I still stagger and fall. Of course I have that, it happens to me all the time, you just have to get very careful about it, because it’s inappropriate for an elderly chap to register authentically his feelings, you know, because they really could be interpreted, so you really have to get quite covert as you get older or you have to find some avuncular way of responding, but still, you just, really are just, you’re wounded, you stagger, and you fall.
—Leonard Cohen at 72
In 50 years, will I look at love with the same starry-eyed mysticism as I do now?
Will I be satisfied, having loved enough, requited and not?
In my dotage, will I be proud to say that I was adored once, too?
When my friends are gone and my hair is grey, and I ache in the places where I used to play, will I still stagger?
Will I still fall?
Leonard Cohen makes a wonderful litmus test. Everyone I know who admires his work tends to fall in the high IQ category and think deeply. I think we should screen all presidential candidates on their familiarity with Leonard Cohen.
:) Leonard Cohen I think would be pleased to be a litmus test.
I hope we all will still be falling at his age.
That guy has a rad voice! haha
just stopping by to say your web design is beautiful. great work!
@Xibee — A great idea. I also find that familiarity with Leonard Cohen is a subtle test for sense of humour. It takes a special personality to enjoy his brand of sarcasm and wit.
@Pearl — As a Canadian, it makes me so proud to know that Cohen is from Quebec, and that his music went as far as Europe in the 70’s.
@Dam Masq — If you follow his music from the 70s to the 90s, one can easily tell how drastically his voice has deepened. He once said that it was from “about 500 tonnes of whiskey and a million cigarettes”.
Great photographs.
Thank you.
I ache in the places where I used to play
Oh now I just have to go and break out the LC… Which hard drive was that all on???… Must hear Take this waltz…
Hahahah…I find Lenny’s songs to be really hit-or-miss. The good thing is that so many of them are hits, even though he changed his sound significantly.
And you mean to tell me that you have your music spread across multiple drives? You must have a buttload of music!
Hey Jeff,
Yeah, I’m the same with his music. Just seems the ones that hit really hit. I could use some of his mellow sound here at the end of the year…
WRT the music, sadly the story goes more like “I had a drive with music and it decided to stop working”… x2. We’ve managed to salvage some stuff, but not all of it. So once in a while I grab the drive, plug it into an external USB box I have and get what I can off of it. Kinda clunky, but its good fun to go in once and a while and rediscover music that I haven’t heard in ages…
Eep! I recently had a hard drive meltdown, but was able to recover everything I needed. (i.e. My ENTIRE music and photo collection). Still, I keep a backup every few months at work for horror stories just like that.