Steve Gutteridge remarked that the song title was strongly reminiscent of the way that Aesop's Fables are titled in the format 'the X and the Y'. Fables are stories containing anthropomorphised animals, creatures, plants or other inanimate objects and which have a moral. Some 720 tales are attributed to the ancient Greek Aesop, but scholars are agreed that many cannot be by him as they predate him.
Crows appears in 27 of the tales, while Nightingale appears in six, but as Steve notes, they do not appear together. Generally the Crow is depicted for its horrible squawking and the Nightingale for its beautiful songs.
The Nightingale is a song by Leonard Cohen from his 11th album, Dear Heather, released in 2004. The lyric appears to be an eulogy for a lost lover.
The music is composed by Cohen's collaborator Anjani Thomas, using a poem that had been abandoned by him. It's dedicated to the R&B singer Carl Anderson, Thomas's colleague, who died in 2004.
'Thank you for your words of longing'
Published in 2006, the Book of Longing was a Leonard Cohen collection of verse mostly written during a five year period during the 1990s when Cohen was in seclusion in a Zen monastery on Mount Baldy near LA. It contains the words to The Nightingale although it drops the definite article and formats them differently.
Leonard Cohen
A favourite artist of Steve Hogarth, Leonard Norman Cohen (21/09/1934 – 07/11/2016) was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist, arguably popularly known as the author of Hallelujah, which is probably best known from Jeff Buckley's version. Cohen's writings are perhaps best known for being about relationships, sex, death and loss. h has sung Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat during his h Natural shows many times.
Joe Serge added that Joni Mitchell, with whom Cohen had a brief affair, referred to herself as a crow on a song entitled Black Crow from her 1976 album Hejira.
'Doesn't really matter'
The Leonard Cohen poem Doesn't Matter from his posthumous anthology The Flame contains the lines (lower case initial letters from the original):
it doesn't matter darling,'A job for Christo... wrapping the sun with silk'
it really doesn't matter
 |
| Wrapped Reichstag, Project for Berlin (1995) |
'Christo and Jeanne-Claude' was the professional name of the married artists Christo Javacheff (1935–2020) and Jeanne-Claude Guillebon (1935–2009). The pair, originally known as 'Christo', were best known for large-scale installations, particularly wrapping large landmarks such as the Reichstag or Pont Neuf in fabric.
The pair stated that that their artwork had no particular meaning beyond the aesthetic and seeking to change how people look at the world.
'Better than darkness'
In episode 98 of The Corona Diaries, h was asked whether he'd incorporated any Cohen into the song. He said the only outright quote was 'Better than darkness', which comes from the opening stanza of the poem Better, from his Book of Longing collection:
better than darkness
is fake darkness
which swindles you
into necking with
your neighbor's daughter
'Locking Helen of Troy in a padded cell'
Helen of Troy was the wife of King Menaleus, and said to be the most beautiful woman in the world. She was abducted by the love-struck King Paris of Troy, thus precipitating the ten year Trojan War. (Cf Incubus, The Web)
Racket being, of course, The Racket Club, Marillion's studio and also Racket Records, their label.
Songs with a link have explanations.
- Introduction
- Be Hard On Yourself
- Reprogram The Gene
- Murder Machines
- The Crow and the Nightingale
- Sierra Leone
- Care
"The X and the Y" are common titles in Aesop's fables (Greek Author, 6th century BC), the most famous of which being "The Hare And The Tortoise". ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesop%27s_Fables#List_of_some_fables_by_Aesop
ReplyDeleteAlthough several of Aesop's fables include Crows and Nightingales in their titles, they never appear together, although generally the Crow is depicted for its horrible squawking and the Nightingale for its beautiful song.
(cf: "The Turtle and the Scopion" from Fish's solo track "Manchmal")
Excellent point, Steve - I shall include something to this effect!
DeleteThe “Locking Helen of Troy in a padded room / Behind frosted glass / Howlin’ at the moon” lines, while they certainly name Helen of Troy, seem to refer mostly to Leonard Cohen’s position on romantic love. In it, one of the most important notions is that of being overthrown by goddess-like beauty, which we can find in ‘Hallelujah’ and many other of his songs. Also, in Cohen’s idion, love and relationships can be an unrelenting struggle, comparable even to ‘war’.
ReplyDeleteSimon Riches has written some interesting observations on this in Chapter 10 (Leonard Cohen on Romantic Love) of ‘Leonard Cohen and Philosophy: Various Positions’ (https://books.google.nl/books?id=InToBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT77&lpg=PT77&dq=leonard+cohen+helen+of+troy&source=bl&ots=rB-7c0Ky3Z&sig=ACfU3U1596w95lZaf35sIE2UO6U-XepIhg&hl=nl&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiTuM2Rn9L2AhWWG-wKHYqwDKQQ6AF6BAgYEAM#v=onepage&q=leonard%20cohen%20helen%20of%20troy&f=false)
A racket and a tune could refer to a writer who was a very strong influence on Cohen’s lyrics and poetry, Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca (1898-1936). Cohen, on stage, would often recite the opening lines of the love poem ‘Gacela of the Morning Market’: “Through the Arch of Elvira, I want to see you go, So that Im can learn your name, And break into tears.” Cohen is also quoted as saying: “Lorca led me into the racket of petry. He educated me. He taught me to understand the dignity of sorrow through flamenco music, and to be deeply touched by the dance image of a Gypsy man and woman.” A racket and a tune could then, of course, refer to the poetry and music of Cohen, the ‘Nightingale’, and contain a play on words with Racket and the music of h, the ‘Crow’.
ReplyDeleteThen again a crow mostly makes a racket and a nightingale really sings a tune, so it could all be much simpler.
DeleteI took it this way, and as nothing referring to the label. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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