LEONARD COHEN

There are some men who should have mountains to bear their names to time...

(note on message board)

R. I. P. LEONARD COHEN,  1934--2016

On this eight-years-today anniversary of the day I sent out that first tentative blog post, there's a sad and glorious tenor to the day, for I've just learned of the passing of one of my very favorite people---Leonard Cohen.

Such a Voice for the Age, those sepulchral, deep tones echoing spare truth and hard ideas in such evocative words and phrases.    We lost one of the Great Ones on Monday, as he whispered away into that smoke-hazed, music-filled stage which must have been his Dream of Heaven.

But the words he left---oh, the WORDS.   The love-saturated SUZANNE, the capriciously-serious CLOSING TIME, and all the genius of the other starkly real songs he created around so many subjects---and the sheer poetry of the lyrics.  You can hear the voice of personal experience, as well as his Johnny Walker Wisdom and empathetic soul.   There was such a vitality, such an absolute MAN-ness to him, in his voice and his expression, and the vivid harsh-and-gentle of his writing is too severely beautiful to describe.   The music is echoing off my walls this moment, as I think of his life in the dark colours of his clothing and his themes and his deep-shadowed face as he sang through the years.   What a legacy, and what a gift, in all the permutations of the word.

His writing and composing WERE the Crack in Everything, and also the Light getting in, in such an exultant, beat-driven, gritty way that the shine hurt your eyes AND heart.   I just thought he’d always be there, and can’t imagine a more sublime way to live on, than through such glorious music.  

And if he’d never opened his mouth but once, if he’d never put pen to paper and hands to piano or guitar but the single time, in all that long life lived in such solemn exuberance, then HALLELUJAH would have been enough.

Lord a'Mercy, THAT’S PLENTY, and overflowing the cup.