With its opening song, and reminiscing themes, this album could probably have been entitled "Bringing It All Back Home," if someone else hadn't thought of it first.
Can old ideas sometimes be an advance on current ones? There's a certain audacity in entitling your new album "Old Ideas" and expecting it to be thought sufficiently novel as to sell in decent numbers. Slicer wonders whether the notion behind it is that the ideas inspiring the work on the album are old, or that they're the creation of a man who's conscious of his advancing age, and that there's a limit to how much further it can advance.
It's foolhardy to claim to know what's going on in the mind of an artist when they create their work but, since part of the beauty of art lies in its interpretation, Slicer risks doing some interpreting. At the very least it's legitimate to view art in relationship to a variety of contexts eg artistic, spiritual (in the widest sense of the word), historical, societal, referential to other writing, and what's known of the artist. On the latter, Cohen is a practising Jew who has also adopted Zen Buddhist practices, which he sees as not in conflict with his faith. His music has long been filled with religious and cultural imagery. At times he has something of an Old Testament prophet about him... he sets out his stall challenging society's assumptions and norms, dreaming of a better way... and his visionary capability isn't in decline, judging by this effort.
The opening song is Going Home:
"He will speak these words of wisdom
Like a sage, a man of vision
Though he knows he's really nothing
But the brief elaboration of a tube"
Cohen seems to be agreeing with other talented folk that the songwriter is a sort of conduit, and can't take a load of credit for his output.
Don Was, legendary music producer who has worked with many talented artists, commented on songwriters: "If there’s anything they have in common—the greatest ones—it’s that they have no idea where the songs come from."
Randy Newman's one of them, and said of his own work "I don’t know where the songs come from."
Dylan: "I don't know how I got to write those songs. Those early songs were almost magically written."
Mark Knopfler: "I never know where the songs come from. It is still a mystery.''
Cohen's saying it more poetically, though, and he goes further - this song seems to be a narrative from the perspective of the ultimate source/author of the song, for whom "Leonard" is a conduit. In case you think Slicer's dreaming himself, note Cohen's reply when he was asked where his songs come from: "If I knew, I'd go there more often."
There's also wry humour - that Leonard has profited sufficiently from the process of speaking someone else's words to be able to dress himself up in a suit, and look like he actually works for a living:
"I love to speak with Leonard
He's a sportsman and a shepherd
He's a lazy bastard
Living in a suit."
There is a sense of resignation throughout the song, of going off to some place without sorrow, where things are better, and where there is no more pretence of who we are. On the face of it
"Going home without my burden
Going home behind the curtain"
doesn't make a whole lot of sense, and is way short of Cohen's usual lyrical standard - if it's taken to mean that he's going back to his pad to enjoy staring at the chintz hanging over his front door. Given his Jewish background, of course, the curtain takes on a whole new significance; given his Jewish background*, it's surprising that he feels it's possible to go behind the curtain, much less see that location as home.
It seems Lenny doesn't have lofty expectations of his love songs - he doesn't aspire that they fix the world. Each is just "a manual for living with defeat, a cry above the suffering." In this at least he's consistent over the years, having previously defined Love as "a cold and broken 'Hallelujah'" rather than a victory march.
Amen
"Tell me again when the filth of the butcher
Is washed in the blood of the lamb
Tell me again when the rest of the culture
Has passed through the Eye of the Camp."
The filth of the butcher could be a statement on those butchering humans just as easily as a pro-vegetarian stance. The "Eye of the Camp" is a puzzling phrase. Is it a reference to Holocaust and the injustice of concentration camps? Or is Lenny suggesting that the rest of society needs to see the world through the eyes of those of a particular sexual orientation/those given to a particular way of dressing, speaking or behaving? Or could it instead be derived from the notion of a camel passing through the eye of a needle? The latter is a New Testament reference to how difficult it was/is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and has had some less abstract interpretations eg the (unverified) suggestion that it was the name of a particular low gateway in Jerusalem through which camels could only pass by getting onto their knees, stripped of their baggage. The eye of the needle metaphor was used in ancient Jewish texts too for several purposes.
Slicer has no idea how long ago this song was written, but is intrigued by the possibility that the Eye of the Camp is a reference to the Occupy Movement setting up camp to protest at a culture which fosters the greed of rich men in large companies. Maybe the Eye of the Camp is a modern day Eye of the Needle - a watchful eye, and one which requires a humbling of the privileged.
The chorus has a world weary feel:
"Tell me again
When I've seen through the horror
Tell me again
Tell me over and over
Tell me you love me then
Amen"
Regardless of what Eye of the Camp signifies, it seems that the singer isn't likely to be receptive to very much information, (including statements of how much he's wanted, desired or loved) until he's seen wrongs righted, justice done, and "victims singing."
Show Me the Place is another song pervaded by resignation - resignation to being a slave, to dependence, to station, to loving a higher authority from that lowly and constrained position. But the slave wants direction.
"Show me the place
Where you want your slave to go
Show me the place
Help me roll away the stone
Show me the place
I can't move this thing alone
Show me the place
Where the Word became a man
Show me the place where the suffering began."
So in addition to seeking direction, and unable to change his/her circumstances in the present, the slave in the song may have a model for obedience, and a refuge for empathy in suffering.
Darkness
Cohen has, somewhat unfairly, been stereotyped as the godfather of gloom. However, this one lives up to the stereotype.
"I got no future
I know my days are few
The present's not that pleasant
Just a lot of things to do
I thought the past would last me
But the darkness got that too."
What great rhymes and meter....
Anyhow is a request for forgiveness from a woman, despite the unlikelihood that it's available.
"Have mercy on me baby
After all I did confess
Even though you have to hate me
Could you hate me less?"
Crazy To Love You features the wonderful notion of a "souvenir heartache." The singer, despite the pain, can't bring himself to flee - but hasn't the energy to keep pursuing his passion.
"I'm tired of choosing desire
Been saved by a sweet fatigue
The gates of commitment unwired
And nobody trying to leave."
Come Healing, sitting where it does in the song sequence (when the album is allowed to be played as conceived, rather than dissected and dismembered!), functions as a salve to the world-weary wounds of the earlier songs.
"Oh gather up the brokenness
and bring it to me now..."
...and let the heavens hear it
The penitential hymn
Come healing of the spirit
Come healing of the limb."
Banjo is a curious account of a malevolent instrument, bobbing "on the dark infested sea." Slicer's not going to even BEGIN to try to interpret that one.
Lullaby, as the title suggests is a song of comfort "if your heart is torn."
Different Sides tackles the subject of division, and different perspectives or priorities, that are no less real despite the fact that the origin of the difference may be buried in the mists of time.
"We find ourselves on different sides
Of a line that nobody drew
Though it all may be one in the higher eye
Down here where we live it is two."
Artistically, there's no doubt that Cohen has ploughed his own furrow. Parts of this album have psalm-like qualities, parts are tender and comforting, helped in no small part by the rich deepness of the man's voice. There is a ferocious intimacy to the recording. There are exquisite images, and explorations of language use which are downright expeditionary in their venturing into uncharted territory. No doubt there are some who, using work such as Darkness, would want to continue to caricature Cohen's work as interminably depressing. Yet this is a man who sings in the first song here
"Going home without my sorrow
Going home sometime tomorrow
Going home to where it's better than before."
Instead of being depressing, Slicer sees it that in the midst of darkness, as the man himself put it elsewhere:
"There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in."
And, while the songwriter presents himself as a slave on this album, let's not forget his own alternative presentation of ploughing his own furrow:
"Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried, in my way, to be free."
* Slicer acknowledges very little insight into modern day Judaism - his perceptions here are influenced by Old Testament Judaism.
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