In Focus • 5

Paying a visit to Nancy the subject of Leonard Cohen's 1969 song and our own Nancy.

Dec 8, 2021

In Focus is part of my newsletter Beginner’s Mind and it’s a bi-weekly 🤞 collection of curiosities that inform and shape my outlook of the world.

When I was in middle school, I had a friend named Taylor — she was a pale funny redhead with a gap between her two front teeth. The two of us connected through our love of music — we both had an affinity for The Smiths and Morrissey, and one day, she introduced me to Leonard Cohen. She sent over the song, So Long, Marianne, from Cohen’s 1967 album, Songs of Leonard Cohen.

The sensation that I felt as I listened to Cohen’s vocals was visceral. The first verse Come over to the window, my little darling I'd like to try to read your palm was euphoric, never had I heard a voice like Cohen’s professing such simple and profound language.

As a teenager, the words meant nothing to me but I understood that there was something to unpack. Immediately, I got my hands on as much of Cohen’s music as I could. At that time, I had moved to the suburbs and when I began high school, I knew nobody. Friday nights, I dedicated myself to playing Leonard Cohen’s music on my Playstation and TV. Occasionally, my mom would come in the room to ask if I was okay — I think she was concerned that her son was listening to Cohen’s somber voice. I was more than okay.

Leonard Cohen passed away in 2016. He was born in Canada in 1934 — and spent the early parts of his career writing novels about the frailties of life. The characters and stories he created were riddled with fantasy, sex, isolation, angst, love, loss, religion, and so forth. In 1967, he released his first album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, which the New York Times responded to by saying “Alienated Young Man Creates Some Sad Music; Leonard Cohen Writes and Records Own Songs Poet Is as Unhappy as Bob Dylan, but Far Less Angry” further labeling him as a poet of pessimism.

Today, Leonard Cohen is regarded as being one of the world’s greatest songwriters. He’s graced the world with songs that are direct, complex, layered, and genuine.

Watch his Rock & Roll Hall of Fame speech and induction.

Enter Nancy

Last week I was driving and the words It seems so long ago, Nancy was alone came to mind. They’re the words to Leonard Cohen’s song Seems So Long Ago, Nancy, a song off his album Songs from a Room (1969).

It’s a song that paints a picture of Nancy, a 21-year-old woman that took her own life. Nancy was somebody that Cohen knew and when asked to comment on the song, he said:

I think that the world throws up certain kinds of figures. Sometime in abundance, sometimes very rarely, and that some of these figures act as archetypes or prototypes for another generation which will manifest these characteristics a lot more easily, maybe a lot more gracefully, but not a lot more heroically. Another twenty years later she would have been just like you know, the hippest girl on the block. But twenty years before she was - there was no reference to her, so in a certain way, she was doomed.

The Nancy in the song can be interpreted as literal or allegorical.

The literal Nancy is the aloof person that exposes an obvious misunderstanding in ourselves. The literal Nancy — the person encountered daily but dismissed — the disregarded person that peaks our interest when it’s too late.

The allegorical Nancy is the unappreciated passing moment and life. The fear of honest encounters. The allegorical Nancy can be time, relationships, love, and so forth.

Both Nancys, I think, are representations of mourning experiences that no longer are but still linger in the ordinary and mundane.

And now you look around you
See her everywhere
When you are cold and numb
You hear her talking freely then

And this is why, Leonard Cohen’s writing is sincere and wholehearted, because it opens gates to enter, in which to take refuge and take inventory of our very own life. He allows us to tap into our vulnerability to see what’s there. And that alone is proof of the power of art.

Words to Seems So Long Ago Nancy

It seems so long ago
Nancy was alone
Looking at the late, late show
Through a semi-precious stone
In the House of Honesty
Her father was on trial
In the House of Mystery
There was no one at all
There was no one at all
It seems so long ago
None of us were strong
Nancy wore green stockings
And she slept with everyone
She never said she'd wait for us
Although she was alone
I think she fell in love for us
In nineteen sixty one
In nineteen sixty one
It seems so long ago
Nancy was alone
A forty five beside her head
An open telephone
We told her she was beautiful
We told her she was free
But none of us would meet her in
The House of Mystery
The House of Mystery
And now you look around you
See her everywhere
Many use her body
Many comb her hair
In the hollow of the night
When you are cold and numb
You hear her talking freely then
She's happy that you've come
She's happy that you've come