A Leonard Cohen Minute

Leonard Cohen’s Time in the Zendo

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Ian Pearson:

Cohen does submit to the rigours of Zen. He often arises at 4:30 a.m. and drives the eight minutes from his flat in mid-town L.A. to the zendo (meditation centre) he helped establish with some fellow students a few years ago. He also spends a month each year at a Zen retreat in New Mexico or northern California. A week of that month is spent in a zazen, which involves meditating for fourteen hours a day. “It’s good to sit in the fires of your own distress,” he says. “It really does seem to burn a whole lot of shit away.”

But, forever the blocked writer, Cohen is not above using the experience to solve a song. “I tend to use everything for writing, so consequently I’m a very bad Zen student. Because when I go into the zendo, I go in with a song and I’m working on a rhyme for ‘orange’ right away. Other people are, I suppose, training for some higher end, but I’m trying to finish a song. It’s all I’ve ever been doing for the past twenty years in the zendo.”

From “Growing Old Disgracefully” by Ian Pearson, Saturday Night, March, 1993.

(Source: webheights.net)

Leonard Cohen on Love at First Sight with the Language

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Andrew Tyler about Let Us Compare Mythologies, published in 1956 and comprising a series of poems written when Leonard was between the ages of 15 and 20:

“In many respects it’s been all downhill since then,” he says.  ”It’s something that happens only once or twice in a writer’s life—love at first sight with the language.”

Or as his friend Irving Layton told him: “The two greatest qualities a young writer has are his arrogance and inexperience.”

From “Have you heard the one about Lenny in the sandwich bar?”  by Andrew Tyler,  Disc  (UK), September 2, 1972. 

(Source: webheights.net)

Leonard Cohen Being Kissed Sadly by the World

…”I used to write poems to court ladies.  But somewhere the area of your courting gets wider and wider and you end up trying to court the universe.

“After awhile part of the reason you write is because you like the way you feel when you write.  You’re not so much concerned with the product as the state of mind when you write.  I like to feel that I’m being kissed sadly by the world when I write.”…

Leonard Cohen in an interview from “Works of Canadian Poet Courting the Universe,” The Palladium Times, February 12, 1968.  

Leonard Cohen: “I Seem to Be a Happy Man”

…”You must know about writing. I mean, it takes a fantastic inner compulsion. Nobody writes who doesn’t really drive himself. I feel secretly that I am much more highly disciplined than anybody I meet. I know what it is to sit down at a desk for long periods of time and lay it on. Beautiful Losers I wrote every day until it was finished. I wrote a minimum of four hours a day and a maximum of 20. The last two weeks I worked 20 hours a day. That was when I flipped out.”

…”I’ve always felt very different from other poets I’ve met. I’ve always felt that somehow they’ve made a decision against life. I don’t want to put any poets down, but most of them have closed a lot of doors. I never felt too much at home with those kind of people. I always felt more at home with musicians. I like to write songs and sing and that kind of stuff. I don’t know, I seem to be a happy man.”

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Jon Ruddy from “Is the World (or Anybody) Ready for Leonard Cohen?”, Maclean’s magazine, October 1, 1966.

(Source: webheights.net)

Leonard Cohen and His Legacy

“A poet, one of my closest friends, Irving Layton, probably the best Canadian poet and one of our best North American poets, he was very concerned with his legacy. He was very concerned with his immortality and what would become of his work. I loved the man, so I listened attentively and also with a sense of curiosity. I could never locate that appetite for posterity within myself or think what it means anyhow.”

After a pause, he chuckled, his mind considering all the poets that his late friend Layton would have to conquer to achieve his hoped-for perch in the history books. “You’re up against some heavy competition. King David, Homer, you’re up against Shakespeare, Dante, Donne, you’re up against Whitman. It’s like going up against Muhammad Ali if you’re a pretty good neighborhood boxer, and that’s what I think of myself as. I’m just a pretty good neighborhood boxer. Legacy? I never thought that it would mean anything to me when I’m dead. I’m going to be busy.” 

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Geoff Boucher from “Leonard Cohen reborn in the U.S.A.,” Los Angeles Times, March 1 2009.

(Source: Los Angeles Times)

The Expression of Different Ages Per Leonard Cohen

In the beginning when he left his career in poetry to go into pop he was already established as an older, wiser voice. Now he’s able to treat himself with complete seriousness and complete derision, often in the same line. Has he ever felt like an outsider in a young man’s game?

“I never looked at it that way, I always thought I was in for the long haul. I understood the different kinds of expression appropriate to different ages — lyrical for a young man, meditative for the middle ages, reflective for old age. There’s probably some truth to those designations, but not really. You can feel even more passionate about things as you get older. As you drop the restraining and inhibiting braces of your thoughts and allow your feelings to become manifest a certain kind of energy is liberated.”

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Gavin Martin in “Hello! I Must Be Cohen” in New Musical Express, January 9, 1993.

(Source: webheights.net)

Leonard Cohen, the Reporter

“That’s the difference between the philosopher, the priest and the politician and what I do. I don’t have to win a vote, I don’t have to establish a system that doesn’t contradict itself, I don’t have to have a clear vision, I don’t even have to have a vision. All I have to do is report things as accurately as I can from moment to moment.”

Leonard Cohen in an interview with Gavin Martin in “Hello! I Must Be Cohen” in New Musical Express, January 9, 1993.

(Source: webheights.net)