Whether you're a partyer, a
pickup artist, a
wallflower, a
people watcher, a
pickpocket, a compulsive
extrovert, an
exhibitionist, a
professional drinker, a weary earner, a
hooker or just plain need to get
pie-eyed, there is one thing you have in common with your fellows. That is the moment of dark magic and lactic-acid-fuelled strangeness that comes but once a night when fantasies are brought down in a smash of bright lights and
delerium tremens, when dust motes dance in sudden glare and eyes blink in reflexive adjustment as shoulders hunch under the weight of the unseen tomorrow and the voices
call out for stragglers.
Closing time.
Thrust from the womb into the harshness of life. It might be dark out, it might be light, it doesn't matter. You may have found love or lust or loneliness; you may not care at all. The moment that was will suddenly be cut from all the moments that will be, and the division will be a crisp one even if there is no pain.
Musicians, by the nature of their trade, end up in bars. Many musicians have performed and penned songs titled Closing Time. This writeup is about two of them.
On the face of it, these two songs couldn't really be more different. One is a pop song, crafted by a group that another noder has called (with good reason) "the consummate inoffensive pop band." The other is a tribute to loss, offered up by a poet of pain and alcohol. The thing is, though, they're both about the same concept, and in both you can feel the same thing.
Semisonic aren't Leonard Cohen, and comparing the artists would (rightfully) draw hellfire down on my head. Instead of the exquisite agony of his voice and words, all they could offer was a knife-edged crafted pop anthem - but they built that, and offered it up to the same God, on the same altar that Cohen did, to the same moment that he did. Closing Time. And because they recognized the limits of their skills, and went right to those limits in service of that moment, it resonates in the same fashion that Cohen's song does as you think about it, perhaps. It's beautiful in a strange color, that Semisonic made a song whose pop hook will grab your head and not let go of it until you want to rip it out with a rusty spoon, whereas Cohen's ballad just reaches in and squeezes until your heart runs down his callused fingers in bloody jello - but that's what Closing Time is all about. So huzzah to the fucking both of them.
You can, in fact, listen to these two songs one after the other. I strongly recommend strong drink before, during, and after.
Leonard Cohen
from The Future (excerpted to stay under the fair use wordcount)
...
I loved you for your beauty
but that doesn't make a fool of me
you were in it for your beauty too
and I loved you for your body
there's a voice that sounds like God to me
declaring, declaring, declaring that your body's really you
And I loved you when our love was blessed
and I love you now there's nothing left
but sorrow and a sense of overtime
and I missed you since the place got wrecked
And I just don't care what happens next
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time (closing time)
Yeah, I missed you since the place got wrecked
By the winds of change and the weeds of sex
looks like freedom but it feels like death
it's something in between, I guess
it's closing time
Yeah, we're drinking and we're dancing
but there's nothing really happening
and the place is dead as Heaven on a Saturday night
...
and I lift my glass to the awful Truth
which you can't reveal to the ears of Youth
except to say it isn't worth a dime
And the whole damn place goes crazy twice
and it's once for the Devil and once for Christ
but the Boss don't like these dizzy heights
we're busted in the blinding lights
of closing time
Oh the women tear their blouses off
and the men they dance on the polka-dots
It's closing time
And it's partner found, it's partner lost
and it's hell to pay when the fiddler stops
It's closing time
...
Semisonic
from Feeling Strangely Fine
Closing time, time for you to go out, go out into the world
Closing time, turn the lights up over every boy and every girl
Closing time, one last call for alcohol so finish your whisky or beer
Closing time, you don't have to go home but you can't stay here
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
Take me home-
Closing time, time for you to go back to the places you will be from
Closing time, this room won't be open 'til your brothers or your sisters come
So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits, I hope you have found a friend
Closing time, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end, yeah-
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
Take me home-
Closing time, time for you to go back to the places you will be from-
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
Take me home-
This writeup has been approved by the CST 8/3/06