Bidding goodbye to Leonard, the man who reinvented music
Leonard Cohen died, something he has been ready to do for a while. Back in July, he wrote a touching final letter to his muse, lover and friend Marianne Ihlen upon hearing that she was dying, telling her “we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon.”
Cohen met Ihlen on the Greek island of Hydra in the 1960s, and though he would go on to have several other relationships that would bring him children and grandchildren, she stayed in his heart.
Ihlen's close friend Jan Chrstian Mollestad recalled that after contacting Cohen “it took only two hours and in came this beautiful letter from Leonard to Marianne.
“We brought it to her the next day and she was fully conscious and she was so happy that he had already written something for her.”
“It said, ‘ well Marianne it's come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.
“And you know that I've always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don't need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.'”
Mollestad said that when he read out the line “stretch out your hand,” Ihlen did indeed stretch out hers.
“Only two days later she lost consciousness and slipped into death,” Mollestad added.
“I wrote a letter back to Leonard saying in her final moments I hummed “Bird on a Wire” because that was the song she felt closest to. And then I kissed her on the head and left the room, and said “so long, Marianne.”
“So Long, Marianne” was the name of a 1967 song Cohen wrote about her.
Sony Music Canada confirmed Cohen's death on the singer's Facebook page, writing: “It is with profound sorrow we report that legendary poet, songwriter and artist, Leonard Cohen has passed away.
“We have lost one of music's most revered and prolific visionaries. A memorial will take place in Los Angeles at a later date. The family requests privacy during their time of grief.”
Cohen put out 14 studio albums during his career and was writing, recording and touring right into his final years.
He was a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation's highest civilian honour, and his influence continues to permeate modern music.
Leonard Cohen's music offered catharsis and a sense of understanding for many, but not Kurt Cobain who, on Nirvana's In Utero track “Pennyroyal Tea”, sung: “Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld / So I can sigh eternally”.
I get where he was coming from — it's not that he wasn't a fan of Cohen's, he definitely was — it's that Cohen's world was so dark that if his music didn't make you feel better on a given day, it would probably make you feel worse.
“That was my therapy, when I was depressed and sick,” Cobain said during an interview with Impact in 1993. “I'd read things like Malloy Dies [sic] by Beckett, or listen to Leonard Cohen, which would actually make it worse.”
I think Cohen must of been aware of the lyric, and after the Cobain committed suicide, he said of him: “I'm sorry I couldn't have spoken to the young man.
“I see a lot of people at the Zen Centre, who have gone through drugs and found a way out that is not just Sunday school. There are always alternatives, and I might have been able to lay something on him.”
The world celebrates the Canadian singer's work this morning, who earlier this year wrote a quite beautiful letter to his muse about their impending deaths. THE INDEPENDENT
“It said, ‘well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine.”