Leonard Cohen and Philosophy (12 page)

A similar style and content prejudice can be seen in attitudes toward the music of Tom Waits, whose voice is also unconventional and whose songs, next to Cohen’s, are comparably nostalgic, gloomy, and depressing. There’s nothing wrong with preferring, as I confess I do, the more conventional, smoother voice of Waits’s early
The Heart of Saturday Night
(1974) to the roughed up vocals of his more experimental later work, but to transmute this preference into a negative
verdict
is again simply a style prejudice. Similarly,
many who dismiss the folk baritone of the early Cohen probably haven’t given his later pop bass a real chance, and those who deny that Cohen sings at all likely haven’t really considered such early performances as “Stories of the Street” or “Sing Another Song, Boys.”

The
Je Ne Sais Quoi

Although some take to Cohen’s voice right away and others never do, still others come around after repeated or prolonged exposure. For some, in other words, Leonard Cohen is an acquired taste. To this extent, the pleasures of listening to Cohen are not unlike those derived from some alcoholic beverages, certain foods, and smoking, which typically require overcoming an initial negative reaction. Most people find their first exposure to the taste of beer, the texture of sushi, and inhaling smoke to be somewhere on the continuum between rather offputting and outright revolting. I suspect that Cohen himself would not find the comparisons insulting. Some people never get over their initial negative reactions, and that’s fine. But the fans and critics who have managed to cross over, or who haven’t had to, are able to enjoy whole spheres of experience, of pleasure, to which the rest of the world remains closed. To transpose a local beer ad into Cohen fandom terms, those who like him like him
a lot
.

To appreciate the importance of this point, that for many Cohen is an acquired taste, we should remind ourselves that, for Hume, part of being a good critic is sensitively discerning the relevant qualities, the aesthetic character, of the thing being judged. To the extent that Cohen is an acquired taste, his detractors might never be in a position to perceive the qualities that many fans and music critics enjoy. It’s not that they
dislike
what the likers like, but rather that they’ve not managed to overcome their natural resistance to even experiencing, much less considering, what fans appreciate. As connoisseurs of beer or wine are able to discern qualities that dislikers simply can’t, so too might the same be said for true Leonard Cohen aficionados.

What fans and many critics experience in Cohen, to the extent that this can be described at all, is a distinctive voice singing unique songs with genuinely poetic lyrics and that express a significant artistic vision. The distinctiveness of the singing matches the personal quality of the lyrics, which unlike almost all other folk or pop songs do more than gesture at poetry. Cohen’s lyrics don’t just gesture, they achieve, they
are
. Most generic voices are less distinctive and less distinct in expressing lyrics that seldom merit the emphasis of Cohenesque enunciation. Where some listeners might resent that Cohen’s singing style betrays such an extraordinarily exacting concern with language, a loving exactitude, this care is part of what fans appreciate in his voice along with the sense of intimacy it suggests and explores with the listener. It’s a voice rich with the attempt to share with the listener something both important and well-turned. Cohen’s voice suits its poetic material.

As many critics, not just fans, see it, Cohen’s voice has a mysterious, enigmatic quality, an undeniable
je ne sais quoi
. Critics observe in the DVD
Leonard Cohen: Under Review
that his voice has an “immense personal charm. You want to engage him when you hear his voice coming out of the speakers” (Robert Christgau). “It has a very hypnotic quality” (Anthony DeCurtis). But figuring out exactly why isn’t so easy: “Is it the quality of his voice? Is it the way he dramatizes himself? I think that these things are very mysterious” (Christgau). Part of the answer might be found in a thought-provoking comment by Ronee Blakley, who also sang backup on
Death of a Ladies’ Man
(1977):

Leonard has in his voice a slight trembling from time to time which is extremely vulnerable and real and present and there. It’s at the front of his head, though it almost has a rumbling sound, a biblical sound at times. It can also sound very sensitive and charming and this sound that he has in addition to the rabbinical quality . . . is almost what in Christian music would be called
bel canto
or
cantus firmus
: the kind that monks would sing. . . .

This comment suggests to my mind two very provocative things about Cohen’s voice: first, that it succeeds in part by somehow tapping into our musical subconscious; and second, that it works not necessarily despite but also oddly
because of
its particular imperfections. A better voice just wouldn’t be
Leonard Cohen’s
. Would it make sense to wish him better endowed? I really don’t think so. It seems we’d be missing the point.

No Accounting?

As I write this I glance at a ticket stub propped up against my laptop: Section 37, Row J, Seat 2, not just a ticket,
my
ticket, for the Leonard Cohen concert at the Halifax Metro Centre, April 13, 2013. It reads “On stage promptly at 8 pm,” which he was, and he played for three and a quarter hours. It was the second time I’d seen him live, the first also in Halifax in 2008 at a venue—and so he recalled in the 2013 concert—called the Cohn auditorium. Though I’d been a fan for very many years, I never thought I’d be fortunate enough to get to see him live, much less twice. The aura hasn’t faded yet. But it gives me pause, this highly personal experience, shared with Megan (Seat 1) and thousands of others: communication as communion. It was, and remains, perhaps a perfect example of how art can—somehow, seemingly—personalize the universal, universalize the personal. Can I convey what it meant to me? Not exactly, though I can gesture at it. Could I convince someone who didn’t like it that they should have? Probably not. “It’s good but I don’t like it” is no paradox. Good standards limit judgment without compelling taste.

This might remind you of the old chestnut, “There’s no accounting for taste,” a sensible but still ambiguous adage. It might mean that you can’t explain why someone has the particular likes or dislikes they do, or that there’s ultimately no justification for taste “beyond itself”—as the bromide goes, it is what it is. Hume, on the other hand, thought that there
is
accounting for taste, in terms of human nature, which he saw as uniform. That uniformity explains why there can be lasting consensus on great artists like Homer (p. 42). When
there are aesthetic disputes, Hume thought, that’s because some of the disputants lack true expertise, missing the right sensitivities or being subject to forgivable age- or culture-specific tendencies. In some cases, too, there will be unavoidable idiosyncrasies of personal taste that don’t really touch on aesthetic disputes. Suppose, for instance, when it comes to Cohen, I prefer his realism, you his romanticism, though we agree that he’s a great artist.

Can we confidently say that Hume-approved experts will agree that Leonard Cohen is a good singer? Not necessarily, though I’ve given some reason to suppose they may. It’s actually pretty tough to figure out who, if anyone, the Hume-approved critics are. Given how vehement the disputes among critics, all of whom have some claim to objectivity, often get, and how rare consensus among them really is except in—fittingly—exceptional cases, perhaps human nature and aesthetic judgment aren’t uniform but varied, pluralistic. Good critics then would be seen in terms of sub-universal but legit spheres of appropriate influence. But does this not just dissolve into utter subjectivity, an aesthetic of idiosyncrasy? Perhaps my enjoyment of Leonard Cohen’s singing voice is mere preference after all.

Is that all there is? Maybe, and I’ll tell you why. In my late teens I was depressive to the point of suicidal. My parents were naturally concerned, more so as the usual ways of addressing the problem proved ineffective. The depression and I were stubborn, lonely and painful as it got. My father did something totally counterintuitive but ultimately inspired: he bought me
The Best of Leonard Cohen
(1975) on cassette. Who would think to give their suicidal son “music to slit your wrists to”? And yet, as I listened, I resonated with the music, with Cohen’s voice, all of it, with such immediacy, such intensity, it was so resolutive—it saved my life. How could that not cloud, in the best possible way, my judgment, biasing me toward the one voice that reached me through the darkness?

6

Covering Cohen

A
DAM
A
UCH

I
n the third verse of “Tower of Song,” Leonard Cohen makes a joke at his own expense. In singing that he was “born with the gift of a golden voice,” he makes a statement so clearly false that listeners are forced to understand it ironically. We know that Cohen doesn’t have a beautiful singing voice, and here Cohen shows he knows it too. Appearing as it does in the midst of a song in which he reflects on his career in the music business, the line comes across as yet another example of Cohen’s characteristic humor and humility.

Something interesting happens, however, when the song is covered by other singers, particularly when these singers have (or had) voices that could be plausibly considered “golden.” Instead of a self-deprecating joke, the line takes on other meanings. For example, consider Marianne Faithfull’s version of the song from 1999’s
Vagabond Ways
. Unlike Cohen, Faithfull did once possess what I suspect many people would consider a beautiful singing voice. However, following years of drug and alcohol abuse, her voice hardened and coarsened considerably. As she sings it, the line comes across as a kind of lament—a reminder that something valuable has been irretrievably lost.

On the other hand, consider Tom Jones’s version of the song (from 2012’s
Spirit in the Room
) where he sings the lyric with fist-shaking sincerity. Like Faithfull, Jones had a
beautiful singing voice in his youth, but unlike her, his voice is still in good condition (though tempered a bit by age). Aside from the bridge (the bit about widening rivers and how difficult they are to cross), the golden voice lyric is the only part of the song that Jones sings with his voice at full power. He performs the rest of the song in a muted, spoken-word style that approximates Cohen’s own version of the song. There is no irony to Jones’s performance—he wants us to know that, after all these years, he still has a (conventionally) beautiful voice. While a charitable reading of Jones’s performance might take his version of the lyric as a statement of gratitude for his innate talent, it’s hard not to hear it as a kind of boast.

Three singers, three different interpretations of the same lyric. How can this be? All ten words in the lyric have clear meanings. Why should it be a joke in one person’s mouth, a lament in another’s, and boast in a third’s? What accounts for these different interpretations?

Whose Voice Is It Anyway?

Another question: Just
who
is “Tower of Song” about? Who is it that was born with the golden voice? At issue here is the status of the golden voice lyric’s first word: “I.” “I” is an example of what philosophers and linguists call an “indexical”: a word that refers to different individuals, objects, times, or places, depending on the context in which it is spoken. Other examples of indexicals include “now,” “yesterday,” “here,” “left,” “right,” “today,” and “tomorrow.” The sentence “It is raining today” is true as I write this essay (I’m watching the rain through the window), but may be false when you read it. And a sentence like “I am over six feet tall” is true when I write or say it, but probably false if you say it. So our interpretation of the golden voice lyric is going to very much depend on who we take the “I” to be.

There are a lot of possibilities: it could be Cohen himself—after all, he wrote the song. But this would not account for the Faithfull and Jones interpretations of the lyric. So maybe the song is about whoever is performing it. When Cohen
sings it, it’s about Cohen, and when Jones sings it’s about Jones. But this also isn’t quite right. Not everything an artist writes or performs in the first person is meant to be autobiographical—after all, Johnny Cash never spent a night in Folsom Prison. So we shouldn’t be too quick to assume that the song is about the person singing it. And yet our discussion of the golden voice lyric suggests that we do associate particular elements of a performance with the persona of the performer. But what is a persona anyway?

As an exercise, think about what immediately comes to mind when you hear or read the name “Leonard Cohen.” You might think about the whiskey, the cigarettes, the fedora, and the impeccably tailored black suits. You might think of a poet or prophet, who while lacking a beautiful voice, makes up for it in the beauty of his words. These images and ideas that so easily come to mind when Cohen’s name is mentioned make up his persona. It’s this persona that audiences associate with Cohen’s performances of his own songs, and it’s this persona that shapes their expectations of the message he’s attempting to convey. Something similar happens with Cohen songs written in the second person. When Cohen sings “Suzanne,” you get the sense that he’s addressing himself. When Judy Collins or Nina Simone sing it, they seem to be addressing the listener. At any rate, it seems clear that Cohen is aware of this persona, and he refers to it often in his songs (even addressing it explicitly in “Going Home” on 2012’s
Old Ideas
). Cohen’s performance of the golden voice lyric is just another example.