Synchronicity?

Leonard Cohen is haunting me. It's a good haunting. I mean, what if it were Peter Frampton?
Today at breakfast, I read in The New Yorker Sasha Frere-Jones' review/appreciation of Cohen, who's not exactly making a comeback. To those who appreciate his words and his deep, worn, experienced voice, his bluesy, cool jazz and pop -- even beat -- music and style, he's always been there in our heads and on our turntables. Frere-Jones calls this his "return." The essay brought back memories.
My first taste of Cohen's music came in the summer of 1969. At Winthrop College, it was the beginning of the "hippie" era. Steve White, a local man I'd met when we played two-thirds of Bertoldt Brecht's God in Winthrop's production of "The Good Woman of Setzuan," was known on campus and in town as "the first hippie in South Carolina." Probably not true, but it felt good to believe we knew such a person. He was a good musician and a good listener.
On the 7th floor of Richardson Hall, there were only 3 students that summer, and we didn't really know each other. Carol Conroy and I had become friends after a very spirited argument about "King Lear" in Les Reynolds' Shakespearean tragedies class.Still, in 1969 there was a trust among visual artist Anne Hendricks, poet Carol and me. We never locked our doors, hardly ever closed them at all. It was a '60s thing, for sure.
This particular night, really about 3 a.m., Carol came in my room while I was sleeping and shook me awake. Always an insomniac, she'd been reading or writing for hours.
"Come with me," she said. "You've got to hear the most beautiful song ever written."
I followed her across the hall, sat on the floor and watched her move the needle of her phonograph to the smooth groove between cuts on an album, not able to see the artist's name or read the title of the album or the song.
A clear soprano I later learned was Judy Collins started singing "Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river. You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night beside her ... and she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China ..."
At that moment, it was truly the most beautiful song in the world.
I've been remembering that pivotal summer all day, how much of it was lived to the lyrics of Leonard Cohen and later to those of Joni Mitchell. It was the summer that, thanks to Carol and Anne and Leonard Cohen I traded basketball for books and music and poetry.
Or maybe it was just hormones.
Tonight after dinner I turned on SCETV. They were in a beg-a-thon break, but almost immediately faded to "Leonard Cohen Live in London." He came to the microphone playing the intro to "Suzanne" alone on his guitar. In his 70s, his voice hasn't changed all that much. The musical accompaniment was simple, because simple was what was right. He wore a fedora and a double-breasted suit on his very lean body and he bent into his handheld microphone like he was telling it a story no one else knew, though the song is more than 4 decades old. It'll make you cry. ETV will show it again.
Remember "Bird on a Wire?"
"Like a bird on a wire,
like a drunk in a midnight choir,
I have tried in my way to be free."
Listen to Leonard Cohen some time. I'll loan you an LP or make you a cassette tape. That's the way to hear his music if you can't see him in person. It'll make you appreciate the perfect melding of poetry and music.
Carol's a marvelous poet living in New York City now. I have her books. She still hand writes wonderful letters and cards to me. Anne's making art near Clemson. I'm writing a little, but mostly appreciating music and literature and sincere friendships.
I've got Jennifer Warnes' record "Famous Blue Raincoat" on my turntable right now, and I'll follow it with 1968's "The Songs of Leonard Cohen."
Really, I'll make you a tape.