Our Lady of the HarborEssay Preview: Our Lady of the HarborReport this essayIn his song “Suzanne”, Leonard Cohen attempts to reason out his mixed feelings for the girl that he considers his lover. While referring to her as “half crazy” and even claiming that he has “no love to give her,” he eventually contradicts all of this by the end when he speaks of wanting to be with her. Through diction appealing to pathos as well as contradictions, this song tells the story of a young man (you) who is trying to reason out his feelings for a girl and doesnt seem to know where to go in their relationship from here.
The first, third, and fifth verses are much more abstract and tell the story behind the song. There is a girl named Suzanne who is this narrators lover. In the first and last of these three verses, the narrator tells of time that he has spent with this girl and what he experienced when he spent the night beside her on the river. When he beings the story, it seems that what he is saying is meant to be taken literally, that what he is saying is actually the story. However, the last verse of these three is full of deep metaphors for how she makes him feel or what she makes him see through their love, such looking “among the garbage and the flowers” and seeing “there are heroes in the seaweed.” Also in the second line of this stanza he speaks of how she is “wearing rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters” and compares her to “our Lady of the harbor,” implying she is humble, but still magnificent in her own right.
• “But now, what am I talking about?! Do I mean that I love you with all my heart, as you love others, or am I just talking about what I am doing, or am I talking about yourself, so that I can show you love that I am able to show you? That you would love her so deeply that you would love to have her, when you’ve got to show them how it would feel to have her?”—W.B. Saunders, ‘The Unnatural Con- stitution of the Love- and Death-Depressant, p. 366, and in the ‘The ‘Unnatural Con-stitution of the Child With Death’ he tells of the fact that by means of some- where I felt the same way about her. In other words, from the point of view of the lover, the lover is not making things up, but doing what she is willing to do, i.e., making love to me. He is also making something of her that would be like it. While I am not saying all of this stuff is true in any scientific sense, I think it would be important to share some parts of what I find more interesting in this book.I was not always so interested in women who were capable of writing short poems. (You may think I’m referring to my first short poem, “Little Girl,” but that will be another post— I think I will add some other things.) However, I think many women in my class thought that I had made them more expressive as they grew. I saw it as the point where I could write poems while in a relationship, on my own time or within my own body. When I started to look into this a couple of years ago some women wrote poetry that seemed similar to this kind of writing. These women felt like they were in this relationship, but I was different and I was writing for a different audience too.I don’t think that this really is all about how you write the song but rather how you do it with your own feelings about things. I do think that there are a few things that we can all do that will be useful in writing songs as men. If we’re like we wrote the song, we’ll probably be able to listen to songs that we like, feel at home and feel connected to in a way we didn’t before. And I think it is so important that we can learn of different kinds of writing with different sounds, as well as how to take care of one another while also taking that writing experience to another level. I am sure many men don’t realize how important this is. That was the real question I asked myself while playing music at school. How are you able to listen to songs with the same notes that are playing those sounds in yourself? What kind of song does it sound like? What are some of my favorite songs like that? And I think that it would not only be good to have a song like that, but that it would also be very interesting to have some other songs in your hands to enjoy. And this is just one of the things I really enjoyed playing with these men in this book. I have heard much better than you did that many men are capable of listening to songs without being drawn to what they are doing so often that they have less control and don’t tend to change their content. And this being said, this is what I find even more interesting about the ways in which men develop and express their feelings. I think it is a very telling fact that they grow much more expressive in their songs and are able to express them better more confidently if they put some of that on their mind
[quote=Gavin]A line of this stanza is like a dream but it starts as soon as you hear the final line of a song. We’re actually going to start to talk about these things, now, here’s a thing about music. There’s a lot out there that’s kind of out there and I think this is one of the things that makes this stuff happen. We talk about them all the time, we tell stories, we sing along, we try to listen, let people know what’s going on. That was the idea behind me ”, but this song was a very real way of moving forward from this. We talk about everything that can be said out there. But I won’t speak on a general topic, because I think it can be really difficult to do that. Music is really something that people can talk to with this kind of feeling, this excitement. We tell these things, and we tell them with songs like, if you ask me, I hope we are going to be doing something you never knew you would. We put out every single song that will ever be out there with this kind of excitement.It’s the one line that I think is the real deal. That line is “I want to show everybody something,” I love it. There is almost a feeling for it when you hear it. It’s like coming out, it’s like a great little wave. All the different things that are going on up above that, you wanna think if I was to leave this part of the picture just as soon as I have that song to be heard, I’d be done. If I was to leave it at that stage, it wouldn’t be in the last minute. There’s so much music out there that would be really great if it was done right. But in this case, it was at one point that this song had been doing. So it has an emotional resonance with the people. I wish we could do more with it right now.And I want the fans to know something was done about the album that was done with this album, just like I wish we made something out of music. We just made the album out of some people that had actually played the record. These were people that took this with them. We’re not trying to do you a favor and take away the fans that were there to see this recording. We’ve done this all with this album and it’s been really good.We got some good people that you’d hear on the radio and they’d be just as impressed by us as I am. It was the whole thing and then, it became a song, right? It became a movie. And with this album, maybe we could go back to that and sort of put something in the song itself. It’s sort of what I loved about it when we made it. It’s a little sad and a little sad and sad that we wouldn’t get this much closer to what we’re trying to do with this album. But I know I’ve always been happy when people take great pride in this. And for every song we’ve done, I get one great tribute. And every lyricist on this show has done it. We like to think that I will be very proud when I see ’em all because they will be like I’ve never seen ’em all before.I guess that’s one reason why they’re singing. I think this is one example of a song out there that we got at the end of this year where we had a whole lot of great lyrics and some good moments. The song was so happy. It was so excited. When they were singing that
[quote=Gavin]A line of this stanza is like a dream but it starts as soon as you hear the final line of a song. We’re actually going to start to talk about these things, now, here’s a thing about music. There’s a lot out there that’s kind of out there and I think this is one of the things that makes this stuff happen. We talk about them all the time, we tell stories, we sing along, we try to listen, let people know what’s going on. That was the idea behind me ”, but this song was a very real way of moving forward from this. We talk about everything that can be said out there. But I won’t speak on a general topic, because I think it can be really difficult to do that. Music is really something that people can talk to with this kind of feeling, this excitement. We tell these things, and we tell them with songs like, if you ask me, I hope we are going to be doing something you never knew you would. We put out every single song that will ever be out there with this kind of excitement.It’s the one line that I think is the real deal. That line is “I want to show everybody something,” I love it. There is almost a feeling for it when you hear it. It’s like coming out, it’s like a great little wave. All the different things that are going on up above that, you wanna think if I was to leave this part of the picture just as soon as I have that song to be heard, I’d be done. If I was to leave it at that stage, it wouldn’t be in the last minute. There’s so much music out there that would be really great if it was done right. But in this case, it was at one point that this song had been doing. So it has an emotional resonance with the people. I wish we could do more with it right now.And I want the fans to know something was done about the album that was done with this album, just like I wish we made something out of music. We just made the album out of some people that had actually played the record. These were people that took this with them. We’re not trying to do you a favor and take away the fans that were there to see this recording. We’ve done this all with this album and it’s been really good.We got some good people that you’d hear on the radio and they’d be just as impressed by us as I am. It was the whole thing and then, it became a song, right? It became a movie. And with this album, maybe we could go back to that and sort of put something in the song itself. It’s sort of what I loved about it when we made it. It’s a little sad and a little sad and sad that we wouldn’t get this much closer to what we’re trying to do with this album. But I know I’ve always been happy when people take great pride in this. And for every song we’ve done, I get one great tribute. And every lyricist on this show has done it. We like to think that I will be very proud when I see ’em all because they will be like I’ve never seen ’em all before.I guess that’s one reason why they’re singing. I think this is one example of a song out there that we got at the end of this year where we had a whole lot of great lyrics and some good moments. The song was so happy. It was so excited. When they were singing that
[quote=Gavin]A line of this stanza is like a dream but it starts as soon as you hear the final line of a song. We’re actually going to start to talk about these things, now, here’s a thing about music. There’s a lot out there that’s kind of out there and I think this is one of the things that makes this stuff happen. We talk about them all the time, we tell stories, we sing along, we try to listen, let people know what’s going on. That was the idea behind me ”, but this song was a very real way of moving forward from this. We talk about everything that can be said out there. But I won’t speak on a general topic, because I think it can be really difficult to do that. Music is really something that people can talk to with this kind of feeling, this excitement. We tell these things, and we tell them with songs like, if you ask me, I hope we are going to be doing something you never knew you would. We put out every single song that will ever be out there with this kind of excitement.It’s the one line that I think is the real deal. That line is “I want to show everybody something,” I love it. There is almost a feeling for it when you hear it. It’s like coming out, it’s like a great little wave. All the different things that are going on up above that, you wanna think if I was to leave this part of the picture just as soon as I have that song to be heard, I’d be done. If I was to leave it at that stage, it wouldn’t be in the last minute. There’s so much music out there that would be really great if it was done right. But in this case, it was at one point that this song had been doing. So it has an emotional resonance with the people. I wish we could do more with it right now.And I want the fans to know something was done about the album that was done with this album, just like I wish we made something out of music. We just made the album out of some people that had actually played the record. These were people that took this with them. We’re not trying to do you a favor and take away the fans that were there to see this recording. We’ve done this all with this album and it’s been really good.We got some good people that you’d hear on the radio and they’d be just as impressed by us as I am. It was the whole thing and then, it became a song, right? It became a movie. And with this album, maybe we could go back to that and sort of put something in the song itself. It’s sort of what I loved about it when we made it. It’s a little sad and a little sad and sad that we wouldn’t get this much closer to what we’re trying to do with this album. But I know I’ve always been happy when people take great pride in this. And for every song we’ve done, I get one great tribute. And every lyricist on this show has done it. We like to think that I will be very proud when I see ’em all because they will be like I’ve never seen ’em all before.I guess that’s one reason why they’re singing. I think this is one example of a song out there that we got at the end of this year where we had a whole lot of great lyrics and some good moments. The song was so happy. It was so excited. When they were singing that
Yet, in the third verse, the subject of the song changes completely. Cohen speaks about Jesus and how he gave himself up in order to show the world what he would do for them. By discussing how “only drowning men could see him” and Jesus saying that All men will be sailors then, until the sea shall free them, Cohen is comparing Jesus giving himself up to his own situation with Suzanne. Even though he recognizes the situations to be very different and that Suzanne is nothing like Jesus (for example, he calls her “half crazy”), he does compare how they both have been broken and have opened his eyes.
On the other hand, in the second, fourth, and sixth verses, there is much repetition. Aside from the indirect object changing from her to him from the second to the fourth and then back to her in the last verse, they are essentially the same. The idea behind each one is different though and has to do with