Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen

by Jeff Burger

  Leonard Cohen: I guess I was trying to write a tough song, a song that indicated to myself and the world that I really knew the score about something or other. We all have these archetypes floating around in our minds and we become them from moment to moment. That guy [in the song] was a kind of know-it-all who’d been there and done that and seen it all. I think that was how it began but then under the tyranny of rhyme, other lines emerged that I could never possibly come up with. There were good lines there: “a long-stemmed rose” and “without your clothes.” Things like that are wonderful gifts and I don’t know how they arrive.

  It’s not that I don’t sweat over it because I do. I sweat over every word. And it takes me a long time to bring these songs to completion. But when these little gifts appear, you’re still wonderfully surprised and grateful. That song has a particular number of them and then it began to allow me to explore my own feelings about the way things were rather than become active in some cause, which is not really my nature. I could activate impulses that somehow coincide with a sense or a need or an appetite for reform. I think Yeats’s father said that poetry is the social act of a solitary man.

  SR: Another song being inducted is “Ain’t No Cure for Love.”

  LC: “Ain’t No Cure for Love” … that song I hardly remember. Can you sing it? I forget how it goes.

  SR: [Sings.] “There ain’t no cure, ain’t no cure …”

  LC: Well, that’s for sure.

  SR: [Laughs.] OK. I can’t believe I sang for Leonard Cohen. Hello, John Hammond.

  LC: It hints at something. Sometimes you don’t really know what a song is about. “Ain’t No Cure for Love,” I just know it’s true. And it suggests that love is an ailment. It’s not an original idea that love is a fever or a disease but in another sense it’s the same landscape as “There is a crack in everything.” That our impulses and our motivations … they’re hopeless.

  First of all, we don’t determine them. We receive them. We act on them. And we fall in love with things and with ideas and with people and we can’t help ourselves. We’re just programmed that way, constructed that way. In the same way that we’re bloodthirsty, homicidal predators, in the same way we’re tender creatures filled with the highest ideals and the profoundest aspirations and the widest appetite for love. And regardless of all the evidence—and there are mountains of it—to the contrary, we simply cannot help falling in love. Not just with each other, but that’s certainly part of it. But with principles and ideals and a dream of virtue.

  SR: Do you know more about love now than you did when you wrote—

  LC: I was never good at it. This I can say with real certainty.

  SR: Has it been a good dance?

  LC: It’s been a good dance. I just wrote a song with Anjani Thomas called “Thanks for the Dance” and it goes, “Thanks for the dance, it was hell, it was swell, it was fun / Thanks for all the dances, one-two-three, one-two-three-one.”

  SR: [Laughs.] Beautiful. Will that show up on the new CD with Anjani?

  LC: Yes, that’s the final song of that album called Blue Alert.

  SR: You go back a ways with her.

  LC: Anjani played keyboard and sang backup for me on a 1984 tour. So I’ve known Anjani for a long, long time. I’ve known her professionally and now we’re neighbors of the deepest kind.

  SR: You have a new album coming out and a new book of poetry?

  LC: Yes I do. I have a book of poetry called Book of Longing. And it’s poems and drawings and it has a wonderful cover.

  SR: What’s on it?

  LC: It’s a bird. What I like about it is that it was a drawing I discarded and had no use for. But I endlessly recycle my scribbles and sketches and it’s really wonderful when something reappears. You should never throw anything away, including people and ideas. It’s really true that you should never give up on anyone. Everything can be used.

  SR: So there’s a book, there’s a CD, there’s this lovely induction into the Canadian—

  LC: It’s so very kind to have this happen to a number of songs, because to have songs go into the hearts of your countrymen and women is really a wonderful thing. I heard an interview with [filmmaker] Oliver Stone once and he said [he] had a hit with I think it was Platoon. He said every artist should experience this. He said if he could decree something he would have every artist experience a hit because he said there’s nothing like it. He said it’s unstoppable and you just have the sense that the whole world is expressing this unspeakable hospitality to your soul.

  I’ve never had a huge hit. But my songs, a few of them, have made their way, and I’ve had that feeling, like you go into a café someplace and a song of yours is playing or you pass by a park and some kid is playing one of your songs. It’s really great and this is the kind of symbolic culmination. There is no hall of fame. There’s just the heart.

  SR: I have to ask you about “Hallelujah.”

  LC: That song also comes out of the same place as “crack in everything” and “Ain’t No Cure for Love.” It says, “And even though it all went wrong, I’ll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my tongue but hallelujah.” I guess that kind of sums it up for me.

  SR: You’ve heard k. d. lang sing it.

  LC: Oh I just love that version.

  SR: It is magnificent.

  LC: It’s just glorious.

  SR: She’s glorious.

  LC: She does that to most of the things she sings but that is a wonderful moment when she sings that song on her last album. It’s just beautiful.

  SR: So with all of these things going on, Leonard … you were concealed for a while. I guess you’re back to being revealed for a little while. Are you hot again?

  LC: I’ve never even used that word about myself most of my life but things are tough now and if you want to survive in the marketplace, first of all you have to acknowledge that there is a marketplace and that there are people who operate it and manipulate it. I can’t get into it that way.

  SR: And I can’t ask you about it either, really.

  LC: I don’t know how it’s done and I’ve had this curious relationship with a number of people, which is the way I look at it. And it seems to be a substantial number of people. So I can address them in exactly the terms that … I won’t even say appropriately because I don’t even know that it’s appropriate but just in the terms that appear, that come to me. And I hope I can continue to do that.

  SR: When you were up on Mount Baldy with your spiritual leader Roshi—

  LC: My old friend Roshi, he’s ninety-eight.

  SR: He’s still alive.

  LC: Oh, he’s still alive. He said to me, “Excuse me, I forgot to die.” He’s at the top of his form. That’s an inspiration. I never thought of him as my spiritual leader but as someone who exhibits the unusual capacity to thoroughly understand your own predicament. We all try to do that to the people in our lives but it’s an art or a skill like anything else and some people have that.

  I was never interested in Buddhism. I had a perfectly good religion but I was interested in Roshi’s remarkable and unusual interest in other people because I didn’t feel I was at home anywhere. So I wanted to avail myself of that hospitality. If he’d been a professor of physics at Heidelberg, I would have learned German and studied in Heidelberg but he happened to be a Zen master so I put on the robes and I entered the monastery and I did what was necessary and appropriate to be able to enjoy his company.

  SR: When you came down from the mountain, how did it change how you went through your day?

  LC: There’s a tremendous respect in that tradition which appealed to me very much. I cooked for Roshi for many years.

  SR: What did you make him?

  LC: Well, he had to have a lot of protein at his age. So I cooked a lot of fish. He liked tuna and salmon. I used to make a lot of teriyaki salmon.

  SR: Did you make him a Red Needle [the drink Cohen created]?

  LC: Roshi taught me a lot about drinking. Roshi is a
great drinker and he taught me to discern, at least in the early stages of the evening, between let’s say the tastes of Hennessy and Martell cognac. He’d test me. But I could never get him interested in red wine. He drank the poisonous raw sake, which he cherished. I could never really embrace sake drinking. If your heart has been nourished by the highs of Bordeaux, it’s hard to really get into sake.

  SR: A Red Needle, I understand, is your drink.

  LC: I invented the Red Needle in Needles, California. I can’t make it anymore. I can construct a facsimile of the Red Needle now. Basically it’s tequila and cranberry juice and a little bit of soda water to give it a bit of a fizz and some fruit. But when I invented it and proselytized it, I was the evangelist of the Red Needle for a number of years. And it took off. But I’ve forgotten now. Like most things. Like an opinion—I can come up with an opinion if pressed and generally my opinions are cowardly now. If I’m in a certain kind of environment, I will certainly embrace the ideas that are current at that moment and completely reverse myself. But the Red Needle has fallen into disuse.

  SR: I’m so sorry.

  LC: There are other practitioners of the Red Needle who can accomplish it.

  SR: You’ve said that even with Alzheimer’s, Irving Layton’s voice couldn’t be silenced.

  LC: No. There is something about Irving that is so amazing. When I went to see him in his last days, he hadn’t recognized me for a while but before that, I visited him at the hospital. We found a place to smoke. I was helping him light his pipe. His hands were trembling and he says to me, “Have you noticed some decline in your sexual appetite?” This must be about eight years ago and I said, “I have, Irving, somewhat.” He said, “I’m relieved to hear that, Leonard.” I said, “So I take it, Irving, that you yourself have noticed some decline in your sexual appetite.” He says, “Yes, I have.” I said, “When did you first begin to notice it?” He said, “Oh, about the age of sixteen or seventeen.” [Rogers laughs.]

  But it’s a curious and mysterious disease, Alzheimer’s. I don’t have any particular insight into it but the last time I visited Irving, I brought him some cheese Danish. I was with [his friend] Musia Schwartz who was so devoted to him. I cut it up and put it down in front of him. He said, “Thank you very much.” And some orange juice. He said, “Thank you very much.” And I had the feeling that he was very peaceful. He really enjoyed that cheese Danish. He didn’t look up…. I just felt that he’d gone beyond the social conventions. It wasn’t as though it were some kind of enlightened or spiritual silence. It wasn’t that at all. It was just the sense that nothing need be said or can be said. It’s not that it was taken for granted. It’s more that it just was the way it was and it was completely all right with him. And the only invitation that was in the air was for it to be all right with you too. And I just sat there completely relaxed while Irving felt no need or obligation to acknowledge my presence. That’s the last time I saw him.

  SR: So you’ve been able to deal with the unfairness of the way he went out.

  LC: These things we simply cannot penetrate. I thought his exit was very graceful. It was silent and maybe unfair but the mind was at rest in some way. This incredible mind that had imagined Canada for all of us … it seemed to be at rest.

  SR: Can I ask you one question about Canada?

  LC: Sure.

  SR: Years and years ago, you said Quebec was a country and Canada still had to work on it. That’s not a direct quote but what do you think?

  LC: Quebec—one language, one religion, one location, one history, one culture—had a legitimate claim to calling itself a country while Canada was a new kind of formation. These new great ideas that we have in North America, in the United States and Canada, of a different kind of society that is not specifically governed by these tribal obligations, is also wonderful. And if we can accommodate a country in our other formation, it would be a tremendous human achievement, if we could accommodate all kinds of expressions but especially the Quebecois expression. I know everybody’s pissed off.

  SR: “Not this again.”

  LC: “Not this again” or “let them go” or “let us go” or “it isn’t working and it’s time for the divorce.” And there’s much to recommend everybody going their separate ways. And we’re in a period in history where everybody’s invited to go their separate ways. I think we should try to do it together. It’s much more interesting for us to accommodate one another and the challenges will invite many more interesting kinds of expression than if we do go our separate ways. That’s just my two cents.

  SR: It’s almost an opinion.

  LC: I don’t care.

  SR: I want to thank you very much for this time. And, again congratulations. Your award [is] gleaming in the background behind your head. Thank you, Mr. Cohen.

  LC: Thank you.

  COHEN CLIP

  On His Early Influences

  “I read a lot of Lorca at the time and a lot of Isaiah and apocalyptic religious literature appealed to me. The prayer book, the synagogue, the labor movement, collectors like Alan Lomax, singers like Pete Seeger, the People’s Songbook, the Almanac Singers. On the European side, singers like Amelia Rodriguez and the flamenco singers, the fado singers, the French chanteurs. Those were the influences.”

  —interview with Michael Silverblatt, Bookworm, KCRW-FM

  (Santa Monica, California), June 24, 2006

  LIFE OF A LADIES’ MAN

  SARAH HAMPSON | May 26, 2007, the Globe and Mail (Toronto)

  “When I set off to interview Cohen in his home in Montreal, I couldn’t have known how long I would have with him or where the conversation would go,” Sarah Hampson told me. “He was emerging from his reclusive period. He was known for disliking media. So all of this interview came as a surprise. I was there for close to five hours, and toward the end, the discussion veered off into romantic advice—for me. He had asked me a little about my life. I had recently divorced after an eighteen-year marriage.

  “‘You just need to find someone to go to dinner with, to sleep with from time to time,’ he began.

  “‘Maybe I should go younger,’ I suggested playfully.

  “‘It’s a good idea,’ he said. ‘At a certain point in someone’s life, it’s very refreshing. There are a lot of young men who like older women, and really want that experience and that kindness that only childbearing and the real abrasive education of life can give somebody.’

  “He told me about meeting [French writer and film director] Marguerite Duras, who had a boyfriend forty years her junior at the time,” Hampson recalled. “‘That’s one of the things that takes a little bit of courage, but it’s worth cultivating,’ Cohen said. ‘You should just think, “This is really nice for me.” So, think, “Yes, you want to sleep with me? Lovely. You’re eighteen? OK, that’s maybe too young. OK, maybe twenty-four? Lovely, how lovely.”’

  “It was a sweet, funny exchange,” Hampson said, “and we laughed. Later, he took me on a small tour of his house. I loved the tiny bathroom with a tub in a crawl space under the stairs leading to the third floor, and I mentioned how inviting the tub looked. I am a big bath person, I told him. ‘Come back anytime,’ he said in his casual manner.

  “When I returned to Toronto, I emailed him to thank him for giving me so much of his time. ‘Don’t forget the promise of the bath,’ I wrote cheekily, thinking I would never get a reply.

  “Ten minutes later, it arrived: ‘I’ll get the towels ready.’

  “‘And the candles, Leonard?’ I typed.

  “‘Will have to check with the fire department,’ he wrote back.

  “I printed out the exchange and filed it away for safekeeping.” —Ed.

  The park is like a poem: self-contained and spare. Smokers sit on benches in the morning drizzle. Pigeons swoop over a small gazebo, under the limbs of stately trees. There is a solemn-looking house, three stories high with a grey stone facade. It’s the only one that faces this park in the east end of Montreal, and it’s h
is. There are two big front doors, side by side. No numbers. No bell. No indication which one is right. You just pick, and knock.

  There is more than one way into the world of Leonard Cohen, and on this day in late April, they are all open.

  Cohen, now seventy-two, novelist, poet, and singer/songwriter, is a cornerstone of Canadian culture, but he dances in our heads mostly unseen, like a beautiful idea. It is rare that he makes himself available for scrutiny.

  Here he is, though, a gentleman of hip in black jeans and an unironed dress shirt beneath a pinstriped grey-flannel jacket. Atop his thick white hair, combed back off his deeply lined face, a grey cap sits at a jaunty angle, and in the breast pocket of his jacket, instead of a handkerchief, he keeps a pair of tinted granny glasses. Standing in the cramped foyer to which both front doors open, sporting a wry, knowing smile, he politely ushers you into the house (once partitioned into two dwellings) that he has owned for over thirty years.

  Now is a new Cohen moment, and while he acknowledges that his increased creative activity is partly to compensate for the millions he lost in royalties at the hands of his former manager, he seems to be enjoying the attention. Next week, as part of Toronto’s Luminato festival, his drawings get their first exhibition, at the Drabinsky Gallery. There’s a new concert work by Philip Glass, inspired by Cohen’s art and poetry from his 2006 Book of Longing, which was published after a thirteen-year silence. In 2004, he released his seventeenth album [counting compilations and concert recordings], Dear Heather.

  Earlier this year, expanded editions of his first three albums hit the market, as did the critically acclaimed CD, Blue Alert, that he worked on with his lover, Hawaii-born songstress Anjani Thomas.

  There is nothing off limits in a discussion with Cohen. Sit with him, and the candid revelations come in conversation, in an exchange that is both as playful and solemn, as rich and layered as his work. Over a bottle of Château Maucaillou, Greek bread, a selection of Quebec cheeses, and a fresh cherry pie, bought for the occasion from the local St-Laurent Boulevard merchants, you learn that he prefers to sleep alone; that he is no longer looking for another woman; the real reason he secluded himself in a Buddhist monastery for almost five years; and that a small, faded portrait of Saint Catherine Tekakwitha, the seventeenth-century native woman and heroine of his novel Beautiful Losers, hangs on the wall in his kitchen, above a table holding a fifties radio and a telephone with an oversize dial pad.