The New Yorker streams "Going Home" and prints the lyric

Tony Crosbie · Post by **Tony Crosbie** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 6:50 am

I love to speak with Leonard - he's a sportsman and a shepherd - he's a lazy bastard - living in a suit.

Up there with some of the best lines he has ever written.

sturgess66 · Post by **sturgess66** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 7:48 am

From Hartford Courant -
http://courantblogs.com/sound-check/leo ... ew-yorker/

The New Yorker Streams Song From Leonard Cohen’s New Album
By Eric R. Danton On January 16, 2012 · 1 Comment

It’s actually a perfect fit: The New Yorker and Leonard Cohen; a venerable magazine with a long-standing interest in poetry, and a songwriter who was a published poet long before he wrote his first song. Starting today, The New Yorker streams the opening song from Cohen’s forthcoming album, “Old Ideas.”

Leonard Cohen's new album, "Old Ideas," is due Jan. 31 on Columbia.

The song, “Going Home,” is a subtly playful meditation on inevitability: of aging, of duty and, to get all abstract about it, a lightening of being. Cohen purrs out the lyrics in a voice grown deeper and richer, and you can almost see the hint of a smile flickering about the corners of his mouth when he sings, “I’d love to speak to Leonard/He’s a sportsman and a shepherd/He’s a lazy bastard living in a suit.”

In addition to streaming the song here, The New Yorker is publishing the lyrics as a poem in its Jan. 23 issue (on newsstands today, a press release informs us).

“Old Ideas,” Cohen’s 12th studio album in a career stretching to 1967, is due Jan. 31 on Columbia. Listen here to “Show Me the Place,” another song from the album.

WiTS · Post by **WiTS** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:15 am

here is page 62-63 of current issue of new yorker

sturgess66 · Post by **sturgess66** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:23 am

From PrefixMag.com -
http://www.prefixmag.com/media/leonard- ... ome/60577/

On Jan 31, Leonard Cohen issues his first new album since 2004, Old Ideas, and it's sounding pretty great already. The last single, "Darkness," was one of the better Cohen songs, period, and now here's a new one called "Going Home" that's pretty great too. It appears this week in the New Yorker in poem form, but this version renders the poem as a prayer like devotion, complete with backing singers at the end. Old Ideas is turning in a dark horse performance here for best album of January, and we've only heard a few songs. You can stream the song below via the New Yorker.

Violet · Post by **Violet** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:35 am

.. hi I.F..

.. on the "tube" front.. not to forget the wave-particle duality found in Show Me The Place, we may be in subatomic particle territory.

quoting from Wikipedia on this:

Electrons are at the heart of cathode ray tubes, which are used extensively as display devices in laboratory instruments, computer monitors and television sets.[174] In a photomultiplier tube, every photon striking the photocathode initiates an avalanche of electrons that produces a detectable current pulse.[175] Vacuum tubes use the flow of electrons to manipulate electrical signals, and they played a critical role in the development of electronics technology. However, they have been largely supplanted by solid-state devices such as the transistor.[176]

Post by **jarkko** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 10:05 am

According to the CD booklet, "tube" is correct,
"But the brief elaboration of a tube"

Dana Glover is the background singer. Other credits for this song:
Patrick Leonard wrote, produced, arranged, engineered, programmed, and performed the music. Jesse String provided additional engineering.
Bela Santelli on violin.

JudasPriest · Post by **JudasPriest** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 11:21 am

That's a violin??

JudasPriest · Post by **JudasPriest** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 12:04 pm

On the not being able to hear the end of lines front, in Show Me The Place, "wave" sounds like "way" and I can't hear the "v" in behave.

ProfNowlin · Post by **ProfNowlin** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:22 pm

Jarkko: Thank you for the info about the lyrics as they appear in the CD booklet. I suppose I best change my tune, as it were, about "tube." Violet, your suggestion about subatomic particle territory is an intriguing one. It also seems to me that "tube" could be, among other things, a playfully self-deprecating way of metonymically referring to the human body, which would in fact fit with the overall tone of the song/poem and with its inspired shedding of "costumes." Regardless, I trust that the puzzle of "tube" is fully intentional, and I'll take it, like I take the song as a whole, as a gift. What's that old Sufi injunction? Something like, "Sell your cleverness. Buy bewilderment."

Brian

JudasPriest · Post by **JudasPriest** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:57 pm

I read tube as in test tube baby- something constructed- analagous to his official personna.

jerry · Post by **jerry** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 5:02 pm

I read it as the brief coming to life of nothing more than a bunch of chemicals mixed together which is really what the human body is after all.

phillip · Post by **phillip** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 12:45 am

The new songs are amazing Leonard sure is a genius can not wait for the new album 2 weeks to go yay

peter danielsen · Post by **peter danielsen** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:34 am

One comment on the problems on hearing what LC sings, just try imagine what Bob Dylan sings, no one understands a word of his mumbling
Peter

st theresa1 · Post by **st theresa1** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 5:53 am

When I listened and thought I heard 'a brief elaboration of a tube', my mind filled out the idea of a channel (since he has no choice in what he says).
He has previously said he has no idea where the good songs come from and I want to respond "I do" but only in the abstract of course. Being a human being of course, he is a bit more elaborate than a tube, but I love the way he throws in 'brief'.

holydove · Post by **holydove** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 10:03 pm

st theresa1 wrote:When I listened and thought I heard 'a brief elaboration of a tube', my mind filled out the idea of a channel (since he has no choice in what he says). .

Hi st theresa1,

That was one of my first thoughts too - that Leonard is like a vessel (that's the word that crossed my mind - same as channel) - through which the messages flow, in the form of poetry/art/music, from that mysterious source (where the good songs come from).