Don’t you love it? I go back in time to about twelve years old when I hear it. It’s got such a cheery sound, like a merry-go-round. Spelling it out amplifies that all-consuming experience of infatuation, when a primal urge obliterates the intellect. It was a bit tricky to get the vocals in sync only because I didn’t write the whole lyric out. There are only five lines but they are chanted in different ways. We had a lot of laughs over getting it right. I wondered how people would react to it. To those who are irritated and perhaps even incensed by it, try a glass of Bordeaux and put it on autoplay until you stop taking it all so seriously.

For the body of Heather, which slept and slept.
For the body of Bertha, which fell with apples and a flute.
For the body of Lisa, early and late, which smelled of speed and forests.
For the body of Tamara, whose thighs made him a fetishist of thighs.
For the body of Norma, goosefleshed, wet.
For the body of Patricia, which he had still to tame.
For the body of Shell, which was altogether sweet in his memory, which he loved as he
alked, the little breasts he wrote about, and her hair which was so black it shone blue.
For all the bodies in and out of bathing suits, clothes, water, going between rooms, lying on grass, taking the print of grass, dancing discipline, leaping over horses, growing in mirrors, felt like treasure, slobbered over, cheated for, all of them, the great ballet line, the cream in them, the sun on them, the oil anointed.
A thousand shadows, a single fire, everything that happened, twisted by telling, served the vision, and when he saw it, he was in the very center of things.
(The Favourite Game, IV, 30)

In I, 27 of the same novel we found:

Is there anything more beautiful than a girl with a lute?
It wasn't a lute. Heather, the Breavmans' maid, attempted the ukulele. She came from Alberta, spoke with a twang, was always singing laments and trying to yodel.
The chords were too hard. Breavman held her hand and agreed that the strings were tearing her fingers to pieces. She knew all the cowboy stars and traded their autographs.
She was a husky good-looking girl of twenty with high-colored cheeks like a porcelain doll. Breavman chose her for his first victim of sleep.
A veritable Canadian peasant.
He tried to make the offer attractive.
»You'll feel wonderful when you wake up.«

Breavman, the main character of The Favourite Game, on a napkin wrote:
Jesus! I just remembered what Lisa's favorite game was. After a heavy snow we would go into a back yard with a few of our friends. The expanse of snow would be white and unbroken. Bertha was the spinner. You held her hands while she turned on her heels, you circled her until your feet left the ground. Then she let go and you flew over the snow. You remained still in whatever position you landed. When everyone had been flung in this fashion into the fresh snow, the beautiful part of the game began. You stood up carefully, taking great pains not to disturb the impression you had made. Now the comparisons. Of course you would have done your best to land in some crazy position, arms and legs sticking out. Then we walked away, leaving a lovely white field of blossom-like shapes with footprint stems.

...legs all white
From the winter?

Breavman and Tamara were white. Everybody else on the beach had a summer's tan. Krantz was positively bronze.
»I feel extra naked,« said Tamara, »as if I had taken off a layer of skin with my clothes. I wish they'd take off theirs.«
(The Favourite Game, II, 13)

Tentative:
»Heather« (already abstracted from the Cohens' real maid at least as early as The Favourite Game) is the original female body (»the ribbed original of Love« – Dylan Thomas), naked from head to toes (or from face to legs?).
The well-known obsession of the master with »naked bodies« (c.f. among other sources: »Master Song«, »Memories«, »Tonight Will Be Fine«, the Heather sequence in The Favourite Game – we all could add lots of lines from poetry and prose...) is not content with »undressing«. In »Dear Heather« the legs are »white from the winter«: another layer has been taken off.
The original of Love splits – in life, in the novel – up into a lot of real (and/or fictitious) women. The Favourite Game names some: »Heather – Bertha – Lisa – Tamara – Norma – Patricia – Shell«. Some will be related to real women in Leonard's life.
Maybe there is a connection here with the names of G-d in the cabbalistic tradition: Every aspect of »His Supreme Being« corresponds to a separate name. Again we see the parallel between romantic, even sexual love and G-d...
Returning to »nakedness«: To the »extra-nakedness« of the bodies (Breavman's, Tamara's, everybody's) corresponds a »nakedness of the Spirit«: exposing everything (»It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple.« – The Favourite Game, I, 1 – who dares relate this to »the day they wounded New York«?), standing »naked before the Lord«...

Dear Anne
I'd like
to watch
your toes
 
when you're
naked.
(The Favourite Game, IV, 18)

The last time I read The Favourite Game I saw that he equated sexuality and religion. Now, as I'd say: »Listen to Dear Heather, and you'll see the same....«
The »Dear Heather« Heather definitely is not the Favourite Game maid. But, as in the novel one woman was just another aspect of »Woman«, »Heather« is beyond being a specific woman, she's »the woman«... And I'm not talking about the title track. I'm talking about the album.

Many wise ancient spiritual traditions are saying that sexual energy and spiritual energy are using the same channel through human body (some say they are the same energy).
The way I see this female affair: it is almost like if Cohen is filling the missing part in Jewish, Catholic and Muslim male monotheist religion and world. Like if he was taking by the hand one by one all the godesses that were forced to go silent and, to remind veiled or in the dark, removed, far away from us, and make them real again into our world, under the sun, making them shine of all their powers.

»WHEN LEONARD COHEN WAS IN HIS early teens, he developed a keen interest in hypnosis. After studying a 19th century book, he tested his skills on his family's maid and succeeded in putting her into a trance. After which he took her clothes off. Then, in a panic, he desperately tried to wake her before his mum came home. Ancient wisdom, nakedness, sexual longing, angst, the imposition of will, the art of holding people spellbound – even if the story wasn't true (and it is), it would have made a perfect allegory for Cohen's musical output.« (Sylvie Simmons, Mojo Presents Leonard Cohen CD)
So, maybe after all he was hypnotized by her legs passing by (or was it the face; I really don't recollect »the legs« being metaphor for »the face« in Beautiful Losers, but that would indeed explain the legs in the song and the face on the front cover!) Maybe that's he trying to do: hypnotize us with »Dear Heather« and Dear Heather.

About drawings:

At first sight, it has seem to me to be the objects little Leonard associated with the maid. Maids clean candlesticks, maids clean the house with cleaning products, they drink soda – Coca Cola, Sprite, Canada Dry, Pepsi, etc. (free publicity!) and all those companies offer their products in the same can format. The only thing, is: this sort of can were not yet on the market at the time of Favourite Game – but they are at the time of Dear Heather.

The Grumbacher, etc. is a still life from a table top in Montreal. He [Leonard] likes to do still life subjects sometimes, and is quite a good observer. It seemed to fit rather well with the playful, casual tone of »Dear Heather,« so we used it on that page.

song index