Leonard Cohen & Me
Hello everyone and welcome back to Delopolis. I know anything related to popular culture, arts or media is usually reserved for the Weekly Wonders segment of the newsletter, but I felt that this week’s topic wholly deserved a spot in the core. I’d highly suggest grabbing a cup of bitter coffee and turning on Songs of Love and Hate as you begin reading today, and once you read through, please feel free to comment any thoughts or contributions to the discussion.
The core
Do you ever find an artist (in any medium) that you immediately resonate with? I did: Canadian singer-songwriter and poet Leonard Cohen (1934-2016). Cohen’s lyrical, alternative folk ballads on albums like Songs from a Room and more complex, jazz-influenced albums like Death of a Ladies Man have influenced generations of artists and memorialized him as one of the most important artists of the 20th century; even his literary pieces, like his 1956 poetry anthology Let Us Compare Mythologies and 1963 novel The Favourite Game, have served as hallmarks of the cultural zeitgeist that pervaded the west at the time.
Leonard Cohen was a great and influential artist. On a more personal level, Leonard Cohen is not just objectively great, but individually meaningful. Obviously, I have found meaning and significance in a nearly countless number of artists over the years, but the inspiration I have experienced from Leonard Cohen at this current stage of my life seems especially notable. Between my frequent listening of songs like “Joan of Arc” and “So Long, Marianne,” to my recent completion of The Favourite Game, I have found my writing, musicianship and even thought processes at least somewhat influenced by Cohen’s style.
Cohen’s quiet expression of overpowering feelings, like matching the deepest forms of love with an omnipresent sense of ennui and writing about death in the same breath as descriptions of worldly life is one of the most striking aspects of writing in my view. I find that in most of western culture there is too intense a divide between the “sacred” and “mundane”; at least for me, love, death and despair are all interconnected and intermingled with the tangible and absentminded realities of life. If these experiences, feelings and ideas aren’t connected, then are they truly real? If not linked to the realities of our life, do these feelings really exist beyond idea?
These musings might be a little far removed from the main topic of this newsletter, but that’s exactly the kind of thing that Leonard Cohen symbolizes and epitomizes to me. The sheer vastness, diversity and complexity of both his art and the ideas and questions it contained marks him as one of the most important musicians, in my opinion, in North American history. And although Cohen’s music is by no means obscure, and songs like 1984’s “Hallelujah” have become central in the modern canon of popular music, I think more thought and appreciation should be devoted to just how impactful and masterful all of Cohen’s pieces are.
Conversely, I think Cohen’s books of poetry and novels are most definitely underappreciated. Leonard Cohen originally intended to be a poet or writer, much like other folk and rock musicians like Lou Reed (who studied with noted poet/author Delmore Schwartz at Syracuse University), and the influence of his background in literature is massive and inseparable from his lyricism.
I just finished reading The Favourite Game, Cohen’s premiere novel, and I can confidently state that it is the most impactful of everything I have read so far this year. The abstract coming-of-age narrative feels like an alternative, more artistic version of The Catcher in the Rye that reads like a prose poem, and the semi-autobiographical storyline is both gripping and contemplative. Although I am not a Jewish boy growing up in 1940s Montreal, I felt that I was reflected in the novel’s classic yet striking roman à clef structure.
Leonard Cohen was a genius both beyond his time and exactly fitting for it. While not everyone will appreciate his art and contributions to the world of culture, I think everyone living in the west today feels some form of his influence.
Weekly Wonders
A few days ago I went on a magnificent visit to what is in my opinion the greatest record store in Los Angeles, Record Surplus. While I’ve restricted myself to buying CDs for the lower prices and ease of transport (I’m looking forward to bringing some music to college), I was shocked to find six of my favourite albums being sold (and all less than $6!).
I bought Mona Bone Jakon (1970) by Cat Stevens, Last Splash (1993) by the Breeders, A Different Kind of Weather (1990) by the Dream Academy, Making Movies (1980) by Dire Straits, Four-Calendar Café (1993) by Cocteau Twins and the two-disc Gold compilation album of the Velvet Underground.
While none of these are new discoveries or first listens for me (unlike most of my record store purchases) I really couldn’t be happier with my new physical music and can’t wait to listen to these discs with friends at college.