Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox Pens Eulogy to Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen died at the age of 82 on Monday, November 7. The news of his passing spread last night–the day he was laid to rest in Montreal. The music world has since mourned Cohen’s death. Deerhunter’s Bradford Cox is a noted fan of Cohen’s work, and in 2012, covered his 1969 track “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy.” Today, Cox has shared a eulogy to Cohen with Pitchfork. Read it below.

It is very difficult not to feel that we are headed for some sort of dark age, or rather, that we’ve arrived there and are only now realizing it. As we lose another artist whose work in the 20th century helped to shape not only how we view songwriting, but also how we view the world, there is a very clear sound of the hammer driving another nail into the coffin of authentic culture.

Leonard Cohen wrote what I believe to be the single greatest lyric I have ever heard:

“Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.”

The first time I heard it I was young enough that it almost slipped by me but moments after hearing him sing it, plainly, without affect – I was picking my jaw up off the floor.

Cohen was a master of creating such lines imbued with utter despair and melancholy but also humor and humanity. He created a body of work – novels, poetry, music – that one could get lost in for a lifetime.

We need something to get lost in more than ever at this point in time. To hear someone tell the truth over and over without hesitation, and do it with beauty… this is something our generation has yet to produce. I don’t even know if that kind of wisdom is even possible now. I am even less sure that we’d have the capacity to appreciate it if it was.

“I fought in the old revolution on the side of the ghosts and the king. Of course I was very young and I thought that we were winning. I can’t pretend I still feel very much like singing as they cary the bodies away. Into this furnace I ask you now to venture. You whom I cannot betray.”

- The Old Revolution, from Songs From a Room

Read “Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’: Music’s Greatest Work in Progress” and “7 Covers Leonard Cohen Made His Own” on the Pitch. Find more tributes to Leonard Cohen in the wake of his death here.

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