by Jeff Burger
SLD: Do you get that feeling now?
LC: Yes. A lot. But that’s God’s world in which there is no separation between you and anything else. As my old teacher says, you can’t live in God’s world—there’s no restaurants or toilets. So you have to leave God’s world and be in a human world.
SLD: What is love to you?
LC: Love is that activity that makes the power of man and woman … that incorporates it into your own heart, where you can embody man and woman, when you can embody hell and heaven, when you can reconcile and … when man and woman becomes your content. In other words, when your woman becomes your own content and you become her content, that’s love. That as I understand is love—that’s the mechanics.
SLD: What does that mean, that she becomes your content?
LC: She becomes what fills you and you become what fills her and you recognize the full equality of that exchange because if she’s smaller than you, she can’t fill you and if you’re larger than her, you can’t fill her. So there has to be an understanding that there really is an absolute equality of power, different kinds of power, obviously different kinds of magic, different kinds of strength, different kinds of movement and as different as night and day. And it is the night and day and it is the moon and the sun and it is the land and the sea and it is plus and minus and it is heaven and hell. It is all those antinomies. But they’re all fundamentally equal. So you cannot have a woman as your content, she can’t fill up every space in you where she must be unless you understand that she occupies the same cosmic space as you do and you occupy the same cosmic space as she does. Then there can be an exchange and then there can be love.
SLD: Did you experience this?
LC: Yes, I have experienced it. But those are the experiences that make me want to start again, back when I grow up and go to college and—
SLD: Do it all over again but in another way.
LC: [Laughs.] Because it’s very sweet when you see it done right. You don’t have to change the world. There don’t have to be any revolutions. It doesn’t really matter what is going on around you.
SLD: Do you still have a longing to live the old-fashioned kind of life?
LC: Yes, I do. But it’s crazy. And sometimes I think about what career should I take. Sometimes you forget that you’re living in this sixty-three-year-old body. I find myself speculating more and more as I find myself more and more healthy and experience more and more energy and the world looks brighter and brighter in some sense, on some days—some days it doesn’t. But because I feel those currents running through me, I start to forget that this mental activity is enclosed in this body that is not at all appropriate. I think, find some nice girl and marry her, some nice twenty-two-year-old girl and find a nice little house.
I know I could really enjoy that now. A nice little house with a lovely tablecloth and some nice crystal. And a little money coming in. And I’d know how to treat a woman now. And if we had children, I’d really enjoy them. Not like the first time around where I really had to push myself into some mold that I didn’t feel I was naturally in. I did my best and thank God they turned out OK but now I think, yes, I’ll find that wonderful young girl and we’ll have that tablecloth and we don’t need a big house because I know now that riches and big houses and all those things mean nothing. I know that the only thing that counts is to express love and respect and to bend your knee before the object of your love so that she can bend her knee to you. I know that now. I didn’t know then.
SLD: So why don’t you do it?
LC: Well, I feel that it’s not quite the right moment. Maybe next time around. [Laughs.]
SLD: You’re not quite ready yet?
LC: I don’t feel it’s really appropriate now. Because I’m not twenty-five years old. Sometimes I feel I’m twenty-five years old and that’s what I should be doing—and that I should choose a job, not a job like a singer or a writer, not one of those jobs in the arts where the competition is ferocious and the whole situation is scornful and it’s dicey and it involves you in investigations of yourself that don’t lead anywhere except into sorrow. I don’t want to be one of those people, I know what they’re like. I wouldn’t go near that. There are lots of good jobs.
SLD: Like?
LC: Simple jobs. You could work in a bookstore. You could be a librarian. There’s lots of stuff.
SLD: Your relations to your kids and to your ex-wives [sic] or women … have they changed after your entering the monastery?
LC: That’s hard to say. I don’t know if anything changes, especially relationships that are really screwed up. It’s pretty hard to straighten them out but, yeah, something does change. It’s hard to put your finger on it.
SLD: Do your children ever come here?
LC: Sure, on visiting day they sometimes come up. My son [Adam, by now a singer/songwriter. —Ed.] called me up a few weeks ago. He never asks me for any help. He said, “There’s just one line, Dad. One line in a song I can’t get. Could you help me with it?” He said, “I’ve really been sweating over it.” How wonderful, and what a wonderful afternoon we spent. He came up with a sandwich from down below and I had my second lunch with him and we sat outside … it was good weather.
SLD: Could you help him?
LC: Yeah, I gave him a couple of words. He just needed a word or two. [Smiles.] And that’s what we’re both doing …
SLD: He was close to death a couple of years ago.
LC: Yes, he had a very serious car accident. He was running around with a black band in Guadalupe.
SLD: But he survived but you stayed with him for a couple of months when he was in hospital. How did that change you?
LC: About four months.
SLD: What happened to you during this time?
LC: The thing that happened to both of us is that we were able to get very tight. And those kinds of experiences, they resonate very deep in everybody’s heart. It’s hard to say exactly what they change but you do find out something about the human body and frailty and you find out something about courage. Not just love between you and the other person but what human beings are capable of.
I saw this kid who was smashed completely and there was a very strong psychic element in his recovery, both involved with my love, his understanding of my unconditional love, my understanding of his incredible courage and his incredible effort. So there were very deep and mysterious human mechanics of the love and of the heart going on which I wouldn’t even presume to describe but they certainly had a part in the healing.
SLD: Attachment … is that something you’re thinking about?
LC: Oh, there’s one funny moment I just remembered when my son was in intensive care and he was very smashed and they didn’t really know what to do yet. They were just examining him and wondering what approach to take to the damage. And he was on large amounts of morphine and he was in and out of consciousness. And I was reading the Bible out loud to him. I was sitting by his bed reading the Bible and he came to at one time and he turned to me and he recognized me and he said, “Dad, can you read something else?” [Cohen and Dabrowski laugh.]
SLD: I guess that was a happy moment in your life. Did you [read something else]?
[Cohen nods.]
SLD: A very long time ago you said that women were the salvation for mankind, that they had the brains and the power and the men were playing or artists or joking around—
LC: Gossips.
SLD: Gossips, exactly. And the sooner the women took over the better.
LC: Right. Well, now that they’ve taken over we can judge whether it’s better or not. [Laughs.] I may have been wrong.
SLD: But do you mean that women have equal strength to men or do you mean that they are stronger?
LC: Men and women have exactly equal strength but it really wasn’t acknowledged that way. Lip service was paid to it and everybody would say that men and women are equal but now in men’s hearts they really understand that they are dealing with power at least as great as the
ir own.
SLD: Are you happy with this?
LC: Yes. I’m very happy with it.
SLD: You have given so much to so many people. If you are now feeling so fine and you are not interested in creating any more of this stuff, isn’t this very sad for the rest of the world?
LC: I don’t think it’s too sad ’cause you and I know that the stuff’s already been created so there’s no danger of it being uncreated.
SLD: But the source is still there, the well is still giving water …
LC: I think that those poems and songs I wrote then have a certain value. And the poems and songs I’m singing for you right now have another kind of value.
SLD: But does it mean anything to you, what kind of impact you have on the world?
LC: It’s hard to discuss the very serious things but, yes, it does mean something to me. Because I get mail, just a little mail, but I get it from people who tell me that my songs are useful. Someone will say that they played my song “If It Be Your Will” at their friend’s funeral. Or they played “Dance Me to the End of Love” at their wedding or “Hallelujah” got them through the night or their mother listened to my records as she lay dying of cancer right to the last moment. I see that they [the songs] moved into the world and were able to be useful and helpful and it makes me feel good because it’s important that you feel useful. And I do—I do feel that the things have been useful.
SLD: But now you are releasing a new best-of album.
LC: Yeah.
SLD: Are you not going out to—
LC: Tour with it? No, no.
SLD: Why not?
LC: Well, I can’t interrupt these studies here.
SLD: I was very surprised when I came here and you said, “Well, they’re doing this record but I don’t give a shit.” I never heard an artist say that.
LC: It’s not that I don’t give a shit. Because there are people who are spending their time and their money and their energy to do it. I don’t in any sense want to convey the fact that I’m scornful of the activity. It’s just that I’m involved in an activity now that cannot be interrupted. It’s too important for me to interrupt it and it’s too important for whatever future work I might do. It’s too important for the health of my soul. And the time is limited. Old Roshi, his time is limited—he’s ninety.
My body is going to decay naturally over the years and I’m not going to be able to do this kind of practice. I’ll be able to do another kind of practice but this one here on this mountain with these kinds of rules and regulations—which I understand so intimately and which I understand the value of so intimately—I won’t be able to do that very long. So time is like an arrow. The thing is moving very, very quickly. And it’s like the Hebrew saying, “If I am not for myself, who will be? And if not now, when? But if I am only for myself, what am I?”
So all those questions are answered. But I don’t think it’s a moment for me to climb down the mountain, abandon this investigation, put a band together and go out on tour. No, I don’t think that’s the moment right now. And please forgive me. And I say this to my listeners: please forgive me for not going out with a band at this moment but I am trying to learn some things and trying to get myself into a shape which I hope will result in songs that are deeper and better and maybe on that basis I’ll be forgiven.
SLD: I’m sure.
[Cohen laughs, then he and Dabrowski are seen outside his cabin.]
SLD: So what do you want to say to the Swedish people?
LC: You can speak for me, OK?
SLD: No, you can speak for yourself very well. Thank you very much.
LC: Put it there, kid. [Shakes Dabrowski’s hand.]
SLD: Nice talking to you.
LC: It was a pleasure.
SLD: Bye bye.
LC: Please come again. I hate to see you go. This is terrible. This is a terrible moment.
SLD: Separation.
LC: The moment of separation. OK, so let me take you to your car. See you later.
SLD: Bye bye.
LC: Bye. Are you driving? [Cohen waves to Dabrowski and walks back toward his cabin.]
COHEN CLIP
On Hearing His Old Songs
“I hardly ever get a chance to hear my old songs. Sometimes I hear one on some generous retrospective radio station when I’m in town, but I don’t feel like that person anymore. I stand in awe. People say the very early songs were the most important. I listen to them like I’m listening to someone else. I have a lot of respect for the young heart who produced those visions.”
—from “A Life in the Day of Leonard Cohen,” by Nigel Williamson,
the Sunday Times Magazine (London), 1997
COHEN CLIP
On His Buddhist Monastery Retreat
“There is no one here who is not, in a certain sense, broken down, who has not found that he doesn’t know how to deal with the things you have to face in ordinary life. So they come here. It’s not at all an isolated situation. In ordinary life down the mountain sometimes you finish your day’s work, you go home, you shut your door, you watch the TV … and you’re really alone. Here you’re never alone. There’s little private space, very little time to yourself. There’s a saying in Zen, like pebbles in a bag, they polish one another. We’re doing that all the time here. So one doesn’t have the sense of isolation here …”
—from interview with Jean-Luc Esse on Synergie
(French radio show), October 6, 1997
TV INTERVIEW
VALERIE PRINGLE | October 28, 1997, W5, CTV (Canada)
Like Stina Dabrowski, veteran Canadian broadcaster Valerie Pringle spoke with Cohen in 1997. He was still on Mount Baldy, where he would remain until 1999, but he came down from the mountain to meet Pringle at Shutters on the Beach, a luxury hotel in Santa Monica, California. Their discussion included some of the singer’s most forthright comments to date about his struggles with depression.
“I had interviewed him before but this was the best conversation,” Pringle told me. “We ran in the waves by the hotel for b-roll. He was fabulous. I have quoted from that interview quite often.” —Ed.
Valerie Pringle: Leonard Cohen was born to a well-to-do family in Montreal. He was a latecomer to the pop-music scene. He didn’t begin making records until he was in his thirties. Classics like “Suzanne” and “Sisters of Mercy” made Leonard Cohen an international success. His songs are rich with metaphor and melancholy. For more than thirty years, those weighty themes of love, death, and salvation have made him an anomaly in the world of light pop music.
Now this musician with a touch of the mystic is exploring a new path. For the past four years, Leonard Cohen has lived in an austere Zen Buddhist monastery atop Mount Baldy in California. He is a friend and follower of Roshi, a ninety-year-old monk who leads the center. Last year, Cohen himself was ordained as a Buddhist monk. He gets up every morning at two thirty after only four hours’ sleep. It’s a rigorous lifestyle but one that he has chosen to help him cope with a burden that he’s struggled with most of his life. I talked to Leonard Cohen in Los Angeles.
Leonard Cohen: I bumped into this old man. He seemed to be old when I met him although he’s younger than I am [sic], Roshi. And he seemed to know a thing or two that I was interested in looking into.
VP: But what was it that you were looking for? What did he know that you needed?
LC: I don’t think anybody goes into this kind of activity unless their personal level of distress reaches a certain unendurable point. To be serious about it, nobody gets into a very rigorous activity unless they’re suffering.
VP: What were you suffering from—depression?
LC: Depression is one thing but just a general sense of confusion, bewilderment, a sense of shipwreck—that you’ve screwed up badly.
VP: When you talk about being in distress, do you mean depression? Has mental illness been a strong factor in your life?
LC: Yes. I feel like I’m coming out of the closet, but depression has certai
nly been an element that I’ve had to deal with all through my life. And my cover story looked wonderful.
VP: That you were just this bummed-out artist and you had success writing songs about it.
LC: No, the guys would say, “What’s he got to complain about?” Nobody dealt me any bad cards.
VP: But if you’re manic-depressive, that’s a bad card.
LC: I think it just goes with the territory. Everybody’s got something that they gotta deal with that is rough.
VP: And the solutions you sought included what? Travel, drugs, scotch, Prozac…
LC: Well, yeah, I still do. What happened was that somewhere along the line I understood that this question had to be addressed on the fundamental level of consciousness.
VP: You say that your cover story dealing with depression was that you were an artist and had success with your songs, particularly some of the more depressing songs. Did you ever worry that if you dealt with the depression, that if you actually got better, you would lose touch with your artistic side that understood that kind of pain and expressed it so well?
LC: No. That’s a popular notion—that it is exclusively suffering that produces good work or insightful work. I don’t think that’s the case. I think in a certain sense it’s a trigger or a lever but I think that good work is produced in spite of suffering and as a response, as a victory over suffering.
VP: That’s an interesting concept—a victory over suffering.
LC: Yeah, because if the degree of intensity of anybody’s distress is sufficiently high, you can’t move, and for people who’ve experienced acute clinical depression … the problem is getting to the next moment—the room tilts, you lose your balance and you’re incapable of coherent thought.
