LEONARD COHEN: 'MY SPIRITUAL AMBITIONS ARE QUITE MODEST'

The long lost part two of a 1992 interview

This part of my interview with Leonard Cohen has never been published. It took place Nov. 12, 1992, in his suite at the Righa Royal Hotel in Manhattan. The topic was his then new album The Future, the album that changed the way I listened to this visionary singer-songwriter. Its apocalyptic visions seemed to confirm what Cohen called the "inner catastrophes" we had both internalized. In the earlier post, he said something like, "So you're shattered; we're all shattered!"

That part of the interview was so rich, there was so much to talk about in each song, and Cohen was so typically articulate, that it formed the entirety of a feature story for my column in Newsday and New York Newsday, and the Q&A that appeared on my Substack on March 16, 2022. https://waynerobins.substack.com/p/leonard-cohen-sees-the-future

A few days ago, I found a folder with more transcribed material from that interview: It was like an entirely different conversation. The "new project, The Future album, had been thoroughly discussed, but there was still much to talk about: How often does one get invited to stay and break bread with Leonard Cohen? This part of the interview was much more intimate: his Judaism, his family's central place of Montreal's Jewish community; medication and meditation; sex after the destruction wrought by the AIDS plague; sex and aging; and the youthful loneliness of a ladies man. No disclaimer for "editing for clarity" is required. This is how the conversation unfolded. I hope you will forward this to people whom you believe will enjoy subscribing, and that those who subscribe will find this Substack worth paying for.

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WR: WE WERE TALKING ABOUT YOUR AUDIENCE IN POLAND A WHILE AGO, AND YOUR WELL-RECEIVED APPEARANCES AT THE KRAKOW FESTIVAL WHEN THE COMMUNISTS WERE STILL IN POWER.

LEONARD COHEN (LC) I don't know if it's still going on. For some odd reason I've got a very large following in Poland, and other Eastern European countries, but especially Poland. I gave concerts there before the end of the Communist regime, and the crowds there was enormous. I think it's the most attentive country in the world in terms of my songs, no one knows why.

DO YOU HAVE ANCESTRAL ROOTS THERE?

LC: My family came [to Canada] in 1860, from Vilkavish, which is on Polish territory, but was actually part of Russia at the time. [Vilkavish is now considered part of Lithuania.]

WERE YOU RAISED AN OBSERVANT JEW?

LC: Yes, very much so. In an observant and very responsible familu in the [Montreal] community. It was a very nourishing and decent exposure to the tradition.

My sister and I still keep my mother's house there. Even though my mother's passed away, we somehow believe she's there. The loyalties and the roots for Montreal Jews are very, very strong. For many of us, Montreal is some sort of spiritual homeland, the Jerusalem of the north. I have a deep attachment to the city, and I live there much of the time.

YOU ALSO LIVE IN LOS ANGELES?

Yes, the last few years I've been working on this album, recording and mixing, which seemed to take ages.

AS A YOUNG MAN YOU HAD AN IMAGE AS A ROOTLESS MAN, A WANDERING SOUL.

I did drift around for a long time. And I lived in hotel rooms for a long time, and broke down often in these places. A lot of the work does come out of that position.

My family was very much involved in the development of the Jewish community, they arrived in the country earlier (around 1860) and participated in the founding of a lot of institutions, the synagogues, the hospitals . . . They founded the Zionist organization Jewish Colonization Services, which settled Jews in the Canadian [western] prairie provinces. They founded the Jewish Times, the first English language Jewish newspaper in North America. I was at the heart of the whole enterprise.

From the Jewish High Holy Days liturgy, adapted by Cohen, 2009 Live in London

COHENS [KOHAINS] ARE THE PRIESTLY TRIBE IN JUDAISM. DO YOU STILL MAINTAIN THAT CONNECTION, DID YOU EVER DRIFT AWAY OR QUESTION ITS VALIDITY?

I never felt the need to revolt against my family. There was a time I drifted away, but it wasn't...It had nothing to do with a sense of rejection, or a critique. I always thought they were very decent, and still do.

THAT WAS CERTAINLY UNFASHIONABLE AT A TIME.

It was always unfashionable.

[Cohen asks me about my crabmeat, which leads to a discsussion of my interest in cooking. I tell him about cooking elk stew].

SPIRITUALITY DOES COME UP OFTEN IN YOUR SONGS. WAS THERE A TIME YOU FOUND YOURSELF WANTING OR LACKING?

Holding to the idea that there is some possibility of repair of the spirit, my spiritual ambitions are quite modest. I'm not trying to come up with visions or enlightenment. I'm talking about a kind of balance that makes daily life possible.

I guess we cling to the notion that there are certain kind of activities or positions or graces that allow one to experience a sense of repair. All great religions have this notion of a resurrection, or a return, and unless a religion has this notion, they don't serve us very well.

There is available to us a technology of return or methods by which we can attempt to resurrect the spirit. I've always been interested in those activities, not from any luxurious point of view, but the same way I'm interested in new medications. Maybe this is serotonin . . . but those activities may produce serotonin, those chemicals that allow the mind to exist with itself.

DO YOU PURSUE THESE ACTIVITIES WITH SOME DEDICATION?

I do. I find sitting long hours in a meditation hall, for a few weeks out of every year, perhaps a month or so, to be highly efficacious. Also, it's a good place to develop songs. You might even find a rhyme for 'orange' sitting on one of those mats. There are no phones, and it smells nice, the incense is good, it's early in the morning, and you're with diligent American men and women. It's very invigorating to go down to a meditation hall each morning.

DO YOU STILL SPEND TIME IN GREECE?

I haven't been able to get there very often [to his house on Hydra]. I still have my house there that I bought for $1500 in 1960, and my kids use it. It's changed a lot, and it's a long way to go to find yourself not very far from the place you've left. When I got there there was no electricity and no running water, it was a very different kind of life. Not that I fault anyone for wanting to have linoleum and electricity as opposed to rough stone floors and chopping firewood.

WAS THERE A TIME WHEN THIS WAS A GREAT SOURCE OF CREATIVE GENERATION?

Oh, it was, and it still is. First of all, it was an economic solution, because I could live there for $1,100 a year. So I would go back to Canada and put together a couple of grand, enough for the fare, as long as I could live on what I brought over. It was a wonderful life. I went there four years ago and began a lot of these songs there.

ARE YOU A MARRYING KIND OF GUY?

I've never been married. One thing, just plain scared, but I've never been able to find an ideological definition for my fright. Which we develop quite extensively in young manhood.

WHICH WAS?

The position was, the institutions are corrupt, and why involve them in your love affair? Do you really want a lawyer to  determine the terms of your relationship? Do you really want or need the church or state to lend their blessings to this union? How do you feel? How old are you? [I tell him. We're off the record, briefly].

WHEN YOU WERE YOUNGER, AND MADE YOUR FIRST ALBUM LEONARD COHEN [1967], AND WROTE THE NOVEL BEAUTIFUL LOSERS, [1962, paperback 1966] YOU BECAME A FIGURE OF ROMANTIC OBSESSION FOR COLLEGE AGE WOMEN ALL OVER THE WORLD. WHAT WAS IT LIKE?

LC: It's so curious, because I couldn't get a date. I couldn't find anybody to have dinner with. By the time the first record came out, which rescued me from a precarious situation [financial and otherwise], I was already in such a shattered situation that I found myself living at the Henry Hudson Hotel on West 57th St., going to the Morning Star Cafe on Eighth Avenue trying to find some way to approach the waitress and ask her out. I had no social life at the time. I would get letters of longing from women all over the world, and I would find myself walking the streets of New York at 3 in the morning, trying to strike up conversations with the women selling cigarettes in the hotels.

I think it's always like that. It's never delivered to you.

WHY NO NOVELS FOR SO MANY YEARS?

Well, it's hard to say. On the front lines of one's life, it's hard to develop a strategy. These songs have taken so much, and somehow the regime has become like a regime you establish to write a novel, months and months of consecrated labor. I have an old friend, Robert Altman, the director, and whenever we meet, he asks me to tell him what I'm doing, and I recite a lyric to him.

I recited "Democracy" to him, and he said it sounded like a three-act play. I think "Waiting for the Miracle" feels like a novel and I think you can live in those songs in that way, and somehow they take that long to write--as long as a novel would take.

I WAS LISTENING TO YOUR OLD RECORDS, AND I HAD A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT MEMORY OF THAT VOICE. COMPARED TO NOW, YOU SOUNDED LIKE A BOY SOPRANO.

LC: Fifty-thousand cigarettes. I don't know what it was. I stopped smoking a year and a half ago. You?

I STOPPED 20 YEARS AGO (WHICH WOULD'VE BEEN CIRCA 1973) BUT I WAS A PATZER. [A WORD OF POSSIBLE YIDDISH OR GERMAN DERIVATION MEANING AN AMATEUR OR INCOMPETENT, ESP. IN CHESS]. I WAS NEVER A PACK OR TWO OR THREE A DAY SMOKER.

LC: I was. You're smart. There is a real change somewhere along the line [in voice texture], and it's not just getting older. There was some kind of a break, a diversion, or change in the way things seemed to be moving aesthetically, or artistically, musically. Something seemed to change around Various Positions. I wrote those songs around 1980.

THE APPEARANCE OF I'M YOUR MAN MARKED A STRONG DEVELOPMENT IN YOUR MUSICAL CAREER AND SOUND. THAT RECORD MADE PEOPLE FANS AGAIN AND MADE NEW ONES. DO YOU THINK THAT WAS THERE WAS A LOT OF HUMOR?

LC: A lot of discernible humor, yeah. You don't often get an actual real joke in a song, where you can laugh.

FROM "THE JAZZ POLICE" AND THE CONVERSATION WITH HANK WILLIAMS IN "TOWER OF SONG," THERE WAS SOME GRINNING TO BE SURE. WHEN WAS THE LAST TIME PEOPLE COULD BE GRINNING TO A LEONARD COHEN ALBUMS?

LC: (laughs). That's a good question.

WAS IT ESPECIALLY MEANINGFUL FOR THE RECORDING CAREER TO CATCH SECOND WIND AT AGE . . . 58? POP MUSIC IS SUPPOSED TO BE A YOUNG PERSON'S GAME.

LC: That's what they say. [Tongue in cheek] I guess it is awkward of me to have stayed around so long. I like to hear from old guys myself, hear what Neil Young is saying, and Ray Charles and Fats Domino. I like to hear from the elderly.  It's fine to listen to the first fine careless frenzy of a 20-year-old. In any case, I've always thought I was in this for the long haul.

DO YOU WATCH MUCH TELEVISION?

I do, in a very haphazard way. I find it indispensable to a good night's sleep.

DO YOU WATCH LATE NIGHT TELEVISION TALK SHOWS?

I watch everything. I watch it all at once, then I go to sleep. [He makes clicking a remote control motion.] Very restful.

I CAN'T, IT'S TOO MUCH MEDIA FOR ME.

You're in it, too. Don't forget, I don't see anybody all day.

SEX USED TO BE TERRIFYING ENOUGH BEFORE IT BECAME...

Truly.

TRULY FATAL. HOW HAVE THE AIDS PLAGUE YEARS EFFECTED YOUR PERSPECTIVE ON SEX AND SEXUALITY, WHAT IT MEANS, WHAT IT'S DONE?

LC: [He is silent for a long time.] It's a really good question and to answer it accurately, I want to think about it.

[He takes another long pause.]

I'm trying to find the words to indicate some kind of desperate carelessness. It allows me not to care about the whole [sexual] enterprise, but then it sneaks up on you, and you care in the most passionate way, deeper and more desperate than you've ever cared.

I've found that's what growing older is. The range gets wider and wider, and you become more tranquil, and more anxious. You become more generous, and more mean-spirited. The whole range. That's a determination, rather than the plague. That one feels very indifferent much of the time to the whole sexual enterprise, and at the same time, never more passionately concerned with these orifices that seem to glimmer and gleam under every garment. Yeah. You find the range of of emotion as you get older becomes intolerably wide. Much more passionate, life as you get older. It's more passionate because you buy into these periods of tranquility, and you think you've beaten the rap. Then it hits you like a steamroller.

WHAT DO YOU KNOW NOW THAT YOU WISH YOU KNEW WHEN YOU WERE 40, OR 20.

LC: I think there is a wisdom appropriate to every age. I think there's a 17-year-old wisdom, and a 40-year-old wisdom, and a 60-year-old wisdom. And I don't think they necessarily have any rapport with one another. So I don't necessarily have a sense that I blew anything that I could have avoided blowing. I think the problem is with vitality, with conserving the capacity to art and to be the custodian of this energy. I don't know how much I would tell my 40-year-old self if I could resurrect him. The thing seems much more immediate, the sense of living on the front line of my own life has become very immediate, and the capacity to develop strategies, certainly the capacity to give advice, is very, very limited.

ALL RIGHT, MR. COHEN. I BELIEVE YOUR PAPERS ARE IN ORDER.

LC: And? I can pass?