Leonard Cohen passed away!!!

... more optimism needed, today, folks!

I've been a fond, loyal fan and follower of Leonard Cohen's art: I read some of his poems, his novels, The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers have always been in my personal books Olympus, I searched for his Greek house in Hydra, back in 1984, asking to islanders where it was and visiting its door and white walls like a temple... and always returned to his discs often and often, in the last 40+ years, like a vessel back to the harbour, after a storm.

When I began playing acoustic guitar in my teens, his Suzanne was among the very first licks and songs I learned and my young ladies friends swear they never saw me more sexy... ahhh, the power of immortal melodies and simple, truest art: also if (badly) filtered through my personal flaws (voice and playing), the beauty poured and reached the hearts, strong and pure like the real thing.

I must admit I remained much more fond of the early records, the naked, acoustic arrangements were so right for his words... I found as redundant the strings and other instruments added on his more recent discs.

 After the release of "You want it Darker",  his last, recent record, he told the following to Rolling Stone:

"You depend on a certain resilience that is not yours to command, but which is present, and if you can sense this resilience or sense this capacity to continue, it means a lot more at this age than it did when I was 30, when I took it for granted."

A giant, he'll be deeply missed... not only for what he wrote and sang in the shiny past, but most of all for the lighthouse he was, a rock of poetry and beauty in a dark sea of sorrow and grief of a world going worst and worst.

R.I.P. dear Leonard, condolences to your sons and to all the ladies you loved, reciprocated...


... and thank you for being.