I was getting ready to write an article on the election until this morning when I listened to one of my favorite songs, "Suzanne." I got pretty emotional after listening and I'm emotional writing this, but probably because it has been a rough week. I thought we should all take a break from the election and remember this contemporary legend.

Leonard Cohen, one of the most beautiful contemporary singer/songwriters, died Monday at his home in Los Angeles; he was 82. His legendary music will forever be remembered in modern culture.

Cohen started his career out to be a writer. He studied English at McGill University where he published his first book of poems, "Let Us Compare Mythologies". One of his poems that I find so beautiful is "Song" from "The Spice Box of Earth":

I almost went to bed
without remembering
the four white violets
I put in the button-hole
of your green sweater
and how i kissed you then
and you kissed me
shy as though I’d
never been your lover

Cohen was raised Jewish, but in the late 1970s, he became interested in Zen Buddhism and often visited the Mount Baldy monastery. In 1994, he abandoned his music career altogether and moved to the monastery, where he was ordained a Buddhist monk.

He was most widely-known for his music. His music career spanned around five-decades, full of songs of faith, despair, solitude, sexuality, and politics. Probably Cohen's best-known song, "Hallelujah," a raw, majestic ballad was written in 1984 for a record company that actually rejected it. It was popularized a decade later by Jeff Buckley.

Leonard Cohen has left us all some beauty in our lives. This week has taken a toll on myself and I'm sure many others, but in the wake of it all, I think we all should remember this man and his magnificent legacy. Rest in peace, Mr. Cohen.