of sorts: It was the first time I could really see and intuitively feel what it was I was doing, making or creating in that enterprise. After a long period of barrenness, it all just seemed to click. Suddenly, I knew these weren't discrete songs I was writing ... I could see – I could sense a unity. Various Positions had its own life, its own narrative. It was all laid out and all of a sudden it all made sense. It was almost painfully joyful, if that makes some sense. The pulling and the putting of the pieces together coherently, the being inside of that process and knowing, once I'd done that, it would be finished and I would have to leave it and go back to the world. The album contains two songs that would become live standards for Cohen: "Dance Me to the End of Love" and "Hallelujah". In 2010, producer John Lissauer revealed to Cohen biographer Anthony Reynolds that the drum track on the former is actually from the Casio keyboard the song had been composed on: "It didn't even have audio output so we had to mike it up. We tried to do that song with real drums and percussion but he liked the simplicity of the Casio and had become accustomed to it." This explains the slight strain in Cohen's singing on the track; changing the key on the Casio would have meant altering the drum pattern that Cohen wanted to use (The song, which would become Cohen's perennial show opener, is performed in a lower key live). Although structured as a love song, "Dance Me to the End of Love" was in fact inspired by the Holocaust. In an interview, Cohen said of the song: Along with "Suzanne", "Hallelujah" is arguably Cohen's most famous song. The original version is in 6/8 time, which evokes both waltz and gospel music. Written in the key of C major, the chord progression matches lyrics from the song: "goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, and the major lift": C, F, G, A minor, F. Cohen wrote around 80 draft verses for the tune, with one writing session at the Royalton Hotel in New York where he was reduced to sitting on the floor in his underwear, banging his head on the floor. The song contains several biblical references, most notably evoking the stories