Leonard Cohen
You Want It Darker

Jikan the silent, betrayed monk, dweller of the dawn, approaches his friend Leonard and whispers.

- Hineni, hineni.

Outside it's November. Tonight a singer must die because his voice has lied. Tonight it will finally take away the back pain too.

Leonard smiles.

- I'm not ready.

November is a crappy month and it's cold.

It would be nice to be in the sun of Hydra or on Mount Baldy.

Being with Roshi again, the master who "wages war on nothing," he appreciated what Leonard cooked for him and knew that Jikan was a terrible student. It was pleasant being there, where combs weren't needed, but Kelley took all his money.

And it wasn't for the money, nor because - once - she had spoken to him of love (love, you know, is just another lie), it wasn't even for the accusations and threats. It's that Kelley took away his silence.

Back to singing, writing, walking, talking. On the road again.

And he's journeyed far, the little Jew from Montreal: New York, Hydra, Paris, the Chelsea Hotel, Los Angeles, Mount Baldy, and no place to call home. And meetings, and women. So many women: Suzanne, Marianne, Janis, Rebecca, Judy, and none, none of whom he could say: "she's mine." And two novels, and poems, and books, and then music and records, and never - never - to be able to say: "it's me."

He encountered death early, at just nine years old (that of Nathan, his father), and, equally early, depression in the eyes of Masha, his mother. He was never poor, but he knew lack.

The void. You can try to fill it with rivers of words, you can seek peace between women's breasts, you can sing songs to try to please the Lord, you can try to be as free as a worm on a hook, you can seek silence in Zen meditation. But the void always reaches you.

And then you start walking again. Because “there is a crack in everything and that's where the light gets in.”

Thus, the old Jew from Montreal, the silent monk, has picked up his guitar again.

He has told us again of lands of plenty and days of glory, of old ideas and Temples to tear down. And of God and Love, and roads and lies. Of the women who have been exceptionally kind to the one who has spoken of their mystery and who still bend over his bed and cover him, old, like a trembling child, "look at me Leonard, look at me one last time."

We who are ugly, are obsessed with beauty.

In short, the usual things. In short, life.

But things are never the same and the road is never alike.

And the roads lead nowhere, but - sooner or later - they end. And at the end of this road, there is darkness, there is "You Want It Darker."

And it's a beautiful album. A long farewell recited with a sandpaper voice. The body is tired, but the voice is clear and the words are still powerful. He still lets us see his broken beauty, as he would for someone he loves, he still passes desire through his tongue. And the darkness is torn by a dazzling black and white. It is an essential album.

And I can tell you little about "You Want It Darker": how can you talk about a goodbye? It takes time, time takes away modesty.

I prefer to imagine Leonard with his son Adam.

He had been working on this album for a year, Leonard, but then fatigue took over and health worsened, the project was about to be abandoned. Then Adam stepped in.

Adam, who tried to follow in his father's footsteps, Adam, who, when he was 17, was involved in a car accident and remained in a coma and Leonard spent his days beside him, talking to him.

Adam takes an orthopedic chair to soothe Leonard's back pains, then picks up guitars and instruments, a magnificent Neumann microphone and locks himself in his father's living room. He and Patrick Leonard craft those small unfinished gems, they even call the Shaar Hashomayim congregation choir, the family synagogue choir, for the song that gives the album its title.

And so Leonard, the little Jew from Montreal, has crossed another piece of road.

But the roads lead nowhere, but - sooner or later - they end. And at the end of this road, there's a floor, a fall, two vertebrae that crack. And you can't fix two vertebrae at 82 years old.

-Jikan?

-Hineni, hineni.

-I am ready. Now I am ready, My Lord.

Sincerely L. Lector