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The release of a new album by song/poet Leonard Cohen is always a major event.
Mojave Desert Ceilidh Band bassist Dave "Ashley Planxty" Beltanovich III was driving up from LA to our house in the Southern
Sierras. It was Thanksgiving 1992 and Dave was bringing Leonard's then new CD: THE FUTURE. We listened perplexed. It seemed
as it still seems: stiff, overwritten, glib, unmusical, over-produced. I decided to write a response song and got off to a
fine start with a good melody, good chorus and bridge. However I got bogged down with the verses and, over the next six years,
probably made at least thirty different versions of the song. It began to send out distress signals.
Leonard answered them. I was working the register at a spiritual bookstore one dark afternoon when he proffered his embossed
calling card: 'L. Cohen' it said clearly under the more ornately written koan, 'American, Express!' ([punctuation mine] It
would be years before I attained the full realization of those two words: Be an American! Now!! EXPRESS!!! B-b-but Leonard,
you are Canadian and I am British? KWATZ!!!!) I looked up and his averted gaze seemed to say: Take your dismay at meeting
me here and not at some symposium of sung poetics somewhere where we might be co-panellists; take your subsequent urge to
strike me; your savage urge to bite the hand that fed you — take all that and transmute it into the verses you have
so long longed for.'
As this teaching had been delivered in the guise of a retail transaction, I bagged the ceremonial items he had brought to
the register; he obviously had had no need of them. Yet, I charged them to his account. In a very real way this transaction
would put a token sum of money in my pocket; it was an offertory of sorts. But I could only comment on the 'thusness' of the
ceremony. I was dazzled by the sheer fact of his presence.
"There you are, sir!" I said.
Yet the words that should have sped from my lips mumbled from his: "Thank you."
Like a pile of sawdust the edifice of my song disintegrated at my feet. Now I could build anew!
I like to call Leonard Cohen the second greatest figure the Jews gave the Christians. While Leonard and Suzanne partake of
tea and oranges in Cohen's famous song "Suzanne," Jesus (the greatest figure the Jews gave the Christians) walks upon the
St. Lawrence River. Throughout, 'romantic derelicts' (as playwright Bob Burleson derisively calls Cohen himself) rub elbows
with saints and priests.
A songwriter of surpassing lyrical chops, he makes excellent use of, for instance, forced rhyme and enjambment to convey
a sense of uncertainty and ambivalence. Musically he frequently employes a sort of weary waltz time to frame his introspections.
Dry, prosaic, and elegantly moribund as as such introspection might seem, he cunningly juxtaposes it against a luminous transcendence
- Cohen's world view, I think — which makes his songs quite beautiful indeed.
When he was 50 he wrote THE BOOK OF MERCY, 50 contemporary and personal psalms, a very fine work. He was by then a student
of the Rinzai Zen master, Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi who had given him the odd instruction: "Sing more sad." Sadder or not,
Leonard's songs at this time had a stillness and depth which provided me great sustenance.
Here at last is my response song to THE FUTURE:
Listen: "The Good Old Fin de Siecle" (unreleased demo recording)
The Good Ol' Fin de Siècle
The sky all pale and ashen
like a video of passion
in a motel where there's nothing else to do
but decline your daily ration
of decadence and fashion
and make another song to sing for you.
Here goes:
That late November afternoon, the leaves
all departing from the tree
In the heart of the dark wood a demon
assembling unbeknownst to me
Through that wood hanging, a gray mist,
a sort of cloud of unknowing
parted, revealing that demon who goes
by the name: Leonard Cohen
Remember, my darling, how we
used to listen so late at night
as Leonard sang deep in the well
of his soul cursing the light.
He could sing like a demon and write
like one too back when he was free.
Free from his freedom which strangled
the life out of his Future CD
There's a song he calls 'The Future.'
Let's bet —we said— it's black.
The good ol' Fin de Siècle
is makin' a comeback.
It's coming back.
The good ol' Fin de Siècle...
The famous blue rain-coated hunchback
But under his raincoat this dark-suited
demon didn't want to be seen.
I sold him some incense, some ash for the
incense, and a Tricycle Magazine.
Something to read on the can
and something just to sweeten the smell
A New Age bookstore is a dangerous
place for a demon from Hell.
It's that old song called 'The Future'
Do we have to paint it black?
And paint out all the courage
'The Future' says we lack.
It's coming back.
Won't you come back?
The good ol' Fin de Siècle...
Looks like the dawn is starting to crack.
As Leonard has predicted
the darkness is addicted
to the glitter and the glamour of the stage.
And God has been conscripted
and we've all been convicted
and condemned to expressions of the age.
It was quiet in prison. Leonard writing
sonnets to getting corn-holed.
I was counting the days on the walls of my cell
'till we both got paroled.
Now I'm here in the motel waiting
for you and writing this song.
Passing the time till the future
arrives. Please don't be long.
It's that old song called 'The Future'
Do we have to paint it black?
And paint out all the courage
'The Future' says we lack.
It's coming back.
Won't you come back?
The good ol' Fin de Siècle...
Looks like the dawn is starting to crack.
(Thanks for the songs, Mr. Cohen!)
© 2001 by David Nigel Lloyd
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