I’m moving – from a desert island to a corner, and now to the wilderness. At least I get a change of scenery. Some tumbleweed came blowing by yesterday and I imagined I was in a film of some kind.
I have spent the remaining time deciding on my Desert Island Discs:
1. I Vow to Thee My Country (just because it represents my childhood, father a vicar and spending a lot of time in church. I wrote about this a lot in my first novel (my magnum hopeless) including how the church spire used to creep across the lawn cutting a dark slice in the sunshine
A poem about my art
Karma
My magnum hopeless lost between
the armchair and the seat
I watch the sitcom of my life
- alas, it’s a repeat
2. The Master Song (my favourite early Cohen, although it isn’t easy to choose. they were all my favourites, including Sing Another Song Boys – I loved the way his voice goes completely wild on the la-la-la’s at the end). The other day I said to jan, a friend, “We went to see Leonard Cohen the other week. Do you like him?”
“Oh, the Master!” she said. “I love Leonard Cohen”. I decided this was a good name for him. Hence this poem
I Believe that I heard the Master Sing…
I learned from the Master
I watched you for forty years
I thought, If he can do it
so can I
3. The News from Spain by Al Stewart. A beautiful song about losing love, which reminds me of my first love. Another poem
My First Love
That characteristic way he had
of brushing away reality
like a gnat
- he brushed me away
just so.
I ought to have killed him for that
4. Ain’t No Cure for Love
ditto. Some of the lines in this really healed me when I was suffering so badly from a broken heart.
5. If It Be Your Will
My favourite ever Cohen song. It has me on the floor every time. A bit of a problem when I played the tape in the car. I played it before going into hospital to give birth to Daniel, 3rd January, 1997. The total abandonment of power is utterly irresistible.
6. Democracy
I love the lyric on this one. I laughed out loud the first time I heard it – and many times after that.
7. Hallelujah by Rufus Wainright. My favourite cover.
Not sure about the eighth – will probably come back to this.
PS Actually what I think about If it be your will, is that it inhabits that borderline between nothing and everything – that it is only by surrendering everything that you find it. Every religion has things to say about this. The very leaves on the trees proclaim it. But still we say “can’t I just keep this one thing?” And that is the one thing that prevents us from having everything.
“Only one thing made him happy
and when that was gone
Everything made him happy”
