Remembering Leonard Cohen - A Way To Say Goodbye

I didn't really wake to the bad news on Wednesday morning.  I never really fell asleep, instead watching the map of the United States change slowly but inevitably into a rabid shade of red.  Luckily I had the morning off work.  But I still took the time to send a message to a Chicagoan colleague stating that I hoped she felt okay and letting her know of that wise and hopeful Leonard Cohen quote from 'Anthem'.  This small message of hope felt important. 

"There is a crack in everything ... that's how the light gets in."   

"Suzanne takes you down to her place near the river ...." 

This morning I awoke to a very different kind of bad news.  Leonard had gone.  There was no shock - he was 82 after all - but unlike with Bowie or Prince this felt immediately more personal.  I'd listened to him in a very different way than I had other music.  Almost as a companion rather than as an entertainer.  A father figure even, someone who personified the two qualities that I value above any other: kindness, and the curiosity to keep on learning, realising that you are never half as wise as you think you are.  

Like most things cultural, I was slow on the uptake.  I'd first paid attention around 1992 in the passenger seat of my then girlfriend's hatchback as we wound our way around the hairpin roads of the Austrian Alps.  She had two tapes that she would play repeatedly on the car stereo.  The first was a compilation of Vaya Con Dios, the second the gloomy baritone of someone who sounded like he'd been dead for a very long time.  On learning that it was Leonard Cohen I recalled the name that Smash Hits had ironically given him in the 80s, 'Laughing Len', and, young fool that I was, I probably said it out loud and laughed.  I was intrigued enough to file him away though and vowed that I would investigate further when I got back home.  Instead though I bought a CD of Vaya Con Dios; this would complement my exotic relationship with an older European woman I thought. 

Cut to a few years later and I'm serving in the Royal Navy, sitting in a bar in Malta and pondering why there's a whole boiled egg on top of the pizza that I've ordered, when suddenly that lugubrious baritone returns.  "Come over to the window my little darling, I'd like to try and read your palm."  I listened properly.  Yes there was melancholy in there, but there was also charm, self-deprecation, humour, lines that spoke directly to me – feeling as cold as that new razor blade – and above all wisdom.  I was ready for Leonard Cohen.  This time I didn't pause and I sought out my purchase the very next day, buying The Best of Leonard Cohen.  The songs all came back to me, uncovered from a few years before; a few years seems a long time when you're young.  The melancholy beauty of 'Suzanne' and her oranges all the way from China, the high drama and thrilling forgiveness of 'Famous Blue Raincoat', and the overwhelming and unrequited desire of 'Take This Longing'.

"All the men will be sailors then, until the sea shall free them."

Years pass and I age.  So does Leonard.  He's there at difficult times, sad times and happy times (I should have learned from Morrissey that a gloomy voice doesn't always negate humour and joy).  A relationship in my thirties that had run its course ended with the swapping of Valentine's postcards etched with poems.  Mine was a translation of 'The God Abandons Anthony' by the Greek poet Cavafy, that I'd only discovered because of Leonard's 'Alexandra Leaving', a personalised rewriting of the poem that is still my favourite of his songs.  (I was given Frank O'Hara’s 'Lines for the Fortune Cookies' by the way). Maybe that's the way to say goodbye. 

I visited Hydra to discover the place where he met one of his muses Marianne, and felt the magic and mystery of that island, just as much of a muse as was his lover.  I didn't find my own Marianne in the Adriatic, but I did rent and then fall off a scooter.  I should have at least made half the effort to follow in Leonard's tracks and tried horse-riding. 

Leonard and Marianne - "And everything depends, on how near you sleep to me."

Getting to see Leonard live twice recently was also special.  Both times at the O2 in London, the second time with my partner, felt like a real privilege.  To make that vast, cavernous arena feel as intimate as he did was incredible.  To see him in his late seventies, springing around the stage with more sprightliness that I was displaying in my forties; to be in the charming company of the perfect gentleman, spellbound on both occasions for nearly three hours of the most beautiful, wise and (yes) life-affirming music was an absolute delight.

"We are so lightly here.  It is in love that we are made.  In love we disappear."

As well as a singer-songwriter, he was also a poet (in the real sense) and a novelist.  Check out Beautiful Losers, a wonderfully rich and intriguing book.  He was also, reluctantly, a modern day prophet.  Listening to 'The Future' this morning has really taken it up a notch - "I've seen the future ... and it is murder", and although the lyrics are opaque and almost impenetrable, the anxious foreboding that fills 'First We Take Manhattan' can scare you half to death.  

So yes, this feels like the most personal of losses.  Today I'm going to return to the start, that Best of Leonard Cohen album, and listen to those songs again.  Death will give them a deeper sadness, I guess, but they'll still retain what is their most important quality: wisdom.  Or rather, as Leonard, might have preferred, the wisdom to accept that mystery and the unknown are sometimes the most beautiful things of all.      

Goodbye, Leonard!  You once wrote "Let's not talk of love and chains and things we can't untie."  Thank God that you ignored your own advice and provided us with just that.