Patrick Comerford
We are in the final stages of countdown to Christmas, with just four days to go to Christmas Day. The last week of Advent began on Sunday with the Third Sunday of Advent or Gaudete Sunday (17 December 2023), and this is a very short Advent this year.
Before today begins, I am taking some time for prayer, reflection and reading this morning.
Throughout Advent this year, my reading and reflection each day includes a poem or song by Leonard Cohen. These Advent reflections are following this pattern:
1, A reflection on a poem or song by Leonard Cohen;
2, the Gospel reading of the day in the Church of England lectionary;
3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.
The Songs and Poems of Leonard Cohen: 19, ‘Tower of Song’:
‘Tower of Song’ by Leonard Cohen is the keynote work on his 1988 album I’m Your Man. In a readers’ poll in 2014, Rolling Stone listed it as the eighth favourite Cohen song.
The origins of ‘Tower of Song’ are described in Ira Nadel's Cohen memoir Various Positions (1996). Cohen wanted to ‘make a definitive statement about the heroic enterprise of the craft’ of songwriting. In the early 1980s, he called the work ‘Raise My Voice in Song.’ His concern was with the ageing songwriter, and the ‘necessity to transcend one’s own failure by manifesting as the singer, as the songwriter.’
Cohen had abandoned the song, but then one night in Montreal he finished the lyrics, called an engineer and recorded it in one take with a toy synthesiser.
Cohen later revised the song, which contains the self-deprecating claim,
I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice.
Cohen was constantly aware of his reputation as a ‘flat singer’ among critics. But his audiences responded with warmth and humour when he sang or spoke these lines in his concerts.
Cohen admired for Hank Williams, a songwriter he refers to in the song, describing how, when they are both dead and have passed to the their eternal reward, Hank Williams is ‘coughing all night long … a hundred floors above me.’
The lyrics also hint at Cohen’s social conscience, and his engagement with the Jewish mystical concept of tikkum olam or divine justice:
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgement coming
In this song, he also expresses his religious hopes for eternal life, not just for himself but also for these he loves and has loved in the past:
I see you standing on the other side
I don’t know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We’ll never, we'll never have to lose it again
Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back
They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window
In the Tower of Song
Cohen recited the lyrics of Tower of Song’ in full when he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
‘Tower of Song’ has been covered by many artists, notably on the tribute albums I’m Your Fan, with separate covers by Robert Forster and by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and on Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, with separate covers by Martha Wainwright and U2.
The song appears on Marianne Faithfull’s album Vagabond Ways and on Tom Jones’s album Spirit in the Room. Shaar Hashomayim Choir, Willie Nelson, Céline Dion, Peter Gabriel and Chris Martin performed the song at the concert Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen, in Montreal in 2017.
Tower of Song: The Songs of Leonard Cohen is a tribute album to Leonard Cohen, released in on A&M Records in 1995. It takes its name from this song by Cohen on his album I’m Your Man. Oddly, though, the song ‘Tower of Song’ does not actually appear on this tribute album.
The tribute album Tower of Song included Elton John, Sting with the Chieftains, Billy Joel, Peter Gabriel and Bono of U2. The album was the initiative of by Cohen’s manager, Kelley Lynch, who, a decade later, was found liable for fraud, having drained almost all of Cohen’s life savings.
Leonard Cohen, Tower of Song:
Well my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song
I said to Hank Williams, ‘How lonely does it get?’
Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
Oh, a hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song
I was born like this, I had no choice
I was born with the gift of a golden voice
And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond
They tied me to this table right here
In the Tower of Song
So you can stick your little pins in that voodoo doll
I’m very sorry, baby, doesn’t look like me at all
I’m standing by the window where the light is strong
Ah they don’t let a woman kill you
Not in the Tower of Song
Now you can say that I’ve grown bitter but of this you may be sure
The rich have got their channels in the bedrooms of the poor
And there’s a mighty judgement coming, but I may be wrong
You see, you hear these funny voices
In the Tower of Song
[Bridge]
I see you standing on the other side
I don’t know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We’ll never, we’ll never have to lose it again
Now I bid you farewell, I don’t know when I’ll be back They’re moving us tomorrow to that tower down the track
But you’ll be hearing from me baby, long after I’m gone
I’ll be speaking to you sweetly from a window
In the Tower of Song
Yeah my friends are gone and my hair is grey
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I’m crazy for love but I’m not coming on
I’m just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song.
Luke 1: 39-45 (NRSVA):
39 In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, 40 where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. 41 When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit 42 and exclaimed with a loud cry, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. 43 And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? 44 For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leapt for joy. 45 And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfilment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.’
Today’s Prayers (Thursday 21 December 2023):
The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘The Joy of Advent.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (21 December 2023) invites us to pray in these words:
We ask you God to heal us, restore our relationships, and finish Your good work in us. Mend this broken world so joy can be felt by all nations.
The Collect:
O Lord Jesus Christ,
who at your first coming sent your messenger
to prepare your way before you:
grant that the ministers and stewards of your mysteries
may likewise so prepare and make ready your way
by turning the hearts of the disobedient to the wisdom of the just,
that at your second coming to judge the world
we may be found an acceptable people in your sight;
for you are alive and reign with the Father
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
The Post-Communion Prayer:
We give you thanks, O Lord, for these heavenly gifts;
kindle in us the fire of your Spirit
that when your Christ comes again
we may shine as lights before his face;
who is alive and reigns now and for ever.
Additional Collect:
God for whom we watch and wait,
you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way of your Son:
give us courage to speak the truth,
to hunger for justice,
and to suffer for the cause of right,
with Jesus Christ our Lord.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Leonard Cohen, ‘Tower of Song,’ Live in London
Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org
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