The Darker Album and the Songs

Leonard Cohen's last studio album (2016)
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jarkko
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by jarkko »

Four last pages of this thread have been edited and some 30 posts deleted,
to get the discussion back on topic, the Darker Album.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by vickiwoodyard »

No one ever really understands, because logic is never the key. The heart is the instrument by which to measure the immeasurable.

Boss, you delight in reaming people out, which proves you are not in possession of the true key, perhaps. If you really had it, you would delight in sharing it, rather than encode it in an unacceptable form.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

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Always be kinder than necessary.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

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I lost my little girl to cancer. It did not seem the better way. I have no bitterness, Boss. Just gratitude for people like you that rock everyone's boat. Thank you.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

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We all come here to honor the Man. As we contribute, perhaps we learn to serve. Who knows? As you say, boss, being broken is part and parcel of the journey. I, too, write words that anger people that are sleeping through their lives. And I am one of them.

Now it is my turn to speak truth to you, with no trace of anything but love for you. Grow up. I want to ask you a question about the riddle you left us with. Are you speaking of his son and his estranged wife? You may baffle me but do not condescend to me. Leonard never did.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by vickiwoodyard »

Wish I could be clearer, Boss. I have intuitions, but they are not that specific. Being on a path of awakening, I tend to see the treaty being between the "I am" awareness, which we all are—and the illusory ego. To speak personally, as I try to become more awake, the gulf between any 2 people becomes more apparent. It is simply the nature of this world to divide everything. Yet love cannot be divided. One must simply see this and yet one forgets it all too quickly. Then the mechanical mind is in control and the treaty is wished for again. But there can be no treaty; just a realization that there need not be one. And I could be wrong.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

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If it be Thy Will. As I understand it, there is no individual will. Just the will of the All unfolding. Sounds like a lovely intention, though.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

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The Darker Album speaks to us all. I listen to it often. He is urging us to wake up in "Steer Your Way." To not be distracted by the world of the opposites, to keep going in the only direction possible.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by Joe Way »

Thank you very much Mat and I'm Your Fan for introducing the work of San Juan de la Cruz. It reminds me that Leonard referenced mystic poets such as "cloud of unknowing." And thank you to Diane, Ursula & Vicki for your continued discussion about the album. Boss, I think Doron can give you more detail on Jubilee.

I'm still struggling a bit with making overall sense of the album as it is such a departure from much of Leonard's earlier work. I still listen and enjoy it immensely. I will pop back occasionally if I have an observation that seems relevant.

Vicki, deep sympathy in the loss of your daughter to cancer-how terrible for you.

Joe
"Say a prayer for the cowboy..."
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mat james
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by mat james »

Hi Joe, thanks for saying hello,

I posted this piece below on another thread I started titled "Traveling Light, with Leonard".
My intention there is to explore all things Leonard, including this Darker album.
However, it fits nicely here too.

The fragmented self …diablo

Mirabai Starr, in her Introduction to her translation of Juan’s Dark Night of the Soul tells us that she has chosen the term “the fragmented self” for all things evil; the reason being, she implies, is that god is “Unity” until he is ‘fragmented’ in our human mind, and he is Unity again when we, (being “the me and you” Cohen sings of) surrender again to that “position” (Various Positions) of Unity.
Cruz’s very close friend and fellow mystic poet Teresa of Avila, says this of that unifying moment: “God dissolved my mind, my separation”. In other words, she re-gained her own position of Unity with the merciful help as Cohen suggests in his Book of Mercy, of god.
"Fragmentation" then, is the painful world of the opposites: and there is the good …and also the diabolical which literature has personalised into angels verses devils and Satan and Snake and evil spirits and such; all mental positions that keep us from our Unity position/perspective. So when we dissolve our mind, as Teresa says, we are dissolving the diabolical and the good as well. And therefore, recognising this need for a changed perspective, Leonard sings on The Darker album about how he and his G~d got back “on the level” ;

“Let’s keep it on the level
When I walked away from you
I turned my back on the devil
Turned my back on the angel too”

To hold the Position where one turns their back on both the good and the bad takes a while and a lot of courage because that attitude goes against all we have been taught and to do this is a scary thing; but as he sensed his G~d was present, the "We", the “me and the you” dissolved “my mind” and the separation dissolved along with it;

“Your crazy fragrance all around
Your secrets all in view
My lost, my lost was saying found
My don’t was saying do”

So as he walks away from his old self , he sings; “Let’s keep it on the level, when I walked away from you I walked away from the devil, turned my back on the angel too…they should give my heart a medal…” :lol: ;-)

No more Diablo for Leonard. And no more angels either; just him and his G~d.

"You smiled at me like I was young
It took my breath away"

...and how beautiful is that! for an old man's line about the Divine in each of us, and, in the Unity/G~d Itself.

I love Leonard Cohen. :razz:


I'm traveling light!

MatbbgJ
"Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart." San Juan de la Cruz.
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by vickiwoodyard »

I got the feeling that he was traveling light because it was his au revoire to the ego and its concerns. He has seen through the illusion of duality and come to rest in and as the One projecting all of the "stuff."

There are many unsolvable koans in this his last album, just as there are in his others. He wanted it that way. He was not writing science, after all. And yet the science of the soul, being metaphysical, conveys love to the nth power.

in spite of his knowledge of how things are, he is suffering like any mortal does, but without negativity. He has left that table.
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mat james
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Re: The Darker Album and the Songs

Post by mat james »

"...resting in the one projecting all the stuff"

That makes sense to me Vicki.

Mat.
"Without light or guide, save that which burned in my heart." San Juan de la Cruz.
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