When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned

Leonard Cohen is one of those artists that you love, but soon forget. I have a lot of those, but I think that he is definitely the most prominent. He's one of the greatest songwriters of all time, and is finally getting inducted into the Rock and Roll hall of fame this year, so it seems apropro. His first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, is stuffed full of beautiful, haunting, folky songs that at first seem like narratives, but soon transgress into questions of spirituality and existence. It's interesting that his two biggest themes seem to be loneliness and religion, and alludes to both of them often at the same time, as in "Suzanne" or "So Long, Marianne". The most beautiful song on the album, though, is probably "Sisters of Mercy",

Oh the sisters of mercy, they are not departed or gone.
They were waiting for me when I thought that I just can't go on.
And they brought me their comfort and later they brought me this song.
Oh I hope you run into them, you who've been travelling so long.

Yes you who must leave everything that you cannot control.
It begins with your family, but soon it comes around to your soul.
Well I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see how you're pinned:
When you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned.

Well they lay down beside me, I made my confession to them.
They touched both my eyes and I touched the dew on their hem.
If your life is a leaf that the seasons tear off and condemn
they will bind you with love that is graceful and green as a stem.

When I left they were sleeping, I hope you run into them soon.
Don't turn on the lights, you can read their address by the moon.
And you won't make me jealous if I hear that they sweetened your night:
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right,
We weren't lovers like that and besides it would still be all right.

I've also been listening to Okkervil River's Down The River Of Golden Dreams, a collection of rants and raves and broken-up hopes and fears. Though this isn't their best album, and when you're in a really good mood the pessimism seems grating and annoying, but the lyrics and the music--which sounds sometimes like punk rock on mandolin and accordion--deserve all the points you can give. Will Sheff has described it as the "water record" to Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See's earth, which seems pretty fitting. Where Don't Fall In Love is rolling around in itself, trying to cling to whatever sanity or substance that might be left in the world (like a murderer's somehow sound justification in "Westfall" or a stripper trying to reconnect with her unstable mother in "Red"), River Of Golden Dreams is the letting go and floating away, letting yourself drown in insecurity, heaertbreak, or self-destruction. Like most of Okkervil's work, you could call it a narrative, this one of a post-breakup life: realization ("It Ends With A Fall"), anger ("For The Enemy, "Blanket and Crib"), disillusionment ("The War Criminal Rises and Speaks"), signs of recovery ("Dead Faces", "The Velocity of Saul at the Time of His Conversion"), a relapse ("Maine Island Lovers"), independence ("Song About a Star"), regret ("Yellow"), and finally a bittersweet recovery, moving on and accepting ("Seas Too Far to Reach"). Here's a sample, the one that gets me every time:

The heart wants to feel.
The heart wants to hold.
The heart takes past Subway,
past Stop and Shop, past Beal's,
and calls it "coming home."
The heart wants a trail
away from "alone,"
so the heart turns a sale
into a well-worn milestone
towards hard-won soft furniture,
fought-for fast food,
defended end table that holds paperbacks
and back U.S. News.
The mind turns an itch
into a bruise,
and the hands start to twitch
when they're feeling ill-used.

And you're almost back now,
you can see by the signs;
from the bank you tell the temperature
and then the time, and the billboard reads some headlines.
The head wants to turn,
to avert both it's eyes,
but the mind wants to learn
of some truth that might be inside reported crimes.

So they found a lieutenant
who killed a village of kids.
After finishing off the wives, he wiped off his knife
and that's what he did.
And they're not claiming that
there's any excusing it;
that was thirty years back,
and they just get paid for the facts the way they got them in.

Now he's rising and not denying.
His hands are shaking, but he's not crying.
And he's saying
"How did I climb out of a life so boring
into that moment? Please stop ignoring
the heart inside,
oh you readers at home!
While you gasp at my bloody crimes,
please take the time to make your heart my home:
where I'm forgiven by time,
where I'm cushioned by hope,
where I'm numbed by long drives,
where I'm talked off or doped.
Does the heart wants to atone?
Oh, I believe that it's so,
because if I could climb back through time,
I'd restore their lives and then give back my own:
tens of times now it's size
on a far distant road
in a far distant time
where every night I'm still crying, entirely alone."

But the news today always fades away as you drive by,
until at dinnertime when you look into her eyes,
lit by evening sun - that, as usual, comes
from above that straight, unbroken line, the horizon -
it's rising is a given, just like your living.

Your heart's warm and kind.
Your mind is your own.
Our blood-spattered criminal is inscrutable;
don't worry, he won't
rise up behind your eyes
and take wild control.
He's not of this time, he fell out of a hole.