"That's How The Light Gets In" - Leonard Cohen & Troubadours Of Passion In The Holy Heart Of St. John's (Videos)

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.  - Anthem, Leonard Cohen

It's a cloudy, windy, chilly day here on the far eastern edge of the western world (or the far western edge of the eastern world, depending on your point of view), but I'm still basking in the warm afterglow of last night's Leonard Cohen show at Holy Heart. There is something so perfectly appropriate about having experienced the raw, impassioned vulnerability of Leonard Cohen's music within the walls of Holy Heart; I felt much the same way seeing Hawksley Workman in that same small, warm place a few months ago. Some day I'd love to see Ron Hynes play there too, and best of all the Holy Heart Of Mary would be a most fitting place for all the facets of Alan Doyle and his music to shine.

That was what I was thinking as I fell asleep last night, and just like an awkwardly written scene in an overly earnest first novel, my CBC-radio-set clock alarm went off this morning by playing Take Me For A Ride. I thought it was a sweet and painful dream; gradually I became aware that this was real and waking life.

Last night's show was wonderful - the performers, the crowd, most of all the music, all of it better than I could have hoped for or expected, even taking into account my own very high hopes and confident expectations. It has been a very long time since I last saw Leonard Cohen perform live - it has been a very long time since most anyone has seen Leonard Cohen perform live - and it was as good as I remembered and so much more. I'm not sure how much of that "so much more" is a part of Leonard's own apparently limiltess breadth and depth of artistry and skill and how much of it might be a result of the effects of the intervening years on the observer. All I can say for sure is that this is the music - above all, these are the lyrics, though perhaps more apt to call them the poetry - that found their place in my heart long ago and far away; this is the music, the lyrics, the poetry and the passion, that abide in that same place.

The first Leonard Cohen song I ever heard was almost certainly Suzanne; the Judy Collins version was so ubiquitous that I can't begin to recall when or where I first heard it - it was just always there. But not so with Bird On The Wire, the song that caused me to fall in love. Some moments are forever unforgettable: Late one night during a party my parents were hosting, with a house full of the jazz and blues musicians who played regularly at the club where my Dad tended bar, I was doing kitchen duty to avoid being summarily sent off to bed, keeping the food hot and the drinks flowing while eavesdropping on the conversation and music that kept breaking out spontaneously all night long.

At one point very early the next morning, an older fellow I didn't know well began to sing the most amazing song in a smoky, aching voice filled with longing and desire, hope and despair, pleasure and pain. What he was singing stopped me dead in my tracks, standing there all by myself in the kitchen transfixed, frozen in place like a statue of some Old World kitchen-sprite, a corkscrew in one hand and a serving spoon in the other. I can't pretend to have fully understood Bird On The Wire then, I was far too young for that; but instinct and intuition are at times ageless.Instinct and intuition whispered to my heart that this song was true. And so I opened my heart to that truth.

I've said before that I tend to think of songs as if they were people, living entities with a life and purpose all their own. That goes both ways - sometimes I see people in the songs I believe describe some fundamental aspect of the heart and soul of who that person is. The way that most often works is that I hear a song and it reminds me of a particular person I know, but on a rare few occasions, it's been a matter of having held a song in my heart, waiting for the person who belongs to that song to come along. I waited a very long time for the truth of Bird On The Wire to become tangible. As with all things Wonderful - even more with all things Terrible Wonderful - the wait was well worth it.

I know full well that it's not the person many, perhaps not even most, believe Alan Doyle to be, but from the very first time seeing him perform and hearing his songs - by the second verse of Consequence Free, I was already thinking about the contradictory challenges of the beggar and the pretty lady -  the truth of Bird On The Wire has been who I believe him to be, something fundamental to the heart and soul of what I see and hear in him, something true about him.  Instinct and intuition. All that I have witnessed since those first few moments has made belief in that truth all the more sure and steady, as well as all the more deserving of an open heart.

Bird On The Wire, Leonard Cohen, Holy Heart, St. John's, May 2008

Bird On The Wire

Like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook,
Like a knight from some old fashioned book,
I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind,
I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue
It's just that I thought a lover had to be some kind of liar too.

Like a baby, stillborn,
Like a beast with his horn,
I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song,
And by all that I have done wrong,
I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch,
He said to me, you must not ask for so much.
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door,
She cried to me, hey, why not ask for just a little bit more?

Oh, like a bird on the wire,
Like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free.

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Overall, it was an excellent show, one of the best shows I've seen in awhile. The band was uniformly excellent (especially the fellow who played clarinet, saxophone, harmonica, keyboards and a few other instruments too), and each member received due and diligent acknowledgement from The Master (hah - now there's a Cohen song I was once told reminded someone else of me). The adoring and enthusiastic crowd (not a bit the norm in St. John's) and Cohen's apparently genuinely sincere gratitude for how he and his crew had been received and treated during their three-day stay here in St. John's created an atmosphere of friendly warmth, that feeling of gratitude flowing freely in both directions. I don't spend much time in audiences who show anywhere near so much genuine and generous gratitude to the artists on stage; it felt wonderful, much like being caught up in the sweep of a loving embrace.

And then there was Leonard himself. How in the world do I do justice in describing what it is like to see Leonard Cohen live?  For all of the times we shrug and say, "You really need to see it for yourself to understand its power," this is one of those times when that need is at its greatest. This is why I tried as hard as I could to persuade Alan to come to one of these shows, but even so, all I could say was that I wanted him to see how Cohen connects with his crowd. I'm kicking myself for not being more blunt about it, for not saying outrght that there are distinct parallels that dwell alongside complete opposites - each of which work to create a similar result - in how Cohen and he perform; I held back because it has been so long since I had seen Leonard, I was not sure it would be all I remembered it to be. O ye of little faith; I should have had more trust in both the music and the man. I could never have any such similar hesitations about Alan himself; I should never have had them about Leonard.

I could have told Alan about how Newfoundland's private face has so many times reminded me of images and moods and moments in Cohen's songs (it's no surprise at all to me that there is such a dedicated Cohen contingent to be found here...the surprise would have been if it were otherwise). Or maybe I should have just come straight out and told him that if he came he would most likely see Cohen perform a song that described him perfectly; I very nearly did say that...Alan was very much a Bird On The Wire that night.

There was so much I could have said, and as always so little time and place in which to say it; all I wound up saying is that he should go. I'm not sure he made it to any of the shows, though I do know Bob did, since I saw him there. I tend to think Alan did not, but I'll keep hoping he did. There was something important there for him to see that probably isn't going to be described well enough by anyone else, including me, no matter how diligently I try.

Immediately after the show, a friend's mother said she could still feel Leonard's voice reverberating in her chest. My friend and I looked at each other, smiling. Well, yes...there too is what I thought to myself. By nearly any objective standard, Leonard Cohen really can't sing, not in terms of how singing voices are usually judged, and he's not particularly adept with melody lines nor proficient with hooks. But there is that low, insistent barenaked passion that penetrates all defences and touches the willing listener in a place - to purloin one of his own lyrics - a thousand kisses deep. His live performance is a smoothly deft and relentlessly honest seduction, the crowd his eagerly compliant partner. It's no coincidence that so many of the women of all ages who see Cohen perform - and a good number of the men too, I am betting, those with the balls to admit it - come out into the cool evening air after the end of the show still stirred and shaken by the passion and the heat. Leonard Cohen's songs are all about passion and heat - all about impaling oneself on pleasure and caressing the whetted edge of pain - and they draw like-minded hearts and bodies toward them like moths to the hypnotic flicker of that flame.

For all of the admirable skill of the musicians on that stage, the music and the performance of Leonard Cohen are both founded on words of passion. There is so much raw, sensual, vulnerable emotion in the songs themselves, intimately confessional lyrics that lay the songwriter wide open as he offers himself up to his audience, and his understated directness of delivery is not at all unlike the sure and steady hands of the lover who works his dark magic in all the right places at exactly the proper pace. Leonard Cohen puts his own unique spin on the concept of "An intimate evening with".  

As does Alan, in his own unique way, with songs of his own which are very similar and with songs of GBS's which are quite different. Suggestive similiarities and diametric oppositions - reminiscent passion and familiar dark magic, differing seduction techniques in each pair of sure and steady hands. Like a pair of birds on the wire.

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A few more videos from last night's show. I would have loved to have gotten Anthem on video - that notion of a crack in everything being how the light gets in is pivotal to what I want to write about this place and people in regard to that which is half-broken - but I was too caught up in the sheer delight of experiencing the song live for the first time. I would have loved to get Boogie Street and Tower Of Song too, but only had so much space on the camera card. I did get a video of another of my all-time favourite Cohen songs. If there were a Cohen song to which I might want to lay claim, this, with obligatory gender switch, would be that song.

I'm Your Man, Leonard Cohen, Holy Heart, St. John's, May 2008

I'm Your Man

If you want a lover,
I'll do anything you ask me to;
And if you want another kind of love,
I'll wear a mask for you.
If you want a partner,
Take my hand;
Or if you want to strike me down in anger,
Here I stand -
I'm your man

If you want a boxer,
I will step into the ring for you;
And if you want a doctor,
I'll examine every inch of you.
If you want a driver,
Climb inside;
Or if you want to take me for a ride,
You know you can -
I'm your man

Ah, the moon's too bright,
The chains too tight,
The beast wont go to sleep.
I've been running through all these promises to you,
That I made and I could never keep.
Ah, but a man never got a woman back,
Not by begging on his knees;
Or I'd crawl to you baby,
And I'd fall at your feet;
And I'd howl at your beauty,
Like a dog in heat.
And I'd claw at your heart,
And I'd tear at your sheet.
I'd say please, please -
I'm your man

And if you've got to sleep
A moment on the road,
I will steer for you.
And if you want to work the street alone
I'll disappear for you.
If you want a father for your child,
Or only want to walk with me a while,
Across the sand -
I'm your man

If you want a lover,
I'll do anything you ask me to;
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you.
If you want a partner,
Take my hand;
Or if you want to strike me down in anger,
Here I stand -
I'm your man

From the very first time I heard it, I have loved that doctor line. As did the doctor sitting next to me last night.

And no way could I not get a video of Leonard performing Suzanne live:

Suzanne, Leonard Cohen, Holy Heart, St. John's, May 2008

   

A very young man's song, and he'd probably be the first to say not at all the best of his lyrics, but I have always been and will always be haunted by these lines:

There are heroes in the seaweed,
There are children in the morning;
They are leaning out for love,
And they will lean that way forever.
While Suzanne holds the mirror.

A clear and reliable mirror, an unflinchingly honest and intensely passionate mirror, a mirror that elicts a gasp and a sigh, a cry and a smile. A mirror that reflects the light that gets in through the cracks in everything. Those are the bells that can still ring.

Comments

[Ellen]

Lynda, I nearly needed a cigarette after reading that. Whew!

I've never been big on Leonard Cohen, mainly because he can't sing but reading the lyrics you posted maybe I should check him out more. Those are truly beautiful lyrics. Never in a million years would it have occured to me to put Alan and Leonard Cohen in the same category. I've really got to think about that. But it's a good think!

Good luck finding middle ground about fans. I think you can do it -- you've already come a long way from how you felt before so you can go the rest of the way too! {{hug}}

I'd love to see new pictures, when you find the time. :D

[Stephen]

It's been a long time since LC's been on my radar. How good a lyricist he is had slipped my mind. I read what's here and Googled the other titles you mentioned and wound up spending a lot of the government's dime remembering. I think its time for me to go searching through the stack of CD's with the dust on them when I get home.

Before that I better go back to work and earn my dime. ;)

[lynda]

I've got Leonard at home on CD and even on vinyl. I go long periods of time without listening to them, but I have so many of his lyrics in my memory and those lyrics arise unbidden at times, catching me off guard all over again with how appropriate they are to whatever I am pondering in the present. I really did think of Bird On The Wire during that first rendition of Consequence Free, partly because of the song, partly because of what the camera was revealing. Same with the "crack in everything" and "half-broken" connection, though it took me a long time on a very rocky path to understand the implications of that connection. Most of the implications, that is...I'm still stumbling around on that path, I suppose.

I think some people who really like Leonard tend to forget about his music for long periods of time, maybe because there is so much passion and emotion in it and that's often not the easiest/safest feeling to hold onto during day-to-day so-called "real life". His lyrics tend to challenge us when we have become complacent or are settling for a gray and circumscribed existence; some respond to that kind of challenge, but others instead choose to turn away and stop listening. Maybe that's part of why so many who love his music when they're college students drift away when life becomes less about the peaks and valleys and more about mortgages and soccer games. I certainly gone through some periods in my life when Leonard was just too much to face up to.

Go and have a listen to those dusty CDs. I think you'll be glad you did.

Ellen, thank you so much for saying that. I tried to write in a manner suited to the men about whom I was writing, and your response is just what I'd hoped for.

Leonard's lyrics are indeed beautiful, perceptive and insightful as well, a beauty that is intense, deeply personal, even confessional. I was suprised by how much better his singing voice was at this show; most of the rasp was gone, leaving his characteristic low rumble coming through penetratingly clear (going straight to chests, and other places). He made a mention at one point about having stopped smoking, and maybe that's what's caused the increased vocal clarity.

I could have written a really long piece detailing why it is I put Leonard and Alan into the same category - some of those reasons because of similarities, others because of complete opposites - and maybe one day I will. For now, maybe think about it in terms of passion...the ways in which inner passion finds its way into artistic expression.

Leonard Cohen pours his emotion into his songs, in a blaze of intensity that steals your breath away; his performance dynamic is charming and direct but always understated...on stage, he becomes a vessel for the passion in his songs. The songs - those lyrics and his self-effacing charm in performance - transform him and draw his audience into an embrace that is dizzyingly impassioned. I think most everyone felt like they needed a cigarette after the show came to an end. As for me, I was wondering if there was some way to go to another show.

For all of the giddy frenzy generated at GBS shows, most GBS songs are not particularly emotional, certainly not emotional across a wide spectrum of human feeling. There aren't many GBS songs about the agony of the heart or the despair of the soul; for that matter, there aren't many GBS songs about undying love or impassioned seduction. At least not upfront and outright...as a general rule, a good deal of the emotion expressed in GBS's songs - that emotion which lies beneath the sparkle of their upbeat and hopeful surface - is subtle and understated. Much like Cohen's own style of performance.

It's a bit like a mirror image. Cohen's songs are emotionally intense and sensually passionate and his performance is subtle and understated. Many of GBS's songs are emotionally understated and subtle (yes, I know full well many do not believe this of the Newfie Party Band, let alone of any artists from NewfoundDisneyland) and Alan's performance is emotionally intense and sensually passionate. Regardless of the content of the song, Alan steals your breath away with his performance.

I'm not casting any aspersions on how the anyone else performs, quite the contrary - they all work very hard and they all put on a fantastic show most every night - right now I am simply talking about performing with the fire of passion, and Alan is the one who does that, night after night aftet night. Passion is founded in need, and his singular and striking need shows clearly to anyone who is not completely blind, willfully or otherwise.

Actually, I'm not even saying I think that having/showing this level of passion - personally or professionally - is necessarily "better" than other ways of doing it. Just because it's what appeals to and draws me, that doesn't mean everyone is going to react the same way. It doesn't even mean that I don't think there are some troubling aspects to being that way.

By definition, when people can so clearly see your passion and your need, you are leaving yourself wide open, totally vulnerable to any and all kinds of mistreatment. There are strong and sensible arguments for keeping that innermost part of yourself safely tucked away, especially when you are in the midst of jackals, as artists so often are...as we all so often are, I suppose. As much as I am moved by how Alan performs, I worry and worry and worry about his own vulnerability. It was even worse with Russell; he made me half-cracked with worry for him because he was so wide open on stage and he let his need for his music to connect with his audience show so plainly, even painfully at times - all of this before audiences that for the most part did not merit anywhere near so much trust or openness. Pearls before swine, more often than not. But for all that worry, it was still all that passion that caught my attention, as always. Some of us seem to be wired that way.

And at the end of the day, that's what it comes down to for me, why I put Alan and Leonard Cohen into the same category - that common denominator of passion, of relentless desire, even if the passion and the desire often find differing manners of expression.

I happen to believe that "passion will out" to paraphrase a truism; one way or another, passion will find a means of expression. Frankly, there is no way within the context of GBS - at least not now, and I can't see it happening in the forseeable future - for Alan (or any of them, for that matter) to write the kind of songs Leonard Cohen writes, no way to write any song that makes manifest that part of the human emotional spectrum that lies outside of the parameters of what is considered (internally and/or externally) "appropriate" for GBS. Alan's done it in some songs he's written and co-written (Triffie, Take Me For A Ride, Weight Of A Man, Ladder, The Way You Wanted Me, Not For The Money Alone, and of course Belong) but as a general rule, those aren't the songs that become GBS songs. And even when they do (Boston, Lucky Me, and, yes, Walk On The Moon), they still seem more fitting as solo Alan Doyle tunes than as GBS songs. Either that or they so often get totally misunderstood or half-understood (if Boston is your wedding song, I have to wonder if you're really paying attention to what the song is saying) or rejected (didn't How Did We Get totally tank as a single release because that's not what the pogo hordes wanted from GBS? Or was that Fast As I Can?) or they wind up being made to sound "more happy" than they were originally intended to be (I'm really finding it difficult to watch the canada.com videos that show the process of getting WoTM GBS-CD ready).

For that matter, it's happened to Bob too, when Helmethead went from self-loathing to becoming more or less a joke song and the general rejection/indifference to both Bob and Sean with songs such as Demasduit's Dream, Buying Time, Bas As I Am, and, of course, Sean's Widow In The Window. God only knows how many more songs there are that will never get heard at all. I am very much wondering what the fate of Straight To Hell and Oh Yeah will be; the cynic in me says the former will be loved but at best only surfacely understood and the latter will likely be rejected out of hand. Though it might depend a great deal on how each song has been made to sound on the CD and how each song winds up being performed.

There is a full range of emotional expression that almost never surfaces in GBS music, not directly from them and/or not successfully responded to by their fans, certainly not the way it is predominant in Leonard Cohen's music and embraced by his fans. But when a full range of passion exists within the artist and that artist has a driving need to express himself and thereby elicit a desired response from others, it is going to find its own way to happen.

And at the end of the day (as well as the show), the result of that expression of passion is very much the same: There will be those who have come who wind up touched and moved and, for a brief few moments, swept beyond the narrow boundaries of themselves into something more than what they could be all alone, on stage as well as off. A moment of shared delight and mutual satisfaction will have occurred. Which is as good a description of the natural effects of passion as you're going to get from me.

So much for not writing a long piece about it. Silly me with my delusions of succinctness.

In for a penny, in for a verbose pound...thanks for the good thoughts in regard to finding my way to a more balanced perspective when it comes to fans. I do know I've made some progress...or, even if not always progress, I at least know I don't react to the same things the way I used to.

I got a comment the other day reaming me for the way I focus on Alan here, basically calling me a sorry sack of shit for not giving all the GBS members "equal coverage". A long time ago, my reaction would have been some touchy-feely response that went on and on about why it is my heart, camera, and writing inclinations tend in an Alanesque direction, probably followed by an earnest resolve to be "more fair" in the future.

By the time I finally realised how utterly pointless that approach was with this kind of person, I had begun to respond to the same with a "What is it about the term "personal blog" that you don't get, bitch? This isn't a GBS board and I'm not on their payroll and sure as hell not on yours, so if you don't like my choice of focus, you can fuck off." That attitude quickly became as tedious as the jerks who were provoking it. I will never understand how it is that perpetually angry and sour people find the energy to maintain all of their negativity; feeling that way just sucks the pleasure out of everything for me, and most assuredly not in the good way.

After that came the feeling of desperate boredom, kind of like The Preacher in Ecclesiastes - is there nothing new under the sun? Or maybe Peggy Lee - is that all there is? But there's just too much interesting other stuff - too much to care about and be fascinated with - in life to stay bored for very long.

When I got this last comment the other day expressing the same old sour bitchiness that's been spewed out for years now, it was more a matter of responding with a shrug and a "Yeah, there is it again, right on schedule". It is what it is, and I decided a long time ago that the good is well worth the bad, so there you go.

And that really does feel like progress.