While I’m deeply distrustful of big data/cloud computing, I do appreciate the accumulation of data, the “On This Day” feature on Facebook, the numbering, counting, and sorting that every computer system I use does automatically. The most played song on my itunes right now is “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” by Leonard Cohen, which feels like a joke. The last time I listened to it was on August 1st, at 11:53 AM. I wonder what I was doing that day, that morning, if the air conditioning was humming its persistent whine, if I was unpacking, reading, or just sitting there, listening.
The first time I heard Leonard Cohen I was in high school, driving--my boyfriend's friend put on a mix CD with Famous Blue Raincoat. Both my boyfriend and his friend were older, out of college while I was still seventeen, and I was too embarrassed to ask who was singing so I memorized the lyrics to look up later.
When I learned who was singing, I realized I'd met Leonard Cohen a couple years prior, at Book Expo, when his last book of poetry (from Ecco, the publishing imprint where I later worked for three years) was published. My mother's employee, a bookseller I'd had an all-consuming crush on, had been in New York with us for the convention but unable to make it to Leonard's book signing, and sent me in his place. There was a one-copy limit, so I didn't get one for myself. Later, months of longing later, that bookseller was my first kiss, twenty-eight to my fifteen.
During my first semester of college, I wrote letters to the man who first played Leonard Cohen in the car for me, kissed him the night before Christmas Eve. I wore flowers in my hair to see him--he didn't deserve it.
I worked the closing shift at Greenlight on Friday nights for well over a year, and whenever I closed with Pat or Jarrod, I'd put on Leonard Cohen as soon as ten o'clock hit, jokingly singing along as I tied up the trash and they counted the register. I thought it was funny to put on 'Closing Time'.
In 2012, I saw Leonard in concert, alone. Pat and his mom happened to be sitting just two rows in front of me. Leonard sang and played for four hours. He stood by while his longtime backup singer, did a solo number--holding his hat to his chest the whole time. Before the show ended, he introduced and thanked every member of his crew by name. I walked home alone in the cold, blissful and destroyed.
At twenty-three, I listened to Hallelujah over Skype with a much older married man I knew would never fully be mine, sobbing as I watched his face change with the music, wondering if it made our relationship seem even more cliched, that we loved this song together so much.
A different married man took me out for a business lunch a couple winters ago, bought me steak, asked me why I was single. I wanted to kiss him but I knew better; instead, that night, I emailed him a list of my top ten Leonard Cohen songs.
On my second day of work at Ecco, looking through my boss's phone book, I found three (three!) separate numbers for Leonard Cohen, an old friend of his. I never called any of them. I so wish I had, now. I don't know what I would have even said.
It's fitting that my eulogy of Leonard reads like a blind item list of men I've loved in so many different ways. I think he would approve. But hey Leonard--this is no way to say goodbye.
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