“[Boogie Street is] ordinary human struggle and life, the place of work and desire. It’s where we’re meant to be, it’s what we’re born into. There are moments when the burden of the self is lifted, but those are only temporary situations.” Leonard Cohen

Allan Showalter

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[Boogie Street is] ordinary human struggle and life, the place of work and desire. It’s where we’re meant to be, it’s what we’re born into. There are moments when the burden of the self is lifted, but those are only temporary situations. As I say in the song, ‘You kiss my lips and then it’s done/I’m back on Boogie Street.’ Whatever the experience is — the god, the woman, the insight, the epiphany, the penetration — those are temporary events. Or as my old teacher says, ‘You can’t live in Paradise — no toilets or restaurants.’

 

 

Leonard Cohen

 

Angst & Aquavit by Brendan Bernhard. LA Weekly: September 26, 2001. Photo atop post by Jfkjaya. – Own work., CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikipedia Commons

I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted Mar 14, 2017.

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