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MERCY
March 2, 2000
Leonard Cohen's song
"The Sisters of Mercy" In itself, this is a
was evidently the little peculiar, because
deciding influence there isn't a lot in
behind the seminal attitude or style that
gothic rock band choosing the band has in common
that as their name. with Leonard Cohen.
This has led to an
amazing array of
misconceptions in the
goth subculture about It's funny how *often*
what the song is this happens... even lyrics
*really* about. much more straight-forward
and obvious than Cohen's get
I've heard: twisted in the minds of casual
(1) it's a celebration listeners. They prefer
of prostitution. rumors to their own perception. TURNING
(2) he just slept over
one night, there wasn't
any sex.
Both of these seem ridiculous
to me. In part because I heard
a recorded interview with Cohen
once where he discussed the song
a little... but just the song
itself seems to contradict it.
I mean, what is this line supposed to mean:
They touched both my eyes,
And I touched the dew on their hem.
Running into two women on the
street outside their place,
and being invited up to have
sex with them evidently seems
outlandish to today's mind,
but this is the sixties that
we're talking about here.
The Pill combined with
antibiotics gave the
feeling that the
technical barriers to And: as usual
promiscuity were with me, an
overcome, and whatever afterthought:
social and there was the
psychological problems And maybe also there LSD going around.
there might be with it was the sense that one
were downplayed. may dance on the edge Many people
of the abyss? seem to
The idea that a develop a
pair of "free To quote a letter from my "Oh, what
spirits" might eldest brother, Edward Brenner: the fuck"
sleep with a attitude
somber wandering "The jist of the 60s after doing
folk singer/poet mentality -- I was there acid.
just isn't that & think I know -- is
bizarre. that the dance is not
less free if the abyss
is a mile that way."
I guess the line that confuses is:
And you won't make me jealous
if I hear that they've sweetened your night,
We weren't lovers like that,
and besides it would still be all right.
But "free love" was an
idea in the air, And the
monogamy/infidelity/jealousy
syndrome was under suspicion.
Isn't it more likely that
this is the kind of thing
he was getting at?
About the old spoken interview
that I once heard:
The point that Cohen was
making was that his songs
rarely have any great metaphorical
message concealed in them.
He really was walking down the street
one night, and he met these two women
who invited him in, and he really did
have sex with them, and he got up in
the middle of the night and wrote this
song by the light of a full moon, and "Don't turn on the
in the morning he sang it for them. light, you can read
their address by
Now the idea that these women the moon."
were actually prostitutes...
I can imagine Cohen writing a
song about prostitutes, but
this just isn't it.
Where's the talk of
greed, self-contempt,
guilt, desperation?
If you think that Cohen
would just elide things
like this, you haven't
been paying attention.
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