Next week, Leonard Cohen releases his 12th studio album, Old Ideas: An Album of New Songs, recorded after a year-long world tour that featured three-hour long, sold-out shows (the video from the LA one is here) -- including one at Ramat Gan Stadium in Tel Aviv on September 25, 2009, which Cohen held after rejecting Palestinian demands that he cancel it (He not only proceeded, but sang “Lover, Lover, Lover” to the crowd).
The new album has the feel of an elegy. The New Yorker has published the lyrics of the first song, “Going Home.” The poem/lyric is below. After reading it, listen to it here; it is hauntingly beautiful as music. You can also listen to the entire album at NPR, at least for a little while.
I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit
But he does say what I tell him
Even though it isn’t welcome
He will never have the freedom
To refuse
He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he’s really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube
Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
To where it’s better
Than before
Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore
He wants to write a love song
An anthem of forgiving
A manual for living with defeat
A cry above the suffering
A sacrifice recovering
But that isn’t what I want him to complete
I want to make him certain
That he doesn’t have a burden
That he doesn’t need a vision
That he only has permission
To do my instant bidding
That is to SAY what I have told him
To repeat
Going home
Without my sorrow
Going home
Sometime tomorrow
Going home
To where it’s better
Than before
Going home
Without my burden
Going home
Behind the curtain
Going home
Without the costume
That I wore
I love to speak with Leonard
He’s a sportsman and a shepherd
He’s a lazy bastard
Living in a suit
Back in 2007, Cohen published “The Book of Longing,” and “Going Home makes me recall the title poem from that book -- which reads as follows, with the hyphen in “G-d” in the original, a song/poem perhaps addressed to you:
I can’t make the hills
The system is shot
I’m living on pills
For which I thank G-d
I followed the course
From chaos to art
Desire the horse
Depression the cart
I sailed like a swan
I sank like a rock
But time is long gone
Past my laughing stock
My page was too white
My ink was too thin
The day wouldn’t write
What the night penciled in
My animal howls
My angel’s upset
But I’m not allowed
A trace of regret
For someone will use
What I couldn’t be
My heart will be hers
Impersonally
She’ll step on the part
She’ll see what I mean
My will cut in half
And freedom between
For less than a second
Our lives will collide
The endless suspended.
The door open wide
Then she will be born
To someone like you
What no one has done
She’ll continue to do
I know she is coming
I know she will look
And that is the longing
And this is the book
Since he wrote that poem/lyric, Cohen held his world tour, released a CD with 12 songs from it, and has now produced 10 new songs on this latest CD to be released this week. Hallelujah.
It's been a looong time since I've heard a Leonard Cohen song. I did buy his first two albums (late 1960's?). What I remember from them are:
Suzanne: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otJY2HvW3Bw
Tonight Will Be Fine: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1bI9y9OMTA ...sensual.
Posted by: Dikehopper | January 25, 2012 at 02:12 PM