Election years are usually stressful, and this one is wreaking a unique kind of havoc on our nervous systems. We need help to soothe our troubled minds and inspire us to stay present, doing whatever we can to keep the ship of state navigating these choppy waters. We aren’t likely to find it in contentious media, mass or social, but if we’re lucky, we might come across it somewhere else.
We might stumble upon a song that lifts our spirits. Music has long served as both balm and catalyst. Astute musicians know this and the best have found ways to help us forget our troubles, or at least feel less alone with them while also rousing us to carry on, to rise up and meet the moment. And sometimes what we need to meet the moment might come back around, revisiting us even after decades and death.
So in this time of trouble, enter Leonard Cohen, offering spiritual solace and patriotic inspiration in a singular anthem. Though this doleful Canadian poet is no longer with us, his 1992 release The Future is. In the album Cohen balanced darkness and light with agility; its centerpiece is a seven-minute song titled “Democracy,” which took him years to complete. At one point, he had written more than 50 verses for consideration.
Begun as a poem inspired in part by the fall of the Berlin Wall, amidst cheers around the world for Germany’s reunification Cohen wondered whether democracy could truly take hold. The prospect found him optimistic and also, as was his nature, a tad anxious. Pondering the possibilities, he shifted his focus to that great bastion of freedom, the United States, a nation holding high ideals yet seeming to fly and falter in equal measure, achieving great things while marginalizing many of its own citizens.
America, he said, was “where the experiment is unfolding. This is where the races really confront one another, where the classes, where the genders, even the sexual orientations confront one another. This is the real laboratory of Democracy.” Cohen saw that America was at its best when its people recognized their ideals and yet acknowledged the formidable climb still required to reach them. Peering southward from his Montreal home or perhaps eastward from his Zen monastery on Mt. Baldy in California, Cohen saw America’s potential and pitfalls.
Instead of admonishing the country for its chasmic societal gap, he offered something greater: a vision of encouragement. An invitation to realize that America was – and is – uniquely positioned to turn a majestic corner:
It’s coming to America first;
The cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range and the machinery for change,
And it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way.
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Known for his wry irony, as well as gloominess reinforced by his brooding baritone, Cohen delivers “Democracy” with refreshing earnestness. It is, in fact, one of his most optimistic offerings. Too poetic for radio play and too complex to be covered by jingoistic singers who prefer on-their-sleeve patriotism, “Democracy” didn’t penetrate the American consciousness much beyond the Cohen faithful when it was released.
Yet, the song has proven its merit by remaining relevant over the decades. In it, Cohen seems to be willing the arrival of true democracy, coaxing it prayerfully to grace us in all its shining, battered beauty. In a half-dozen verses, he unfolds a complicated and familiar world: the Berlin Wall, Tiananmen Square, the AIDS crisis, the racial divide, patriarchy, American innovation, spirituality, and sexuality. Indeed, listening to it now, it seems to have newfound relevance.
Finally, he offers his own humble sense of hope as he sings:
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean.
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
The title track of The Future with its lyrics that include “Things are going to slide in all directions…I’ve seen the future, brother, it is murder” makes it clear that Cohen was no unbridled optimist. He must have glimpsed how divided America was becoming and shared that alternate narrative alongside the hope envisioned in “Democracy.” That Cohen exited this life the day before the 2016 U.S. election may be his most poetically prophetic move.
But he left America with a roadmap. He left an anthem for these times. He left us with “Democracy.” Here are the lyrics – the six majestic verses that survived the cut from the original 50+ stanzas. And here is a link, if you’d like to listen to him sing it. May it help us all through these uncertain times, to recognize the shores of need and move past the reefs of greed and through the squalls of hate. Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on….
Democracy (listen here)
It’s coming through a hole in the air,
from those nights in Tiananmen Square.
It’s coming from the feel
that this ain’t exactly real,
or it’s real, but it ain’t exactly there.
From the wars against disorder,
from the sirens night and day,
from the fires of the homeless,
from the ashes of the gay:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming through a crack in the wall,
on a visionary flood of alcohol,
from the staggering account
of the Sermon on the Mount
which I don’t pretend to understand at all.
It’s coming from the silence
on the dock of the bay,
from the brave, the bold, the battered
heart of Chevrolet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming from the sorrow in the street,
the holy places where the races meet;
from the homicidal bitchin’
that goes down in every kitchen
to determine who will serve and who will eat.
From the wells of disappointment
where the women kneel to pray
for the grace of God in the desert here
and the desert far away:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on
O mighty Ship of State!
To the Shores of Need
Past the Reefs of Greed
Through the Squalls of Hate
Sail on, sail on, sail on, sail on.
It’s coming to America first,
the cradle of the best and of the worst.
It’s here they got the range
and the machinery for change
and it’s here they got the spiritual thirst.
It’s here the family’s broken
and it’s here the lonely say
that the heart has got to open
in a fundamental way:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
It’s coming from the women and the men.
O baby, we’ll be making love again.
We’ll be going down so deep
the river’s going to weep,
and the mountain’s going to shout Amen!
It’s coming like the tidal flood
beneath the lunar sway,
imperial, mysterious,
in amorous array:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
Sail on, sail on …
I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean
I love the country but I can’t stand the scene.
And I’m neither left or right
I’m just staying home tonight,
getting lost in that hopeless little screen.
But I’m stubborn as those garbage bags
that time cannot decay,
I’m junk but I’m still holding up
this little wild bouquet:
Democracy is coming to the U.S.A.
