she gets you on her wavelength

“I knew it was a song about Montreal, it seemed to come out of that landscape that I loved very much in Montreal, which was the harbour, and the waterfront, and the sailors' church there, called Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours, which stood out over the river, and I knew that there were ships going by, I knew that there was a harbour, I knew that there was Our Lady of the Harbour, which was the Virgin on the church which stretched out her arms towards the seamen, and you can climb up to the tower and look out over the river, so the song came from that vision, from that view of the river. At a certain point, I bumped into Suzanne Vaillancourt, who was the wife of a friend of mine; they were a stunning couple around Montreal at the time, physically stunning, both of them; a handsome man and woman; everyone was in love with Suzanne Vaillancourt, and every woman was in love with Armand Vaillancourt. But there was no ... well, there was thought, but there was no possibility, one would not allow oneself to think of toiling at the seduction of Armand Vaillancourt's wife. First of all he was a friend, and second of all as a couple they were inviolate, you just didn't intrude into that kind of shared glory that they manifested. I bumped into her one evening, and she invited me down to her place near the river. She had a loft, at a time when lofts were ... the word wasn't used. She had a space in a warehouse down there, and she invited me down, and I went with her, and she served me Constant Comment tea, which has little bits of oranges in it. And the boats were going by, and I touched her perfect body with my mind, because there was no other opportunity. There was no other way that you could touch her perfect body under those circumstances. So she provided the name in the song.”

I love that.

I've already noted in a previous post that "Suzanne" is not a favorite Cohen song of mine. This is not popular opinion, as one of his most famous songs, it is considered a true classic. Lyrically, I don't deny that it's lovely, but in verse, it loses something for me. However, in preparation for a trip to the north country a month from today (exactly so), having recently taken part in a photowalk in my home neighborhood, I have been looking into doing something with my time while in my favorite troubadour's homeland. So I did some research and found the streets I will need to cross ... the "valued avenues of discovery."

I was first in Montreal just before my 10th birthday, the second time a little after that. The last time I was there was a pre (post?)-honeymoon, five years after the marriage ... only appropriate as the love was decided by a Cohen quote and the proposal produced in front of the Chelsea Hotel ... "I remember you well ..."

So I offer up this ... as Cohen quotes Irving Layton ...

"A poet is deeply confilcted and it's in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. The place is the harbor. It doesn't set the world in order, you know, it's the place of reconciliation. It's the conssolumentum, the kiss of peace."

And these links these evening, that which express thought and song ...

the mathematics of angels
Speaking Cohen
Un Canadien Trouvé

I will be touring Westmount, some time in early May, to walk along the hill and look down at the harbor I'll stroll down Avenue Belmont and take a snap or two of #599, hopefully the frost will have been driven from the trees, and a bloom will appear.

And I couldn't resist one last brilliant snippet, before ending this evening's post ...

"Nowadays there's a great deal of confusion between Art and Religion. Since religion has failed so many people, they look to Art for Salvation. I wish them luck in this enterprise." --Leonard Cohen, Megamix, 1992