new skin for the old ceremony

Nov. 7th, 2025 08:05 pm

 

hello dreamwidth. i haven't posted in a long time so i figured i'd come back and write about my current favorite album. 

 

i almost didn't write this because i was worried about getting it wrong. i don't know much about leonard cohen, his personal life, or the political climate in which he wrote his songs. since i'm missing all that context, i'll misinterpret some things for sure. it's not like it would be super difficult to do some research on these things, but it would suck the fun out of this and feel more like a school project than a fun hobby. so i'm just looking at the album in front of me, and nothing more. and im only listening to the songs i like! i don't care if it's lazy and intellectually dishonest! this is just for fun; u can't make me listen to songs i don't like! (me getting defensive 4 no reason... nobody even accused me of anything, im just fighting demons i suppose)

 

for a long time i haven't thought of myself as a perfectionist because i've seen the way perfectionists are at school and at work, and i'm definitely not like that. i'm not like perfectionistic artists either. i have no reservations about making ugly art. but i'd never really considered that i can be a perfectionist in my personal life without it spilling over into school, work, or art. i suppose i just don't stake enough on them to stress about those kinds of things. 

 

 

what i do stake a lot on is understanding and being understood. 

 

recently, i wrote two scripts for youtube videos that i didn't follow through on. one was about transmasculinity, and the other was about alcoholism. in both instances, i got obsessive-compulsive about making sure that i was understood, that i was disclosing the right amount of information about my personal life to support my argument without disrespecting my own privacy, and imagining all possible interpretations and misinterpretations of my words so i could address them before they came up. i felt like i had to make watertight arguments that nobody could disagree with, otherwise i wouldn't have properly justified my position and proven that i'm a reasonable and intelligent person. so i'd preemptively stress myself out over arguments that didn't even happen.  

 

anyways, back to leonard cohen... part of why i'm so scared of publicly posting a misinterpretation of new skin for the old ceremony is that i'm pretentious about liking it and i don't want to embarass myself. the other part is that i can't relate to cohen, which makes this an exercise in understanding perspectives other than my own. i want to be good at that.

 

i thought a bit about how i'd go about this, and figured i'd better do it song by song, and then i could write some cohesive paragraphs tying it all together to comment on the album as a whole and explain why i like it. i don't mind showing you my rough work. it's part of the fun. 

 

songs:

 

  1. is this what you wanted: cohen explains that the subject of the song is better than he is by comparing her to many nice things, and then himself to something in the same category but of a lower quality. in the chorus he states that they have broken up and she is living in the house that they shared when they were together. it is unclear whether he still lives there with her, or if he has moved out. from her perspective, the relationship was always more about sex than about love, and she was not loyal to him, although he was loyal to her. 
  2. chelsea hotel #2: about a sexual encounter and grieving the loss of a sexual partner
  3. lover lover lover: begging god for his lost lover to come back and reconcile with him (with really good instrumentals, i must add...)
  4. field commander cohen: honestly i'll be real with u i dont really understand this one, and it's my second least fav on the album so i'm not gonna make myself analyze it
  5. why don't you try: this song begins with cohen encouraging the subject to become independent from her husband. midway through, he begins goading her to become sexually available to other men, including cohen
  6. there is a war: acknowledges the conflict between many groups of people such as men and women, the rich and poor, the black and white, etc. cohen repeatedly describes the war and encourages the subject of the song to acknowledge the conflict and participate in it
  7. a singer must die: about feelings of persecution. i don't fully understand this song but i like it. in the first verse, he admits his guilt in court, and after the chorus, he begs a woman for forgiveness during sex. i'm not sure what connects the two. 
  8. i tried to leave you: pretty much what it says on the tin. a song about wanting to leave someone but feeling unable to.
  9. who by fire: inspired by a jewish prayer about god deciding who will live, who will die, how they will live, and how they will die. cohen questions whether these decisions are actually coming from god, or from some other force
  10. take this longing: about desiring a woman who controls men and is unfaithful to them. the song takes on a very sad tone. 
  11. leaving green sleeves: i hate this song so much i refuse to listen to it or look up the lyrics. i just can't stand cohen's wailing it gives me the ick. lowkey felt this way about is this what you wanted at first, but i like that song now. maybe i'll come around to leaving green sleeves but not today

the first thing i noticed about this album is that a lot of the songs are about unfaithful women who like to control men that they have sex with but don't really love. cohen makes it clear that he has low self esteem (opening the album with a song about feeling inferior to someone; letting the subject of chelsea hotel #2 call him ugly; describing his name as being covered with fear and filth and cowardice and shame in lover lover lover; just to name the most obvious examples), which likely makes him easier to control.

okay nevermind i don't feel like writing the rest of this. just go listen to the album idc. im posting this anyways because im not a perfectionist. gonna go play chess goodnight lea nation.

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