Leonard Cohen

But you don’t really care for music, do you? -Hallelujah

I do care for the music of Leonard Cohen. The words could stand alone, but just add the minor fall and the major lift, the violins and keyboards, and the voice. I imagine they may have heard his melancholy bass-baritone in the ancient temples of Jerusalem and Babylon. He sounds like Nick Cave and Lou Reed, but deeper, smarter, and sadder.

The songs I like best are all love songs, but they’re not happy by any means. Hallelujah is a love song, but it’s a violent, sexy sort of love. The relationship in this song isn’t very healthy, but it sounds religious and euphoric. When I first heard Dance Me to the End of Love, I thought it was about a couple reaching the end of their lives, Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in. I made the mistake of reading up on it and Mr. Cohen wrote it about the inmates who played the violins while their fellow Jews were marched into the gas chambers. It’s a lesson, take what you want from a song, not necessarily what the writer meant.

So Long, Marianne really is about him leaving his longtime lover. Her name was Marianne Ihlen and they spent most of the1960s together, but parted, and so it’s time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. They must have remained friends over the ensuing decades though, because as she lay dying, he sent her a letter telling her, “Well, Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.” He died a few short months after her death. Until the end, he still had love and the words to express it.

#onlinedating #middleaged #manspov

#middleageddating #lastfirstkiss #love

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