This song always tears me up, and Jeff’s cover seems to express a vibe that the others just fall short of. Just short. Not quite. I don’t know what it is. Maybe loss?. I’m not sure. The feelings it pulls up for me say loss, but it’s beyond that too.

And then there’s John Cale too.

Beyond loss. Somewhere just past mourning. Like a bowing acceptance to the mantle of original sin. That’s not a religious confession, not for me, no more than it was for Leonard Cohen when he wrote Biblical allusions into the song. It’s an acknowledgement of the epic proportion of the grief of original sin. That’s what it feels like sometimes, that we are born into something impure or unclean.

There are these days, when the grief comes up like rain rising up in the gutters. There are these days.

There’s Leonard Cohen too, the original poet behind the song. I remember the mourning I woke up to the news of his passing. I walked out with the dog and was thinking about the first time I heard any of his songs. Was it Famous Blue Raincoat? So Long Marianne? I don’t remember which. I remember knowing I’d been missing something. The words for all my feelings I had always found in music and there had been a missing explanation and I remember hearing Leonard Cohen and thinking, “There we go, boy. There we go. That’s what it sounds like. That… thing… that thing you feel some days. It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone here.”