ABC Australia Radio
(a transcript of a radio program)
(Background: I'm afraid I don't have many details about this interview,
other than the Interviewer is female.)
Interviewer:
Leonard Cohen, I think most people who know anything
about your music really want to find out whether Leonard Cohen the person
is full of the mystery and darkness that Leonard Cohen the songwriter and
singer is. Do you have that mystery and darkness in you?
Leonard Cohen:
That's hard to say from the place where I'm standing. It's better evaluated
by somebody else. Yeah, I think everybody has mystery and darkness in their
heart.
Interviewer:
Do you find though that it's a bit hard sometimes
to live up to that image that you've created of yourself?
Leonard Cohen:
I don't feel under any obligation to live up to it. That's just something
that happens in the public world. I think in anybody's life they have versions
of themselves that are not really themselves but that they have to deal with
day to day.
Interviewer:
Why is it you write so much about love, and also
religion?
Leonard Cohen:
Women and God are about the only things that interest me. I think the
content of everybody's heart is just the people they know or want or love
and then trying to discover what is the fundamental reality in which all
these other manifestations take place.
I love the Bible and that Book of Isaiah has magnificent language and
huge scope and huge optimism. I always loved Isaiah.
Interviewer:
Well a question I know you are frequently asked,
do you have any problems reconciling your poetry writing and your
songwriting?
Leonard Cohen:
No, I think I always heard a huge, invisible guitar behind everything
I do. There's really no conflict in writing novels and writing songs. In
fact, once you set up your desk and you find yourself in a kind of introspective
mood, all kinds of things arise.
Interviewer:
You're not really one of the most prolific songwriters
there's ever been. Why is that?
Leonard Cohen:
I'd love to be. But it just takes me a long time to do a song. I find
I'm working on a number of songs at any given time. It generally takes a
couple of years before 10 or 12 songs come to their completion and I can
make a record with them.
Interviewer:
Maybe it's to do with the quality of them, how much
you put into them.
Leonard Cohen:
Well, I put a lot into them but it's no guarantee of excellence. I've
worked a long time on mediocre songs and short times on good songs. There's
nothing that really guarantees it one way or the other. It's just my pace
is slow.
Interviewer:
Have you ever been through a period where you've
wondered about your creativity, about what you've got to say and whether
it's worthwhile, whether it's any good? I guess most artists do, but do you
ever feel you've reached a stage where you're possibly yesterday's
man?
Leonard Cohen:
I often feel that. Because I work so slowly in fact, I feel it most of
the time. It is always a kind of delightful surprise when I actually finish
something.
Interviewer:
You've taken a long time to come to Australia. Why
so long?
Leonard Cohen:
I take a long time to do everything, to get everywhere. I only tour every
two or three years.
I knew George Johnston and his wife Charmian Clift very well because I
lived in Greece in those days on the same island.
Interviewer:
When was that?
Leonard Cohen:
I guess it was from '60 to maybe '65. Hydra. The Johnstons were there.
There were just a few foreigners there in those days. The Johnstons were
central figures. They were older. They were doing what we all wanted to do
which was to write and to make a living out of writing. They were very wonderful,
colorful, hospitable people. They helped me settle in. They gave me a table
and chair and bed and really helped me out. (*
See note below on the Johnstons.)
Interviewer:
Does it follow that you wanted to come to Australia
because of that? Did it have any influence on you?
Leonard Cohen:
I heard a lot about Australia. You're on a little Greek island and there's
nothing much to do but sit around and talk. George was a magnificent talker.
He used to talk about his life here. He was Australian, there's no question
about it. Now that I've come here, I see just how Australian he was. I don't
know if I can characterize what an Australian is, but I know one when I meet
one.
Interviewer:
By the drawl probably. I wonder, you say you like
Australia, but do you think it will provide any inspiration for
you?
Leonard Cohen:
I never depended too much on inspiration. Everyone I know is inspired
in the sense that everybody has flashes of insight and moments of deep feeling
and seizures of emotion. I don't think writers have any corner on that kind
of experience. But the thing that comes next, which is the application, or
the perspiration not the inspiration, that's what makes a writer. I think
if I lived here the landscape would be very nourishing.
Interviewer:
Do you find that your audiences are about your own
age or younger or do they span all age groups?
Leonard Cohen:
Well, when I look into an audience in a concert hall, I think they seem
to be in their early 20's. Of course, there are some people that follow my
work for a long period of time. So sometimes you find parents with their
children.
Interviewer:
Why do you think you appeal to people in that age
group?
Leonard Cohen:
Well, I think I'm maybe the oldest living teenager, maybe that's part
of it. I think younger people are interested in information in a way that
older people are not. Older people often don't want to hear anything new
or anything upsetting. Whereas, young people are very hungry for that kind
of intelligence.
Interviewer:
They don't mind upsetting the equilibrium.
Leonard Cohen:
No, they prefer to. They just have an appetite for experience and that's
what a writer is suppose to do, clarify experience.
---------------
*(Note from Ira B. Nadel's biography of Cohen,
Various Positions: "George Johnston and Charmian Clift were Australian
journalists who had moved to Hydra in 1955 to write. Peel Me a Lotus
is Charmian's engaging account of their survival on an isolated and uncomfortable
island with two small children. By 1958, two years after the birth of their
third child, their relationship had begun to fall apart. In his 1960 novel
Closer to the Sun, Johnston recounted the jealousies and liaisons
of island life. The couple returned to Australia in 1964 after George contracted
tuberculosis, shortly before his novel My Brother Jack was published.
It was hailed as an outstanding and significant Australian novel. In 1969,
Charmian committed suicide, shocking everyone. George died a year later."
(p. 78)) Back Up
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