[continued from previous message]   
      
   >>> > Love tries to call you by your name.   
   >>> > The world that Cohen perceives in his songs is consistently   
   >>> > materialistic, sordid, and corrupting. Saints become lechers, lovers   
   >>> > become masochists, Cadillacs spread poison gas. Love can become "some   
   >>> > dust in an old man's cuff" ("Master Song"). Priests can trample the   
   >>> > grass of the shrines which they sene ("Priests"). God himself says to   
   >>> > man:   
   >>> >   
   >>> > Sometimes I need you naked   
   >>> > Sometimes I need you wild   
   >>> > I need you to carry my children in   
   >>> > I need you to kill a child.   
   >>> > ("You Know Who I Am")   
   >>> > Cohen shows man in this world clinging to whatever solace the moment   
   >>> > offers. The cowardly grasp one thing forever; the bolder move from   
   >>> > narcotic to narcotic, from woman to woman. And in "The Old Revolution"   
   >>> > Cohen shows everyone surrendering to this "furnace" that is life.   
   >>> >   
   >>> > You who are broken by power   
   >>> > You who are absent all day   
   >>> > You who are kings for the sake of your children's story   
   >>> > The hand of your beggar is burdened down with money   
   >>> > The hand of your lover is clay   
   >>> > Into this furnace I ask you now to venture   
   >>> > You whom I cannot betray.   
   >>> > Cohen's is indeed a black world, illumined only by random loves, the   
   >>> > mystery of Suzanne, and the harsh light of the existential furnace.   
   >>> > Cohen has elsewhere been termed a "black romantic"-one who accepts the   
   >>> > evil and sordidness of this world and seeks revelation through   
   >>> > immersion in these. Such an interpretation of his work is certainly   
   >>> > supported by his songs. Dylan can be similarly interpreted,   
   >>> > particularly in view of his materialism's self-destruction, in such   
   >>> > songs as "A Hard Rain," as a gateway to Eden. Neither is an activist;   
   >>> > neither believes that utopia can be achieved through human action. And   
   >>> > both are thoroughly disinterested in purveying the old and simplistic   
   >>> > romantic lies whch so many of today's pop artists Donovan, the Bee   
   >>> > Gees, the Fifth Dimension, the Association consistently peddle. Both   
   >>> > instead try to do the poet's job present the world as the world   
   >>> > appears in the words and images which their separate visions demand.   
   >>> > Frank Davey, in Alphabet No. 17, December 1969   
   >>>   
   >>> I just read it again... ha ha.   
   >   
   >> I haven't read it in a few years but intend to when time permits.   
   >   
   >> :)   
   >   
   > Same here...!   
      
   Maybe in 2025.   
      
   🙂   
      
   --- SoupGate-DOS v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)