Bob Dylan-Leonard Cohen on Ageing and Mortality

Two of the best singer/songwriters of my generation were Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. Both offered spiritual tales and relationship insights/heartbreaks, sung in their respective inimitable styles.

However, each produced a piece with the singular themes of ageing and facing mortality; detachment from the world, with a powerful poignancy. Dylan’s “Time Out of Mind” (TOOM) released in 1997 and Cohen’s “You Want It Darker” (YWID) released in 2016, synthesize lyrics, melodies, and vocal styles that evoke a vein of ageing that can’t help but affect the listener in an introspective way. 

Dylan’s album was a comeback after a fallow period when no original songs were composed for seven years. Cohen’s YWID was released a few months before his death, and it was evident that he knew his time on Earth was ending. As if prescient, Dylan got gravely ill after recording but before releasing TOOM. He spent a couple of weeks in the hospital with a rare fungus infection around his heart.

I see these two compelling efforts as close cousins to each other, despite being nineteen years apart. Both sing in a detached way. In Cohen’s case there are subtle undertones of anger and disappointment. With Dylan, it is total resignation. One might feel that such vocal styles might be tedious, but to the contrary, they are perfect in their somber mood conflated with surrendering to the inevitable. 

Some samples from Dylan:
“When you think that you’ve lost everything, you find out you can always lose a little more.”(Trying To Get To Heaven), or “Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb, I can’t even remember what it was I came here to get away from”(Not Dark Yet).” The party’s over and there’s less and less to say, I got new eyes, everything looks far away”(Highlands). These lyrics by themselves may not seem like much, but the letting go and detached singing delivery evokes powerful existential feelings of one’s own mortality. Dylan received near universal accolades, awarded three Grammies including the coveted Album of the Year for 1997. Rolling Stone named his Album of the Year, as did the Villiage Voice and numerous other music critics.

Some samples from Cohen:
“If you are the dealer, let me out of the game. If you are the healer, I’m broken and lame” (You Want it Darker). “I wish there was a treaty we could sign, I do not care who takes this bloody hill. I’m angry and I’m tired all the time”(Treaty).  “I’m leaving the table, I’m out of the game. I don’t know the people in your picture frame”(Leaving the Table).
As with Dylan, this album received wide spread commendations. Similarly to Dylan, it’s the melodies and the singing that smack a potent punch.

It’s not a pretty picture, yet both are artistic expressions of withdrawing from the world, the act of surrendering, and facing the exit door. There is a bittersweetness underneath the surface moroseness. It’s something we all will face and the threshold that we all will step over, consciously or unconsciously.