Meaning of The Future by Leonard Cohen & Song Story

In 1992, Leonard Cohen recorded the song The Future, in which he told how he sees the future of mankind. The famous Canadian songwriter has described a creepy world that one obviously doesn’t want to leave to one’s children.

Several decades have passed. People still fight, morally decay, suffer from multiplying diseases and destroy nature, but still the future that has come does not seem so terrible. Or is the apocalypse just not here yet?

The story of the creation of the song The Future – Leonard Cohen

The words and music of the composition were written by Cohen. It was originally called If You Could See What’s Coming Next. Leonard reworked it several times, writing several pages in a notebook.

The song opens the album of the same name, released in November 1994.

Meaning of The Future by Leonard Cohen

What is The Future song about? Heidi Hochenedel, Ph.D., who published a full analysis of the composition on the LeonardCohenFiles.com website, believes that the author shares a vision of the future apocalypse, describing it in a Judeo-Christian interpretation.

Here is how Cohen himself explained the main idea of the work:

The Future is a song that the future has cried out, torn out of me. This is not politics, but something akin to psycho-geopolitics. The future is pulling these exclamations out of me, out of my heart.

Bob Harris Show 1993

Another expression by Leonard Cohen, explaining the intent of the author of The Future:

It reflects the situation in which we now find ourselves, with openly extremist positions, defensive to the extreme.

1992

In a conversation with Bob Mackowitz, Leonard Cohen touched on the meaning of certain phrases from the lyrics of The Futre:

Think Yeats line [ирландский поэт William Butler Yeats – примета Blimey] “the center will not hold” could be a good subtitle for the song…
Right now we are not even able to hold onto the concept of a resurrection mechanism. We do not even know what the essence of this concept is. We cannot even define its place in our intellectual equipment. It really seems to me that centrality has disappeared…
Every day we are in a world full of ambiguity, ambiguity about ourselves, about our wives, our husbands, our loves, our families, our dedicated people, our work. The ambiguities became unbearable. We are no longer outside the problem. There was no distance left for her. There is no hill from which to look at it. We have become one with the serpent you deny and the dove you accept. We are in it. The Future was born from this experience.
The future has no more perspective. You will accept the Berlin Wall. You will accept totalitarianism. You will accept the FBI. You will receive an ozone layer with a hole. You will accept the ruined Amazonian forest.
All this will seem good in comparison with what is to come.

The song The Future has the line “Give me back…my privacy”. Leonard explained its meaning:

I think I was referring to the end of private life as developed in the West, which has been the real hallmark of our civilization. The notion that there was a personal space that was sorely lacking in the world before we in the West started furnishing our own rooms, offices and walls. I think at some point it seemed to me that this began to change under the powerful influence of popular culture. The notion of a personal space in which certain ideas can be developed and certain aspects of the soul can be cultivated. It seemed to me that it was disappearing, that we were moving towards some kind of mass mind.

L.A. Weekly

And a couple more quotes from Cohen’s interview:

There is a line in The Future: “When they said repent I wonder what they meant”. I understand that for several centuries they forgot how to build arches. Stonemasons have forgotten how to build certain types of vaults. It was lost. It is in our times that certain spiritual practices, formerly very useful, have been abandoned and forgotten. Redemption, repentance, resurrection – all these ideas are washed down the drain. People have begun to be suspicious of religion, as well as these redemptive practices that bring great benefits.

Song Talk, 1993

In general, the idea of resurrection implies a return, a rebirth. If people do not realize that they can reclaim their lives, we will be left in a very deplorable situation. These mechanisms exist, they are available everywhere: from the Catholic Church to Alcoholics Anonymous.

1993

Leonard interpreted the phrase “I saw the future, this is murder” as follows:

I mean, all they give us is murder. This is what they feed us with … Of course, this is a colloquial expression: “How hard is it? – Deadly!”, “What is the situation on the roads? – Murderous! But it’s still about murder. And the great undisclosed secret that the politicians don’t even touch is that you have nowhere else to run.

Read below a breakdown of the lyrics to The Future by Leonard Cohen.

Video The Future – Leonard Cohen

Check out the music video for The Future.

Cover versions

Elvis Costello performed The Future at the Tower of Song: A Memorial Tribute to Leonard Cohen concert.

Interesting Facts

The songs The Future, Anthem and Waiting for the Miracle by Leonard Cohen were included in the soundtrack of the film Natural Born Killers, which Oliver Stone directed from a script by Quentin Tarantino.

The Future Lyrics by Leonard Cohen

Give me back my broken night
My mirrored room, my secret life
It’s lonely here
There’s no one left to torture
Give me absolute control
Over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby
That’s an order

Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
And stuff it up the hole
In your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother
It is murder

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has turned over
The order of the soul
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

You don’t know me from the wind
You never will, you never did
I’m the little Jew
Who wrote the Bible
I’ve seen the nations rise and fall
I’ve heard their stories, heard them all
But love’s the only engine of survival
Your servant here, he has been told
To say it clear, to say it cold
It’s over, it ain’t going
Any further
And now the wheels of heaven stop
You feel the devil’s riding crop
Get ready for the future
It is murder

Things are going to slide
slide in all directions
Won’t be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
The blizzard, the blizzard of the world
Has crossed the threshold
And it has turned over
The order of the soul
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant
When they said (they said) repent (repent), repent (repent)
I wonder what they meant

There’ll be the breaking of the ancient Western code
Your private life will suddenly explode
There’ll be phantoms
There’ll be fires on the road
And the white man dancing
You’ll see a woman
hanging upside down
Her features covered by her fallen gown
And all the lousy little poets
coming round
Tryin’ to sound like Charlie Manson
And the white man dancin’

Give me back the Berlin wall
Give me Stalin and St. Paul
Give me Christ or give me Hiroshima
Destroy another fetus now
We don’t like children anyhow
I’ve seen the future, baby
it is murder

Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, Universal Music Publishing Group, Songtrust Ave

Possible reference to the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht), as they call the Jewish pogrom in Nazi Germany on November 9-10, 1938.
A hint of the devil or governments wanting to control the citizens?
It is possible that we are talking about rape.
form of cocaine.
Later, Cohen replaced the phrase anal sex at concerts with the expression careless sex.
The Berlin Wall fell in 1989, a couple of years before the song was written.
Stalin and the Apostle Paul in this context are the personification of evil and good.
Irreversible changes have taken place in the souls of people.
People have lost their sense of guilt and the ability to repent.
The founder of the sect “Family”.