Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love is renowned filmmaker Nick Broomfield’s most personal and romantic film of his storied career. The documentary starts on the Greek island of Hydra in 1960, where Leonard Cohen, then a struggling and unknown fiction writer, and Marianne Ihlen, a single mother with a young son, became part of community of expat artists, writers and musicians. Never-before-seen footage shot by Broomfield and legendary documentarian D.A. Pennebaker make for a unique portrait of an idyllic 1960’s bohemia. It was a time that left a lasting imprint on both Marianne and Leonard, whose friendship would last another fifty years before their deaths in 2016.
Leonard’s letter to the dying Marianne:
Well Marianne, it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless Love, see you down the road.
Marianne died July 26, 2016 (aged 81); Leonard died November 7, 2016 (aged 82)
Come over to the window, my little darling
I’d like to try to read your palm
I used to think I was some kind of Gypsy boy
Before I let you take me home
Now so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
Well, you know that I love to live with you
But you make me forget so very much
I forget to pray for the angels
And then the angels forget to pray for us
Now so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
We met when we were almost young
Deep in the green lilac park
You held on to me like I was a crucifix
As we went kneeling through the dark
Oh, so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
Your letters, they all say that you’re beside me now
Then why do I feel alone?
I’m standing on a ledge and your fine spider web
Is fastening my ankle to a stone
Now so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
For now I need your hidden love
I’m cold as a new razorblade
You left when I told you I was curious
I never said that I was brave
Oh, so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
Oh, you are really such a pretty one
I see you’ve gone and changed your name again
And just when I climbed this whole mountainside
To wash my eyelids in the rain
Oh, so long, Marianne
It’s time that we began to laugh
And cry and cry and laugh about it all again
1967
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But now it’s come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
I’m not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
You know my love goes with you as your love stays with me
It’s just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea
But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest they smiled like me and you
But let’s not talk of love or chains and things we can’t untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye
1967
Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a fish on a hook
Like a knight in some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
And if I, if I have been unkind
I just hope you will let it go by
And if I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you
Like a baby stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out to me
But I swear by this song
And by all I have done wrong
I’ll make it all up to be
I saw a young man leaning on his wooden crutch
He called out to me, “Don’t ask for so much”
And a young woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried out to me, “Why not ask for more”
Like a bird on a wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
1969
featured image: James Burke/The LIFE Picture Collection (Getty Images)
Lorraine's frilly freudian slip 
July 7, 2019 at 9:12 pm
fascinating friendship/relationship they had …. and well, I just love to read Cohen – even if song lyrics … funny, but not, how they read differently without the music, of course — which then begs the question of the music becoming necessity to the words etc. because not all lyrics are poetical/poetry – but even in the simplest stanzas: he always throws in a line that just dances for it!
right – never mind, I’m off and wandering into hot beaches and cooler waters and hearing pounding surf as starlight spills onto the waves and my toes …. *sigh* …. one day, if only ….
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July 7, 2019 at 10:42 pm
Yes, if only . . . After watching the trailer, and looking a photos, I suddenly wanted to be transported to Hyrdra circa early ’60s. Funny, that. Never really felt the urge to go to Greece, though I’ve often contemplated time travel!
Actually writing you an email (I stopped to watch the season finale of Endeavour), hopped back on, and found you here.
Now, I shall return to the email.
And, yes, words, and music and words and music. I’m not sure if it’s the words or the music that entraps me into a song. I think of the lyrics as poetics in terms of many of the artists I listen to.
And somewhere back in my mind, I remember a teacher/professor who assigned song lyrics as poetry.
I will try reading Cohen without the music/voice. Of course, as Jennifer Warnes Famous Blue Raincoat album is one of my special favourites, I sometimes hear her voice/pace/flourishes when the song spools through my microfilm reader. Carbon-dating myself again.
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July 8, 2019 at 1:57 pm
LOL@carbon dating 😌
received emails and duly read – have a “bird seed brain” day – taking all of my efforts to focus on the day-to-day, so words are elusive ….
I can understand about the time-travel — the feeling of wanting to experience, without necessarily living it …. sort of a like a fly on the wall, but in human form – present but a ghost …
sometimes, with certain artists, I think we end up hearing the music, just because for however it works, the two are so intertwined, we can’t but help it …. it’s like I could never read Bob Dylan and Not hear his voice, – so I’d have to work 3 times as hard to just read the words and accept them for their own purpose and value ….
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July 10, 2019 at 5:14 pm
For me, words and music might be intertwined too deeply, as you suggest, to separate. But, for me, it’s the stuff I like that is so woven into a fabric of rhythm and rhyme, it’s hard for me to discern. Music I don’t like, I still might enjoy the words. I’m finding more and more, that I’m not enjoying the older stuff as much when I come across it. Hearing it as I once did, isn’t the same as hearing it now. In my head, it sounds different — I’ve put a kind of stamp on it, even though I have no musical talent to riff. Curious how remembories work.
Time travel both to experience (I would probably NOT enjoy most of it physically, emotionally) and to just be a specter, taking in the ambience, without the smell, pain, uncomfortableness of what women had to wear, etc.
The Time Tunnel show I taped was lousy. Figured it was another one of those programs that just don’t hold up over . . . time, lol.
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July 11, 2019 at 7:39 am
I think the Time Travel thing is: nice place to visit, but wouldn’t want to live there — kind of concept. But maybe, you’ve already lived it. In another life.
who knows?
music, I think, or at least memories of it, are probably like most “memories” and associations – they become infused and embedded with all kinds – and that’s okay too –
as for not enjoying stuff as much anymore? well, that’s not a bad thing, – it means you’re ready to slowly let it all go – to allow yourself room for new musicality and other ideas and explorations …
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July 12, 2019 at 5:10 am
Need to find new music that I enjoy — haven’t come across too many new artists’ whose works I find pleasant to my ear. I should try one of the streaming radio channels to widen my repertoire.
Think its the historian in me who is fascinated by time travel. To “be there” and see how things unfolded, without the many tissue paper lens of reimagining, reinventing, media-izing our pasts.
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July 13, 2019 at 1:02 pm
it’s hard to figure it out — the music thing – but I’d say you’d be on the right path of choosing a stream that might bring you fresh ideas — like jazz or even classical – sometimes completely changing the genre works wonders – it did for me ;)
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July 16, 2019 at 2:50 pm
I use the old-fashioned boom box to locate stations. Lot’s of stuff out there. Listening to classical, and then on certain days, the Blues.
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