MONDOmagazine

A spry Leonard Cohen outside of the King Edward Hotel, May 1983. Photo by Tom Robe.

Twenty-five years ago, almost to the day, I sat in the bar of Toronto’s King Edward Hotel asking Leonard Cohen questions about Art and Life, Truth and Beauty, the Sacred and the Profane. A week earlier, in a different establishment across town, I’d been asking him whether he wanted fries or salad with his chili dog. He’d just come down from the mountain — Mount Baldy near LA, that is, where he’d been rigorously observing an ascetic lifestyle in a Zen monastery — and there he was, in my section, ordering a hot dog and Coke. Fortunately, the restaurant happened to be empty apart from Mr. Cohen and his female companion (the distraction of serving my biggest idol might have doomed my other tables). Not so fortunately, as the chef tardily informed me, we’d run out of chili dogs. After working up the courage to break this news — which (must’ve been the Zen thing) he accepted with admirable composure — I worked up the courage to ask him for an interview.

I was a 21-year-old waiter and would-be writer working in downtown Toronto (some things, apart from age, don’t seem to change). The woman I was living with, in a dying relationship, was perhaps an even bigger Cohen fan than myself. When she heard that I’d met Leonard and would be interviewing him at the King Eddie, where he was filming I Am a Hotel, and when it was quite clear that I would not be divulging his room number, she threatened to split up with me. It was one of those let-me-get-this-straight moments: if I refused to provide my girlfriend with the directions to another man’s bedroom, I would be history. But such was the allure of Canada’s “melancholy bard of popular music.” (By the way, Suzie, it was Room 327!)

My real introduction to Leonard Cohen dates back to the end of a previous relationship, a couple years prior. It was a somewhat sweeter demise but, being my first serious break-up, painful beyond what I thought I could bear. And just when it seemed the moment couldn’t get sadder, my soon-to-be-ex put the needle down on a record that was more soulfully dolorous than any music I’d ever heard. That voice and those words said with impossible beauty what my lover was trying her best to make me understand: it’s over, but what we’ve been to each other will always be a part of us as we go our separate ways into the world. The song was “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye” and the voice belonged to a poet and novelist from Montreal who’d ventured into songwriting. I’d heard the name before, but from that moment on it would be imbued with a significance that’s only grown deeper and stronger over the years: Leonard Cohen.

Someone once said that listening to Leonard Cohen’s music made his life not worth living. Critics — and more recently bloggers intent on providing self-help advice — have called it “music to kill yourself by.” Thinking back to hearing that first song (actually considered to be one of the cheerier ditties among his early recordings), those sentiments, while not shared, are not hard for me to understand. I was young and my emotional spectrum was broad and intense. Hearing something that resonated so closely with my sorrow was almost, at first, devastating. How could anyone do that, I thought. Now I have to get through this too! But there was something in the voice — hypnotic, slightly frail, empathic, and oddly heroic — that compelled me to listen, that comforted me even as it tore at my heart, and that somehow helped me to feel that my life was, after all, very much worth living. Ever since that first transfixing exposure, the writings and music of Leonard Cohen have been an ongoing source of inspiration.

When it came time for the interview, I was nervous but well-prepared with a list of questions that inquired as much into Cohen’s work as an author as they did his career in music. Being accompanied by a wonderful photographer named Tom Robe, who was known for his live shots of musicians both famous and obscure, helped my confidence considerably. Tom had done photos for the only other interview I’d published: a conversation with author Christopher Dewdney that had appeared in Shades magazine (which would later print the Cohen piece as well). Tom got some terrific shots that day and his presence helped keep me from lapsing into the jitters. Leonard’s warm demeanor, dry wit, and gracious attention to my very serious questions put me further at ease. Still, it wasn’t until a small chamber ensemble began playing dreamily as if on cue after the last topic had been addressed and Leonard said “That was a really good interview,” that I finally relaxed. Maybe it was the scotch talking, but Leonard proceeded to express his approval in a way that suggested our exchange had gone beyond the commonplace, and that he was pleased with the terrain we’d covered. Should he chance upon the fragments transcribed here, I hope he’ll still find aspects of that long-ago conversation agreeable.

This week my son, an aspiring songwriter who’s just a few months older than I was at the time of the interview, will see Leonard perform for the first, and perhaps only, time. His deep appreciation of Leonard’s music began earlier than it had for me — Kerry was in the womb when his mother and I attended a concert on the tour for Various Positions (the album Leonard often cites as his favourite). The tour that will bring Leonard back to Toronto (where it officially launches) has already received reverential reviews and awestruck ovations in other parts of the country. At 73, he still refuses to perform with anything less than total commitment, playing for nearly three hours with multiple encores. For the shows in Toronto, where he and his nine-member band could easily sell out a stadium, he has chosen to play a more intimate venue, hitting the stage four nights when one or two might have sufficed. This tour may have been prompted by financial concerns but it’s clearly about more than money. It’s even about more than music. It’s about Art and Life, Truth and Beauty, the Sacred and the Profane, and it’s about communing once again with the man who has evoked these in song with tremendous honesty, grace, and spirit for over four decades.

I really hope this isn’t the last time Leonard Cohen brings his song to the world, but if it does turn out to be his farewell tour — well, it sure is some way to say goodbye.

Steve Venright, Toronto, May 2008

——

A Conversation With Leonard Cohen

May 1983

The interview opens with talk of Cohen’s current projects: the short musical film he’s been working on called I Am a Hotel, an operatic collaboration with Lewis Furey that he refers to as The Hall (presumably this became the film Night Magic), a new studio album underway (no doubt Various Positions), and a proposed album of spoken text based on his forthcoming Book of Mercy. He also speaks of plans to build a Zen farm “somewhere in the southlands.”

Steve Venright: Can you say what effect on your life Zen has had?

Leonard Cohen: It’s just house cleaning. From time to time the dust and the dirty clothes accumulate in the corners and it’s time to clean up.

SV: That reminds me of a poem of yours in Death of a Lady’s Man [sic] — which I think is called “How to Speak Poetry” — where you’re saying that [speaking poetry] is analogous to going over a laundry list.

LC: Yeah — nothing special.

SV: But does that apply to the songs, with your singing voice? I’d say there’s so much emotion in your songs…

LC: Oh, I see what you mean — that’s a good question. [ponders] I also go for natural expression, in singing.

SV: You seem to be placing some focus on Canada these days, as far as work goes. Are you involved in any projects at the moment abroad?

LC: No. No, I’m not. I’ve always been a bit of a patriot and I wanted to reconnect with Canada because I haven’t really done anything here in a long time. I’ve lived here, but all my concert tours in the last seven or eight years have been in Europe.

SV: And I think you’d explain that as a matter of the audience already being there.

LC: Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

SV: Whereas in Canada perhaps it would take more effort…

LC: It’s also much more expensive because the space between the cities is so much further. And another thing is, I think that because of what I’ve experienced in Quebec — that is, more or less an attack on the language I work in — I think that had something to do with me wanting to work in this country in English.

SV: Do you plan to tour with the album eventually?

LC: I would like to. I haven’t toured for three years now, and I don’t know if it has to do with the album, but sometimes you just get to miss the road and the kind of friendships that grow up when you’re playing with people night after night.

SV: That’s good to hear. How does the reception to your work in general differ from, say, in Europe?

LC: This city has always been very warm to my work, from the very beginning. From the very first book I put out there’s been extremely generous attention to my work here.

SV: I’ll be a little closer to home, then, and say how does Toronto differ from Montreal in either respect for what you’re doing or attention given to it?

LC: Well, Montreal to me is like Kyoto or Jerusalem.

SV: The Jerusalem of the north.

LC: Yes. It’s a holy city, and they’re properly not concerned with this sort of secular expression. They have heavier things on their mind, like the destiny of their blood and things like that, you know. And Toronto is the cultural centre of the country — I suppose they don’t want to hear this in Edmonton — so it’s appropriate that I work here.

SV: You were very involved in the pop culture of the sixties. How do you feel about the present pop culture that has been generated or engendered by punk rock and approaches like that?

LC: I feel there’s been a general vulgarization of society — which I can’t get too upset about one way or the other.

SV: You’ve probably been accused of it yourself at one point or another.

LC: Oh, I’ve been accused of selling out ever since I played a guitar chord in public.

SV: I guess by “vulgar” I was referring to responses you received to Beautiful Losers in particular. The sacred and the profane…

LC: That elegant book?

SV: That’s going back a ways, I realize.

LC: It’s still around. I guess “vulgar” is the wrong… Things seem rather dull. I think we might hope for vulgarity. It seems rather dull and repetitive. But maybe that’s just the observations of middle age.

SV: In what was intended as a private statement about your book Flowers For Hitler you once wrote, “All I ask is that you put it in the hands of my generation and it will be recognized.” That was almost 20 years ago. Has your work attained the nature of recognition you would hope it to?

LC: Yes, and beyond. And beyond.

SV: It seems there was a change in either course or maybe sentiment when you came out with Recent Songs. There seems to be a peace in that album that maybe wasn’t visible before.

LC: What was that?

SV: I just felt that either you were becoming a little more at peace with anxiety, or at least that there was a level to the album which was less aggressive. [LC expresses agreement] Do you feel this is sort of a natural course, or is there anything you attribute it to?

LC: I think I’ve stopped whining.

SV [after lengthy pause]: How does that feel?

LC: A lot better! [laughter]

SV: Well, I don’t know if this is a heavy question or not, but, I believe you said in the past that Beauty no longer mattered to you as much as Truth did. Do you find yourself ever sacrificing Beauty for the sake of Truth, or vice versa? Or is that impossible to discern?

LC: I feel the conversation flies in the face of Keats’s famous observation that “Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty is all you need know,” or something like that — the end of “Grecian Urn.” I don’t know how I was ever tricked into talking about Truth and Beauty anyhow! [laughter]

SV: You’ve probably said as much on that subject through your work as anyone would need, in this lifetime, to know. Well, what’s next? Do you see beyond December at this time with the album, the book of psalms, and the opera? Or are you going at that as it comes to you?

LC: More or less as it comes to you. And, you know, as you get older, with a certain gratitude that it’s coming to you at all.

SV: Is it coming to you as strongly as ever?

LC: I meant just the time. You mean inspiration or work or the capacity to work.

SV: I’m thinking along the lines of the hunger, of the necessity to create.

LC: Yeah, I feel that very strong. And after a while you realize that when you’re in good health, part of that good health is the song.

Steve Venright is the author of Spiral Agitator (Coach House Books, 2000) and Floors of Enduring Beauty (Mansfield Press, 2007). Through his Torpor Vigil Industries record label he has released recordings by composer Samuel Andreyev and sleeptalker Dion McGregor.