Guest Essay: Never Leave Home Without Leonard Cohen

[Editor's Note: Today we bring you an essay by Max Kirchner, who shares with us the relationship he's had with the music and voice of Leonard Cohen, the man formerly known as the Canadian Bob Dylan, now known largely as a languidly-voiced libertine. Kirchner also shares what he believes are the ten best songs in Cohen's discography. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments. -- ed]

During the summer between my junior and senior years of college, my parents moved away from their tiny house in North Seattle. At the time, I was making one of my first attempts at gainful employment as an office gnome in Salem, OR and living with several friends in a glorified squat. With my parents needing help moving from my childhood home, not to mention my own need to bid farewell to the most formative place in my life, I was in the unfortunate position of becoming an interstate commuter. I worked 7AM to 4 PM Monday through Friday, and then would hop on I-5 for the long, desolate slog north in a vain attempt to make it to Seattle for one my mom's home-cooked meals. I would then spend Saturday paying my respects to our old home and schlepping boxes until Sunday came around and it was time again for me to return from my weekly pilgrimage.

I was driving north from Salem to Seattle for the umpteenth time that summer, mired in heat and stuck in traffic, when my CD player died. Relegated to driving the remaining distance, choked with smog, traffic, and an endless line of neon-lit mini-malls to the buzzing crackle of AM radio and honking horns, I scrounged around the cab of my old Volvo for some solace. My free hand happened upon a tape my father had made of Leonard Cohen's album "I'm Your Man." As the throaty rumble of Cohen's voice, tempered by the constant buzz of the tape deck, began to tell me "Everybody knows that your in trouble / everybody knows what you've been through / from the bloody cross on top of Calvary, to the beach of Malibu," I was struck with a sense of calm, as if a cool breeze had finally willed itself out of my hopelessly broken air-conditioner. In the midst of the chaos of rush hour, in the oppressive heat of mid-summer with my back sticking to leather seat, I remembered that sometimes, that is just how it goes.

Thinking back on that brief moment of calm, I knew I had experienced it before. When I got home to Seattle, I thanked my dad for making the tape and told him what had happened. He told me that from an early age, I had trouble sleeping through the night, a trouble that has stayed with me even as I've grown out of many other infantile tendencies. Distraught, my parents tried just about everything to put me to bed. Eventually, my parents discovered that when nothing else would work, they could lull me to sleep by driving me around in my dad's old blue Volvo, safely strapped in my car-seat, listening to Leonard Cohen. Somehow, the combination of his deep voice along with the perpetual motion of the scenery by my window would do the trick, and I would be sleeping like a baby in no time.

As the hectic summer continued, this brief moment of repose drifted from my mind. I said goodbye to my childhood old house from two hundred miles away, and tried to grapple with my new sense of homelessness. No one truly feels at home during their early adulthood, and I certainly was not ready to have my physical symbol of childhood comfort and familial connection taken away from me. I had assumed that I would never live in that house again, at least not for an extended period of time, but no longer having the option of returning to my physical roots had become a cause of great anxiety for me. Like most 21-year-olds, I was being bombarded by questions about what I was going to do with my life, what were my career goals, where would I go after my time in Salem, none of which I was remotely capable of answering. I felt untethered in a way I never had before. I had never intended for Salem to be my home. My attachment to it would always be limited to the duration of my education, but now I found myself more familiar with there than where I had always thought of as my home, Seattle.

I couldn't escape the feeling that I was being overlooked, as if I were a joker that someone forgot to take out of a deck of playing cards, waiting for someone to discover I didn't belong. The feeling stuck with me until Thanksgiving vacation, my first time trying to call my parents new dwelling "home." My second night in town, I was possessed to drive out to my old house. I was once again alone in my trusty red Volvo, a gross approximation of my dad's old blue one, and set against the elements, this time the unseasonable cold of an early winter instead of the intoxicating heat of mid-summer. As I pulled slowly down my old street, I saw the houses in which my childhood friends had lived, passed by the house where the crazy old woman would collect the various items of clothing left in the park across the street, and stopped in the parking strip in front of my house. I sat there for a moment, looking at the yard where I played whiffle ball and raked leaves, at the deck and arbor that my dad and I had built, at the garden that I helped my mom cultivate and the empty space where her tomato plants grew in the summer. Inside, I could see the muffled light of a big-screen TV hung on a wall that used to have a beautiful print of a Eugene Bodin painting of a little girl in a sundress with a basket of flowers, her back turned to the viewer, walking down a wooded lain. As a commercial flickered where the print used to be, I felt something pulling me away. The same impulse that brought me back was now pushing me away- whatever I had hoped to find wasn't there- among unfamiliar cars parked outside what now seemed like such an alien place.

In order to not call too much attention to myself, I slipped the shifter into gear and pulled away into the night before anyone would notice the creepy car idling out front. Before I returned to the road, I reached for the tape, still sitting in my glove compartment, that was labeled simply, in my dad's nearly illegible scrawl, "Leonard Cohen." As I pulled away from our old house, as my parents must have countless times to soothe my infantile insomnia, I was driving a different old Volvo, and I heard a gravelly voice, tinged with both sorrow and acceptance, "My friends are gone, and my hair is grey / I ache in the places that I used to play / but I'm crazy for love..." As my old house disappeared into the darkness behind me, and the streetlights and neon signs flowed passed, I saw the familiar sights of my old neighborhood fade back into memory.

Top 10 Leonard Cohen Songs to Bid Adieu to Youth:

1. Everybody Knows - from "I'm Your Man" A personal favorite of mine from the latter part of Leonard Cohen's career. In this characteristically sly and insightful look at love and lust in the 20th century, a strong backing beat sets the stage perfectly for his gravelly-voiced delivery of some truly excellent lyrics.
2. Take This Waltz - from "I'm Your Man" - Coming from the same album as "Everyone Knows," this charming waltz (duh) again showcases the more mature, read: deeper, voice of his voice. A light string accompaniment, while still sparse, allows for a more musically intricate platform for carrying the melody and brings the fore the lyrical quality of Mr. Cohen's poetry.
3. The Partisan - "Songs From A Room" - Taking a slight step back in time, all the way back to World War II, in fact, we come to "The Partisan." A truly gorgeous and heartbreaking tale of a soldier on the run after losing his detachment. Weaving French and English, and jumping from poetic musings to stark descriptions of hardships of his character, Mr. Cohen crafts a truly masterful piece of music.
4. So Long Marianne - "Songs of Leonard Cohen" - This song is an absolute classic in the Leonard Cohen cannon. Off of his first album, the very simple arrangement and delivery of this song belie the depth of emotion contained just below the surface. I'm not sure anyone has described the triumphs and utter failures of youth so well within a single song.
5. Suzanne - "Songs of Leonard Cohen" - Maybe one of Mr. Cohen's best loved songs, and for very good reason. This song is about the thrilling and dangerous intersection of love, lust, faith and devotion. Simply beautiful, and truly terrifying.
6. The Stranger Song - "Songs of Leonard Cohen" - Recalling Bob Dylan at his earliest, this tale of a restless vagabond and his emotional impact, both for better and worse, on the woman that took him in. Mr. Cohen again captures an intrinsic part of growing up: learning to balance the need for comfort against the impulse to drop everything and see what else the world has to offer.
7. Don't Go Home with Your Hard On- "Death of a Ladies' Man" - "Death of a Ladies' Man" was a true departure for Leonard Cohen. Paired with noted producer Phil Spector, this album is much more musically dense than any in Mr. Cohen's cannon. Released in 1977, it became surprisingly popular amongst the many of the up-and-coming punk and new wave bands, especially in the New York/CBGB's scene. This song in particular, with its bouncing back beat, horn section, and suprisingly upbeat melody, is wry, rather raunchy look at foibles of learning the ways of love and lust.
8. Famous Blue Raincoat - "Songs of Love and Hate" - A heart-rending song about losing someone slowly. The familiarity the narrator has with his subject is palpable, but the distance that has grown between him and the woman he has lost is insurmountable. "I guess that I miss / I guess that I forgive you / I'm glad that you stood in my way" You cannot say it any better than that.
9. I'm Your Man - "I'm Your Man" - Thematically, this song is quite a departure from the rest of this list. Gone are the tales of heartbreak and longing, youthful indescreteions and sorrow, and in its place we have Leonard Cohen's blueprint of how to be the perfect lover. A lofty goal for anyone, this song helps give hope and a bit of swagger to even the unluckiest in love.