Gimme Stalin and St. Paul - A Reading Of The Future

A READING OF THE FUTURE

by Heidi Hochenedel, Ph.D.

In his 1992 album The Future, poet and musician Leonard Cohen combines images, both sacred and profane, to reveal a stunning vision of the apocalypse and the means to salvation. Although Cohen is a Jewish student of Buddhism, he frequently uses Christian mythology in his writing. The purpose of this essay is to read closely the first song on this album, "The Future," in order to uncover a somewhat coherent vision of the apocalypse. We shall see that although Cohen describes the apocalypse from a Judeo-Christian perspective, he also incorporates the Buddhist concept of Nirvana in this song.

Give me back my broken night
my mirrored room, my secret life
it's lonely here there's no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me baby, that's an order!

The first two lines in this stanza demand both suffering and seclusion. "Broken night" implies sleepless-ness and misery and "mirrored room" and "secret life" imply division and alienation. The mirror image also connotes the reflection of the self. Why does the speaker want these things (division, alienation, and a sense of self) restored to him? Is he (or was he) somewhere where there is no broken night or secret life? As we shall see, the answer to this question is yes. The speaker has seen the future or the end of the world.. As his apoca-lyptic vision develops, it becomes clear that the categories of self and other will become blurred and disappear. In the future there will be no one left to torture because the concept of the self will not exist. It is for this rea-son that the speaker demands the restoration of his self and his solitude.

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that's left
and stuff it up the hole in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and Saint Paul
I've seen the future brother:
It is murder.

This stanza is profoundly angry and betrays a desire for violence and self destruction. Crack and anal sex are both potentially deadly pleasures, especially in the age of AIDS. This kind of entertainment connotes an indifference to life and a lust for self destruction. Lust, anger, and lack of respect for self and others are the inevitable ingredients of rape. Clearly the image of the last tree being stuffed up the hole in culture brings powerfully to mind the idea of forced sex. The image of a hole is also that of a void or a lack. If there is a hole in culture, something is missing from it. Culture has a need or desire that must be met by nature, symbolized by the tree. The speaker demands that nature "fuck" culture even after the former has been nearly destroyed by the latter. Although rape is usually an extremely negative image that implies the violent exploitation of one human being by another, it also suggests unity. Sexual union, even a forced one, is a fusion in which two become one. The culture/nature rape image in this stanza implies that culture should become a part of nature and vice versa. The union of the two categories suggests that they become indistinguishable from each other. As we shall see in my analysis of the refrain, this notion of unity constitutes the speaker's apocalyptic vision. 

Stalin

EXETER play #Stalin'sDaughter @BlueBrookProd 21 April–2 May @BikeShedTheatre http://t.co/AnyKzwuJtp pic.twitter.com/ztuve9bGDd
— Ray Latham (@SevernsideArts) March 5, 2015