Half my fault and half the atmosphere
Jun. 30th, 2008 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistWhat brought him his vast following certainly isn't his gift for melody, I read in the Guardian today (even though it was from last week, or from 34 years ago, depending on how you look at it, I just saw it now).
That caught my attention. I too have been baffled by why people like him for as long as I have liked him myself.
His songs, I read, all proceed at much the same pace, with a laconic lilt; and where most people rely on a tune, Cohen seems to aim for hypnosis. I had to stop and grin when I saw hypnosis.
I'm still finding people -- Andrew's family, co-workers -- who haven't seen me in a little while and want to know how my parents' recent visit went. "Did they enjoy it?" I'm always asked. A simple enough question, but since I find myself nearly incapable of answering formal-sounds with other formal sounds and feel the need to give honest answers instead, I keep talking about how I couldn't tell, how they said everything was "nice" or "good." Everything.
As we all know I was uneasy at the prospect of the part of me that likes Leonard Cohen crossing the streams with the part of me that has parents, but he was on his best behavior that night, looking very dapper and sounding enough like a folk singer that my attempt to explain him to my dad as "a bit like Bob Dylan" wasn't as wildly inaccurate as it could've been.*
Oh, and I just remembered that Andrew's dad told me this weekend that he'd thought my parents might actually like the concert because, "his music, it's not religious..." (he clearly thinks my parents are "religious," and of course by British standards they are because they go to church every Sunday, but I don't remember either of them saying a word about religion, so I don't think of them as religious) "...but it's..." He struggled for a word and left it but came back to this theme a bit later and found himself lost for words and this time I took pity and supplied the word he was probably thinking of even though it's one that I hate: "Spiritual?" I said. "Yes, spiritual!" It's not the right word, but I know what he means.
So when somebody asked my parents afterwards what they thought of the show, I was prepared for answers like "Yep, it was good!" and I got those. But then my dad, unbidden, added, "His voice is... hypnotic." I almost had to laugh at that; it's not the sort of word you often hear from people like my parents, whose arsenal of adjectives consists mainly of "pretty good" and "not too bad."
I told this to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rainmerlot in the impromptu gig review I e-mailed her and she replied, "He's right, it is hypnotic!" I smiled.
I can't argue -- what else could I say his music has done in these past few months, after all? Cast a spell on me, change my brain's way of thinking so that good days are better and hard days are a little easier... That's hypnosis. Hearing all those songs that night conjured up vague memories of all the time I've spent listening to them on the bus, lying in bed, walking around town, all sorts of normal things I've shared with that music, and the concert was richer for those happy associations with my quotidian life. That's hypnosis.
And, also like hypnosis, I didn't know it was happening to me at the time. I would've said I didn't think it was possible if you'd asked me but I wasn't asked, I was just suddenly but gently moved to some strange new corner of human awareness.
I can't argue with hypnotic but I'd never thought of describing him that way, yet now here's the same word again already. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal; it's seeming an increasingly obvious word-choice, but little coincidences always make me smile, because they're more than the sum of their parts.
* He didn't even say "Give me crack and anal sex"! He said careless sex instead (something,angel_thane noted when we compared notes of our respective gigs, as taboo now as anal sex would've been when the song was written, and while that's the sort of astute point I'd expect from him, I myself was just thinking I should think it's a shame that you bowdlerized it, sir, but since my parents are here I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart!).
That caught my attention. I too have been baffled by why people like him for as long as I have liked him myself.
His songs, I read, all proceed at much the same pace, with a laconic lilt; and where most people rely on a tune, Cohen seems to aim for hypnosis. I had to stop and grin when I saw hypnosis.
I'm still finding people -- Andrew's family, co-workers -- who haven't seen me in a little while and want to know how my parents' recent visit went. "Did they enjoy it?" I'm always asked. A simple enough question, but since I find myself nearly incapable of answering formal-sounds with other formal sounds and feel the need to give honest answers instead, I keep talking about how I couldn't tell, how they said everything was "nice" or "good." Everything.
As we all know I was uneasy at the prospect of the part of me that likes Leonard Cohen crossing the streams with the part of me that has parents, but he was on his best behavior that night, looking very dapper and sounding enough like a folk singer that my attempt to explain him to my dad as "a bit like Bob Dylan" wasn't as wildly inaccurate as it could've been.*
Oh, and I just remembered that Andrew's dad told me this weekend that he'd thought my parents might actually like the concert because, "his music, it's not religious..." (he clearly thinks my parents are "religious," and of course by British standards they are because they go to church every Sunday, but I don't remember either of them saying a word about religion, so I don't think of them as religious) "...but it's..." He struggled for a word and left it but came back to this theme a bit later and found himself lost for words and this time I took pity and supplied the word he was probably thinking of even though it's one that I hate: "Spiritual?" I said. "Yes, spiritual!" It's not the right word, but I know what he means.
So when somebody asked my parents afterwards what they thought of the show, I was prepared for answers like "Yep, it was good!" and I got those. But then my dad, unbidden, added, "His voice is... hypnotic." I almost had to laugh at that; it's not the sort of word you often hear from people like my parents, whose arsenal of adjectives consists mainly of "pretty good" and "not too bad."
I told this to
rainmerlot in the impromptu gig review I e-mailed her and she replied, "He's right, it is hypnotic!" I smiled. I can't argue -- what else could I say his music has done in these past few months, after all? Cast a spell on me, change my brain's way of thinking so that good days are better and hard days are a little easier... That's hypnosis. Hearing all those songs that night conjured up vague memories of all the time I've spent listening to them on the bus, lying in bed, walking around town, all sorts of normal things I've shared with that music, and the concert was richer for those happy associations with my quotidian life. That's hypnosis.
And, also like hypnosis, I didn't know it was happening to me at the time. I would've said I didn't think it was possible if you'd asked me but I wasn't asked, I was just suddenly but gently moved to some strange new corner of human awareness.
I can't argue with hypnotic but I'd never thought of describing him that way, yet now here's the same word again already. I know this doesn't sound like a big deal; it's seeming an increasingly obvious word-choice, but little coincidences always make me smile, because they're more than the sum of their parts.
* He didn't even say "Give me crack and anal sex"! He said careless sex instead (something,
angel_thane noted when we compared notes of our respective gigs, as taboo now as anal sex would've been when the song was written, and while that's the sort of astute point I'd expect from him, I myself was just thinking I should think it's a shame that you bowdlerized it, sir, but since my parents are here I can only thank you from the bottom of my heart!).