Gladwin Emmanuel

On this day, ten years ago, we lost Leonard Cohen - one of the great poets of the 20th century. I became obsessed with his music in late 2024. It was a cold day, perhaps around this time of year, and I was waiting for my train to college, when I decided to start listening to his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, which starts with 'Suzanne.' 'Suzanne' transported me to a whole other world - and over the next few months I listened to the album over and over again, sometimes three and four times a day, as well as to everything else released by Cohen, both studio and live albums. Cohen's music transported me to worlds so unfamiliar, and yet which felt so much like home, with so many hints of a final destination, such a mode of knowing, that I knew I was changed. One of the things I most admire in Cohen's writing is the admirable unity achieved by the tension between so many aspects of life, notably the low and the high, the material and the immaterial, the sexual/sensual and the religious/spiritual. 'Master Song' comes to mind the most - a work of genius - where a love triangle is (or so it seems to me) also the relationship between God, Jesus, and the faithful, though many considerations could be made regarding these roles.