COMMENTATORS |
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PAGE FOR
DERIC SOON
TO ARRIVE!
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The Future, CBS Records,1992 recurrent airplay favorite at MATT RADIO |
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Mr. Cohen, you also have the line, "The maestro says it’s Mozart, but it sounds like bubble gum." That junk is sometimes promoted as great art.
Some stuff is being promoted as junk and it is great art. Remember the way that a lot of rock and roll was greeted by the authorities and the musicologists and even the hip people. And when people were putting me down as being one thing or another, it wasn’t the guy in the subway. He didn’t know about me. It was the hip people, writing the columns in the hip newspapers, college papers, music papers.
So it’s very difficult to see what the verdict is going to be about a piece of work. And the thing that makes it an interesting game is that each generation revises the game, and decides on what is poetry and song for itself, often rejecting the very carefully considered verdicts of the previous generations. I mean, did the hippies ever think that they would be the objects of ridicule by a generation, that they'd be considered self-righteous and prideful for the really bold and courageous steps they had taken to find themselves imbued in the face of an unmovable society; the risks, the chances, the dope they smoked, the acid they dropped?
Did they ever think they would be held up as figures of derision, like cartoon characters? No.
And so it is, with every generation. There’s that remark: "He who marries the spirit of his own generation is a widower in the next."
source: interview conducted by Paul Zollo in SONGWRITERS ON SONGWRITING, 1997
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Oliver Stone's use of "Waiting for the Miracle" to begin Natural Born Killers is somewhat shallow, especially in relation to the significance of the later two songs. While the music sets the tone for the opening scene, and Cohen's weathered voice seems perfectly suited to the images of death in the desert that open the film, there's no discernible significance to the lyrics. Unless Stone means to suggest "the miracle" of the title to be the first murders we see onscreen, which is a weak analogy at best, the song is simply there for the ambience provided by the music, and Stone only includes the first three verses (less than half the song) as it is. Coupled with the sounds of searing heat and the distant sound of a storm approaching and accompanying shots of empty landscapes and dead animals, the song makes for an effective opening despite its thematic incongruencies. Stone obviously felt the use of the song was successful, because it also opens the Natural Born Killers soundtrack album.
source: "Naturally Born of Cohen," by Ted Ekering, 1997
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Cohen is no stranger to the apocalyptic emotional struggles his songs describe. The Future took four years to finish.
"I tend to get shattered as I bring a project to completion," Cohen said. "I have to discard versions of myself, and versions of the songs, until I can get to a situation where I can defend every word, every line. But that place often involves a real shattering of equanimity, or of balance... I have to go to this naked and raw place. And it usually involves the breakdown of my personality, and I flip out. I can't go into crowds, I don't want to leave my house, I don't want to leave my room, I don't want to answer the phone, all my relationships collapse."
When the work is over, Cohen climbs back. "You try
slowly
to repair your relationships or support system, so you try the Prozac
or Deseryl [another antidepressant], or you go to synagogue or the
meditation hall; you go back to yoga or start running. Whatever
repair
mode is accessible, you embrace."
source: interview by Wayne Robins,
Nov. 22, 1992, Newsday-Long Island