how the light gets in."
Ah, Leonard Cohen . . . now appearing on a bumper near you. And he's right. If we didn't encounter any problems, we'd never make any progress or learn anything new.
Do you know this song? It's called "Anthem," and it's on the 1992 album, "The Future." If you've heard it, you might remember it better as "Ring the Bells," as those are the first words of the oft-repeated refrain.
"Ring the bells that still can ring.
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack, a crack, in everything.
That's how the light gets in."
"Anthem" is a song about war -- and peace. It's a song about corrupt government -- and revolution. It's a song about love -- and loss.
And hope.
"The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what has passed away
Or what it yet to be"
Cohen practices Buddhism, and one of the things you learn when you study the teachings of the Buddha is that being present is what it's all about. Don't worry about the past or fret about the future -- just focus on what's going on right now. It's not about denial, and it isn't easy to do -- letting go of anxieties about what might happen or what should have been done.
I like this song because it reminds me that things can -- and will -- get bad. And then better. And then bad. And then better. And so on. Perhaps the best thing to do is accept the inherent flux in life, and ride the wave.
At the end of the song, Cohen sings:
"Every heart to love will come
But like a refugee."
I've pondered these words, trying to prize out his exact meaning. LC can be bleak at times. But surely it's not desperation that drives us to love. Do we love because it provides shelter from the scary world out there? It's got to be more than that. But love does provide a safe haven from the craziness we encounter when we leave the house (or turn on the TV) each day. Tonight, curled up on the couch with my sweeties within reach, I am grateful.
Listen here.
It was the winter of ‘66. I was a student at the University of Texas, and I’d been invited to a Christmas party by a young woman who had been a high school classmate of my brother’s, and whose roommate looked like Annie Lennox before Annie Lennox looked like Annie Lennox.
ReplyDeleteI didn’t know anyone at the party and was feeling a bit like Kurt Cobain must have been feeling when he wrote “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” There was music in the air (from a stereo with those big old 33 1/3s stacked on a narrow spindle, waiting their turn).
While I was milling uncomfortably around, a new record fell into place and I heard something new and something different and something arresting. I wandered over to the stereo and looked at the round, red Columbia Records label going round and round and read “Songs Of Leonard Cohen.”
What I was listening to was “Suzanne,” but I was also listening to the voice, and I was also listening to the spare and haunting arrangement.
Except for Bob Dylan, about whom I was passionate, nobody else was writing lyrics like this that I knew of.
I waited for the next song, then sat down by the stereo and listened to all of side one. I was astounded.
When the side was finished, I got up and went looking for Annie. When I found her, I asked her if she would mind putting the other side of the Leonard Cohen album on. I think it’s the only time she ever looked at me as a person of possible interest.
I sat and listened to side two. The next day, I went out and spent the considerably large sum of $3.99 for the album.
I can still sing the lyrics to “Sisters of Mercy,” my favorite from the first album. Same for “One Of Us Cannot Be Wrong,” a very close second.
For a long time, Leonard Cohen was a secret not all over the block. At least, not in the American neighborhood. I did have one friend who knew the music, and he contemptuously dismissed Cohen as a “pseudo-poet for neurotic and depressed co-eds” and unceremoniously consigned him to the likes of Rod McKuen.
Still, I continued to listen. I faithfully purchased each new album whenever I discovered one in a record store. And, by and large, I was experiencing an ongoing chronological parallel between Cohen’s lyrics and my life experiences.
In fact, it’s possible Cohen’s lyrics actually crossed over and directed one of my life experiences. I once married a woman who, on our first encounter at a dinner party, let me know she not only knew who Leonard Cohen was, but was as familiar and admiring of his music as I was. That astonishing revelation (and probably that second glass of wine) gave me the courage to ask her out.
Leonard captured all the emotional nuances of our breakup, too – a process as lengthy as Leonard’s retreat to the mountaintop.
We both came back better men.
Leonard Cohen is the second member of my Holy Trinity. Bob Dylan and Tom Waits round out the threesome. But somewhere in late middle age, I realized Bob and Tom and I had all gone our separate ways. I still enjoy the postcard each continues to send me from the always interesting places they are now. But Leonard and I still seem to be traveling much the same path.
Listening to his catalog, I’m struck by how each phase of my life has been marked by a favorite song, each favorite fading as a new song matching a new phase moves into place.
We’re both old guys now, and despite the Buddhist-tinged spirituality of many of his current songs, I relate strongly to the earthy and amusing truth of “Closing Time.” As a friend of mine likes to say, “You can’t make this stuff up.” But who else would have seen it quite this way?
What to you say to an artist who’s helped you understand so accurately and honestly your own life experiences, who spares you no pain and still makes you laugh about it all again? You say the same thing Leonard is reported to have said when asked what one should say to a woman after making love:
Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
-- Charles