[lit-ideas] Re: [lit-ideas] Re: [lit-ideas] Culture Desk: Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home” : The New Yorker
- From: Andy <mimi.erva@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 18 Jan 2012 06:21:23 -0800 (PST)
Liking music is like being in love. The heart has reasons that reason cannot
know. One of the things I never liked about Dylan is that he exploits
religious imagery and people love it, maybe for the illusion of profundity it
gives. Imagine if he wrote "And Zeus said you'd better run". Not quite the
same ring, even if the same idea. Leonard Cohen strikes me for the totality
of the experience, that beautiful soft quality with lyrics that stick to the
ribs somehow. I love the song Marianne. But I also like the Pill Box Hat.
The heart has reasons...
Andy
________________________________
From: Donal McEvoy <donalmcevoyuk@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, January 18, 2012 6:55 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: [lit-ideas] Culture Desk: Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home”
: The New Yorker
________________________________
From: Ursula Stange <ursula@xxxxxxxxxx>
>Listen...and then read the heartfelt comments below the song. Leonard is
>loved...>
Yeh. Too-f---g-loved.*
Cohen raises a problem that other artists, like Dylan, also raise: their
all-too-loving fans. They're enough to put you off (as Dylan observes in 'No
Direction Home', "You can kill with kindness"). And the abiding suspicion is
that what they get from the artist is a pale and self-satisfying imitation of
what the artist is actually offering [Woody Allen sent this up re Dylan in
"Annie Hall" with the Shelley Duvall character who is awestruck by the
profundity of the chorus of "Just Like A Woman" (though one suspects Woody
might think there is little more to Dylan than what that character 'gets')];
and so they do the object of their devotion a disservice. In Cohen's case, his
schtick might be summarised as offering some of these fans a romantic vision of
themselves as 'beautiful losers'; but the ironic and perverse and self-mocking
elements of Cohen's own 'beautiful losers' personae tend to be downplayed, if
not scrubbed from, these fans' appreciation. It
makes them rather pathetic and deluded looking - losers maybe, but not so
beautiful as they care to think. That they might be simply deeply affected,
rather than at all amused, by Cohen's new "Going Home" is a case in point.
Dylan went through a hideous phase, shown by "Empire Burlesque", of trying for
some modish production and even singing in a terribly mannered way, but on his
recent records ("Time Out Of Mind" onwards) his singing, and the playing and
production, would be worth the price of admission even if those records did not
also contain some of his best songs. But Cohen has long and consistently opted,
presumably deliberately, for musical backdrops that tend to 'muzak' (including
the kindergarten clippety-clop undertow of new song 'Going Home' and its girly
chorus) - anyone who finds this great and affecting and sophisticated music,
without bemusement at its MORish schmaltz and very limited musical structures
and palette, is only one step away from taking Mantovani and Liberace seriously
as great artists. It can only work as music if taken as some kind of joke. How
many Cohen fans would head the queue agreeing? There were none in the queue of
"heartfelt comments".
D
*see 'Spinal Tap'
Who inwardly cheered when Chris Addison expressed his derisive view of the
"awful" Shami Chakrabarti ("She screeches like a spoilt six year old") in
yesterday's London 'Metro'
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/01/leonard-cohens-going-home-new-song.html
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