Although I had heard maybe a couple of his songs beforehand, the first album by Leonard Cohen that I'd listened to, back in 1984, was Songs of Love and Hate, which seemed like a concept album about a trip through a dark tunnel of depression, but which I'd found out a few years ago had actually been cobbled together from stray studio and live recordings. Although it remains to me astonishingly brutal and beautiful, and there are some songs of his which still command my attention and respect, it's hard for me to listen to Cohen anymore, which is a testament to how much I've changed as a person. Add to this my learning of some supremely nefarious stuff that this guy had been about throughout his life, as though he'd been born into it, and my enthusiasm for this guy's music goes limp. Knowing what I know now about "reading" people's character from their speech and behavior caused me to cringe even more while watching this "documentary" – which I can likewise tell was staged and scripted – it is glaringly obvious in this cinematic puff piece that this guy was absolutely full of shit.
What a consummate, but transparent, bullshitter. The reason why generations of arty college chicks have fallen for his schtick is exactly like how the aging arty Peter Pan living in proximity to a college campus can seduce them year after year until about when he hits 50. It's all neuro-linguistic. It's the illusion. It's the very thing that sells the artist in order to sell the art. Offer people a gratifying fantasy of themselves, or of others in which to participate, and they go with it against their better judgment – or, in the cases described, for lack thereof. I can't even tell, anymore, whether his songs had truly struck a "resonance" within me when I was in my 20s or I'd just been wanting arty college chicks to like me. Such is my befuddlement as to why I had fallen for this, myself. It's a great argument for raising the voting age to 30.
