Sad for the artistic loss but also glad he died at peace after a rich life spent doing what he loved till the last moment. He joins a special list, alongside Hintjens who also passed recently, of those who manage to strip the dread from death and stress the importance of 'tidying up' over passive acceptance as one enters the final days.
“The big change is the proximity to death,” he said. “I am a tidy kind of guy. I like to tie up the strings if I can. If I can’t, also, that’s O.K. But my natural thrust is to finish things that I’ve begun.”
“For some odd reason,” he went on, “I have all my marbles, so far. I have many resources, some cultivated on a personal level, but circumstantial, too: my daughter and her children live downstairs, and my son lives two blocks down the street. So I am extremely blessed. I have an assistant who is devoted and skillful. I have a friend like Bob and another friend or two who make my life very rich. So in a certain sense I’ve never had it better. . . . At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliché, but it’s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.” [0]
"In a pursuit like rock ’n’ roll, which is entirely devoted to redemption, Cohen’s ideas were not only old but radical. His peers all insisted that salvation was at hand. To go to a Doors concert was to stare at the lithe messiah undressing on stage and believe that it was entirely possible to break on through to the other side. To see Cohen play was to gawk at an aging Jew telling you that life was hard and laced with sorrow but that if we love each other and fuck one another and have the mad courage to laugh even when the sun is clearly setting, we’ll be just all right. To borrow a metaphor from a field never too far from Cohen’s heart, theology, Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin, and the rest were all good Christians, and they set themselves up as the redeemers who had to die for the sins of their fans. Cohen was a Jew, and like Jews he believed that salvation was nothing more than a lot of hard work and a small but sustainable reward."
That article contains a wonderful story about how he calmed a hostile audience in the middle of the night at a festival in 1970. I recommend it. (Search for "Isle of Wight", the story starts there.)
Thank you for sharing this. If anybody wants a tear in their eye, read this article while listening to his latest album. And, optionally, a glass of wine.
I have cried more tears listening to Leonard Cohen than all the other tears I've cried combined, his music, his words, his poems have always resonated deeply within me. He truly is my favourite artist. We listened to him daily in my dad's house and I grew to find an incredibly amount of peace in his voice. Love the HN community seems to like him as much. rest well sir.
If you have Spotify, there's a playlist there published by Spotify called "This Is: Leonard Cohen", it's one of the best sweeps over his career that I've seen so far.
He may not have been as prolific as Dylan, but he also had pretty much no duds.
I'm thankful to have his work seeing me through this life. Especially so these days.
I took my mum to see him live in Brisbane back in 2013. At the end of the show he thanked his backing band. And then he thanked, by name, the sound engineers, the lighting operators, the cameraman filming for the tour DVD, and various other staff. One of the greatest musicians to have lived but also a genuine and decent person.
I saw Leonard Cohen on his last tour. He opened every show on the tour by saying "I don’t know if we’ll meet again, but tonight we’ll give you everything we got."
About 4 years ago I was scanning my twitter timeline and I noticed someone posted a picture from a Leonard Cohen concert that night in Montreal. What?!? I hadn't heard anything about it and my heart sank. After a frantic search I found out he was playing the next night and I bought myself a ticket.
I went by myself, which is unusual for me when it comes to concerts. He played for 3 hours and needless to say, it was incredible.
During "Suzanne", the room (a hockey arena) was completely dark except for a spotlight shining up from below casting a giant shadow behind him. Combined with such a haunting song it made for one of the most beautiful musical experiences of my life.
That turned out to be the last time he played here and I'm so thankful to have gotten a chance to hear him play his songs.
Way too many great lines to quote, but these ones comfort me:
"But you'll be hearing from me baby, long after I'm gone
I'll be speaking to you sweetly from a window in the Tower of Song"
EDIT: I found a video from a different concert that gives a better idea of what it looked like, though the link above is a better performance imo, + much better audio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emgt62vls3o
(also love the single comment, which I ran through google translate: "What is still the magic of this man? I am not a sentimental dragon, but it goes straight to the heart.")
> During "Suzanne", the room (a hockey arena) was completely dark except for a spotlight shining up from below casting a giant shadow behind him. Combined with such a haunting song it made for one of the most beautiful musical experiences of my life.
I think that what got me from the concert (which I saw in Chicago) was when he dropped to his knees to sing. What a privilege it was to see such a giant perform.
Interestingly, I was thinking about him on the subway just before surfacing to see above thread pop up. Very glad that I got to catch up on his bio (and to see him live a few years back) before his departure.
"Hineni" means "here I am" in a literal sense too - Cohen happens to be making a biblical/spiritual reference there, but like most lines from the (Hebrew) bible, the language is very plain and straightforward.
So sad. I saw him in Manhattan. My wife got tickets as a Christmas present, knowing I had been excited when we were traveling in Barcelona and he was there that week. (Couldn't get tickets -- didn't even try.) So we showed up at Madison Square Garden and I had no idea what we were seeing -- and there were no markings to give away the surprise! It was not until the show started that I knew it was a Leonard Cohen concert. It was an awesome evening.
If you want a lover
I'll do anything you ask me to
And if you want another kind of love
I'll wear a mask for you
If you want a partner, take my hand, or
If you want to strike me down in anger
Here I stand
I'm your man
80 is my threshold digit for sadness. If you reached it without long debilitating condition or traumatic life, then, at least if I had the pleasure to get there, no complaints.
I never thought about this ... I've always wanted to smoke (the mechanics of the whole thing please(s) me on some level) but I suffer from asthma and a mild disinclination to lung cancer. Mind you, when I say "smoke", I mean the real thing, not vaping.
Don't mind me, though. I hope I outgrow this at some point.
From asthmatic to asthmatic, I never liked the slightest thing about smoking. Maybe the shape .. that's it. Last year I had a health accident, cardiovascular and lung in deep trouble, and for some reason, all of a sudden I started having strong smoking envy. Considering I avoided smoking because of asthma, being in lower health condition made these "cravings" somehow absurd. But there was something smoking represented: inhaling a gas that made your mind peaceful, just like proper breathing does, and my health deprived me of this, so smoking felt like the only substitute.
Same. I think the juxtaposition between the cohen version throughout and the 4 non blondes (?) version at the end made me love it so much more.
I feel that many singers just sing the words, and sometimes they're pretty, sometimes sad. It was like raw emotion poured out every time Leonard Cohen opened his mouth.
There was recently a lovely interview with Leonard Cohen on Fresh Air [1], from which I learned that he had also spent some time a Zen monk. The article mentions this in passing, but there's more detail in the interview.
> While never abandoning Judaism, the Sabbath-observing songwriter attributed Buddhism to curbing the depressive episodes that had always plagued him.
RIP. Listening to his brand new release You Want It Darker (via Spotify HQ on my Audio Technica ADG1Xs, Soundblaster ZXR sound card). I can't get over the quality of the production and how utterly perfect his voice still is .. right until the very end. In light of recent events, this song is uncanny. What a masterpiece to finish a magnificent career.
Interesting, and a stellar job. I could easily see this becoming a reference track / album for hi-fi affectionados, bringing depths and detail to my new headset that I didn't know it had. (I upgraded a few months ago from the ATH-ADG1s.)
Easily one of the greatest songwriters of the generation. As Dylan said, ‘As far as I’m concerned, Leonard, you’re Number 1. I’m Number Zero.’
His songs are dark and poetic and really keep you entranced. I'm glad he released his last effort (Leaving the Table is a great one for the occasion) and seemed totally at peace in his New Yorker feature.
I like Cohen's. It's different from all the Wainwright-style covers, and I once heard he'd written over a hundred verses for it that he alternates on concerts. I wish they were available somewhere, but I suspect I would have had to have been there.
I'm not enough of a fan to know how many of those verses he did sing in concert, but I do know that I have two recordings of him singing the song and they only have one verse in common. Weirdly, this verse ISN'T in the Jeff Buckley version. And it's easily my favorite:
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah
The reason I like Cohen's the best is because of the backing singers. I think this song works best when there's the graceful and harmonious support of the backup singers... it adds to and "load balances" the hugely majestic tones of this song! I think when KD Lang or anyone does it solo, they're taking on too much, and while they might do a fine job, it's a lot for one person to sing. Just my thoughts!
A sad day. I'm a big fan, had the privilege of seeing him perform four times and I've named my daughter Suzanne.
I cant be sure, but back in 2008 when he played "Democracy is coming to the USA" he seemed to be delighted that Obama won. IMHO this part of the song is more appropriate for Leonard's last days on earth: "I love the country but I can't stand the scene".
RIP. Those looking to try Cohen for the first time (or wanting to rediscover him) should listen to Live in London (2009), which IMHO is one of the best live albums ever. Great songs and some witty banter in between.
I wanted to post some of his lyrics as a comment, but it turns out you can take any rhyming subset and it is appropriate for almost any occasion. (Not kidding, try it yourself).
They're ambiguous so that helps.
"But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye."
Big fan of Leonard Cohen, big loss. I think his Isle of Wight performance is one of the greatest of all time considering what was going on the crowd and how he used his showmanship and calming music to turn things around:
Just making a general point here that this event has surfaced..
I dont get why people are so emotional when famous artists die. Posting on facebook and whatnot..
We werent personal friends with them, so it wont affect our lives in any way. Their works are still as available as ever, and still as great as ever. We can still listen to their music every day.
If they died old then they've had a good run to make a good body of great work that can be their direct legacy for hundreds of years. Few people achieve that.
My father once explained to me, when I was very young and my 12-year old cousin had died of cancer, that the reason I was in pain and suffering was not because my cousin was dead and he would not be enjoying his next birthday, or that he would not be coming with us for the next vacation.
The reason I was in pain was because I was not going to enjoy him anymore. In the end, he was dead already. He could not feel or enjoy anything anymore, so why be sad for him?
So maybe when someone that through art or knowledge or whatever touches people in a certain way, and then that person passes away, it makes people sad because they will not be able to enjoy any new music, any new takes on life, any new works, etc.
Yes, we now have YouTube and digital media so we can keep listening to John Coltrane and Leonard Cohen, but the fact that we won't be able to keep growing up with them makes it painful. Even if they are not your friends, they are people you admire. They are people that will no longer produce any "new wisdom" for you to absorb and savor.
When someone like say, Dennis Ritchie died, we (HN, engineers, <other placeholder>) got sad because there would be no new insights coming from this great mind. He's not going to be able to comment on, say, SpaceX's first trip to Mars or whatever.
So in the end we are the ones deprived of these great minds' wisdom and thus we are the ones that ache and suffer.
That's my take on it at least. Maybe it's not what's actually happening but it kinda make sense to me :)
"We werent personal friends with them, so it wont affect our lives in any way"
Life is about the search for value, and most often you find that in other people, their ideas, and their lives. Singers and other artists selectively create a public representation of their value-judgments, and people who find those values resonate in them come to love those artists in a very personal way.
> I dont get why people are so emotional when famous artists die. Posting on facebook and whatnot.. We werent personal friends with them, so it wont affect our lives in any way.
I mentioned in another thread how touching it was that Cohen always addressed his audience as 'friends'. It is a little thing, but he wanted to connect with us personally—he was a poet much more than a performer, I think—and he did, and I feel it as a personal loss even if I was never physically any closer to the man than one seat at one of his concerts.
If you don't feel it, or any loss of anyone famous, personally, then that's totally reasonable; but why try to dismiss others' sense of loss?
My mother knows I have been a longtime fan of Leonard Cohen. I received some texts this morning saying she hoped I wasn't sad. Not at all - I presume he lived a great life. His death doesn't affect me and it doesn't change my enjoyment of his music or writing. Those are works created in certain moments of time, that's what matters and cannot be erased.
Some artists die having more to make, more to say. Bowie or Prince could have had a dozen more albums, and thousands more design ideas, photos, and poignant commentaries. Those moments of joy could have surfaced here and there over decades, but instead they're all gone in one day.
Leonard Cohen wasn't as young as some of them, but he was still active. I looked forward to his thoughts and music on many things.
It's a widely held sentiment that 2016 has killed more long-running celebrities than any other year. Is there any factual basis to this, or is it just confirmation bias?
I read someplace that the phenomenon of modern celebrities and the communication networks / styles necessary to develop those celebrities started to take off at a time that coincides with those ever-increasing numbers of celebrities to reach their terminal years now. Unfortunately I cannot find the original source, but perhaps somebody else knows what it was.
I think there were a few celebrity deaths that were really unexpected, especially Prince (who died of an accidental drug overdose) and David Bowie (who hadn't revealed he had cancer and outwardly seemed to be healthy and active), so they hit people especially hard.
And those came on top of the incredibly bitter political situation in the U.S., the Brexit vote and refugee-related strife in the E.U., rising authoritarianism in Russia and China, and a number of high-profile terrorist attacks and some serious natural disasters.
Maybe related to a special post war period that gave birth to icons so many of us shared through the rised of nascent mainstream mass scale medias.
More than a dreadful year, it's also the passing of a generation, of a world. Sometimes I think that we had it too easy and we produced nothing good as a replacement for being somehow spoiled brats.
It seems like so many of my favorite musicians and songwriters have passed in the last few years and its a struggle to figure out why. I'm a millenial with a wide taste in music from the early 20th century blues to contemporary EDM but it seems like the musicians whose talent you could just sense with every note and lyric are rapidly disappearing. I should be too young for this kind of cynicism but its an easy trap to fall into when comparing Dylan, Bowie, or Cohen to some song on the pop charts or an artist in the overwhelming field of independent musicians.
It's a sad day but I can't help but marvel at the universe. It is a kind of unique, rare beauty when a life-long artist like Bowie or Cohen close out their final chapter by releasing an album within weeks of their death.
>It seems like so many of my favorite musicians and songwriters have passed in the last few years and I'm struggling to figure out why.
Because people generally die, and your favorite musicans are all several decades older than you, and thus close to the median life expectancy?
Assuming you are not into 2010's teen pop of course.
If one likes pre-war blues, for example, almost all of their favorite musicians would not be around anymore.
>I'm a millenial with a wide taste in music from the early 20th century blues classics to contemporary EDM but it seems like the musicians whose talent you could just sense with every note and lyric are rapidly disappearing.
Well, not many "contemporary EDM" musicians are rapidly disappearing. OTOH, Dylan, Bowie or Cohen were all 65+.
This is sad. I heard about this listening to the radio this morning while waiting for the school bus with my son. I introduced my (future) wife to his music and our wedding song was "Dance me to the end of love." I gave her the Matisse coffee-table book set to its lyrics (https://www.amazon.com/Dance-End-Love-Art-Poetry/dp/19321839...).
I always wanted to meet him and now, I'll never have the chance.
About a week ago commented with a friend of mine his last album was absolutely wonderful and how awesome that he was 80 years old and still creating with the quality that he was. He was the musician that touched the most, others I sort of grew out of but always came back to Leonard - I suspect that there hasn't been a month in the last 15 years where I haven't listened to him. As an aside also discovered Irving Layton, a poet, through him.
If you haven't heard his songs, either the early folky ones or the post-80s electronic-ballads, definitely check them out. They are songs for grown-ups (he started his career as a singer around 34 years old after all).
Very sad. Also sad that the very first thing I did when I saw a mention of it on Facebook was google "leonard cohen death hoax". Thanks and farewell, Mr. Cohen.
I feel with you. I was born into this world with Leonard Cohen in the background. Still "the Captain" make my mother feel in a very special way that I cannot relate to.
A relative of mine did interviews with both Cohen and Marianne Ihlen (the Marianne from his song)[1].
Cohen has a special place in my heart, his humor, darkness, humbleness[2] and poetic aide is for me very inspirational and aspirational and the thought of him make me choose life when I get depressed.
Leonard's music had an uncanny sense of timing, both musical and cultural. He referenced the external, political world, indirectly - not through selfishly inward bullshit, like many of his contemporaries, but by sifting it through relationships with others and his relationship to the divine.
As I am writing this, the next article in hackernews is about Peter Thiel and his ascension to whatever office he is seeking in Trump's cabinet. His views on the damage women and minorities have done to Libertarianism (whatever that is), and how democracy is shit are well known, and I will let you judge how Palantir has benefited humanity.
The thing that gets me is his straight faced desire for immortality. Note that he doesn't wish for immortality for someone who is great, he wishes it for himself.
He was merely demonstrating the contrast between two people and doing so politely and in an eloquent way, whether you agree with him or not why should the mods be involved? And why should he be ashamed of himself/herself..
I think you're both right. Which means best to leave it alone and move on IMHO. The first sentence of his post about Cohen is nicely put, "uncanny timing" and all that. Then he spoiled it with a whiny point on politics.
Cohen said something funny about his time spent meditating at a zen buddhist monastery in the hills. He said of the experience that "on a superficial level it basically gets you to stop whining"..."it makes whining the least appropriate response to suffering".*
In some ways it's natural to _reduce_ human experience to its commodified representation (Can't we have Hacker News without the $foo??). But the truth is that there is no boundary between human experience. Your economic, social, and spiritual lives are, in actuality, indistinct.
Oh fuck right off, will you? Why do you even care enough to comment? If you don't like it, simply don't upvote the story, don't click on it, don't comment on it.
The system will self correct, in a matter of hours. It's only a single item in 30, it's not that big of a deal.
Just realise that while you might not be, others can be affected by news like this. Not to play the "us hackers" card, but I do feel a lot closer to some people on this board (as in, I share their thoughts, sometimes) than other forms of media.
I loved Cohen. I, and it would appear, many other commenters, have spent many a night listening to his craft, in one way or another, performed by one artist or another, and it has helped us introspect, contemplate, decide, commit, fight and flee.
Cohen, among other greats, alive or dead, through the quality of their wordsmithing, have enabled more humans to connect with their surroundings, and understand the world around them than most education systems have prepared them for. Or maybe those humans were just helped in finding the strength to keep on going blindly.
In other words, just shut the hell up, and allow your fellow humans (and other species) a moment to pay their respects. Guess I had some karma to burn.
> Oh fuck right off, will you [...] just shut the hell up
We ban accounts that comment like this, so please don't do it again.
The other user was wrong both to be snarky and to say the story didn't belong here, but what you did is considerably worse. If you're going to reply to a provocative comment here, you need to increase the civility level, not crater it.
> Just realise that while you might not be, others can be affected by news like this. Not to play the "us hackers" card, but I do feel a lot closer to some people on this board (as in, I share their thoughts, sometimes) than other forms of media.
I came to work today and chatted with a co-worker about Cohen. We both like music, so it was a natural topic. I read through the comments to this story, and found 3 threads the mirrored the conversation I had with my work buddy. Not ones that were similar, but threads that actually developed along the same lines and points in the same order we discussed.
Please stop posting uncivil and unsubstantive comments to Hacker News. We ban accounts that comment like you've done in this thread.
HN has never been just for tech material, and there's a reason the site guidelines make that clear in the first paragraph. The story is entirely on topic. Please familiarize yourself with how HN actually works before making claims in its name.
“The big change is the proximity to death,” he said. “I am a tidy kind of guy. I like to tie up the strings if I can. If I can’t, also, that’s O.K. But my natural thrust is to finish things that I’ve begun.”
“For some odd reason,” he went on, “I have all my marbles, so far. I have many resources, some cultivated on a personal level, but circumstantial, too: my daughter and her children live downstairs, and my son lives two blocks down the street. So I am extremely blessed. I have an assistant who is devoted and skillful. I have a friend like Bob and another friend or two who make my life very rich. So in a certain sense I’ve never had it better. . . . At a certain point, if you still have your marbles and are not faced with serious financial challenges, you have a chance to put your house in order. It’s a cliché, but it’s underestimated as an analgesic on all levels. Putting your house in order, if you can do it, is one of the most comforting activities, and the benefits of it are incalculable.” [0]
[0] http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/17/leonard-cohen-m...