Little piece about Leonard...
Posted: Wed Jul 21, 2004 1:56 pm
This is a few days old, so sorry if it's been discussed, but I just found this little piece of writing relating to Leonard Cohen's new album on Pitchforkmedia.com, and rather liked how the writer put it, so I thought I'd share:
Leonard Cohen Readies 11th Album
Joins Veronica, J.D. in plot to take down the new breed
Joshua Sharp reports:
I'm not a betting man. This is partially because I don't have very much money; I'm lazy, and I'm not very good at resisting impulses. But if you asked me off the record, I'd wager Leonard Cohen to be straight-up immortal. Granted, there might not be a whole lot of biological evidence suggesting the man holds the silver key to life eternal-- at least not in the traditional sense of the term "evidence"-- but the songs Cohen has written possess a nearly singular quality: Most of them are impervious to the very possibility of a natural demise.
It is my own subjective assessment that the lasting power of Leonard Cohen's output can be attributed to two intrinsic elements: Cohen's true calling as a man of the pen, and the paradoxical ability of his words to be visually precise/visually evocative while remaining semantically applicable/semantically evocative in innumerable situations of a more individual context. Perhaps this suggests not merely timelessness, but also placelessness. For all their detail, all their setting, all their visual singularity, Cohen's songs contain a human flexibility that enables them to be related into our own individual contexts. For this, his music may never die.
Leonard Cohen Readies 11th Album
Joins Veronica, J.D. in plot to take down the new breed
Joshua Sharp reports:
I'm not a betting man. This is partially because I don't have very much money; I'm lazy, and I'm not very good at resisting impulses. But if you asked me off the record, I'd wager Leonard Cohen to be straight-up immortal. Granted, there might not be a whole lot of biological evidence suggesting the man holds the silver key to life eternal-- at least not in the traditional sense of the term "evidence"-- but the songs Cohen has written possess a nearly singular quality: Most of them are impervious to the very possibility of a natural demise.
It is my own subjective assessment that the lasting power of Leonard Cohen's output can be attributed to two intrinsic elements: Cohen's true calling as a man of the pen, and the paradoxical ability of his words to be visually precise/visually evocative while remaining semantically applicable/semantically evocative in innumerable situations of a more individual context. Perhaps this suggests not merely timelessness, but also placelessness. For all their detail, all their setting, all their visual singularity, Cohen's songs contain a human flexibility that enables them to be related into our own individual contexts. For this, his music may never die.
