Signs You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan – Part 3

This is the third installment of Leonard Cohen fan symptomatology, following Warning Signs Of Leonard Cohen Fan Syndrome and More Signs That You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan. (All You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan If … entries can be found at the You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan If … Page.)

Each of the entries below is directly derived from confessions offered in emails, on Facebook, or LeonardCohenForum.

I couldn’t make  this stuff up.

You may be a Leonard Cohen fan if …

En route from Kentucky to Montreal to view the Leonard Cohen art exhibit,¹ you are detained at the Canadian border by a guard, who says, “I’m sorry ma’am, but I’m having trouble believing that you would drive all the way from Kentucky, just to see a Leonard Cohen exhibit. Would you mind pulling over,” after which your car is searched for Cohen contraband, yet on your return, you report

We had a perfect trip, just didn’t get to stay long enough, …

You finagle two tickets to see Leonard Cohen perform at Sligo, book hotel and ferry reservations, and arrange kennels for your dogs; then – and only then – do you ask your husband if he would “fancy going to Ireland for summer holiday.”

When your husband, who is not a Cohen fan, yet is, inexplicably, an uncommonly fine fellow, responds (after assuring “I haven’t got to go to concert have I?”) in the affirmative, you find yourself displaying a soppy grin of self-satisfaction for the next five days because, after all, you love the guy – and your husband is OK, too.² You are, of course, also happy that those two tickets you purchased are for one seat at  each of the two concerts.

After joking about buying Leonard Cohen’s childhood home now that it’s for sale, you find yourself investigating Canadian mortgages, calculating payment schedules, and organizing an investment coalition.

Upon discovering  that Dino posted on Twitter that he was “sockless,” having left all his socks at the hotel in the last city that had hosted the Leonard Cohen World Tour, you take it upon yourself to call the hotel in hopes of retrieving them.

Alternatively, upon discovering  that Dino posted on Twitter that he was “sockless,” having left all his socks at the hotel in the last city that had hosted the Leonard Cohen World Tour, you take it upon yourself to purchase a pair of red socks and send them to Dino.

You have written and posted a poem called “Songtitles – Eighty Reasons to be a Leonard Cohen Fan,” consisting primarily of titles of Leonard Cohen songs – but are concerned that doing so might indicate you are a poet with too much time on his hands rather than a pure case of Cohenphilic Personality Disorder.

You, having read that Leonard said (in 1970) that the Madison campus of the University of Wisconsin was like “Brigadoon with a touch of Havana,” order the movie, which you’ve never watched since you don’t enjoy musicals, from Netflix to see exactly what he meant.

You choose gifts associated with your favorite Leonard Cohen songs for your lover; you went shopping for his most recent birthday present the day after attending a concert in which Cohen sang the version of “I’m Your Man” with the line, “And if you want another kind of love I’ll wear my leather mask for you.”

You must watch the entire Live in London concert each night before you can fall asleep.

Your only political activity in the past 10 years has been  inviting all your friends to join the “Leonard Cohen for Governor General” page on Facebook.

You track down a Ukraine-based seller on eBay in order to purchase a “Warning! Driver Under The Influence Of Leonard Cohen” sticker for your car bumper.

You obsess about how to best to bring salvation to those culturally- and spiritually-impoverished individuals who respond to conversations that somehow turn to Leonard Cohen (i.e., any conversation in which you participate longer than four minutes) with “Who?”

You compile, for your own use, a song book, titled “49 Songs,” consisting of  lyrics to those Leonard Cohen songs missing  from  the official  “Leonard Cohen: The Little Black Songbook,” all arranged in perfect alphabetical order, index pages, varying styles and formatting with columns and numbered with footers,  because you  feel the least you can do as a Cohen fan is to always carry ALL his lyrics with you  at ALL times.

After completing “49 Songs,” you realize that there are still  other song books needed – for example, one with the song lyrics which are not official, such as those listed on Rare Live Songs. And what about the different verses sung in live concerts, not to mention songs on “The Other Songs of Leonard Cohen Vol 1 and 2, …

You nick a water glass from which Leonard Cohen has drunk despite the reprehension evident in the faces of several individuals observing your larceny of love.

Your five-year old daughter (the one whose demanded her most recent natal celebration take the form of “a Leonard Cohen birthday party”) responds to your explanation that the Leonard Cohen concert in Moscow are prohibitively expensive with “Mummy! We can use ALL the money in my piggy bank! Just the girls in Moscow to see Leonard! It will be so fun!”

You became an ardent viewer of Mad Men – but only after you read that Anjani mentioned that Leonard enjoyed the show.

Your children grew up hearing you and your spouse sing Leonard Cohen songs to them as lullabies.

You feel as though you short-changed your oldest child, who was 12 years old before attending a Leonard Cohen Concert; thankfully, the younger siblings were a more age-appropriate 4 and 5.

You have been a fan so long, hung around other fans so long, and spent so much time at LeonardCohenForum that you think the behaviors listed above are normal.

All You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan If … entries
can be found at the You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan If … Page

_____________________

1. See first entry of More Signs That You May Be A Leonard Cohen Fan [↩]
2. While this union of Cohen fan and non-fan is heartening proof that mixed marriages can work, youngsters should be warned that sustaining such a coupling is a dangerous and arduous undertaking. [↩]