the cool of leonard cohen

i’m a neat fan of leonard cohen. no, not a HUGE fan, or even a BIG fan. just a neat one. like most of his younger fans, i first heard his voice on that infamously catchy movie, pump up the volume. it surprised me even then that such a depressing sound could be considered cool. i mean, goth music is often considered depressing but it’s really only cool to goths and, let’s face it, they just don’t count (please don’t write to me about that, lestat).

you can watch pump up the volume as many times as you like, and about the only thing you’ll get out of it is, apart from a grin from the bursts of glorious and angry punk, is an appreciation for mister cohen’s croaking lyrics over cringingly bad synth music – a combination which should leave you reeling in terror but actually leaves you wondering what just hit you between the eyes and who threw it so you can hit them back.

i remember not long after watching this zany film, i found a battered copy of mister cohen’s selected poems 1956 – 1968 in a secondhand store and i snapped it up as poetry is a bit of a rare species in my neck of the woods. i was so moved by one of the poems, the reason i write, that it is the only poem i actually know by heart. i have found i truly enjoy his short poems. they zazz and pop off the page like little daggers picking at the skin of a goth on their fifteenth suicide for attention attempt. the last book i scrounged, book of longing, was by far my favourite of his poetry books. the scrapbook feel of scribbled illustrations and the poetry stamped like graffiti or faded posters on an urban skyline give a feel of wisdom merged with regret and a deep understanding of the cage which emerges as we age – testament to the entrapment of failing flesh.

i do, however, have a secret confession to make, and i will use this post to do so. i don’t like his long ballads. they drive me crazy. mind you, i guess i just don’t like long poems anyway. but mister cohen’s long poems are too much. they draw you out like a long curtain call. a slow death in a desert with only bones for company and sand for a blanket. they just go on and on and on and you wish it would end but it never seems to. i confess to skipping some of them in favour of the short poems. under a page, and i’m fine. longer than a page, and i’m lost.

yet, always there’s this cheeky humour like a genie in a bottle, smoke fingers trickling out to push your lips up despite the reputation of mister cohen to be somewhat dire and probably a killjoy at parties. listening to his music, you imagine the kind of guy who’d walk into a room and half the people in it would kill themselves before the end of the night and the other half would be on their knees wishing they’d the courage to follow their comrades to their graves while mister cohen stood in the centre of the room, hands in his pockets and a morose expression greying his face while he spoke only a line here and there but it would be enough to drive even the most effervescent personality into a chaotic spiral of despair. it’s probably an unfair interpretation of his character, but one which appeals even more to those who love his music. i firmly believe the challenge is to go to his concerts and return alive and with no marks of self-mutilation.

so what makes him so cool? there’s plenty of people out there who’d make you want to self-mutilate, but none of them could be considered cool. i mean, morrissey. i would kill myself even before i made it to the concert. ick. and kylie minogue, andre rieu, or anyone with mc or dj in front of their name…

my one big regret of the year is that i was unable to make it to the leonard cohen concert held here in perth. it’s so rare to get anyone remotely interesting that i was spitting chips that i couldn’t see this miasma of darkness performing live. i wanted to see if he crooned with one hand in his pocket and the other wrapped around a lung-killing cancerstick. i wanted to see if he ever smiled on stage. i wanted to see just what it was that makes this old man so cool. in the meantime, i have the books. i have the albums. i have the dvds. it’s just not enough. i still don’t understand. no matter how depressing his songs, he’s just so damn cool. i wish i could be like him, but when i write depressing things, mine just look like that awful goth poetry you find in online ‘zines. enough to make you shudder and wish you could kill yourself rather than read the poem, but without the essence of wisdom and glory that mister cohen is just so natural with.

i hope he doesn’t mind, but i just want to share this with you all:

the reason i write

The reason I write
is to make something
as beautiful as you are

When I’m with you
I want to be the kind of hero
I wanted to be
when I was seven years old
a perfect man
who kills

- leonard cohen

Tags: cool, leonard cohen, music, poetry