The Irish Times - Wednesday, August 4, 2010
An Irishman's Diary
FRANK McNALLY
Leonard Cohen at Lissadell House. . . "resistance
was finally wiped out by the old charmer himself".
Photograph: James Connolly
I DROVE to Sligo on Saturday still feeling a little resentful that, after he gave the perfect concert – almost in my back garden – two years ago, Leonard Cohen had not quit while he was ahead. By “quit”, I don’t mean quit the mortal sphere. Retirement would have been enough: ideally to the Mount Baldy Buddhist retreat in California, where he could resume life as a monk, under his Zen name of Jikan, meaning “silence”.
The slightly-cheated feeling persisted through the first few songs at Lissadell, an exact repeat of the playlist from the 2008 Kilmainham shows. Not only had I been suckered into forking out for two (pricey) tickets to see the same concert, I thought, based on a vague notion that this time, WB Yeats and Countess Markievicz might appear on backing vocals. But worse, the experience would now also tarnish the memories of the first occasion, which I could otherwise have treasured for years.
Then Cohen introduced some new songs. Then his backing virtuosos began to weave their magic again. Then the relentless beauty of the music washed over me like the misty rain that accompanied some of it.
And any remaining resistance was finally wiped out by the old charmer himself, whose definitive stage gesture these days is to take his hat off between songs, exposing his grizzled head in humility to an audience that – to his apparent astonishment – loves him.
No doubt the modesty is part showmanship. You can’t perform to adoring crowds night after night without at least suspecting you must be good. But Buddhist monks are probably taught not to dwell on such delusions. And if it is an act, he does it very well.
For a performer long associated with gloom, the surprised boyish smile into which his features resolve themselves so often now is a remarkable thing in itself.
Naturally, he invoked the spirt of Yeats during the latest shows. And I wondered what WB would have made of the performance.
He was a mere 61 when he wrote that “an aged man is but a paltry thing/a tattered coat upon a stick”.
To which, of course, he added the qualification: “Unless soul clap its hands and sing/And louder sing, for every tatter in its mortal dress”.
So he may have been on to something about the power of song, even then. But I suspect that, being a ladies’ man as well as a wordsmith, Yeats – if he was present at Lissadell – might have regretted not living in a slightly later era, when poets could front rock bands, perform into their late 70s, and still have women going weak at their every husky word.
I have suggested before in this paper that Ireland, in its search for an agreed anthem, could do worse than adapt Cohen’s latter-day classic of that name (ie Anthem), with its soaring chorus: “Ring the bells that still can ring/Forget your perfect offering/There is a crack/A crack, in everything/Thats how the light gets in”.
Not only has it an uplifting message about accepting – even rejoicing in – the imperfections of life. It also has special resonance in this country, on two levels. Firstly, every new thing we build here, from the Dublin Port Tunnel to the Luas rail-lines, seems to have a crack in it. A tradition now apparently continued by the Aviva Stadium, which, according to one of our letter writers yesterday, has a leaky roof.
Secondly, it captures the spirit of what Yeats called the “indomitable Irishry”. For it’s not just when things are going well that we try to find the crack in them, although begrudgery is an honoured national tradition. But the converse is true too. No matter how gloomy a situation seems, there is a compulsion to find the crack (or the “craic”, if you must) in that too, somewhere.
I was thinking about this in the early hours of Sunday, on the way back from Sligo. It was prompted by the automated toll-booth on the M4, which demanded €4.30 from me instead of the normal €2.90. I wondered if the price went up after midnight. But I was too tired to argue, and had fed the machine €3.50 before it corrected its glitch and raised the barrier (while keeping the change).
By the time I reached the M50, however, when only post-concert euphoria was keeping my eyelids open, it had struck me that the lyrics of Anthem had also been dramatically vindicated in Leonard Cohen’s own life.
After all, it was financial ruin that forced him back on tour to recoup the millions misappropriated by his manager. Out of which catastrophe has emerged a new, wondrous chapter of his career. He seems to have been energised by the road. Not only was he skipping on and off the stage at Lissadell, he now has a new studio album planned, the first in years.
Countless others have also benefited from the fraud. Not his manager, obviously. In what looks like karma, her life has been a litany of disasters since. But for everyone from the “sublime Webb sisters” – elevated out of relative obscurity in England to join Cohens choir of angels – to the many fans who would otherwise never have seen him perform, the ex-manager’s dishonesty has been a gift.
And in some cases, like mine, an education. By the time I was finally home on Sunday morning, I had learned one of Anthem’s lessons. Namely, the futility of holding onto my memories of that perfect evening in Kilmainham two years ago, whose peerlessness, I now realise, was just an earthly illusion, shattered forever by the fact that I saw a concert just as good somewhere else.
Thanks for posting.