i ordered a copy of leonard cohen's
stranger music on amazon late in the semester last spring so that i could match up feelings i was having at the time with some of his poetry. the song "closing time" came closest to my emotional range at the time, but certain lines from early poems jumped out at me as i perused the book's pages. one of these was the title of cohen's first collection,
let us compare mythologies. the title poem is not included in the collection, so i took those enticing words and began to construct my own meaning based on my own experiences and the four words i had been provided with.
i came up with this: that we each have a sort of personal mythology, our own little world that we carry around daily, composed of our past, our habits, or likes and dislikes-- everything we care about caring about. "let us compare mythologies" refers to the moment in which the floodgates open and these things are shared, sliding between two people in slick conversation over hours that feel like minutes. it becomes, when looked at from a distance, more like a mass cultural exchange than personal bonding. belief systems passing between and meeting up in the middle; syncretism, something rubbing off in the process.
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