It’s funny, when Satori asked me this morning about this ‘Leonardo Cohen’ who’d died*, one of the first things I managed to mumble was “well, I liked a lot of his stuff, but I’m not really a big fan or anything…”.

Well, maybe it’s the timing, or maybe sometimes you just don’t realise you’re a ‘big fan’ until the moment arrives, but nine hours later I’m finding it difficult to keep it together and remain dry-eyed today.

The more I think back on his songs – bits I recall from them, bits I’ve looked up online or seen quoted in tribute – the more I realise how serious this guy was about his job as a poet, an artist, whatever you want to call it, and how much of an example his success must set for others who would purport to assume such a role.

Whilst I’ll admit that much of his stuff can be overly personal, or ridiculously obtuse, or even somewhat cringe-worthy, when he had a mind to, he could craft couplets or stanzas that hit like hammer blows. A few painstakingly chosen words in a casual pop/folk rhyming pattern that could alter people’s understanding of their position in life, could shift their moods from bottom to top or vice versa, could re-arrange entire worldviews, could remind people what their priorities need to be.

And, we’re not just talking *some* people here. I don’t think Leonard Cohen was writing for some sub-set of the population, some particular demographic or age/geography-defined cult following. His words (especially in his later years) were explicitly aimed at *all* people. Whether he achieved it or not, the ‘tent pole’ songs in his catalogue (and many of the deep cuts besides) aspire to a kind of universality that I think is the highest goal a creator of human culture can seek.

I don’t need to point you toward quotes and examples – just go google some up, they are everywhere.

Of course, each of his albums has its throwaways and its goof-offs and missteps, but you feel that if he came up with a batch of songs whose lines didn’t hit that mark often enough, he’d probably have just thrown out the whole lot and started again. For all the humour in his work, he wasn’t messing around.

It sounds ridiculous, but reading his lyrics on the page today (as I have rarely done in the past), they remind me more than anything of William Blake – that particular mixture of frustrating obscurity, chest-beating melodrama and absolute, crushing directness – and I’d almost go as far as to say that his “greatest hits” have entered the collective lexicon in a similarly indelible fashion.

I don’t know quite where I’m going with this – it’s all going a bit “gripping the lectern and shaking fist at the heavens”, isn’t it? Sorry about that. I don’t have an ending or a final sign off planned, or any gags. Perhaps there is more to come. This plus a BBC World Service panel discussion of the incoming President’s likely foreign policy agenda has all proved a bit too much to take in today, so we’ll leave it there for now. As Cohen reminded us, buried amid the apocalyptic visions of the song I linked to in the post below,
“love is the only engine of survival”.


* Apparently Leonard Cohen is almost entirely unknown in Japan, which I suppose is understandable given the extent to which the appeal of his work relies upon knowledge of the English language, although I’d imagine outfits like The Jacks must have cultivated at least a passing familiarity with his output…?

Labels: deathblog, Leonard Cohen