A Humble and Elegant Heart

A Humble and Elegant Heart | Dec 29 2007

It was four years ago, during my stay in Yangshuo. One day, when I was drinking a cup of Latte in a roadside café , as the CD player switched on, a hoarse voice abruptly broke the morning’s silence and bore in my mind. That was Leonard Cohen and his “In My Secret Life”.

He became one of my favorite singers since , but I started to take him seriously only after I watched a musical documentary of Cohen’s life and his music.

Leonard Cohen is more than a singer. He is also a poet and a philosopher who owns a pure heart and loves wisdom. Because of this, there were always some serious themes in his songs about our lives, like religion and love, and they were expressed in a way both provocative and poetic.

One of his most popular songs,“Suzanne”, was about a romance of Leonard and a woman named Suzanne who was an artist herself. Facing the video camera, Leonard spoke of this woman frankly. She was the wife of one of his friends and Leonard had been visiting with her for a long time. He was attracted deeply by her and so was she by him. Apparently, Suzanne played the role of Muse in the poet’s life,inspiring a beautiful and sentimental song we now hear.

And Jesus was a sailor
When he walked upon the water
And he spent a long time watching
From his lonely wooden tower
And when he knew for certain
Only drowning men could see him
He said "All men will be sailors then
Until the sea shall free them"
But he himself was broken
Long before the sky would open
Forsaken, almost human
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone.
---------Suzanne

To live is to love and to love is something that can be likened to drowning. Only with this dreadful experience, are you led to God’s light and then you are shared with the brightness. It came up to me when I was watching that shy man remembering the past love in a humble but elegant manner in the documentary.

Leonard is very humble, and elegant also. “The less what I was, the better I felt” told Leonard to describe what he has learnt from staying for years with a Japanese illuminati who was a Zen Buddhist. They lived together in a way of monks. Leonard wore long robes and ate vegetables everyday during that time.
As a result, he became more modest than ever and at the same time he found himself agreeable to oriental values naturally. When his newest english-written book was about to publish in Chinese in Taiwan, Leonard wrote a preface himself for the Chinese version. Within the lines, he showed his fondness of Chinese culture and his unpretentiousness as being talented and multifaceted

In the last part of the video, Leonard said that, with a reluctant smile,“I hate everyone but acted generously and no one found me out. My reputation as a lady’s man was a joke. It cast me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousands nights. Nights alone.”

For most of his life time so far, Leonard has been lonely because he has loved someone and will probably love her forever.

That is Leonard Cohen, a man one can hardly resist.