The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
W B Yeats.
Song Without Words (Excerpt)
To be published 2023
Leonard Cohen once told me the Secret of Life. It happened at a time when his hair was black and he didn’t wear a hat.
I gave him a lift to his hotel one evening after a concert at the Royal Albert Hall. I was untroubled by his silence on the short journey to Notting Hall as I knew him to be introspective, his humour wry and understated.
I stopped my little green Renault outside two graceful neo-classical houses, converted into The Portobello Hotel in the early seventies.
I glanced at the passenger seat. He was looking through the windscreen, serious and silent, without a trace of his usual expression of wry amusement at some inner irony. His attention seemed to be rooted in an inner world as if in meditation. He was present but detached, aware of my presence, but unconcerned. I examined his profile, thick curling black hair, aquiline nose, eyes that slanted downwards like General de Gaulle and deeply etched furrows stretching down to a mouth where a full smile would never sit comfortably.
Suddenly his quiet voice broke the silence "I want to tell you the Secret of Life".
I spluttered with surprise and laughter "Sounds serious".
A long silence followed, then he began to speak slowly and quietly. He excavated each word as if it were buried deep. At first I thought it was an idea for a song or a poem, and perhaps it was.
Time passed and the Universe paused to listen as each word plopped into a pool of stillness. My mind settled down and I too became still, sensing rather than hearing the words and short phrases.
His deep voice faded into silence only when the pale morning sun slanted from the east and slipped out from behind St Peter’s Church. The vibration of his words hovered in the air as music does when a concert ends. He waited for a while then opened the car door without another word and stepped onto the pavement. I watched black cowboy boots climb six tiled steps to the hotel. The door opened then closed quietly behind him.
I drove the short distance to my flat. Once home, I kicked off my shoes and crashed onto my unmade bed. The telephone rang and continued to ring for a very long time. I stretched out my arm and huddled back underneath the duvet.
"And where were YOU last night?"
My laugh broke into a yawn "I was told the Secret of Life.".
There was a long pause. "The Secret of Life. Weird... What is it?"
I sat up, reached for a pillow to prop myself up, took a deep breath, opened my mouth to reply, hesitated and stopped. My face puckered, eyes squeezed tight. I searched dark corners of my mind in an attempt to recall a phrase, a snippet, anything to get me off the hook, but sleep had erased every word. I struggled, stuttered and at last blurted "I can’t remember".
There was a long pause, then half formed choking exclamations were followed by wild shrieks of laughter. My insides squirmed with shame and embarrassment. I held the phone away from my ear and closed my eyes. My brain teetered at the edge of knowing something. I knew it. I knew that I knew it, but what was it? It teased like a puppy playing a game of chase at the edge of my mind. It danced around on delicate paws and dared me to chase it, but every time I lurched clumsily to catch it by the tail, it scampered out of reach.