Leonard Cohen/Anthem
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.
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
.Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is 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 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
and they’re going to hear from me.
Ring the bells that still can ring …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.
Leonard Cohen
“Though he didn’t consider himself religious, he told his rabbi that everything he wrote was liturgy. I found out that he drew especially from the Kabbalah—the mystical version of Judaism which teaches that all of creation was once a vessel filled with holy light. But it shattered, and now the shards of divinity are scattered everywhere, amidst the pain and ugliness. Our task is to gather up these fragments wherever we find them. This philosophy made instant and perfect sense to me. “It was part of this thesis that he had, that his whole life was about,” explained Adam Cohen in an interview with the music producer Rick Rubin, “which is brokenness—the broken Hallelujah, the crack in everything. The whole notion that defeat and imperfection and brokenness was the fabric of the experience. Then, instead of just having a plaintive assertion, the real generosity was to write about it in a way that you hadn’t considered, with generosity, with voluptuousness, with inventiveness, and then he could, on top of it, set it to a melody. Like what nicotine is in a cigarette, it’s a nicotine delivery system. He was giving you a transcendence delivery system. That’s what he was trying to do every time.” [Emphasis added.] I hadn’t known all this during the many years that I’d loved Cohen’s music. But I’d felt it—especially the part about brokenness giving way to transcendence.”
Bittersweet | Susan Cain
