Kill Rock Music

Listen, if you were in my position, you would have killed Leonard Cohen too. Anybody who knows anything about Leonard Cohen knows how much he enjoys a good knife fight. I know it sounds like an excuse, but seriously, he just fell on the knife while we were horsing around. I mean, everybody knows that knife fighting is Leonard Cohen’s biggest passion in life. I found out this fact for the first time when we were julienning some tomatoes. I had no idea what ‘julienne’ meant, so I was really just cutting them into cubes. Leonard was over there in the corner, julienning away, and then all of a sudden he lunged at me with his paring knife. What was even more disconcerting was the fact that he was singing Chelsea Hotel No. 2 the entire time he was trying to stab my eyeball. After repeatedly puncturing me about the torso and arm region, he informed me that I shouldn’t take it personally; he just really liked a good knife fight. On hearing that, I reached for the cleaver and really went at him, and we had a gloriously fun time attacking each other.

Now, this is just a way of laying out my defence, as it were, for killing Leonard Cohen. Like, I was the FIRST one to object when he wanted to switch to machetes. I mean, Christ, we’d faced enough wounds just using our traditional vegetable peelers.  But ol’ Len was insistent on breaking out the big knives. He said ‘I’m gonna knife-fight you, anonymous webmaster for killrockmusic.’ I was a bit confused on etymology and said ‘but surely, Len, it should be knives-fight? We both will have one, making it plural.’ Hell, he was frothing at the mouth by this point, but rightly pointed out that, as a fight of knife against knife, the singular was acceptable.

Now, everbody’s best memory of Leonard Cohen is Hallelujah, so let me put it in terms you can understand: I ‘played’ Leonard’s secret chord, which turned out to be a machete in the pancreas, and, well, I don’t know if it pleased the lord, but it certainly made Mr Cohen think twice. His dying words, if anybody cares, were ‘Don’t Go Home with Your Hard-On’. It really made me think. And that’s the story of how Leonard Cohen died in my arms, wearing his famous blue raincoat. But, dear reader, don’t shed a tear for poor Leonard. He died doing what he loved – namely knife fighting – and didn’t go down without a battle – literally – a blood soaked rag wrapped around his head, biceps veined in post-steroidal bliss, his mouth bloody with the flesh of the people he’d beaten (and subsequently eaten) before me. Weep not for Leonard Cohen, dear reader: weep instead for the loss of passion in what one does.