Leonard Cohen Lyrics Word Map Of "Dance Me"
Visualizing Relationships Of Words In Leonard Cohen’s Lyrics
A simple pie chart or bar graph can sometimes illuminate a mathematical relationship between sets of values more effectively than the mos elegant formula. Similarly a visual method of displaying the relationships and connections within a body of text may yield insights that have proved elusive to capture by listening to or reading the lyrics.
Words trees focus on the occurrence of specific words or series of words (chosen by the user) within a specified database (in this case, Leonard Cohen’s lyrics) and the relationships between those worlds.
The graphic at the top of this post is part of a word map of the phrase, “Dance Me,” in Leonard Cohen’s songs.
Creating Word Trees From Leonard Cohen’ Lyrics
An interactive applet that will create word trees form a databased composed of the lyrics of the songs from Leonard Cohen’s albums is now online at the Heck Of A Guy web site: Leonard Cohen Lyrics - Word Trees
Footnotes
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The Remarkable Accomplishments Of Artists Over 70
Leonard Cohen Bows (Photograph: Aaron Harris/AP)
Fashionably Late, an essay by Mark Lawson published in the August 26, 2008 Guardian, is an impressively thoughtful and insightful consideration of artists, including Leonard Cohen (73), PD James (88), Stanley Middleton (89), and a youngster, Neil Diamond (67), whose performances in old age are genuine triumphs.
This is worth reading by anyone interested in Leonard Cohen, PD James, Stanley Middleton, Neil Diamond, the nature of artists, aging, popular culture, … or anyone sentient and curious about life.
The Art That Results From Old Age Without Problem Resolution
These two excerpts, the first a general statement that includes the quote that comprises the second half of this post’s title, and the second a reflection on Leonard Cohen that strikes me as being dead-on, explicate the main premise of the article.
These conventional expectations of late work - the serenity of seniority, the perfection of a philosophy - have been challenged by the literary critic Edward Said in his influential book On Late Style (2002). Said, a dedicated contrarian, argued that what made autumnal culture most interesting was not that the writer had come to some kind of final understanding of their world and their work, but that they had failed to do so. Career codas such as Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge or Missa Solemnis - dark, dense, dragged out of deafness - were a statement, he argued, of “intransigence, difficulty and unresolved contradiction“. (Emphasis mine)
The usual objection to singers in the final phase of their careers has been that their voices go. During the final tours of Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone, audiences had to fight an instinct to shout out for an ear, nose or throat surgeon in the house. But what’s fascinating about Cohen in particular is that, if his voice has gone, it has simply gone to another place - and, probably, a better one. Listening to Cohen’s 1970s and 80s recordings after seeing him perform in Dublin and London this year, I was surprised to find that what had once seemed definitive recordings of Hallelujah and Suzanne felt somehow light and trivial. Now that he has taken the sensible precautions of giving up smoking and taking up yoga, there is a remarkable combination of gravity and clarity in Cohen’s tones.
There is much more to be read and considered, including the significance of undeniably old, undeniably extraordinary artists in fields such as pop music that reward youthfulness.
This unusually provocative and accessible essay can be found at Fashionably Late.
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Will Not Be Blue 2
- Blue Alert II - NOT The Next Anjani Album
As I Was Saying To Anjanikins,
After receiving a dozen emails asking me about the long-impending Anjani album, I put into motion a cleverly devious investigatory strategy. Using a listening device that could also transmit, I surreptitiously dialed her number and slyly asked her “What’s up with the new album?”
Faced with that type of sophisticated interrogation, she soon spilled the beans.
Well, a few beans at least.
It’s About Time
Those of you who follow the adventures of Anjani may know that once upon a time in lala land, this album was originally scheduled for completion early this year. The rate limiting step, it turns out, was not writer’s block.
Psychiatrists use the term, “overdetermined” to indicate an effect (e.g., an emotion, an element of a dream) that has multiple causes, any of which might be sufficient to account for the effect. One might analogously consider Anjani’s efforts to develop the songs on this album overinspired.
In the past year, Anjani has sequentially invested herself in at least three distinct and independent projects she felt confident would result in an album.
The good news for those of us waiting for the final product is that it appears that none of these schemes were aborted because they were found to be unworkable but because a better concept came along.
The most recent delay has an odder origin.
After putting together a playlist suitable for the album, hiring musicians, and the 27,442 other details of creating a CD, including recording the tracks, Anjani, who had been working with a voice coach, found her vocal range and strength had improved so markedly that those already recorded songs possessed significant potential that could be realized only by reworking them and performing them with her newfound capacity.
Yep, the current wait is the result not of an entertainer’s injury or illness impairing the capacity to perform but because of an improvement in that entertainer’s skills.
With only moderate haranguing from me, Anjani volunteers a guarded, hedged judgment that the album will be released no later than the end of this year.
Content and Style
Anjani is less explicit about what the next album will be than what it will not be.
For example, Anjani’s next album will not be Blue Alert II. Blue Alert is a gorgeous set of songs that are so intrinsically private and powerful that it is impossible to imagine them being performed anywhere other than the most intimate venues.
Further, …
Anjani’s Next Album Will Also Not Be
Anjani, the first Anjani Thomas Album
… a reprise of her first album, Anjani (above) or her second, The Sacred Names (below), which was, like Blue Alert, produced by Leonard Cohen.
The Sacred Names, the second album by Anjani Thomas
The new album will, in fact, be significantly different from any of her previous efforts.
Anjani slots the songs in a genre once called “soft rock” - before that once highly valued category was subsumed and eviscerated by the amorphous blob known as “adult contemporary” - with portions of folk, world music, and jazz added to the mix.
Perhaps more intriguing than her precise words was Anjani’s enthusiasm about the forthcoming album. While she has never been less than gracious and generous when we’ve written or talked, this conversation was striking for the animation and genuine excitement she demonstrated as she spoke of the flow of the work and songs that wrote themselves, leading her rather than her constructing them.
More mundane but, I would contend, just as significant is the sustained and ongoing work that has been the hallmark of her involvement in this album. This is distinctly atypical of her usual style which she has outlined this way:
“I quickly discovered that I did not have the wherewithal to sit in a practice room for four, six, eight hours a day. This is not in my nature - and it has, unfortunately, continued to the present day. “I’m notoriously uninspired when it comes to practicing,” she said. “But give me a deadline and, two days before, I’ll sit down and work my butt off.”
The most striking comment, however, occurred as our conversation was ending with bit of social chitchat (e.g., “How are the kids?” “How’s Leonard?” “Is the weather nice out there.?”). Anjani paused for a moment and, referring to the songs destined for the new album, commented, with a lilt to her voice,
It’s the kind of music that makes you feel like dancing
- and I want to feel like dancing.
It was the strangest thing, but I was absolutely convinced that dancing was exactly what she was doing that moment.
Which made me feel like dancing too.
Footnotes
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