Bob Dylan Profile

Bob Dylan Profile

Mar 1, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Musicians/Composers, Profiles

Photo: ©Globe Photos/ZUMAPRESS.com/Alamy

Bob Dylan is often regarded as one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time, and he has been a favorite musician of both Carolyn and mine for decades. With a prolific career spanning more than 60 years, Dylan has profoundly influenced music and popular culture in many ways, with his unique poetic gifts, acute political awareness, and natural storytelling abilities.

Born Robert Allen Zimmerman in 1941, and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, Dylan’s grandparents were Jewish refugees from Russia and Lithuania, who arrived in the United States around the turn of the 20th Century.

While attending Hibbing High School, Dylan performed in several bands. He played cover songs by Elvis Presley and Little Richard in a band called The Golden Chords, and his performance of Rock and Roll is Here to Stay with Danny & the Juniors at his high school talent show was so loud that the principal cut the microphone during mid-performance.

In 1959 Dylan enrolled at the University of Minnesota, where he studied American folk music. Dylan started performing at coffee shops around this time, and he began introducing himself as “Bob Dylan” to give himself anonymity and recreate his persona. He used various aliases initially in his career, such as “Elston Gunn” and “Robert Dillion,” but Bob Dylan is the one that stuck.

In 1960, after his first year in college, Dylan dropped out of school, and a year later he traveled to New York City where he went to perform, and he visited his music idol Woody Guthrie, who was seriously ill in the hospital. In 1961 Dylan began playing in clubs around the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan and often accompanied other folk musicians on the harmonica. When Dylan was 19, he performed at the Café Wha? in Greenwich Village, which was started by our beloved friend Jai Italiaander and her husband.

That same year Dylan played the harmonica on an album by Carolyn Hester, which brought his work to the attention of the album’s producer, who signed Dylan on to Columbia Records. Dylan’s first album, Bob Dylan, consisted of traditional folk, blues and gospel songs, with only two original compositions. The album sold just enough copies to break even, but Dylan was starting to become better known.

Dylan’s second album, The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan, was released in 1963, and his music— often labeled as “protest songs,” with lyrics that questioned the social and political status quo— became more popular. This album contained his well-known song Blowin’ in the Wind, which was partly derived from the melody of a traditional slave song. Along with the politically charged The Times They Are a Changin, these songs became anthems for the antiwar and civil rights movements of the 1960s.

Dylan’s revolutionary third album Bringing it all Back Home, which was released in 1965, featured his first recordings using electric instruments, and with free-association lyrics that were reminiscent of beat poetry. Using electric instruments with folk music caused some controversy within the folk music establishment, but Dylan’s popularity continued to soar. Dylan has since gone on to sell more than 125 million records, making him one of the bestselling musicians of all time. To date, Dylan has released 39 studio albums, 95 singles, and 15 live albums.

Dylan has strong spiritual beliefs and he has “always thought that there’s a superior power.” Although Dylan was raised in a small, close-knit Jewish community, and even had his Bar Mitzvah when he was 13, he converted to Christianity in the late 1970s and has released three popular albums of contemporary gospel music.

Dylan’s lyrics have received detailed attention from academics and poets. In 1998 Stanford University sponsored the first international academic conference on Dylan’s work, and in 2004 Harvard Classics professor Richard Thomas created a seminar on Dylan’s song lyrics, that put him in the context of classical poets like Virgil and Homer.

Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and has won numerous other prestigious awards, including 10 Grammy Awards, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Golden Globe Award, an Academy Award, a Pulitzer Prize in 2008, and a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2016. Dylan has also published eight books of drawings and paintings, and his watercolor and acrylic work has been exhibited in major art galleries around the world.

Some of the quotes that Bob Dylan is known for include:

There is nothing so stable as change.

I consider myself a poet first and a musician second. I live like a poet and I’ll die like a poet.

I change during the course of a day. I wake and I’m one person, and when I go to sleep I know for certain I’m somebody else.

I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.

I define nothing, not beauty not patriotism. I take each thing as it is, without prior rules about what it should be.

Yesterday’s just a memory, tomorrow is never what it’s supposed to be.

You’re going to die. You’re going to be dead. It could be 20 years, it could be tomorrow, anytime. So am I. I mean, we’re just going to be gone. The world’s going to go on without us. All right now. You do your job in the face of that, and how seriously you take yourself you decide for yourself.

by David Jay Brown

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Pablo Picasso Profile

Pablo Picasso Profile

Mar 1, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Profiles

Photo by Rene Burri/Magnum Photos

Carolyn and I have long admired the extraordinary work of the Spanish painter and sculptor Pablo Picasso, who is one of Carolyn’s all-time favorite artists, and is considered one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century.

Pablo Picasso was born in 1881 in southern Spain. His father, a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other animals, was a professor of art and the curator of a local museum. From an early age, Picasso demonstrated a passion for creative expression and a skill for drawing. According to his mother, Picasso’s first word was the Spanish term for “pencil.”

In 1890, at the age of seven, Picasso began his formal art training, when his father taught him figure drawing and oil painting. Since Picasso’s father was a traditional academic artist, he believed that proper training required a disciplined copying of the masters, and accurately drawing the human body from plaster casts and live models. Picasso demonstrated incredible artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence, but this rigid style of expression was destined to be re-imagined during Picasso’s career.

In 1900 Picasso moved to Paris and shared an apartment with a friend who was a writer. This was a difficult time marked by extreme poverty and much of his work was actually burned to keep their small place warm.  In 1901 Picasso moved to Madrid and shared another apartment with a different writer, who wrote for a journal that Picasso illustrated. The paintings that Picasso painted from 1901 to 1904 are characterized by somber renditions of people, done mostly in shades of blue and blue-green, and this time frame is known as Picasso’s Blue Period.

By 1905 Picasso had already established himself among well-known art collectors at the time, such as Leo and Gertrude Stein. Gertrude Stein, who became Picasso’s principal patron, acquired some of Picasso’s drawings and paintings, and she exhibited them at her Parisian home in her legendary salon, which The New York Times called “the first museum of modern art.”

Between 1907 and 1909 Picasso created a series of paintings that were inspired by the African artifacts that he saw at an ethnographic museum in Paris. This became known as his “African-influenced primitivism period” and is most characterized by his famous work, Demoiselles d’Avignon, a large oil painting created in 1907, of five nude women in a Barcelona brothel, rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes.

From 1909 to 1919 Picasso’s style of work is described as Cubism. This was an art movement that revolutionized European painting and sculpture, where objects and people are broken up and reassembled in an abstract form—and instead of depicting them from a single perspective, they are painted from a multitude of different viewpoints in order to represent a greater context.

In 1917 Picasso journeyed to Italy, and here he produced work that is considered to be in a “neoclassical style.” This was an art movement that drew inspiration from the art and culture of classical antiquity. Picasso’s paintings and drawings from this period frequently recall the work of earlier European painters Raphael and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres.

In 1925 some of Picasso’s work appeared at a group exhibition of Surrealist artists, and although his work at this exhibit was really more representative of Cubism, Surrealism influenced Picasso’s work during this time by reviving his interest in primitivism and eroticism.

In 1937 Picasso produced a large oil painting called Guernica which is probably his best-known work, which depicts the German bombing of a Spanish city during the Spanish Civil War. It is a powerful piece that, for many, expresses the brutality, horrors, and inhumanity of the war.

In 1939 and 1940 the Museum of Modern Art in New York City held a major retrospective of Picasso’s major works at the time, and this exhibition brought Picasso into full public view in the United States. This resulted in a reinterpretation of his work by contemporary art historians and scholars.

During the years of World War II Picasso remained in Paris while the Germans occupied the city, from 1940 to 1944. Picasso’s artistic style didn’t exactly fit in with the Nazi ideal of art, so he never exhibited his work during this time, and the Gestapo often harassed him.

During a search of his apartment, a Nazi officer saw a photograph of his painting Guernica. “Did you do that?” he asked Picasso. “No,” Picasso replied, “You did.”

Picasso’s immense creativity found its way into other mediums. Between 1935 and 1959 Picasso wrote poetry as another form of artistic expression, and he crafted over 300 poems. He also wrote two screenplays, in 1941 and 1949. Additionally, Picasso made a few film appearances as himself, including Jean Cocteau’s Testament of Orpheus in 1960, and in 1955 he helped make the film The Mystery of Picasso.

The last years of Picasso’s life were marked by a period of great creativity, during which he continued to explore new media and techniques. He also experienced great success, receiving numerous honors and awards, such as the International Lenin Peace Prize award, which he won twice, in 1950 and 1962.

Picasso’s later works often contained a mix of elements from different styles, including Cubism, Surrealism, and his own unique vision. He also continued to draw inspiration from the world around him; his paintings often contained references to current events and the political landscape at the time.

Picasso remained very active in the art world through his nineties, and he continued to exhibit his work in galleries and museums around the world until the end of his life. He also continued to work with a variety of different media, including sculpture and lithography. Picasso painted 13,500 paintings in his lifetime, and more of his paintings have been stolen than any other artist. He also produced 100,000 prints and engravings, 300 sculptures and ceramics, and 34,000 illustrations.

Picasso died in 1973 at the age of 91, and he was active as an artist until his last breath. His work has inspired generations of artists, and his influence can be seen in many of the works of modern and contemporary art. Carolyn’s painting After Picasso was inspired by Picasso’s Cubist work, for example. Picasso’s iconic pieces continue to be exhibited in museums and galleries around the world, and his influence can not only be seen in the development of modern art, but also in popular culture, with his works inspiring films, music, fashion, and other forms of artistic expression.

Some of the quotes that Picasso is known for include:

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

It takes a long time to become young.

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Everything you can imagine is real.

Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.

“f there were only one truth, you couldn’t paint a hundred canvases on the same theme.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.

I don’t believe in accidents. There are only encounters in history. There are no accidents.

The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good’ sense.

To finish a work? To finish a picture? What nonsense! To finish it means to be through with it, to kill it, to rid it of its soul, to give it its final blow the coup de grace for the painter as well as for the picture.

by David Jay Brown

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Aldous Huxley Profile

Aldous Huxley Profile

Mar 1, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Profiles, Psychologists, Writers

Photo by Bettmann

British writer, philosopher, and social satirist Aldous Huxley’s work has had a profound impact on Carolyn and I, and our dear friends Oz Janiger and Laura Huxley told us wonderful stories about their precious time with him.

Aldous Leonard Huxley was born in 1894 in Surrey, England. He was born into an intellectually active family; his father was a schoolteacher and writer, and his mother founded an independent girls’ boarding and day school. Aldous was the grandson of the famous zoologist Thomas Huxley, who was an early advocate for Darwin’s theory of evolution, and his brothers Julian and Andrew became noteworthy biologists.

Aldous’ father, Leonard Huxley, had a well-equipped botanical laboratory where Aldous began his science education as a child. His brother Julian described him as someone who “frequently contemplated the strangeness of things.”

Aldous faced some serious challenges as a teenager. In 1908 his mother died, and in 1911 he contracted an eye disease that caused the surface of his eyes to become inflamed. This ocular inflammation left him almost blind for around three years, and then he partially recovered, with one eye just capable of light perception, and the other with about 5 percent of normal vision. Unable to pursue a career in medicine, as he had initially intended, due to his loss of sight, Huxley studied English literature at Oxford from 1913 to 1916.

After graduating from Oxford, Aldous taught French for a year at Eton College in Berkshire. One of his students at the time was a young fellow named Eric Blair, who also went on to become a well-known writer; he took the pen name George Orwell and wrote the classic dystopian novel 1984.

In 1916 Aldous edited the Oxford Poetry journal, and he completed his first (although unpublished) novel at the age of 17. In 1921 Aldous published his first novel, Crome Yellow, which, like the novels that followed— Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925, and Point Counter Point in 1928, were social satires.

In 1919 Aldous married his first wife, Maria Nys, and they had one child together, Matthew (who Carolyn and I met at a conference during the 1990s). Aldous and Maria lived with Matthew in Italy during the 1920s, where Aldous would spend time with his friend, English novelist and poet D. H. Lawrence.

In 1932 Aldous published his most well-known work, Brave New World, a dystopian novel about a World State in the future, where citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy. The book has since become a classic of modern literature— it ranked number 5 on a list of the 100 best-selling English-language novels of the 20th Century — and carried a profound warning about the dangers of social control that seem especially relevant today.

In 1937 Aldous moved to Los Angeles with his wife Maria, where he worked as a screenplay writer for Hollywood films. Aldous received screen credit for Pride and Prejudice in 1940, and he worked on a number of other films, including Jane Eyre in 1944. In 1955 Aldous’ wife Maria died.

Aldous grew interested in philosophical mysticism and in 1945 he published The Perennial Philosophy, which explores the common ground between Eastern and Western mysticism. Our beloved friend Laura Huxley first met Aldous in 1948, when she was pursuing an idea for a film, and although the film was never produced, they stayed close and were married in 1956. Laura was married to Aldous for the last 7 years of his life.

Carolyn Mary Kleefeld and Laura Huxley

Carolyn Mary Kleefeld and Laura Huxley

In 1953 Canadian psychiatrist Humphry Osmond introduced Aldous to a psychedelic medicine, mescaline, and he had a powerful mystical and transcendent experience that became the basis for his revolutionary book The Doors of Perception. It’s a slim volume, just 63 pages, but it had a powerful cultural impact and is generally regarded as one of the most important books on psychedelic mysticism. The popular rock band The Doors took their name from the title of Huxley’s book.

In 1962 Aldous published his final novel, Island, a utopian fantasy about a shipwrecked journalist on a fictional island, which incorporates the insights that he gained from his mystical experiences, and provides a wonderful alternative future to his dystopian vision in Brave New World. During his lifetime, Aldous published more than 50 books, and a large selection of poetry, short stories, articles, philosophical treatises, and screenplays.

Aldous died in 1963, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. On his deathbed, Aldous asked Laura to administer LSD to him and he died while undergoing a psychedelic experience, as Laura read to him from The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Laura wrote about this experience, and her final days with Aldous, in her much-loved book This Timeless Moment.

Laura shared a favorite story with me about Aldous. She told me about this one time that Aldous was at a meeting of professional scientists, and how he was asked what final words of advice he could offer after a lifetime of inquiry. His response was, “I’m very embarrassed because I worked for forty years. I studied everything around. I did experiments. I went to several countries. And all I can tell you is to be just a little kinder to each other.”

Some of the quotes that Aldous is known for include:

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

I wanted to change the world. But I have found that the only thing one can be sure of changing is oneself.

Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.

The more powerful and original a mind, the more it will incline towards the religion of solitude.

That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons that history has to teach.

Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.

The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.

There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.

I wish so much that I had had an opportunity to interview Aldous, but I was only 2 years old when he died.

by David Jay Brown

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Allen Ginsberg Interview

Allen Ginsberg Interview

Mar 1, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Interviews, Poets

Photo: Associated Press

The late, widely acclaimed poet and writer Allen Ginsberg was the cousin of our beloved friend, Dr. Oz Janiger, and Allen used to stay with Oz whenever he was visiting Los Angeles, so Carolyn and I spent some time with him, and I interviewed him for my book Mavericks of the Mind.

Along with Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs, Ginsberg was part of a core group of experimental writers that came to be known as the “Beat Generation,” and he received numerous honors and awards, including the National Book Award for Poetry, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship.

Ginsberg is probably best known for his revolutionary poem Howl, which caused such a stir when it was first published in 1956 that it was seized by the San Francisco police and U.S. Customs. The controversial poem became the subject of an obscenity trial because it described homosexual acts, at a time when those acts were illegal in every state, and it went on to become one of the most widely read and translated poems of the 20th century.

Carolyn used to send some of her manuscripts to Allen when he lived in New York, and one night when we all had dinner at Oz’s home Carolyn showed Allen the book that she was currently working on, The Alchemy of Possibility. Allen returned it to Carolyn with edits and ideas, and she was able to use some of them after “scrutinizing what fit” for her “as the author, and yet much respecting Allen.”

Interestingly, our friends Jerry and Estelle Cimino have documented much of Allen’s work, and have an extensive collection of Beat memorabilia, including original manuscripts, rare books, letters, personal effects, and cultural ephemera at The Beat Museum in San Francisco.

Here is an excerpt from my conversation with Allen in Mavericks of the Mind:

David: What was is that originally inspired you to start writing poetry?
Allen: It’s a family business. My father was a poet, his Collected Poems were posthumously published. . .

David: Was it something that you always knew you were going to do?
Allen: No, but I always wrote poetry; since I was a kid I knew poetry. My father taught high school and college, so I knew a lot of Milton, Poe, Shelley, and Blake when I was five, six, seven years old. And I memorized it, or it just sort of stuck in my head. I started writing when I was maybe fifteen, or younger, but I never thought of myself as a poet. I just thought that it was something you did on the side, like my father had done. But then, when I met Jack Kerouac at the age of seventeen, I realized that he was the first person I had met who saw being a writer as a sacramental vocation. Rather than being a sailor who wrote, he was a writer who also went out on ships. That changed my attitude towards writing, because now I saw it as a sacred vocation.

by David Jay Brown

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Edmund Kara Interview

Edmund Kara Interview

Mar 1, 2023 | Artists, David Jay Brown, Interviews

The late Edmund Kara was an extraordinary sculptor, and perhaps one of the greatest sculptors who ever lived, yet few people recognize his name. However, people often know his work from seeing it at Nepenthe– a landmark restaurant in Big Sur, California– where one of his wooden sculptures, the Phoenix Bird, is permanently on display near the entrance.

Edmund’s home was overflowing with his incredible museum quality sculptures, but there have been few public showings of his work. This is because the work was born out of his passion for creating, and he had no interest in commercial success, so he never sought it. Carolyn gave Edmund his first gallery show at the Gallerie Illuminati in Santa Monica during the early 1990s. Carolyn honored Edmund with many works of her own art, including her painting, Edmund’s Tree Song.

Edmund Kara and Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

Edmund Kara and Carolyn Mary Kleefeld

Some of Edmund’s sculptures are life-size and larger-than-life renditions of mythological creatures, archetypal personalities, and biblical figures, as well as abstract pieces. The detail is truly uncanny. They have a magical and haunting quality, and almost appear to be alive. I got the feeling that when the clock struck midnight, and everyone was asleep, all of the magical wooden creatures in his studio sprung to life.

Edmund led a fascinating life. He traveled around the world on his bicycle in his youth, and had a successful career as a fashion designer in New York and Los Angeles. As an interior designer, a stage designer, and costume designer— with clients such as Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Keely Smith and Maria Cole— Edmund had a highly refined aesthetic sense and a masterful creative touch. He personally dressed the actors with his costumes in the productions that he worked on.

Edmund left his successful Hollywood career behind for a relatively solitudinous life in Big Sur devoted to his sculpture. He told me that he thought, “capitalism annihilates creativity, because you start working for bucks, rather than just working to be an artist.” He also said, “one could only become an artist if no one can convince them not to be.”

I once visited Edmund with Carolyn and the late ethnobotanist Terence McKenna. Before entering Edmund’s home and studio, I raved enthusiastically to Terence, “You’re in for a real treat; these are some of the most incredible sculptures that you’ve ever seen!” Terence looked at me with more than just a little skepticism, and a facial expression that seemed to be politely saying, “don’t you know who you’re talking to.” He simply said, “We’ll see.” However, after about five minutes inside Edmund’s magical studio, Terence turned to me and said, “I see what you mean.”

There was a timeless quality about Edmund. He seemed to have stepped out of another time, or rather; he seemed to have always existed. He lived on a breathtakingly beautiful mountain in Big Sur— a “suburb of Mount Olympus” he called it (on the mountain road below Carolyn’s)— in a magnificent cabin of his own design.

Edmund’s home was closer to the Pacific than his neighbors, so the crashing of the ocean waves was literally below him, and he reminded me of a sea captain. Edmund had a biblical and powerful presence. He looked you directly in the eyes — with a kind of laser beam intensity — when he spoke, and was dramatic and highly expressive. There was grandness to his style of communication. He had a tough exterior, but a gentle soul. Edmund passed away in 2001 and we miss him dearly.

I interviewed Edmund at his home in 1996. Here are some excerpts from my conversation with him:

David: Has sexuality influenced your work?
Edmund: Of course. I mean look at those fluid lines. Look at those curves and arabesques. There’s no straight hard-edged anything. It’s organic, sensual. I always think the essence of my work is about hair, which is one of the most sensuous things about our bodies. Wood is the hair of the planet. It is an extremely sensuous thing.

David: I guess that makes you a planetary hair stylist.
Edmund: That’s right. I’ve often called myself a cosmic hairdresser. Yes, It’s all bundles of fibers.

David: I suspect that sexual energy and creative energy are one and the same.
Edmund: Well I’ve always felt there is nothing but sexual energy. It’s the first and primal energy.

David: And every other form of energy is…?
Edmund: A sub-division, that’s right. I’ve only ever been craving one thing – that’s reunion with the One.

David: What do you think happens to consciousness after the death of the body?
Edmund: I prefer to know when I experience it. . . .

David: Do you think that consciousness survives death?
Edmund: It’s plausible, but I don’t know. I prefer that it didn’t. Let’s face it. I know all the stories about karma and reincarnation. I’m familiar with all the theories about it. I’ve heard them all. I’ve thought about them all. I feel indifferent to that idea. But I have read things that I think are wonderful. Like I read once that “you are reborn according to your heart’s most urgent desires.” Think about that.

There’s a great beauty and truth in that, because that does occur in you daily life. You are reborn continually, and you could be reborn— in God knows what fashion— according to your heart’s most urgent needs and desires, which is something you could not intellectualize, because it doesn’t say your brain’s urgent needs, it says your heart’s urgent needs.

So that’s a very comforting idea to me. If there is a continuation of consciousness, it will be a re-birth based on my needs in a karmic frame, what I have to achieve on the next step.

David: What do you think is the most important thing that you’ve learned in your life?
Edmund: That humor is above death. . . .

David: What’s your concept of God or the Divine?
Edmund: Well, I’ve gotten over the most common images of God that are fed to us as children. I’ve gotten over the images of “Him” or “Her.” I do believe there is a central seed consciousness that is fused in all of the universe. There is some potent, high-exulted energy that represents God to me, and it manifests in nature particularly. All of nature awakens an inner reverence, a sense of holiness to our existence within my being. And I’m very aware of it in my work. I’m very aware of it when I walk, and when I’m out in nature, when I see something growing, when I plant a rosebush and watch the buds spurt out of the stems in the springtime. I’m very aware of this power that is infused in all of life— from every star in the heavens to every minnow in the sea.

To learn more about Edmund Kara and see his artwork, we invite you to visit his website.

by David Jay Brown

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Leonard Cohen Profile

Leonard Cohen Profile

Feb 28, 2023 | David Jay Brown, Musicians/Composers, Profiles

Photo by Graeme Mitchell for The New Yorker

Another brilliant artist of legendary proportions that Carolyn and I both admire is the late Leonard Cohen. Cohen was a Canadian singer-songwriter, poet, and novelist, whose emotionally powerful work explored such themes as romance, isolation, sexuality, loss, politics, and death. His husky voice and soulful words have touched the hearts of millions, and he continues to soothe and inspire us with his wildly innovative songs and mesmerizing poetry.

Cohen was a masterful poet; he had 17 collections of poetry published in his lifetime, and he didn’t begin his music career until he was 33. Cohen graduated from McGill University in 1952 and spent some time in graduate school at Columbia University, but he wasn’t happy there; he described his academic experience as “passion without flesh, love without climax.” In 1957 Cohen left school to pursue a career as a poet and novelist; he began working various odd jobs so that he could focus on his creative writing.

Disappointed with his lack of success as a writer, in 1967 Cohen moved to New York City to reinvent himself as a folk music singer-songwriter. He began hanging out with artist Andy Warhol and mixing with his associated creative community. Popular singers such as Judy Collins and Joan Baez started covering some of his songs around this time, translating his poetry into music. After performing at a few folk festivals, Cohen came to the attention of a Columbia Records producer who signed him to a record deal, and his first album was released that same year. Cohen released 14 studio albums and eight live albums during the course of a recording career lasting almost 50 years, and a posthumous album, Thanks for the Dance, was released in 2019.

Cohen was a deeply contemplative man, who sought the advice and guidance of spiritual leaders throughout the world. He spent much of his life as a spiritual seeker, alternating periods of deep study of the Jewish Torah with long retreats at Zen monasteries. He had ancestral roots in religion, and his deep personal sense of spirituality was expressed in his most well-known song, Hallelujah, which was the result of a long and profound spiritual journey; it took him years to write the revered classic, filling notebook after notebook with rejected lyrics.

Cohen ran into financial difficulties later in life due to missing money that his ex-manager had stolen, and in 2008 he embarked on his first world tour in fifteen years. He performed his final time in New Zealand in 2013. Appreciation for Cohen’s songs spans across generations, as he had the ability to reach people of all ages, and although I never saw him perform, Carolyn saw him numerous times, and so did my mom, who is also a great admirer.

Cohen was immensely creative and, in addition to his poetry, prose, and music, he also produced countless sketches, drawings, and lithographs, some of which are collected in his book The Flame: Poems Notebooks Lyrics Drawings. Cohen died in 2016, at the age of 82. His legacy is enormous; he is recognized as one of the most influential musicians of our time. His albums have sold millions of copies, and he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, and the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Some quotes that Leonard Cohen is remembered for include:

Poetry is just the evidence of life. If your life is burning well, poetry is just the ash.

You look around you and see a world that doesn’t make sense; you raise your fist or you say ‘hallelujah.

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. — Cohen describes his writing process

There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.

The older I get, the surer I am that I’m not running the show.

Carolyn added: “David Campagna and I experienced Leonard at many concerts, with seats right next to his performance. At one point he looked into David’s eyes, which were tearing, smiled his half smile, and fell backwards, his eyes also full of tears.“

“Then a few months later, while David was at Mt. Sinai Hospital in LA, Leonard said ‘Hi bro’ I ‘They are just hanging us on.’ Then David brought my book The Divine Kiss to Leonard the next week, while dragging himself across the room attached to a chemo machine. Leonard remarked what an act of passion it was that the book was dedicated in David’s honor. I’m not sure if they saw each other again, but Leonard’s family estate does have that book, thanks to David’s heroism.”

by David Jay Brown

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