Anthem — Leonard Cohen
#365Songs: July 25th
The birds they sang
At the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
Has passed away
Or what is yet to be.
We’re in a multi-year chaos cycle, one seemingly without end, and it’s hard to not fall into the doom spiral. For so long, we’ve been tasked to carry on as normal, even in the absence of calm and peace. To step up and fuel the capitalistic engine, even as it sputters for those most loyal to it, even as it enriches those already enriched by schemes that perpetuate the chaos.
In those months after the 2016 election, and inauguration, as rights were stripped, as everything we knew to be decent was reversed, we carried on.
In those early pandemic months, as we juggled claustrophobia with a loss of purpose, connection, and logic, as we feared for the health of the ones we love, as so many of us suddenly took on too many roles with no end in sight, we carried on.
As the Fascist redefined truth, broke the systems meant to protect us, staged an insurrection, then cried immunity, never to be punished — because in a rigged system, the ones who rig it never lose — we carried on.
And now, as we inch ever closer to the end of everything we know, we’re once again asked to carry on.
But how do we carry on as hope fades, after years of accumulated exhaustion and false positives?
We just do.
Even here deep within the chaos, there’s still a little light. There’s still a glimmer of something, perhaps a Kamala Harris miracle, a collective bout of conscience and common sense in the privacy of voting booths that turns us right-side out again. When I started thinking about searching for light in the throes of darkness, I thought immediately of the incomparable Leonard Cohen.
Ah the wars they will
Be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
Bought and sold
And bought again
The dove is never free.
Leonard Cohen wrote the songs for his 1992 album, The Future, as the LA riots raged, as the Berlin Wall fell, as Bill Clinton waged electoral war against Bush — a time that, at the time, felt turbulent yet in modern terms was closer in tone to the backyard of a Disney film. The Future is unquestionably Cohen’s most apocalyptic album, a journey into our darkest nature, and yet, as with most of his catalog, there’s humor and sex and wisdom and faith and (gasp) even some unbridled hope.
He said in interviews, “We’re already in the flood, just the flood is interior. What is it that people can’t take? They can’t take the reality they’re living in.”
That was 1992.
And yet, he sang about carrying on. Easy to say then, right? But still, the message is clear.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
We asked for signs
The signs were sent:
The birth betrayed
The marriage spent
Yeah the widowhood
Of every government
Signs for all to see.
I’m not religious, by anyone’s standards, but I’ve studied some theology and have attended enough multi-denominational services to know that in the eyes of God, any God, we’re flawed by design. Meant to suffer, learn, suffer more, learn again, suffer longer, then die. And in the suffering, we’re meant to find purpose, love, laughter, ourselves. And the thing is, we often do because we’re without other options.
Suffer. Suffer again. Suffer better.
Or something like that.
I can run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
They’re gonna hear from me.
Ring ring ring ring ring
There’s a time and place for Cohen’s music, and that time and place is now and always. His humanity is timeless, his poetry seemingly effortless, an intimacy so proximal it’s as if we’re there, in the Chelsea Hotel, living his life alongside him — and that man certainly lived a life worth living.
Even though the rest of the album was conceived in the moment and of the times, the song Anthem was a decade in the making — a song recorded three times before finally appearing on The Future. According to Cohen, there was always something missing — a lyric, a note, an unburdened truth.
“I think it is one of the best songs I have written, maybe the best,” the songwriter told music critic Robert Hilburn in 1995. “I knew that song was everything that my whole work and life had somehow gathered around. It is absolutely true to me.”
Those are some big words from an artist like Cohen, but also a reminder that our opus might just be buried within our previous failures. On a broader scale, it’s also a hint of optimism that everything goes through a series of edits, alterations, and existential failures before becoming what, in the end, it must be. Though it’ll take some serious self-gaslighting to believe it, perhaps that’ll happen to our democracy, too: a retraction before springing back forward into an era of progress. We can hope, at least. What else is left but to carry on?
I can run no more
With that lawless crowd
While the killers in high places
Say their prayers out loud.
But they’ve summoned, they’ve summoned up
A thundercloud
They’re gonna hear from me.
Ring ring ring ring ring
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in
You can add up the parts
But you won’t have the sum
You can strike up the march,
There is no drum
Every heart, every heart
To love will come
But like a refugee.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
~
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