Spotlight on.. Music… The Amazing Leonard Cohen

Sometimes Music evokes so much feeling in us that you just want to share it.

What does Music have to do with Fashion.. you may ask me?.

Music sets a mood.. and fashion catapults us through it. Emotion has long since the beginning of time ruled peoples thoughts, actions and creativity. That creativity is what reaches into our most inner cores.

Hence my spotlight this week on MY all time favorite Writer/Musician

Emotion    Romance   Love   Life    Loss   Laughter….

Leonard Cohen.

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don’t even know the name
But if I did, well really, what’s it to you?
There’s a blaze of light in every word
It doesn’t matter which are heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Even now after letting you hear the song in the video.. *Hallelujah*. I feel like i’ve let you in one of my deepest secrets. It touches me that much. Yet so does 100 other of his songs. They are simply Poetry.. set to music.

Some of you wont get it. The Euphorims, the pictures his poetry paints. Good thing millions around the world DO get *him*.

Although retired now.. and in his mid 70’s. He is still considered Sauve, Romantic, Intelligent and yes So Very Sexy. Canadian Born Cohen started writing  in the mid 50’s.  Cohen’s writing process, he told an interviewer in 1998, is “like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I’m stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it’s delicious and it’s horrible and I’m in it and it’s not very graceful and it’s very awkward and it’s very painful and yet there’s something inevitable about it.”

During the 60s, he was a fringe figure in Andy Warhol’s Factory crowd. Warhol speculated that Cohen had spent time listening to Nico in clubs and that this had influenced his musical style. Cohen’s first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967), was too dark to be a commercial success but was widely acclaimed by folk music buffs.

Over 2,000 renditions of Cohen’s songs have been recorded. Cohen has been inducted into both the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and is also a Companion of the Order of Canada, the nation’s highest civilian honour. While giving the speech at Cohen’s induction into the American Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 10, 2008, Lou Reed described Cohen as belonging to the “highest and most influential echelon of songwriters”.

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Aside from Mr Cohens Original Version of *Hallelujah* This one is my favorites. Recorded by Espen Lind(on guitar), Askil Holm, Alejandro Fuentes, Kurt Nilsen(World Idol) 4 norwegian great singers.

This song..as like all of Leonard’s fuel me in my creative endeavors. Mr. Cohen greatly influenced me in writing my own published book of erotic poetry titled ” Satin Sins: A Bedside Book of Erotica”. He also influenced my own musical world from a young age. I can remember cleaning the house, doing chores and then a decade later singing on stage with my band and hosting jam nights at a large florida club. Soon 15 musicans were on stage jamming to Cohen tunes. Its amazing the emotions Leonard Cohen can Evoke. This is especially why I chose Him to be our first Musical Spotlight , he was there in so many firsts of my life, it seemed only appropiate.

If you’ve never heard of him.. or haven’t heard alot. I implore you to research his music, his art, his poetry and his books. Such a multi-faceted genuius.. shouldnt go unnoticed.

Here is a Few Videos from a tribute to Leonard Cohen

Martha Wainright singing (amazingly) Cohen’s *The Traitor*

But I lingered on her thighs a fatal moment
I kissed her lips as though I thirsted still
My falsity had stung me like a hornet
The poison sank and it paralysed my will

I could not move to warn all the younger soldiers
that they had been deserted from above
So on battlefields from here to Barcelona
I’m listed with the enemies of love

From the same Tribute the amazing Antony.. Singing Cohen’s *If It Be Your Will* (another fav)

If it be your will
That I speak no more
And my voice be still
As it was before
I will speak no more
I shall abide until
I am spoken for
If it be your will
If it be your will
That a voice be true
From this broken hill
I will sing to you
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing
From this broken hill
All your praises they shall ring
If it be your will
To let me sing

 I’ve included some links below. I hope in some way Leonard Cohen can help to inspire you, the way he has myself..and so many others.

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/

http://www.leonard-cohen.com/

 Read here for all the amazing details of Mr Cohens life… (most info on this blog was taken directly from wiki.)  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_cohen