leonard cohen

there’s a song on nirvana’s 1993 album in utero called “pennyroyal tea.” it’s one of the darkest and most inward looking tracks on the record. in it, kurt cobain writes the lines: “give me a leonard cohen afterworld / so i can sigh eternally.”

that same year, during the tour for his album the future, leonard cohen played a concert in seattle. the members of nirvana attended. two generations, two different kinds of darkness, meeting in the same room.

after kurt cobain’s death in april 1994, someone told cohen about this connection. cohen responded: “i wish i could have spoken with him. at our monastery, there are young men who come close to the edge like he did. there are ways of reaching them, not psychological ways, but essential ways. i don’t think i could have changed much. it’s just one of those endless ‘if onlys.’”

cohen never positioned himself as a savior. he never claimed that his poetry, his music, or that night at the concert would necessarily change anything. but the fact that cobain wanted cohen’s songs in his afterlife, and cohen later saying “i wish i could have spoken to him,” hangs in history like the echo of a conversation that never happened.

emil michel cioran once said, “music is the refuge of souls ulcerated by happiness.” the songs these two artists left behind continue to be a refuge in our mostly futile search for happiness.