Re: "come forth from the cloud of unknowing . . ."
Posted: Sun Jan 08, 2017 10:24 pm
Dear Geoffrey, Violet,
I don’t know if this is of any use to you Geoffrey in respect of Violet’s ‘list’ idea but I have looked again at the various tributes available on line by those who were - it would seem - well acquainted with Leonard and copied here what I felt were the more pertinent passages in respect of Leonard’s health in the months/weeks prior to his death or articles posted just after he died. They aren’t in chronological order but all the links to where I picked them up from are included just above them. I realise you will have already read them at some point but this is just my attempt to collate any quotes I could find that seemed relevant to this post and hopefully from reliable sources. Jx
http://slippedisc.com/2016/11/leonard-c ... st-letter/
LEONARD COHEN’S LAST LETTER
November 11, 2016 by norman lebrecht
- See more at: http://slippedisc.com/2016/11/leonard-c ... Saxeg.dpuf
It was a death he foretold to a mutual friend, in an email sent 30 days ago, on October 12.
He would have liked to be part of our project, Leonard wrote, but his strength was fading and he was confined to bed. And more, besides.
He did not need to write that letter. We knew he was gravely ill. But Leonard never left his lines unfinished. Seldom have I seen evidence of death faced with greater courage, certainty – and exquisite courtesy.
Aside from being his country’s greatest musician and the poet of our lives, Leonard Cohen was the kindest, most considerate of men. A mensch in a world full of monsters.
‘I am ready, my Lord,’ he whispered in what would be his final song.
David Remnick of the New Yorker:
And there’s the element of time, which is powerful, with its incentive to finish up. Now I haven’t gotten near finishing up. I’ve finished up a few things. I don’t know how many other things I’ll be able to get to, because at this particular stage I experience deep fatigue. . . . There are times when I just have to lie down. I can’t play anymore, and my back goes fast also. Spiritual things, baruch Hashem”—thank God—“have fallen into place, for which I am deeply grateful.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/20 ... 9ad88135e3
He said, “If I keep writing the verses and discarding the slogans, even the hip ones, even the subtle ones, then something will emerge that represents.” He told Remnick that he still heard the voice of God but now it was not judgmental. “It's very compassionate at this stage, more than any time in my life. I don't have that voice that says you're f*cking up. That's a tremendous blessing, a tremendous blessing. I'm ready to die. I hope it's not uncomfortable. Spiritual things, thank God, have fallen into place, for which I am deeply grateful.
At a press conference at the Canadian Consulate in Los Angeles three weeks before his death, Cohen softened the statement he'd given Remnick that he was ready to die, and, to the audience's amusement, made light of it by saying that he intended to live forever. But the subtext was undeniable--here was a man at peace with himself and his creator.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/leo ... e32870140/
It was a mild day for mid-November in Montreal when Leonard Cohen’s funeral was held last Thursday in the city he always considered home, even after years of living in Los Angeles.
One of his best songs, In My Secret Life, included the words “I know what is right/And I’d die for the truth.” And in the end, those lyrics segued into Cohen’s secret funeral.
About 15 people attended the graveside ceremony and burial in the Jewish section of Mount Royal Cemetery.
“As Leonard requested, there were only a few old and close friends,” said Robert Kory, Cohen’s L.A.-based manager.
He said Cohen wanted his funeral to be simple, absolutely traditional and in compliance with Jewish law, with the body placed in a casket.
“It was as elegant and profound as he wished,” Kory said. “The rabbi spoke, the cantor spoke, and we recited Kaddish [the Hebrew prayer for the dead].”
In late September, Cohen told a friend – another former Montrealer living in L.A. – that he had only six weeks to live. That turned out to be accurate.
Amazingly, though Cohen died before dawn on Tuesday last week, Kory was able to work closely with the rabbi, the cantor and others to keep the funeral plans secret for more than two days.
“I was fortunate enough to have people at all levels to respect Leonard’s wishes,” he explained. “One doesn’t usually find that level of integrity in a chain of people you don’t necessarily know.”
http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/leo ... de-public/
Cohen died Monday in Los Angeles and was buried Thursday at the Shaar Hashomayim cemetery in Montreal, his hometown, according to reports citing a statement from Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, an Orthodox synagogue in the Westmount neighbourhood of Montreal.
“Leonard’s wish was to be laid to rest in a traditional Jewish rite beside his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents,” the statement said. He maintained “a lifelong spiritual, musical, and familial connection to the synagogue of his youth.”
A Cohen family plot is located just through the front gates of the Jewish cemetery near the base of Mount Royal, The Toronto Star reported. The only evidence of Cohen’s burial is unsettled earth covered by fallen brown leaves in front of an unmarked gravestone, according to the newspaper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/arts/ ... pe=article
“He felt the window getting narrower,” said Patrick Leonard, a producer and songwriter who had worked closely with Mr. Cohen on his last three albums. “He wanted to use the time as productively as he could to finish the work that he was so good at and so devoted to.
At times this year, people who wrote to Mr. Cohen — usually a dependable correspondent on email — got an automatic response. Chris Douridas, a host on the California public radio station KCRW, got a terse “Unable to read/reply,” and got a worried feeling.
“It told me that he was unplugging from the digital world,” Mr. Douridas said.
But that message was also Mr. Cohen’s way of keeping distractions at bay while he worked. In the weeks and months before his death, he appears to have engaged in as much creative activity as he could handle. Mr. Leonard said that he emailed Mr. Cohen a set of new R&B tracks the morning he died. Other friends spoke of dining with him just days before.
Mr. Douridas said that after the event, he asked Adam Cohen whether fans could expect another album. “He genuinely seemed to not know the answer to that question,” Mr. Douridas said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/fashi ... ebook&_r=0
Rites of Passage
By SHOZAN JACK HAUBNER DEC. 6, 2016
The last time I saw him, he looked epiphanic and light, as if he were disappearing. There was great pain in his eyes, and his breath was heavy.
He told me that during his stay in India after his years at our Zen monastery, something clicked and he found a peace inside that had never left him. “This stuff works,” he said. “Somehow everything I’ve been doing all these years comes down to the work I did with Roshi.”
He played his new album for me. At the end, gorgeous, soft strings set the tone, lulling you into a drifting, pensive melancholy. Then his voice emerges with the wish for a treaty of love. He sat in silence before me, this aged, tiny, impeccably dressed poet, his black fedora tilted lightly on his head, his voice booming all around us.
When I heard those final lines, it was like he split me open with a ray of light. My face grew hot, my heart pounded. I was sobbing inside. I knew he was saying goodbye to all of us.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ ... preciation
11/11/2016 by Chris Willman
Why he agreed to come out in public and chat for a bit less than a month before the end is a mystery. Maybe someone on his business side decided it was a bad idea to release a record while making the world think you’re on your deathbed, even if you kind of are. Maybe he had a fleeting recovering where he really did feel like he had another album or two in him, as he said he did in that conversation -- always with the addendum “God willing” (or “but one never knows”). Maybe he thought he’d gotten a little too Zen about it all and decided raging just a little against the dying of the light is OK. But it was heartening to be in that room, see his broad smile, and hear him say things like, “If you’re lucky, things deepen between members of a family. If you’re not lucky, they don’t. If you’re unlucky, they deteriorate. I’ve been lucky. I have close relationships with my few friends and my family members and my grandkids. So, so far, so good. I hope it continues to deepen. I have every faith that it will.”
Producer PATRICK LEONARD, who worked on Cohen’s final albums, recalls the singer’s tireless work ethic in the face of illness, As told to Camille Dodero.
I wasn’t with Leonard when he died, but I’m certain that until he couldn’t hold a pen in his hand, he was working. That’s the way Leonard was. He had been weak and ill for a while, but he was working all the time. The hours in a day that he could work were narrowing, but the determination was still there. I think it was clear that the end was in sight, but I don’t think his October release You Want It Darker is him leaning toward mortality: Go back and listen to his first album [1967’s Songs of Leonard Cohen] — there are mortality issues there. The songs we were working on before he died were really light R&B, beautiful Leonard Cohen love songs. Another project we were working on was an extension of You Want It Darker’s reprise of “Treaty.” We had 10 arrangements written and half of them recorded already -- beautiful melodic arrangements -- without his voice on them. Maybe they will see the light of day. I don’t know.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/religion/a ... hens_rabbi
by Rabbi Mordecai Finley
Posted on Nov. 16, 2016 at 3:54 pm
I last saw Leonard Cohen a few months ago. He had asked me to come to his place. After brief pleasantries, he said to me, “Reb, I am getting ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. I have some questions for you.”
He and I had spoken about “Hamlet” more than a few times. I knew the play and especially the soliloquy were close to his heart, and, at that moment, closer than ever. He knew he was soon not to be, at least in this frail frame. I remember thinking to myself, “I have to remember every word we say. ”One day, with his children’s permission, maybe I will be able to write about that conversation that began with “Hamlet.”
He sent me poetry he was working on (I think I was on a list) until the week before he passed. He wrote me on Friday that he wished he could come to shul to hear my new series of talks on a deep dive into Genesis. He died on Monday.
I don’t know if this is of any use to you Geoffrey in respect of Violet’s ‘list’ idea but I have looked again at the various tributes available on line by those who were - it would seem - well acquainted with Leonard and copied here what I felt were the more pertinent passages in respect of Leonard’s health in the months/weeks prior to his death or articles posted just after he died. They aren’t in chronological order but all the links to where I picked them up from are included just above them. I realise you will have already read them at some point but this is just my attempt to collate any quotes I could find that seemed relevant to this post and hopefully from reliable sources. Jx
http://slippedisc.com/2016/11/leonard-c ... st-letter/
LEONARD COHEN’S LAST LETTER
November 11, 2016 by norman lebrecht
- See more at: http://slippedisc.com/2016/11/leonard-c ... Saxeg.dpuf
It was a death he foretold to a mutual friend, in an email sent 30 days ago, on October 12.
He would have liked to be part of our project, Leonard wrote, but his strength was fading and he was confined to bed. And more, besides.
He did not need to write that letter. We knew he was gravely ill. But Leonard never left his lines unfinished. Seldom have I seen evidence of death faced with greater courage, certainty – and exquisite courtesy.
Aside from being his country’s greatest musician and the poet of our lives, Leonard Cohen was the kindest, most considerate of men. A mensch in a world full of monsters.
‘I am ready, my Lord,’ he whispered in what would be his final song.
David Remnick of the New Yorker:
And there’s the element of time, which is powerful, with its incentive to finish up. Now I haven’t gotten near finishing up. I’ve finished up a few things. I don’t know how many other things I’ll be able to get to, because at this particular stage I experience deep fatigue. . . . There are times when I just have to lie down. I can’t play anymore, and my back goes fast also. Spiritual things, baruch Hashem”—thank God—“have fallen into place, for which I am deeply grateful.”
http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/20 ... 9ad88135e3
He said, “If I keep writing the verses and discarding the slogans, even the hip ones, even the subtle ones, then something will emerge that represents.” He told Remnick that he still heard the voice of God but now it was not judgmental. “It's very compassionate at this stage, more than any time in my life. I don't have that voice that says you're f*cking up. That's a tremendous blessing, a tremendous blessing. I'm ready to die. I hope it's not uncomfortable. Spiritual things, thank God, have fallen into place, for which I am deeply grateful.
At a press conference at the Canadian Consulate in Los Angeles three weeks before his death, Cohen softened the statement he'd given Remnick that he was ready to die, and, to the audience's amusement, made light of it by saying that he intended to live forever. But the subtext was undeniable--here was a man at peace with himself and his creator.
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/leo ... e32870140/
It was a mild day for mid-November in Montreal when Leonard Cohen’s funeral was held last Thursday in the city he always considered home, even after years of living in Los Angeles.
One of his best songs, In My Secret Life, included the words “I know what is right/And I’d die for the truth.” And in the end, those lyrics segued into Cohen’s secret funeral.
About 15 people attended the graveside ceremony and burial in the Jewish section of Mount Royal Cemetery.
“As Leonard requested, there were only a few old and close friends,” said Robert Kory, Cohen’s L.A.-based manager.
He said Cohen wanted his funeral to be simple, absolutely traditional and in compliance with Jewish law, with the body placed in a casket.
“It was as elegant and profound as he wished,” Kory said. “The rabbi spoke, the cantor spoke, and we recited Kaddish [the Hebrew prayer for the dead].”
In late September, Cohen told a friend – another former Montrealer living in L.A. – that he had only six weeks to live. That turned out to be accurate.
Amazingly, though Cohen died before dawn on Tuesday last week, Kory was able to work closely with the rabbi, the cantor and others to keep the funeral plans secret for more than two days.
“I was fortunate enough to have people at all levels to respect Leonard’s wishes,” he explained. “One doesn’t usually find that level of integrity in a chain of people you don’t necessarily know.”
http://jewishnews.timesofisrael.com/leo ... de-public/
Cohen died Monday in Los Angeles and was buried Thursday at the Shaar Hashomayim cemetery in Montreal, his hometown, according to reports citing a statement from Congregation Shaar Hashomayim, an Orthodox synagogue in the Westmount neighbourhood of Montreal.
“Leonard’s wish was to be laid to rest in a traditional Jewish rite beside his parents, grandparents and great-grandparents,” the statement said. He maintained “a lifelong spiritual, musical, and familial connection to the synagogue of his youth.”
A Cohen family plot is located just through the front gates of the Jewish cemetery near the base of Mount Royal, The Toronto Star reported. The only evidence of Cohen’s burial is unsettled earth covered by fallen brown leaves in front of an unmarked gravestone, according to the newspaper.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/17/arts/ ... pe=article
“He felt the window getting narrower,” said Patrick Leonard, a producer and songwriter who had worked closely with Mr. Cohen on his last three albums. “He wanted to use the time as productively as he could to finish the work that he was so good at and so devoted to.
At times this year, people who wrote to Mr. Cohen — usually a dependable correspondent on email — got an automatic response. Chris Douridas, a host on the California public radio station KCRW, got a terse “Unable to read/reply,” and got a worried feeling.
“It told me that he was unplugging from the digital world,” Mr. Douridas said.
But that message was also Mr. Cohen’s way of keeping distractions at bay while he worked. In the weeks and months before his death, he appears to have engaged in as much creative activity as he could handle. Mr. Leonard said that he emailed Mr. Cohen a set of new R&B tracks the morning he died. Other friends spoke of dining with him just days before.
Mr. Douridas said that after the event, he asked Adam Cohen whether fans could expect another album. “He genuinely seemed to not know the answer to that question,” Mr. Douridas said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/06/fashi ... ebook&_r=0
Rites of Passage
By SHOZAN JACK HAUBNER DEC. 6, 2016
The last time I saw him, he looked epiphanic and light, as if he were disappearing. There was great pain in his eyes, and his breath was heavy.
He told me that during his stay in India after his years at our Zen monastery, something clicked and he found a peace inside that had never left him. “This stuff works,” he said. “Somehow everything I’ve been doing all these years comes down to the work I did with Roshi.”
He played his new album for me. At the end, gorgeous, soft strings set the tone, lulling you into a drifting, pensive melancholy. Then his voice emerges with the wish for a treaty of love. He sat in silence before me, this aged, tiny, impeccably dressed poet, his black fedora tilted lightly on his head, his voice booming all around us.
When I heard those final lines, it was like he split me open with a ray of light. My face grew hot, my heart pounded. I was sobbing inside. I knew he was saying goodbye to all of us.
http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ ... preciation
11/11/2016 by Chris Willman
Why he agreed to come out in public and chat for a bit less than a month before the end is a mystery. Maybe someone on his business side decided it was a bad idea to release a record while making the world think you’re on your deathbed, even if you kind of are. Maybe he had a fleeting recovering where he really did feel like he had another album or two in him, as he said he did in that conversation -- always with the addendum “God willing” (or “but one never knows”). Maybe he thought he’d gotten a little too Zen about it all and decided raging just a little against the dying of the light is OK. But it was heartening to be in that room, see his broad smile, and hear him say things like, “If you’re lucky, things deepen between members of a family. If you’re not lucky, they don’t. If you’re unlucky, they deteriorate. I’ve been lucky. I have close relationships with my few friends and my family members and my grandkids. So, so far, so good. I hope it continues to deepen. I have every faith that it will.”
Producer PATRICK LEONARD, who worked on Cohen’s final albums, recalls the singer’s tireless work ethic in the face of illness, As told to Camille Dodero.
I wasn’t with Leonard when he died, but I’m certain that until he couldn’t hold a pen in his hand, he was working. That’s the way Leonard was. He had been weak and ill for a while, but he was working all the time. The hours in a day that he could work were narrowing, but the determination was still there. I think it was clear that the end was in sight, but I don’t think his October release You Want It Darker is him leaning toward mortality: Go back and listen to his first album [1967’s Songs of Leonard Cohen] — there are mortality issues there. The songs we were working on before he died were really light R&B, beautiful Leonard Cohen love songs. Another project we were working on was an extension of You Want It Darker’s reprise of “Treaty.” We had 10 arrangements written and half of them recorded already -- beautiful melodic arrangements -- without his voice on them. Maybe they will see the light of day. I don’t know.
http://www.jewishjournal.com/religion/a ... hens_rabbi
by Rabbi Mordecai Finley
Posted on Nov. 16, 2016 at 3:54 pm
I last saw Leonard Cohen a few months ago. He had asked me to come to his place. After brief pleasantries, he said to me, “Reb, I am getting ready to shuffle off this mortal coil. I have some questions for you.”
He and I had spoken about “Hamlet” more than a few times. I knew the play and especially the soliloquy were close to his heart, and, at that moment, closer than ever. He knew he was soon not to be, at least in this frail frame. I remember thinking to myself, “I have to remember every word we say. ”One day, with his children’s permission, maybe I will be able to write about that conversation that began with “Hamlet.”
He sent me poetry he was working on (I think I was on a list) until the week before he passed. He wrote me on Friday that he wished he could come to shul to hear my new series of talks on a deep dive into Genesis. He died on Monday.
