Words. Suit. Voice. Hat.

​

If he had not written (and shared) those lines...

​

Quiet, secret drives. Incomprehensible urges. Dark energy. Lust. Time and a bite of holy hope.

​

He knew we were just little dancers pulled, tossed and destroyed by very many forces. 'He knew' that is to say... he may have known.

​

"And you know that she's half crazy 
But that's why you want to be there".

​

Things are happening, and we do not understand. The gift of acceptance of uncertainty. The gift of progression. Creation in uncertainty: Leonard's gift.

Seeing the world as it was, he continued. 

​

I met him when I was perhaps 22 or 23. I was studying for my engineering exams. A different lost cause. I recall playing on the kitchen stereo something with the lines 'field commander Cohen' then I'm not sure, perhaps it goes.. 'our most important spy'.. perhaps not. Then there was 'Is this what you wanted? To live in a house that was haunted?' That was a burned CD. I lost it. Those were the times. I do not really know specifically what I liked hearing from this guy. It was probably the lack of solutions offered, whilst covering so much lived ground. A splash of ego, a spritz of self deprecation all coated in an earned, wily acceptance.

​

Did he suffer sufficiently?

​

There isn't a trace of cornball cheese - for the sake of the sound - trite anything, anywhere in all that I have heard. His eye. His crippling humility. His perseverance. His acknowledgement that he is and was not holy. Perhaps, perhaps the holiness has been accorded due to living one of the less common existences there seem to be: an authentic one. Or at least one that is somewhat your own.

​

For a man who shared so much, it is nice to imagine the remainder: his private universe. If he dared sidle up to anything of significance, he'd give it a little jab in the side, smile and then tell a new tune. But they were all the same tune. They were all Leonard.

​

I think I once heard from him a line about his monk friend... "he cares about me enough to not care how I'm going". These lines stay.

​

He dedicated his life to itself, and he shared some of what he found. What a greedy, lovely hero. I have been thinking about him for the last week since hearing the news. Not of him, I did not know him. But what he meant to me, and perhaps to others.

​

I remember hearing someone say that Leonard 'let women hurt him'. I liked him for this line. I saw this man twice in my life. With two women that I 'let hurt me' and I them, or vice versa, so it goes. For me, none have described, thus somehow allowed, the legion feelings and forces that unions yield as wholesomely as he. He, the most precise, yet not descriptive, narrator of these forces that I am yet to know. I sat there in the crowd: a disciple, loving follower, other creature. With lover beside and I was thankful.

​

"yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new."

​

He didn't seem to go the way of Mr Vonnegut in his later years: defeated. Perhaps having lived with a maimed romanticism for longer, gave Leonard a gentle, broken hand to keep on going. Or maybe it was always hopeless. And like the Sisyphus that Camus perhaps wished for the world; he nonetheless did it with a grin. Or at least a good going dimple; and a cigarette not far.

​

"You said you could never love me, 
I undid your gown."

​

The suits. The refinement. Were they a vigil to his father? I wear my grandfather's watch and draw strength from it, from him. Though he does not know that I do. I guess that's the thing with all of this. Our ability to draw strength from others. They need not know that they are providing the strength. Need not know who we are. But as we live our lives we are carving out something. Perhaps a shape. A symbol. And these shapes can make others feel in certain ways. I have my grandfather's watch on my wrist, and Leonard in my bed.

​

Leonard Cohen taught me that words are important. That sharing them is important. And that you need not know why.

​

And his words keep sinking in. Just as he did not necessarily intend.

​

See you Leonard.

​

Thank you Leonard. 

​

​