Everybody Knows

 

As a Christmas present, I treated myself yesterday to a visit to the current exhibit at the Art Gallery of Ontario on Leonard Cohen.

It was a disappointment. But then, I expected it to be. How do you host an art exhibit on a poet? Wrong medium. 

You got to see his notebooks under glass; but usually just the covers, and the covers look like any other notebooks, after all. Letters to and from other celebrities; very hard to read in handwriting and under glass, with others crowding you. Much better printed as a book or a web page. One of his guitars; his electronic keyboard. Look very much like any other guitar or Casio keyboard. Videos of him singing; using clips readily available on YouTube. So what?

When I went to an AGO exhibit years ago on William Kurelek, it felt life-changing. I left with a sense of what Kurelek was all about, what he was saying. When I went to a more recent exhibit on Andy Warhol, I left with a sense of what Warhol was all about. When I left the exhibit on Cohen, I was feeling, “was that really all he was about?” 

I had to remind myself of the actual lyrics. Being a writer, Cohen was far better at revealing himself than any museum curator’s collection of memorabilia could be. 

Had I known of Cohen only from the exhibit, I would have thought that Cohen was interested only in producing tunes that someone could enjoy while doing the laundry, or dance to. Ironic, since Cohen often did not write the tunes, only the lyrics. And did not have one of the world’s great voices. Again and again, the clips chosen seemed to downplay the significance of the lyrics, the poetry, and the novels. Beautiful Losers was the product of sunstroke. “First We Take Manhattan” was an attempt to say “something about Berlin.” “The Future” was gloomy, but saved by an upbeat tune.

If there was a core message, okay, Cohen loved his mother, his family, and his hometown. All actually highly dubious assertions, based on what he actually wrote. If true, merely bland and pedestrian. He was fascinated with guns, for some unexplained reason; he was not a pacifist. He thought the ultimate meaning of life was getting laid. Totally soulless.

At the exit, you had the opportunity to buy a trilby hat like the one he wore on stage, or a keychain, or a t-shirt. Fan stuff.

I felt Cohen’ legacy was being falsified and crassly exploited, either by his surviving family, or by the museum, or, most probably, both.

The title chosen for the exhibit was appropriate: “Everybody knows.” It merely traded on Cohen’s fame, and withheld anything not apparent to everybody.