You Want It Darker
BY LEONARD COHEN:
If you are a dealer, I’m out of the game
If you are the healer, it means I’m broken and lame
If thine is the glory then mine must be the shame
You want it darker
We kill the flame
Poet musicians like Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen have a way of getting us in touch with subjects we rather avoid, like love, lust, betrayal, and death.
I am a fan of Leonard Cohen, knowing he possessed his own shadow side and dark demons. However, like a well crafted wine, Cohen matured with age, expanding from subjects like love and sex, to death and dying; from aging to saging.
We should adopt Cohen’s last song as an anthem for the dark times we live in. Using the biblical story of God giving Abraham and Sarah a son in their old age, and then asking Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac to Him, Cohen sings the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead (magnified, sanctified, be thy holy name), and then tells us how to deal with dark times like this by saying Hineni, Hineni. Here I am. Here I stand.
There is a lover in the story
But the story’s still the same
There’s a lullaby for suffering
And a paradox to blame
But it’s written in the scriptures
And it’s not some ideal claim
You want it darker
We kill the flame
It is winter. Nights are longer. Coronavirus is leaving considerable destruction in its wake. These are dark times, but this is not humanity’s first or worst dark period, so let us use the advice of our prophets, poets and philosophers to deal with dark times like this.
Hineni, Hineni.
Here I stand, resolute as always, committed to the vision of building an enlightened community,
— Sina.