Leonard Cohen passed away a decade ago today, on November 7, 2016, at the age of 82. His death came two weeks after the release of his final album, You Want It Darker: an unflinching meditation on mortality, aging, faith and a final reckoning with God. “I’m ready, my Lord”, his raspy chainsmoker voice growls at the end of the title track.
Three Cold writers have written short tributes to the late Canadian folk artist, poet and novelist. One climbed the spiral staircase in the pouring rain to his cottage on the Greek island of Hydra, which he inhabited with the muse behind the song “So Long, Marianne” – and got a skirt with his face on, custom-made. Another spoke with the younger generation of habitués of the Chelsea Hotel, where Cohen lived in the late 1960s.
A love letter to Leonard, by Connie Fletcher
Top picks:
- Take This Longing, 1974 – fourth album (New Skin for the Old Ceremony)
- Let Us Compare Mythologies, 1956 – Cohen’s first poetry book
Climbing up a never-ending spiral of stone steps, I come to the conclusion that I am lost. After a week of solitude, I am embracing being directionless. It is mid-October, and it is raining on Hydra. The path beneath my feet is slippery, and my clothes are soaked through. I follow a trio of kittens for a minute or so who meow at my feet, they don’t seem to like the rain either. Suddenly, it is before me, Leonard Cohen’s house. I gaze upon the blue plaque on the wall above my head, I found what I was looking for. I’d be lying if I said this wasn’t the main appeal of coming to Hydra. For as long as I can remember, I have been mesmerised by Cohen’s work; his poetry, his voice, his entire essence. I even own a mini skirt with his face on that I had custom-made – pretentious, I know. Yet as I stand before the house he occupied with muse Marianne Ihlen for seven years, everything about it feels so ordinary. Having held Cohen in an almost biblical regard for so many years, gazing upon his humble dwellings felt strange. I was reminded that Cohen was not the mythological being I imagined, he was human. Ten years on from Cohen’s passing, I think this is important to remember.
The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Cohen never pretended to be anything other than a man. Over time, he has been attributed with a legendary status. So much so that hundreds of like-minded individuals are attracted to Hydra each week. Like me, they traverse the hillside path to gaze upon the hand-shaped knocker that remains untouched on his front door. Yet even with all his wisdom, Cohen never acted as though he was above impulse or weakness. In fact, he used this in his lyricism and writing. From contemplating higher powers and spirituality to loneliness, yearning and death, Cohen shies away from little. But his frankness makes him unique. He blends charisma with melancholy, explores spirituality without denying ego and lays himself out as vulnerable without ever feigning innocence. I often describe Cohen as the horniest man to have lived. Cohen knows desire, he knows the complexity of human existence, and somewhere between eroticism and sincerity, he broadcasts this in his music. His exploration of holiness comes from the same place as his appetite for human connection, for intimacy. Searching for God is paralleled with longing for the flesh of another’s body. It is as carnal as it is dark and poetic. These feelings that we grapple with every day, sometimes painfully, Cohen transforms into something spellbinding. I think that is why his memory lives on.
I came to Hydra hungry for connection, to what I am not sure, maybe I was soul-searching – I am in my late 20s, after all. I left realising that the magic is afoot within the everyday. Cohen gave me that, and on this anniversary it is that which I will be remembering.
Cohen and the Hotel Chelsea, by Missoteric
Cohen was a private man, the intimacy of his art contrary to the facts of his existence. He engaged the press with an encapsulating stoicism, rarely faltering to slip the quieter details of his life. He played along with the misguided British satirisation of his work as wholly melancholic – the word will see you as they want to see you, after all, and improv is vital when you dream of being one of the world’s great comics.
Cohen’s stays at the Hotel Chelsea, however, were fleeting yet periodic slips of his elusiveness. Hiding from the public eye is a colossal feat when residing with some of the era’s most notable names. Joplin, Warhol, Smith, Sedgwick; it seemed a right of passage for the artists of New York City to have their rendezvous with the hotel, and when the owner, Stanley, was so willing to trade art for rent, who could say no? To be wrapped up in something much bigger than himself, as a man who valued his peace so integrally that he turned to Zen Buddhism for half a decade despite his Jewish roots, was antithetic; yet his essence became deeply ingrained within the hotel’s history.
A decade after his passing, many after The Chelsea’s prime, the new scene is still preserving his legacy and finding guidance in his words. Recently I spoke with two of the Bince siblings, France and Sarah, who came eerily close to luring artists back to the hotel before receiving a lifelong ban for their myriad of landslide soirees. They told me that visiting the hotel nowadays feels akin to “chasing a ghost,” but Cohen still lives on, in the landmark and the city itself. “Living in New York doesn’t help either,” France told me of how Cohen has influenced his way of being, “I ram through the streets in my boots and my coat dragging on a gloomy day, next thing you know I feel one with Leonard. I look up & smile”
During his career, nuances of his art and demeanour were overlooked; he was placed in a painting of anguish and unbothered to fight it. Cohen’s duality, once ignored, has become a defining factor in his work’s value for many adoring new fans. “Cohen stood at the intersection of human fragility and that means everything to me,” told Sarah, who looked to Leonard when finding herself. His work brings equilibrium of the mind, matrimony of the darkest and most wonderful aspects of life.
The journey upward together – a short tribute to Leonard Cohen, by Charlie Hills
“I said to Hank Williams “How lonely does it get?” Hank Williams hasn’t answered yet”, wrote Leonard Cohen in Tower of Song, telling us that a life so steeped in serving the position of songwriter can be a cold and solitary one. Even Hank Williams, a “hundred floors above” in the ivory tower of craft, doesn’t reach out a hand. It is rare for a voice to be so singular and speak so honestly to the tribulations of despair and solitude. Across his body of work, Leonard Cohen repeatedly confronts his own mortal despair in a nebulous dogfight. “I greet you from the other side of sorrow and despair, with a love so vast and shattered it will reach you everywhere” opens Cohen on Heart with No Companion. Like Sartre before him, he acknowledges that the blues can be a companion for the journey upward. Beyond despair is love so infinite, that its shattering only multiplies its effects.
Cohen was a conduit for music and a friend to melancholy, incarcerated by his uncanny ability to unite both pain and passion. His work confronts the “necessity to transcend one’s own failure by manifesting as the singer, as the songwriter”, and confesses to mortality at every turn. The sacred and profane are equal truths of a life seeking spirituality, and the divine manifests in both sensuality and piety for Cohen. This darkness and light, acting together, allow his words to comprehend the world comprehensively and assiduously, giving power to sin as a condition of humanity and humility. He allows us, the audience bound to his Tower of Song, to be seen in our humanity, not our flaws. For Leonard Cohen, the mortality of our earthly presence is often dark, but it does not inhibit us from seeking the divine and letting the light in. Through our own despair, he shares our blues and accompanies the sorrow with song.
“You go your way,
I’ll go your way too.”
- Leonard Cohen, The Sweetest Little Song – Book of Longing (2006)
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