Cohen cartoon

Dem · Post by **Dem** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 11:19 pm

Leonard Cohen in His Live Words created by Marc Gaffie
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/pilgraeme/

For "Dance me to the end of love" there are only two entries:

Wien 11/05/88
I wanna go to that place where one is free from love,and one is free from God,and one is free from song,and one is free from politics.I'll try to get there in this song called "Dance me to the end of love".

Interview with Chris Doritos, "Morning Becomes Eclectic", 1997
That's a song I worked on for a while. And I thought I'd really nailed it when I finally recorded it. But well that was part of an album called "Various Positions" which wasn't even issued in this country. Columbia at the time neglected to inform me that they weren't going to put the record out. And it was put out on a tiny label. But I like the song very much and nobody ever mentioned it for about ten or fifteen years. And then recently a book has been put out accompanied by Matisse's drawings, and it's been in the soundtrack of several movies and people seem to have discovered it. That's always agreeable when that happens.

Dem

lightning · Post by **lightning** » Mon Sep 11, 2006 11:30 pm

Try this thread which I began a while back:

viewtopic.php?t=2449

Dem · Post by **Dem** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:18 am

Lightning I tried that thread and there's nothing
more than what I have already said.

Perhaps the song was inspired by a photo from a
concentration camp (in the Koln quote Leonard DOESN'T
mention Auschwitz specifically) but frankly if one just
listens to the song without having read anything about
can hardly connect it with death at Auschwitz.

Dem

lightning · Post by **lightning** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:33 am

ok. i wish it were just a romantic song insted of a reminder or couples that were sent to their deaths.

Dem · Post by **Dem** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 1:31 am

Couples are sent to their deaths as we speak.

From the 1300 civilians killed in Lebanon
(that's almost half 9/11, isn't it?)
how many do you think were couples?
http://tinyurl.com/l64kk

From the 29 people killed today in Iraq?
http://tinyurl.com/hoy8l

How many from the 43 killed yesterday?
http://tinyurl.com/kcbcg

From the 40 on Saturday?
http://tinyurl.com/f9qba

From the 36 on Friday?
http://tinyurl.com/jmltc

From the another 40 on Thursday?
http://tinyurl.com/zfadf

From the 1500 in August?
(that's another half 9/11, isn't it?)
http://tinyurl.com/nb8l8

Dem

Davido · Post by **Davido** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 2:23 am

Leonard was asked about the meaning and origin of the song 'Dance Me To The End Of Love' in an interview for Australian TV in 1985.
Leonard said that his initial idea was to write a song about Berlin and the origins/roots of evil. (He had learnt that in the concentration camps they forced string quartets to play while the killing of 'inmates' took place).
However, as the songwriting process progressed,these ideas and verses he had constructed would not 'fit in' and he realised that he was actually writing a 'love song or wedding song'.He went on to say that it became 'a prayer or a love song'. 'If the song comes from a deep place' he said,'it will have a wide embrace'.

lightning · Post by **lightning** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 6:18 am

Dem,
If you add the Afghans murdered with the figures you supply, it will probably come to more than 3000, and as yet no protest has been able to stop them. All the weeping relatives of the 9/11 victims have blood on their hands. What do you suggest?

Red Poppy · Post by **Red Poppy** » Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:16 pm

Come on Dem, you're tying yourself up in semantics here.
And Jack "vanGogh" Vetriano had one thing in mind when he painted that piece ----------------M O N E Y. Cut off his ear, I say.

Tri-me · Post by **Tri-me** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:02 am

I see this song as a love song. To me it is about how difficult love can be, dancing together is a metaphor. I love "burning violin" violins can be so passionate.
I can also see how others see it another way. This is the thing about art, it is open to interpretation of the person experiencing it. If it affects you the artist has done a good job.
I try not to think about the holocaust esp after hearing stories from a woman who did her thesis on it. I was disturbed for weeks after talking with her one afternoon, I can't even repeat the things she told me. I can't see movies with this theme anymore it tears me up inside.

Red Poppy · Post by **Red Poppy** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 1:20 am

To me the holocaust connection is vital to the song, as are the politics (in te widest sense) of so many Cohen songs. They give them an added piquancy and edge

Boss · Post by **Boss** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:31 am

We played 'Dance me to the end of love' at my father's funeral. The '93 'live' version. It was Dad's and his wife's 'song'. They didn't see Treblinka, Terazin etc. in it. Only of loving each other to death. And Dad was Jewish!

Boss

Young dr. Freud · Post by **Young dr. Freud** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 8:19 am

All the weeping relatives of the 9/11 victims have blood on their hands.

How so?

YdF

Fljotsdale · Post by **Fljotsdale** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 2:50 pm

Presumably, for allowing Bush into the Presidency, and for accepting his policies?

Otherwise, it has to be for the simple folly of either being American or, if not American, of allowing their family members to work in America?

I can't see any other way they could be accused of having their 'blood on their hands'.

And anyway... WHO's blood?

I was assuming the blood of the victims of the Twin Towers... but now I'm unsure... Iraqi? Afghani?

UrPal · Post by **UrPal** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:12 pm

Anyone listened to Leonard Cohen’s new song “Puppets” lately? I don’t know about anyone else around here, but I find it strange and disquieting to the point of nauseousness to find myself subjected to a discussion in which the innocent individual victims of hostilities wherever they may be (and who once themselves enjoyed the luxury of their own particular views, opinions and lives now denied expression) are objectified and reduced to so many numbers counted on a scoreboard, or worse by an attributed collective political consciousness and purpose to some kind of pawn, in a “going nowhere fast but up its own backside” political discussion. It reminds me all too much of the thought processes which have made, and continue to make, the worst kinds of human atrocities possible.

Here’s a bit of a poem by Louis MacNeice which I’ve always found useful:

I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.

………..

I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.

I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.

I expect a lot of those victims would have hoped for the same forgiveness, strength and salvation. The least they deserve is respect as real people who once occupied the same world in real time as the rest of us.

lightning · Post by **lightning** » Wed Sep 13, 2006 4:18 pm

Y DF-- I meant by paying taxes to fund the war, putting up with things as they are, ignoring them and going about their business. The hands that type this are included.