There was a review of a recent biography of Leonard Cohen up at the New York Times. I am fan of Cohen and his music for reasons that are good, bad and purely contingent. I listen to him, and to pop music in general, a lot less often than I used to but I still read about the guy when he pops up.
If prudence matters, and it does, then you will approach Leonard Cohen with misgivings. But his greatest failing by far, is as a lover. After introducing him as an "artful dodger" and telling us the news that Cohen had a sexual affair with Joni Mitchell (neither a small nor an exclusive club), novelist Amy Holmes, who writes the review, tells us this about Cohen:
And Holmes doesn't seem interested in the wreckage Cohen left behind him.
We all resist love now. You can see it in Cohen's "fictional sense of separation". He said that right around the time the Lemon Girl and I got married and there is no evidence that he has managed to get over this sense of separation, however fictional it might be, in the years since. We think heartbreak and failure are character building but Evelyn Waugh was absolutely right when he wrote,
If prudence matters, and it does, then you will approach Leonard Cohen with misgivings. But his greatest failing by far, is as a lover. After introducing him as an "artful dodger" and telling us the news that Cohen had a sexual affair with Joni Mitchell (neither a small nor an exclusive club), novelist Amy Holmes, who writes the review, tells us this about Cohen:
Women play a huge role in Cohen’s life — his need for female affection, along with his difficulty in remaining involved, is the stuff of legend.His "need for" love. That is telling. They play a huge roll in his life but what kind of roll did he play in theirs? She goes on to quote him:
“I had wonderful love, but I did not give back wonderful love,” he said. “I was unable to reply to their love. Because I was obsessed with some fictional sense of separation, I couldn’t touch the thing that was offered me, and it was offered me everywhere.”That is quite a confession. And yet both Holmes and Cohen seem to skim right over it. It's easy to say horrible things about yourself. And it's easy to blithely admit these things as way of justifying your continued failure. The person who says, "I always fail at X," is telling you that he means to fail again.
And Holmes doesn't seem interested in the wreckage Cohen left behind him.
We all resist love now. You can see it in Cohen's "fictional sense of separation". He said that right around the time the Lemon Girl and I got married and there is no evidence that he has managed to get over this sense of separation, however fictional it might be, in the years since. We think heartbreak and failure are character building but Evelyn Waugh was absolutely right when he wrote,
To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.Leonard Cohen doesn't have much time left but I hope and pray he manages it.
I remember Leonard Cohen, I don't know if I would call myself a fan but I enjoyed listening to him in my youth. I don't know when it started but at some point this "fictional sense of separation" among men was supposed to be cool. But most of us outgrew it, or we met somebody who helped us see the light.
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