Kaddish for Leonard Cohen

MR says:

“I happened to be listening to Leonard Cohen’s rendition of Lorca’s poem, “Take This Waltz” tonight and wanted to share the story of how I had a very little part in the creation of it.

In the early 1980s, while still living in Europe, I found myself in an interesting party in the house of a French aristocrat in Paris. I did not know the aristocrat personally and was taken there by a friend. Anyway, the party warmed up and I happen to like the wine they were serving. As the evening wore on and proceeded to the whee hours of the morning, I, in a drunken stupor, began to recite this Lorca’s poem (with the original title of “Pequeno Vals Vienes”).As you know, Federico Garcia Lorca, the poet and playwright, who remains one of my favorite (Surrealist) poets, was killed at a young age in the Spanish Civil War, in 1936. Anyway, a few days after the party, I got a surprise call from Leonard Cohen, you know, the Canadian poet singer, who, unbeknown to me, had been in the party and had heard my very loosely based recitation of Lorca’s poem (that I had improvised out of memory), and had later sought and found my phone number. He asked me about the poem and the poet and if I could send him a copy of it. I told him what he had heard was loosely based on the poem. He wanted both versions, the original and my “take” of it. So, a few days later I sent a few pages of my ramblings and included Lorca’s poem and also went into some detail of how I understood the poem. After that I didn’t hear anything from him for some time. Until one day I received a check in the mail. I don’t remember if it was from him or from the company he was associated with. I sent the check back and said in a note that since I had nothing to do with the poem and was only a minor conduit, I felt that I did not deserve to get paid. I never heard anything from him again, But heard and liked the song, which went into many variations. I also learned that Cohen had named his daughter Lorca. The song you hear in the link below, is the final version, and I’m quoting the lyrics for you. The lyrics are very close to the original poem and perhaps contains a few races of my verbal idiosyncrasies. I hope you will enjoy it.”

The above is part of an email I received in 2013 from a neighbor I met in Los Angeles outside on our street on a rare rainy day there. Oblivious to the rain, our initial conversation included him reciting a poem he had recently composed, He was born in Iran, and several years after we met, he and his wife, who was born in Germany, moved to the Netherlands, joining their daughter.

What an extraordinary song and video posted above, this being my introduction to the song, bringing back a flood of Leonard Cohen-related memories, and will no doubt lead to my revisiting his music.