Patrick Comerford
This has been the shortest possible Advent in the Church Calendar and we have come to the final countdown to Christmas. Tomorrow is the Fourth Sunday of Advent and Christmas Eve (24 December 2023).
Later this evening, I plan to attend the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols in Holy Trinity Church, Old Wolverton, at 6 pm. Before today begins, however, I am taking some time for prayer, reflection and reading this morning.
Throughout Advent this year, my reading and reflection each day include 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: 21, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’:
‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ was recorded by Leonard Cohen as the sixth track on his third studio album, Songs of Love and Hate (1971). By 1971, I had already become an avid reader of Leonard Cohen’s poems, and I listened to this album throughout that summer of 1971. I was in my late teens, and it was a summer that became nothing less than life-changing in terms of my spiritual growth and maturity.
‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ has no Christmas associations, and has few Biblical or religious allusions. But it is written in the cold at ‘four in the morning, the end of December.’
‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ offers perhaps the clearest synthesis of Cohen the poet-novelist and Cohen the singer-songwriter, as he relays a vividly characterised tale of adultery, regret and loneliness.
The poem or song is written in the form of a letter, and many of the lines are in amphibrachs. The original recording starts in the key of A minor, but switches to C major during the choruses. Cohen said, ‘That’s nice. I guess I got that from Spanish music, which has that.’
The lyrics include references to the German love song ‘Lili Marlene,’ to Scientology, to efforts to give up drugs, and to the bohemian lifestyle on Clinton Street in Manhattan, where Cohen lived in the 1970s when it was a lively Latino area.
This is a very personal song in a form of a letter from one side of a love triangle to another, invoking multiple images including the first biblical murder of Abel by his brother Cain. The letter is addressed to an unnamed man who, we learn, once unsuccessfully tried to prise away Jane, the wife of the narrator, a fictionalised version of the singer himself.
It is an elegiac description of a tortured, twisted love triangle, involving the song’s narrator, a woman named Jane, and an unnamed male figure who is addressed but identified only briefly as ‘my brother, my killer.’
The letter is curiously brotherly in tone, even conciliatory towards the narrator’s rival. The tragedy in the story was never the infidelity, but the way in which the narrator was resigned to the decay of his marriage. ‘Thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes, I thought it was there for good, so I never tried,’ he concedes in an arresting line that distils the heart of marital despair and miscommunication.
Cohen’s words are rich in their ambiguity. Was there ever a second man? Is he an alter-ego, an abstract spectral presence? Is ‘going clear’ a euphemism for sex, or a reference to a stage of scientology, in which Cohen dabbled at the time?
Cohen provided little elucidation, and in an interview in 1994, he admitted: ‘It was a song I’ve never been satisfied with. I’ve always felt that there was something about the song that was unclear.’
The second, unnamed male figure, Cohen’s nemesis, comrade, brother – perhaps even his alter ego – wears the ‘famous blue raincoat … torn at the shoulder.’ The ‘famous blue raincoat’ once belonged to Cohen himself, but was stolen in the early 1970s from the New York apartment of his lover, Marianne Ihlen. In the liner notes to the album The Best of Leonard Cohen (1975), which includes the song, Cohen wrote:
‘I had a good raincoat then, a Burberry I got in London in 1959. Elizabeth thought I looked like a spider in it. That was probably why she wouldn’t go to Greece with me. It hung more heroically when I took out the lining, and achieved glory when the frayed sleeves were repaired with a little leather. Things were clear. I knew how to dress in those days. It was stolen from Marianne’s loft in New York City sometime during the early ’70s. I wasn't wearing it very much toward the end.’
The stolen blue raincoat serves as image of things stolen, things we miss once we realise they are gone forever, people who disappear from our lives, friends, companions and lovers we lose, things that vanish from our very beings, from our deepest souls: ‘I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you.’
Cohen said in 1994 that ‘it was a song I’ve never been satisfied with.’ Yet, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ is widely considered one of Cohen’s best songs. Ron Cornelius, who played guitar on Songs of Love and Hate, once said: ‘If I had to pick a favourite from the album, it would probably be ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’.’ Far Out and American Songwriter have included the song in their lists of the 10 greatest Leonard Cohen songs.
‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ has been recorded by many artists, including Joan Baez and Tori Amos, Glen Hansard and Damien Rice, who performed the song at the concert ‘Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen’ in 2017.
The song also provides the title for Jennifer Warnes’s album of cover versions of Cohen’s songs. In 1986, she gave an emotive, jazz-inflected rendition – a version that Cohen worked on himself, and one that he said he preferred to the original. She adapted the lyrics slightly so that the narrator is recast as an observer rather than a participant in the affair. ‘My woman’ becomes ‘some woman’, and the letter is no longer signed-off by ‘L Cohen’ but ‘a friend’.
Cohen never wrote a song that more perfectly encapsulates the regret and loneliness in a tale of adultery and lost love. The singer even forgives his rival:
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried
Leonard Cohen, Famous Blue Raincoat:
It’s four in the morning, the end of December
I’m writing you now just to see if you’re better
New York is cold, but I like where I’m living
There’s music on Clinton Street all through the evening
I hear that you’re building your little house deep in the desert
You’re living for nothing now, I hope you’re keeping some kind of record
Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Did you ever go clear?
Ah, the last time we saw you you looked so much older
Your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder
You’d been to the station to meet every train, and
You came home without Lili Marlene
And you treated my woman to a flake of your life
And when she came back she was nobody’s wife
Well I see you there with the rose in your teeth
One more thin gypsy thief
Well, I see Jane’s awake
She sends her regards
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I’m glad you stood in my way
If you ever come by here, for Jane or for me
Well, your enemy is sleeping, and his woman is free
Yes, and thanks, for the trouble you took from her eyes
I thought it was there for good so I never tried
And Jane came by with a lock of your hair
She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear
Sincerely, L Cohen
Luke 1: 57-66 (NRSVA):
57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58 Her neighbours and relatives heard that the Lord had shown his great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.
59 On the eighth day they came to circumcise the child, and they were going to name him Zechariah after his father. 60 But his mother said, ‘No; he is to be called John.’ 61 They said to her, ‘None of your relatives has this name.’ 62 Then they began motioning to his father to find out what name he wanted to give him. 63 He asked for a writing-tablet and wrote, ‘His name is John.’ And all of them were amazed. 64 Immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue freed, and he began to speak, praising God. 65 Fear came over all their neighbours, and all these things were talked about throughout the entire hill country of Judea. 66 All who heard them pondered them and said, ‘What then will this child become?’ For, indeed, the hand of the Lord was with him.
Today’s Prayers (Saturday 23 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), has been ‘The Joy of Advent.’ This theme was introduced last Sunday.
The USPG Prayer Diary today (23 December 2023) invites us to pray reflecting on these words:
‘Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near’ (Philippians 4: 4-5).
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.
Collect on the Eve of Advent 4:
God our redeemer,
who prepared the Blessed Virgin Mary
to be the mother of your Son:
grant that, as she looked for his coming as our saviour,
so we may be ready to greet him
when he comes again as our judge;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.
Yesterday’s Reflection
Continued Tomorrow
Leonard Cohen, ‘Famous Blue Raincoat’ (Live in Dublin)
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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