You Live Your Life As If It's Real — Leonard Cohen, An Appreciation

in #ocd-resteem6 years ago (edited)


In 1994, the great, recently-deceased artist, Leonard Cohen, retreated to a Zen Buddhist monastery in California (Mt. Baldy) for some five years. When he came back down from the mountain, he brought with him a luminous new album, simply titled 10 New Songs. (Asked why he left the monastery in an interview, he quipped: ‘I’d washed enough dishes.’) Whatever the other benefits may have been, however, the retreat did wonders for his work. As an album, '10' is perhaps more overtly spiritual than previous albums.

On one song, Love Itself, he meditates on the light coming through the window:

“In streams of light I clearly saw
The dust you seldom see
Out of which the Nameless makes
A Name for one like me.”

Later in that same song, the rays of Love that plunged into his room leave him spellbound:

“All busy in the sunlight
The flecks did float and dance
And I was tumbled up with them
In formless circumstance.”

Nonetheless, these ten new songs are suffused with this-world’s charms, too. Back on Boogie Street Cohen sings: (listen to it, here:

), Cohen sings

“a sip of wine, a cigarette
and then it’s time to go.
I tidied up the kitchenette
and tuned the old banjo.”

Later in that same song, Cohen shares with us this piece of secular spirituality:

“So come, my friends, be not afraid
We are so lightly here
It is in love that we are made
In love we disappear.”

Yet on another track with metaphysical accents, That Don’t Make It Junk, Cohen huskily confides this discomfiting truth: “I don’t trust my inner feelings – Inner feelings come and go.”

With previous albums such as New Skin for the Old Ceremony and Death of a Ladies’ Man, it is abundantly clear that Leonard Cohen never assumed the impossible position of celibacy. His love songs are addressed as much to the body as to the mind, and frequently depict him worshiping at the altar of Woman:

“So I knelt there at the delta,
at the alpha and the omega,
at the cradle of the river and the seas.”

Yet it seems the surfeit of Cohen’s relations leave him feeling marooned, as he whispers hoarsely on one of the new songs, A Thousand Kisses Deep:

“You win a while, and then it’s done –
Your little winning streak
And summoned now to deal
With your invincible defeat,”

This from the same man who named one of his books Beautiful Losers. The title of Cohen’s last volume of poetry, The Book of Longing, may well apply to his entire oeuvre.

National Treasure

Eccentricities aside, this unclassifiable artist has come to be regarded as National Treasure, in Cohen’s Canada. Over the decades, he has garnered international respect and recognition - with doctoral dissertations and university courses discussing his work, including a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 2008 - all of which he has accepted with both humility and grace. Leonard Cohen's followers are not just leftovers from his 70’s heyday but a whole new generation of young adults, with two recent tribute albums by contemporary musicians: I’m Your Fan (1991) and Tower of Song (1995).

Inhabiting an Intensity

Cohen’s position of authority stems from more than the sum of their introspective lyrics and singing voices. In spite of the numerous books of verse and prose Cohen has published over the past few decades, it is not strictly as a poet or novelist that he has made his mark. Delivered in his trademark, cigarette-ravaged, reassuring growl, Cohen’s words acquire another force altogether on his albums. Gloomy-doomy on the page, they take on new life when sung.

To hear the passion with which he stakes his claim, we should be mean to begrudge him. Ultimately, he moves us and matters because of an intensity that he inhabits, an emotional profundity, and the earthly mysticism born of living in close proximity to suffering and solitude. Or, in the words of another spiritual warrior, philosopher Nietzsche, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

In that sense, Cohen was not merely a despairing artist but an artist of despair and salvation, returned from the underground to share with us what they’ve seen. Cohen coos in an old classic, Anthem.

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.”

That light is all the more powerful on account of the darkness he's shared with us, and we come to realize our lives are richer thanks to this brave witness and his poignant threnodies.

In closing, I invite you to listen to yet another shudderingly beautiful, prayer-of-a-poem by Cohen, There for You. I admire this devotional song so deeply (and secretly wish I'd written it) that I attempted a reading, here, in order to try and know it better:
https://soundcloud.com/yahia-lababidi/there-for-you-by-leonard-cohen

© Yahia Lababidi

Image of Cohen: http://www.leonardcohen.com/photos
Other images: Pixabay

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Cohen is and always has been one of my favorites. I say "always" because there is not a time before Cohen in my life - I mentioned to you before that my parents very nearly joined a Christian cult when I was very little, and in that time period they purged their music collection to better fit the ideals of their new (cultist) friends. My parents never quite could commit to the new lifestyle, and little vestiges of the people they used to be would manifest in things like my father refusing to shave his beard even when the other men of the church group would ridicule him for it.

Leonard Cohen was another part of their old life that refused to die. They could not bring themselves to get rid of their Leonard Cohen albums and he was a favorite accompaniment to our dinner hours (along with Neil Young). I like to think that Leonard Cohen helped them keep alive the flames of their true selves and maybe that spark that he nursed helped them to eventually turn away from that path. They very nearly sold our property in town and moved out to the communal church land far up the highway, just before the Canadian border.

Thank you Leonard Cohen - there is a purity and spirituality in your music that cannot be denied. Held up to the beauty of your music, the Christian cult was a pale shadow of the truth. In no small part perhaps I owe the person I am today to Leonard Cohen.

Thank you for the beautiful reading as well. I love everything about this post, Yahia. My pleasure to resteem on my main account.

Much love - Carl "Totally Not A Cultist" Gnash



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What a beautiful, mini-essay of a response! You'd alluded to the cult, yes, but I don't believe quite this fully, @carlgnash. I feel closer to you & more grateful for Cohen knowing what he meant to your family. This is wonderful, truly:

"I like to think that Leonard Cohen helped them keep alive the flames of their true selves and maybe that spark that he nursed helped them to eventually turn away from that path...

Thank you Leonard Cohen - there is a purity and spirituality in your music that cannot be denied. Held up to the beauty of your music, the Christian cult was a pale shadow of the truth."

Thank you, for laying your heart bare, and being out there, my friend! Warmly, Yahia

I really enjoyed this article @yahialababidi, thanks. You write about Cohen so well, expressing the intensity at the soul and center of his work. This passage particularly struck me:

To hear the passion with which he stakes his claim, we should be mean to begrudge him. Ultimately, he moves us and matters because of an intensity that he inhabits, an emotional profundity, and the earthly mysticism born of living in close proximity to suffering and solitude. Or, in the words of another spiritual warrior, philosopher Nietzsche, “Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”

In that sense, Cohen was not merely a despairing artist but an artist of despair and salvation, returned from the underground to share with us what they’ve seen.

This passage from your article really resonated with me on multiple levels, both personally in things I've dealt with in my life and in relation to Cohens songs.

I am by no means as big a fan of Cohen's as you are, I think 😉 but this article has inspired me to check out some of his wider works beyond his music, that is the biggest complement I feel a writer can give or get, being the catalyst for inspiration. Thanks again friend

Thank you, @raj808, for reading and taking the time to comment. I fully agree with you that the highest function of art is Inspiration. As someone inspired by Cohen, I hope to communicate this enthusiasm, and so it makes me happy that it reached you.

I hope you enjoy what you discover of his and that it might help better illuminate some corner of your life, as Cohen has done for me with his work...

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You capture beautifully the wise and honest duality of Cohen. The reading, not simply in his honor, but as a tool for understanding, is a form of empathy...walking in his voice and thoughts. The Sylvie Simmons biography I'm Your Man: The Life of Leonard Cohen had me spell bound last February, which led to the repeated spins of his albums, especially New Skin for the Old Ceremony, with Who By the Fire resonating the strongest during such a tumultuous year. I'm grateful for this offering and the bridge created for my mind to reconnect with a lyrical hero.

Ah, it's good to meet another Leonard Cohen fan :) Yes, he is a kind of 'lyrical hero' as you put it and, when they gave the Nobel Prize of Literature to Dylan, I kept thinking that if they were going to give it to a musician Cohen should've been honored, instead!

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