Dimmed Elegy For Leonard-On Master
Songwriter Leonard Cohen's Passing At 82
By Sam Lowell
Maybe somebody else should have written
this elegy, written some words commiserate with the broad strokes a master
lyricist like Leonard Cohen who etched upon every member of the generation of
’68 with any sense of what was happening in those desperate days that the
pathos of love, among other things, could draw out from the depths of his
sullen creative mind. Yes, someone like my friend Frank Jackman who lived and
died by his lyrics in the midnight hour by the forlorn telephone (now forlorn
cellphone is probably more apt but the waiting still goes on) for a word, just
a word that you, a human speck, had something somebody needed to speak to you
about. Most of the time that ring never came (just like now) and some human
speck tossed and turned the night away in sweats or tears. Leonard was that
kind of songster, a songster not of protest except in the broadest sense that
modern times had created some strange paradoxes in the love game like his
contemporaries of the time Dylan, Ochs, Baez, Paxton, but of the silt of
existence, of the lonely longing sorrows of the night.
So he spoke of erratic Chelsea mornings
in dank dark foreboding New York City sitting among the crowd gathered there to
desperately make their mark, make a wave before the lobby of that hotel got too
crowded with fame, that section of the big yellow light city that was open to
poverty-driven talent. One time somebody did a visual take, a documentary about
how Leonard hit these shores (oh well coming over the border from Canada, okay)
in formal garb, never going down to the depths of hippy causal. (I wonder what
he made of his audiences about a half generation younger than him and so free
to mix and match whatever struck their fancy, the same crowd aged now that showed
up in similar garb the last tour or the one previous to that he took out in the
blazon America goof night.)
Spoke of the loneliness of existence,
what did he call it, oh yeah, a bird on the wire, great metaphor for the sunken
heart after the affair is over or after the roar has settled into it torpor.
That damn bird tied into so many knots, couldn’t relieve the pressure in his
fertile brain. Oh sure he had his flock of ladies, Joanie, and the crowd from
around the town but it always seemed not to supply him with the energy he
needed to write his paeans to the struggles of modern love life. Couldn’t catch
what he dreamed of in those dark hours before the dawn blurry-eyed and weary from
putting some words together.
Spoke of some mind’s eye Botticelli
wisp of a woman, flowers in her hair, all aflutter a fresh breeze willing to
show you the lights of heaven or take you by the hair and dump you down in some
lonesome broken down valley. As was the nature of the times once the constrains
of a straight-laced society were pulled asunder she took you as her lover, twirled
you around, gave you sustenance and left you standing at the backdoor wondering
what the hell had happened, why you were not able to roll with the flow when
she took another lover and took him to the lights of heaven and then pulled him
by the hair and dumped him down some lonesome broken down valley. And so it went
but you were just a shade too square when the deal really went down to brush it
off and so you were the one who waited by the midnight telephone (now cellphone
remember but the same thing) watching the darkness settle into your brain,
watching your life drain for your heartless sins. All will be forgiven in the end
(a very Christian notion for a guy who never hid his deep Jewish roots but
maybe all were sons and daughters of Abraham anyway).
Spoke of good-byes and sorrows, missed opportunities
and promises, always worrying to perdition about the future, about the next one
to tear his heart out, to drive him to words to express his angst, to express
his lost. And now we are left to express our lost. Yeah, somebody else should have
written this elegy but I did okay, okay alright. Leonard, RIP.
No comments:
Post a Comment