Leonard Cohen TPAC 2009
http://margaretelizabeth.tumblr.com/pos ... -tpac-2009
Caveat lector, what follows is a long and self-indulgent personal account.
When I was in college, I read this passage from a book. These words have been with me ever since, and they have had a great influence on me:
“Here, Socrates, lie down alongside me, so that by my touching you, I too may enjoy the piece of wisdom that just occurred to you while you were on the porch. It is plain that you found it and have it, for otherwise you would not have come away beforehand.”
And Socrates sat down and said, “It would be a good thing, Agathon, if wisdom were the sort of thing that flows from the fuller of us into the emptier, just by our touching one another, as the water in wine cups flows through a wool thread from the fuller to the emptier. For if wisdom too is like that, then I set a high price on my being placed alongside you, for I believe I shall be filled from you with much fair wisdom. My own may turn out to be a very sorry sort of wisdom, or disreputable like a dream; but your own is brilliant and capable of much development, since it has flashed out so intensely from you while you are young; and yesterday it became conspicuous among more than thirty thousand Greek witnesses”(Symposium 175c8-e6).
Because we pretty much know that wisdom does not flow, like wine, through a wool thread, Socrates’ quip with Agathon strikes a cautionary note. I may believe that it is worth a great deal of money to set myself down in a seat close by to someone I admire, and this might be because I believe that I will acquire something through the proximity. But I am foolish.
And at face value, I was foolish last night. I paid a great deal of money to set myself down in a seat close by to someone I admire, Leonard Cohen. Anyone who knows me, and not many people do I guess, knows that the musical recordings of Leonard Cohen have had a formative effect on my growth as a human being, since about my senior year of college (2002-2003) when I first heard “Bird on a Wire.” I first got my hands on The Essential Leonard Cohen in the late fall. I stayed in Annapolis over the Christmas holiday that year, mostly by myself, working as a waitress at the restaurant downstairs from my apartment, drinking cranberry vodka sodas or champagne after work (boss-man was pretty lax with the Belvedere vodka or Moët & Chandon), and stumbling upstairs after the night was finished to open my bedside window seat, which overlooked the main street of historic downtown, to wrap myself in an old wool sweater, put my face out against the cold, sip some secreted champagne, smoke a du Maurier, listen to Ten New Songs on repeat, watch the empty street, and catch the occasional snowflake on my tear-stained cheek. If I close my eyes, I can still feel the dark and silent snow, taste the stale champagne, that New Year, after midnight in Annapolis.
The feeling of loneliness and profundity was incomparable. I had so many thoughts in those days, I remember they used to come out in floods of inspired writing, fueled by these late-night, feverish, tear-soaked revelations (sometimes tears of desperate sorrow, sometimes tears of desperate joy). I was writing my senior paper on the Symposium, a dialogue about eros. It was all about this unattainable thing that would come so close, and even lay down beside you, and even tempt you with these words, and this drove you into a frenzy of desire, for that unattainable thing.. I, like many young people who study the Symposium, felt great sympathy with Alcibiades. I also had a bad habit, a scary and abusive habit, of falling deeply in love. To the tunes of “Take this Waltz” and “Dance Me to the End of Love.” I am so very, very sorry.
(Ah, youth, etc., etc., And now I’ve got to deal with the fact that I’ve drug up all these feelings again, as if there’s some kind of unfinished business there, which there isn’t, I emphatically tell myself, I have made it so that all of that business is finished.)
Up until the moment when Leonard Cohen came out on stage, it was hardly real to me! In anticipation I tried to trivialize it to myself, by playfully saying to Andy how we were going downtown to see just “some music group or other,” “some regular old singer that would probably be ok,” and this really wasn’t hard to believe. How could I possibly go see something, a body, how could a single body, contain in itself everything that Leonard Cohen has come to mean to me?
I suffer from no illusions about this at least, I know that I am not friends with Leonard Cohen. I am sure he is a very nice man. But my admiration has been from a distance, and it hasn’t even really been of him, rather I have admired his music and words. We (his music and words and me) have shared something very special and important, but that something is not him. I know nothing of the man himself and I’ve done an ok job of keeping it that way (no thanks to DrHGuy).
Because, you see, I have intimacy issues with my idols. I resist the desire, I have a phobia, for closeness. And I believe I have very good, serious reasons for my reluctance: it is a bad habit, a scary and abusive habit, to let people, earthly and arbitrary people, with frail intentions and trembling hands, get a hold of your soul. The love that steers my life may be so strong that no obstacle can turn it away from its pursuit, but that love is at least mine. I know it is mine because it is of me, It answers to me and I answer to It, we have had a lot of conversations over the years, and however trying it is, we’ve always been able to reach an agreement. It may have required pain and sacrifice on both our parts, but our overall wellbeing relies on our conjoining ourselves together, our harmonia, our agreement that these pains have been worthwhile. I am—what I am is—the possibility of reconciliation (an Aristotelian psychoanalytic: the dynamis of harmonia as dynamis?). And thus, I am no slave to eros—because, my eros is no slave. (See what I did there? I’ve had only the best of teachers.)
Anyway—as I write I am sitting here wearing my new Beautiful Losers t-shirt, which I wore to bed last night—I wanted to have very little interest in seeing or being near to the body of Leonard Cohen. My girlish fingers, clicky credit-card keyboard fingers, got the good seats, but I myself, I would be calm as an adult. Or at least I would pretend to be. And I almost did it! And now I want to write down words so that I’ll really remember the memory of last night, like I can remember the memory of the dark and silent snow.
I remember the shadow of the brim of his hat, the shadow cast by the spotlight, how sometimes it would cover his eyes, and sometimes it wouldn’t, and sometimes (in more prayerly moments) he would even look up to the light, as if speaking to Heaven. He was so small, and also kind, to the other musicians and to the audience, and yes, the lines were well-worn with rehearsal from other venues, but I believe they were honest. During the Webb sisters’ “If It Be Your Will,” I could see him off in the dark of the stage, looking quietly at them and listening, and I swear it was a private moment for everyone in the theater, a moment with Leonard, sharing with him our admiration for something beautiful. There was a story about how he lived right here near Nashville, just outside of Franklin, a place called East Fork (I think?), in a cabin, $75/month, rented from a friend, there was a neighbor, Leonard asked him “Do you have a horse for me?”, the man brought over a gray mare, Leonard never could catch it, there was so much land, he just brought it sugar cubes to eat, and then the horse would run away. His stage moves. The moments when he got on his knees to sing, or when he’d bend his legs and press his thin knees together, leaning slightly over the mic and gesturing with his hand, as if he was just then really remembering his own memories, remembering the woman who was looking for Kris Kristofferson when he sang “Chelsea Hotel”, or remembering wanting to cry looking through the papers when singing “In My Secret Life”. Maybe I am naive, but I think it makes it not a lie but something honest, that he was just then really remembering his own memories. Skipping on and off the stage like a child one tenth (!) his age. The man who sat to my right was alone, at intermission he said his wife gave him the ticket for his birthday, but she had no interest in coming, she didn’t like Leonard Cohen so much; all I could do was stare at him in shock, I hope I wasn’t rude, but his story was a bit sad and I was still high from “Anthem”. I don’t know what I would have done if I hadn’t been there with Andy, I held his hand tightly most of the time, I felt I needed to, as if I was undergoing surgery. The music was warm and inviting and precise. The ruby cup of darkness blues song was still and dark and dangerous. I wanted to get up and dance, because lately I dance, when mid- to late-era songs came on, or “Boogie Street” (which is a particular favorite of ours), but I couldn’t because I wasn’t in my own kitchen, so I lived vicariously through Sharon Robinson. I love her and I trust her better than Leonard Cohen. I do wish I knew her, or was myself trusting enough to be friends with someone like her. The lights were important. They were so deep and colorful, except when he sang “Suzanne,” at which point they darkened to mostly black and a small whitely illuminated Leonard, as if it is a song whose feelings are felt in the dark. It wasn’t private, but it was shared. If I were a vocal type of audience member, I would have shouted, as the angels do in “Because of,” Look at me, Leonard!, but instead I just thought it to myself. Those are the kind of dialectics best kept silent. And then I told Andy after.
I wore new shoes last night, it’s a funny little irony, written in the sole of the shoes it says, unconsciously like Parmenides, “There is only the truth.” I remember the strange feel of my new shoes on the cold sidewalk, kind of negotiating their fresh relationship with my funny-shaped feet, as we walked back to the library parking lot. Downtown Nashville streets at night smell like second-hand smoke. Andy said it was like, and then it reminded us of, Philly. I don’t really know what else to say. It was special, but of course it was not singular. It was perfect, unassuming, gentle, respectful, and beautiful. I didn’t feel violated, I hardly even felt deceived. And now I am desperate to remember every last minute of it.