It shouldn’t be surprising to find a Freudian theme running through Leonard Cohen’s lyrics. For Kevin Hersak it goes deeper than that, deep into a love of music and the relationship with his father that spawned it. Hersak is an Ottawa singer/songwriter and front man for a band called The Ethics. Here he writes about how Cohen’s eroticism, songs that can break your heart and living-room dancing helped define his life with dad.

By Kevin Hersak

Dad’s eyes would light up as he pulled the record from the shelf and turned to me. “Son, it’s time for you to hear this.”  The lights would be turned off, and the stereo volume up.  The manner in which dad reverently held the LP was like a priest raising a golden chalice before the faithful.  In this ritual rite, I was the faithful, and it was my worship that was to be stirred.

Dad would inevitably provide a preamble to the music; he was notorious for his monologues.  However, once the needle met the vinyl and the sound of crackles arose, it was of the utmost importance that complete silence and devotion be given.   Following this, I would avail myself fully to the sounds coming through those tall speakers. One song would often be played repeatedly.  My younger brother would lay upstairs, sleep deprived and irritated, while I would sit in the living room rocking chair overtaken by music I never knew existed.

I was still at a tender age when dad decided it was time for me to hear Leonard Cohen’s Memories off the Death of Ladies’ Man album.  At most I had caught fleeting glimpses of the sensual world, but was now involuntarily plunged into a dark mysterious world of carnal pleasure and vice. I begged for mercy. As Cohen lustily sang of the seductress with “many parts of me to touch, you have your choice; but no you cannot see my naked body,” I broke the unwritten rule of silence and pleaded that the record be instantly removed. It was too much.

Whatever possessed dad to play that song for me, he saw it through to the end.  And, oh, what an end it was.  Cohen screaming of “her naked body” over roaring women’s voices and wailing saxophones and trumpets.  “I’ve put my trust and all my faith to see her naked body.”  My own particular faith and trust in my dad had been thrown into question.  I was moved with fright and wonder.  My senses worked overtime in vain to organize this onslaught of passion.

Friday nights introduced rites of passage to dark visceral musical worlds, whereas Saturday mornings brought lighter shades of the musical experience, often showcasing dad’s flamboyant dance moves.  These bursts of expression usually kicked in just after he’d treated my brother and I to his own unique brand of eggs (the key, he would suggest, was to burn the butter as eggs are served best when a shade of grey).

It was evident that dad fancied himself a gifted dancer as he pranced around the living room in his pajamas.  These antics caused my brother much trepidation (compounded with being kept awake the night before).  Worse, my brother’s dismay only served to provoke dad to bust the moves out with all the more vigor.   The tension would inevitably come to a breaking point when he would insist that my brother join in.

He had a difficult time grasping that something he took delight in could have the completely opposite effect on somebody else, especially if that somebody else was his own flesh and blood.  This combined with my brothers’ stubbornness and powers of resistance made for some high drama.

My own involvement teetered between a measure of amusement and anxiety.  I was torn over whether to dance or not. Dad looked somewhat ridiculous out there on his own with all that excessive twisting and contorting, and Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life is not meant to be danced to alone.  So whether out of genuine interest, or solidarity, or maybe sympathy, I would sometimes hit the floor with him and do my best to overcome my inhibitions and my brother’s painful gaze.

Making the unconventional work

These Saturday morning dance escapades usually highlighted dad’s pop-music sensibilities.  This was the mid-80’s, so we’re talking about the likes of Paul Young, A-ha, Fine Young Cannibals and the Pet Shop Boys.  But he could also pull out an unconventional dance tune and make it work.

One Saturday morning the party could start a little prematurely with the husky voice of Warren Zevon’s Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money as the butter for the eggs was frying.  We immersed ourselves in the sounds of sin and debauchery: “I went home with a waitress the way I always do.  How was I to know she was with the Russians, too.” We realized our home was on the brink of going up in flames just as Zevon was “hiding in Honduras … the shit has hit the fan.”

What still puzzles me about a lot of the music dad treasured was the ache at the heart of it.  As he got older, he increasingly adhered to a world view that was tidy in its black-and-white moral code and couldn’t admit much in the way of nuance.  But the songs he would want so dearly for me to hear when I was a boy and into my teenage years tended to be songs of turmoil and longing.

It was the deep sad voice of Waylon Jennings “seeking wisdom that she denies, wishing his words could make it well, wishing he could find a way to lay it down,” or the agitated cries of Van Morrison “falling into trance, throwing fits, getting on the train, saying goodbye to Madame George.”  Maybe it was the tired and weary voice of Kris Kristofferson finding that “there’s nothin’ short of dyin’, half as lonesome as the sound, on the sleepin’ city sidewalks, Sunday mornin’ comin’ down,” the ecstatic and drug-addled shrieks of Tim Buckley’s “sweet surrender” or the soaring notes of Mark Knopfler’s guitar lamenting that “we’re fools to make war on our brothers in arms.”  The child whispering in daddy’s ears you’re a fool to cry; it was the words and sounds and everything in between them.  It was humanity in all its frailty, yet beautiful.  And it was my dad in his frail beauty.  The music could at once break your heart but also mend it, or at least soothe it.

I’m grateful for something that happened later in my life.  We ended up re-visiting one of original records he shared with me when I was younger, Tom Waits’ Heartattack & Vine.   The difference now was that I was the one to make the choice, and dad somewhat surprisingly went along with this. There were two songs that we used to torture ourselves with over and over – On the Nickel and Ruby’s Arms – two of the most heart-rushing songs ever recorded.  Strange how there can be such sweet delight in bitter, sad songs.  Perhaps I also inherited this from dad.

We sat together listening to Waits’ gravelly voice ask “what becomes of all the little boys who never say their prayers?”  As it approached the point in the song where Waits howls “Jesus Christ this goddamn rain,” I looked up in sudden panic that this would offend my dad’s sense of sacred.  But instead, I saw him weeping.  These were not the few tears men learn to form later in life; it was deep sobbing.   He’d fully surrendered himself to Ruby’s arms. I wanted to go over and hold him; I don’t know if I ever loved the man more than in that moment.

I’ll feel my way down the darken hall

and out into the morning

The hobos at the freight yards

have kept their fires burning

So Jesus Christ this goddamn rain

will some one put me on a train

I’ll never kiss your lips again,

or break your heart

As I say goodbye to Ruby’s arms

By the time I reached my early 20‘s, our lives had moved in somewhat reverse parallel.  My dad came to understand the world largely on religious terms, while I, disillusioned and somewhat in shambles by that same religious paradigm, sought to put the world back together. It was in the songs of Bruce Springsteen and Tom Waits that I found a narrative to make sense of the world, while for dad, there was no longer anything redeeming in this form of music. I’m not sure if he could ever accept that I loved, and was even composing, what he considered atheistic music.

In his own clumsy and perhaps ill-timed way, he showed me how liberating and tremendously fun music could be.  It took years and some horrendous gymnasium dance episodes, but I’m not ashamed to admit that some of my finest moments have been cutting loose on the living room floor.  I happen to think the world would be a much better place if people allowed themselves to dance recklessly and with abandon more often.

My dad’s life was taken much too quickly by a vicious lung disease. Now it’s those music-and-dance sessions that make up my fondest memories.  When I returned to my apartment after burying him on his 64th birthday, I turned to my record collection for solace.  I knew the first album would have to be one of those from our sacred nights.  This was an important moment, and it had to be the perfect song.  And so I placed Side 2 of the Stones’ Black and Blue on the turntable and turned the volume up as the first lovely notes of Fool to Cry began, the song at once bruising, and yet soothing.