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I'm a bit obsessed with this song! (well - I played it for the first time 15 minutes ago, so its a very new obsession...)

Ideas about its meaning? I'm seeing religious significance...(as in many songs Cohen!)

Yes, I think there is some religious matter here, but deep and undefined. It's like a great wheel of experience turning slowly, with questions about the nature of God, or Fate, or Nature at the hub.

I love the voice in the background singing in Arabic. Awesome!

I just love this song. Each song you actually listen to on this album gets better and better with each hearing.

What is she saying in Arabic?

Two links that go a long way to answering my question:

http://drhguy.com/2014/09/23/leonard-co ... ems-album/

and Jean Fournell, elsewhere on this forum:

viewtopic.php?f=82&t=35390#p348189

Thanks folks.

I haven't much time now to analyze it fully, but here's what I think. It's about Islam. After WW1, where the Ottoman Empire fought against us and were defeated, we signed the Treaty of Versailles which broke up the Empire into arbitrary nation states, boarders which the Muslims don't recognize. The nation state is a western concept which we imposed on the Orient. We then, according to scholars like Edward Said, proceeded to analyze their culture from the perspective of the West, a process Said called Orientalism. He thought this process objectified and degraded them. However, their descendents live among us, and we are surprised when we hear that the English or American or French or other European kid next door has run off the join the Jihadis. They survive, their roots entwined across their diaspora. When I have a moment, I'll go through it line by line. In the meantime, I wonder if anyone else has ideas about this song within this context.

A friend of mine points out that the song can also be taken the other way around from what I outlined above: that it is written in the voice of the ghost of Western Civilization after our defeat by Islam.

From the first listening, I wondered if there is something wrong with my brain (please, no comment) because the songs flipped in another position in a middle of a paragraph, then it flipped back again.

I wonder if this has to do with his comments in the reviews and interviews regarding Popular Problems. That the only engine of survival is to understand, to bring into consciousness, that everybody is suffering.

He did not concluded anything about that.

But. If the whole humanity is suffering from the same reasons.

It feels like if people can find solutions (instead of scapegoats), that would be - wow - nice!

I kinda see christian themes - this idea that goodness and God are still "lurking" - even though we all tried to kill him (Jesus on the cross), even though evil is everywhere - he still is among us.

and to follow on from that - the line about them writing their memories/the stories (the gospels), and the stanza where he says he couldn't kill, he couldn't hate - its like in all the wretchedness there is some goodness lurking in this world.

makes me think of the movie "calvary" actually - anyone see it? it is AMAZING

If "Samson In New Orleans" is Part II of "On That Day" then "Nevermind" feels like the ghost of "First We Take Manhattan".

Has anyone compared the lyrics of Never Mind to those of The Partisan?

esthergoldberg wrote:Has anyone compared the lyrics of Never Mind to those of The Partisan?

I did think about a kinship at the first listening, in term of "warrior of the shadow" if you see what I mean.

Yeah, there are shadows of The Partisan too.

The poem version of Nevermind is featured on page 144 of Book of Longing.
Interesting he didn't include "No man can see/The vast design/Or who will be/Last of his kind.