miércoles, 30 de noviembre de 2011

Leonard Cohen



Gracias a los premios Príncipe de Asturias he redescubierto a Leonard Cohen, que es una maravilla. Después de escuchar su discurso en Oviedo (¡w-o-w!), no me pude resistir a ver un DVD, muy poético, titulado "I'm your man". No os lo podéis perder. Allí se ve todo su genio y su encanto. Y los comentarios de Bono, su admiración al maestro, son conmovedores. Por eso no es de extrañar que el gran final de la película sea esta puesta en escena de "Tower of Song", un dúo entre Cohen y U2, una conjunción casi perfecta.

He entresacado algunas frases sobre su música, su personalidad, su arte: un abrebocas para quienes aún no lo han visto. Es un artista realmente inspirador.

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"I had the title 'poet' and maybe I was for a while. Also the title 'singer' was kindly accorded me, even though I could barely carry a tune". [Cómo surge una vocación artística: he ahí el misterio]

"A lots of songs are just a response to what struck me as beauty, whatever that curious emanation from a being or an object or a situation or a landscape. That had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone, and I prayed to have somre response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me and were a lot".

[Ouch. ¿Cabría aquí un "Solitude (III)?"] "My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke. It caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone."

[Bono] "He makes something beautiful out of this blackness. He finds shades in the blackness that feel like colour. And he has you at any stage in your life. He has your youthful idealism. He has you when your relationship is splitting up. He has you when you can’t face the world and you look for something higher to get you through. Inside of a pop song there were some big ideas, big dreams". [Nos bastan esas sombras. En un mundo de oscuridad las sombras, a veces, lo son todo. Porque en las sombras vemos la luz, que de algún modo es lo que siempre estamos buscando. ¡Cómo se agradece que alguien nos muestre -no nos diga- a ese poco de luz!].

[Bono, hablando de la mítica canción "Hallelujah", que pongo al final] "It's a song that is so surprising, because as well as bringing you to your knees, he makes you laugh out loud. And that's the shock, you see, lots of people, lots of writers have dared to walk up to the edge of, you know, reason, and stared into that great chasm, into the abyss. Very few people have got there and kinda laughed out loud at what they saw. So, there's definitely something. It's the divine comedy".

So, there it is:


1 comentario:

  1. En esto te gané... Yo descubrí a Leonard Cohen hace dos años, gracias a una de sus fans número 1. Pero me lo voy a cargar ahora contando lo que le contesté a una persona que me preguntó si me estaba gustando el concierto (visto en DVD, ojo, no en directo): "Sí, pero yo en mi cumple prefiero ver a El Canto del Loco".

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