Man of the Moment

Editors' note: This essay was originally published on July 25, 2006.  

“Live in the present” seems like one of those too-obvious Zen prescriptions, but here’s the truth: rarely has a person seemed more fiercely in the moment than the Jewish Buddhist poet, songwriter, and novelist Leonard Cohen. At the age of 71, he’s never been more before us, and never in so many different ways. This year Ecco has published Book of Longing, his first collection of new poems in 22 years. And his first book of poems, Let Us Compare Mythologies, written when he was an undergraduate at Montreal’s McGill University, has just been reprinted to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its first publication.

That’s just the beginning. Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man, a documentary film tribute, was recently released nationally. Filmed at a concert in honor of Cohen at the Sydney Opera House in Australia and augmented by interviews with him, the documentary captures fascinating interpretations of his music and offers a series of snapshots of the artist from glancing angles.

At the Los Angeles premiere, an only-in-L.A. mix of Hollywood industry figures, scenesters, and bohos showed up driving Volvos and electric cars to see the movie and hear West Coast singers perform music written by their man. Cohen hasn’t been making many appearances lately, but he was there that night. His light touch hasn’t failed him yet: he tapped his heart as the crowd gave him a standing ovation, and then offered a mild demurral, predicting the “inevitable moral pneumonia that follows on a blizzard of praise.” That’s easy for him to say, basking as he was in the warmest, friendliest blizzard even a guy from Canada is likely to encounter.

There’s a striking sketch of Cohen in Book of Longing, a no-holds-barred self-portrait with head shaved, face deeply lined. (The image also shows up in the documentary.) We are far closer to the end of things than their beginning, the picture says: now is a time for truth, not flattery. Much of this collection of verse and jottings, scraps and song lyrics was written in India and at the Mount Baldy Zen Center, a Buddhist retreat in Southern California’s San Gabriel Mountains. Cohen lived there from 1993 to 1999, becoming a monk while studying and serving as cook for Joshu Sasaki, known as Roshi (teacher).

As he writes in “The Party Was Over Then Too”:

I joined a tiny band of steel-jawed zealots
who considered themselves
the Marines of the spiritual world.

But Cohen doesn’t sound or write like a grim Marine: he says his friends kiddingly called this “the book of prolonging” because he produced it at such a leisurely pace. And many of the sketches are of young women, and much of the writing is to them. In “Thing” he writes:

I am this thing that needs to sing
I love to sing
To my beloved’s other thing

Studying with Roshi seems to have burned out the galaxy-wide gloom that once permeated, and gave meaning to, his work. (Musician Paul Weller, after all, once famously disavowed Cohen by saying he wrote “music to slit your wrists by.”) The pieces in Book of Longing are casual, but never so casual that the old horndog doesn’t have muscle or bite.

I’m Your Man isn’t about muscle or bite. Directed by Lian Lunson, the documentary is straight-up hagiography, and truth to tell, it might have been served better by a little more distance. Lunson treats her subject with untarnished reverence, and so do all the musicians who sing and talk about their idol. The show was put together by the brilliant Hal Willner, who has a knack for assembling complementary, yet various, talent on a single stage, and included performances of Cohen songs like “Death of a Ladies’ Man” (sung by Jarvis Cocker and Beth Orton), “Suzanne” (Nick Cave), and “Hallelujah” (Rufus Wainwright). Best may be the sparkling duet of Julie Christensen and Perla Batalla on “Anthem.”

Interspersed among the songs are interviews with Cohen, and revealing clips—everything from family film to images from his early Montreal poet days to later TV appearances. It’s fascinating to watch Cohen answer questions with a mix of caution—he knows he’s constructing a mask for himself with this documentary—and abandon. He tosses off references to Buddhism, the Bible, the Bhagavad-Gita, and other big stuff, and he takes his sweet time to make sure he says it accurately. Even if he had been a talking head in a documentary about somebody else, he would probably be the center of attention.

The documentary offers a parade of ever more mannered emoters: Nick Cave leads to Handsome Family’s Brett Sparks, then Martha Wainwright, then New York artiste Antony. And just when you start to worry the next singer is going to start itching and twitching like Joe Cocker, out comes Our Man himself, to front U2 and offer an incredible version of “Tower of Song.” (This portion was filmed in New York.) Fact is, Cohen could barely carry a tune in his younger days and mostly just talks through this one and, fact is, it couldn’t matter less: his presence and power show what some of the earlier performances lack. I’m Your Man is well worth seeing for this moment alone, and for a series of interviews that show Cohen painstakingly explaining his life.

He started as a poet and novelist; he lived on the Greek island of Hydra, where he wrote Beautiful Losers, an exquisite novel. He moved to Nashville in 1966 because songwriting seemed to promise better money, but before the year was out he was in Greenwich Village. There he seemed like just another folkie, but over time his work moved away from roots and toward a fluid mix of cabaret and international influences. His baroque, arty Death of a Ladies’ Man was recorded with Phil Spector, and though it was deemed a failure in 1977, it’s looked at today as some of his bravest work. He’s been down, up, down again; he’s appeared on Miami Vice. He’s been around long enough that today Cohen is perhaps the last of a once familiar—and once respected—breed: the prestige artist, whose talents were a given even if the sales weren’t quite.

The past year hasn’t been all ice cream for Cohen: in 2005 he discovered his former manager was plundering his retirement savings. (A Canadian court recently ruled that the woman owed Cohen nine million dollars, though he hasn’t gotten it yet.) Still, as his appearance in the documentary shows, nobody on earth looks more right, more elegant, more balanced than Cohen in one of his 20-year-old thrift store suits. The money is a concern rather than an obstruction.

The year of Leonard doesn’t stop with I’m Your Man. His former backup singer Anjani Thomas has recently released Blue Alert, featuring music written by her, lyrics by him. And Cohen is now working on a new CD—four songs are already completed. As he tosses off with a smile in the movie, he’s even thinking about going on the road again. Think of it: a septuagenarian singer songwriter, his monk, his followers, and assorted pop stars touring together. That’s not a documentary, that’s the best reality TV show of 2007.