
[Editor's note: As we roll up our sleeves to ensure the health and well-being of our planet for future generations, I find the words of Leonard Cohen soothing and inspiring. I hope you do too, as trying times are ahead.]
By Virginia Small
Just before Donald Trump became our reality TV star president-elect, songwriter-bard Leonard Cohen died, leaving an incomparable legacy.
Releasing his last album weeks before his death at 82, Cohen charted courses for survival and redemption. And he pulled no punches. To the end, he deftly interwove themes of darkness and light that were political and personal, erotic and sacred. More than entertaining his listeners, Cohen intimately engaged them. He called on fellow travelers to take heart, make change, laugh, pray, dance, and act with courage, dignity and love.
Ben Houdijk / Flickr
Insights from a dozen Cohen songs are relevant to today's unsettling realities.
1. Achieving democratic ideals is an ongoing challenge. Cohen's prescient Democracy (1992) recounts the governmental system's challenges and shortcomings. "It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and the worst ... from the brave, the bold, the battered heart of Chevrolet … It's coming from the sorrow in the streets, from the holy places where the races meet … Democracy is coming to the USA."
Cohen told Paul Zollo in Songwriters on Songwriting in 1992: "It's not an ironic song. It's a song of deep intimacy and affirmation of the experiment of democracy in this country … This is really where the races confront one another, where the classes, where the genders, where even the sexual orientations confront one another."
How to navigate all this complexity? The song admonishes: "The heart has got to open in a fundamental way." Cohen sends godspeed for America's precarious journey: "Sail on, sail on, O mighty ship of state! To the shores of need, past the reefs of greed, through the squalls of hate..."
2. Stare down desolation with grit and grace. In Steer Your Way (2016), released on his final album, Cohen's sings: "Steer your way past the ruins of the altar and the mall … /Steer your way past the pain that is far more real than you/That's smashed the Cosmic Model/That blinded every view."
He calls for unflinching self-review and humility: "Steer your way past the Truth that you believed in yesterday/ … And say the mea culpa which you gradually forgot/Year by year, month by month, day by day/Thought by thought."
As Cohen prepared to bid farewell, he surveyed the natural world and a coarsened culture with trademark irony: "They whisper still, the struggling stones/The blunted mountains weep/As he died to make men holy/Let us die to make things cheap."
3. Yes, the system is rigged—now what? Decades before Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren railed against oligarchs and plutocrats controlling America, Cohen pronounced, "Everybody knows the deal is rotten/Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton/For your ribbons and bows."
Everybody Knows (1988, with Sharon Robinson) is a caustic litany: "Everybody knows that the dice are loaded/Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed/Everybody knows the war is over/Everybody knows the good guys lost/Everybody knows the fight was fixed/The poor stay poor, the rich get rich/That's how it goes/Everybody knows."
Both bleak and droll, it can be heard as a fatalistic accounting of corruption or an urgent plea to clean things up.
4. Hold onto an inner guiding compass. In My Secret Life (2001, with Sharon Robinson) celebrates quiet subversiveness. "I do what I have to do/to get by/But I know what is wrong/And I know what is right/And I'd die for the truth/in my secret life."
The song recounts the strain of facing ever-present horrors: "Looked through the paper/Makes you want to cry/nobody cares if the people/live or die/And the dealer wants you thinking/That it's either black or white/thank God it's not that simple/ in my secret life."
5. Take care of body and spirit. Come Healing (2012, with Patrick Leonard) is reverent, transcendent: "O see the darkness yielding/That tore the light apart/Come healing of the reason/Come healing of the heart."
A devout Jew, Cohen also often referenced other spiritual traditions: "Behold the gates of mercy/In arbitrary space/And none of us deserving/The cruelty or the grace/O solitude of longing/Where love has been confined/Come healing of the body/Come healing of the mind."
6. Tough times call for clear-eyed vision and empathy. The Future (1992) is prophetically stark: "Give me back the Berlin Wall/give me Stalin and St. Paul/Give me Christ/or give me Hiroshima…I've seen the future, baby: it is murder."
Cohen explained to Rolling Stone in 2009 that The Future and Democracy were on his concert set list, "because their apocalyptic vision seems truer now than when they were recorded. People really thought I needed help back then," Cohen told the reporter, laughing.
The song warns: "Things are going to slide, slide in all directions/ … the blizzard of the world/has crossed the threshold/And it has overturned/the order of the soul." Nevertheless, he offers a way out: "I've seen the nations rise and fall/I've heard their stories, heard them all/But love's the only engine of survival."
7. Embrace imperfection. Anthem (1992) starts as a solemn serenity prayer, "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."
Then it urges action and acceptance, despite all: "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."
The narrator defiantly prepares for mythic battle: "I can't 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."
Rebecca De Mornay, who co-produced the song, told Uncut about the verse: "That 'I'—that's the soul of Leonard Cohen."
8. Invoke a higher power. The incantatory tone of If It Be Your Will (1984) reflects Cohen's fervent mysticism. "From this broken hill/All your praises they shall ring/If it be your will/To let me sing."
It's a plea for global as well as personal salvation: "If there is a choice/Let the rivers fill/Let the hills rejoice/Let your mercy spill/On all these burning hearts in Hell/If it be your will/To make us well."
9. Comfort others and do what you can to sleep well. Cohen told Rolling Stone about a song he was working on in 2009, in the midst of the Great Recession: "I thought that 'Lullaby' was just what everyone needs to get to sleep in these troubled times," he said.
Released in 2012, it's beautifully simple: "Sleep baby sleep/The day's on the run/The wind in the trees/Is talking in tongues … If your heart is torn/I don't wonder why/If the night is long/Here's my lullaby." Cohen reassures the listener: "There's a morning to come."
10. Live passionately. A popular standard, Dance Me to the End of Love (1992) honors deep love and the protection it can provide. "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin/Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in/Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove/And dance me to the end of love." Even as passion gets spent, it shields: "Dance me through the curtains that our kisses have outworn/Raise a tent of shelter now, though every thread is torn."
Cohen told an interviewer the "burning violin" image "came from just hearing or reading or knowing that in the death camps, beside the crematoria, in certain of the death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while this horror was going on." He added that "It's not important that anybody knows the genesis of it, because if the language comes from that passionate resource, it will be able to embrace all passionate activity."
11. Celebrate paradox (and cultivate patience). Hallelujah (1984), Cohen's exultant and erotic anthem has been covered some 300 times. He drafted 80 verses over five years before its release, sometimes singing alternate lyrics in concert, such as: "There's a blaze of light/In every word/It doesn't matter which you heard/The holy or the broken Hallelujah."
It took 15 years for Hallelujah to become a massive hit. Cohen told the CBC radio show Q in 2009 that after it was released on Various Positions in 1984 in Canada and Europe, Sony decided not to release the album in the U.S.: "The only person who seemed to recognize the song was Dylan. He was doing it in concert," Cohen said.
More than a decade later, Hallelujah recordings by John Cale and Jeff Buckley began building an audience. Rufus Wainwright's version in the 2001 film Shrek brought it into the mainstream.
12. Take positive action, however you can. In You Got Me Singing (2014, with Patrick Leonard) Cohen's deep-throated delivery conveys triumphant optimism (accompanied by a violin and country-tinged vocals). He makes a winking nod to his signature song: "You got me singing/Even tho' the news is bad/You got me singing/The only song I ever had … You got me singing/Even tho' it all looks grim/You got me singing/The Hallelujah hymn."
His tone is matter-of-fact and resilient, even lighthearted: "Even though the world is gone/You got me thinking/I'd like to carry on."
Reposted with permission from our media associate AlterNet.
Water Protectors Arrested in Minnesota After Chaining Themselves Inside Enbridge Line 3 Pipe
By Jessica Corbett
Water protectors were arrested Thursday after halting construction at a Minnesota worksite for Enbridge's Line 3 project by locking themselves together inside a pipe segment.
- Indigenous-Led Water Protectors Take Direct Action Against ... ›
- Indigenous and Climate Leaders Outraged Over Minnesota Permits ... ›
EcoWatch Daily Newsletter
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker vetoed a sweeping climate bill on Thursday that would have put the commonwealth on a path to eliminating carbon emissions by 2050.
Trending
By Ajit Niranjan
World leaders and businesses are not putting enough money into adapting to dangerous changes in the climate and must "urgently step up action," according to a report published Thursday by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP).
Adaptation Has a Long Way to Go
<p>The Adaptation Gap Report, now in its 5th year, finds "huge gaps" between what world leaders agreed to do under the 2015 <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/5-years-paris-climate-agreement/a-55901139" target="_blank">Paris Agreement</a> and what they need to do to keep their citizens safe from climate change.</p><p>A review by the Global Adaptation Mapping Initiative of almost 1,700 examples of climate adaptation found that a third were in the early stages of implementation — and only 3% had reached the point of reducing risks.</p><p>Disasters like storms and droughts have grown stronger than they should be because people have warmed the planet by burning fossil fuels and chopping down rainforests. The world has heated by more than 1.1 degrees Celsius since the Industrial Revolution and is on track to warm by about 3°C by the end of the century.</p><p>If world leaders <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-change-performance-index-how-far-have-we-come/a-55846406" target="_blank">deliver on recent pledges</a> to bring emissions to <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/joe-bidens-climate-pledges-are-they-realistic/a-56173821" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">net-zero</a> by the middle of the century, they could almost limit warming to 2°C. The target of the Paris Agreement, however, is to reach a target well below that — ideally 1.5°C. </p><p>There are two ways, scientists say, to lessen the pain that warming will bring: mitigating climate change by cutting carbon pollution and adapting to the hotter, less stable world it brings.</p>The Cost of Climate Adaptation
<p>About three-quarters of the world's countries have national plans to adapt to climate change, according to the report, but most lack the regulations, incentives and funding to make them work.</p><p>More than a decade ago, rich countries most responsible for climate change pledged to mobilize $100 billion a year by 2020 in climate finance for poorer countries. UNEP says it is "impossible to answer" whether that goal has been met, while an OECD study published in November found that between 2013 and 2018, the target sum had not once been achieved. Even in 2018, which recorded the highest level of contributions, rich countries were still $20 billion short.</p><p>The yearly adaptation costs for developing countries alone are estimated at $70 billion. This figure is expected to at least double by the end of the decade as temperatures rise, and will hit $280-500 billion by 2050, according to the report.</p><p>But failing to adapt is even more expensive.</p><p>When powerful storms like cyclones Fani and Bulbul struck South Asia, early-warning systems allowed governments to move millions of people out of danger at short notice. Storms of similar strength that have hit East Africa, like <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/zimbabwe-after-cyclone-idai-building-climate-friendly-practices/a-54251885" target="_blank">cyclones Idai</a> and Kenneth, have proved more deadly because fewer people were evacuated before disaster struck.</p><p>The Global Commission on Adaptation estimated in 2019 that a $1.8 trillion investment in early warning systems, buildings, agriculture, mangroves and water resources could reap $7.1 trillion in benefits from economic activity and avoided costs when disasters strike.</p>Exploring Nature-Based Solutions
<p>The report also highlights how restoring nature can protect people from climate change while benefiting local communities and ecology.</p><p><a href="https://www.dw.com/en/climate-fires-risk-climate-change-bushfires-australia-california-extreme-weather-firefighters/a-54817927" target="_blank">Wildfires</a>, for instance, could be made less punishing by restoring grasslands and regularly burning the land in controlled settings. Indigenous communities from Australia to Canada have done this for millennia in a way that encourages plant growth while reducing the risk of uncontrolled wildfires. Reforestation, meanwhile, can stop soil erosion and flooding during heavy rainfall while trapping carbon and protecting wildlife.</p><p>In countries like Brazil and Malaysia, governments could better protect coastal homes from floods and storms by restoring <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/mudflats-mangroves-and-marshes-the-great-coastal-protectors/a-50628747" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">mangroves</a> — tangled trees that grow in tropical swamps. As well as anchoring sediments and absorbing the crash of waves, mangroves can store carbon, help fish populations grow and boost local economies through tourism. </p><p>While nature-based solutions are often cheaper than building hard infrastructure, their funding makes up a "tiny fraction" of adaptation finance, the report authors wrote. An analysis of four global climate funds that spent $94 billion on adaptation projects found that just $12 billion went to nature-based solutions and little of this was spent implementing projects on the ground.</p><p>But little is known about their long-term effectiveness. At higher temperatures, the effects of climate change may be so great that they overwhelm natural defenses like mangroves.</p><p>By 2050, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/rising-sea-levels-should-we-let-the-ocean-in-a-50704953/a-50704953" target="_blank">coastal floods</a> that used to hit once a century will strike many cities every year, according to a 2019 report on oceans by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the gold standard on climate science. This could force dense cities on low-lying coasts to build higher sea walls, like in Indonesia and South Korea, or evacuate entire communities from sinking islands, like in Fiji.</p><p>It's not a case of replacing infrastructure, said Matthias Garschagen, a geographer at Ludwig Maximilian University in Germany and IPCC author, who was not involved in the UNEP report. "The case for nature-based solutions is often misinterpreted as a battle... but they're part of a toolkit that we've ignored for too long."</p>- Beavers Could Help in Adapting to Climate Change - EcoWatch ›
- Anishinaabe Tribes in the Northern U.S. Are Adapting to Climate ... ›
- Climate Adaptation Is Essential, Scientists Warn - EcoWatch ›
A Yellowstone National Park trail camera received a surprising visitor last month.
- Road to Nowhere: Highways Pose Existential Threat to Wolverines ... ›
- Court Ends Attempt to Mine for Gold Near Yellowstone - EcoWatch ›
For the first time, researchers have identified 100 transnational corporations that take home the majority of profits from the ocean's economy.
- 3 Innovations Leading the Fight to Save Our Ocean - EcoWatch ›
- 5 Ways to Curb the Power of Corporations and Billionaires - EcoWatch ›