"I think you're playing far too rough" - Leonard Cohen

News item the first: Last night was a BLAST! As usual, the Hall Monitors slayed. Thanks again to Mike, Ginger, Matt, and Sean for putting on a great show and for all the free beer (and to Sweet Sweet Melissa for putting up with my bad dancing to Saturday Night Fever during the after-party). I can't decide whether Mike Sullivan being allowed to mold young minds is heartening or a frightful proposition. Regardless, you have to respect a man who can set up and soundcheck his drum kit in under four minutes. Oh, and mad props to Ginger's skills at The Hustle.

I've always said that Leonard Cohen was Johnny Cash for junkies and Nick Drake for the avant-krautrock set. There's always been something mystical and eerie about his songs, like they weren't being played on turntable or radios or computer speakers, but instead lurking in the shadows. Like the best of the prewar blues, they sound like they've always existed and will always continue to exist, that instead of your speakers creating the sounds, they're merely tapping into an intangible force that's there all the time, whether you're listening or not.

Three stories involving me and Leonard Cohen that might resemble scenes from hackneyed indie movies:

1) During a particular bout of depression, I was sitting alone on the floor in my bedroom, naked, propped up against the door and swigging from a bottle of rotgut vodka. Songs of Leonard Cohen was playing, and the lights were as dim as could be without the darkness being total. As I got drunker and the record played on, I started to become increasingly paranoid that something was hiding behind the dresser. Slowly, silently, I reached for the hunting knife under my bed. Removing it from the sheath, I crawled on all fours to the other side of the room, intending to hack this intruder to pieces. I pounced, hacking wildly and savagely in the small space behind the bureau. All I succeeded in doing was severing the cord to my alarm clock. It was then I decided that maybe I should listen to Jawbreaker instead.

2) One night, driving on some deserted two-lane country highway in Georgia (I think it was near Bethlehem), I pulled off onto the shoulder right in front of some empty, grassy field, purely on a whim. I got the thrift-store transistor radio and a small bag of joints and proceeded to hop the split-rail fence. I found a tree on the edge of the clearing and propped down. Lighting up, I turned on the radio, hoping to find a vintage jazz station. Cycling through a few stations, I unexpectedly came across one playing Cohen's "One of Us Cannot Be Wrong." Looking at the moon wanly light the amorphous outline of the trees and the powerlines, I wondered if I really died on the road and this was really Heaven. Then a car commercial came on and I was quickly disabused of this notion.

3) The night I met T-------, we came back to my place and ended up holding each other on the couch, listening to Leonard Cohen and trying our hardest to try and articulate what we thought beauty was. It was one of those conversations that stick with you for the rest of your life, and it was all prompted by Mr. LC.

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/3630497/Leonard_Cohen_Master_Song.mp3.html

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/8503686/Leonard_Cohen_One_Of_Us_Cannot_Be_Wrong.mp3.html

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/7069385/Leonard_Cohen_Seems_So_Long_Ago,_Nancy.mp3.html

http://www.mysharefile.com/v/1242509/Leonard_Cohen_Love_Calls_You_By_Your_Name.mp3.html