I've been harping on about Leonard Cohen for a while now, especially as of late as I just went through his biography and a bunch of his poetry while on paternity leave. And during that time I put together an essay about his life and work which I posted on Facebook, and figured I'd carry over here. There might be some interest, and at the very least this thread can serve as a conclusion to my rambling 
.
It's both a summary and analysis of his life and career:
Dissecting the life of Leonard Cohen
.It's both a summary and analysis of his life and career:
Dissecting the life of Leonard Cohen
With the birth of my son and seven weeks away from work I took on the remainder of Leonard Cohen’s poetry, albums, and a biography of his, as a side project. I’d already read his later work, but with some of my non-fiction interests drying up I had the opportunity to dive into the rest of his writing.
At first it started off casually, finishing each book of poetry and reviewing it on Goodreads. But after ordering and beginning his biography titled I’m Your Man I couldn’t stop myself from writing about his incredible life. This essay is the result.
The Life and Work of Leonard Cohen
In I'm Your Man, Sylvie Simmons offers the most comprehensive biography of Leonard Cohen written to date. Within the book are easily digestible chapters that allow readers to sit and read about the remarkable life of Leonard Cohen, bit by bit. The book is long enough, the text detailed enough to satisfy both life-long and casual fans, while not being so detailed to become tedious. The book is readable, with a dash of flair, and moves at a quick enough pace to keep you interested.
As for the life it describes I'd recommend reading I'm Your Man to any Leonard Cohen fan, as it has to colour your perception of him. What grabbed me at first was that Cohen is a Jeff Bezos of poetry. There is no doubt that he was a generational talent, phenomenal writer, and without his passion could never have accomplished what he did. But at the same time considerable financial support, including a wealthy family, allowed him to survive a lack of income and a few failures before finally hitting it big as an artist.
I wouldn't call that a mark against Leonard, but it is an important point when weighing up his career and eventual success. Undoubtedly there have been many poets and musicians with Cohen's talent for the written word, but because of the uncertain life as an artist were never able to go public with their work. And on Cohen's end, everything came together in just the right way, allowing him to reach beyond the obscurity usually faced by writers.
This is why we don't often see modern poets of Cohen's caliber - because poetry is not widely popular and Cohen's fame didn't arise until he became a musician. Combine these elements and Cohen's career can be summed up as a random chance in the universe - talent, wealth, persistence, and a music career at the right time - each factor so rare by itself that it will be a while before someone is able to match his life's work.
Dissecting Cohen's Early Life
In the beginning of Simmons' book we get a sense of the younger Leonard Cohen as someone who had grand aspirations for himself, who was sure that he'd be a serious and important writer. Almost to the extent of megalomania. Eventually he did become an important writer, but in my view you can't separate his achievements from the shoulders he was standing on at the time. His family's wealth, grants from arts associations, a cultural heritage that supported his music. In this light Cohen's career was made possible by being lifted up by others. So his achievements weren't his alone, but also a result of the times. Like ancient philosophy that emerged in the Axial age, Cohen's writing and music were results of a world with enough excess to encourage the arts.
With that in mind it's difficult to read about a young Cohen in a dream like state, avoiding school work, doing nothing of much value, moving from woman to woman, and obsessing over his own writing without letting it affect my perception of him. Make no mistake - his work is very good, but it's difficult to look at his younger self with the same respect as I would someone who invented insulin, or who wrote books about African emancipation. I feel more drawn to people quietly doing unsexy, hard work for the betterment of others. Where Cohen's writing was ultimately directed at his own self image. In his youth there were even a number of women who supported Leonard with little fan-fare, but who were eventually left behind so he could continue pursuing the arts.
It's also difficult not to view the art scene during Cohen's early life as self-indulgent. In Montreal in the 1950s and 1960s you had groups of artists, including Cohen, who were convinced of their own importance, while the culture propping up their art ignored parts of the world that were rife with violence, poverty, and chaos. When a large segment of humanity was still faced with real problems, Cohen, Layton, Ginsberg among others were focused on their own spirituality and growth. If North America and Western Europe make up your moral universe the excess of the 60s art scene makes sense, but when you put it in contrast with the real, hard problems of the world at the time that same arts scene can look a bit vain.
No doubt Cohen's writing was very good, even his early writing, but that writing was an effect of a better world, and not as much a cause. Leonard Cohen's career shows us that excellent art (and self-actualization more broadly) only happens when everything else is going well, and when others who've come before us have done the hard work, solved the hard problems.
Dissecting Cohen's Middle Life
At the same time it's easy to forget that I'm writing about Cohen's life in retrospect, with the knowledge of who he became. As a young man in his late twenties, or early thirties, Leonard would have had no idea that he would become famous. He was just a kid trying to avoid the monotony of industrial Montreal. It's also easy to forget that he was human. Despite his work as an older man giving him an aura of invincibility, even a young Cohen was growing as a person, and many of the critiques I'm making now likely came to him later in life.
Another important point in this vein was that Cohen's eventual music career was a compromise, not something he truly cared about. In Simmons’ work we're told that Leonard loved his minimalist life in Hydra, Greece with his partner Marianne Ihlen, writing poetry and novels. But he realized he needed money. Eventually he was confronted by reality, and so took a shot at making it in the music business. Later we learn of Leonard mingling with celebrities in New York for a few years before releasing his first album, but during this time always longing to be back in Hydra with Marianne. And so while he eventually reached a level of super-stardom, a lot of it was not of his own will.
This is a part of Cohen's life that I can sympathize with. We all have dreams, but are eventually faced with the hard truth of making a living. I can also sympathize with Cohen's love of the simple life he was living in Hydra. Sun and a slow lifestyle, a woman he connected with, while surrounded by artists and free-spirits. What more could a person want? There was something Leonard found in Greece that he couldn't find in North America, with it's focus on money and status. This is something I feel too as work dominates my life, and many around me seem more concerned with their self-image than things spiritual.
Eventually, despite a rough start, Cohen established his music career with Columbia, hit the oil-well as it were, and accepted the path that his life was traveling down. He spent the next number of years producing albums, touring (usually in Europe where he was the most popular), doing a smattering of drugs, writing a bit of poetry, and somewhere in there managed to produce two children, but subsequently split from his partner.
Dissecting Cohen's Late Life
After an initial surge of popularity, and coming up on his 50th birthday, Cohen's music career started to slow, and Leonard himself started to wear down from it all. You could tell that at this point - with a separation from the mother of his children, and dwindling support from his fans and critics - he was tired and weary. So much so, that in 1984 he released a book of psalms called Book of Mercy, which Cohen described as written 'completely for himself'. It was a religiously themed work, and aimed at others who found themselves in the same predicament as Cohen: tired, spiritually burnt out, and lonely.
But as they say, the show must go on, and so to did Leonard's life. He was running out of money after a break from recording and still had a family to support. It was around this time that Cohen got a sense of his mortality, and that he wanted the rest of what he wrote to be perfect and authentic. So much so that he spent five years writing his much acclaimed song Hallelujah, and over twenty years finishing his final book of poetry called Book of Longing.
It was as though the inertia of his past had pushed him so far into life as an artist, that he was now committed to seeing his career through as one of history's greatest writers. And so from 1984 he would go on to produce some of his best-selling records, some of his most famous songs, and eventually see a resurgence in his popularity culminating in awards coming at him from every direction.
At this point I started to see two parallel trends in Leonard's life. On the one hand he was running out of enthusiasm. After a life of accomplishing so much, having had so many interesting experiences, after soul-searching for so long he had to wonder what was left for him, what there was left to do. But on the other hand his sense of humor and humility was growing in spades, and he was taking himself less seriously. After all that he had experienced, after standing at the top of the mountain, the only thing left to do was accept it all and try to have some fun.
Once the 90s hit Cohen’s decades long interest in Zen Buddhism, and friendship with Sasaki Roshi, culminated in a split from his then actress wife, and having himself ordained as a monk. For a while he didn't want to be 'Leonard Cohen', and so joined a notoriously ascetic Zen monastery. After five years at the monastery he also spent some time in India attending sessions from a Brahman religious guru.
It's not clear to me what Cohen's real intentions were here, whether he wanted to escape his life as an artist for a while, build on his mythos, or whether he was bored and looking for something interesting to do. My guess is that he didn't have a true calling for the religious life. He certainly had a sense of the divine, and the human relationship with spirituality, but at this stage of the game a monastery sounded like it'd be giving him a few kicks, and maybe a break from his career. If not spending a few years with religion, he would have been left to himself above the Parc du Portugal in Montreal, figuring out what to do with his time.
Eventually, as with all things, Cohen moved on from his religious pursuits and back into the studio, although telling himself that there'd be no more touring. Soon after he discovered that his most recent manager had wiped him out of most of his fortune, but having had his recent religious period approached it with good humor, saying it put a 'dent' in his mood.
Right around this time Cohen also found himself receiving a number of lifetime achievement awards, but described them as like an obituary because he didn't feel like that person whose creative output was over yet.
Because of his recently lost money Cohen was forced to go back on tour in 2008. It started hesitantly, but eventually turned into a string of the most successful tours he'd ever done. He had been away for so long, and gained so much esteem, that people wanted to see him. An appropriate way for a modern prophet to spend his declining years.
Cohen also continued recording new albums, finishing with You Want it Darker shortly before he died. On You Want it Darker he released a song that he'd been working on for twenty years: Treaty.
Wrapping Up
When we add up the elements of Cohen's life I feel a sense of gratitude about what he managed to accomplish. While I think we can call his career a pinnacle of our times, and maybe a little self-indulgent, if we didn't have people like Leonard producing art, music, poetry, we would live in a much less interesting world. If everyone around us was always practical, if they always did the thing that made the most sense, then I don't know that we'd be able to call ourselves free. The art of someone like Cohen is what separates us from the the animal kingdom - we can do things that don't make sense, we can be spiritual, we can rise above the product of our history and evolution. Cohen's art tells us that we aren't always destined to chase the dollar, or it's equivalents.
Another point I find interesting is how determined Cohen was to continue working and releasing albums right up until the end of his life, even going so far as releasing a song he'd been writing for decades as a final statement. It makes one wonder what causes our need to leave a mark on this world. Some leave their mark with children, others through activism, with Cohen's last album, I think, it was a sense of closure and completion on his storied career.
Even despite his posthumous reputation, looking back at Cohen's work it's hard not to admit that it still had constraints. Cohen was a poet, he was a musician, he was religious, but beneath all of those titles he was also a salesman. His art had to make him money, and so it had to be constructed to pull at our deepest emotions, to seduce us with gentle lies that we're all too ready to believe. To paint a picture of something just beneath the surface, hidden out of our view, and charge us 10 dollars per book or album to see it. For the entirety of his career Leonard played the dual role of priest and conman - he directed his writing as far as he could toward the transcendent, but was never able to fully abandon what would sell, or to stop playing the mysterious prophet.
This doesn't tell us that Cohen was dishonest, but instead that even he was living the same life as the rest of us. Even Leonard Cohen was constrained by the rules of the game. While he bent the arc of his life as far as he could in the direction he desired, the world was pushing back just as hard. So when we look back at his life we see two men - one who wanted to be free, and in some ways was, but also another who, like in one of his famous lines, was a bird on a wire.
