I am getting a completely different take on this song. Rather than analyze the entire song, I'll just leave a few notes. For some reason, when Leonard talks to someone intimately in song lyrics, I imagine he is speaking to Joni Mitchell. I know she is just a straw man at this point (no offense, Joni), but it gives me a point of reference.
I'd really like to live beside you, baby
I love your body and your spirit and your clothes
But you see that line there moving through the station?
I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those....
This is a sad truth about Leonard Cohen's life. In at least one of Joni Mitchell's songs, she refers to him as "the priest." Cohen has foregone many of the pleasures in life to remain dedicated to his music, and to the tremendous proliferation of his body of work. But he seems to be weighed down by his monk-like existence (literally, for five years he went into seclusion in a monastery near Los Angeles, adopting the name "Jikan," which means "silence,"). The reduction of his entire life to being someone standing in line at a train station emphasizes his very somber and contemplative observation of the world around him. He is a lonely sentry, bearing witness to the machinations of those with social power today.
The "twenty years of boredom" probably refers to his many years of being a troubadour, a less strident voice. But Leonard is nothing if not serious as a heart attack. His true calling is as an iconoclast, rather than as a conformist.
I see parallels in my own life. I spent more than twenty years being bored to tears in the office world, but still, I learned a great deal about people and social politics, which informs my writing now. I even had a dream once where I was deemed a silent angel, and this dream has always haunted me, because I see so much more than I speak of. So, of course, I relate to this song on a very personal level.
I am getting a completely different take on this song. Rather than analyze the entire song, I'll just leave a few notes. For some reason, when Leonard talks to someone intimately in song lyrics, I imagine he is speaking to Joni Mitchell. I know she is just a straw man at this point (no offense, Joni), but it gives me a point of reference.
I'd really like to live beside you, baby I love your body and your spirit and your clothes But you see that line there moving through the station? I told you, I told you, told you, I was one of those....
This is a sad truth about Leonard Cohen's life. In at least one of Joni Mitchell's songs, she refers to him as "the priest." Cohen has foregone many of the pleasures in life to remain dedicated to his music, and to the tremendous proliferation of his body of work. But he seems to be weighed down by his monk-like existence (literally, for five years he went into seclusion in a monastery near Los Angeles, adopting the name "Jikan," which means "silence,"). The reduction of his entire life to being someone standing in line at a train station emphasizes his very somber and contemplative observation of the world around him. He is a lonely sentry, bearing witness to the machinations of those with social power today.
The "twenty years of boredom" probably refers to his many years of being a troubadour, a less strident voice. But Leonard is nothing if not serious as a heart attack. His true calling is as an iconoclast, rather than as a conformist.
I see parallels in my own life. I spent more than twenty years being bored to tears in the office world, but still, I learned a great deal about people and social politics, which informs my writing now. I even had a dream once where I was deemed a silent angel, and this dream has always haunted me, because I see so much more than I speak of. So, of course, I relate to this song on a very personal level.