Opening Speech by Geoff Gompers

DAYTIME AND NIGHTTIME

Opening Speech by Geoff Gompers

[Walks out in sunglasses with banana]

I heard of a man
Who says words so beautifully?
That if he only speaks their name
Women give themselves to him

Ladies and gentlemen, Welcome to Hydra and Welcome to the Leonard Cohen Hydra Experience. Otherwise known among the fraternities of the “Delta, the Alpha and the Omega” as Leonard Cohen’s Greek Weekend!

My name is Geoff Gompers. I will be your lawyer for the weekend. That’s right. I’m a lawyer and I’m here to help you.

My fellow Beautiful Losers, it is truly my great honor and privilege to welcome you all to Hydra and to this wonderful event to Honor and celebrate the life, music, poetry, philosophy and art of Leonard Cohen. It is going to be a great weekend.

So that my ego doesn’t get too large from the honor of opening this Event, I’ve been ordered by the committee to keep my remarks to 10 minutes.

So in keeping with my time restrictions I thought that I’d start off by reading a short poem about Greece. It’s called Homer’s Iliad.

Actually, it’s called Days of Kindness and it was written by Leonard Cohen in Hydra in 1985.

Greece is a good place
To look at the moon, isn’t it
You can read by moonlight
You can read on the terrace
You can see a face
As you saw it when you were young
There was good light then
Oil lamps and candles
And those little flames that floated on a cork in olive oil
What I loved in my old life
If haven’t forgotten
It lives in my spine
Marianne and the child
Then days of kindness
It rises in my spine
And it manifests as tears
I pray that a loving memory
Exists for them too
The precious ones I overthrew
For an education in the world.

Many may also recognize that as a poem that Leonard wrote here in Hydra.

You know that there are some women who say that Leonard Cohen has a commitment problem.

But Leonard has been committed to music, poetry, and art for about 50 years. And for over 40 years Leonard has had a home here in Hydra that has been a constant also-- his home in Hydra. Many of you will have the opportunity to visit his home this weekend.

Ira Nadel, wrote a chapter in his book about Leonard Cohen “Various Positions” and it contains a chapter on Leonard’s decision to move to Hydra and I may refer to portions of his text over the next few minutes.

I know that it may be difficult for many of you to believe, but in March of 1960, Leonard Cohen was feeling depressed—in a Zen Buddhist kind of way. Leonard was living in the East End of London and it was raining. He hadn’t “been so happy since the end of World War II.” Leonard just had a wisdom tooth pulled. This is true! As he walked along he noticed a Bank of Greece sign on Bank Street. He entered and saw a teller with a suntan wearing sunglasses. Cohen asked the teller what the weather was like in Greece. “Springtime” was the reply. Within a day Leonard was in Athens. Within a short time, Leonard was in an artist’s colony on the Island of Hydra.

Hydra had a small community of writers and artists. Allen Ginsberg stayed with Cohen for several nights in Hydra. Visitors to the island that Cohen may have seen visiting the island included Aristotle Onasis, Brigitte Bardot, Jackie Kennedy, Edward Kennedy, Tony Perkins, and Peter Finch. Cohen complained in his letters about the influx of movie crews, which would upset the tranquility of the island.

On September 27, 1960, just after his 26th birthday, Leonard bought a house in Hydra for $1500.00 using a bequest from his recently deceased grandmother. He described the home in a note to his mother.

It has a huge terrace with a view of a dramatic mountain and shining white houses. The rooms are large and cool with deep windows set in thick walls. I suppose it’s about 200 years old and many generations of seamen must have lived here. I will do a little work on it every year and in a few years it will be a mansion . . . I live on a hill and life has been going on here exactly the same for hundreds of years. . . . I get up around 7 generally and work till about noon. Early morning is coolest and therefore best for work, but I love the heat anyhow, especially when the Aegean Sea is 10 minutes from my door.

It was on this Island of Greece that Leonard wrote Beautiful Losers and met Marianne Jensen about whom he later wrote, “So long Marianne. In his home on Hydra, Cohen also wrote Bird on the Wire. When Cohen first arrived in Hydra there were no wires on the island, no telephones, and non-regular electricity. When the telephone wires arrived outside his home Cohen wrote:

I would stare out the window at these telephone wires and think how civilization had caught up with me and I wasn’t going to be able to escape after all. Then he noticed that the birds came to the wires. And life went on undisturbed.

Now for a couple of important matters.

First, I want to thank a number of people that made this weekend possible. First and foremost, thanks to Leonard Cohen. He has been very kind in supporting this meeting and he prepared special artistic items for the booklet and gave us permission to reprint many of the poems he wrote on Hydra as well as photos from his archives. Many items are published here for the first time.

Now I need to have your attention for the next several minutes. Many of you are here in Hydra for the first time. And the management asked me to warn you of certain matters.

First, I need to warn the single women that there are certain Leonard Cohen imitators walking around the island this weekend. These men are counterfeit. They are not real. Do not go with them to look at their etchings.

Second, during this weekend there are only two times that you are permitted by Hydra law to sing Leonard Cohen music. Daytime and nighttime.

There are only two times that you will be permitted to eat, drink, sing and make love. Day time and night time.

So let’s kick up our heels, sing, dance and celebrate the art of Leonard Cohen. Welcome to Hydra.