| Leonard Cohen – In My Secret Life Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I love this song - it has less overt politics than some of his others, but he goes to the very heart of apathy and hypocricy here, I think. Every verse contrasts his reality with his "secret life" - where she hasn't left, where he knows wrong from right, where its not that simple and he's "die for the truth" - but the reality is the opposite. And none of that means anything if he never acts on it. "marching past the borders of my secret life" seems to suggest hes finally going to make a change... |
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| Leonard Cohen – The Future Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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Its about good and evil, existing as a dichotomy - Stalin and St. Paul - leaders of distinct, codified ideologies, and all their consequences - Hiroshima, the Berlin Wall, even the decadence and self detruction of "crack and anal sex" are preferable to the future he's seen - "it is murder." Our past might not be particulaly good, but its preferble to our future where "there will be a breaking of the ancient western code", where theres no friends and "no one left to torture", and everything slides out of control. Basically, IMO, its about the transtion from a culture with definite - if often terrible and hypocritical - values, to a reletivist one where anything goes if thats "whats right for you", where there is no such thing as decadence or sin anymore, becuase you can do whatever you want, and all the contracts that hold us together fall apart into unbridled selfish individualism. |
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| John Mellencamp – Human Wheels Lyrics | 16 years ago |
| I always took the "human wheels" to be about alienation of labour - Peoples lives tick away, just wheels in the machine, while the world sweeps around, huge and incomprehensible and wonderful, which the narrator grieves at, but refuses to relinquish the idea. I may be strongly influenced by knowing of Mellencamps general leftist tendencies though. | |
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