[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>> > That you wore for the world to look through.   
   >>> > The lover seeks the advice of a doctor who proves as frail as he,   
   >>> > locking "himself in a library shelf" with the details of their honey-   
   >>> > moon. He then visits a saint who teaches "that the duty of lovers is   
   >>> > to tarnish the golden rule," but the saint too proves frail. Reports   
   >>> > the lover,   
   >>> > And just when I was sure   
   >>> > That his teachings were pure   
   >>> > He drowned himself in the pool,   
   >>> > His body is gone, but back here on the lawn   
   >>> > His spirit continues to drool.   
   >>> > Nevertheless, our poor lover cannot learn by these sordid, possessive,   
   >>> > lascivious, and self-destroying examples and remains as blindly   
   >>> > masochistic as ever, as the last stanza demonstrates.   
   >>> > An Eskimo showed me a movie   
   >>> > He'd recently taken of you   
   >>> > The poor man could hardly stop shivering,   
   >>> > His lips and his fingers were blue.   
   >>> > I suppose that he froze   
   >>> > When the wind took your clothes   
   >>> > And I guess he just never got warm   
   >>> > But you stand there so nice   
   >>> > In your blizzard of ice   
   >>> > O please let me come into the storm.   
   >>> > The thing that all lovers must learn in Cohen's songs is how to say   
   >>> > goodbye, not because parting is good for its own sake but because ties   
   >>> > seem to Cohen to keep people from fulfilling their eesential manhood   
   >>> > or womanhood. Change is imperative for fulfillment in Cohen's   
   >>> > precarious world, and ties inhibit change, as is indicated by the song   
   >>> > "That's No Way to Say Goodbye."   
   >>> >   
   >>> > I'm not looking for another   
   >>> > As I wander in my time,   
   >>> > Walk me to the corner   
   >>> > Our steps will always rhyme,   
   >>> > You know my love goes with you   
   >>> > As your love stays with me,   
   >>> > It's just the way it changes   
   >>> > Like the shoreline and the sea.   
   >>> > Cohen's most energetic condemnation of possessiveness in love is found   
   >>> > in "Master Song," a song about the poet's old sweetheart, who is   
   >>> > perhaps a personification of poetry herself, who has now come under   
   >>> > the control of an autocratic master. This new master is associated   
   >>> > throughout the song with images of violence and oppression: he is a   
   >>> > man "who had just come back from the war," who has given the woman "a   
   >>> > German shepherd to walk / With a collar of Ieather and nails," who   
   >>> > flies an aeroplane "without any hands," who "killed the lights in a   
   >>> > lonely lane" and made love to the woman in the guise of "an ape with   
   >>> > angel glands" to "the music of rubber bands." And in turn the woman   
   >>> > keeps the poet himself prisoner, not ever bringing herself to him, not   
   >>> > even bringing to him a sacramental surrogate of "wine and bread." This   
   >>> > song is one of intense disappointment and frustration, and is filled   
   >>> > with images of sterility and despair.   
   >>> > However, love does remain in the songs of Leonard Cohen the major   
   >>> > remedy to the callous possessiveness of our society. Cohen's song   
   >>> > "Suzanne" seems on one level to be another escape-through- drugs song   
   >>> > such as Dylan's "Mr Tambourine Man" or the Beatles' "Lucy in the Sky   
   >>> > with Diamonds." But, as in this latter song, the escape is   
   >>> > ambivalently both female and hallucinogenic, and the speaker's entry   
   >>> > into the escape is clearly an entry into a love experience, so that   
   >>> > the song tells us simultaneously both that to turn on is to love and   
   >>> > that love is a turn-on. Even on first meeting the exotic Suzanne,   
   >>> > Cohen tells us, you will know   
   >>> > That you've always been her lover   
   >>> > And you want to travel with her   
   >>> > And you want to trave! blind   
   >>> > And you think maybe you'll trust her   
   >>> > For you've touched her perfect body with your mind.   
   >>> > As your experience with Suzanne deepens, he continues, you will want   
   >>> > not only to travel blind with her but also to walk upon the water with   
   >>> > the dead Jesus. By the end of the poem Suzanne has raised all the   
   >>> > various contradictory realities of this would-"the garbage and the   
   >>> > flowers"-to beauty, and has even through love brought ourselves to   
   >>> > perfection-"for she's touched your perfect body with her mind." A   
   >>> > further noteworthy aspect of Suzanne is that she can be approached or   
   >>> > abandoned at will-"you can spend the night beside her" (my italics);   
   >>> > both as an hallucinogenic and as a woman she acts only as a "sister of   
   >>> > mercy" and never as the grasping spouse.   
   >>> > The Cohen song where love serves most obviously as a panacea for   
   >>> > society's demand that one control, discipline, and enslave one's   
   >>> > environment and fellow man is the difficult and unpublished song,   
   >>> > "Love Tries to Call You by Your Name." Cohen's basic assumption in   
   >>> > this song is that in surrender to the materialism and generalism of   
   >>> > society one also surrenders one's personal identity. Only love, as the   
   >>> > title states, "tries to call you by your name." The song opens with   
   >>> > the speaker slowly losing himself in something much larger and less   
   >>> > real than he himself is.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > I thought it would never happen   
   >>> > To all the people that I became   
   >>> > My body lost in these legends   
   >>> > And the beast so very tame   
   >>> > But here, right here   
   >>> > Between the birthmark and the stain   
   >>> > Between the ocean and the rain   
   >>> > Between the snowman and the rain   
   >>> > Once again and again   
   >>> > Love tries to call you by your name.   
   >>> > From the wholeness and integrity of the ocean to the fragmentary   
   >>> > realities of the drops of rain, from the monolithic existence of the   
   >>> > snowman to the destructive rain which fragments that snowman, from the   
   >>> > birthmark which, when positively interpreted symbolises one's unique   
   >>> > being, to the birthmark pejoratively interpreted which now represents   
   >>> > a stain or blemish on the norm of general humanity, the speaker finds   
   >>> > himself pulled, while the "beast" of his individuality grows tamer and   
   >>> > love weakly calls on him to return.   
   >>> > Succeeding verses amplify Cohen's image of the man who is drawn into   
   >>> > self-annihilation and away from self-realization, a man much like the   
   >>> > "dealer" of "The Stranger Song." Such a man claws at "the halls of   
   >>> > fame," lives for "the age" rather than "the hour," for "the plain"   
   >>> > rather than "the sundial," and prefers the banality of the commonplace   
   >>> > to the demanding particularity of genuine love.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > I leave the lady meditating on the very love   
   >>> > Which I do not wish to claim   
   >>> > I journey down these hundred steps   
   >>> > The street is still the same.   
   >>> > He abandons real lovers, real heroes, to follow society's broad high-   
   >>> > way to mediocrity, vulgarity, self-indulgence, and anonymity.   
   >>> > Especially here in this song it is self-indulgence which betrays the   
   >>> > indi- vidual away from the difficulties of one's own fulfillment and   
   >>> > into the easy chains of conformity.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > Where are you Judy, where are you Ann   
   >>> > Where are all the paths all your heroes came   
   >>> > Wondering out loud as the bandage pulls away   
   >>> > Was I only limping or   
   >>> > Was I really lame;   
   >>> > O here, come over here   
   >>> > Between the windmill and the grain   
   >>> > Between the traitor and her pain   
   >>> > Between the sundial and the plain   
   >>> > Between the newsreel and your tiny pain   
   >>> > Between the snowmen and the rain   
   >>> > Once again and again   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)