artist v. con-artist(s): an unhappy battle brewing

[MarieM]

Folks,

I would point out that both of the articles that have been published about this were written by Colorado "reporters" from the perspective of one of their precious own, Greenberg, coming under fire from an evil California (land of fruits and nuts) celebrity. Many of you saw Leonard's house on Hydra and in Montreal. Jarkko has pictures of his home in LA. Celebrity lifestyle? We know better. But Colorado readers, who love when celebrities spend money in their state but hate when they come to live, might not know better and the articles were written for them.

The first public word on this came from Greenberg himself in a very self-serving, obnoxious press release announcing the filing of a lawsuit. Who issues a press release to celebrate filing a lawsuit? For most of us, it would be a sad occasion. Apparently, for Greenberg and company it was a chance to try to get the PR upper hand and attempt to embarrass a distinguish and respected man. It didn't work.

As much as we try to understand what is happening here, we aren't privy to the facts. Those will be revealed in court. The "facts" we have been presented are one-sided. Personally, I know what I know. Leonard is a good man and wouldn't falsely accuse any one of anything. You can call this hero worship. I call it years of research. I've read just about everything ever written on the man, talked to people who know him well, and have had some personal (and always wonderful) email interaction with the man. I think I've done a little more research than some Colorado "reporter" who probably never heard of Leonard Cohen before this week.

Marie

[Nan]

Megan2c2b

Just because you have emails from a celebrity and met them once doesn't mean you know them. Leonard would say that he "knew" Kelly. He "knew" her for years. And she robbed him blind. Remember that old saying? "It's what you do when nobody's looking that reveals your true character."

So getting an gracious email from Leonard means very little in terms of what his character really is.

It seems to me that Kory (and possibly Leonard) wanted Agile to falsify the truth in order to get the insurance company to fork over his losses.
And Agile wasn't going for that.

That is why Dr. Freud's question is an important one. Did Greenberg in 1996 suggest or urge Leonard to set up this corporation with Kelly as POA and Majority stockholder. Or was this Kory's idea. Or was it Leonard's whacky idea.

I'm sorry but if Kelly stole the money. It's Kelly who should be in jail. Why isn't she?

Why, because Leonard had turned over Power of Attorney to her. In the eyes of the LAW Kelly is Leonard when it comes to the finances and business arrangements. Leonard was crazy to do this.

The embezzlement is nothing new. It happens all the time. Hundreds of singers through the years have been robbed by managers.

What's different and disturbing is the SWAT TEAM and the involuntary psychiatric incarceration and the drugging. That is WEIRD.

[Nan]

And I really doubt it's an issue of Colorado against California. And as for lavish lifestyles - Who knows? Seeing photographs of two homes, excuse me, three homes, means nothing. But I still see this as something Kelly did and caused. Not Agile. If I were Agile I wouldn't take the fall for it either.

[MarieM]

Nan, I was trying to suggest that Greenberg was framing the issues in this matter with the help of a self-serving press release and two reporters in the Colorado media. We have not heard Leonard's side and wisely, he apparently will try his case in a courtroom and not in the media.

[~greg]

I don't know. If Agile is liable, it may be on account
of their stated "AGILE GROUP PHILOSOPHY"

At Agile Group, we go beyond conventional approaches in our
relentless pursuit of investment opportunities. With over 20 years of
successful investment experience on behalf of clients and the
collective insights of over 100 alternative investment managers,
we are vigilant at identifying and offsetting investment risks to provide
multi-strategy portfolios designed to make money in all market
conditions. We are deeply committed to delivering consistent, positive
returns for affluent individual and institutional investors, partnering with
their advisors to ensure that our offerings contribute to investors’ long
term wealth and well being.
- http://www.agilefunds.com/index_home.html

What bears repeating in that is this:

...partnering with their advisors
to ensure that our offerings contribute to investors’
[NOTE: NOT "ADVISOR'S" !]
long term wealth and well being.

Kelly may have had power of attorney, but there
are surely implicit and explicit limits on what that "power" means.

See eg this, on the
"Limitations on Power of Attorney"
(--was a dead link, but Google had it cached here:
http://64.233.187.104/search?q=cache:Oj ... y%22&hl=en
)

[Young dr. Freud]

Presumably you admire, or have admired, LC's art.

Yep.

Presumably you can appreciate that it took an extraordinarily
sensitive individual (,perhaps with concomitant neurosis,)
to have created it.

Yep.

And yet you fault him, and don't see the contradiction in it,
for his not being the Uncle Scrooge McDuck, with nothing
better to do than make, guard, and count his money!

There is no contradiction in being an artist and being wise with your money.

But these things are incompatible.

Says who? He's Leonard Cohen not Leonard Gump.

Perhaps you do handle your own finances exceedingly well.

Yes. Would you like to join my pyramid?

And, after all, artistic creativity,
and financial cupidity, ARE inversely proportional.
(wouldn't you admit?)

No, I would not admit. Artists can be as avaricious as anybody else.

However how can you fault him (--LC!--)
for not being a hard boiled cynic about women?

I mean, how can YOU???

Excuse me, but am I understanding this question correctly? Do you accuse me of faulting Leonard for trusting Kelley Lynch with his finances because of their former romantic relationship. Or merely because Lynch is a woman and not a man. I am not quite clear on what you mean. Her gender has nothing to do with her culpability or non-culpability.

However, you have now set my mind going in a new direction. Let us say you have your great romance (for you anyway) with a poet-artist. But the Poet-artist's passions cool (as they always do) and it is over. But the Poet-artist gives you a job in the office. A sucession of young beautiful creatures are paraded in front of you year after year. You hide it very well but perhaps there is some lingering jealousy...perhaps a little resentment. After all, you're doing the typing and filing and the boss is... doing the seductive Poet-artist thing. Perhaps the Boss is taking you for granted. Perhaps, you think....well, I deserve it. Before you know it your hands are in the cookie jar. (Please notice that I did not make this scenario gender specific.)

The only big difference in this case is that the Boss took the lid off the cookie jar and said, "Please, take as many as you like."

But any psychoanalyst who can't see through that
- who doesn't know the difference between the defense mechanisms
of a true bleary eyed idealistic romantic that never could
"grow-up" in the real world (- however furious that makes you at him)
on the one hand, and the affects of a brain-stunted sociopath on the other
- had better turn over his couch, and get a job as an expert
tv commentator psychologist instead.

Leonard may be bleary-eyed. But he is all grown-up. It is pure poppycock that he is so idealist and romantic that he can't function in the bad old real world. As for defense mechanisms...he better get rid of that Kory.

As a Jew you should be particularly sensitive to LC's
subconscious guilt for being a Cohen of the tribe of Levi.

It's what's behind all of his self-destructive behavior.

I don't think Leonard has ever felt guilty for being a Levite. It's always been a source of pride to him.

His losing his money has nothing to do with Levictus or heave offerings or singing Hava Nagila.


YdF

[lizzytysh]

This is no surprize to anyone, I know, but I feel compelled to say it, anyway. My time has been so friggin' limited, that I have not had the chance to read every, dirty, little detail. Yet, I don't need to. The one thing I know reiterates what Megan has expressed. I know ~ for a fact ~ call it intuition, call it whatever you like ~ that Leonard is an honourable man, and that this media mess is just that. As Megan has expressed. the media plays to its audience and the reporter has no idea upon whom he is 'reporting.' If Leonard assesses that Kelley misused funds ~ in misaccordance with their original agreement and his trust ~ then that's all there is to it.

~ Elizabeth

[Young dr. Freud]

Dear Lizzytysh,

Remember when we first met and I told you to take 2 aspirin and call me in the morning. Well, it's going to take more than a couple of Excedrin to get you sorted out this time.

First, read every dirty little detail.

Second, intuition isn't what it's cracked up to be.

If Leonard assesses that Kelley misused funds ~ in misaccordance with their original agreement and his trust ~ then that's all there is to it.

Third, that's not "all there is to it". Not by a long shot.

YdF

[lightning]

Does anyone understand why he gave Kelly power of attorney? Usually this kind of think happens when someone feels he soon may not be able to function for himself, e.g. when he gets a cancer diagnosis. Could this have to do with renouncing money to follow a religious path? Did he have to disconnect from his money to go to the monastery, or did he just not want to be bothered with it? And why did she turn on him? Simple greed? Fury of a woman scorned?

[Young dr. Freud]

Did he have to disconnect from his money to go to the monastery,

Leonard once said in an interview, when asked about his "ordination" that Roshi said he should do it for tax purposes. This may have been one of Leonard's little jokes. But I bet tax dodging, --- a time honored tradition--- is at the bottom of all this garbage.


YdF

[lizzytysh]

Well, I never did take two aspirin, and I never did see you in the morning; and I stand resolute that the muck and the myre are just that; that whatever arrangements Leonard made were in trust of Kelley; and that Kelley violated that trust.

Leonard has lived too long and been through too much; and he knows how ethical issues can revisit; and how karma doesn't have to wait until the next lifetime. I don't know what really happened. However, I do know in whom I invest my trust with these issues. As I recall, Leonard was in a somewhat vulnerable head state at the time he went into the monastery ~ to get to spend real time with Roshi, while he had the chance; yet coming out of a long-term relationship with Rebecca.

~ Lizzy

[~greg]

As a Jew you should be particularly sensitive to LC's
subconscious guilt for being a Cohen of the tribe of Levi.

It's what's behind all of his self-destructive behavior.

I don't think Leonard has ever felt guilty for being a Levite. It's always been a source of pride to him.

His losing his money has nothing to do with Levictus or heave offerings or singing Hava Nagila.

oh god no,
- i really put that badly didn't I?

It's not what I meant at all.

Mabye I've got just enough time to fix the impression that must have left.

--
I certainly didn't mean that LC ever felt guilt about *being* a Levite.
Good god!

And I'm certain he did feel pride, among other things, about it.

But the thing of it is:
-- to the exact same extent that he felt pride about it,
he must also have felt guilt about it.

Because I'm referring to the guilt of reneging on the duties prescribed of a Levite,
-- as detailed in the legal documents of the bible.

However, I realize now, "guilt" is probably not the right word for it, -for what I mean.


What's the word for the way Gen. Patton felt when WWII came to an end?

One of the astronauts, scheduled for a moon mission
--practiced for it for years - gave up everything for it.

Then it was scrubbed. Permanently. It never happened.

So he had a break down. Which lasted two weeks.
The exact time the mission would have taken.

And for the duration of it he confined himself to a ward bed,
and went through all the motions, every detail, that he would
have on the mission.

Like a Levite without a liturgy -

And I sing this for the captain
Whose ship has not been built
For the mother in confusion
Her cradle still unfilled

For the heart with no companion
For the soul without a king
For the prima ballerina
Who cannot dance to anything

Simply to be called an "American" makes me (the least of them)
- feel both pride and guilt.
(But you wouldn't know anything about that would you.
[--insert haughty contemptuous emoticon] )

And I think people who actually think of themselves as "American"
- must feel even greater guilt.

But perhaps not.
Perhaps that was a very stupid example.

Anyway, the bible is a very big book, a very well known book,
with a reputation for being The Book.
The closer people are to being its actual subject matter, I should think,
the more its weight must weigh on them.

LC's father might not have applied much pressure, if any,
to LC to follow tradition. However he died when LC was
too young to know for sure that he never would.
So LC must have completed his gestalt closure on him,
with more archetypical models. And then go on to be
haunted by them.

All sons feel a certain type of guilt proportional
to how far they wander from their father's apple tree.
This is clearest when they're toddlers and crawl off
a certain distance. Then they suddenly seem to be
yanked back by an invisible tether, which you can
almost see. What's most interesting about it is
that the tether has a precise length, -proportional
to the kid's age. And that it stretches over the years.
But never breaks.

LC does follow his "father's trade" in one certain sense.
And it seemed so significant to him that he does
that he repeats that he does 4 times in a row:

I follow my father's trade
Yes I follow my father's trade
Yes I follow my father's trade
Yes I follow my father's trade

Which must mean that he feels guilt about not
following his father's trade in other more significant ways.

I'm sure that lots of Levites likewise left the liturgy for the laity.
- LC being not alone in that.

Just maybe not very many
that are as G-d conscious as LC.
--------------------

In any case, you couldn't be farther wrong about Hava Nagila
than if you'd tried.

More coins have fallen out of more pockets dancing
to Hava Nagila than any other song! It's put far
too many in the poor house, it has.
And that's a fact.

[Henning]

I don't think that WWII or Levictus (whatever that is) has much to do with this misery. As Lizzy stated correctly ("Leonard was in a somewhat vulnerable head state") by the time in the mid 90's Lenny was more than ready for the monastery. I realized that yesterday when for the first time I listened to the much praised Zurich bootlegs of the 93 tour in my car. Arrangements, intonations aren't well chosen - Leonard is struggling thru the songs (reciting the song lyric before the song starts is something I personally don't like at all). In every line that he sings you can hear him say "Get me out of here". And once he had reached Mt. Baldy I guess that every breath he drew was "Hallelujah". So it must have been this desolate situation when he probably gave too much power to his management. Leonard is a family man though as an adult he seldom ever lived a daily life with a family for long. He's keeping his ex's and his friends in his life if possible. Big family, so to speak. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't and sometimes shit simply happens.

[lightning]

Does anyone need 8 million dollars to retire on? What did she spend it on? You probably can buy a Greek Island for less than that? How does giving someone else power of attorney reduce ones taxes?

[Adrian]

This story requires a financial, rather than a general, reporter to probe its layers. Either that, or it will be that we'll have to wait for the full truth to come out through the court process.

According to its public filings, Agile appears to have had a curious relationship with, at least, one pair of sub-advisors in recent years. Upon registering its Agile Multi-Strategy Fund, the group reported that its initial sub-advisor was Sage Capital of Sarasota, Florida (by agreement dated August 8, 2003). By October 14, 2003, only two months later, Sage was no longer mentioned - and, in its place was something called Battenkill Asset Management - which listed an address in New York City.

According to a filing with the SEC: " On November 18, 2004, the Company (Agile) determined that it would be in the best interests of the Fund to have the sub-advisory relationship with Battenkill terminated and such termination occurred effective November 22, 2004." Whatever was going on in late 2004 that resulted in this happening is not explained by the, (perhaps aptly named), Agile group.

Now, these dealings may not be connected in any way to the problems encountered by Leonard Cohen, however, until someone who understands such business digs into these sort of details, it won't be clear what the broker-dealer Greenberg and his associates may be doing...