A few months ago, when I drove down to park near my place near the river, my memory took me back to Jean and Leonard Cohen.
It is just after the first day of Spring. The crocuses are in bloom. The tulips are possibilities. And my thoughts circle back again to myself as an eighteen-year-old in Sarnia in 1964. And Jean. And Leonard Cohen.
The ‘new’ library on Christina Street had just been open for about three years. I was there searching through the stacks, trying to find something to rival my recent experience with Holden Caulfield. Franny and Zooey were disappointments. And Dickens was great, yes. Admirable, no doubt. But dusty and old.
So I went to the desk and asked Jean for something new. I don’t think I used the words ‘hip’ or ‘cool,’ but that was the sense of my request.
Jean was our neighbour in the house down the street and the Research Librarian at the Sarnia Library. She had been a mainstay in both the old and new buildings since 1953. And while others described her as warm and welcoming, Jean scared me silly.
But she knew my mother. So I took a deep breath and asked for her advice.
She stood up, pulled out Flowers for Hitler from the new books section, handed it to me, said “Here”, and walked away. You can bet I hadn’t asked for poetry, but I couldn’t say “No” to Jean.
It turned out in the wider world, Cohen had become confrontational, controversial, and demanding. And his drive for success just kept growing. In 1966, he made up his mind “to take a shot at music” and “drive to Nashville to become”, of all things for a distinguished poet, “a songwriter.”
A tale told around that time was that Cohen heard Bob Dylan on his car radio along the way and thought, “Oh no. Somebody’s already done this.”
As a result, he ended up in New York, not Nashville, ran into Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and indirectly Judy Collins, who recorded Suzanne on her best-selling album "In My Life". Then Cohen recorded the song on his own 1967 album, "Rockets Up".
Years later, in October 2016, when Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature, many argued it should have been awarded to Cohen. Sitting here with my own earlier memories of Jean, I wonder what she thought about that.
Others have told me Jean was known for her hearty laugh, her contributions to the community, and her own achievements as a local writer.
In my own memory, Leonard Cohen and Jean walk together.
Success has many faces.
