Besprechungen
Cohen wrote this perfect ballad about a night with Suzanne Verdal, who was married at the time to the Montreal sculptor Armand Vaillancourt. It was initially a poem, "Suzanne Takes You Down", collected in Parasites of Heaven, and the drenched dreamscape language situates the listener via all senses: "And she shows you where to look/ Among the garbage and the flowers/ There are heroes in the seaweed/ There are children in the morning." Suzanne, holding a mirror, supposedly really did give Cohen tea and they had some sort of slinky walking tour of Montreal and the St. Lawrence River, but, also supposedly, they didn't sleep together-- didn't want to ruin the wavelength. Still, even without the nookie, Cohen recasts the night as worthy of the Bible-- turning the simplest moment into something extraordinary. (Brandon Stosuy)