Leonard Cohen

So begins the story of an everyman Leonard Cohen, a would-be artist, a would-be lover, a would-be tragic figure. Or perhaps the ‘would-be’ doesn’t really apply, perhaps he is all of these things. Yet he is a man haunted by the greatness of his namesake. He struggles to compete. He struggles not to be defeated. He struggles to accept his fate, to be more than a punchline in his own mind. He struggles, in partiuclar, to write one song that would be as great as the least of the great Leonard Cohen’s songs. At the centre of Leonard’s life is Daphne. In their meeting, a contemporary fable of Daphne and Apollo plays out, the birth of love out of lust. But even with Daphne, Leonard is shadowed by the ‘other’ Leonard Cohen. The ancient myths haunts the fated lovers, and the ‘nobody’ Leonard Cohen’s life becomes at once a mystery, a miracle, and a myth on its own terms.