Take that, If Only! (Or, practicing to sing back up for Leonard Cohen)

You know those dreams you’d do if only? If only you had a good voice… if only you didn’t freeze up… if only you didn’t blush… if only you had the technology… if only you knew the technology… if only you knew people…

And then one day you’re on German Guy’s porch reading “Stranger Music, Selected Poems and Songs by Leonard Cohen.” Leonard Cohen, your hero, your inspiration, your number one crush (when it’s not Clint Eastwood. Or Pablo Neruda. Or Billy Collins. Or or…). Leonard Cohen, whom you secretly fantasize singing back up for.

Then German Guy comes out and finds you singing and just like that he says, let’s record it.

And so you do.

Here you go, my friend. Sisters of Mercy. Take 1. As is. Because if I mess with it I’ll spend my whole Sunday on technology and it’ll never get done. Or be good enough for If Only. And if I think about it for 2 more seconds I’ll chicken out.

Press here to listen.

A tight box + big energy + curiosity + Leonard Cohen = change

Change. It happens. It’s the way of things, of life.

Inside me something’s been pent up for something like forever. Tied up. Stifled. It’s some kind of energy.

Isn’t energy a property of matter related to its ability to perform work? You know, work. As in motion, movement. (I had no idea I had this physics stuff left in me. But don’t get your hopes up. Or, don’t get worried, whichever the case may be. That’s it for physics. Promise.)

Lately some kind of herculean pushing is going on inside me. As if something’s gotten way too small for the space it’s in and now it’s pushing to get the hell out. Sometimes its energy is desperately intense, like it’s buried alive, trying to claw or hoof its way out. Even when more subdued it feels like something growing that has run out of space: there is no way it can keep growing, or even stay alive, where it is, how it is.

IT wants expression. I don’t know exactly what IT is, but its medium is written. And I do have some hints about IT.

This whole buried alive feeling is getting reeeeeally uncomfortable. It’s amping up majorly. We’re at a Spinal Tap 11. Or “a todo full,” as we said growing up in Chile.

I’m curious about the box. The coffin. The majorly confining thing that feels like it’s killing me alive.

Thing 1 about that.

Something is afraid. It is trying to protect me. It has to do with wanting a guarantee of success. Or, better said: It wants to know I won’t fall flat on my face, because from its point of view? That would suck.

Suck how, I wonder—

Um, duh! Major shame. Crimson cheeks. Hide in closet kind of shame.

From its point of view it’d actually be better to stay stuck and stifled in the box than out and free and in danger of falling flat on my face in shame.

Thing 2: “What will they think” and “it’s too much”

These thoughts invariably come nipping at the heels of the push to express in a big way.

Ironically, all the hints I get about the IT point to ITs having to do with taking the shame out of being human. Hmmm! Curiouser and curiouser.

The IT wanting to be written has to do with saying things without pretense. Without prettying them up. Without uglying them up. Saying things as they are.

But in order to say things as they are or in whatever way they ask to be said, I have to get out of their way. The agenda of having me look good doesn’t fit. The hidden motives of teaching anyone anything, making a point, or having a cause don’t fit.

IT may very well allude to or come right out and talk about things people often feel they should hide. (And it’s so not about airing dirty laundry. No). But again: Hello, Shame!

It sure does seem that much (all?) of the reeeeeally hard and stuck stuff of our world—hate, war, prejudice, murder, lies and everything that separates rather than connecting us—touches on shame in some way.

Who would we be without our shame?

I know many people who would say that shame is what keeps us in line. Case in point: Watch the news. Notice the language used in relation to the “bad guys”. Or, adults saying to children: Shame on you!

But really: How IS that working for us? I’m beginning to suspect that line of thought. It seems much more true that shame keeps us hiding and small and, ironically, doing the things that make us feel ashamed.

In all this pondering I have noticed something odd: The people I find most beautiful, endearing, attractive, crush-worthy… and the stories that most speak to me, are not Pollyanna-ish Hallmark-y tales with pretty Hollywood endings. At all.

Rather, they share a quality of almost heart-breaking honesty and openness, usually or often about the very things that would shame me. They are at once incredibly vulnerable and incredibly strong. These people look life in the eye, no matter what looks back. They are as resilient as they are fragile. Their skin is as leathery tough and wrinkly as it is tender and soft. Their transparency is breathtaking. And they don’t care what others think of them. Or if they do, they don’t let that stop them. They go ahead anyway.

Which brings me to : Leonard Cohen. Whom I saw. Performing. On Saturday night. In person, people, in person!

And, um, Leonard Cohen? In case you’ve not been near planet Heidi for the past several years? Newsflash! I am in love with him. In love. Unapologetically and irrevocably: in love.

(Blushing-aside: In fact, halfway through the concert, pro’bly during Chelsea Hotel or Suzanne, I turned to my dear friend who was visiting and had gotten us the tickets, and told him that if there were, you know, any chance of, um, you know, with Leonard Cohen, that, well, um, we’d have to find him—my friend, that is—my camping mattress and sleeping bag so he could sleep on my living room floor for the night. Or something. He laughed and said, of course. Yah. Now that’s a friend!)

So where was I? Oh yes. About my love—

Leonard Cohen, exquisite lover of word and world, is my hero. Such accessible poetry. None of this intellectually aloof blah blah. He is clever, but never in an I-need-to-impress-you way.

But most of all I love him for not hiding his humanity from me, from you. He is imperfect and heart-breakingly honest about his foibles and mistakes. Which makes him all the more beautiful. He teaches me to embrace wherever I am at.

And he shows me how to age with the utmost of grace. Talk about vintage wine. Oh my. The man is 75 and he’d skip onto and off the stage. He was sporting his fedora, of course. His backup musicians were all stellar in their own right and when their moment came, Leonard Cohen was the embodiment of generosity: he’d take off his hat and listen, rapt, sometimes getting on one knee right alongside them. The man can listen.

The entire concert felt like some kind of a passionate, mysterious, sensual, divine yet oh-so-human prayer.

Thank goodness my days praying to inaccessible perfect gods are over. Give me human. Give me heart. Give my honest. Give me life, any day.

I’m left to ponder this: What if I cared what people think AND went ahead and expressed IT anyway? What if?!

“But what about that shame?” something asks.

“Awww, Sweetheart,” I say to it, “it’s OK. Here, give me your hand. There’s enough room on this human bus for every part of us. Stay with me as long as you need but how ‘bout you and me get the hell out of this tight box and start writing? What do you say?”

Everybody Knows

Leonard Cohen, songwriter for songwriters, brilliant humble genius, the man who takes the shame out of our secrets, who shines a light into our human closets and gives us a chuckle over what otherwise might make us weep…, has a million lines that I adore, and “Everybody Knows” is full of them. This one feels especially apropos of this administration and the financial mess we’re in:

“…everybody knows the boat is leaking, everybody knows that the captain lied, everybody’s got this sinking feeling like their father or their dog just died…”

Rufus Wainwright, cheeky as ever, hams it up and nails it. If you want to skip to the song, skip to 1:50. But if you’re a fellow Cohen-lover, start at 0:00. I hope you enjoy!

Click here to watch

There is a crack in everything

Gashing and slashing wide and black I went back to bed and asked for a crack, however small, just enough for a little light and I dreamt of Holland: stark in summer, from above, wide angle, everything fast, like a bullet, like death, and like those, in slow motion. I’m scanning for a road and find one on last winter’s ski runs. Small angle zoom in on three men on skiis falling, still in slow mo —- air air air, pulled inexorably by earth’s grav(e)ity. The middle man is caught and on his sides the other two try in their way to set him free, like a bird on L. Cohen’s wire.

All My News (Leonard Cohen)

(by Leonard Cohen, in “Book of Longing”)

1.
I was not meant
to be renown
in the present
market town,

but in the future
some may find
what might be used
to change a mind

from slaughter
in the name of peace
to honouring
complexities,

and thus influence
politics
with deeper balance
deeper checks.

2.
Look on low
look on high,
see with Love’s
inhuman eye

not only charge
of opposites
(the broken heart
the healing fix),

but what engenders
every turn—
the leader on her
knees will learn.

And he who’s sick
with heavy thought
will cherish it
and fold his cot.

3.
Do not decode
these cries of mine—
They are the road,
and not the sign.

Nor deconstruct
my drugless high—
I’m sober but
I like to fly.

The quickened with
my open talk,
you need not pick
the ancient lock.

4.
Mystery now,
and now Revealed
I bend to Thee
my will to yield,

and whisper here
my gratitude
for every tear
of restless mood;

Who lets me breach
the walls of time
so I could touch
the ones to come

with wisdom that
my parents spoke
(established on an
anecdote),

and shorthand of
the unborn mind
with graceful effort
all combined.

5.
Undeciphered
let my song
rewire circuits
wired wrong,

and with my jingle
in your brain,
allow the Bridge
to arch again.