The Darker Album and the Songs

[DBCohen]

The devastating news of Leonard’s passing hasn’t really sunk in yet. I read all the tributes on FB and the Forum, and couldn’t find words of my own. But when I saw that some people were still writing on this thread I was encouraged to rejoin; you are right, Joe, perhaps the best way to deal with our grief is by going on with the discussion of his work, which has had such an impact on all our lives.

I’ve learned just now on the Forum that Leonard passed away already six days ago, on Monday, was buried in Montreal on Thursday, and only then was the news of his death released to the public. Perhaps it is meaningless, but I seem to gain some relief from the fact that he died a day before the US presidential election took place and did not have to witness the awful result. As many others must have felt, “You want it darker” suddenly gained one more foreboding meaning, almost like a prophecy. It seems like he knew that darker is what people want.

Before I go any further I would first like to go back a page or two here.

Jean,

I’m with you when you say:

One delightful aspect of this album is that it is not cryptic. Things are in the open — only, Leonard Cohen is dealing with difficult matters.

blonde madona,

It’s good seeing you here again (memories of the Book of Mercy discussion…). You said, among other things:

I also don't think he's ever been or is as spiritually focused as Joe and DB seem to think. Didn't he say to Roshi that he'd met a woman? He also said that a man never gets over his first sight of a naked woman and that all his sad adventures in pornography, love and song are just steps on the path towards that 'holy vision'. Where DB sees god I almost always see a woman, unless he actually states "I'm ready my Lord".”

First let me quote LC from an interview he gave back in 1993 (p. 366 in the volume of interviews edited by Jeff Burger):

If you leave God out of sex, it becomes pornographic; if you leave sex out of God, it becomes self-righteous.

For him these two aspects were always intertwined, so it is right to look for them in his songs.

Secondly, if you turn to the page in Book of Longing (23) where he tells Roshi that “I met this woman”, the picture he paints there is of a statue in an Indian temple, so I always thought that he was alluding not only to a woman, but also to the fact that he was searching for meaning with the help of an Indian teacher, “betraying” Roshi in that way, or in more than one way.

Thirdly, let me state frankly that I don’t have an agenda; I’m not trying to force God or anything else into the songs (I have no reason to). What I’m trying to do is to get the meaning of the songs, and since with LC there is often a double meaning, and since many of the words he uses are so loaded, one has to dig deeper and find associations from inside his body of work or from sources familiar to him and go wherever they lead. If I can reasonably show that a certain interpretation can be validated from within the text then I accept it; I realize not everybody has to.

Finally, thanks for suggesting another discussion of LC’s poetry. Perhaps once we’ve gone over the album we can start something new (or restart the one Joe began a few years back on “Lines from My Grandfather’s Journal”).

Now I need to relate to “Leaving The Table”, but I’d better do it in a separate posting.

[DBCohen]

One more thing; Allan Showalter posted this on his website a few days ago:

While reviews of Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker album continue to be published by newspapers, music journals, blogs, and broadcast media (as of today, Info & Updates: Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker lists more than 150 such reviews), Cohen fans may find another source – The Darker Album and the Songs section of the LeonardCohenForum – especially interesting and useful. Its write-up at Info & Updates: Leonard Cohen’s You Want It Darker follows:
LeonardCohenForum: The Darker Album and the Songs: This section of the LeonardCohenForum contains analyses of and comments, speculations, and perspectives on You Want It Darker contributed by Forum members, many of whom have followed Leonard Cohen throughout his entire career, some of whom are exceptionally insightful and articulate, and all of whom are passionate about the Canadian singer-songwriter’s music. Highly recommended.

So it looks like what we are doing here has some value… And thanks to Allan for his kind words.

[Stuart84]

DB I think it is interesting that you mention the link with the presidential election. Mr. Cohen has had many views about the world and the future which proved to be quite accurate in the end. Now when I think of the lines "You want it darker / We kill the flame" it seems prophetic of the current situation, not only the election of Trump but also the Brexit (the beginning of the end of the European Union) and the strong upcoming of the populistic right wing movement in Europe. The people have voted for all this, so it is really "We" who kill the flame. Mr. Cohen said in an interview that the greatest threat to us all are the hardened hearts of humanity. Well apparently the hearts of many are hardening.

As sad as I am after yesterdays news, I find comfort in the fact that Cohens' songs and words will remain a very significant source of wisdom and I can keep on learning from him.

[DBCohen]

Stuart84,

I agree with your comments with all my heart.

Joe,

Thanks for introducing “Leaving The Table” (two pages back) with such a fine introduction, quoting from Leon Edel and Yeats. You also related to the music and the arrangement, which I also find very compelling, especially the electric guitar (once again, our gratitude to Adam Cohen who produced this song).

Clearly this is a song of departure, farewell and resignation; it relates both to a lover and to the cycle of life, which I guess LC was feeling he was about to complete. And yes, I don’t think God is absent from this song either… For me the line “If I knew your name” immediately stood out, especially when being reminded of BoM and the important place “the Name” has in it (and there too it was sometimes printed in lower case). I don’t think LC could write “your name”, even if thinking of a lover (or of a possible lover who alluded him), without the other use of the word (God’s name) also being on his mind, or at the back of his head. So “If I ever loved you / If I knew your name” must also refer to God and perhaps to the narrator’s own failure in loving him. However, this is a song of acceptance: there’s no blame, no reward, and no fear of consequences, apparently; there is no longer any sexual desire either (or any other desire).

As we’ve been pointing out, “table” is a very meaningful word for LC, but the association of gambling does seem to stand out in this case (“I’m out of the game”). I would like to write about this motif in LC’s work sometime, as it pops up very often (cards, dice, horses and so on); it must have held special importance for him. Those who went to the “final” concerts in Las Vegas in December 2010 (which turned out not to be final, as he resumed the tour a year later) would remember him wishing us all “good luck at the tables” (it didn’t work for me).

The line “If I ever loved you” also takes me back to “Did I Ever Love You” on the PP album. “Table” appears there too (“Are we still leaning / Across the old table”), and chillingly in hindsight, “November” (I think that this other song can also be interpreted both ways).

There is something a little strange about the rhyming scheme of this song. Three verses (1, 2 & 4) all follow the same rhyme, which begins with “game” and is repeated 12 times, closing with a full repetition of the first two lines. However, the third verse has different rhyming, beginning with “reward” and ending with “The sweetness restored”. I guess the contents of this verse were important enough for LC to break the rhyming scheme for. “Sweetness” also takes me back to BoM, where words based on “sweet” appear no less than a dozen times; for example: “Your name is the sweetness of time” (31), or “In utter defeat I came to you and you received me with a sweetness I had not dared to remember” (6). Given that the sweetness is restored here, this song is not as bitter and negative as it might seem (although “don’t” and “no” are repeated so often in the lyrics and added by LC in his singing). Also, the melody and arrangement make it if not sweet at least bitter-sweet.

[Joe Way]

They whisper still the ancient stones, the blunted mountains weep

Beautiful evocative words. I was backpacking in Yellowstone couple of months ago and these words describe exactly the feelings I experienced. Ancient stones and blunted mountains. I tend to read or hear words at face value and not dig too deep, maybe just a little bit.

Have been listening to this album mostly in my car and have a few other thoughts I will share later on.

It is amazing how Leonard was able to connect to our consciousness in so many situations. It can absolutely picture the feelings that you were having. Thanks for sharing this.

[Joe Way]

Long-time lurker, you know the rest.

I see the song (and by extension the album) You Want It Darker as a maturation of If It Be Your Will. The latter is a gentle acceptance of life's unfolding, especially with the live arrangement sung by the angelic Webb sisters:

"I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will."

You Want It Darker on the other hand is angry, sullen acceptance, which makes perfect sense for someone experiencing directly the betrayal of a body that is unable to keep up with the mind and soul after a lifetime of suffering.

In Treaty, LC talks about having transcendent experiences (watching water turn to wine) and periods of disillusionment (wine turning back to water) and admits that though he sits at God's table every night, he cannot reach that transcendent state. IMHO, the ghost is the idea of God that he built in his head.

He says his goodbyes over the course of the album - goodbyes to the man he was and the experiences he had.

And we close the album with some beautiful strings, a silencing of the golden voice, and finally the lines:

I wish there was a treaty we could sign
It's over now, the water and the wine
We were broken then but now we're borderline
And I wish there was a treaty, I wish there was a treaty between your love and mine.

This to me is our friend finding peace with God, where illusion is stripped away and he's resigned but accepting that the Great Mystery remains a Great Mystery. The devotion is there.

I woke up to the really bad news this morning, during a glorious pink sunrise. For a moment, there was a sense of peace knowing that our friend accomplished the great work he needed to do in this lifetime. I'm a Buddhist, thanks largely to LC, and in this album I hear a man who is reconciling himself with the unknowable God / the Universe / the nature of existence as he has done all his life, and we are all tasked to do (over many lifetimes, if you are Buddhist). A fitting conclusion for a man who held the mirror to our deepest longings.

Finally, some words that gave me comfort today:
"On a day
when the wind is perfect,
the sail just needs to open and the world is full of beauty.
Today is such a day.”
-Rumi

Thank you-I agree that he is saying his goodbyes during this album-though I think it also includes his last two. The dichotomy between Leonard's vision is always interesting. "If It Be Your Will" is one of my favorite songs, but the songs on this album rival it.

Joe

[Joe Way]

Dear Doron, thank you for mentioning the song, "If I Ever Loved You." I listened to it last night and saw how closely it relates to his new songs. I still just love the line and the way he sings it, "And are we still leaning, across the old table."

Doron wrote:

Clearly this is a song of departure, farewell and resignation; it relates both to a lover and to the cycle of life, which I guess LC was feeling he was about to complete. And yes, I don’t think God is absent from this song either… For me the line “If I knew your name” immediately stood out, especially when being reminded of BoM and the important place “the Name” has in it (and there too it was sometimes printed in lower case). I don’t think LC could write “your name”, even if thinking of a lover (or of a possible lover who alluded him), without the other use of the word (God’s name) also being on his mind, or at the back of his head. So “If I ever loved you / If I knew your name” must also refer to God and perhaps to the narrator’s own failure in loving him. However, this is a song of acceptance: there’s no blame, no reward, and no fear of consequences, apparently; there is no longer any sexual desire either (or any other desire).

Dear Doron,
My friend Geoffrey just posted on his Facebook page an email from Leonard on New Year's Day, 2008. I've asked Geoffrey for permission to post it here and he has granted it. I think it will add a lot interest to our discussion of his last few albums.

"Dear Old Friend,
It’s all fucked up, and God has a very dark and cruel side, as you and the real Kabbalists know. Let us hope against hope, that our prayers, and our demonstrations human love and friendship, can return He/She/It to some sort of sanity, or Unity, and both human and Divine consciousness can be repaired. God needs a human education to heal It’s agonizing and monstrous bi-polar predicament, which apparently is why we were created to restore a balance to the system that was fractured when the world was formed. Not a casual mission, as we are dealing with the One who in a panic of Materialization, created life and death, night and day, joy and suffering, good and evil. Hard to swallow, but that is what the Jewish mystics dare to tell us. We are that part of the Broken System specifically designed to repair the System. Cold Comfort. Please forgive my rant , and know that you and your wife and family are deep in my thoughts this New Year’s Day. Love and Blessings, Leo"

His observation that God's creating of the world created, in turn, Materialization is a new insight that I hadn't considered before.

Looking forward to discussing this more with you and our dear friends here on the forum. (I've been so glad that more people are willing to discuss the songs now.

Joe

[abby]

I cannot think of a time when I did a thing in a panic and it was the right thing to do. I have created mess after disaster after train wreck doing things in a panic. Without exception the road out of the disaster has been deep and worth every bit of its necessary, ridiculously hard work. Leonard's letter to Geoffrey offers so much comfort.

What's the alternative?

Though the atmosphere for the feeling was growing before Leonard's death, since he died I have wanted someone to hold me- and I'm a person who generally doesn't enjoy physical contact. The impulse came over me tonight in a panic. Can you blame me? There's a good reason people seek to couple at a funeral. Instead of seeking comfort, I spent some time with nothing to hold onto, nothing to make it all ok. Alone in my little room with my notebook writing, there's nothing to make what is anything but what it is.

Before materialization, what was wasn't good enough for god and god in a panic made a mess of things. Am I hearing him correctly, that what we do is all the hope of healing there is? I keep coming back to Leonard's letter to Marianne; it seems in our experience of trying and failing to achieve a treaty between our will and god's, there is only this consolation- that we can make a decent gesture to another person.

But can we make a decent gesture to another person in a panic? Can we make a gesture of care without great care? Those are genuine questions.

Doing things in a panic creates messes that are blessings of work. The alternative to doing things in a panic is doing things with care. If god had acted more carefully, we'd only do the right thing, it would all be one lifelong letter to Marianne. The comfort in Leonard's letter to Geoffrey is that we're blameless.

[DBCohen]

Dear Joe,

Thank you so much for posting Leonard’s email to Geoffrey; it shows, among other things, how consistent LC was in his views over the years. In this case he expresses what he learned from the Jewish Kabbalah, ideas that were manifest in BoM and even before. Among them were the ideas that God created the universe out of necessity, that something went wrong in the process, and that it is human beings’ duty to help in the process of mending (Tikkun). Some ideas about the base matter and the emanation of God’s powers must have come indirectly from Neo-Platonism.

I would also like to refer briefly to your earlier observation that the album should be viewed as a whole. One indication for this which caught my eye are the similarities in the vocabulary and even the rhyming scheme between the first (You Want It Darker) and the fourth (Leaving The Table) songs. See, for example:

Rhyming with the words game / lame / blame / claim / shame / name / flame appears in both songs (in the former the rhyming is consistent throughout the song, in the latter it is changed in the third verse).

The importance of the word “name” in both songs, of which I wrote earlier.

“There’s a lover in the story / But the story is still the same” compared with “I don’t need a lover / The wretched beast is tame”.

“We kill the flame” compared with “So blow out the flame”.

So these two seemingly different songs have a lot in common and this helps bring the album together and demonstrates once again that LC’s constant themes (love, God, politics) give dual meaning to his songs.

[DBCohen]

abby,

Are we really blameless? I think LC had a strong consciousness of sin, in spite of his being aware that the system was broken.

Joe,

I admire the way you introduced “If I Didn’t Have Your Love” (on the previous page), including your idea that this song may be the “manual of living with defeat” that we so much need right now, or at least one chapter in that large manual. Also, we often talked about how LC’s use of pronouns raises questions, especially the use of “you”; I like your idea that this time he is addressing all of us, those for whom his work is such an important source of comfort, and whose love he took care to appreciate during the concerts and on other occasions.

The music and production of this song are by Patrick Leonard and I’m afraid I don’t care for either very much (especially the opening with the organ), but the lyrics are as good as ever. I’d like to draw attention to two expressions only. One is the word “broken”, which puts this song in the context of so many others, and the lines:

If I couldn’t lift the veil
And see your face

which took me back to chapter 3 in Book Of Mercy, with the beautiful parable (borrowed from The Book of Splendor, the major source of the Kabbalah) of the Torah as a hidden maiden. It later appeared again in another piece which we discussed years ago, “You Are Right, Sahara” in Book of Longing (p. 44). For me it’s admirable how a song can be fresh and new and simultaneously share in the treasure of images that recur throughout his work.

[Diane]

Hello all you lovely people. Tons to absorb here, thanks! Your analysis increases my appreciation of the album.

I also agree with those who say they don't like to analyse because it spoils the magic. But Leonard Cohen encourages us to rest in contradictions.

A comment and a question:

I see the song (and by extension the album) You Want It Darker as a maturation of If It Be Your Will.

I agree.

The songs imagery is like a reversal of creation. "the sun would lose its light... we lived an endless night...and no water in the sea, and the break of day had nothing to reveal."
We are left with the question-whose love is it-who makes it real?

Right now, "Treaty" seems to me the key to the album, and "If I Didn't Have Your Love" the lock.
Bennyboy has already suggested complementing Vicki's question

Who is he addressing in the lines, "If I didn't have your love to make it real?"
[...]
It does seem to be a bit out of line with the other songs, since it is decidedly "undark."

with the question: Who is speaking?
Let me suggest one further question: Who is the "we" who would be able to "live[...] (in) an endless night"?
(Surely not humans: depending on artificial warmth, food and oxygen, our species would certainly not survive "endless[ly]".)

Maybe the song will reveal just how "dark" it actually is...

Are you suggesting that God/"God" could be the narrator in If I Didn't Have Your Love?

[HugoD]

Maybe not the correct topic to post this, but I couldn't help feeling some kind of hope that there is more to come after reading this article. It seems a lot of work has already been done.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/11/11/le ... d-rb-album

[Joe Way]

"Are you suggesting that God/"God" could be the narrator in If I Didn't Have Your Love?

[/quote]
I'm not so sure the narrator is God, but I do think that along with all of us, the narrator may be referencing God and us when he talks about, "you."

[DBCohen]

Good seeing you here, Diane (“And one by one…”). I’m afraid I can’t contribute anything meaningful today, only wishing to stay in touch.

[Jean Fournell]

WARNING (to whom it may concern):

This post is guilty of over-analysis. Do not read it!

—

My apologies for first suggesting things, and then leaving them unexplained for such a long time.
Let's say, I'm still somewhat paralysed — stunned by this powerful album, shocked by the sad news, astonished by the e-mail quoted above. It's all pretty much of a whirlwind in my mind.
But maybe I can say a little more about my idea of "Treaty" and "If I Didn't Have Your Love" seen as the key and the lock in this album.

Please bear with my amateurish outsider approach to monotheism, and inside that world even more amateurish when it comes to Judaism rather than the other three (Zoroastrism, Christianism, Islam).
And please bear with my verbosity. Making it shorter would require even more time before I give an answer.

—

Yes, Diane, I mean to suggest that God might be a narrator in "If I Didn't Have Your Love" (not "the" narrator, though), and that God might be "that ghost" in "Treaty", if there's no human love to make Him real.

For a first approach, that solution seems the easiest to begin with — all the more so in the light of the quoted e-mail.

"Treaty", the key for the lock "If I Didn't Have Your Love", presents us with two incompatible sorts of love, and I don't think they are male and female love. The addressee changed water into wine, and that means he is Jesus. Not necessarily the Christian saviour, but still very much one with God.

Methinks the two sorts of love are rather human love and divine love. But here again, not in the common mystic sense of "love of a human towards another human" versus "love of a human towards God", but in the sense of "love of a human towards God" versus "love of God towards a human". Mutuality, reciprocity; and yet incompatibility ("We find ourselves on different sides of a line that nobody drew").

Starting position of the lock: "love of a human towards God".
God depending on the human to be more than "that ghost", to be real.

Turn the key: "love of God towards a human".
The human depending on God to be real.
(Believers often tend to see atheists like me as mere ghosts, deprived of any spiritual dimension. This led to many of us sharing Giordano Bruno's fate.)

Turn the key: the real-human's love making God live.

Turn the key: the living-God's love making the human live.

Turn the key: the living-human's love making God perceptible for outsiders.

Turn the key: the perceptible-God's love making the human convincing.
(I'm not talking about proselytism. Leonard Cohen is a priest, and a prophet the way Jesus and Al-Hallaj are, but he's not a missionary. He refers to himself as "the unconvincing Zen monk", but then: what would a convincing Zen monk be, if not a contradiction in terms? He is a convincing human being.)

Once this toying with key and lock is over, maybe we can open the Gateless Gate:

If, in Eihei Dogen's "To forget the self is to be certified by all beings in the cosmos" (as opposed to some generalised "Maya"), we replace "all beings in the cosmos" by a collective "the One", we have, methinks, the synthesis Leonard Cohen went to Bombay for. And after all, why should his zen-teacher have whispered the solution into his ear? A zen monk is meant to be(come) autonomous.
One possible difference being that in such a pan-en-theist view, the human species is one phenomenon amongst so many others, and not some "crown of creation".

For my part, I tend to heed the buddha Siddharta Gautama's warning that incompetent fiddling around with things that exceed our capacities (God, Cosmic Illusion, afterlife, reincarnations, what happens to the universe once it has expanded enough, and other suchlike Epimenides paradoxes) might easily lead to more confusion, instead of less.
"But [here I will] make an exception":

In the quoted e-mail, the mystics seem to be inviting to do just this fiddling around. The koan looks as though some basically Zoroastrian mare had run away, and now it's after her as best you can. (But the e-mail is from 1st January 2008, quite a while before Old Ideas, Popular Problems, and You Want It Darker. I don't think a man like Leonard Cohen will remain "static" that long...)

Now those mystics can legitimately be expected to have the operating instructions for their koan. So there should be no problems, unless some unknowing "free-lance" should set out on their own.
They are supposed to — but do they?

I'm not into koan-practice; zen for rewards, like satori or enlightenment or what, is not my cup of tea.
If, however, a monotheist koan like "Can the Omnipotent create a stone so heavy that He Himself cannot lift it?" is answered by Hugues de Saint Victor, saying "impossibilia posse non esset posse, sed non posse" (to be able to do the impossible isn't to be able, but to be unable), this sounds to me like utterly botched spiritual craftsmanship, and not at all like a master's koan added on top of a previous koan.

More stuff like that:

"God is limited in his actions to his nature. The Bible supports this, [certain Christian philosophers] assert, in passages such as Hebrews 6:18, which says it is 'impossible for God to lie'."
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox)

Impossible for Him as well: to die, to fail, to do evil, to negate Himself — what is there He actually can do, in the end?
Not much, visibly, not without human love.
With the Gateless Gate open, the position of the lock is indifferent now, and the key can be turned as you like, for the fun of it, or in the process of repair-work on the lock, or not at all.

The "we", now, would be both speakers. The two of them certifying and being certified by each other, like two sides of one coin; sustaining and being sustained by each other, like two halves of one vault.

Thus, humans could indeed live without the sun, merely sustained by God. And this situation would allow for one or both sides to be merely doing their duty (like paying taxes) — but love is more:
In his "Mea culpa" ("I'm so sorry for that ghost I made you be"), the human speaker apologises for imperfect human love, marked by impermanence, not operating at all points in passing time, but only now and then. At other moments, God is merely "that ghost", and only the ego is "real".
(More would have to be said about "points in time".)

This sounds very much like "Why have I forsaken Thee". A mirror image of Jesus' cry on the cross, which is the key to the Christian salvation mechanism.

The Gateless Gate swinging to and fro across the "borderline".
("And you know that she's half crazy" — "That's how the light gets in")

And when God receives the human back into His love, as He did recently, when the Treaty does come about, when God loses the alterity of His priest — then, I'm afraid, His life indeed becomes a bit more like that of a dead God, of an image some people make unto themselves, of some Word learned by rote.

Unless...