Leonard Cohen on Leonard Cohen

by Jeff Burger

  —from “Rebirth of a Ladies’ Man,” by Brendan Kelly,

  Financial Post (Toronto), December 12, 1992

  COHEN CLIP

  On His Favorite Song

  “When people ask me, ‘What’s your favorite song?’ I say [Fats Domino’s] ‘Blueberry Hill.’ ‘I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill / The moon stood still on Blueberry Hill.’ That’s as good as it gets, as far as I know. You know everything about that moment. You know, you’re continually seesawing back and forth between the secular and the spiritual until from time to time you hit it right. It’s there on ‘Blueberry Hill,’ or ‘Ol’ Man River’ from Ray Charles.”

  —from “Sincerely, L. Cohen,” by Brian Cullman,

  Details for Men (US), January 1993

  COHEN CLIP

  On Songwriting

  “I’ve only learned one thing writing songs, and that is, if you stay with it long enough, the song will yield. But ‘long enough’ is beyond any reasonable length of what long enough might suggest to you. You might think it’s a few months—it might be a year or two….The work of it seems to be involved with rejecting every version of the song that is too easy. And then you read it, and it is kind of a surprise, because it’s a position you couldn’t have come to through any other process. It doesn’t involve a slogan; you even transcend your own politics. You burn away those versions of yourself, your courage, and your modesty until you get something irreducible, that lowest guy on the food chain shouting, ‘They’re gonna hear from me.’”

  —from “Painstaking Effort Pays Off in Leonard Cohen’s Future,” by Tom Moon, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 4, 1993

  COHEN CLIP

  On His Son’s Car Accident

  “A lot of things happened during the recording of this album [The Future]. My son had a very serious car smash and I spent four months beside him in the hospital. That upset the process. A child being hurt like that is the parent’s nightmare. It calls on resources you never knew you had. He was badly hurt and when he perceived how badly hurt he was it represented a real assault on his morale. You’re ready to deal with your own disasters but not someone else’s. When I saw his courage that’s where I drew my courage from.”

  —from “Hello, I Must Be Cohen,” by Gavin Martin,

  New Musical Express (UK), January 9, 1993

  COHEN CLIP

  On Having Children

  “I never wanted them, to tell you the truth, at the beginning. For a long time, I felt I’d been maneuvered into it and probably had been. I didn’t like the idea. First of all, kids are the only event that moves you out of center stage. I’m not just talking for a performer, I mean in your own life. It’s the only thing that ever happens to you where you stop thinking of yourself as the star of the whole play. The demand and the urgency that kids present is unavoidable. It’s the only time in your life that you stop thinking about yourself, so I didn’t like it. I didn’t like that at all. Of course, you love the kids, goo-goo and everything else, but I really didn’t like the maintenance. But I’m sure glad I had them because they are about the best company I have in my life.”

  —from “The D-Files: Leonard Cohen,” radio interview by

  David Fanning, RTE (Ireland), January 21, 1993

  COHEN CLIP

  On His Musical Resurrection

  “I started to get the news that I was being resurrected from my daughter, who was about fourteen at the time. She was telling me: ‘You know, Dad, a lot of garage bands are playing your stuff.’”

  —from “Leonard Cohen … What’s Your Problem? Doom and Gloom,” by

  Patrick Humphries, Vox, February 1993

  COHEN CLIP

  On His One Extravagance

  “As one’s family grows and one’s sense of responsibility grows, yes, you need more money, but I’ve always been drawn by the voluptuousness of austerity. I would say that the sole extravagance that I indulge myself in is caviar. Unfortunately, I have developed I won’t say a need, but a taste for caviar.”

  —from “The Joking Troubadour of Gloom,” by Tim Rostron,

  the Daily Telegraph (London), April 26, 1993

  THE FUTURE

  ALBERTO MANZANO | May 1993, interview | Spring 1993, El Europeo (Spain)

  Though a 1997 best-of package included two new songs, 1992’s The Future turned out to be the last collection of fresh material that Cohen would release for nine years. But that doesn’t mean he disappeared from public view—at least not right away. In 1993, in fact, he conducted at least as many interviews as he had in the previous year.

  “Leonard had arrived in Madrid to promote his new album, The Future,” Alberto Manzano told me. “I took the opportunity to call the Spanish singer Enrique Morente, with whom I was preparing a record of versions of Leonard’s songs in flamenco style called Omega. Enrique didn’t hesitate in rushing out to meet him and I introduced them to each other. We talked at length in the bar at the Palace Hotel, where the poet Federico Garcia Lorca used to have a few drinks when he was in Madrid. Leonard’s eyes had a special shine as he smiled faintly. He was delighted with it all.

  “The next day,” Manzano continued, “we went to the Spanish TV studios to record a playback of the song ‘Closing Time.’ I didn’t like it very much. It was too long and rushed. I told Leonard that it was not a song that was representative of the album. ‘Marketing stuff, Alberto,’ he replied.” —Ed.

  Alberto Manzano: The hummingbird appears on the front cover of your new album, The Future, but it had already appeared in that other album of 1979, Recent Songs. What has the hummingbird been doing all these years?

  Leonard Cohen: When I was writing these songs, the hummingbird would come every morning outside my window, so it came here to rescue the heart from the handcuffs. You’ve been the only one that’s noticed it was on my other album.

  AM: Is the idea of the cover that of the spirit setting the heart free of its chains?

  LC: Something like that. I’m not quite sure what it means. These three symbols, the bird, the heart, and the handcuffs … I worked with them in different ways and finally I gave them to an artist in Los Angeles-Michael Petit—and we developed this symbol for the record. Something to do with liberation, something to do with imprisonment.

  AM: The song that serves as the title for the album shows a terrible apocalyptic vision of the future. It takes up, once again, the spirit of Isaiah and the message of earlier songs like “First We Take Manhattan” and “Everybody Knows.”

  LC: I don’t have any biblical ambitions and I know that whatever life I’m leading is beyond the control of my personality, beyond the direction of my intentions. I think as you get older you understand that you’re in the grip of forces that are greater than the ones you believe you are commanding. Whatever role you tend to be living is fuelled, it’s running on its own, an energy with its own motion. So I don’t pretend to emulate a prophet and I don’t pretend to emulate one that’s not a prophet. I just go to where the energy is in my own landscape.

  You’re just living your own life and where do you go when you want to speak? Where do you go when you want to sing? You have to find where the well is, or where the food is, and when I’m hungry or thirsty I try to find where to go so that I can eat and I can drink. And I often go to places where the landscape is burning, where the city is burning, where the sea is coming over the shore. That’s where I go to eat and where I go to sing. I don’t know if it has any meaning for anybody else. But the rest of the landscape is very quiet and very dull, very boring. And I feel chained there and imprisoned there. I feel I cannot speak there. Maybe I should stay there and not speak, and not sing. But when I want to sing I have to go to where the sea is flooding, where the city is burning.

  AM: In “Democracy,” your other political song on the album, you convert the “Sermon on the Mount” into a good example for the democratic movement.

  LC: It’s a good example in the sense that it’s a mystery. Just like democracy is a mystery. Democracy is th
e great religion of the West. Probably the greatest religion because it affirms other religions; probably the greatest culture because it affirms other cultures. But it’s based on faith, it’s based on appetite for fraternity, it’s based on love, and therefore it shares the characteristics of a religious movement. It’s also like a religion in that it’s never really been tried.

  Nobody is ready to surrender to a democratic heart. Nobody is willing to affirm the equality of all phenomena. Nobody is willing to say the night is the same as the day, and they both rest on zero. Nobody is willing to say that the black is the same as the white when it rests on zero, or the good is the same as the bad when it rests on zero. Nobody is willing to really embrace a democratic vision, but the vision is there and we move towards it.

  The Sermon on the Mount has the same mysterious quality. The words resonate in our hearts and in our minds but it’s impossible to really grasp it: “Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the Earth.” “Blessed are the poor in spirit for they shall see God.” These words resonate with possibility, with potential in our minds, but nobody can grasp the meaning of that because we see that the meek are crushed underfoot, they don’t inherit the Earth; we see that the poor in spirit are going to mental hospitals, they don’t see God, or if they do, they see terrible versions of God. So like democracy, fraternity, equality, liberty, they resonate in the heart. But when it comes down to individual choices, we’re very unwilling to surrender our status, to surrender our position in regard to the others. And we’re frightened by the notion that we might have to share our room with strangers; we might have to share our heart with strangers, to share our life with strangers, with those poorer than us.

  So we have this resonance where the basis of our religious teaching [is]—“blessed are the poor,” “blessed are the meek.” But where are they? Do we want them with us? Do we really want the poor in our restaurants? Do we want to share our jackets with the beggars? They resonate in our minds, and they create this notion, this tension, this direction towards this possibility that we call Christianity, this possibility that we call democracy …

  AM: Do you think there is hope for this utopian human democracy?

  LC: I think we are on the edge of a democratic experiment. I think it has begun. I think that the idea has escaped into the world. It becomes a kind of necessity that is stronger than hope, and it will result in a tremendous amount of human suffering like all other ideas that get into the air like an infection. I don’t know whether there’s an absolute quality to democracy, or to Islam or to Christianity, but it’s like fuel—it makes people act, whether it’s for the good or the bad, I couldn’t possibly decide. But we see that the populations of the world are no longer content with their previous positions in regard to authority. Democracy makes everybody nervous.

  AM: Up till now some of the implications of the American democracy in the world have not been very attractive. What’s your opinion of this “soft revolution” which [President Bill] Clinton is leading?

  LC: A lot of people feel very hopeful about the victory of the Democratic candidate. People have said to me that he’s listened to the music, he’s smoked the grass, he’s had the long hair, he was born after World War II, he has the social credentials, the cultural credentials, to manifest this vision. Whether he will or nor depends on a whole number of variables that nobody can predict, but he has produced hope in people’s hearts.

  I, of course, as you know, am not given to hope. It is not one of the emotions that I embrace very enthusiastically, but you can summon your blessings for the administration. Of course you hope that things will turn out. There are so many social problems in America that have to be addressed. One of the wonderful things about America is that democracy is being tested in a way it’s not being tested in other parts of the world.

  AM: You say love is one of the foundations of democracy, but how does one feed it and eliminate all the garbage that covers it?

  LC: Love is the foundation of democracy, but it’s very important for people to have a certain kind of education. Which we’re not getting. Democracy affirms the equality of phenomena. It affirms the equality of the white and the black, and the poor and the rich. It’s filled with affirmations, with validations for the fragment of society, but unless the fragments of society can experience themselves as a something other than the fragments, then democracy will fail.

  It is important to experience yourself as a man, but also it’s important to experience yourself as neither a man nor a woman. It’s important to experience yourself as a black or as a white, but it’s important to experience yourself as neither black nor white. So while democracy affirms black and white and man and woman, it hasn’t yet matured to a position where it affirms a position that is neither black nor white, that is neither man nor woman.

  It hints at this wisdom. That’s what we love about it. It hints that there is a transcendent category that is neither black nor white nor man nor woman, nor rich nor poor, that there’s a transcendent category. But it hasn’t yet developed the educational institutions for people to experience themselves as neither man nor woman, as neither black nor white, as neither East nor West, as neither Christian nor Islam nor Jew. It hasn’t developed the educational institutions to mature the wisdom of zero. But we hope it will. And we work towards that goal, each in our own way.

  AM: I remember that poem of yours which said, “Any system you contrive without us will be brought down.” It was published in the early seventies in the book The Energy of Slaves, although then it seemed to have been written by an anarchist.

  LC: Anarchism represents a faith that human beings can develop their own contracts with each other without having these contracts imposed from above, and that relates to this position that I was speaking about that affirms, that validates the man, the woman, the black, the white—that affirms the wisdom that understands that the black and the white, the man and the woman, the Christian, the Jew, the Muslim; that the basis of this expression is zero, that there’s a fundamental experience that’s neither black nor white, nor man nor woman. Anarchism affirms or hints or points or believes or hopes that there is a position that everyone instinctively understands, that allows them to make contracts with each other on a personal and rational and loving basis that does not need to be ordered from above. So it’s always an attractive position, especially to the young.

  AM: You definitely seem to be thrown into a sort of political crusade in your latest albums. Why this obsessive and urgent return to revolutionary formalities?

  LC: Well, when I feel the fascist arise in my own heart, I say, “Ah, the fascist is here again.” In me. The fascist can deal with the situation, the situation is chaotic and the fascist arises, and I like him; he looks good. “First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin.” The extremist arises, the terrorist, who’s unwilling to deal on the democratic plane, on the parliamentary plane, unwilling to enter into the debate with all his voices. The leader arises with his black shirt and silver buckle and his revolver on his belt and he says, “I’m going to take charge. I don’t want to hear what everybody is saying. I don’t want to listen to any more arguments. I don’t want to hear any more positions.”

  And that fascist, that hero, arises and I find him attractive and I also find him menacing, and I deal with him. And then the other terrorist arises from the left, who says, “None of your institutions are worth protecting. Don’t talk to me about order, don’t talk to me about family, don’t talk to me about your beautiful monuments and your works of art and your museums and your restaurants and your hotels. I don’t want to hear about those things—they’re all going down. There may be something good. I’m sorry about it. If a child is going to be burnt, forgive me. The thing produces only suffering, the whole affair deserves to be blown up, and I’m going to blow it up.” And he stands up, and he’s young and he’s beautiful and his shirt is open, and he’s wearing rags and he has a bomb in his hand, and he throws it. And I have to deal with him. So in peri
ods like the ones we’re in, all of those figures arise, and they arise very powerfully and I deal with them, and that’s how this record was written, in dealing with those figures that spoke so powerfully to me during this period.

  AM: So the album seems to move between those two poles, represented by “Democracy” and “The Future.” That is, the vision of democracy coming “in amorous array,” as you say in that song, and on the other hand, a maddened futuristic panorama.

  LC: Yeah, I think it does, although there is no strategy. These are the songs that were saved out of the shipwreck. There were lots of songs I was working on. One was called “Blue Alert,” one was called “My Secret Life.”

  None of them survived. [In fact, “In My Secret Life” surfaced on 2001 s Ten New Songs while “Blue Alert” became the title track of a Cohen-produced 2006 album by Anjani Thomas, who was by then his lover. —Ed.] These were the ones that survived, and at the end of three, four years you say, “What have I got? How have I wasted this time? What have I been working on?” And you see what you have, and it generally has some kind of truth, some kind of coherence, but it doesn’t begin with a strategy. But yes, you either have “The Future” or you have “Democracy.” Somehow these two possibilities set up a tension, or you have a kind of philosophical background, a compassionate background like the song “Anthem,” which says it doesn’t matter whether you have “The Future” or whether you have “Democracy,” “there is a crack in everything,” this world is not perfect. The central myth of our culture is the expulsion from the Garden of Eden.

  Nobody wants to believe the central myth of our culture is that we’ve been expelled from the Garden of Eden, and this world is the manifestation of a fall. We fall from birth into death, from dream into failure, from health into sickness. This is the situation. We’re not in Paradise. Nobody wants to accept that. There’s a great black blues verse that goes like this: “Everybody wants to laugh, nobody wants to cry / Everybody wants to go to heaven, nobody wants to die.”