The following article originally appeared in the
Chicago Reader in late 1992.
It has been revised for these pages and is reprinted with permission.
The photograph of Leonard Cohen is by Mariano Brustio
and is reprinted with permission.

Leonard Cohen: The Future

by David Whiteis

AUTHOR'S NOTE: The following is a slightly revised version of an article that originally appeared in the Chicago Reader in late 1992. The astute observer will notice that some of the lyrics, as they appear here, are not necessarily word-for-word the same as they appear on original albums, or in the anthology Stranger Music. I used the most recent sources I could find at the time -- records and CDs; recollections from concerts I'd attended; the early-80s film, The Song Of Leonard Cohen. Since Leonard has a history of continually changing and adjusting his verses and lyrics, these sources may not jibe entirely with the reader's. In most cases -- with the possible and arguable exception of my quote from "I Tried To Leave You," which was taken from the film instead of either the original LP or any later anthology -- the words' original (or subsequent) meaning has not been changed or modified in any way.

Leonard Cohen is one of the few survivors from the great singer-songwriter scare of the 1960s who can still be counted on to create work that sounds fresh and provocative. On purely musical terms he's remained relevant in ways that many of his folkie fans would probably have never anticipated: the melancholy acoustic guitar patterns and angelic female choruses of his early work have given way to strident, aggressively danceable synth productions of considerable texture and complexity. Meanwhile his voice has receded into a hoarse whisper that sounds both ravaged and visionary.

Cohen is virtually the only songwriter whom mainstream critics of the 60s felt comfortable in calling a poet without adding a qualifying prefix like "folk" or "rock". He published his first volume of poetry, Let Us Compare Mythologies, in 1956 when he was barely out of his teens. He had three more books of poetry and two novels to his credit when he recorded his debut LP, Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1967. He makes little distinction between his literary and musical works: some of his most trenchant songs -- "Suzanne," "Teachers," "The Master Song," and "Avalanche," among others -- have also been published as poems.

One of Cohen's greatest strengths has been that, despite his legendary self-absorption, he's mostly managed to avoid the deadly solipsism that plagued much of the singer-songwriter movement of the 60s and 70s (and is still evident in the work of such latter-day aspirants as the Indigo Girls). From the beginning his lyrics have suggested that the tribulations and decay that wrack what he calls "the inner country" of the psyche are analogous to -- and, on some unnamed but vital level, intertwined with -- a greater spiritual malady that threatens the social order.

"Stories of the Street," an overlooked gem from Cohen's first album, found the poet leaning out of his hotel window with "one hand on my suicide, one hand on the rose." "Where do all these highways go / now that we are free?" he asked, as he contemplated a human condition as fractured and frightened as his own soul:

"The age of lust is giving birth
and both the parents ask the nurse
to tell them fairy tales
on both sides of the glass
And now the infant with his cord
is hauled in like a kite
One eye filled with blueprints
One eye filled with night..."

Since then Cohen's social vision has become even bleaker and more intensely drawn. He fills his commentary with vivid snapshots of war and upheaval, often with strong pacifist and even revolutionary implications. In "The Old Revolution" on his second LP, Songs From A Room, "even damnation is poisoned with rainbows" as "all the brave young men / they are waiting to see a signal / which some killer will be lighting for pay". An entry in The Energy of Slaves, a 1972 volume of poetry, warns the powers that be: "Any system you contrive / without us / will be brought down."

But it's difficult to tell where Cohen's worldview ends and where his sense of irony begins when he starts making pronouncements like that. Although the 60s-era counterculture embraced him as a kind of radical existential warrior he's made it clear that he views the social disruption that's characterized the last several decades as a collective psychic catastrophe, one which commands the poet to envision new ways of knowing and understanding in order to survive.

In the face of this catastrophe, Cohen has sometimes invoked an obsessive and unsettling fascination with totalitarian control. One of his books of poetry is entitled Flowers for Hitler; in The Favorite Game, his first novel, Cohen's youthful Jewish protagonists play Nazi torture games where they take turns stripping naked and whipping one another with red string, and they fantasize about delivering Fuhrer-like speeches and inciting crowds to violence through mass hypnotism. In interviews Cohen has waxed nostalgic about his childhood love for the military. His father, a decorated veteran, wanted to send him to a military academy; had his father lived, Cohen has suggested, he himself might have gone on to become a career man in the Canadian army. He immerses himself in the drill-like discipline it takes to oversee a musical tour, and he once named his touring band "The Army".

Probably the most enigmatic element of Cohen's work has been his relationship with women. On the one hand, his vision of sexuality often seems sacramental. A poem in The Energy of Slaves proclaims that "one man free to love his minute / in the realms of flesh and sun / breaks down more pain than ages / of humane law or lawyers can." So powerful is this healing force that the poet will "let politics go hang" and "speak for love alone".

His musical and literary persona -- a sad-eyed traveler seeking sanctuary and salvation in various beds along the way -- made Cohen a hero in the free-love 60s. In retrospect, though, it's somewhat surprising that it didn't earn him more enmity from feminists. Even some of his most beautifully crafted works romanticize a love-'em-and-leave-'em ethic which women in that era were already challenging as sexist and exploitative.

Cohen has gotten away with it, partly because of his status as a legitimate poet, but also because even when he's loving 'em and leaving 'em he does so in such tender and eloquent terms that it's almost impossible not to be seduced:

"Sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much
not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger..."
("The Stranger Song")

Just as seductive, perhaps, but even more problematic when viewed from a longer perspective has been Cohen's penchant for elevating women onto pedestals. In songs like "Our Lady of Solitude" on 1979's Recent Songs ("She is the vessel of the whole wide world / Mistress, O mistress of us all") and "Light As The Breeze" on his current CD, The Future, ("She stands before you naked / you can see it, you can taste it... it don't matter how you worship / as long as you're down on your knees"), he grovels and begs before them in supplication.

Cohen has sometimes used this cravenness in the presence of feminine beauty to excuse himself, or at least plead a case for himself, after committing romantic indiscretions. In the title song on I'm Your Man, from 1988, he admits: "I've been running through these promises to you that I made and I could not keep". Then he declares,

"I'd crawl to you baby and I'd fall at your feet
and I'd howl at your beauty like a dog in heat
And I'd claw at your heart and I'd tear at your sheet
I'd say please, please, I'm your man."

Such a posture leaves women little room to be anything but infatuation objects, and can easily cross the line into resentment or misogyny. "She cannot be tamed by conversation," Cohen writes in The Energy of Slaves. "Absence is the only weapon / against the supreme arsenal of her body / She reserves a special contempt / for the slaves of beauty..." In a harrowing prose-poem from his 1978 volume Death Of A Lady's Man he writes: "The weight of her beauty has become intolerable... This feels like doom. This is a pyramid on my chest. I want to change blood with her. I want her slavery. I want her promise. I want her death. I want the thrown acid to disencumber me... I want to die in her arms and leave her."

In this fevered landscape, where "desire" manifests itself as "greed" and a hallucinatory madonna wearing a "bridal negligee" might dance on a cafe table, taunting and proclaiming that "My body is the Light / my body is the Way", betrayal and cruelty often emerge as the inevitable consequences of love: "Love is a fire," Cohen writes. "It burns everyone / It disfigures everyone / It is the world's excuse / for being ugly". Although it's usually the men in his tales who do the betraying ("There are no traitors among women"), he seldom chides them for infidelity or caddishness. In fact it's a major accomplishment -- as well as a defeat of sorts -- when a man remains faithful for any length of time:

"I tried to leave you
I don't deny it
I closed my book on us
at least a hundred times
I'd wake up each and every morning
right there by your side

The years have gone by
I've lost my precious pride...
and I have not gone outside..."
("I Tried To Leave You")

"When you give love, you take a wound," Cohen said in a 1988 interview. "If you give full love, of course, you die. To love, something in the ego has to die, has to surrender anyway, and with that surrender a wound is taken." And by implication, a wound is given, as well. But after participating in these wounding catastrophies of the heart, Cohen's protagonists usually resume their sexual adventuring with either a flip remark ("It was half my fault and half the atmosphere") or yet another tormented confession ("Like a baby stillborn / Like a beast with his horn / I have torn everyone who reached out for me.") Such wailing may bring atonement, but one senses that it probably doesn't signal any real change in attitude or behavior.

Yet Cohen continues to insist that the desire that drives men and women obsessively into each other's arms is "the divine scheme". Here's where his twin obsessions -- the heroic mythos of the soldier and the erotic mythos of salvation through sexual grace -- come together. Cohen's questing lovers are partisans on a sacred quest, surrendering to desire and its torments as a soldier surrenders himself to his duty.

 In "The Traitor", on Recent Songs, Cohen weaves erotic and military images so densely that the distinction between them virtually disappears:

"I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity it stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralyzed my will
I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
that they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I'm listed with the enemies of love."

This fervid and intimate dance between Eros and Ares permeates Cohen's work. "Whores were ideal women, just as soldiers were ideal men" to the children in The Favorite Game;  "Love Calls Your By Your Name", from Cohen's 1970 LP Songs Of Love And Hate, addresses a broken-hearted romantic "Shouldering your loneliness / like a gun that you will not learn to aim". That same album also includes "Last Year's Man", with its wracked fusion of spiritual and erotic hunger, martyrdom, and war:

"I came upon a lady
she was playing
with her soldiers in the dark
One by one she had to tell them
that her name was Joan of Arc
I was in that army
Yes I stayed a little while
I'd like to thank you, Joan of Arc,
for treating me so well
But though I wear a uniform
I was not born to fight
all these wounded boys you lie beside..."

The Future, Cohen's first new recorded collection in nearly five years, finds him again immersing himself in this persona as a seeker -- wounded, vengeful, visionary, sometimes cruel, obsessed with beauty and salvation -- adrift in a world rife with seductive pleasures and rent with upheaval. Although the sacred and morally ambiguous mission of erotic pursuit still preoccupies him, he concentrates more than ever on global themes: of the three tunes on The Future that could be classified as love songs Cohen wrote only one, "Light As The Breeze".

Cohen has long fancied himself an interpreter, and the results have ranged from the exquisite ("The Partisan" on Songs From A Room) to the excruciating ("The Lost Canadian [Un Canadien Errant"] on Recent Songs). His efforts on The Future fall somewhere in between. "Be For Real," by soul singer/composer Frederick Knight, is a tender R&B ballad. Its pop-soul arrangement doesn't particularly lend itself to Cohen's atonal voice and wooden phrasing, and his larynx sounds shredded through most of the song. Nevertheless he manages to croon it, and his breathy intonations of "Baby" are surprisingly sexy.

"Always," the Irving Berlin chestnut, is another matter: Cohen delivers it in a lugubrious lounge-lizard moan, complete with a spoken intro that sounds like Barry White revved down to 16 RPMs. It's difficult to tell whether Cohen's tongue is in his cheek on this one, but either way it's one of his most surreal tracks ever.

Cohen is at his strongest on this disk when he's tackling larger issues. The title song is the starkest nightmare of societal breakdown he's ever committed to record. Over an insistently throbbing minor-key synth track, Cohen brings forth his predictions of doom and destruction in a ragged whisper that occasionally erupts into a hoarse croak -- he sounds like an Old Testament prophet writhing in the throes of a manic episode:

"There'll be the breaking of the ancient western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There'll be phantoms
there'll be fires on the road...
Things are going to slide in all directions
Won't be nothing, nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard of the world
has crossed the threshold
and it's overturned the order of the soul...
Get ready for the future
It is murder..."

Cohen's ambiguity about authoritarianism also reasserts itself with new ferocity:

"Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It's lonely here, there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
Lie beside me baby
That's an order...
Give me back the Berlin Wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul..."

Most striking, perhaps, is his apparent indictment of abortion as a symptom of social decay:

"Destroy another fetus now
We don't like children anyhow
I've seen the future, baby:
It is murder."

Cohen has hinted at such sentiments before. In "Diamonds in the Mine," on Songs of Love and Hate, he bitterly derided "the only man of energy, the revolution's pride" who "trained a hundred women just to kill an unborn child". Even his earlier "Story of Isaac" ("You who build these altars now / to sacrifice these children / must not do it anymore"), usually considered an antiwar song, could be interpreted as a denunciation of abortion. In live performance Cohen used to dedicate it to those who'd "sacrifice one generation on behalf of another." Once again his insistence on remaining ideologically ambiguous marks him as a courageous poet and, I'm sure some listeners will conclude, a dangerous loose cannon.

 The imagery takes on a more surreal tinge in The Future's "Closing Time". As fiddles saw away behind him with a rollicking, claustrophobic dissonance, Cohen serves up a hallucinatory slice of life from some purgatorial roadhouse where a carnival for lost souls is in full swing:

"All the women tear their blouses off
The men they dance on the polka-dots
and it's partner found and partner lost
and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops...

I raise my glass to the Awful Truth
which you can't reveal to the Ears of Youth
except to say it isn't worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the Devil and once for Christ..."

In the background, a female chorus chants "Closing Time" like a band of taunting angels.

Then, in the midst of all this decadence and darkness, Cohen ignites a light of hope with "Democracy." Set to a martial beat and tinged with his characteristic deadpan irony -- "It's coming from the silence / on the dock of the bay / from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet" -- the song is a prophetic testament to the coming of a political millennium the likes of which Cohen has seldom dared to envision:

"It's coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst
It's here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it's here they got the spiritual thirst."

Cohen seems to have reconsidered his earlier doubts about the healing potential of social change, as well as reconsidering his longstanding faith in the transforming power of visionary contemplation (in "The Traitor" he declared that "The dreamers ride against the men of action / Oh see the men of action falling back"). This time around he's adamant that dreaming and believing aren't enough. "Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.," he assures us, but first "the heart has got to open / in a fundamental way... It's coming from the women and the men."

 This unexpected optimism in the face of shattered dreams and ruined miracles arises from Cohen's almost mystical belief in the connection between the collapse of an old order -- political, psychic, or spiritual -- and the rising of a new one. "Anthem," the centerpiece of the disk, traces this cycle of decay and regeneration:

"Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what has yet to be.
The wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free."

This is a new, mature Cohen, up off his knees, taking responsibility both for the implications implied by doubt and the obligations inherent in faith. He may still go weak at the sight of "a woman / beneath this / resplendent chemise," but he can also summon the courage to stand tall in the face of immolation and see hope and democracy arising "from the fires of the homeless / from the ashes of the gay."

Cohen hasn't given up on the redemptive power of love, either; he's simply learned that it requires time and discipline to attain. "Every heart / to love will come / but as a refugee" -- no more rogue's salvation, no more easy benedictions from sainted Sisters of Mercy or an exalted Lady of Solitude.

 The poet has come a long way from Suzanne's place near the river; he realizes now that you can't "travel blind" if you want to get anywhere that matters. Instead he turns to face the world with both eyes open, earning his lover's blessing and finding cause for optimism in the very arrival of the desolation he prophesies: "There is a crack in everything," he concludes; "That's how the light gets in."

Copyright © 1997, 1998 David G. Whiteis
All rights reserved.

The following anecdotes is reprinted with permission.

It Seems So Long Ago:
Random Memories & Vignettes
of Leonard In Person

by David Whiteis

The first time I saw Leonard Cohen in live performance was at a gig that almost no one else seems to remember -- I've never seen it documented or even mentioned by any official biographer or chronicler of his career.

The show took place early in 1970 (January, I believe), at the University of Hartford (or, possibly, at Greater Hartford Community College), in Connecticut. I remember hearing it advertised on the radio only a week or two before it happened. A few months later Leonard embarked to Europe on his first tour, so I'm assuming that this gig was put together, more or less at the last minute, as a kind of "dry run" for that. The band was, I believe, the aggregation that eventually became known as The Army. At the very least I remember both Charlie Daniels and Robert Johnston being in the group. Corlynn Haney was one of the female singers.

Leonard received a rousing ovation, of course, as soon as he hit the stage; he appeared rather overwhelmed. He muttered something along the lines of: "And to think that all I was nervous about was that you wouldn't like my jeans!" He recited the poem "The Music Crept By Us", then launched directly into "So Long, Marianne". If my memory serves me correctly, the concert consisted entirely of songs from his first two LPs (no material I hadn't heard). He also recited at least one additional poem, "Dead Song"; I can't remember if he did any others.

During the concert an adoring young woman made her way onto the stage and handed Leonard a flower; he tenderly inserted its stem into the hole of his soda can, then murmured into the microphone: "Mmmmm -- I'd like to eat her!" Only Leonard could make such a statement sound like a caress (and I'm willing to bet that even he wouldn't attempt it today)!

He also told the audience that this was his first time singing for "the people" -- this wasn't technically true but if, in fact, it was the maiden gig of his first actual professional tour, it might have felt that way to him. At any rate, he apparently continues to think of that show as his first "real" gig (see below). He also told a story about a party he'd been at in Greece; at this party he ended up with "a friend's wife", and (he said) he found himself sexually inhibited, unable to let his desires flow freely and naturally. He advised us that we should avoid such inhibition and let things happen more spontaneously, even -- if the urge hit -- right there in the hall!

His final song of the evening, of course, was "Suzanne". Apparently there was a bug or two left to be worked out in terms of stagecraft, because he had nothing left for an encore -- he had to do "Marianne" all over again. After the show, everyone crowded around the stage for a handshake, a hug, or whatever they thought he might care to bestow. Throwing caution to the winds, I climbed onto the stage and flung my arms around him. Embarrassing in retrospect -- but I was, after all, seventeen at the time, and very emotional. The entire experience left an indelible impression on me, and I spent the better part of the next several years of my life writing tortured love poems and God-haunted existential musings -- mostly, I hasten to add, to no avail.

More importantly, however, Leonard was the one who inspired me with the idea that somebody might actually be able to make a living through writing. In my case, it ended up being journalism instead of poetry, fiction, or songwriting, but I do owe most of what success I've had as a writer to his inspiration -- especially considering what happened the next time I had the opportunity to see him in person.

That next opportunity was in the autumn of 1975, at a nightclub called the Shaboo Inn, in Willamantic, Connecticut. By then I'd graduated from college and was dreaming of a career in journalism. When I found out about Leonard's gig, I called the Hartford Advocate -- an alternative newsweekly -- and basically sold myself to them: I told them that I knew every song he'd ever recorded, and that I'd read both of his novels and most of his poems (all true); I also said I could critique his performance and, given the opportunity, interview him as authoritatively as anyone they could possibly find (total bluff). Surprisingly, they gave me the go-ahead.

I wish I could remember the song he sang during the sound check. It was one of those lugubrious old down-on-the-plantation chestnuts (complete with a reference to "darkies", if I recall correctly) -- not "The Old Folks At Home", but something from that genre. For the gig itself, his female back-up singers were dressed in identical formal men's suits.

The set consisted primarily of material from his first two albums, as well as a few selections from Songs Of Love And Hateand New Skin For The Old Ceremony, and several from what would eventually surface as Recent Songs. Disappointingly, he started to sing "The Stranger Song" but then cut it short in frustration -- a group of lackeys from Columbia Records were sitting up front, making so much noise he couldn't concentrate. He plunged into an especially aggressive version of "There Is A War", instead. (Nonetheless, he enigmatically instructed the audience that he didn't mind if people talked during his "little ditties" -- in fact, he indicated strongly that such lack of reverence somehow reassured him.)

Prior to set, there had been a rumor that Bob Dylan was going to show up (probably why those Columbia Records folks were there) -- Dylan never arrived; Leonard told the crowd that there had been rumors we'd all be graced with a visit from "The Great Nightingale" but, unfortunately, we were going to have to settle for "the same old cuckoo clock"!

Cohen did the great, unrecorded "Guerrero" ("She said there is a table set in heaven / but I don't like to eat there all the time!"); he also performed a wonderful, low-key "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On", nothing like the travesty that ended up on Death Of A Ladies' Man. This version absolutely dripped [sorry!] with irony; he crooned it in a well-lubricated [sorry again!] lounge-lizard moan similar to the one he eventually committed to record on "Always", and the band swayed gently behind him with a jazzy, 3:00-in-the-morning elegance. That same night, by the way, he introduced "Chelsea Hotel" by saying, "This is a song I wrote for Janis Joplin." He later told me that this was the first time he'd ever revealed that in public.

Which brings me to the interview I did with him. This was my first-ever journalistic "assignment," and I have no doubt I came on like some ungodly combination of Jimmy Olsen and the Geek From Hell. Yet Leonard was as charitable with his time and his spirit, and answered my questions as carefully and eloquently, as if I'd been someone who could have done something to help his career. Any rudeness or impatience from him and I'd very likely have panicked, tucked my tail between my legs, and run away, never to attempt such a thing again -- as it was, though, his warmth encouraged me to try to make a go of it, and in fact I've been a professional writer ever since.

What did we talk about? I had no idea, of course, how to structure an interview (I remember him, at one point, gently asking me to rephrase a question so he could be certain he understood my meaning). I do remember him reaffirming that the 1970 Hartford gig had been his first in-public concert; he also told me that he dressed his back-up singers in those suits because "I like 'em to look neat." He pointed out that he began his show with "Bird On The Wire" because it was a "penitent" song that returned him to his sense of duty and responsibility. He still seemed gripped by stagefright: when it came time to get ready for the second set, he shook his head and muttered, "it's so terrifying!"

He also passed on an anecdote I've never heard repeated: he said that "A Singer Must Die" was written at least partially in response to his having learned that he was on President Nixon's "Enemies List" -- the list Nixon and his henchmen drew up, consisting of dissidents and counterculture figures who were targeted for FBI or IRS harassment. He asked me not to print this --"I don't want to inflame them even more" -- but he definitely knew, or at least believed, that he'd been the subject of Nixonian surveillance.

Well, I went home and wrote down as much of the conversation as I could remember and --lo and behold! -- the Advocate actually published the story, starting me on my way to a career in  journalism. In retrospect, the entire episode seems almost unfathomably cheeky on my part; at that time I had no business passing myself off as a writer, and I certainly had no business expecting Leonard to even give me the time of day.

 I really don't even know what I expected to find when I met him, even though he'd been a hero of mine ever since my first mind-shattering exposure to Songs Of Leonard Cohen, nearly a decade earlier -- maybe I expected a high-fallutin intellectual, maybe a ravaged and wasted veteran of the 60s. Part of me, probably, was steeled against disillusionment -- what if the poet who'd given Shell back her body and hung Joan Of Arc's wedding dress above the adoring throng turned out to be a profane lech or an arrogant boor? But what I found, instead, was a powerful and humble spiritual presence, a man who even then radiated hard-won peace laced with courageous and uncompromising compassion -- the kind of wisdom that kneels down unflinchingly beside the beggar screaming "Please Don't Pass Me By", not as a dispenser of charity but as a fellow supplicant, and gleans from that experience both redemption and the impetus to seek further healing.

Before I left his dressing room, I told Leonard that he'd been my inspiration as a writer. He answered, with great kindness and conviction: "Pass it on." As corny as it may seem, I'm still doing my best to try to live up to that blessing and that charge.

Copyright © 1998 David G. Whiteis
All rights reserved.

Mr. Whiteis would welcome your comments.
Email him at Whiteis@ipfw.edu