“They took her baby away.”

He told me “Seems So Long Ago, Nancy” was about an acquaintance of Leonard Cohen’s; an early hippie who was the daughter of someone important. “And she went crazy.”

“She was from an important family, her father was a senator or something like that. I think they didn’t want her to be the daughter who had an illegitimate child. They took her baby away, and she killed herself. She was in hospitals, and she blew her brains out.”

-“That’s horrific,” I said.

“The mental hospital, that’s the ‘house of mystery’ I think.”

-“Hm. Well I think the reason it’s so relatable, is because we all have that place, inside of ourselves. A house of mystery.”

“A place that no one wants to visit?”

-“Yeah.

-But artists do. Art visits. That’s what artists are good for. That’s why people like Leonard Cohen are important. That’s why art is important.”

Everyone loves Nancy now.

Everyone cries for her. Now we understand, Nancy

And we are sorry.