If Bob Dylan wrote a song, and sang it, I probably know about it. Not necessarily true with respect to the songs of Leonard Cohen. As some might think it appropriate for me to say, using an expression that I don't much favor: "My Bad."
One of Cohen's songs, "Everybody Knows," is featured in the video at the top of this blog posting. I should have known about it. It is a really great song. It is a really powerful song! I feel certain that I should be blushing to confess that I didn't know about that song until just after the election of Donald J. Trump on November 5th, last year.
In fact, I saw some lyrics from the song on Facebook, back on November 12th, put out there by a Facebook Friend as a commentary on the presidential election. Below, I am displaying the extract from the song that I saw on Facebook, accompanied by this picture:
Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
--Leonard Cohen (Sept. 21, 1934 - Nov. 7, 2016)
I believe that many people will take these lyrics - so powerful, so "true" - to be a declaration that what "everybody knows," what is so accurately described in this powerful poetry, is not just a description of what "everybody knows," but is, in fact, a statement about the inevitable reality that we confront in the world in which we live.
I don't think that would be a proper deduction. The fact that "everybody knows" that bad things have prevailed (and that everbody then often shields themselves from that knowledge) does not mean that the "bad things" are the only things that we can discover when we observe the world.
I often make a distinction between the role of the "observer" and the role of the "actor." We are both observers and actors. We are foolish if we blind ourselves to the genuine nature of the realities of the world - if we work to convince ourselves that what "everybody knows" doesn't actually exist. Cohen's song is a powerful reminder that we often do this, and his song is a warning not to do that. We insulate ourselves from what is evil and outrageous because we would prefer the reality to be something else. Whether it's "rotten" politics or a married partner who isn't quite as "faithful" as we would like them to be, our ability to blind ourselves to what is wrong is, itself, a kind of wrong-headed effort at self-protection.
But, what exists now, what "everybody knows," is NOT what inevitably must exist. Cohen's song is, emphatically, not a song about the essential nature of reality, because "reality," in the end, depends on what we do, not on what we see, or on what we "know."
Above all, that is true of the "Political World" that we most immediately inhabit. Let me extend my comment from Leonard Cohen's powerful song to a song by Bob Dylan, "Political World," which might, again, be heard as stating that our "politics" is, inevitably, vile and depraved.
That is, of course, so often true. "Everybody knows" that. But whether the unacceptable realities about which "everybody knows" will continue to exist, depends - and let me say it again - on what we choose to "do."
Everybody knows that Dylan's description of politics is "right on the money," to employ a phrase that refers to "money," which is what a lot of people think is the main point of "politics," as is suggested in Dylan's song, and in Cohen's song, too.
That's not what I think. It's not what Hannah Arendt thinks, either, to refer you to an authority figure who well understands what politics is really all about. What does she think?
She thinks that politics is how we change the world.
That's also what I think, and not everybody knows that they can think that, too!
Image Credit:
(1) - https://youtu.be/xu8u9ZbCJgQ?si=BcTPI4wYaV_pGzj8
(3) - https://youtu.be/jg29g6D0sPs?si=0IOOgDhcch4edvoE
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