We are reaching the traffic lights, we are a little late for school as usual, had to take some antibiotics, and cope with the kid's renewed interest in dental hygiene...we are reaching the traffic lights, the radio is on, Take this waltz, take this waltz, ay yay yay...the song fades and in comes the presenter with eulogies for the artist, and I'm wondering what's going on, because morning radio shows don't do eulogies, don't even comment on the songs they play...unless... unless... something has happened.
And she ends up on...what can I say, I didn't want to hear, we didn't want to hear? 82 years old, on tour at the beginning of the year, 82 years old, a full life, 82 years old, a new album recently, 82 years old, two years older than my mother, 82 years old, this voice will never die.
One guitar, one voice, a voice at war. I don't think I understood so much about what he was talking about, being in the throes of my puberty at the time, but the music, the feeling, spoke straight to my soul... even the French I could not understand...
But we Greeks have a history of listening to songs we maybe don't understand so well... hahaha...but yet they touch us and we love them...
So this is how my relationship with the voice of Leonard Cohen begun.
A couple of years later, someone gave me a bunch of LPs they did not want anymore. Amongst them where two albums of his. I immediately picked this one out...
"Avalanche" touched and reverberated on every one of my inner strings... In my troubled and lonely teenage years, this music electrified and amplified my feelings... and became the first of a series of dark songs that would follow me through life.
"the crumbs of love that you offer me,
are the crumbs I've left behind,
your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow of my wound..."
And in this way I fell in love with darkness, and the sometimes dark people who passed through my life...
A year later, he brought out another album, and I thus found out that the "songsmith" was still "songsmithing" away... with songs like this one.
Then came "I'm your Man" ... Cohen never stopped talking to our inner selves, with songs that may have been a little more "pop"? although who can judge? Here from a recent live show...
I could sit here all day and put one song after another, all the songs we loved....
But I will say "good evening" and sign off with a cover of Cohen's "Hallelujah", by an artist who left us all too soon...
Here is a little "esoterica" on the song... It has been covered by very many artists. Once John Cale was preparing to do it, and he called Leonard to ask for the lyrics. He got back a 15 page fax. He called him back to say "what the hell?" And Leonard said, "that's the whole poem...just pick out the ones you want..."
People depart, the songs remains. Who can say that their souls do not live on through the songs?
Leonard Cohen and all the Greats like him live on inside us, and will continue to live inside every person who is touched by their music in the future.
May they be sweetly remembered for making our lives more beautiful....for being there when they were needed...
Note form today 7th Nov 2019
This article was first written and published by me in Greek on the 11th of November 2016, 4 days after Leonard died. Today 3 years later we remeber him and I thought I would translate it and add a little more... so here is one of his poems. for he was a great poet...
And she ends up on...what can I say, I didn't want to hear, we didn't want to hear? 82 years old, on tour at the beginning of the year, 82 years old, a full life, 82 years old, a new album recently, 82 years old, two years older than my mother, 82 years old, this voice will never die.
Fuck. I'm crying.
I'm crying for a man I never knew, yet he was with me at every diffiult moment...
I remember the first song of his I heard. I must have been 13 or 14 and there was a series of compilation albums called "80s Rock Volume" or something like that and it was this one
One guitar, one voice, a voice at war. I don't think I understood so much about what he was talking about, being in the throes of my puberty at the time, but the music, the feeling, spoke straight to my soul... even the French I could not understand...
But we Greeks have a history of listening to songs we maybe don't understand so well... hahaha...but yet they touch us and we love them...
So this is how my relationship with the voice of Leonard Cohen begun.
A couple of years later, someone gave me a bunch of LPs they did not want anymore. Amongst them where two albums of his. I immediately picked this one out...
"Avalanche" touched and reverberated on every one of my inner strings... In my troubled and lonely teenage years, this music electrified and amplified my feelings... and became the first of a series of dark songs that would follow me through life.
"the crumbs of love that you offer me,
are the crumbs I've left behind,
your pain is no credential here,
it's just the shadow of my wound..."
And in this way I fell in love with darkness, and the sometimes dark people who passed through my life...
A year later, he brought out another album, and I thus found out that the "songsmith" was still "songsmithing" away... with songs like this one.
Then came "I'm your Man" ... Cohen never stopped talking to our inner selves, with songs that may have been a little more "pop"? although who can judge? Here from a recent live show...
I could sit here all day and put one song after another, all the songs we loved....
But I will say "good evening" and sign off with a cover of Cohen's "Hallelujah", by an artist who left us all too soon...
Here is a little "esoterica" on the song... It has been covered by very many artists. Once John Cale was preparing to do it, and he called Leonard to ask for the lyrics. He got back a 15 page fax. He called him back to say "what the hell?" And Leonard said, "that's the whole poem...just pick out the ones you want..."
People depart, the songs remains. Who can say that their souls do not live on through the songs?
Leonard Cohen and all the Greats like him live on inside us, and will continue to live inside every person who is touched by their music in the future.
May they be sweetly remembered for making our lives more beautiful....for being there when they were needed...
Note form today 7th Nov 2019
This article was first written and published by me in Greek on the 11th of November 2016, 4 days after Leonard died. Today 3 years later we remeber him and I thought I would translate it and add a little more... so here is one of his poems. for he was a great poet...
Δεν υπάρχουν σχόλια:
Δημοσίευση σχολίου