Anecdotal Evolution & the Nobel Laureate

Tags

bob dylan, leonard cohen

 

I have been told that my Leonard Cohen-Dylan anecdote was recently in the New Yorker magazine. I do not get the New Yorker anymore, although I wish I did and could still read it, because, as I recall, it was the best magazine on earth. Their version of the great Cohen-Dylan meeting was unattributed, set in Paris rather than Montreal, but contained a few of the key elements from my own version. I should stress that I was only told about the piece and did not actually read it myself – or listen to my robot reading it. The fact that a 30-year-old celebrity yarn has taken on a life of its own intrigued me. Of course, I have related the tale to dozens of people over the years, one of them a stand-up comic who used it in his act with himself as the narrator. Naturally, Leonard told the story too, and I once heard him spin a highly embellished version of it – but it was not set in Paris. I don’t know if Cohen and Dylan ever played concerts in Paris at the same time, but they would have had to for the anecdote to work there. However, it is the longevity and adaptability of these snippets about our idols that interests me. Certain incidents, like the Great Summit of Two Troubadours, take on a numinous significance and embed themselves in the larger myth, where they become an intrinsic part of the whole. We see it in every hagiography, from the Buddha to Bowie. Who knows if the young Siddhartha Gautama was really shielded by his father from the harsh realities of life? From what we know of the Buddha’s discourses, he was not given to autobiography, and there are also Nepalese folk-tales concerning a prince who became a holy man after facing life’s grimmer issues – but, attached to the Buddha’s narrative, the story, whatever its provenance, becomes an indispensable metaphor, and is thus intrinsic to the greater corpus. The Christian myth is similarly fleshed out with anecdotes that permit Jesus to say something wise – and some of them are even clearly spurious. When Jesus is asked, in Matthew (I think), about a woman’s right to divorce, he confidently cites Roman law on the subject – when he presumably would have only subscribed to Halachic law, under which a woman has no right to divorce. Gospel exegetes generally concur that the text began simply as a collection of wise sayings, which was then turned into a narrative, mostly by Mark, who created incidents where certain expostulations of wisdom were appropriate. But it seems that many of these anecdotal episodes were from the lives of other people – especially from James, the so-called “brother of Jesus”, who has all but vanished from history, although, unlike his famous sibling, he is in fact an historical figure. When an anecdote enters and is embedded in the myth, its actual truth ceases to matter, and it will continue to exist in whatever form best suits the myth, rather than the truth. In a John Lennon biography, I once read an anecdote of mine that was attributed to Lennon’s first wife, Cynthia. In fact, though, coming from her mouth, it gained a significance in the overall legend that it would not have gained had it come from my lips. In a documentary I watched, a Beatles anecdote I had been told by the horse’s mouth was attributed to Yoko Ono, which increased its aura of sanctity but detracted from its credibility, since Yoko had yet to appear on the scene when the incident recounted occurred. The sculptor David Wynne told me this story, and it revolved around him. He had been commissioned by Kellogg’s Cornflakes to sculpt the Beatles for tiny plastic figurines that would be included in each box of the cereal. Naturally, his maquettes were life-sized and not an inch tall. The work was concluded in Paris, and a dinner celebration had been planned. David wanted to give each Beatle a present to commemorate their relationship, and he found, on the Left Bank, four Egyptian scarab beetles. Not a modest man, he recounted his speech to the four mop-tops something like this: “I told them the history of these scarabs and ancient Egypt, and of course they were amazed – they’d never heard anything like it before, because they were wretchedly uneducated, almost illiterate…” So inspired were the lads, evidently, that, when Ringo discovered his scarab had been cleared away with the dinner things, “he had the whole metropolitan rubbish tip of Paris combed through until it was found…’ Now, you’d think that this anecdote would only work if the sculptor told it himself, no? Well, no. Ascribed to Yoko, it became an entirely different story, one about how she brought culture to the culturally-deprived Lennon, whose scarab beetle was lost and then found through her amazing grace. Ortho-anecdotes might be the term. It is, ultimately, the requirements of the myth that determine the version of an anecdote that survives and thrives, but this does give them a kind of spuriously eternal existence in which they become chameleons, taking on the characteristics of their new surroundings and shrugging off their humble origins.

 

The Nobel Laureate

 

Has anything so eagerly anticipated been as deeply disappointing as Bob Dylan’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize? One was hoping for a Dylan in white tie and tails dining with the Swedish monarch, and even possibly singing a new song instead of delivering a dignified speech. One was also assuming that Bob would actually bother to travel there and accept the world’s most prestigious literary honour in person. He’s nothing if not unpredictable, however. Perhaps he had good reasons for not attending, but he never shared them with us or the Nobel Committee. Instead, the hapless US Ambassador to Sweden read a speech especially written by Bob for the occasion. Actually, it sounded more as if it had been especially dictated in ten minutes on a tour bus. Whether or not it was deliberately moronic is impossible to say, but it displayed the ignorance of a Grade 10 student with Internet access. First, Bob informed us of the prestigious exclusivity of the literature prize, rattling off a short list of previous laureates – but only previous laureates from the US – which did serve to point out how erratic the criteria for awarding this honour can be. Then our humble bard informed us how far from his thoughts winning a Nobel Prize had been for most if not all of his life. He confided that he had played concerts for 50,000 people, and also ones for fifty people, and that it was harder to play for fifty, since they were more demanding and critical – which reminded him that the Nobel Committee was also small in number and therefore more critical, making his award all the more marvellous because… Well, it was hard to say whether it was because, being so small and critical, the panel of judges must have thought very highly indeed of the Dylan oeuvre, or whether such a tiny committee was bound to make grievous mistakes. The new laureate then mused on the nature of literature, opining that literary giants like Shakespeare never thought they were writing literature, just as he, Bob, only thought about scribbling the next song, getting the right musicians for it and the right studio to record in. Warming to his theme, he returned to Shakespeare, who, he usefully reminded us, was “a famous dramatist”. Will the dramatist, said Bob the bard, was writing plays to be seen and heard, not read. He wasn’t writing literature — he was an entertainer. Bob assured us that, when Hamlet thinks about “different thing”, his creator, Will, was thinking about box-office receipts, the right scenery, where he could get a human skull, and whether the play should really be set in Denmark. I laughed my arse off, but it was still hard to say if the Minnesota Maestro was serious about this or not. In his mind, the Nobel had now placed him in some very rarified company, and, by all accounts, he felt quite comfortable there, privy now to the Bard of Avon’s most inner concerns. Dylan wrote long ago of Shakespeare being “in the alley with his pointed shoes and his bells…”, or something, which, at the time, made me think his views of the Elizabethan dramatist were derived more from folk tales than history. Is he still so ignorant of the greatest star in the English literary firmament? Is Elizabethan English beyond his repertoire? Anyone with even a mild passion for Shakespeare can see that the curious thing about his plays is they are written to be read on a page rather than seen in a theatre. The poetry and themes are far too dense and complex to be comprehensible to a first time audience – especially one at the old Globe, where you were lucky even to hear more than half a play coherently. As for the Avon Bard not writing literature, on a number of occasions in the Sonnets, he makes it eerily clear that he knows his poetry will outlast time – just as Dante does in the Divine Comedy. Bob also seemed confident that, with the Nobel’s stellar endorsement, his own work was now guaranteed a cozy eternity, and had certainly already resonated with people around the world. He was very grateful for the honour Sweden had accorded him, etc. Not so grateful that he’d bother to collect it in person, however. One felt deeply sorry for America’s Ambassador having to read this rambling twaddle to the King of Sweden, when he could have penned a far more fitting eulogy for Bob himself. But, as always, Dylan vanishes into his own mythic enigma, leaving us wondering if we’ve just been treated to a form of ironic satire, or if it was only another taste of Bob Dylan’s patent scorn for his audiences and fans. Plus ca change…

 

Paul William Roberts

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Remembrance Week

Tags

carl marx, climate change, Donald Trump, election law, electoral college, federal reserve, leonard cohen, the future of america

 

 

If you are the Dealer

          I’m out of the game

• Leonard Cohen

 

‘Dealer’ is a common Cohen euphemism for ‘president’ or any kind of boss-man. Indeed, as far back as his poetry of the late-fifties, gambling appears as a metaphor for life itself, in which you are playing with the greatest dealer of all. The words and music of Leonard Cohen have been a staple of my life for fifty years, and his death was a harder blow than I’d ever anticipated it would be. My personal issues aside, what a diabolical week! Through the agency of my wife, I placed upon his Montreal doorstep this morning a box of chocolates and a long-stemmed rose. In his characteristically self-effacing way, Leonard would be amazed by the worldwide outpouring of love and grief. I can hear him saying, ‘It’s just the Lightforce of the Lord shining through me that they feel…’ Yes, indeed.

 

In retrospect, I was appalled by my attempt to put an optimistic spin on the election of Donald Trump. There is clearly little or nothing optimistic about a Trump presidency. I do not know enough about Constitutional Law to say whether or not a legal challenge to the election-result is viable. However, I do know that hardly any Americans can explain the phenomenon of Electoral College votes – which mean that the election goes to whoever wins over 270 such statewide votes, and not to whoever gains the most votes, as Hilary Clinton seems to have done last week. You elect electors and not candidates? It makes no sense. Like the private ownership of the Federal Reserve, it is one of those fundamentally inexplicable anomalies that breed theories of conspiracy, or at least of occluded double-dealing. It is a curious turn of events that has the Democrats questioning this election and not, as he’d suggested, Trump’s Republicans. The whole US system, with its usually ignored or down-played mid-terms, its Electoral College, and its general federal-state confusion has long been called into question. But I think it is democracy itself that needs to be questioned. One of its more modern pioneers, Rousseau, says, in his Social Contract, that it is a perfect system, yet one only suited to a perfect society of gods. He maintains that some peoples will never be able to handle democracy. The US seems to be one of these. The Socratic ideal, espoused in Plato’s Republic, theorizes a perfect rule by philosopher-kings, of which Piere Elliot Trudeau was once acclaimed by some as an example. But ancient Greece was hardly democratic – like the US, it was an oligarchy – and the Platonic republic suggests outlawing poets, writers, and perhaps artists of any kind. They’re a menace to societal tranquility.

I once wrote a piece – for Harper’s, I think – suggesting that a vote needed to be earned, and was not a right. There ought to be some kind of basic test before you could vote — state what the candidates’ platforms are about, for example. Nothing severe, but not multiple-choice either. Why would you vote, went the argument, if you do not know why you’re voting? The piece garnered great hostility – I was a fascist, mainly – yet I now wonder whence the hostility came. I’d assumed it was from the Left, but this recent election makes me think it may have been the Right. They do have more to gain from an ignorant electorate — those whose political views exist only as moronic slogans. There is of course also the great mystery of a proletariat consistently voting against its own best interests. Who has ever explained this, except by family tradition or amped-up media rhetoric? An earned vote would at least prevent millions from casting a self-destructive ballot. But those millions also comprise the most easily-swayed segments of society. Right-wing barkers and howlers have long accused universities in particular of being bastions of the Left. This has always struck me as a self-refuting allegation, inasmuch as it points to the most intelligent being drawn to liberal politics. It is natural that right-wing elites have always opposed state-subsidized further-ed for the needy. It is education alone that will change society for the better by ensuring a fully-informed vote. To this extent, America is still back where Europe was during the Industrial Revolution. And, in truth, no western nation will achieve democratic ideals until the system of private schools is abolished. I have lectured in such schools and can assure readers that their small classes and numerous other perquisites – not least of which are opportunities to socialize with others in elite strata of society – guarantee advantages way, way beyond the grasp of ordinary mortals. The very few exceptions – mainly, it seems, in venture capital or Silicon Valley – simply prove the rule. I have friends willing to pay for such offspring-benefits – and, no doubt, I would have too if the money had been there. But the playing-field must be levelled if we are to call ourselves a democracy. It is a simple fact that wealth ought not be hereditary – that merit alone must determine social status and its rewards.

As we have seen most clearly with Trump – yet it preceded him – further education, with its fancy big words, and its theorized scorn for the working man, is in fact undesirable, and even a social ill. It is what those of us who questioned Marx and Trotsky referred to fearfully as ‘a dictatorship of the proletariat’ – the idea of government by the under-educated for the uneducated. Of course, it would in fact be manipulation of the uneducated by the well-educated posing as blue-collar oafs. Marx saw the workers rising like Lazarus, yet he did not envisage this happening without universal education. He also saw the fiest revolution happening in relatively well-educated England, not serf-owning Russia. The Russian proletariat were only roused by leaders posing as fellow-workers. One thinks of that malevolent goblin Lenin in his worker’s cap, and of Mao in his custom-tailored Mao-jacket, which from a great distance resembled attire of the dispossessed hundreds of millions.

Trump doesn’t wear tacky Mafia-suits from his own line, nor one of his own frightening collection of cheap, sweatshop-made silk Trump Neckties. It is admittedly true that he has managed to find an expensive tailor to dress him with equal vulgarity. Yet one must assume that, with his pricey hair-weave or toupee, he closely resembles the self-image many a laid-off coal worker or dirt-poor farm labourer has of their lottery-winning selves. Trump has always been a vulgarian – whose excesses were only matched by his first wife – so I am not suggesting demonic cunning going back decades. His awful TV show probably showed us the real public man. His problem now is different, though. As my friend, Richard Sparks observed, he’s narcissistic, self-promotional, venal, greedy, power-hungry, and he needs to be loved – all of these being excellent qualities for a politician. The need to be loved by all, however, may be what saves us. We are now hearing a more reticent Trump – liked Obama, loved the concern and patriotism of anti-Trump demonstrators – so we can imagine a Trump already looking towards his historical record as another Lincoln, a healer of divisions, a political Titan. He will not enjoy being president – no one ever has – so all the job will hold for him is the explosive bloating of his baggy brand to interstellar dimensions. Resigned to being a minor footnote in financial history, he now faces the possibility of bestriding the known world like a Colossus, an American Caesar, a Yankee Frederick the Great,  or a Brooklyn Napoleon (minus Waterloo). We can only hope that the compromising minutiae of the job turn him to these greener pastures: Uncle Trump’s fireside chats-of-the-Union.

Trump’s victory aside, has there been anything more despicable than the Republicans who scorned him when the chips looked to be down now trying to crawl up his arse for positions and preferment? That shameless pawn of vested interests and extravagantly unprincipled Beltway whore, House Speaker Paul Ryan, taking Trump up to the Capitol’s mount to show him all the kingdoms of the world – truly sickening! And he’s just one of a disgusting troupe of hypocritical bum-lickers. One hopes Trump won’t forget so quickly the league of back-stabbers. Yet when you hear of such hoary old Nazi reptiles as Newt Gingrich and Rudolfo Giuliani – surely long since cast into the Lake of Fire? – you cannot help but think of replacing the Statue of Liberty’s slogan thus: Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here… No wonder California wants to leave the Union.

 

As I’ve said, all US refugees welcome up here in the Laurentians. It’s inexpensive, and we ought to survive the Global Warming apocalypse longer than most – not hat having the last laugh will be very consoling.

 

Paul William Roberts

 

All Hallows Eve

Tags

death, joy, leonard cohen, love, music, songs, volcanos, Werner Hertzog

 

I have always liked this day, this night, which grows increasingly poignant as Time decays. So many lovely souls now lost to the dateless night closing in on us all. So many. My lifeline to the planet’s progress, or egress, CBC Radio’s The World At Six, is 50 years old today. Ho-hum. The police in Montreal are now tapping a journalist’s telephone. The Great American Disaster now slouches towards its inevitably foul finale, with the FBI illegally interfering in an election that, one hopes, will remain the all-time nadir of western democracy. This is a day for reflection and remembrance. The earth has grown still and silent, as life retreats below to wait for spring and more life. A winter chill envelops huddled trees and empty fields. Up here, in the mountains, even people seem to disappear until the tenderness of new green leaves is once more seen. Byron and Algis are off to Mexico. It is usually a melancholy time, yet I find myself thinking of not-so-small mercies, the recent blessings that have come.

By now, I have purchased Leonard Cohen’s latest album, You Want It Darker, and I am overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration. Previously, I thought the title song was cause enough for rejoicing – and, to be honest, I expected no more. Now I find this is one of his very best albums – which, for Cohen, is saying a lot – a compilation of ten exquisite songs almost heartbreaking in their truth and beauty. It was produced by his son, Adam Cohen, who has created a masterpiece of subtle restraint, with plaintive strings, reminiscent of Beethoven’s Last Quartets, always haunting his father’s balefully evocative and irreducibly concise words.

 

If you are the Dealer

                   I’m out of the game

                   If you are the Healer

                   Then I’m broken and lame –

                   You want it darker?

                   We kill the flame…

 

          Leonard Cohen was not well when he recorded this album, it seems. The sessions were held in his house, and the microphone fixed up over a medical chair. No doubt the extreme physical exertions of his recent tours – falling to his knees to sing Hallelujah – exacted a toll. The songs do indeed sound elegiac, yet I hear no sense of an end-time farewell, as some do. Indeed, the gently tinkling piano and the modest cooing of back-up singers lends a hopeful air to extravagantly ambiguous lyrics. Flames may be killed, he might be “out of the game” – but his heart has always been heavy with a love so bittersweet it is barely distinguishable from sorrow. Even the phrase, “I’m ready, my Lord,” which repeats in the title song, is not a quietus – Leonard has long been ready for his Lord, and, unsurprisingly, he still is. Although now he may be:

 

Somebody who

Has given up on me and you…

 

I might be that somebody too, so I can dig it – as we used to say.

 

I’d better drink this glass of blood

Try to say the Grace Try to keep the peace…

 

They are not words of weary resignation. So many of these fine songs express the equanimity that comes

 

Year by year

Month by month

Day by day

Thought by thought

 

I’m not sure why Leonard Cohen’s triumph at 82 should so transfix me with joy – yet it does. Possibly it encourages me, at 66, to anticipate many more years of abundance? Possibly. But, listening to all the shitty contemporary music which spurts from my radio if I don’t get there fast enough, I am inclined to think it is because great singer-songwriters may be waning, but they’re not dead yet – and, who knows, they may inspire another generation to match standards that seem anything but standard? Well, Lenny, what a feat!

 

Equally delightful is Werner Herzog’s latest film, Into the Inferno, now available on Netflicks. Of course, I could not actually see it, but I heard it, and heard about it. Ostensibly a look at volcanoes and volcanologists, it is naturally far, far more than that, delving into matters as deep and dark as those Leonard Cohen toys with. The footage of eruptions and lava-flows is evidently mind-boggling, yet much of this is stock-footage – and Herzog happily admits it. What interests him is the ancient interplay between humankind and this most dramatic display of nature’s destructive potency. Numerous far-flung regions have a mythology inextricably linked to the earth’s proclivity for devouring her inhabitants in a rage of molten rock, of pyro-caustic rivers rushing down at a thousand miles an hour to obliterate all that was once a landscape unchanged in millennia. One South Pacific island even has a relatively recent commemorative cult. Jon Frum, an American GI, parachuted – presumably by accident – into the island’s volcano crater. But, like Jesus, he will one day return, bringing gifts of bubble-gum, candy, and washing-machines for everyone. This is not a barroom yarn. It is a nascent religion – one that could, if circumstances permitted it, dominate half the world. Herzog does not ridicule it either. With his usual wry wisdom, he presents it in comparison with Christianity – and these comparisons are many. Herzog is the perfect polite observer, always eager to understand another’s point of view, and never judgmental. Somehow, he manages to enter North Korea, where a great volcano – Mount Pekatu – has been incorporated into the ruling party’s mythology. Noting the country’s restrictions on media, the director simply informs us that North Korea prefers to be seen from its own point of view. He allows the images to speak for themselves – the “human pixels” choreographed in displays of hundreds of weeping thousands celebrating the nation’s birth. It would be mawkish to comment on such images. Instead, Herzog pinpoints nuggets of information that reveal far more even than his images. The original Kim Il Jong, for example, the fighter against “Japanese imperialism” who fathered the nation, also declared himself the “leader for all eternity” – which is why his son and , now, his grandson have never declared themselves leaders. There can be no other leader. As Herzog shows us, the nominative leaders are always portrayed with the volcano behind them. It is a metaphor for strength, and a symbol of the regime’s connection to North Korea’s vast antiquity. We see students in military dress sing odes to the volcano, and Herzog merely remarks, in his droll way, that it is hard to picture American college freshmen and women performing such a ritual in deadly seriousness. Hard? It is impossible. In Ethiopia, he stumbles across anthropologists who have just uncovered fossilized human remains a hundred-thousand years old. It is only the third such find in all of Africa, and he captures beautifully the mood of scientists whose lives generally involve sweeping through dust and finding nothing. It is, perhaps, his interest in human reactions to the extraordinary that makes Herzog such an exceptionally great director. This, and his willingness to allow his films to jolt off on tangents offering huge digressions. Here, he muses on our distant ancestors, their short lives dictated entirely by a natural world we have now learned to subdue – and will possibly destroy in the process. His film is a powerful reminder of the planet’s proven ability to destroy itself unaided. Herzog’s histories of ancient volcanic events – one of them nearly exterminating the inchoate homo sapiens – are essential to our current dilemma of believing ourselves to be brutal masters of the planet. Nothing matches the earth herself in brutality. We merely float upon an inferno, that can shrug us off whenever it wishes. Thank you, Werner Herzog, for so many wonderful films, so much bizarre fun, and a great deal to think about. Now the Ghoulies are coming to my door…

 

Paul William Roberts

Leonard Cohen New Album

Tags

leonard cohen, music

You Want It Darker?

 

Readers have made me feel guilty after my Bob Dylan hagiograph. It is true that I have purchased every Leonard Cohen album, not since 1963, but since 1967’s Songs of Leonard Cohen. At 33, he then seemed so much older than me, Dylan, or indeed anyone on the music scene. Now he’s 82, and doesn’t seem so old. It is one thing writing great songs into the twilight years, but it is something else altogether to produce one of your very greatest songs on your 82^nd birthday, or thereabouts. I have not yet heard the whole album, but I have heard the title track, You Want it Darker? One of his fine lapidary constellations of balefully evocative and irreducibly concise poetic images precedes the chorus:

 

You want it darker?

We kill the flame…

 

If possible, the rumbling thunder of his hypnotic voice seems to drop an octave, as a series of arresting word-pictures streams out to catch this moment in time in its fascinated web. The song begins with heavenly choirs, and concludes with the ululating cantor’s soulful cry, and the heartfelt phrase, “I’m ready, Lord…’ I heard it for the first time moments ago, and the hairs on my neck are still standing up. This is one of the classic songs – and Cohen has so many – yet it is hard to imagine anyone else venturing to sing such personal lyrics – “Lord, I’m ready…”

I worked with Leonard years ago on the 30-minute video of I Am A Hotel, which we shot in Toronto’s King Edward Hotel at a time when his career had reached an apparent nadir. Recent albums had been lacklustre, with musicians who sounded like Sunday afternoon in Greece. Leonard seemed preoccupied, more concerned with his practice of what he termed “Zen-Judaism” than with his future as a singer-songwriter. A new album even contained the hauntingly exquisite refrain:

 

If it be your will

That my voice be still…

 

He was very concerned that songs like Suzanne – the goose that laid golden eggs – be presented in the video correctly. He tried his hand at editing the tape himself, only to find the task required skills he did not have. I felt certain he was about to retreat to his monastery forever. Yet he came back with a vengeance, and an updated sound at the lip of a leading edge, and lyrics capturing the zeitgeist, be it universal or deeply personal. He has never really left the crest of that wave, although people have been speculating about his retirement for nearly twenty years.

Indeed, he may have been looking forward to it himself, but, some ten years ago, something happened to dash any hopes of a mellow old age. His manager of many years – one of those career women who sees her role as surrogate wife as well as business associate – ripped off all of his money. Possibly, she imagined she’d been jilted? Whatever the cause, the money was gone, and Leonard found himself in his seventies back on the road.

Like Dylan, and many other mediocre instrumentalists, he had always shied away from skilled musicians, feeling it would be embarrassing to display his musical ignorance in front of such people. But now, as Dylan would also do, he started recording and touring with exceptional talents, soon realizing he did not even have to play guitar poorly himself. Someone else could play it well. He could concentrate on singing. He once told me he was so nervous about performing live that he needed a handful of quayludes just to go on stage. Those performances were notorious for the maudlin depths of weeping grief shared by both audience and star. But with a band able to carry his wonderful voice – rather than depend on it to carry them – the last decade or so has been extraordinary, with concerts on DVD as exceptional as any in the history of popular music.

What is most remarkable, though, is the calibre of lyrics. As it was with Yeats, and very few others – in fact, none spring to mind – the later poetry exceeds in richness and depth the earlier work. And this – presumably – very late song is up there with the very best, which, in Cohen’s case, is saying a lot.

Many of his songs seem to speak from two places at once – the universal, a kind of Overlord, and the particular, usually a lover. My Secret Life goes from the ex-lover’s reminisces to:

 

And the dealer wants you thinking

It’s either black or white –

My God, it’s not that simple

In my secret life…

 

Just as You Want it Darker? goes from the kind of observations it is very tempting to see as excruciatingly current, to “I’m ready, Lord,” a poignant call to the very terminal event, one which it is difficult not to hear as the singer’s quietus. Just as First We Take Manhattan goes from apocalyptic instructions from a Dark Force to the memory of “I don’t like what happened to my sister…”

I could rummage through Leonard Cohen’s superlative material for hundreds of pages, but that is not my job. On his glorious 82^nd birthday, I just want to say, “Happy birthday, Lenny, and thanks for a lifetime of heart and soul-stirring songs, and their bittersweet soundtrack to my life. “I’m ready, Lord”? I do hope you’re not too ready, sir…

 

Paul William Roberts

 

Election Songs

Tags

Canada, election, harper, john lennon, justin trudeau, leonard cohen, politics, songs

Song with Apologies to Leonard Cohen

 

Everybody knows Harper’s sinking,

Everybody knows his truth is lies,

In his eyes there’s that awful feeling,

No one will mourn him when he dies.

Everybody knows defeat will kill him,

Everybody knows he scorned the House;

Where he was never asked the question if his tactics came from Leo Strauss.

But the neo-Fascist shows,

And everybody knows.

Everybody knows the man’s a racist,

Everybody knows he’s a corporate slave,

And the rich are who his base is;

The rest of us his knaves.

That’s how Harper’s vision goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’s bribing voters,

Everybody knows that greed works best;

Everybody knows he needs the floaters, but would exterminate the rest.

The Fascist shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he rigs elections,

Everybody knows that to win’s his real goal,

But he cannot abide defections,

Over ethics or burning coal. They wreck his phony pose, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’s the one Prime Minister called ‘un-Canadian’ and even ‘sinister’;

No one cares where the hell he goes, but he’s gone, and everybody knows;

He’s now the stateless terrorist he dreamt up, the man in those media shows;

He caused the fear that crept up, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows the war is raging; everybody knows Mr. Harper’s fate is toast,

And nothing’s there to save him, not even the Holy Ghost;

It’s by fiction the cash pile grows,

And everybody knows.

Everybody knows he won’t play fair;

Everybody knows his dirty tricks;

Everybody knows that Justin Trudeau will be the one a voter picks.

That’s what honest polls show, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows his power is waning, everybody knows his platform’s fake;

Everybody knows his budget’s draining social programs into a filthy Tory lake.

That’s how corruption goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he’d kill the planet, if his masters made a buck or two.

Everybody knows the way to end them is just a vote by me and you.

That’s what history shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows his business plan was just a one-trick sham;

The eggs were in a basket, without bread or even ham;

As a glance at The Dow Jones shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows the rich are richer, and we know where the money went;

Everybody knows the Middle Class is dwindling, the savings all now spent;

Everybody knows the banks are thriving, Thanks to Harper’s sly conniving, since that’s where our money goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows where the numbers never cease to grow, and no one can ever reap what they sow, as bank reports show, and everybody knows.

Spied upon, unfree, and over-taxed,

Poor even if we break our backs;

Such is the way our nation goes, and everybody knows.

Everybody thinks a vote for Harper is sure to make them rich,

As if cloth of gold could be fashioned by one single little stitch.

The deceiver in him shows, and everybody knows.

Everybody knows he sang Imagine, John Lennon’s utopian song,

Everybody knows this was pure cynicism, an almost sacrilegious wrong.

Everybody knows he can’t imagine, everybody knows his soul’s long gone; and inside is an empty feeling, a dull resounding gong, like the darkness he’s imposed; and everybody knows.

Everybody knows we’ll have that piano; everybody knows the song we’ll sing, with Yoko’s kind permission, as the bells of all faiths ring;

Everybody knows we’ll show compassion, as hard as it might be, and everybody knows we’ll sing Imagine, and what the words will be: as for the pose: everybody knows….

 

( Sudden change of tune, with thanks and love to Lennon)

 

Imagine there’s no Harper, it’s easy if you vote,

No tyrant’s vile agenda, an economy still afloat;

Imagine all Canadians living once again in peace,

No egotistic leader wishing wars will never cease.

Imagine wealth is shared, no poverty or crime; fair treatment for First Nations, and a mandate to be kind.

Imagine equality and decency accorded every race; and all who seek asylum with a smile on every face.

You can’t say that I’m a dreamer because most of us agree sending Harper off to nowhere will set this nation free.

Imagine there’s a vote card clasped in your hand, and that your vote would make life better for all living in this land;

Imagine you don’t use it, and have to live with that, live with a representative lazier than your very lazy cat;

Imagine that those not voting lose many other rights, returning what was fought for back to a medieval night, when the barons owned everything, including all your rights.

Imagine there’s no government to help you, would you want that vote again? Imagine you had broken something no one now can mend: a wasted vote is guilty of summoning such an End.

For Harper is a schemer, and he’s not the only one;

I hope that you will join us, for the worshippers of Mammon are already on the run.

Imagine there’s no Harper, you won’t need to imagine long; for the vote will go to Justin, then you’ll wish you’d helped him on.

Imagine trust and hope in Ottawa, it’s no easy thing to do, which is why the end of Harper is eight years overdue.

 

(Suggestion for Harper’s Farewell Song)

 

It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to;

You would cry too if your party dumped you…

++++++++++++++++++

Remember, your vote not only counts but is your responsibility to use, not for any party, but for the person you feel cares and will do his or her utmost for your area when in Ottawa. If a candidate has not visited your house or home in person, it is a good sign that they care little about your needs and will do even less about lobbying for them. Think about the qualities of an individual, not the vain promises of party leaders, which will become increasingly desperate and fictional over the next two weeks. This is not the USA: we elect representatives not leaders. Think carefully about the representatives you know, and vote for the best one, regardless of his or her party. This is a system that has proven its worth over many centuries. Cherish your good fortune to have such a fine system and the glorious land smart enough to avoid adopting the unworkable chaos of Washington.

 

As always with love,

 

Paul William Roberts