The 'BE' flitting like a bee

Conway Daly, a reporter for the Canadian Press, wrote "Leonard Cohen won't be at 'love-in.' He interviewed me, and I was quoted at the end of the article: "It's just tragic," sighed Fuhr, 27, an Edmonton poet and graduate student who has long pored over Cohen's writing. "It's my dream to
meet him."

I didn't know what to expect at the Leonard Cohen festival which was being held in Montreal May 12-14. We had a full itinerary. The festival's first event, though, was the signature. The ticket. We sat in a heat-infested Moyse Hall at McGill University. Kelley Lynch, Leonard Cohen's manager (by the way, how do you get that job?) announced that we were going to be privy to three new Cohen songs -- world
wide premiere. In the corner of the stage was a piano and standing lonesome in the centre was a black microphone, almost looking foreboding.  Flooding through the auditorium came Cohen's paper-cut voice. I stared at the microphone
longing for a body to breathe into it. I looked at the empty piano hoping for a finger to caress its aching keys. Nothing. Nobody. I have never felt such loneliness before. 

The audience was pining. This was a wake. Last I
heard, Leonard Cohen was still alive. This wasn't live. This was a recording. Even though corporeally, Mr. Cohen was not there, his spirit slicked the room with silence.

The festival, nonetheless, was a success. We heard performances from artists who have been influenced by the Montrealer. Biographer Ira Nadel, scholars Brian Trehearne and Stephen Scobie shared their views on Cohen. A
musical / poetry jam was held. We walked through Montreal and witnessed the haunts of our revered poet.

I met people all across the globe whom I felt an instant connection with. It was a homecoming of sorts and the beginning of friendships. I met people who have touched the hand of my favourite poet like his sister, Esther, Jarkko Arjatsalo, and Christof Graf.  I did not meet him, however, at his 'funeral.' But it was a feast, a wedding that he did not attend. This senior citizen had seniority at an event that he could not attend because he was busy as a BE. To be there
alive surely wouldn't have sufficed. Our oracle needed to stream in from time to time celestially, ghost-like, to "touch our perfect bodies with his mind."

Natalie Fuhr
May 29, 2000