To Lenny

With the possible exception of my mother and father, there is no single human being who has had as much influence on my life as Leonard Cohen. I hadn't realized how true that actually is until very recently.

I am told that as a baby, my father would sing to me from "Songs of Love and Hate" and other old school "Lenny" albums. Of course, that was mixed with songs like "Egg Sucking Dog" for a good dose of country flavor. The argument could be made that my infantile exposure to such a rich and forlorn collection of songs may have encouraged my current state of highly romanticized, highly eclectic pessimism. The argument could also be made that Lenny and the like worked as lullabies because I was a romantic and forlorn baby. Who can say?

I've spent more nights than I care to remember listening to Lenny sing about the brutal and unrelenting beauty of this cruel and amazing life. I remember when I first discovered "New Skin for an Old Ceremony", back in the before-time when one had to buy a CD in a store, like a caveman. I remember being surrounded by the darkness of the night. I was so tired of the abuse and failure that my young life had offered me up 'til that point. It was a time during which I contemplated suicide so often that the idea was more of a "when" than an "if". I remember Lenny's voice reaching out through the darkness as I lay on the sofa of my parents' living room, saying,

"I asked my father, I said 'Father, change my name. The one I'm using now is covered up with fear and filth and cowardice and shame'."

More than anything else, with those lines I knew that I wasn't alone in feeling deserted by the ruined idea of a purposeful creator and an idealized destiny. Even as I was digesting the new-found feeling of commonality with another person that I had found, he hit me with the next line,

"He said, 'I locked you in this body. I meant it as a kind of trial. You can use it for a weapon, or to make some woman smile'."

Such a short phrase, yet it somehow encapsulated the entirety of my teen angst. It was through that line that my young dreams metamorphosed from the stuff of superheroes and socialist upheaval to a practical, yet highly romanticized desire to intensely love another person.

I remember "Chelsea Hotel #2". I remember a time when I felt so tremendously ugly that I knew I was relegated to the bell-towers and make-shift sanctuaries of life, existing as some side product of humanity. But amidst my theoretical isolation I remember Lenny singing,

"I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel
you were famous, your heart was a legend.
You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception.
And clenching your fist for the ones like us
who are oppressed by the figures of beauty,
you fixed yourself, you said, "Well never mind,
we are ugly but we have the music."

And I knew that I had "the Music". Regardless of anything else that may be denied to me through the happenstance of genetics and environment, I had access to a beauty that couldn't be reached by people living inside the width of the Bell curve.

I remember "The Stranger Song". I remember the time shortly after I had tried and failed to love an amazing woman who, for a brief and incredible time, loved me more than anyone else in the world. She'd given her heart to people who'd all failed her, and I was just the newest. I remember sitting in a darkened dorm room and first hearing Lenny's words,

"It's true that all the men you knew were dealers
who said they were through with dealing
Every time you gave them shelter
I know that kind of man
It's hard to hold the hand of anyone
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender
who is reaching for the sky just to surrender.

And then sweeping up the jokers that he left behind
you find he did not leave you very much not even laughter
Like any dealer he was watching for the card
that is so high and wild
he'll never need to deal another
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger
He was just some Joseph looking for a manger.

And then leaning on your window sill
he'll say one day you caused his will
to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter
And then taking from his wallet
an old schedule of trains, he'll say
I told you when I came I was a stranger
I told you when I came I was a stranger."

In some ridiculous irony, my heart broke for her because I couldn't bring myself to love her the way she deserved. I loved her so much that I wanted to protect her from the fact that I could never love her enough. It was then that I decided that if I cannot actually love, I should not make the pretense of love.

I remember "Tower Of Song". I remember "Tower of Song" from a hundred different points in my life. I suppose I remember "Tower of Song" best from the time after I left school. I remember finding the first gray hair in my beard as I tried to convince myself to keep walking out the front door every day,

"Well my friends are gone and my hair is gray
I ache in the places where I used to play
And I'm crazy for love but I'm not coming on
I'm just paying my rent every day
In the Tower of Song
I said to Hank Williams: how lonely does it get?
Hank Williams hasn't answered yet
But I hear him coughing all night long
A hundred floors above me
In the Tower of Song

...

I see you standing on the other side
I don't know how the river got so wide
I loved you baby, way back when
And all the bridges are burning that we might have crossed
But I feel so close to everything that we lost
We'll never have to lose it again."

I remember Julie Christensen & Perla Batalla singing "Anthem" for the movie, "I'm Your Man". I remember that regardless of how much I may want life to conform to my idea of perfection, that I should accept the flawed and beautiful life that is around me, and that the cracks are how the light gets in,

"The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don't dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That's how the light gets in.

. . .

You can add up the parts
but you won't have the sum
You can strike up the march,
there is no drum
Every heart, every heart
to love will come
but like a refugee."

Lenny has saved my life more times than I can realistically say. I can say, without a doubt, that I would not be the person I am today without Leonard Cohen. Whether that is a good or a bad thing is irrelevant. I would rather be a living, shitty poet than a dead teenager. I'd rather be an enlightened fool than a fool in the light. I'd rather be with Lenny, than without.

To Lenny.