The Essential Leonard Cohen

[lizzytysh]

Hi Chris,

I think at least a degree of bias comes with the territory, if you consider yourself an LC appreciator/lover/fan. However, I agree with you. I have never felt those pejorative terms [including bedsitter, now that I know what it means] to be valid, either. Thanks for the info. It sounds as good an explanation as any as to how it was derived in regard to him...and simply too colourful for few journalists to let go.

Those labels seem to generate much discussion, as there are many who don't agree, and as you've mentioned, those who hold to them, typically have never really listened to his music, so it's a "consider the source" kind of thing . Because he explores those deeper and darker parts of us and times in our experience so effectively, I've found them to be very cathartic.

~Lizzytysh

[Linda]

I think the choice of songs are pretty good, especially for a someone who would become acqainted with him for the first time, or like myself that does not particularly care for the earlier Cohen, however, want to be familar with his earlier music.

The song "The Partisan" has a deeper meaning for Leonard, as I read about it in the book "Various Positions" it comes from The Peoples Songbook, which was introduced to him by one of his closest friends at Camp Sunshine, a Jewish Community Camp where he became counsellor in 1950. Which demonstrated to him that songs could be about protest, freedom, and resistance. He now understood that songs could convey social thought as well as personal hope. The Peoples Songbook introduced him to the potential of folk music.

I will definitely buy it when it comes out. I was happy to see Democracy from the Future album on there, and disappointed The Window wasn't.

[lizzytysh]

In reading all of the comments so far, without doing a complete retrospective and creating a totally new cd set with all of his work, inclusive, the [shortened] phrase comes to mind, "You can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time."
~Lizzytysh

[Andrew McGeever]

I've given my first impressions of "The Essential Leonard Cohen" elsewhere on this board: Jarkko announced it under two posts, simultaneously. I don't wish to interupt this string, but by sheer coincidence I refered this evening to "The Partisan", in part reply to Elizabeth in the "Tunes and Flowers" thread on the Poetry Forum.
Linda, was it 1950 as you stated, or 1949 as I wrote? What the heck! the song is in the collection, and significant for many reasons, not the least being it was his first "cover".
Andrew.
P.S. I did moan about the lack of "Joan of Arc" and "The Master Song", having voted for the latter and being in the majority, which, for me, is an unusual experience. I also asked who chose the track list; Leonard or Sony. I also asked why Leonard hasn't written the liner notes. I've just repeated the post I sent a few days ago.

[Linda]

Beats me Andrew, I got that out of Various Positions and that is the date it has there for him being introduced to that song book.

[September_Cohen]

lizzytysh, I'm with you all the way

P.S. The cover photo is really really great.

[Sue]

Hi Liz,

No disrespect to Chris, but this definition he gave you is wrong:

"The term "bedsitter" means someone who lives in cheap temporary accomodation, a small damp flat for instance. Lazy UK journalists have often bandied this phrase about when commenting on LC, I guess someone somewhere must have heard someone in a bedsit playing LC and the phrase stuck."

"Bedsitter" doesn't mean a person, it is a shortened form of "bed/sitting room", i.e. a one-roomed apartment or flat. "Bedsit" means the same thing (it's just even shorter). It was not innacurate to call Leonard's music "bedsitter music" in the early years because many of his fans in the UK were students who lived in this type of accommodation. But there's also the implication that people who live in one room are lonely and miserable and that these are the people who Cohen's music (and poetry) will most appeal to. Neither of these of course is necessarily true: houses full of bedsits and music can be very lively places, and Cohen's work - as we know - can be very sexy and funny but that is the association people are making when they talk about Cohen and bedsitters.

[Andrew McGeever]

To Sue,
Your explanation of "bedsitter" fits better than that of Chris. The term has also been used to describe dislocated people who try to survive on "Social Security" (i.e. welfare). The music of several British rock/pop bands has been tagged as "bedsitter music", in a derogatory sense.
The word "bedsit" is one I have in the vocabulary book I keep in my head for use in a future poem.
Andrew.

[lizzytysh]

Hi September,

I'd say, "I guess it's you an' me against the world," except I know that there'll always be disagreement amongst Cohen people, with lots of shifting around going on, so our "world" wouldn't remain cohesive long enough for us to be "against" it. So, it's good to know that I've aligned with at least one other on something related to Leonard ~ at least for the time being. Thanks for letting me know.

Hi Sue,

Thanks for the alternate definition. It sounds like it may be one of those "one phrase fits all," with what seems to be some overlapping between yours and his in the essence of it. Might it have colloquial differences? It remains very colourful and fits very well, with your description......isn't that funny how presumptious people become about single persons?

Some of my best times have been while living in [literally or virtually] one-room housing.

~Lizzy

[Sue]

Yes indeed Liz, what people tend to forget is that while you may be living mainly in one room you are also going to be sharing other amenities - bathroom, kitchen maybe, laundry, garden etc. with other people whom you may not know too well to begin with. And so you can end up sharing more personal things with them, including the books you read and the music you listen to. Sociable housing, in other words. Single people, as you say, can end up a lot happier in this set-up than in a place which is completely self-contained. And yet we have all been brain-washed now to aspire to our own front door and the 'ideal' of separateness from others which that represents. The bedsit way of life may be OK for kids but in anyone over the age of 22 it's seen as a sign of economic, personal or social failure.

Actually the main drawback, I have always thought, with this type of accommodation, is the lack of storage space that so often goes with it - as you get older you simply acquire more stuff; well, most of us do. But if you were designing and building new housing units for single people you could get round that one. It would certainly be less wasteful - in terms of resources and space - to, say, have kitchens and even bathrooms shared between 4 or 5 such units, rather than one per 'apartment'. But to buy into that idea you have to believe in the positive benefits of sharing things with others, outside of family or couple relationships. Funnily enough, once people reach the age of 30 or so they seem to find it difficult to keep that belief.

This is not all irrelevant to Leonard, by the way. It may be that a lot of the personal peace he now shows, the resolution of his lifelong struggle with depression (if that's what it is), is owed to the experience of shared living that he had at Mt Baldy. Monastic life requires you to question the boundaries you place between yourself and others and the value you place on personal possessions and space.

Sue

[George.Wright]

Well said!!!!
Georges

[lizzytysh]

Excellent tie-in, Sue.....as a matter of fact, here's a quote from Leonard that substantiates much of what you've just said ~ well, I thought I was going to go straight to it. Wrong. However, it does exist, it's out there, I will come across it, and I will bring it to you verbatim. Meanwhile, the jist of it is his analogy of his time on Mt. Baldy being like stones in a jar, through their ongoing, close proximity and contact, being rubbed smooth and polished. He's never been much of a materialist, yet "forced" toward even less up there, I suspect that he enjoyed that state "of nothingness" even more.

It's funny, because the relative isolation, that comes with our own front door, has a surprizing number of drawbacks....that we pay more to be privy, to. The alienation between people has driven housing contractors to design entire neighbourhoods in the old-fashioned sense of that, where people becoming ongoing parts of each others' daily lives. Now, people are paying even higher prices to regain what they've lost . It's one of the reasons I loved living in the Keys so much, as the small, space-limited, island structure forced much overlapping; and seeing, talking with, and getting together with people you knew didn't require calendars and appointments. It flowed very naturally, with numerous contacts daily. Excellent community-support system. It also facilitated meeting new people, through already-existing friends.

Yes, amazing how we "grow up," isn't it? Now, if we could just feng-shui it, we wouldn't even need to concern ourselves with the storage. I'm working that direction, "but it ain't easy".....much tenacity and self-dialogue required.

I love your last sentence.

~Lizzytysh

[Sue]

Well Lizzy, you're probably ahead of us in the States in going for housing that deliberately tackles separateness and isolation. It's interesting (but not really surprising..) to hear that it comes more expensive. I know nothing about feng-shui so I'm finding it hard to imagine how it can reduce the number of boxes..

Sue

P.S. Georges! - another hippy?

[lizzytysh]

Hi Sue,

The feng shui idea incorporates reducing clutter [all kinds]; and with that, at some point, the boxes just gotta go! Regardless of what's in them, the boxes contain many memories, which keep us tied to the past and from moving on.

Our country seems to have the isolation-alienation syndrome really bad. The teen suicide rate is very high. Teen drug addiction, gangs, crime, pregnancy, a whole list of things are part of its showing up early in people's lives. The alienation is inside, as well as outside, of the home.

Yes, another example of infinite wisdom was that the Energy Conservation department [can't recall the exact title of it] here, was charging their own employees extra if they wanted to buy one of their specially-produced electric or otherwise energy-economical cars, they had to pay extra. They only recently realized that they should [duh] maybe be role models for the regular citizens and put their own money where their mouth is and drive the energy-efficient vehicles instead, so the department decided to make the vehicles more affordable for the employees, instead of less so!
~Lizzy

[lizzytysh]

Hi Sue,

I saw Leonard's comment Saturday night on a tape [it was the first or second ~ now I'm not sure which] interview by Stina, and it was footage of them talking on Mt. Baldy. It wasn't "stones in a jar," but rather "pebbles in a bag." For Leonard's birthday, I listened to his music all day, more the norm for me than a celebration, and then at night, I introduced him to a friend [vs. going to see DeNiro in "City By The Sea"] via several videotapes on him. Was up till 3 AM Sunday morning watching Leonard. Watched "Bird On A Wire," "I Am A Hotel," Stina's interviews, concert footage from Austin City Limits, etc. Wonderful evening. Chinese vegetarian tofu with rice led into it. And my friend liked him! Was very impressed by his wisdom in his interviews. I notice ~ always ~ that his centeredness is in his eyes. You can see it from his earliest tapes on. Watching him always transports me, I know not where. Yet, once arrived, I want only to remain there. It's difficult to describe. All else in the room becomes secondary.

~Lizzy