Leonard Cohen was the first man I met in Montreal. Walking down Rue Crescent on a windy August evening, new to the city, I was entranced by the kind face smiling down at me with a hand placed over his beating heart. I didn’t know who he was at the time. (My friend tried telling me it was a mural of Anthony Bourdain.) It would take a few more months for me to stumble across Cohen’s first poetry collection while browsing the shelves at Paragraphe Bookstore. In that first moment, all I felt was a strange sense of comfort, and I knew that this city would be kind to me.
November 7 marks eight years since the death of this wonderful poet, singer, and ladies’ man. On September 21, I had the lovely opportunity to celebrate Cohen’s ninetieth birthday at a special event held by The Word Bookstore. Guest speaker and biographer Christof Graf gave a talk entitled “Memories of Leonard Cohen,” during which he shared his experiences accompanying Cohen backstage at his concerts. Graf described himself as a fan “addicted to Cohen,” lucky to have the opportunity to interview Cohen throughout his career and eventually write several books about him. During the talk, Graf provided a detailed account of Cohen’s life here, saying that “Cohen is intrinsically connected to Montreal; he is built into the very fabric of the city.” Audience members were also invited to share their memories of the singer. Though my friends and I were too young to contribute, it was extremely eye-opening to hear from people who had seen him in concert as far back as 1966. Some attendees had even been in Montreal long enough to remember when Cohen would walk up St. Laurent for his daily breakfast bagel, waving hello to his neighbours and to those who recognized him on the streets.
In the weeks since I attended this celebration, I have spent a frankly absurd amount of time listening to Cohen’s music and reflecting on the legacy of love he has left behind in Montreal. It feels like his ghost is following me wherever I go: walking down the Plateau, where he used to live; going to English classes in the Arts building, where he used to study; even writing this article for The McGill Daily, where he used to contribute. It is impossible for me to separate my experiences in this city from his.
Part of why I am so submerged in Cohen’s legacy at the moment is because I’ve spent half of my semester analyzing his writing for a class on Canadian poetry. I was reintroduced to “Suzanne,” a song I knew and loved long before I knew anything about its singer. As I heard him sing the lyrics softly into my earphones for the hundredth time, I realized that Cohen himself had put into words what I’d been feeling for him: “She shows you where to look among the garbage and the flowers / There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning / They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever / While Suzanne holds the mirror.”
Cohen’s poetry is a way for me to reflect on my relationship with Montreal. The more I read and hear from him, the more I feel my bond with this city strengthening. Though his work is rarely explicitly about Montreal, those who have lived here can easily identify what he’s talking about – “our lady of the harbour” in “Suzanne,” images of downtown streets like St. Catherine sprinkled throughout Parasites of Heaven. It’s no wonder that the city is so proud to be known as Leonard Cohen’s hometown.
“I feel at home in Montreal in a way that I don’t feel anywhere else,” Cohen shared with an interviewer in 2006. Similar to his nomadic lifestyle, I myself have moved around many cities over the course of 20 years, never quite feeling tied down to one particular place. Living in Montreal, however, I have made this place my home on my own terms. I’m sure most people who have moved here from another city would agree with me when I say that there’s something about Montreal that you can’t find elsewhere – whether it’s the people, the distinct subcultures, or the strong sense of local identity, it’s the kind of place that makes you want to stay forever. Cohen put it best when writing the introduction to The Spice-Box of Earth in 1961: “I have to keep coming back to Montreal to renew my neurotic affiliations.”
Even as I continue romanticizing the city through the lens of Cohen’s work, however, I am careful not to romanticize the man himself. I know there is a lot we differ on in terms of political ideology, with much of it being a product of his time. His background as an upper-middle-class, Westmount-dwelling Montrealer is ultimately quite alien from my experience as an immigrant in Canada. What is important to me beyond these differences is that I am still able to learn more about myself through his work. Both his poetry and songwriting actively engage the audience, inviting them to question their own ideologies as they confront his. He is not interested in making his reader comfortable or catering to their tastes. He only wants us to face our own truths. To borrow Cohen’s words from his poem “What I’m Doing Here,” he is waiting for each one of us “to confess.”
I’ll confess first: I love Leonard Cohen because I know we share the same love for a city far bigger than either of us. I can feel that love while listening to a song recorded in the 1960s, and I can feel it if I go for a walk down Rue Crescent today. I can feel that love in the legacy he has left behind in Montreal every single day.