The Light Still Gets In: Leonard Cohen's Old Ideas

One warm evening in the spring of 2008, I filed into the Sony Centre in downtown Toronto where you could feel in this company of strangers a communal certainty that what we were about to witness was something captivating. Moments later, garbed in a grey suit and fedora, a Canadian legend took the stage. The applause only ceased when the opening chords of “Dance Me To The End of Love” wafted over us. So began our intimate three-hour encounter with the Canadian icon Leonard Cohen. Like many of his recordings, the performance was simple but urbane; humble but iconic; mournful but beautiful; thus making each detail unforgettable.

Several years after that epic world tour, in his 77th year, Cohen returned to the studio. The result is Old Ideas (Sony Music Canada., 2012) the twelfth studio album in his 44 year career and the first since Dear Heather in 2004. Living off of the vivid memory of that evening almost four years ago, the announcement of Old Ideas was a warm welcome. The album itself proof that Cohen’s artistic crux is still aglow in his twilight years. A Montreal native, Cohen was a published poet before his twentieth birthday. His poetic and literary accomplishments, which also include two novels that capture the quintessential melancholy of CanLit, might have established his foundation, but it is through song, however, that he became immortalized. 


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Music and Lyrics

I found this on There's Hope For All of Us. It drew me in because I recently had this conversation with someone, about how I was a lyrics person and how they were a music person. A music person can just  catch a good rhythm and away they go, lost in the moment. The lyrics people need more. They need to know the meaning.

Which one are you?

 

Sad Songs Say So Much

Dear people in my computer,

I’ve been feeling a little sad lately. A little heartache combined with life’s disparaging obstacles, have me feeling a little blue. Naturally I indulge in some sad music. What are your favourite sad songs?

Below are my top five sad songs:

1. Jeff Buckley’s Lover You Should Have Come Over is saturated with longing. The lyrics are haunted with regret and inner struggles: “sometimes a man gets carried away / When he feels he should be having his fun / Much to blind to see the damage he’s done / Sometimes a man must awake / To find he has no one.” If the words don’t get to you, Buckley’s desperate delivery will.

2. Nobody captures the lows of vagabonds like Tom Waits, which brings me to Tom Traubert's Blues. “A battered old suitcase / To a hotel someplace / And a wound that will never heal ”. Tom Traubert’s Blues is always the song I end up listening to when I’m traveling alone and start to feel the isolation. Themes of feeling alone or like you don’t belong.

3. Then there is the king of the sad bastard song, Ryan Adams. He has so many sad tunes that I love. Come Pick Me Up perfectly articulates confusion in a relationship.

4. Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds' People Ain't No Good really sums up how it feels to completely lose faith in people.

5. I also really like to listent to the Beatles’ Across the Universe when I’m sad. While the song is not particularly heart breaking, the writer, John Lennon, is obviously sorting through a lot of complicated emotions. Rufus Wainwright’s  and Fiona Apple’s versions are both so different, but so beautiful.

Wow. That's a lot of sadness. But, things usually turn around. Here are some wonderful words of wisdom I was once told: "Everything's always okay in the end. If it's not okay. It's not the end." So in anticipation of that moment...

Art work by Tummy Mountain.

Ukelele Crazy

It seems as though many people are going ukelele crazy. They're not just for hula girls anymore. (Although there will always be a spot for hula girls in our hearts.)