Leonard Cohen died just hours before the 2016 election. As we approach the anniversary of his death, and as America once again readies itself to vote, I find myself thinking more and more about the night he died, and the world that went with him.
Cohen’s was a world where words had weight and could occupy a corporal mass in the ether. Hearing his words was like going through life without a sense of smell, and then suddenly, all at once, understanding that God and death contained a fragrance. Dylan wrote poetry for a generation. Cohen crafted verses like cathedrals where we could enter and live forever. When he died, it was as almost as if the words he had written collapsed in on themselves, vanished under their own weight, into a black hole that left the rest of us in an entirely different dimension.
The dimension we found ourselves post-2016 election was unfamiliar. This was a dimension where words were weightless. A world where the goal was to say anything, say it fast, and certainly never invest it with any meaning. All allegiance to telling the truth was suddenly abandoned. Not only abandoned; but accepted. What is most shocking is how quickly it all happened.
Cohen possessed an almost super-human loyalty to truth; and would sweat at an old wooden table for years just to scratch a single true word. His instructions for speaking truth were clear: “eschew the philosopher’s stone”. In other words, it has something to do with humility. Perhaps it was no coincidence he checked out just hours before things began to “slide in all directions” in his adopted country of America. His timing for exiting stage left was impeccable.
Nobody is listening now anyways.
For as Cohen departed, entering stage right was another kind of man. A man who picked up the very stone Cohen had long ago shunned, twirling an elixir in his hands that would Make America Great Again. This man displayed no devotion to truth; just easy digits of 0 and 1 that he spewed upon the country like paper confetti. Whatever he was selling in our Cohen-less world, people bought. And whether Americans will buy it again is something I dare not predict. Regardless of who wins, what worries me is we’ll still be stuck in this strange realm.
But at least I will always have the memory of watching Cohen live at the Sony Centre in Toronto in 2008, wearing his fedora and dark grey suit. His financial devastation, brought upon by the betrayal of his long-time manager, was a blessing for millions of fans who flocked to his shows and happily restored his nest egg. There I sat, holding the hand of my then pregnant wife, and breaking into tears as he drew the Hallelujah from our lips.
The night he died I was on the phone with my ageing mother. A news alert from the New York Times announced his death. He was 82. My two young daughters came into my bedroom—ages seven and four—and notice the tears in my eyes. What’s wrong papa? Nothing my loves. My favourite writer has died. Who was he? And so I played them Closing Time. And I watched as they danced on my bed and sang the hard-won words harvested from a life of dignity, dedication, and moral purpose.
But the Boss didn’t like those dizzy heights. It was bedtime for them. It was closing time for Cohen. And it was a new world the rest of us weren’t quite ready to face.