beauty and the bard
Leonard Cohen deified “Suzanne” in what probably remains his most famous song — the first track on his first album, The Songs of Leonard Cohen, in 1967. Contrary to common belief, the bewitching seductress who wore “rags and feathers from Salvation Army counters” (and served as muse to dozens of beat poets) was not Suzanne Elrod, the mother of Cohen’s two children, but the wife of Cohen’s sculptor friend Armand Vaillancourt. His Suzanne née Verdal, was a performance artist who often carried a little doll around Montreal — and whose playful, naïve spirit has been a timeless source of inspiration for other artists, as evidenced by this photograph by Jeremy Taylor that just resurfaced in a Toronto retrospective. “Everyone was in love with Suzanne Vaillancourt, and every woman was in love with Armand”, Cohen has since recalled, by way of explaining his relationship to her. “As a couple, they were inviolate, you just didn’t intrude into that kind of shared glory that they manifested”. When Cohen visited Suzanne she lit a candle and served him “Constant Comment” tea with orange rind. Uncompromised by Carnality, Cohen’s achingly platonic nighttime rendezvous at Suzanne’s waterfront warehouse loft in the grungy port lands of what is now known as Old Montreal is also his homage to the emotional landscape of his harbourside hometown. “And you want to travel with her; And you want to travel blind”, he sang. “And you know that she will trust you; For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind”. Eking out a nomadic existence in California, rescuing stray cats in a converted pickup (which doubles as her home), Suzanne remains faithful to this day to the hip bohemian lifestyle she encapsulated years ago.
Kendon Polak
“Suzanne takes you down
to her place near the river
you can hear the boats go by
you can spend the night beside her
and you know that she’s half crazy
but that’s why you want to be there
and she feeds you tea and oranges
that come all the way from China…”
Leonard Cohen