Who on earth is Leonard Cohen?

A few months ago I asked a friend this question, only to be put to shame over being so irredeemably ignorant. Now he’s dead, the sense of shame has come back, deepened immensely by the page-long obituaries in all the broadsheets.

One such obituary described Cohen as a “poet, songwriter and singer, whose intensely personal lyrics exploring themes of love, faith, death and philosophical longing made him the ultimate cult artist”.

It’s when reading about men like Cohen that one realises how futile one’s own life has been. There was no escaping now: I had to listen to the lyrics covering so densely the territory between first principles and last things.

However, Cohen wrote hundreds of songs and, while my own ‘philosophical longing’ is strong, it doesn’t stretch that far. A choice had to be made, and what better aesthetic guide can one wish for than The Guardian, the paper for exactly the kind of people whose own longings overlap with Cohen’s?

So I’ve dutifully listened to what The Guardian described as “10 of his best songs”, and I hope you appreciate the lengths to which I go for your sake. Had I not felt duty-bound to quench your occasionally understated thirst for my insights, I would have quit after the first couple of verses.

For Cohen instantly made me upgrade my aesthetic ranking of our ex-Chancellor’s favourite rap group N**gaz With Attitude. The musical content of both is roughly equal, which is to say equally negligible, but the rap chaps have the distinct advantage of not being cloyingly pretentious, quasi-intellectual pseuds.

 Admittedly, N**gaz and Cohen aim at different, and to me equally alien, audiences. But at least they don’t camouflage their savagery the way Cohen hides behind the mask impenetrable to Guardian readers.

Far be it from me to impose my tastes on you, or to believe that an attempt to do so would have the slightest effect. You can make up your own mind, using The Guardian’s list as a lantern lighting the path leading up to Cohen’s towering genius.

Give me crack and anal sex! Give me back the Berlin Wall// Give me Stalin and St Paul

“Terrible, terrifying fun,” says The Guardian. That’s one way to describe it. However, my first impulse is to suggest that N**gaz With Attitude sue Cohen’s estate for plagiarism – not of words but of the underlying ‘philosophical longing’.

 If you want a doctor// I’ll examine every inch of you

One would think that most people outgrow the desire to play doctors and nurses at some point. Apparently not – philosophical poets retain the urge forever. But I’m curious what kind of doctor we’re talking about here. Gynaecologist? Dermatologist? The public has the right to know.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof// You saw her bathing on the roof// Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya// She tied you// To a kitchen chair// She broke your throne, and she cut your hair// And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

There’s no better proof of one’s own strong faith than to watch a girl bathe on the roof at night (how did she carry the bathtub there?) and then have her tie one to a kitchen chair. I may be missing some of the philosophical subtlety here, being a congenitally insensitive sort. But Hallelujah isn’t the first word this pseudo-poetic rubbish draws from my lips.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin// Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in// Touch me with your naked hand or touch me with your glove// Dance me to the end of love

Given the choice of being touched with a girl’s naked hand or glove, I’d opt for the former, provided said hand isn’t holding a burning violin, doubling as a dance partner. I’ll pass on first-degree burns, thank you very much. Again, the subtlety eludes me altogether.

There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning// They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever// While Suzanne holds her mirror

If the heroes are in the seaweed, they don’t mix with children in the morning. The heroes are dead, while the children are presumably alive. And is Suzanne holding her mirror to the drowned heroes or is she using it to spy on the precocious children gagging for love? Art’s fine line between the enigmatic and unintelligible is being overstepped here, methinks.

I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web// Is fastening my ankle to a stone [while in the past you] held on to me like a crucifix

It’s a man who holds on to a crucifix, not the other way around. And if there’s nothing but a fine spider web fastening Leonard’s ankle to the stone ledge, he’ll tumble into the abyss, and wouldn’t that be a shame.

You treated my woman to a flake of your life// And when she came back, she was nobody’s wife

Allow me to translate from the intensely personal, poetic and philosophical: somebody bonked Leonard’s girlfriend but wouldn’t marry her, so she came back to Leonard.

Enough? Certainly is for me. If that were the only choice, I’d take N**gaz With Attitude any day.

Leonard Cohen, RIP.