You Want It Darker

If you are the dealer, I'm out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I'm broken and lame
If thine is the glory, then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame

Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)

A Divine Evening

Well I dreamed I saw the silver space ships flying /  In the yellow haze of the sun NEIL YOUNG After the Gold Rush

And so we drove forth unto Leeds on the Saturday night, one day before the Sabbath, and, behold, we came upon the shiny new First Direct Arena, sparkling like a silver and green spaceship in the slant evening light, and, lo, it was good. It was very good.  

Yeah let's do something crazy, something absolutely wrong / While we're waiting for the miracle, for the miracle to come LEONARD COHEN Waiting for the Miracle

We collected our tickets from the yellow-shirted handmaidens at the ticket office, then repaired to the Stick or Twist bar, conveniently sited little more than thirty barleycorns away. In this noisy antechamber, teeming with fedora-hatted gentlemen and earnest, leather-booted women of pensionable age, we did nothing more crazy than order some inedible food (well, this was a Wetherspoon's pub) and gaze adoringly at the iconic image of our Lord on the admission tickets.

I've heard there was a secret chord / That David played, and it pleased the Lord LEONARD COHEN Hallelujah

Finally we were allowed to enter the main temple, and a hushed atmosphere descended as the throng of disciples penetrated the inner sanctum. We gazed reverently at the High Altar, the Holy of Holies, the moveable tabernacle which would be replaced at a later date by the profane circus of the Strictly Come Dancing entourage. We searched this illuminated shrine for signs of music-making —  for lyre, harp and psaltery — and the portents were good. After a twenty minute delay the lights dimmed, the anointed musicians walked on stage, and our God, the Deity of the Lonely Bedsit, bounded from the wings like a gazelle, with a vigour which totally belied his seventy-eight years.   

I was born like this, I had no choice / I was born with the gift of a golden voice / And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond / They tied me to this table right here / In the Tower of Song LEONARD COHEN Tower of Song 

I wish I could recount for you the wonders of that night in sensual, mystical, spellbinding prose, but, alas, that special gift is beyond me; indeed, many devotees prefer to internalise this kind of experience, keep it quiet and reserve it privately in their hearts for future sustenance. Suffice to say, the sacred ritual was observed, the idol adulated, and the congregation of worshipful admirers flooded out into the chill, late-summer air — eyes gleaming, buzzing with chatter and wondering how many hours they would have to wait before managing to get out of the car park.

(All photos are The Solitary Walker's except the first, which is sourced from Wikimedia Commons.)

Show Me The Place

Tower Of Song

But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I've gone / I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the tower of song LEONARD COHEN Tower Of Song

It's a strange but interesting fact that Rilke, Hölderlin and Yeats — three of our most brilliantly creative European poets, and three of my favourite writers — all spent part of their lives in hermit-like seclusion ensconced in 'towers', from where they produced some of their most intense and inspired work.

Here's a quatrain I wrote the other day about the ambivalent private/public life of the artist. You may also interpret it from a blogger's perspective, if you wish. I suppose 'This public refuge' could be any soul-baring, personal yet published work (or work available to others apart from the writer) — and that includes a blog. I wrote it in French because I'm drenched in French at the moment (having spoken it a lot, albeit imperfectly, during my recent week in Switzerland). Also Rilke wrote most of his Castle Muzot poems in French.

Tour de Chanson

Ce refuge public

Demi-ouvert, demi-secret

S'offre au monde

Comme un Muzot de mots

(This public refuge

Half-open, half-secret

Offers itself to the world

Like a Muzot of words)

A Blaze Of Light In Every Word

Hallelujah

I've heard there was a secret chord
that David played to please the Lord,
but you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this: the fourth, the fifth,
the minor fall, the major lift;
the baffled king composing Hallelujah!

Your faith was strong but it needed proof.
You saw her bathing on the roof;
her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you.
She tied you to a kitchen chair,
she broke your throne, she cut your hair,
and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah!

You say I took the Name in vain;
I don't even know the name.
But if I did, well, really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word;
it doesn't matter which you heard,
the holy, or the broken Hallelujah!

I did my best; it wasn't much.
I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch.
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you.
And even though it all went wrong,
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
with nothing on my lips but Hallelujah!

(additional verses)

Baby, I've been here before.
I know this room, I've walked this floor.
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch,
but love is not a victory march,
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah!

There was a time you let me know
what's really going on below
but now you never show it to me, do you?
I remember when I moved in you,
and the holy dove was moving too,
and every breath we drew was Hallelujah!

Now maybe there's a God above
but all I ever learned from love
is how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.
And it's no complaint you hear tonight,
and it's not some pilgrim who's seen the light -
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah!

From Leonard Cohen's Stranger Music: Selected Poems And Songs (1993)

These lyrics are so good I'm still completely awestruck by them - even after listening to different people sing different versions of this song for many years.

The Lord Of Song

With all media attention focused on Hallelujah at the moment, I thought it might be interesting to hear what Leonard Cohen himself said about this song:

On his approach to composing:

There are two schools of songwriting. The quick and me.

On the writing of Hallelujah:

The only advice I have for young songwriters is that if you stick with a song long enough, it will yield. But long enough is not any fixed duration, it’s not a week or two, it’s not a month or two, it’s not necessarily even a year or two. If a song is to yield you might have to stay with it for years and years. 'Hallelujah' was at least five years. I have about 80 verses. I just took verses out of the many that established some sort of coherence. The trouble that I find is that I have to finish the verse before I can discard it. So that lengthens the process considerably. I filled two notebooks with the song, and I remember being on the floor of the Royalton Hotel, on the carpet in my underwear, banging my head on the floor and saying 'I can't finish this song.'

On why Hallelujah took so many years to write:

They all take quite a long time. And it’s no guarantee of their excellence. I have a lot of second rate songs that have taken even longer.

On Hallelujah's elastic rhymes:

They are really false rhymes but they are close enough that the ear is not violated. In English, we love to hear these coincidences that we call rhymes. It does delight us for some odd reason, we are delighted by inventive uses of sonic coincidences.

On Hallelujah's universal appeal:

I don't know. It has a good chorus. We basically all lead the same kind of lives, and the more authentically a song touches on those areas, which are gain and loss, surrender and victory, popular music has to be about those subjects.

On the meaning of Hallelujah:

Finally there's no conflict between things, finally everything is reconciled - but not where we live. This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled, but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess and that's what I mean by 'Hallelujah'. That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say 'Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.' And you can't reconcile it in any other way except in that position of total surrender, total affirmation.

That's what it's all about. It says that you're not going to be able to work this thing out. This realm does not admit to revolution. There's no solution to this mess. The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say 'Look, I don't understand a fucking thing at all - Hallelujah!' That's the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.

Take This Waltz

Many songs seem a little bald, a little lacking in something, if you read them just as lyrics on the page. The words tend to cry out for the familiar voice and musical accompaniment. I think there are some notable exceptions - the lyrics of Bob Dylan and Noel Coward for instance. And I would also add the lyrics of Leonard Cohen. As I reread my way through Cohen's Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs, I'm struck by how amorphous the dividing line is between his songs and his poems. You can find this song on his very fine album I'm Your Man:

Take This Waltz
(After Lorca)

Now in Vienna there are ten pretty women.
There's a shoulder where death comes to cry.
There's a lobby with nine hundred windows.
There's a tree where the doves go to die.
There's a piece that was torn from the morning,
And it hangs in the Gallery of Frost -
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz with the clamp on its jaws.

I want you, I want you, I want you
on a chair with a dead magazine.
In the cave at the tip of the lily,
in some hallway where love's never been.
On a bed where the moon has been sweating,
in a cry filled with footsteps and sand -
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take its broken waist in your hand.

This waltz, this waltz, this waltz, this waltz,
with its very own breath
of brandy and death,
dragging its tail in the sea.

There's a concert hall in Vienna
where your mouth had a thousand reviews.
There's a bar where the boys have stopped talking,
they've been sentenced to death by the blues.
Ah, but who is it climbs to your picture
With a garland of freshly cut tears?
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
take this waltz, it's been dying for years.

There's an attic where children are playing,
Where I've got to lie down with you soon,
in a dream of Hungarian lanterns,
in the mist of some sweet afternoon.
And I'll see what you've chained to your sorrow,
all your sheep and your lilies of snow -
Ay, ay ay ay
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
with its "I'll never forget you, you know!"

And I'll dance with you in Vienna,
I'll be wearing a river's disguise.
The hyacinth wild on my shoulder
my mouth on the dew of your thighs.
And I'll bury my soul in a scrapbook,
with the photographs there and the moss.
And I'll yield to the flood of your beauty,
my cheap violin and my cross.
And you'll carry me down on your dancing
to the pools that you lift on your wrist -
o my love, o my love
Take this waltz, take this waltz,
it's yours now. It's all that there is.

These lyrics bear all the hallmarks of a typical Cohen song: the romanticism, the eroticism, the surrealism, the melancholia. But I've chosen the words to this particular song above all because I do believe they stand up in their own right on the page, without the voice and the music - athough, of course, at the same time this song in particular is begging for a waltz time musical treatment. Which is exactly what it gets on the record.

Stranger Music

Since I'd enjoyed so much the Leonard Cohen concert the other night I thought it was high time I pulled down from the shelf my copy of Stranger Music, Cohen's 400 page collection of selected poems and songs, and reassessed it 15 years after its 1993 publication. I was not disappointed.

I was immediately struck by the very 1st poem in the book and its startling image of silence which blossoms like tumours on our lips. It's entitled simply Poem:

Poem

I heard of a man
who says words so beautifully
that if he only speaks their name
women give themselves to him.

If I am dumb beside your body
while silence blossoms like tumours on our lips
it is because I hear a man climb the stairs
and clear his throat outside our door.

(Incidentally, and this has some bearing on the above poem, in his song The Tower of Song Cohen refers ironically to being born with the gift of a golden voice - a voice not at all conventionally "golden", of course!)

A few pages further on I found this perfect, translucent short poem, which has echoes of Byron's So We'll Go No More A' Roving:

As The Mist Leaves No Scar

As the mist leaves no scar
On the dark green hill,
So my body leaves no scar
On you, nor ever will.

When wind and hawk encounter,
What remains to keep?
So you and I encounter,
Then turn, then fall to sleep.

As many nights endure
Without a moon or star,
So will we endure
When one is gone and far.

I think this says something interesting, and says it beautifully, about lovers both together and apart, lovers both as a couple and as independent individuals.

Several pages later comes this even shorter poem:

For Anne

With Annie gone,
Whose eyes to compare
With the morning sun?

Not that I did compare,
But I do compare
Now that she's gone.

The poem I Have Not Lingered In European Monasteries reminds one of Simon Armitage's It Ain't What You Do It's What It Does To You with its repetitive I have not... at the beginning of each verse. This is just a taster:

I Have Not Lingered In European Monasteries

I have not lingered in European monasteries
and discovered among the tall grasses tombs of knights...

I have not released my mind to wander and wait
in those great distances
between the snowy mountains and the fishermen...

I have not held my breath
so that I might hear the breathing of G-d...

The 2nd verse recalls one of those old Japanese landscape paintings - which in turn brings to mind Cohen's interest in Buddhism and the time when he trained as a Buddhist monk. The 1st verse attests to his abiding passion for European history and culture (the poetry of Lorca is one of his strong influences) and the 3rd verse to his interest in spiritual matters. I think I'm right in saying that he always writes "God" as "G-d" in his work.

More about Cohen's poetry later as I'm slowly rereading my way through the whole book...

How The Light Gets In

Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack in everything/That's how the light gets in. LEONARD COHEN Anthem

The ecstatic reviews I'd been reading of this year's rare, surprise Leonard Cohen tour were not wrong. Last Saturday's concert at Birmingham's NEC was an unforgettable evening. Cohen, Canada's legendary poet, singer and songwriter - his songs the musical soundtrack to a million 60s bedsits - was relaxed and in good form, and really seemed to be enjoying himself. His voice still seemed in pretty good shape considering he turned 74 this year. And his band was superb (especially Javier Mas, who played a variety of ethnic stringed instruments in styles which showed gypsy, Greek, Indian and Arabic influences) - not to mention his 3 excellent, understated female backing singers (Sharon Robinson a wonderful presence - she's the co-writer of some of Cohen's more recent songs).

The show started promptly at 8 o'clock - and it was a little after 11 pm when he skipped (yes, I said skipped!) off stage after 25 songs and numerous encores and standing ovations. During band member solos Cohen doffed his fedora and gazed intently and admiringly into the eyes of each individual performer, smiling beatifically. At the end of The Tower of Song he impishly made Robinson corpse and break out into laughter, much to the delight of the audience. And every now and then he made some wrily humorous remarks and observations - such as his advice to the young: "After studying all the religions and philosophies for years I've just one word to say: Duck!" At the end of the evening he urged us all to wrap up warmly against the cold (it was indeed cold - it snowed later that night), and then the old romantic skipped (yes, I said SKIPPED!) off stage after poignantly wishing us this: "May the blessings find you in your solitude".

What an evening. I must truly say it was one of the best and most emotional concerts I've ever been to. Something to do with reconnecting with one's youth?

And he did sing Democracy ...

Democracy

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.
It's coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the USA.

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 USA.

The 2nd and 6th verses of Democracy by Leonard Cohen.

Wonder if he'll sing this one tonight at Birmingham's NEC? I'll soon find out as we have 3 tickets for the show. Can't wait...