Leonard Cohen’s “You Want it Darker”

I’ve never been a religious person. In fact, in many ways I see myself as quite averse to religion. My spirituality (if you can call it that) is derived purely from art, other people, the natural world, and the emotions that come as a result of those. I was first introduced to this song when one of my best friends sent it to me on Snapchat. Admittedly, I did not even get a quarter of the way through, before I switched the video to small screen, and out of boredom, started scrolling through the other results that showed on YouTube for “You Want it Darker.” I came across the trailer for “Assassin’s Creed: Origins.” Although I’ve never played this particular installment of the Assassin’s Creed series, I have played all the previous games leading up to its release, and the series as a whole—probably due to the immense nostalgia of them—holds a special place in my heart. So when I watched the trailer (I had watched it years before, but I had already begun to lose interest in video games by that time and didn’t quite remember it) and “You Want it Darker” started to play over pans of animated cinematic shots of Ptolemaic Egypt, the song instantly transformed from being strange and unappealing to inspiring within me a sense of wonder and amazement at the grandness of ancient cultures and peoples in human history. About two weeks passed before I would again listen to this song. It remained out of my thoughts for that time, and I don’t know why I suddenly decided to listen to it. But upon hearing it once more, I became entranced, almost addicted to all the noises that flooded my ears through my headphones. Cohen’s deep and raspy voice that came from decades of smoking mixed with his enigmatic and religiously inspired lyrics makes for a poetic and musical narrative of a man (Cohen himself) coming to terms with his own mortality and his God. The harmonies and almost spoken melody (Cohen’s voice is so low it seems as if he’s just talking) now evoke in my mind pictures of the Great Pyramids and the endless deserts of the Old World, with dead Pharaohs enclosed in golden sarcophagi, and ancient wondering nomads of the Middle East. This song—in a way—connects me to time thousands of years ago, a time that I know little about. I’m not religious, and I probably will never be, but there is a certain grandness in this four minute song that leaves me feeling spiritual; the same way I do when I look at the Earth below from a tall mountain, or listen to Beethoven’s 9th.