Song for a Spring Sunday Morning (Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End of Love)

Edited extract from Juan Antonio Pesetas' diary written during his recent trip to Havana, Cuba. Please, be aware that this post contains adult material.

Sunday 22nd February, 8.04am. The thermometre inside the car tells me it's 21 degrees Celsius outside. It still feels a bit nippy, though. In spite of the morning chill, I roll down the windows after I start the car's engine. I stare out into the distance through the windshield. The city still sleeps. As the sun rubs its eyes and lazily puts its sheets away, thus, making space for the moon to have a lie-down now, the first line of my chosen musical companion on this journey stumbles out of the car speakers: 'Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin'. The verses roll out inebriatedly, tasting of last night's excess; the voice is husky and breathy. One by one each line sheds its clothes unashamedly revealing their bare harmonic bodies, relishing their shameless, narcissistic pleasure.

Some songs are inconsolable pieces of music. Think Radiohead's 'Creep'. Some other tunes are an exercise in introspection. Think Tori Amos' 'Cornflake Girl'. And then, we have the songs that seduce us. The tracks that turn us all into versions of Michelle Pfeiffer's Madame Marie de Tourvel, the famous character from 'Dangerous Liaisons'. We become those flustered and willing beings, prudish on the outside whilst slowly burning with desire inside. Leonard Cohen's 'Dance Me To The End Of Love' is one of those songs. The next two lines are the sweet, ripe plum in whose flesh we sink our teeth slowly, scooping the meaty bit with our tongues, darting it playfully side to side, moving it around, sometimes vertically, sometimes horizontally: 'Dance me through the panic 'til I'm gathered safely in/Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove '. Mr Cohen is a shameless man and I for one don't care one bit. And I bet you don't, either.

Calmly the car dances down Malecon Avenue whilst Cohen's voice dances in my ears. My pulse quickens, the car speed fluctuates between 40 and 50. On my left there's the sea, the bluegreen sea, the feminine sea. Is it any wonder that female orgasm has often been compared to the crashing of waves against the shore? The undertow as powerful a ripple as the initial impact? And just as my X-rated thoughts are about to give my brain a coup d'état Leonard sings: 'Oh let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone/Let me feel you moving like they do in Babylon/Show me slowly what I only know the limits of ' And I hold on to the steering wheel as hard as I can whilst an image flashes up in front of my eyes: the contours of my wife's naked body being caressed by the ruffled sheets of the bed in our hotel room. Ah, Mr Cohen, you give marital debauchery a perfect excuse! And you have given me more than enough reasons to post a song for every spring sunday morning from now until June. I tip my hat to you, sir and I am sure that my readers and fellow bloggers will appreciate your talent and that of the artists to come. In the meantime I make a U-turn at the roundabout of G Street and Malecon Avenue. My consort awaits.

Copyright 2009