The constraints of language help define our conception of romance, and in English we're more constrained than most | |
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Leonard Cohen liked to say that the more particular you are, the more universal: "You don't really want to say 'the tree', you want to say 'the sycamore'," he advised about lyric-writing | Lyrics begin: "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin |
I have gone to my profile page and given it a damn good 'typing to.
30But, as Cohen noted, the more particular you are, the more universal you are - and thus "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin" is not only the insane urgency of a beautiful soundtrack to an act of horror, but a more generalized emotional intensity: "It is the same language that we use for surrender to the beloved," says Cohen | |
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But in this lyric he takes some of the most particularly exhausted words in the universal songwriting lexicon and re-invigorates them | But the next day a lady reader e-mailed to say, if I was looking for a good "glove" rhyme, I should check out Leonard Cohen's "Dance Me To The End Of Love" |
See other thread Dance me to the end of love is a desire to return to the source, wherever that may be, the journey having been sullied by the planet.
4Hence: Each night I ask the stars up above Why must I be A Teenager In Love? It made the rather obvious point that the preoccupations of romantic songs are often restrained by the limited rhymes for the word "love" | Just like Irving Berlin, the Gershwins and all the rest, Leonard Cohen is a Jewish songwriter |
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Here's Buddy Holly in "That'll Be The Day": You give me all your lovin' And your turtle-dovin' | And so a relatively obscure Leonard Cohen number becomes a great Billie Holiday song she died too young ever to get around to |