Soren Dreier
  • Contact
    • About
  • Personal Guidance
  • Readings
    • – Reading Feedback
  • Healings
    • – Healing Feedback
  • Writings

Soren Dreier

Soren Dreier

  • Contact
    • About
  • Personal Guidance
  • Readings
    • – Reading Feedback
  • Healings
    • – Healing Feedback
  • Writings
Society

Leonard Cohen: Thanks For The Dance

Posted on November 25, 2019 by Soren Dreier
Author: Atlantic
November 25, 2019

Leonard Cohen Never Left Earth

Thanks for the Dance, the singer’s posthumously released album, honors his legacy as a mystic and as a man.

The work unearthed after Leonard Cohen’s death at age 82 in 2016 contemplated the soul, the Holocaust, and hip-hop. “Kanye West Is Not Picasso” went the title of one poem in Cohen’s posthumously released 2018 collection, The Flame. A portion:

Jay-Z is not the Dylan of Anything

I am the Dylan of anything

I am the Kanye West of Kanye West

The Kanye West

Of the great bogus shift of bullshit culture

From one boutique to another

Don’t act so surprised. The Canadian singer and writer retains an aura of hallowed spirituality in the public imagination, but he was, first, a man of this world. Yes, Cohen’s work quoted scripture and contemplated apocalypse; yes, he lived for years in a Zen monastery. And yes, he wrote a song called “Don’t Go Home With Your Hard-On.”

The fleeting, contemporary, and crass were all part of the great story that he wanted to tell about permanence and impermanence. In the final lines of the Kanye poem, after his sassy-ironic appropriation of rap swagger, he delivered one of his trademark dark prophecies. “I only come alive after a war,” he wrote. “And we have not had it yet.”

Did Leonard Cohen watch The View? That’s one of the questions I’m left with from Thanks for the Dance, the strong posthumous album assembled by his son, Adam Cohen. On “Moving On,” Leonard bids a tender farewell to a beloved woman (probably his legendary ex Marianne Ihlen).

His voice is a moss-encrusted slither, just like it always was late in his life. His melody unfolds with the simple oomph of a folklore. Tender chords twitch and hover from the Spanish guitarist Javier Mas. “I loved your moods,” Cohen sings. “I loved the way they threaten every single day.” Then: “Your beauty ruled me, though I knew / ’Twas more hormonal than the view.”

The view? Or The View? The lyrics sheet doesn’t capitalize the words. But I’m suspicious after encountering so many men of Cohen’s age cohort who use the word hormonal when confronted with women who share opinions for a living. Even if Joy Behar was not on Cohen’s mind, the invoked cliché of an estrogenic vixen jolts as crass, specific, and worldly. Listening to the song generally feels like curling into a plush comforter; hearing the sexist couplet feels like finding a burr.

Read More

Leonard Cohen: Thanks For The Dance was last modified: November 25th, 2019 by Soren Dreier
0 comment
previous post
The New Fever Waltz
next post
Brain Foods That Cuts Risk of Alzheimer’s

Recent Posts – Dreier

  • Karma: The Man Who Couldn’t Let Go

    November 6, 2019

Most Read This Week

  • On the Other Side of Selfish

    February 28, 2019
  • The Birth of the Spiritual Warrior

    May 31, 2019
  • Astral Spiders Looking For a Home

    November 17, 2015
  • Ancient Love

    December 29, 2017
  • Light is the Spirit – Dense is the Flesh

    January 3, 2018

Trending

  • Light is the Spirit – Dense is the Flesh

    January 3, 2018
  • What We Get Wrong About Time

    December 4, 2019
  • Mastering the Art of Getting What You Want

    December 3, 2019
  • Climate and the Money Trail

    December 4, 2019
  • Ketamine is a ‘Rapid-Fire’ Treatment for Depression?

    December 21, 2017
  • Time to Take a Chance?

    December 5, 2019

Chopra

  • Finding Your Way to Gratitude

    December 2, 2019
  • A New, Improved Reality Depends on You

    May 6, 2019
  • Trading In the Afterlife for One Life

    July 22, 2019
  • The Most Popular Model of Reality Is Wrong

    November 20, 2019
  • Three Impossible Things We Can’t Do Without

    May 21, 2019

Tales of Tao

  • Tales of Tao: Forfeiting the Chance to Become Immortal

    March 30, 2019
  • Tales of Tao: The Mule

    July 11, 2019
  • The Cosmic Now

    June 21, 2019
  • Tales of Tao: To Nobody

    March 29, 2019
  • The Mountain Deity and His Guard Wolf

    May 17, 2019

Categories

© 2019 - Soren Dreier


Back To Top