The Darker Album and the Songs

[jarkko]

A very nice Darker poster in the window of Dussmann in Berlin, photo by Andrea

[Diane]

That's a fine display, Jarkko.

Doron, 'one by one', yes. It's marvellous that you are keeping alive the forum tradition of in depth analysis that you started with BoM.

I must say, the tidal wave of grief and love in this 'news' section (and, no doubt, elsewhere) is humbling in itself.

Jean, I apologise for prodding you into expanding on your earlier post before you were ready. I always was too impatient for the next works from my favourite authors. I will read and digest later. Thank you.

[Joe Way]

Diane, please let me join Doron in welcoming you to this thread. You are also one of the people whose opinion about Leonard's work I value very much.

Jarkko, thanks for that great photo from Andrea.

Jean, you have given us a lot to ponder-I find much of it intriguing and I'll need to re-read a few more times. Thank you for you contribution.

Doron, take your time to respond-your analysis is always worth waiting for.

Joe

[Diane]

Cheers Joe, you are always too kind. Yes, it will be fascinating to hear what response Doron may have to Jean's post.

What in particular made me ask whether you thought the song could be coming from God's perspective was that I thought the lines "If I couldn't lift the veil/And see your face" could be referencing the idea of Christians being betrothed brides of Christ.

Also, at a somewhat more basic and less erudite level than Jean, I just wanted to mention that Buddhism teaches the Three Marks of Existence, characteristics of all beings - impermanence, suffering and no-fixed-self. The three are very closely interlinked. If I didn't Have Your Love, as well as being a kind of backwards Biblical creation story as you mentioned, seems to be imagining what life would be devoid of impermanence. Without impermanence we would no longer lose anything we love, but equally, we would have nothing to love, nothing would ever grow, there would be nothing for us to eat, day would not follow night, everything would be sterile, and, crucially, "No-one that you hurt/Could ever heal."

[Joe Way]

For those interested, I suggest you read "Being Leonard Cohen's Rabbi" posted in a thread in this section. So many of the terms are unfamiliar to me so I anxiously await Doron's help in understanding the various branches of Judaism that the author references. I suspect it may also shed more light on our understanding of Leonard's work.

Joe

[Jean Fournell]

Yes, I share Joe's hope for help: it would be nice to have a few notions of Judaism. Wikipedia is of little use for this rabbi's article.

(And then sequences like "Serrated edge of a murder weapon used on a guy who had it coming to him."
As someone who is trying to learn English, you know straight away that if you tackle that, you'll spend two or three hours in your dictionaries, only to find out that it means "someone is peeling a potato". And that if you don't tackle it, it means something important, and you misunderstand the whole text...)

Diane, I share your vision of the "static" world; and yes, the impossibility of healing would surely be the worst consequence.

But I'm somewhat taken aback by "the idea of Christians being betrothed brides of Christ", which is new to me.
All the Christians? Lesbian women, non-gay men, asexuals — all included? That doesn't seem like a very inviting prospect to me. Rather steer clear.

My idea was that seeing God's face is generally considered as deadly for humans, with Moses and Muhammad as possible exceptions. Now for people like Leonard Cohen, who don't believe in God but know Him, on the one hand this does not apply (and my dialectics God~human work, both being able to lift the veil between them), and on the other hand we know now that it also means "I know to die".

The idea of "a kind of backwards Biblical creation story" hadn't occurred to me, but it is a good idea. Even though I don't know the intricacies of that creation story, if passing time can go forwards, it should be able to go backwards, too. Maybe that conception will sink in and something come from it.

It is not a necessity, however. In "I am the one who loves changing from nothing to one", the "loves" implies repetition, but not necessarily stepping forwards to something and backwards to nothing. When the day is over, time does not necessarily go backwards to night. On the contrary, many evolutions, if taking place over more than 24 hours, seem to indicate that day and night mainly pass in a forward direction.

And back to the "dynamic" world: there seem to be two basic visions. One saying that we, the humans, must keep the world going lest it stop; the other one saying that there is no such need, that it won't stop. The first vision often enough leads to "suffering".

Or as a lunatic once had it:
No point in carrying the moon on one's shoulders.
She's been wheeling for ages.
She's a big girl.

[DBCohen]

I feel like moving on to the next track (other discussions can go on simultaneously, I believe). I don’t know if a vinyl version of the album was (or will be) released, but “Traveling Light” would most probably open its “B Side”, which as a whole has a somewhat different feeling than the “A side”. I really love the musical arrangement by Adam Cohen, and can’t help wishing that he had done more of this on some of the earlier songs. The song fits in well with the “goodbye” atmosphere of the album, but the tempo and arrangement give it a certain lightness that suits the title. It’s more lighthearted than some of the other songs.

“I’m traveling light” naturally means leaving much behind and moving on with as little as possible, but because of the rhyming with “bright” and the mentioning of a “fallen star” we may also take into account the other meaning of “light”, the opposite of darkness. Who is the “fallen star” who is addressed like a person along the song? It’s hard to speculate (a lover? A teacher? God?). Once again I was made to think of Book of Mercy, and in particular chapter 8, in which “fall” and “falling” is repeated again and again, and the one who is doing the falling “falls radiantly towards the light to which it falls”; I suggested that LC evoked here the fallen angle Lucifer (the “shining one” or the “light-bearer”, referring also to Venus when it appears as the morning star). I can’t be sure that this is what he had in mind in this song, but the association could be meaningful.

In any case, the narrator keeps addressing that other persona, although he also says that he has given up “On the me and you”. I guess I’m not the only one to find here an association to “I and Thou”, Martin Buber’s dialogical philosophy. Buber stresses the value of the “I-Thou” relationship which allows for a true dialogue, as opposed to the “I-It” situation which is much more common. Again, I’m not certain that this is what LC had in mind; he might be referring to giving up on a certain relationship with a woman, for example. But because of the very inclusive atmosphere of the song and of the album, and the strong statements he makes, I feel it means something wider and deeper.

It is also interesting that he repeats the line about traveling light “like we used to do”; so it is not only about what will happen from this point on, but also remembering the past. It can seem somewhat ironic (there’s also the typical self-mockery in the lines “I used to play / One mean guitar”), because LC is usually associated with heaviness rather than lightness. Those who listened to him carefully over the years always noticed his humorous side, but still, he often seemed to be dealing with heavy issues, be it in relationships, faith or politics. But now it feels like the burden has been lifted and he is ready to fly (in the opposite direction of the fallen star), perhaps also saying something like: “I have always been lighter than you all thought”.

Writing about lightness I was reminded of the title of Milan Kundera’s novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, another ironic-sounding expression, because after all, how can “Being” be unbearably light? It is either unbearably heavy or very bearably light (and that in a novel about the crashing of the Prague Spring in 1968). Kundera begins the novel with a philosophical discussion which he concludes with the assertion that the heaviness-lightness contrast is the most mysterious among all contrasts and bearing the greatest meaning (I’m not going to try to interpret this, but thinking about it makes a lot of sense). Kundera tends to favor heaviness, because according to him, the greater the burden the more real and meaningful life is. Yes, but one might reach a point when one says they have had enough of reality and even of love; could that be the point LC reached and expresses in this song?

The final verse begins with “But”, signifying a change of course. He wonders whether the road he is taking “leads back to you”, and since we are not told who “you” is we can only speculate, as before. If the road indeed leads him back then he must forget the things he knew; is he expecting to be surprised by what awaits him? Again, it’s hard to tell, but personally I enjoy the way he sounds here so much that I’m going to listen again and again until it becomes clearer, perhaps.

I apologize for writing very associatively and not very clearly about this song. I would love to hear more impressions and ideas.

[Joe Way]

Doron, thank you for introducing the next song and your great comments on it.

When I heard "traveling" my thoughts went to this poem.

Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought /
Of traveling penniless to some mud throne /
Where a master might instruct me how to plot /
My life away from pain, to love alone /
In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake. /
Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost /
Enough to lose a way I had to take; /
Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust /
The will that forbid me contract, vow, /
Or promise, and often while you slept /
I looked in awe beyond your beauty. /
Now /
I know why many men have stopped and wept /
Halfway between the loves they leave and seek, /
And wondered if travel leads them anywhere-- /
Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek, /
The windy sky's a locket for your hair.

This poem has meant a great deal to me throughout the years. It was in his "Selected Poems 1956-1968 that I bought when I was still in high school. My late brother was in the infantry in Viet Nam in 1969 and miraculously came home intact to spend the 2nd semester of my senior year in high school with me. We shared a room and I had the volume of Leonard's poems on the night stand between us. He was reading it and I asked him which was his favorite poem-he said, "Traveling."

I know that it is not the official title of the poem, but it has been for me since.

We really don't know who the narrator is addressing in this poem, again. But we hear the entity described as, "My fallen star." The narrator describes himself as a dreamer which harkens back to the dichotomy he drew between the dreamers and the men of action in his song, "The Traitor."

When I first began my commentary on the album I was convinced that it was an argument/commentary with G-d the healer, or G-d the dealer-two different approximations of the creator. Now after reading others comments and listening repeatedly, I think it is much more complex than that. I suspect I will be contemplating the meaning on my own death bed.

The light aspect has so many connotations as to be almost impossible to include everything in Leonard's canon. I prefer to think of his meaning here as very close to what he was saying when he sang, "It's light, light enough to let it go."

One of the theories that I've had, which involves more of Leonard's Christian imagery, is about the phrase, "It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than it is for a rich man to get to heaven." A scholarly nun told me one time that the "eye of the needle" was a famous pass on the trading route in the mid-east. She said that when the caravans passed through this area that they would have to un-pack the camels to get through it. She contended that Jesus meant that men needed to "un-pack" to get through that narrow gap into deeper understanding. And I think that this does reflect a bit about Leonard's philosophy.

I also notice that the narrator is not alone in this journey. "I've met a few traveling light like we used to do." All in all, it is a very difficult song to comprehend. But very beautiful.

Leonard, in the ascetic manner that he led his life, traveled penniless to many "mud thrones.' Though this poem was obviously about that remarkable romantic love that Leonard described repeated so well, the poem and song also echoes the deep desires that Leonard's life-long quest for an understanding of the nature of his creator and the nature of creation.

Musically, it reminds me a bit of "Dance Me to the End of Love" with the "la, la, la's" going on. I believe it is in duple time, but it is an unusual meter that might be a combination of duple and triple time. Roman says that it is one of the most "YouTubed" songs-so very popular.

Like all the songs, I need to hear them more and then will have more to say.

Joe

[AlanM]

Hearing

the "la, la, la's" going on

I was transposed back to Joan Of Arc. Earlier, happier times - words cannot express my joy in finding Songs of Love and Hate in my local record store - still one of my favourite albums (of which there are many).
I must confess it took me a while to get "into" this album, but now I am delighted with it. Once I had listened to it loudly, in the dark, I fell in love with it. I have adjusted the play order, putting the 2 Treaty tracks together with a small overlap, so they become one longer track. I listen to it at least once a day, and my favourite track changes day by day, thought by thought. Currently it is If I Didn't Have Your Love, but that may have something to do with my wife's impending birthday.

Alan

[Jean Fournell]

Thank you for opening the way to "Traveling Light".
It is normal, at the present stage, to collect associations rather than work out a perfect scholarly dissertation.

Here a few more impressions:

At first glance, this song seems to be addressed to a/the woman. The complicity in Leonard Cohen's voice when he sings
"I guess you're right / You always are"
highlights this interpretation among the other possibilities.
"My fallen star" makes me think of "I can't keep track of each fallen robin".
And then Marianne comes to mind, in the songs as well as possibly Marianne Ihlen, too.

For a man who is "living in a suit", to be travelling light can hardly mean that he's hitchhiking around the world living in a backpack. But the Bohemian years on Hydra, playing "one mean guitar", and the concerts and tours should amply make up for that — as well as "the windows are small and the walls almost bare", his way of living in sober quarters.

It is only in the end, with "But if the road / Leads back to you", that the song shows that it is about death as well. Which suggests a double meaning for "you". First, seeing a/the woman again in the afterlife; second, joining God there.

And the term "back"?
If time goes backwards here, then yes, the narrator obviously must forget.
But I'm not convinced that this is the meaning.

In "Going home to where it's better than before", the persona "Leonard" is not evoking an afterworld better than our here-and-now, a better future, but an afterworld better than the world before earthly life. It is "home" that will have become better. Thus a triple world is implied, and the sequence would be: original "home" before — earthly life ("the blues") now — "home" changed for the better afterwards.

This might suggest an indifferentiated soul of the Primordial Covenant (from which pool the personal soul individuates at birth), followed by a life in the "valley of tears", followed by a "back to you" in an afterlife (better than both).

In this view, the question "Must I forget" would mean: does personal memory survive death or not? Is the difference between the two states of "home" due precisely to such surviving personal memory? Are we the agents whose surviving personal memory makes "home" a better place? —

The narrator "travelling light" would mean that the "burden" was illusory. But also, possibly, that the narrator has "met a few" from another kind of travelling they "used to do", a few whom he met in the realm of the pre-incarnate collective soul.

We have no way of putting ourselves into some "outside", into some absolute position. We are not able to judge whether the world we live in is real or illusory. Whether there is an afterlife or not. Or whether we are repeating a life we lived before, possibly many times already. Such things are beyond our grasp.

What we can do is: live inside our world, be it real or illusory or whatever. We can testify our mutual reality, like Muslims and Jehova's Witnesses testify God's existence. With the risk of wrong testimony, be it knowingly and on purpose, or be it because our perception and memory play tricks on us.
Or else we can make each other real by love (as opposed to personal desire). With no risk: it is not possible to give wrong love.

Now if a fool, a dreamer, forgets to dream this dream inside a dream to reality, that is not really a catastrophe — if he is not alone...

And then let me say a few words about the line "It's au revoir".

The formal English greetings of departure, "Good bye" (short for God be with you) and "Farewell", do not specify whether the separation is final or temporary. But the formal French greeting of departure "Au revoir" does. It is a formal equivalent of the more colloquial English "See you then", clearly specifying that the separation is temporary.

And the title of the French version of Auld Lang Syne is Ce n'est qu'un au revoir.
The refrain goes:

Ce n'est qu'un au revoir, mes frères,
ce n'est qu'un au revoir.
Oui, nous nous reverrons, mes frères,
ce n'est qu'un au revoir.

(It's only a see-you-then, my brothers,
it's only a see-you-then.
Yes, we'll see each other again, my brothers,
it's only a see-you-then.)

If from here we go to the first stanza:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne?

we might see the closing stanza of "Traveling Light" in yet another light.

I'm not saying that any belief in a personal memory surviving into an afterlife is thereby implied.

All I'm saying is: It is possible to read such things into the song, and legitimately so —
"but kindly leave, leave the future, leave it open"...

Edit:
And there is a parallel too, methinks, between "Traveling Light":

My once so bright
My fallen star

and Leonard Cohen's last word and testament on this forum:

Sure it failed my little fire
But it's bright the dying spark
Go tell the young messiah
What happens to the heart

[DBCohen]

I feel the need to apologize for not responding to the recent postings, being extremely busy and trying to keep up with all – or at least part – of the material about LC constantly coming out on various media. As I expect to be even busier the coming week I’ll say just a few words now, hoping to keep the discussion going (and where is everybody? Diane, are you out there?).

Joe,
Thank you so much for sharing the beautiful poem and your touching personal story. You are certainly right about the complexity of the statements made in the songs and our need to think about them longer.

Alan,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts and impressions; I believe I can also remember when I bought Songs of Love and Hate, and the effect of listening to it for the first time…

Jean,
I really enjoyed reading your comments and the way you developed your thoughts. I wonder: if indeed “going back” refers to death (let’s say, the migration of the soul back to where it came from, given that one believes in that reality – and did LC really believe?), isn’t it amazing that he can “travel light”? Can one really shed off the burden of the years, the accomplishments and failures, the myriad human connections and travel on lightly? If so, it’s quite an achievement. Or perhaps when a person gets near that point, all those things no longer really matter, but isn’t that a sad thought? I’ll have to leave it at that…

[Diane]

Hello Doron - I tend to be more of a reader than a writer in these intriguing in-depth discussions. You're right, there is so much going on at the moment. Also, I am sure we have plenty of time to get through the album, so your absence will be fine, for a while.

(Plus it gives more of a chance for others to consider traveling here - for example, I am sure I saw purple footsteps gracing a nearby thread, and sandy ones sauntering through another.)

I'm somewhat taken aback by "the idea of Christians being betrothed brides of Christ", which is new to me.
All the Christians? Lesbian women, non-gay men, asexuals — all included? That doesn't seem like a very inviting prospect to me. Rather steer clear.

My idea was that seeing God's face is generally considered as deadly for humans, with Moses and Muhammad as possible exceptions. Now for people like Leonard Cohen, who don't believe in God but know Him, on the one hand this does not apply (and my dialectics God~human work, both being able to lift the veil between them), and on the other hand we know now that it also means "I know to die".

The idea of "a kind of backwards Biblical creation story" hadn't occurred to me, but it is a good idea. Even though I don't know the intricacies of that creation story, if passing time can go forwards, it should be able to go backwards, too. Maybe that conception will sink in and something come from it.

It is not a necessity, however.

Jean, I imagine you are able to steer your way around some metaphors in the Bible! I like how you brought together the various ways of dying. The 'backwards' creation, and the reverse side of impermanence (impermanence is most often examined in terms of what we lose) are important to note in IIDHYL imo because if God - or if the ever-changing, conditional universe - had not created (or contained) and sustained us, He/it would not 'have' - - our love to make it real. He/it is singing back at us, from His point of view. If that song is God's concession towards the treaty.

But when we get into the area of time going backwards and forwards, my mind gets nicely boggled, and I will be continuing to digest your intriguing post about the lock and key but cannot add anything.

I really like what you said here:

What we can do is: live inside our world, be it real or illusory or whatever. We can testify our mutual reality, like Muslims and Jehova's Witnesses testify God's existence. With the risk of wrong testimony, be it knowingly and on purpose, or be it because our perception and memory play tricks on us.
Or else we can make each other real by love (as opposed to personal desire). With no risk: it is not possible to give wrong love.

Now if a fool, a dreamer, forgets to dream this dream inside a dream to reality, that is not really a catastrophe — if he is not alone...

A few thoughts about Traveling Light:

There is a precedent for speaking from a scientific viewpoint in OI: "A thread of light/ A particle a wave". We may be in the territory of E = mc2.

Also reference the realisation of dear departed ~greg when we were discussing You are Right Sahara:

such a One spins in the Blazing Fire of Changes, embodying all the transformations, one after the other, and then beginning again, and then ending again, 86,000 times a second.

"86,000 times a second"?
--maybe a mangled reference to the speed of light,
--since it's pretty close to 186,000 miles/second

Is Leonard Cohen, nothing now, traveling (at the speed of) light? I understand that mathematics is the best language in which to describe how the universe operates (and a binary code comes into it somewhere I think, although 0/1 rather than "one or two" perhaps?). Any scientists on the forum?

My once so bright
My fallen star

'Fallen star' could have a number of meanings. Fallen as in 'sinner', or as in the war fallen; a deceased soldier. And Leonard of course was once a star, a rock star of the highest order. (For us he still is of course, but he has probably moved on.)

I guess I'm just
Somebody who
Has given up
On the me and you

He has now given up on the me and you - the separate "I" that wants an answer outside itself; given up hope and traveled to the end of love. We may still be waiting, but now, for the narrator perhaps, the darkness is the light:

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing

There is more to say, including about the double "goodnight", but I am out of time.

Please excuse any nonsense here-within.


Just have to say that Traveling Light reminds me of this wonderful Rilke poem in particular:


Buddha In Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed, and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
all beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.


Edit:

Jean Fournell's own translation:

Buddha in Glory

Centre of all centres, core of kernels,
almond, self-enclosing, sweetening, –
this entirety to all the stars, this
is your fruit's flesh: Hail to you.

See, you feel: now nothing clings to you;
in the infinite is where your shell is,
and there stands the strong sap with its urge.
And a radiance helps it from the outside,

for in utmost heights your suns are being
– full and ardent – turned around.
Yet in you is launched already
what persists beyond the suns.

You quote Stephen Mitchell's version of that Rilke poem, where Mitchell tries to reproduce rhyme and rhythm to the detriment of meaning.


Buddha in der Glorie

Mitte aller Mitten, Kern der Kerne,
Mandel, die sich einschließt und versüßt, –
dieses Alles bis an alle Sterne
ist dein Fruchtfleisch: Sei gegrüßt.

Sieh, du fühlst, wie nichts mehr an dir hängt;
im Unendlichen ist deine Schale,
und dort steht der starke Saft und drängt.
Und von außen hilft ihm ein Gestrahle,

denn ganz oben werden deine Sonnen
voll und glühend umgedreht.
Doch in dir ist schon begonnen,
was die Sonnen übersteht.



Buddha in Glory

Centre of all centres, core of kernels,
almond, self-enclosing, sweetening, –
this entirety to all the stars, this
is your fruit's flesh: Hail to you.

See, you feel: now nothing clings to you;
in the infinite is where your shell is,
and there stands the strong sap with its urge.
And a radiance helps it from the outside,

for in utmost heights your suns are being
– full and ardent – turned around.
Yet in you is launched already
what persists beyond the suns.

●

(Twice "... to you", ending the subsequent lines S1L4 and S2L1 – but the rhythm is reproduced. And the first one can be left out.)

Among other things, Rilke has a nice go at the outside-the-universe paradox, which Mitchell passes over in silence, except in S1L2-3 where he gets it wrong: Rilke does not say beyond the stars.

The almond becomes all-there-is (but not more!), its shell in endlessness (but not beyond!).
And then Rilke makes us believe in S2L3 that "there" ("dort" – "over there") refers to the infinite where the shell is, and that thus in S2L4 he falls into the paradox with his "radiance ... from the outside" – only in order to reveal, in S3L1-2, that he has swapped from the infinitely big to the infinitely small: to life inside the sap inside the germ inside the flesh inside the shell which is a big/small almond inside the universe.
And in S3L3-4 he sweeps the whole koan off the table, solved.

In S2L4, the rendition "radiance" for "Gestrahle" is barely acceptable, but there is no better alternative.
Rilke coins this word on the pattern of "tuen / das Getue", parallel to the English "to do / the ado", which carries a pejorative connotation; and in German several such constructions exist. Here it would be "to beam / the abeam", some mindless and haphazard beaming of light all over the place. It is by happenchance that this warmth helps the germination, not intentionally.

The expression "werden ... umgedreht" in S3L1-2 is the passive of umdrehen. That's what you do with cards lying face down on the table when you want to see their value, or what you do with a spy when you make him a double agent.
Here it can hardly be the suns themselves which are being turned around (there is not more radiance on one side than on the other). It is rather one half of their light (emanating on the far side) being bent "backwards", towards the almond, by an unmentioned agent – or maybe even reflected by the "borderline" between All and Nothing...

Rilke solves this koan in Yin-Yang fashion: The infinitely small inside the infinitely big, like the infinitely big inside the infinitely small. This Yin-Yang should be seen in three dimensions, in a ball; and not in two dimensions, in a circle. My poor spatial representation faculties cause my mind to boggle, as you might call it, if I try to imagine such a Yin-Yang – but I'm afraid the Yin-Yang doesn't care.

The last two lines of the poem: into a locked two-dimensional time continuum (eternity and potentiality), passing time is introduced, thus completing the continuum to its three dimensions and unlocking the whole setup. This would have been another possible solution, too, as it is to many koans, but here it seems rather like a completely new start.
And outlasting suns is not paradoxical, of course. Scientists know of many dead and dying suns.

[lizzytysh]

It is so good to see the old regulars gathering around Leonard's latest album, analyzing in depth, as it was with the Book of Mercy; and to see Jean have satisfied what she first expressed upon her arrival, a strong desire to participate in exactly that kind of activity here.

I've only read this last page as of now, but it promises to be rewarding and gratifying. Thank you to all of you who are taking the time to express your thoughts and views on Leonard's forever complex, multi-layered, and deep work.

[I've just read a bit of the preceding page and agree with what Stuart84 has said, regarding Leonard's prophetic nature. This album, You Want It Darker, appears to me to be prophetic, as well... and I was grateful that his passing was the day before vs the day after our election here. I believe that, at minimum, a subliminal level Leonard recognized the current arc of our society and was not pleased.]


~ Lizzie

[Diane]

[I've just read a bit of the preceding page and agree with what Stuart84 has said, regarding Leonard's prophetic nature. This album, You Want It Darker, appears to me to be prophetic, as well... and I was grateful that his passing was the day before vs the day after our election here. I believe that, at minimum, a subliminal level Leonard recognized the current arc of our society and was not pleased.]
~ Lizzie

"And say the Mea Culpa, which you've probably forgot." is the line that stands out for me in that regard.

Hello Lizzy. Nice to see you. Take care.

[Jean Fournell]

Just to keep the concepts clear:
The French name Jean is the male version of the female name Jeanne.