I Can't Forget

On the surface this song may be about a relationship, but I think there's a lot more going on. The cactus, the rig, and that whole first stanza where he's not even talking about a relationship. In fact I think there's so much going on I could never explain it clearly! But I'll give it a try and hope it works.

I think this song is about remembering, not so much a specific relationship, but memories more generally. About how our experiences in life infuse themselves in us and become our substance without us even realizing it. And about how the most important experience of all is love / sex / emotion.

Stanza 1: out-of-body experience. Time has taken its toll and as Cohen looks at his older unfit-for-the-"struggle" self, he realizes He is no longer what he sees in the mirror. He has been left behind, somewhere. All He is now are the memories. He can't point to any one of them ("I can't remember what") but at the same time he could never "forget" - since He is himself. In other words he is talking about the SUM of his memories and experiences.

Stanza 2: he goes to a memory which sounds so general it could have been repeated several times in his life. And he confirms this with the last two lines. Is he actually thinking about someone in particular? No of course not - or he could easily name that person. Instead - he's thinking about the sum total of love and emotion that women and relationships have brought him. And he is putting those above all else - that's what the 5th and 6th lines of that stanza tell me.

Bridge: this explains why he was going to "Phoenix". The cactus points back to the desert. And to me, this is what the cactus symbolizes: a plant that looks dry and uniform from the outside, yet is filled with life (water) and feeling (sap) inside. The rig is another great metaphor. A rig has unstoppable momentum, like the passing of time. This one runs on memories, like us. The rig symbolizes our mortality and human experience.

Stanza 3: he is again talking about the universality of love ("all my life") and about wanting to die with this feeling in mind. But his wish will be granted - since in fact these memories "[go] on forever", whether in summer or winter. And so he returns to his mirror (by repeating the lines from the first stanza), with perhaps a hint of comfort that he will never forget.

So he is saying "how did I get here, to be who I am today? to be who I am now?" The answer: "I can't forget, but I can't remember". I.e. "I am just the sum of my memories, I can't point to anything specifically, but it's made me who I am". And clearly love is the most important of all.

This song has a bit of a Blowing in the Wind quality to it - self-referential to some extent. The answers blows in the wind just as much as the questions.

More importantly, this song manages to point to the passing of time, mortality, the violence of relationships, the importance of passion, the weight of memories, without mentioning any of them by name. To see so much of life summarized with only simple, everyday words, and in such an intricate, structured way is an astounding achievment. Humbling and timeless stuff.

In short, a total, absolute masterpiece that falls squarely into the Cohen canon, and one which I wish were more respected and well-known!