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.