365 Days of Song Recommendations: Sep 21
Everybody Knows—Leonard Cohen
I saw Leonard Cohen at Red Rocks on June 4th, 2011, just under three months from his 75th birthday. His voice was shakier, but still vintage Cohen. He swayed across the stage for four hours in front of a rain-soaked crowd. FOUR HOURS. I don’t recall what I expected going in, but I certainly didn’t foresee a man of his age with that much energy, that much vigor. He didn’t miss a note, and he charmed his audience the way he worked the ladies back in his Chelsea Hotel days.
Skip ahead. November 7th, 2016. The Trump-led end of the world was still two days away, I was mourning the loss of a close friend who’d died a week prior, the Cubs had just beaten my Indians in Game 7 of the World Series, I was working 100-hour work weeks on a major creative project, and going through a fairly significant existential crisis of my own. This was also the day Leonard Cohen died, an ominous hint that perhaps the light had finally stopped shining through the cracks.
Skip ahead to today, September 21st, 2021. Cohen’s 87th birthday, and somehow everything’s even darker than it was when he left us almost five years ago. His entire catalog lives within dozens of different playlists I’ve crafted over the years, and his love songs are on repeat when I’m in the mood to brood — which is often, and no I’m not ashamed to admit it. But one song rises for me today, when I think about Cohen’s prescience about the current state of the world. Or, rather, how what was true in 1988 is more true today.
Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That’s how it goes
Everybody knows
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long-stem rose
Everybody knows
And let’s be clear. The dice are fucking loaded, the war IS over, and we all lost. We were never NOT going to lose. Leonard knew that because Leonard was Canadian and didn’t swallow a mouthful of red, white, and blue bullshit every morning. Cohen knew so much about what we should’ve known, but didn’t, knew about American patriotism so much better than us that he even tonally fucked with us listeners, adding Flamenco vibes to contrast the starkness of the message.
That was the thing about Cohen. He was the embodiment of the great Waits quote, “I like beautiful melodies telling me terrible things.”
And everybody knows that the Plague is coming
Everybody knows that it’s moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there’s gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows
“I’m Your Man” is the 265th song on the #365Songs playlist!
