The Time I Met Leonard Cohen

 In the mid 1980's I was at an art show in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. The big draw of the evening was Leonard Cohen was going to be there. I was a nobody, but my friend at the time was rather known, although he never had his own showing. So I ended up as his plus one.

I was into wire bending at the time and for the amount of money I could make off of the stuff I made, it was hardly worth it. My best piece took a year of spare time to complete and was a crucifix made out of rusty barbed wire. It was OK, but I was not great at it. I sold it for $150.

But back to the topic at hand. Leonard Cohen the "star of the show" or so he thought, was the most rude and arrogant person I had ever met to that point in time in my life. He treated all the women at the show five times worse than the men as well. It was obvious he had nothing but contempt for women to me.

He also tried very hard to look like the most intelligent person who ever lived. An older man who I later learned was an actual voodoo priest (yeah in Saskatchewan), said a sarcastic line I can't remember, to Cohen. The man with all his self important ideals seems to have totally missed it and just kept going on about himself.

To be honest he left early and that made the rest of the evening a lot more fun. It was like someone had turned a light on in a dark room and you could suddenly enjoy yourself. Cohen had managed to suck most of the fun out of the room until he left.

I think it made it worse that this was the time in his life he was the biggest star he would be. I loved his work. His songs where amazing and his poems even better. But the man himself was a nasty hate filled person who had an ego that filled a stadium.

I met several sort of famous people in my life after that, and a few had a cold indifference about them, but no one was nearly as self important as Cohen. Years later I saw him in an interview and I thought, he's still a twat obviously.