Fuck Politeness

So fuckthepostpolitical has really thrown down on our decision to bring the rants to the web.

I was bitching and moping to her the other day about feeling excluded from some of the poetry of lyricists such as Leonard Cohen. While I do love his lyrics, he is often *bleak*, in that “I’m a tragic misunderstoon poet/artist” way…on a good day I am moved, on a bad day I feel shut out of identification with the protaganists in his song…

So there are times where he’s waxing lyrical, romanticising remoteness, loneliness, solitude and the pain of it, where it feels like *woman* is locked in the role of temptress/muse…she’s the mythical, the beautiful, the source of sadness/loss, potentially loopy…she doesn’t have the same agency as him…she’s beauty and grace, temptation and pain, a ‘mystery’…what saps him of his strength, a source of temporary joy, of wonder, but bound to cause loss/grief/a stealing of strength…don’t stay in one place too long…

So there’s all this *poetry* of the man who is always and ever alone, who has *known* beauty and love, but is busy being/doing/feeling/observing/creating…who can never be contained, a man of action, wary of temptation in womanly form, exoticising it, but not recognising woman perhaps as an equal in agency? A source of strength, action, laugter and joy? I just wonder if there’s any mutuality or if it’s more of the archetypal stories of women…of course I’m not familiar with his entire catalogue, and am happy to be proven wrong (and today have had a lovely day of identification with some of his lyrics)…

Where is the female equivalent? Where are the men singing about the strength and fire of their women – how much they’ve learned through them? Where are the women singing about men as mysterious and confusing? As temptation and a sapping of strength? I’m not proposing that reversal solves issues, or that these lyrics are *bad*…I’m just trying to think through the ways gender is *done* even by the ‘deeper’ lyrics – maybe more particularly in those lyrics….what do I have to pin my identification with the strength and dynamism of womanliness on? On being the desired object, or…identification with a codependant pathetic love, an “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you’re killing me, I will not be able to breath in your absence for I am dependant upon your approval”. Ugh. If only I could write decent poetry! Unfortunately it turns out more like Dr Seuss than Leonard Cohen…

Anyway…oops, distracted from my point…she’s written another post on this stuff, on Music and Meaning, the Exclusion of Women and the Romanticisation of Men…check her out…

Tags: agency, Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, poetry, Samson and Delilah, tag Dredgirl - you're it, women