“Everybody knows the plague is coming”: Thinking the Apocalypse with Leonard Cohen
By Simone Webb
On April 10th, 2020, someone tweeted that “Leonard Cohen had the right idea. Spend half a century writing perfect songs, be desired by all women, peace out on November 7, 2016”. Days after Leonard Cohen’s death, Donald Trump was elected US president; the tweet was sent in the midst of a global pandemic. To die on November 7th, 2016, the writer implies, is to skip out on several years of events that feel increasingly catastrophic: Australia burning, mass shootings in the USA, the rise of the political right world-wide. Even before Covid-19 made itself known in the West at the beginning of the year, many were feeling a sense of gloom, pessimism at our collective prospects. And now, as streets empty of people, as the world has gone into lockdown, as states lay their hands on increasingly authoritarian powers in the name of public health, the sense of the apocalyptic is nearly complete.
Cohen didn’t just die at a propitious time, however. Many of his songs are imbued with a similar pessimism and doom to that which grips us today. Most prescient of all, perhaps, is the searing apocalyptic anthem “The Future”, opening track to his 1992 album of the same name. “Give me back the Berlin Wall / Give me Stalin and St. Paul / I’ve seen the future brother, it is murder,” he chants, offering a vision of “phantoms … fires on the road”[1]. “Things are going to slide, slide in all directions,” he prophesies: “Won’t be nothing / Nothing you can measure any more”. On the same album, he sings a bleak hymn to American democracy which has proved devastatingly poignant in recent years: “From the fires of the homeless / From the ashes of the gay / Democracy is coming to the USA”[2].
In his earlier album I’m Your Man (1988), Cohen offers an equally pessimistic vision of his late-Cold-War present. With long-time collaborator Sharon Robinson, he writes that “Everybody knows the war is over / Everybody knows the good guys lost / Everybody knows the fight was fixed / The poor stay poor, the rich stay rich”[3]. These themes are echoed later in the album, as he sings “Now, you may say I’ve grown bitter, but of this you can be sure / The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor”[4]. This is not the final word, however: “There’s a mighty judgement coming”. In The Future and I’m Your Man, Cohen repeatedly shows us a world riven with injustice, fear and suspicion, a world where goodness and peace simply will not prevail. It is inevitable that “the wars they will be fought again”[5], and inevitable too that “the deal is rotten”[6]: after all, Cohen writes wryly, “that’s how it goes”. He’s seen the future — and it is murder.
In his later albums, Cohen’s apocalyptic vision is tempered with a little more tenderness, but unavoidably present. In You Want it Darker (2016), the last album released before his death, he sings meditatively of “the ruins / Of the alter and the mall”[7], ironically invoking Jesus’s death: “As he died to make men holy / Let us die to make things cheap”. His posthumous album Thanks for the Dance (2019) has a short, bitter song describing how “Puppet Presidents command / Puppet troops to burn the land / Puppet fire, puppet flames / Feed on all the puppet names”[8]. Until the end, Cohen is concerned with war, fire, disordered societies, abuses of power.
If this were all he had to offer us, these visions of despair, Cohen’s lyrics might be resonant with our times but no more: tracks which might offer us comfort in their companionship, their recognition of the “blizzard of the world” which has “overturned / The order of the soul”[9], but no guidance for how to navigate that blizzard. I have a conviction, however, that Cohen’s pessimistic interpretation of the world is at the same time an ethical-spiritual theory of redemption, grace and mercy, and that this theory may prove valuable in thinking through our current situation.
We can find Cohen’s framework exemplified best in a famous quote from “Anthem”, another song from The Future. Here, Cohen writes that “There is a crack in everything,”[10] apparently a characteristically gloomy statement. He concludes this line, however, with “That’s how the light gets in”: the very brokenness of the world around us is what permits beauty and hope. Far earlier in his song-writing career, in 1969, we find a similar statement: “Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows”[11]. In Cohen’s vision, the doom and despair of which he writes so powerfully is inextricable from the light.
This might seem to be a beautiful yet opaque sentiment. What precisely it means for the cracks to let in the light is not immediately apparent. This is far from being a glib upbeat aphorism, however. The crack which lets in the light seems to be drawn directly from a Kabbalistic creation myth. According to the Lurianic Kabbalah, a school of Jewish mysticism developed by Rabbi Isaac Luria (1524–1572), God sent forth ten vessels filled with divine, primordial light. The power of the divine light was too much for the vessels to hold, and they shattered, scattering shards of light. Had the vessels survived, creation would have been perfect: broken as they are, creation too is broken and shattered. On this account, what Rabbi Jonathan Sacks terms “a catastrophe theory of creation”, our ethical task as humans is to restore these fragments and to repair the world in what is known as tikkun olam.
The restoration of the world’s brokenness is invoked in “Come Healing”, from Cohen’s 2012 album Old Ideas. This beautiful, melancholy, but hopeful song opens with “O gather up the brokenness / And bring it to me now”[12], going on to call for “healing”: of the body, mind, spirit, limb, reason, heart. Here, we see “the darkness yielding / That tore the light apart”: the shattered light is brought back together. Cohen’s reference in “Come Healing” to the “tearing” of the light finds an echo in Thanks for the Dance. Here he writes of the torn nature of all things: “It’s torn where you’re dancing, it’s torn everywhere / It’s torn on the right and it’s torn on the left / It’s torn in the centre which few can accept”[13]. Again in this song, he returns to the myth of shattered brokenness: “Come gather the pieces all scattered and lost”. The scattering of the pieces recalls too Simone Weil’s comment in Gravity and Grace: “Creation: good broken up into pieces and scattered throughout evil.”[14]
We also find here a hint of how the brokenness might be restored: while the tearing of which he writes is ubiquitous, “It’s torn where there’s mercy but torn somewhat less”. Returning to “Come Healing”, Cohen beseeches us to “Behold the gates of mercy / In arbitrary space”. Through mercy, perhaps, although we cannot repair the rips in the world, we can mend them a little. Mercy, and also love. Even in the apocalyptic vision of “The Future”, Cohen remarks that “love’s the only engine of survival,” while in “Anthem” he foretells that “Every heart / to love will come / but like a refugee”. “Come Healing” speaks of a “troubled dust concealing / An undivided love / The heart beneath is teaching / To the broken heart above”. A broken heart, a broken world, but undivided love.
This is not to say, of course, that Cohen’s writing displays an uncomplicatedly positive attitude towards love. This is the man who writes that “all I ever learned from love was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you”[15], that “there ain’t no cure for love”[16]. In Cohen’s songs and poems, love — especially romantic love — can wound as often as it can heal. He has Joan of Arc singing “Myself I long for love and light / but must it come so cruel, must it be so bright”[17]. This is not a blithely optimistic account in which all we need to do is love and the visions of a murderous future, a divided present, will fade away. Love itself can be broken and painful. Is that so surprising, though, given that everything else is too? In “Anthem”, Cohen advises us to “Forget your perfect offering,” to “ring the bells that still can ring”. We are reminded here, perhaps, of a saying by Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Kotzk (1787–1859): “There is nothing more whole than a broken heart”. For a world in catastrophe and created through catastrophe, love too can be catastrophic, but it is to be offered nonetheless — as imperfect as it necessarily is.
Let us return to the here and now, the pandemic-stricken world in which we live. How might we think through these times with Cohen? We are not encouraged to diminish what is happening in the least degree: “The blizzard of the world / has crossed the threshold / and it has overturned / the order of the soul”[18]; that much is to be acknowledged, and the pain is to be felt. We are urged instead in Cohen’s songs to confront the state of things, to come face to face with the horror, the pain, and the sorrow. There is no quick fix, no immediate prospect of making everything better. What is, is, and it is murder.
But the light still gets in. The bells must still ring. We can find a double guidance here: first, to take note of those ways in which the events befalling us are themselves cracks through which light can filter. Speaking for myself alone, I have observed a greater friendliness and spirit of community care in recent weeks: people smile and speak to each other in the street in ways I have not noticed before. I am benefitting from additional time with my partner now that we are both working from home. On our walks, we see more parents playing with children outside than we ever have before. There is no trade-off or balance here: these things are not to be weighed against death and suffering, but nor do they need to be denied.
Secondly, there is the call to act: to gather up the brokenness with love and mercy. This move towards love, the only engine of survival, has made itself known through the flourishing of mutual aid groups in response to the pandemic. In the face of catastrophe, we can see people turning towards each other, delivering food, making calls, sharing what they have. Here perhaps is an attempt to restore a broken world in small acts of mercy. These acts are inevitably insufficient: people will still die, will still suffer, but that’s not the point. Ring the bells that still can ring, Cohen urges us.
As hopeful as the upsurge in mutual aid made me, I have been equally dispirited by how it has developed: I have been frustrated by the arguments I have seen in Facebook groups, the resistance to anything construed as politicizing mutual aid, the judgement and surveillance of neighbours perceived to be contravening lockdown guidance. At times, I have felt that the vision of a better future I initially saw in mutual aid has been quashed by pettiness and self-righteous judgement. It has been easy to feel, with Cohen, that “Everybody got this broken feeling / Like their father or their dog just died”[19]. Writing this piece, however, returning to Cohen’s framework, I am reminded again that I should not and cannot expect perfection from responses to the broken world around us. Forget your perfect offering: offer what can be offered.
Leonard Cohen is known as a singer-songwriter and poet (and sometime novelist) more than he is a philosopher or ethical theorist, although he has often worn the air of “a sage / a man of vision”[20]. Why should we turn to a singer in these times, when the moral vision he proposes has perhaps been expressed elsewhere more rigorously and coherently? Cohen presents no arguments for his account of the way things are, or for his proffered moral response: no line from premises to conclusion demonstrating that there is, indeed, a crack in everything and, furthermore, that it is how the light gets in. Rather, he presents us in his songs with an image, a vision, a picture of how things are. In much the same way that a novel, or a painting, might be said to present a moral vision without arguing for that vision, so too Cohen’s lyrics present such a picture. To argue for a picture seems almost beside the point: if it makes sense to you, if it seems to accord with the world as you see it, then so be it.
The notion of a picture, a vision, rather than a set of arguments is found in David Gelernter’s book Judaism: A Way of Being (2009)[21]. Here, Gelernter aims to convey the most significant aspects of Judaism through four key images, arguing that such images are fundamental to Judaism as a religion. In presenting what he calls “image-themes,” he is not arguing for Judaism in any real sense: this is because “Judaism is less a system of belief than a way of living, a particular texture of time”[22]. Likewise, Cohen presents his moral stance in vividly imagistic terms: blizzards, cracks, light, darkness, tears, bells. He has a way of seeing the world: a way of seeing which is morally charged. In song, he invites us to see the world in the same way, in all its despair and hope. Perhaps after all Cohen bears comparison more with a mystic than with a philosopher, although the line between the two is thread-thin. By this, I mean that he is conveying the profoundest of insights but without the argumentative apparatus usually assumed to be part of philosophical works.
Beyond the words themselves, it seems to me that song contains a unique potential for emotional and spiritual resonance. Listening to Leonard Cohen has always had something of the timbre of worship for me, even as a nominal atheist. Cohen himself sings of singing as an act of worship amidst the brokenness: “From this broken hill / I will sing to you / From this broken hill / All your praises they shall ring / If it be your will / To let me sing”[23]. The meditative state which a song can induce may create greater receptiveness to the beauty of the teaching than the words alone. The effect of singing, of chanting, loops us back to the link to the Kabbalah: Kabbalistic texts are often chanted, as a holy act. “There is a poetic and meditational quality, as well as a rhythmic power, in chanting an Aramaic Kabbalah text,”[24] writes Alan Unterman: a power which goes beyond the meaning of the words. This meditational, devotional quality is precisely what draws me to listening to Cohen’s songs in times of emotional trouble, as opposed to simply reading the lyrics. I have often walked and listened to Cohen, the songs a form of prayer I am participating in by listening. I vividly remember walking down a long dusty road in Ukraine to visit a wooden church, listening to the entirety of Songs of Love and Hate: more recently, listening to Thanks for the Dance for the first time while walking through London. Listening to Cohen now, at this time, really listening (“listening so hard that it hurts”[25]) can provide a salve, a guide, where words alone may be deficient.
I will close with another verse from Cohen, one which epitomises what we might call his optimistic pessimism.
Tell me again / When the victims are singing / And the laws of remorse are restored / Tell me again / That you know what I’m thinking / But vengeance belongs to the Lord /
Tell me again / When I’m clean and I’m sober / Tell me again / When I’ve seen through the horror / Tell me again / Tell me over and over / Tell me that you love me then / Amen[26]
Here there is vengeance, there are victims — but the victims are singing. There is horror — but the horror can be seen through, seen past. And, after the horror, repeatedly, there is a plea for love. Amen.
About the author: Simone Webb is a PhD student in Gender Studies at University College London, working on developing a feminist ethic of the self through dialogue with Mary Astell and Michel Foucault. She’s involved in public and community philosophy projects such as the Stuart Low Trust Philosophy Forum and the Philosophy Foundation. You can read her chapter on Mary Astell in the forthcoming The Philosophy Queens, and find her on twitter @SimoneWebbUCL.
Footnotes
[1] “The Future”, The Future (1992)
[2] “Democracy”, The Future (1992)
[3] “Everybody Knows”, I’m Your Man (1988)
[4] “Tower of Song”, I’m Your Man (1988)
[5] “Anthem”, The Future (1992)
[6] “Everybody Knows”, I’m Your Man (1988)
[7] “Steer Your Way”, You Want It Darker (2016)
[8] “Puppets”, Thanks For The Dance (2019)
[9] “The Future”, The Future (1992)
[10] “Anthem”, The Future (1992)
[11] “The Old Revolution”, Songs From A Room (1969)
[12] “Come Healing”, Old Ideas (2012)
[13] “It’s Torn”, Thanks For The Dance (2019)
[14] Gravity and Grace, Routledge Classics (2002) [1952)
[15] “Hallelujah”, Various Positions (1984)
[16] “Ain’t No Cure For Love”, I’m Your Man (1988)
[17] “Joan of Arc”, Songs of Love and Hate (1971)
[18] “The Future”, The Future (1992)
[19] “Everybody Knows”, I’m Your Man (1988)
[20] “Going Home”, Old Ideas (2012)
[21] I’ve had this book around for a while, not knowing anything about the author. Looking him up while writing this, I’ve discovered he’s very politically problematic in a number of ways. My use of this text here shouldn’t be taken to endorse any of his broader political or ethical stances. The notion of images that he works with is still very helpful to me.
[22] p. 3, Gelernter, D., Judaism: A Way of Being, Yale University Press (2009)
[23] “If It Be Your Will”, Various Positions (1984)
[24] p. xlii, “Introduction”, The Kabbalistic Tradition, Penguin Classics (2008)
[25] “Amen”, Old Ideas (2012)
[26] Ibid.
Songs cited:
Cohen, L. (1969) “The Old Revolution”, Songs From A Room
— . (1971) “Joan of Arc”, Songs Of Love And Hate
— . (1984a) “Hallelujah”, Various Positions
— . (1984b) “If It Be Your Will”, Various Positions
— . (1988a) “Everybody Knows”, I’m Your Man
— . (1988b) “Tower of Song”, I’m Your Man
— . (1988c) “Ain’t No Cure for Love”, I’m Your Man
— . (1992a) “The Future”, The Future
— . (1992b) “Democracy”, The Future
— . (1992c) “Anthem”, The Future
— . (2012a) “Come Healing”, Old Ideas
— . (2012b) “Going Home”, Old Ideas
— . (2012c) “Amen”, Old Ideas
— . (2016) “Steer Your Way”, You Want It Darker
— . (2019a) “Puppets”, Thanks For The Dance
— . (2019b) “It’s Torn”, Thanks For The Dance
Other works cited:
Gelernter, D. (2009) Judaism: A Way of Being, Yale University Press.
Unterman, A. (2008) “Introduction”, The Kabbalistic Tradition, Penguin Classics.
Weil, S. (2002 [1952]), Gravity and Grace, Routledge Classics.
