A Reading of Leonard Cohen’s “The Future” – Heidi HOCHENEDEL

THE LEONARD COHEN FILES

In his 1992 album The Future, poet and musician Leonard Cohen combines images, both sacred and profane, to reveal a stunning vision of the apocalypse and the means to salvation. Although Cohen is a Jewish student of Buddhism, he frequently uses Christian mythology in his writing. The purpose of this essay is to read closely the first song on this album, “The Future,” in order to uncover a somewhat coherent vision of the apocalypse. We shall see that although Cohen describes the apocalypse from a Judeo-Christian perspective, he also incorporates the Buddhist concept of Nirvana in this song.

Give me back my broken nightmy mirrored room, my secret lifeit’s lonely here there’s no one left to tortureGive me absolute controlover every living soulAnd lie beside me baby, that’s an order!

The first two lines in this stanza demand both suffering and seclusion. “Broken night” implies sleepless-ness and misery and “mirrored room” and “secret life” imply division and alienation. The mirror image also connotes the reflection of the self. Why does the speaker want these things (division, alienation, and a sense of self) restored to him? Is he (or was he) somewhere where there is no broken night or secret life? As we shall see, the answer to this question is yes. The speaker has seen the future or the end of the world.. As his apoca-lyptic vision develops, it becomes clear that the categories of self and other will become blurred and disappear. In the future there will be no one left to torture because the concept of the self will not exist. It is for this rea-son that the speaker demands the restoration of his self and his solitude.

Give me crack and anal sexTake the only tree that’s leftand stuff it up the hole in your cultureGive me back the Berlin wallgive me Stalin and Saint PaulI’ve seen the future brother:It is murder.

This stanza is profoundly angry and betrays a desire for violence and self destruction. Crack and anal sex are both potentially deadly pleasures, especially in the age of AIDS. This kind of entertainment connotes an indifference to life and a lust for self destruction. Lust, anger, and lack of respect for self and others are the inevitable ingredients of rape. Clearly the image of the last tree being stuffed up the hole in culture brings powerfully to mind the idea of forced sex. The image of a hole is also that of a void or a lack. If there is a hole in culture, something is missing from it. Culture has a need or desire that must be met by nature, symbolized by the tree. The speaker demands that nature “fuck” culture even after the former has been nearly destroyed by the latter. Although rape is usually an extremely negative image that implies the violent exploitation of one human being by another, it also suggests unity. Sexual union, even a forced one, is a fusion in which two become one. The culture/nature rape image in this stanza implies that culture should become a part of nature and vice versa. The union of the two categories suggests that they become indistinguishable from each other. As we shall see in my analysis of the refrain, this notion of unity constitutes the speaker’s apocalyptic vision.

The voice goes on to demand the restoration of symbols of tyranny, destruction, and divisiveness; the Berlin wall, Stalin, and Saint Paul. It is impossible not to be struck by the apparent inconsistency of this list. What is Saint Paul doing here? He is, after all, a model of conversion to Christ. Saint Paul is an icon of good whereas Stalin and the Berlin wall are traditional symbols of oppression. From certain perspectives, however, Saint Paul, too, may be viewed as a tyrannical figure. Like Stalin, who interpreted (or twisted) the word of Marx in order to justify the murder of his critics and the oppression of the Russian people, Saint Paul reinterpreted the letter of the Gospels to correspond with his own religious ideals(1). Both Stalin and Saint Paul interpreted sa-cred texts (for Marx’s work is certainly viewed by many as sacred) and adapted them for their own purposes. The works and teachings of both Saint Paul and Joseph Stalin can be construed both positively and negatively, but what is clear in both cases is that their readings of Marx and the Gospels respectively, differed radically from readings that preceded theirs. By comparing Saint Paul, who is widely regarded to be a symbol of good, and Joseph Stalin who is generally considered to have been a force of evil, Cohen deconstructs the categories of good and evil (2). What follows is a description of the apocalypse proper.

Things are going to slide in all directionsWon’t be nothingNothing you can measure anymoreThe blizzard of the world has crossed the thresholdand it has overturned the order of the soulWhen they said REPENT I wonder what they meant

According to the speaker’s apocalyptic vision, meaning and order will disappear. The categories of the soul or consciousness essential for “measuring,” differentiating, and making sense of the world will lose their defi-nition. “Things are gonna slide in all directions” suggests that oppositions set up to categorize the world such as good and evil, God and Satan, self and other etc, will cross the boundaries that define them. According to the speaker’s apocalyptic vision, good will become indistinguishable from evil because for him, divine justice is murder (3). From some perspectives, the Judeo-Christian God can hardly be described as good. On judgment day, it is believed that God will essentially murder those who are not saved (i.e. those who do not believe that Christ is the Messiah), thus taking on the role of Satan (at least from the perspective of the damned). Divine justice is murder, and therefore can be viewed as wrong… [+]