Speaking of "The Gallery," Kakki wrote (and Kate Bennett agreed):
"I always thought it was about a boyfriend from her art school days. After
Joni and Kilauren reunited and reading the news articles about Kilauren's
father who is a photographer, I tend to think it was about him. "I was left
to winter here (Joni left in Toronto) while you went west for pleasure" ("he
went to California hearing that everything's warmer there"). I like the
Diego Rivera tie-in you make."
I'll weigh in here with a different opinion, although the connections Kakki
makes are very interesting. But I never interpreted the central conceit,
the gallery, literally enough that I assumed the song's subject was an
actual artist or photographer. Rather, I always had the sense that it was
about Leonard Cohen.
When Joni and Cohen met, Cohen was an "older man" in his early 30's, and
someone she considered to be sophisticated and urbane. (I'm remembering
this from something I read quite recently: perhaps Joni's own words in the
Mendel catalog).
Cohen has long had a reputation for being a ladies' man, and whatever Brad
McMath's failings might have been, I'm not sure he went out west "for
pleasure" as much as to escape a situation that he found overwhelming. The
phrasing throughout the song leads me to believe that the protagonist, like
Cohen, is a man of some means: in his world, people "go west for pleasure,"
and "winter" in different places than they "summer." Compare this to "Rainy
Night House," where Cohen's mother has gone to Florida and returned tanned,
before Cohen himself treks off to Arizona. Joni has picked up these ideas
and turns of phrases from him, although she doesn't yet the means in "The
Gallery" to put them into action: she's "left to winter" somewhere she
doesn't want to be.
I also think that the conceit of the gallery may not be what it appears on
the surface. Rather than signifying that the protagonist is an artist, it
makes some sense that the he *acquires* works of art with his wealth. He
*owns* the gallery, rather than having created it. On another level, the
"paintings of ladies" are the actual women in his life, over whom he exerts
power due to his personal magnetism and, perhaps, his social position. This
is a man of charm and status who makes things happen. On still another
level, the protagonist is an "interpreter," a mythmaker, whose "portrayals"
of them are powerful indeed to the women who are close to him. Cohen very
much saw himself in this vein in the autobiographical novel "The Favorite
Game," and by implication, in the title of his early collection of poetry,
"Let Us Compare Mythologies." In that the protagonist *is* an artist, his
art is of this variety, rather than one conducted in a more tangible medium.
At the end of the song, the protagonist has been "changed. . . with
religion." Cohen has always been a spiritual seeker, and, as someone
pointed out, even now spends a substantial portion of his time living at a
Buddhist temple.
Finally, I recall a comment of Joni's that Leonard Cohen taught her early on
to "work on the poignancy of a song." I think that, for a time, anyway,
what this meant for her was constructing metaphorical conceits (e.g.:
gallery = women over whom you exert power) that were as carefully developed
as those of the metaphysical poets. . .or, for that matter, those of Cohen
himself. This song strikes me as very much in that vein.
I rest my case! ;-)
Mary the Contrarian.
