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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
promiscuity were
overcome, and whatever
social and
psychological problems	    And maybe also there was
there might be with it      the sense that one may
were downplayed.            dance on the edge of
			    the abyss...
The idea that a
pair of "free                      A stolen insight...
spirits" might
sleep with a                       To quote a letter from my
somber wandering                   older brother, Edward Brenner:
folk singer/poet
just isn't that                       The jist of the 60s
bizarre.                              mentality -- I was there &
                                      think I know -- is 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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