The Future (According to Leonard Cohen)

September 23, 2025

I’ve missed one dispatch already and took a nap today and it’s only day two. And, I have been wandering for the past hour or so thinking of things that could go into Dispatch #2. All I came up with was: that I missed one dispatch and had a nap (felt great), so I am not holding much promise for this one. Usually I am quite verbose and never short for words (according to my sister). Have I purged all my thoughts into the project itself — that is, yesterday I was in meetings pretty much all day from 9am till 10pm, with the last hours spent drafting a ‘road map’ of actions that I’ll get up to here. Could I share that? No. I don’t want to reveal too much of the plans as they exist so far as they only exist as just that: speculations, gestures drawn from my brain materialized as conversations and finalized as a document saved on my computer and emailed to a few people that set off slightly wild dreams last night.

I decamp to a cafe. There’s something about these spaces that at times trigger new thoughts, as there’s usually a whirl of people, bad coffee smells, algorithm-ed music and other assorted stimuli to ignite some kind of associations and create an impetus to find something to say. Just now, the last remaining customers leave. It is just myself and the barista, and perhaps her boyfriend who sits sullenly in a corner swathed in a hoodie swiping on his phone. Nosy, I look over his shoulder as I order a cappuccino and note he’s the cafe’s DJ; he’s furiously scrolling and scrolling assigning little gold stars to various songs: he lingers on a retro coffeehouse favourite, a flashback to the 1990s that could not be escaped at the time, Buena Vista Social Club’s Chan Chan. If you ever sipped caffeine in a Starbucks or Central Perk sometime around 1996 you know it.

I need something else other than latin good vibes. I’m not quite ready to swing outta here — there’s a dispatch to be filed and I don’t want to have a “ Buena Vista summer ” like Salman Rushdie did in 1998. No, I want something gruff and grim, a darkly comic rejoinder of where I’m at right now:

“I’ve seen the future, baby;
It is murder.”

Of course! Leonard Cohen’s The Future, the ultimate antidote to this moment of self-pity and frustration. I get up and ask the boyfriend if he’ll take requests. He looks at me bewildered: friend or foe? To put him at ease, I think of quoting Cohen himself about my chosen song: don’t worry, I’ll say, “it’s a hot little dance track.” I did not say that. I just said: “it’s about Jesus Christ, Stalin, abortion, Charles Manson, and Hiroshima.” Oof . Not the most ringing endorsement for a song, but DJ Boyfriend’s girlfriend steps in to countermand his bewilderment and orders him: “play it.”

He does.

The song’s jazzy, deeply sonorous organ swings into action, it’s bassline crashes in and Cohen’s sub-sub-baritone voice commands:

“I’ve seen the future, brother;
It is murder!”

That makes me feel better. What a weird tune. I can’t take any grand proclamations from Cohen’s The Future, as I think that would be antithetical to his own relationship to songwriting, which he considered as always agonizing . So to tie this dispatch up into a neat lesson for myself would be a betrayal of his lesson. Instead, I enjoy this bitter and mordantly funny song, and sit with its zaniness and realize screw it: sometimes you just gotta request a song at inopportune times.

DJ Boyfriend asks: “Who’s Charles Manson?”