By Declan Marlowe, Musicologist
(Excerpt from “Absinthe Makes the Frequencies Go Fonder,” transcribed from mold-blotted Moleskine journal recovered from an abandoned Masonic Hall)
The board was cold. The room smelled of mold and rotted wood. My velvet jacket smelled of french cigarettes and oversteeped chamomile. I had broken a second story window in the abounded Masonic Temple downtown and squeezed in through the gap. I wandered through the building until I found the creepiest and presumedly most haunted corner and I set up my Ouija board and paraphernalia.
The incense coiled toward the rafters like smoke signals. The spirits had been quiet for weeks ever since I had spilled a flaming Sazerac on the planchette while attempting to summon Jeff Buckley and instead got ten minutes of throat-clearing from what sounded like (possibly) Marc Bolan.
Tonight’s target: Leonard Cohen.
The bard of broken alleluias. The monk of Montreal. The man whose voice could make a grocery list sound like scripture. I had a list of questions as long as my arm. Looking at it in the dim wavering glow of the candles, it now appeared pedestrian.
- What’s at the top of the Tower of Song?
- Is suffering necessary for melody?
- Who wins in a knife fight, Dylan or Waits?
I called out into the dark musty silence. No answer. Just flickers. A slow warble in the air, like a vinyl warp in the fabric of reality.
First: stillness.
Then: him.
The light didn’t change. The shadows didn’t flicker. But Leonard was there. Not fully, just enough. A presence like a worn coat draped across a chair you didn’t know was occupied. A deep baritone voice, calm and sanded down by eternity:
LEONARD: Son, why are you dialing random numbers into the afterlife like you’re cold-calling God?
I swallowed and fumbled for reverence.
DECLAN: I, I, I… just wanted insight. About craft. About meaning. About the sacred mechanics of lyricism. I’m a music journalist. I’m trying to get it right.
LEONARD: No, you’re trying to get it noticed. There’s a difference.
Stunned into honesty, I stared down at my notes.
DECLAN: Aren’t the dead supposed to be generous with wisdom?
LEONARD: We’ve already written the songs. Maybe you weren’t listening the first time.
I reached for the planchette. It slid on its own.
M-E-A-S-U-R-E
Pause.
Y-O-U-R
Pause.
L-I-S-T-E-N-I-N-G
I blinked.
DECLAN: I thought I was. Listening, I mean…
LEONARD: You confuse exposure with absorption. You chase meaning like a man shaking a jukebox for coins he hasn’t paid. The Muse doesn’t work on deadline.
I said nothing.
The board, now humming with an invisible chord, spelled slowly:
N-O-T-E-S A-R-E N-O-T E-N-O-U-G-H
Leonard continued, quieter now, like a vinyl crackle fading between tracks:
LEONARD: You want an interview. But what you need is silence. You want to transcribe the divine. But you haven’t tuned your soul to the right frequency. The Tower of Song doesn’t rise. It burrows. It’s a tunnel made of longing. You don’t climb it, you echo in it.
I looked down. My notes were melting. Literally. Ink pooling like blood from a paper wound. I realized I had been crying onto my notebook.
I panicked. Reached for one last question.
DECLAN: Was it worth it?
Leonard’s misty visage sighed and smiled while shaking a ghostly head.
LEONARD: Ask the next singer who mistakes pain for originality.
Then he was gone.
No thunder. No flash. Just the taste of rust and honey on the air.
I sat alone.
Not triumphant. Not enlightened.
Just quiet.
[Editor’s Note:] Declan Marlowe is on temporary sabbatical, reportedly taking a vow of silence. He has been observed mouthing lyrics to Suzanne while watering dead houseplants. He promises he’s listening now.
We hope so.
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