'cause you know I feel I'm turning into gold." ?

[heyjudah]

I just wanted to know what it meant...what was the intent if
not to repent.

[hydriot]

I've always understood 'turning into gold' to be a metaphor for 'becoming a legend'.

Legends are never accurate. The stories become embellished over the years. What I imagine the young hero is complaining about is that he wants to tell his own story accurately, now, before it gets twisted by the history books. There is the same feeling in Priests: "The simple lives of heroes, the twisted lives of saints, they just confuse the sunny calendar with their red and golden paints."

Then the song switches suddenly to the singer and his woman about to turn off the light and go to sleep after a post-coital cigarette. I get the impression that they have been reading some book in which the bunch of lonesome heroes are indeed frozen in time, golden for ever more ("I guess that these heroes must always live there" i.e. in books, "where you and I have only been" i.e. have visited only as readers) and Leonard imagines one of them crying out from the page that he wants to tell what really happened.

My uncle won a medal in a Second World War battle by counterattacking the enemy armed only with a bucket of grenades, and so rallying his troops and saving the day. He was turned into a hero, but he told me privately that what actually happened was that he had been shelled all morning on and off, and when the enemy destroyed the stove he was trying to brew a cup of tea on, he just lost his temper, picked up the bucket of grenades, and advanced up the trench that the enemy was infiltrating, lobbing a grenade around each corner as he came to it. The enemy was so amazed by this maniac that they all ran away. But after he had single-handedly repelled this enemy attack, he was absolutely horrified at what he had done and thought he'd been a damned fool for taking such an enormous risk.

Thus, my uncle was a hero who was turned into gold, but at least he did get to tell me his story.

[Steven]

Hi Hydriot,

In addition to the metaphor you spoke of, another related possibility involves gold and its
association to idolotry (golden calf of the bible comes to mind). Popular culture
isn't without its legendary figures who are venerated.

Re: your uncle's tea story, Charles Bukowski wrote something about if you want
to make a sane person crazy pick a flower from his garden (maybe a paraphrase of what
he said). Flower and tea outbursts can be surface representations of deeper things,
maybe. Glad your uncle survived to tell you his story and that you shared it here.

[imaginary friend]

Then the song switches suddenly to the singer and his woman about to turn off the light and go to sleep after a post-coital cigarette. I get the impression that they have been reading some book in which the bunch of lonesome heroes are indeed frozen in time, golden for ever more

Hydriot, I've always thought it was a PRE-coital cigarette... especially as the singer/lover then says '...some of us are very hungry now, to hear what it is you've done that was so wrong'. Doesn't sound like they're going to sleep – yet. That line puzzles me a bit. Any ideas re. that?

[hydriot]

I'm a non-smoker so I can't really comment, but I understand the three best things in life are a drink before and a smoke after.

I don't really see anything very appealing about telling your lover exactly what it is you've done wrong during sex, but, when cuddling after sex and the cigarette, confessions come easily.

The idea of the golden calf and idolotry is very persuasive.

[~greg]

Gold is nearly inert.
It doesn't react very much with much of anything.

So, in my opinion, the phrase "turning into gold" means growing old.
Closing down. Ceasing to be impressionable. Ceasing to react with the environment.


Old people, -- the "lonesome and very quarrelsome heroes", --are all certified gold.
They can't even hear the crickets over the din of their arguments. They don't
know, and don't care, what's going on with the army, or with their children.
They can't even hear each other. They don't interact. They just attack.

~~

Everybody knows how this comes about.

People are open to each other, like kids, until they
get hurt one time too many for it. And then they close down.

For awhile they'll tell anyone who'll listen about how much
of a fool they were for leaving themselves open to getting hurt that way.
Leaving themselves open that way was so very wrong, they'll say.

But who wants to hear about that?
So they'll stop talking about it, and, instead,
become "very quarrelsome" about just about everything else.
This is the fate of many marriages.

Kids, on the other hand, will never understand how being open
could ever be wrong.

Put out your cigarette, my love,
you've been alone too long;
and some of us are very hungry now
to hear what it is you've done that was so wrong.

etc.

~~~

ps:
I thought that maybe the Latin for gold, aurum,
might be related to autism. But it didn't pan out,
so to speak.

On the other hand the word "autism" is from "auto", self.
And I read that in the Slavic languages the word for gold
is related to the ancient Indo-European Sol,
- "sun". Which is obviously related to solo, - alone,

So, psychologically, gold has a self-sufficiency about it both
by way of its inertness, and also by way of its natural association with the sun.

[imaginary friend]

Hey Greg,

I always enjoy your opinion, but disagree with this one. I agree with Hydriot that 'turning into gold' in this song refers to becoming a legend, with the hero's own or 'real' story of events being manipulated (that is the sense I get) to become heroic and also to become 'gold' or good currency for the manipulator (e.g. used to gain sympathy or recruits for a cause).

In The Story of Isaac' the axe is 'made of gold'. In that case I guess it symbolizes a divine 'pure' cause. Though I never did like that image of the ol' white guy up there with the long beard and the jealous, heart...

Hydriot's and your posts got me thinking re. the 'what it is you've done that was so wrong' phrase, maybe the 'wrong' is meant as a contrast to 'gold', the man acknowledging that he and the women aren't heroes, and rather than hearing embellished stories about heroics, he would rather get to know her for the real, human, naughty woman she is

[~greg]

Thanks, friend.

I guess I didn't express the feeling of "turning into gold" very well.
But there is a reason why I didn't.
And why I couldn't.

~~

The feeling of "turning into gold" could very well include a feeling
of "turning into a legend". Or of "growing old", even!

But that's only because it could also include virtually everything else, equally well.
Because the feeling of "turning into gold" has nothing to do with any particular
subject that the feelings happen to be about. It has, rather, to do with
certain kinds of qualities which feelings can sometimes have, in certain
situations.

These particular qualities come in alternating waves.

In one wave, the "heroes" will talk effusively, and seemingly
endlessly. This phase is called rapping.
The singer of the song is riding one of these waves.
In this he is no different from any of the other "heroes".
They are all very eagerly trying to get their own brilliant
insights in edge-wise. The word "quarrelsome" is a very
accurate characterization of his phase, -provided it's
shorn of any implication of any real anger. Although
everybody may be talking at once, they aren't really
arguing, or angry. They are really "grooving" on each other.
And on "life" - in the full meaning of the word.
And on shiny objects.

These talkative waves are then followed by waves in which
everybody withdraws into themselves. The word "morose"
could be used for this phase provided that, like "quarrelsome",
the word is shorn of any of its really heavy negative connotations.
Because a "morose thought" in these states is just as likely
to be followed by a giggle, as a "happy thought" is likely
to be followed by a tear or two.


Finally, there is the very famous third wave,
called "the munchies".

~~

Again, it is very hard to describe any of this
to anyone who has never "been there".

~~

As for the line
"I guess that these heroes must always live there
where you and I have only been"
-- I think I know what Cohen was referring to.

I think he was talking about the once famous difference
between two different kinds of drug users;
1) Those who "experiment", mostly with psychedelics,
"in order to expand their minds".
2) And those who use drugs indiscriminately,
- whatever they can get, - in order to escape their lives.

These two different kinds of users have, of course,
always existed. But somewhere between the 1960s
and the 1970s there was tidal change.

In the late 1970s I met a kid who said he was addicted
to marijuana! He said he had to go to some kind of
support group, in order to help him withdraw!

I was certain he was "putting me on".
But he wasn't.

One reason it was even possible was undoubtedly
because the stuff had became a whole lot stronger over the years.

But in any case, the kid became for me an example
of someone who "must always live there
where you and I have only been."

~~

Incidentally, the kind of marijuana that Leonard Cohen
was talking about in "A Bunch Of Lonesome Heroes"
was the very famous, and, back then, not at all
hard to get, ---Acapulco gold.
see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acapulco_gold

And that's just a fact that has always been obvious
to everyone who lived through those times.
It ought to explain why it is very difficult to explain
the feeling of "turning into gold" to anyone who has never "been there".
And why it's hardly necessary to explain it to anyone who has.


thus spaketh I

~~

Pinto > That means that...
our whole solar system...
could be, like...
one tiny atom in the fingernail of some other giant being!

This is too much!

That means...
-one tiny atom in my fingernail could be--
-Could be one little...

Professor Jennings > ...tiny universe.

Pinto > Could l buy some pot from you?

- Animal House

[imaginary friend]

Well Greg,

There go my tentative offerings up in smoke. Thanks for blowing me away – again. (And I'm from Jamaica Mon, so there's no excuse for ignorance!)

Hmmm, neither Leonard's name nor the song are mentioned by Wiki, although they cite quite a few others on the AG entry. So I'm not entirely convinced, and it's a bit late to 'go there' now...

[Apolinary]

I'm not about to giving objective explanations here, I'd like just to mention that these lyrics was very, very close to me in one moment. That time I was very close to leave music for free evenings and start to learn economics and work to become a noble family's father. And I wanted so much to write this and that, to say something very important. I though that my energy would soon be spent on making money not music. When the mind is focused on such things as profit and material things, it's less able to create something. And this is my interpretation of "turning into gold".

[tadpole]

The phrase makes me think of alchemy.