Popular Problems-"The Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man"
Posted: Tue Oct 07, 2014 4:17 am
I think I know why Leonard wanted this particular image of himself on the cover of “Popular Problems.”
This Yeats verse:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul claps its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress.
I was worried that it might take me getting used to Popular Problems for many listenings, but I’ve loved it from the start. I know I have talked about Leon Edel’s essay, “Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man”-Edel who introduced the young poet Cohen at the 92nd Street Y and who was himself a Canadian and a McGill graduate. But this album made me re-visit the essay and there is so much truth to what Edel wrote about the aging dilemma. Edel first starts out in his essay talking about the 80 year old Goethe and a conversation that he had with Johann Eckermann on a journey who looking at the landscape said that nature was filled with good intentions. But one had to admit, nature is not always so beautiful. And he describes the oak trees how their early life and conditions controls their aging beauty. He describes the perfect oak-it grows in sandy soil where it spreads its roots comfortably in every direction; it needs space in which to feel on all sides the effect of sun, wind, rain, and light. “If it grows up snugly sheltered from wind and weather,” said Goethe, “it becomes nothing. But a century’s struggle with the elements makes it strong and powerful, so that at its full growth, its presence inspires us with astonishment and admiration.”
I think Leonard is one of those magnificent oaks!
I certainly don’t have perfect insight into this album, but as Leonard says in one song, “It was good, it wasn’t boring.”
Leonard’s style has certainly become different. In his early songs there was a rich romantic lyricism. Leonard worked hard to describe things in terms that were fresh and lyrical and filled with “wearing rags and feathers,” “heroes in the seaweed,” “children in the morning.” As he has aged the words he uses from the steamer trunk of his experience have become more raw, more warty, more covered with liver spots. In looking through the lyrics of Popular Problems, I notice, old/dead/murder/rage/torture/bridge of misery/smokers/prisoners/jail. Things are no longer made ethereal. Henry James wrote, “Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” And aging for Leonard is still an act of life and art.
In Slow Leonard uses reversals of expectations.
I never liked it fast
Your want to get there soon
I want to get there last
Last instead of sooner or slower or eventually etc. The rhythms are tight, the rhymes are fun and interesting the music appropriate. Ok, speaking of the music, many folks are disappointed first in Patrick Leonard, then the production etc. Edel speaks of this in his essay how with aging spontaneity disappears. There are always expediencies. In my own case my wife has to drive at night. When Henry James developed writers cramp, he learned to dictate directly to the typewriter. Patrick Leonard can provide a musical scenario much quicker than Leonard could and yet, Leonard still had approval power. Nothing was released that he hadn’t put his imprimatur on.
Almost Like the Blues continues the careful rhythm and rhyme patterns. Of course, the favorite humorous line, “And all my bad reviews.” We are introduced again to his Jewish history and again the notion of “G-d in Heaven” and salvation. The words like “frozen” and “rot” interposed with “chosen” and the parental debate add richness and history to what becomes more than just a clever phrase.
Samson in New Orleans is one of my favorite cuts on the album. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. You can carry an open liquor bottle on the street-girls without blouses greeted us having only painted their chests to look like clothing and asked for a dollar to have our picture taken with them.
You said you loved her secrets
And her freedoms hid away
She was better than America
That’s what I heard you say
On a continuum of freedom New Orleans is on the liberty end. Now why would Samson want to take “this temple down?” Are the most libertine of Americans associated with the Philistines? Where is Delilah and what has her cutting of Samson’s hair had to do with this scenario? Who are the killers? There is enough mystery in this song to keep me going for a long time. Plus I just love the hymn-like quality to the music and Leonard’s voice.
Leonard said he’s been working on A Street since 9/11. This is another masterpiece of rhythm and rhyme-we’ve had the previous version-so we are able to ponder the changes. He re-introduces the image of himself left with the dishes and the baby in the bath that he introduced in Undertow and states that “i’ve landed on my feet.” I hope that someone will do a comparison of the two versions. I loved the first version and I’m tempted to think that Leonard overthought this, but he is generally correct in his revisions.
Did I Ever Love You is also one of my favorite songs on the album. I love his Tom Waits voice and I love the repetition of the chorus. I am deeply indebted to Diane for pointing out the poem that contains the lines:
[...] why do you lean me here
Lord of my life
lean me at this table
in the middle of the night
wondering
how to be beautiful
It reminds me how confused I was listening to “Coming Back to You” thinking it was a song about a girl and then realizing that it was about Leonard’s relationship with his version of “G-d.” Now instead of a mis-understanding about repentance, the song becomes such a raw, un-repentant argument about a relationship that at least’s from Leonard’s viewpoint needs to be “settled.” Thank you to dear Elizabeth who pointed out the reference to Lemon Trees/Almond Trees in Leonard’s earlier poetry. In looking at the booklet that comes with PP, I’m on the page that has Did I Ever Love You and it shows Leonard with his whole tool box out polishing his shoes. “And is it still raining, back in November?” This backward look probably encompasses the most touching points of Leonard’s life. I certainly don’t know them, but anyone who is crying out, “Is it ever settled, is it ever over’ knows the right questions to ask. This is a very touching song. The image of Leonard and G-d leaning across the old table is magnificent.
In My Oh My I have to point something out. One of my favorite literary professors replied one time to a young man who said, “You know this doesn’t really strike any chords with me.” My dear professor said, “Well, why don’t you try to see it through the author’s eyes instead of our through your own.” This was great advice, but I still think that there is value in seeing a great artists work in the perspective of their own lives. In our case it was losing a couple of grandchildren and having a good friend who is a good poet write a poem based on an off hand remark that I made. This song so closely captures the despair and consequent joy of having a life experience “Held you for a little while.” All I can say is “My Oh My .”
Nevermind is the beginning of the master works of this album. As I alluded to earlier, it is the struggles that an artist has that often defines the quality of their later artistic life. Nevermind is a caustic version of the never ending story of the results of the Babylonian Captivity. How does one operate in a culture that one, is not one’s own culture, two, goes against many of the principles of the native culture and three, demands that many of these principles are needed to survive.
I think this song has early roots in many songs like “Story of Isaac,” “The Butcher” and “By the Rivers Dark.”
If I had to guess, I would suspect that the concert in Tel Aviv brought many of these issues to a head. There was so much pressure on Leonard to perform or not perform when he (at least in my mind) had really good intentions. This song also contains such wonderful late imagery. “The Sweet Indifference/Some call Love” “The High Indifferance/Some call Fate.” and so “Intimate.” Blood and dust now that reach across this ancient landscape where Leonard says that his children’s graves are safe from ghosts like you.
This is a great song.
Which brings us to Born in Chains, the song that he has worked on for 40 years, the song that at one point became,
I stumbled out of bed
I got ready for the struggle
I smoked a cigarette
And I tightened up my gut
I said this can't be me
Must be my double
And I can't forget, I can't forget
I can't forget but I don't remember what
He has spoken about the difficulties of relaying his theology and how indeterminate it is. But what a beautiful song! Again, speaking from the perspective of a tender human facing life’s difficulties. I found myself with Anne in Salzburg in 2009 with a great group of friends. Jarkko said before the show, “We may hear ‘Born in Chains’ tonight!” We did and the words,
Pursued by the riders
Of a cruel and dark regime
But the waters parted
And my soul crossed over
Out of Egypt
Out of Pharaoh’s dream
brought me back to my dying friend, Bonnie who had been battling cancer for many years. She was released from her struggles shortly after our trip and her soul did cross over out of Pharaoh’s dream.
The imagery in this song haunts back to his early years-“sensual illusion,” “a sweet unknowing,” and “bitter liquor sweetened from the hammered cup.” It is a beautiful heartfelt song and without any irony. How difficult for any of us 21st century people to say these kinds of words. It is not so much that Leonard has a deep faith but that the questions of our little lives offer so much to those who are willing to ask them. It as if Leonard has lived his life to be strengthened by the insights and fortitude of experience and can now accept the incomplete. Age leaves a great deal unsaid, what is said is an achieved simplicity.
This leaves Leonard’s last song, You Got Me Singing.
Like Yeats’ he sang. He is singing the tatters of the indignities that have been heaped upon him like the reputation of an old scold destined for a bedsit. Or for a clueless scholar who is shaken down by a bad business agent. Or one who only has a few friends on an old newsgroup dedicated to the 35 people still interested in his work. Or a bad monk who gets by because he cooks well and entertains the head monk.
This song has it all. It has Alex’s violin. It has the wonderful chorus of the new girls who sing with him. It has pardon and the desire to carry on-it has the hope of a new tour from an 80 year old artist who is a great oak.
Here is the end of Edel’s essay:
“They acknowledge despair, they acknowledge their instincts and their feelings, and grow old without the rigidities of aging. Within the tattered coat upon a stick there is a radiance-the same radiance as in the self-portraits of Rembrandt grown old.
Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
and, as you travel, say again with Montaigne, “It is not the arrival, it it the journey which matters.”
This Yeats verse:
An aged man is but a paltry thing,
A tattered coat upon a stick, unless
Soul claps its hands and sing, and louder sing
For every tatter in its mortal dress.
I was worried that it might take me getting used to Popular Problems for many listenings, but I’ve loved it from the start. I know I have talked about Leon Edel’s essay, “Portrait of the Artist as an Old Man”-Edel who introduced the young poet Cohen at the 92nd Street Y and who was himself a Canadian and a McGill graduate. But this album made me re-visit the essay and there is so much truth to what Edel wrote about the aging dilemma. Edel first starts out in his essay talking about the 80 year old Goethe and a conversation that he had with Johann Eckermann on a journey who looking at the landscape said that nature was filled with good intentions. But one had to admit, nature is not always so beautiful. And he describes the oak trees how their early life and conditions controls their aging beauty. He describes the perfect oak-it grows in sandy soil where it spreads its roots comfortably in every direction; it needs space in which to feel on all sides the effect of sun, wind, rain, and light. “If it grows up snugly sheltered from wind and weather,” said Goethe, “it becomes nothing. But a century’s struggle with the elements makes it strong and powerful, so that at its full growth, its presence inspires us with astonishment and admiration.”
I think Leonard is one of those magnificent oaks!
I certainly don’t have perfect insight into this album, but as Leonard says in one song, “It was good, it wasn’t boring.”
Leonard’s style has certainly become different. In his early songs there was a rich romantic lyricism. Leonard worked hard to describe things in terms that were fresh and lyrical and filled with “wearing rags and feathers,” “heroes in the seaweed,” “children in the morning.” As he has aged the words he uses from the steamer trunk of his experience have become more raw, more warty, more covered with liver spots. In looking through the lyrics of Popular Problems, I notice, old/dead/murder/rage/torture/bridge of misery/smokers/prisoners/jail. Things are no longer made ethereal. Henry James wrote, “Art makes life, makes interest, makes importance.” And aging for Leonard is still an act of life and art.
In Slow Leonard uses reversals of expectations.
I never liked it fast
Your want to get there soon
I want to get there last
Last instead of sooner or slower or eventually etc. The rhythms are tight, the rhymes are fun and interesting the music appropriate. Ok, speaking of the music, many folks are disappointed first in Patrick Leonard, then the production etc. Edel speaks of this in his essay how with aging spontaneity disappears. There are always expediencies. In my own case my wife has to drive at night. When Henry James developed writers cramp, he learned to dictate directly to the typewriter. Patrick Leonard can provide a musical scenario much quicker than Leonard could and yet, Leonard still had approval power. Nothing was released that he hadn’t put his imprimatur on.
Almost Like the Blues continues the careful rhythm and rhyme patterns. Of course, the favorite humorous line, “And all my bad reviews.” We are introduced again to his Jewish history and again the notion of “G-d in Heaven” and salvation. The words like “frozen” and “rot” interposed with “chosen” and the parental debate add richness and history to what becomes more than just a clever phrase.
Samson in New Orleans is one of my favorite cuts on the album. New Orleans is one of my favorite cities. You can carry an open liquor bottle on the street-girls without blouses greeted us having only painted their chests to look like clothing and asked for a dollar to have our picture taken with them.
You said you loved her secrets
And her freedoms hid away
She was better than America
That’s what I heard you say
On a continuum of freedom New Orleans is on the liberty end. Now why would Samson want to take “this temple down?” Are the most libertine of Americans associated with the Philistines? Where is Delilah and what has her cutting of Samson’s hair had to do with this scenario? Who are the killers? There is enough mystery in this song to keep me going for a long time. Plus I just love the hymn-like quality to the music and Leonard’s voice.
Leonard said he’s been working on A Street since 9/11. This is another masterpiece of rhythm and rhyme-we’ve had the previous version-so we are able to ponder the changes. He re-introduces the image of himself left with the dishes and the baby in the bath that he introduced in Undertow and states that “i’ve landed on my feet.” I hope that someone will do a comparison of the two versions. I loved the first version and I’m tempted to think that Leonard overthought this, but he is generally correct in his revisions.
Did I Ever Love You is also one of my favorite songs on the album. I love his Tom Waits voice and I love the repetition of the chorus. I am deeply indebted to Diane for pointing out the poem that contains the lines:
[...] why do you lean me here
Lord of my life
lean me at this table
in the middle of the night
wondering
how to be beautiful
It reminds me how confused I was listening to “Coming Back to You” thinking it was a song about a girl and then realizing that it was about Leonard’s relationship with his version of “G-d.” Now instead of a mis-understanding about repentance, the song becomes such a raw, un-repentant argument about a relationship that at least’s from Leonard’s viewpoint needs to be “settled.” Thank you to dear Elizabeth who pointed out the reference to Lemon Trees/Almond Trees in Leonard’s earlier poetry. In looking at the booklet that comes with PP, I’m on the page that has Did I Ever Love You and it shows Leonard with his whole tool box out polishing his shoes. “And is it still raining, back in November?” This backward look probably encompasses the most touching points of Leonard’s life. I certainly don’t know them, but anyone who is crying out, “Is it ever settled, is it ever over’ knows the right questions to ask. This is a very touching song. The image of Leonard and G-d leaning across the old table is magnificent.
In My Oh My I have to point something out. One of my favorite literary professors replied one time to a young man who said, “You know this doesn’t really strike any chords with me.” My dear professor said, “Well, why don’t you try to see it through the author’s eyes instead of our through your own.” This was great advice, but I still think that there is value in seeing a great artists work in the perspective of their own lives. In our case it was losing a couple of grandchildren and having a good friend who is a good poet write a poem based on an off hand remark that I made. This song so closely captures the despair and consequent joy of having a life experience “Held you for a little while.” All I can say is “My Oh My .”
Nevermind is the beginning of the master works of this album. As I alluded to earlier, it is the struggles that an artist has that often defines the quality of their later artistic life. Nevermind is a caustic version of the never ending story of the results of the Babylonian Captivity. How does one operate in a culture that one, is not one’s own culture, two, goes against many of the principles of the native culture and three, demands that many of these principles are needed to survive.
I think this song has early roots in many songs like “Story of Isaac,” “The Butcher” and “By the Rivers Dark.”
If I had to guess, I would suspect that the concert in Tel Aviv brought many of these issues to a head. There was so much pressure on Leonard to perform or not perform when he (at least in my mind) had really good intentions. This song also contains such wonderful late imagery. “The Sweet Indifference/Some call Love” “The High Indifferance/Some call Fate.” and so “Intimate.” Blood and dust now that reach across this ancient landscape where Leonard says that his children’s graves are safe from ghosts like you.
This is a great song.
Which brings us to Born in Chains, the song that he has worked on for 40 years, the song that at one point became,
I stumbled out of bed
I got ready for the struggle
I smoked a cigarette
And I tightened up my gut
I said this can't be me
Must be my double
And I can't forget, I can't forget
I can't forget but I don't remember what
He has spoken about the difficulties of relaying his theology and how indeterminate it is. But what a beautiful song! Again, speaking from the perspective of a tender human facing life’s difficulties. I found myself with Anne in Salzburg in 2009 with a great group of friends. Jarkko said before the show, “We may hear ‘Born in Chains’ tonight!” We did and the words,
Pursued by the riders
Of a cruel and dark regime
But the waters parted
And my soul crossed over
Out of Egypt
Out of Pharaoh’s dream
brought me back to my dying friend, Bonnie who had been battling cancer for many years. She was released from her struggles shortly after our trip and her soul did cross over out of Pharaoh’s dream.
The imagery in this song haunts back to his early years-“sensual illusion,” “a sweet unknowing,” and “bitter liquor sweetened from the hammered cup.” It is a beautiful heartfelt song and without any irony. How difficult for any of us 21st century people to say these kinds of words. It is not so much that Leonard has a deep faith but that the questions of our little lives offer so much to those who are willing to ask them. It as if Leonard has lived his life to be strengthened by the insights and fortitude of experience and can now accept the incomplete. Age leaves a great deal unsaid, what is said is an achieved simplicity.
This leaves Leonard’s last song, You Got Me Singing.
Like Yeats’ he sang. He is singing the tatters of the indignities that have been heaped upon him like the reputation of an old scold destined for a bedsit. Or for a clueless scholar who is shaken down by a bad business agent. Or one who only has a few friends on an old newsgroup dedicated to the 35 people still interested in his work. Or a bad monk who gets by because he cooks well and entertains the head monk.
This song has it all. It has Alex’s violin. It has the wonderful chorus of the new girls who sing with him. It has pardon and the desire to carry on-it has the hope of a new tour from an 80 year old artist who is a great oak.
Here is the end of Edel’s essay:
“They acknowledge despair, they acknowledge their instincts and their feelings, and grow old without the rigidities of aging. Within the tattered coat upon a stick there is a radiance-the same radiance as in the self-portraits of Rembrandt grown old.
Endure what life God gives and ask no longer span;
Cease to remember the delights of youth, travel-wearied aged man;
and, as you travel, say again with Montaigne, “It is not the arrival, it it the journey which matters.”
