What is that “Boogie Street:” evoked in both “A 1000 Kisses Deep” and “Boogie Street?”

 

It’s an image to evoke the deception, the ‘lost illusions boulevard,’ an image of the everyday life, with its temptations, its disillusions. In fact there is actually a ‘Boogie Street’ in Singapore [Bugis Street]. A very attractive street, where you can find illegal records. I remember having been there after a tour in Australia. I was almost offended not to find my records. I asked the seller and he came back with a box containing the entire collection of my records – what you could never find anywhere else – furthermore at one dollar each. By night, this same street becomes the hottest one of the area. It’s a street of working and sex, and of all the deceptions these activities can bring, deceptions more cruel as you get older, as I am.

 

Leonard Cohen

 

Found at Diamonds In The Lines (Update: no longer online], which references an interview in Chorus: 2002

Credit Due Department: Photo by S Pakhrin from DC, USA – Bugis Singapore, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia

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 Feb 8, 2016.