...Slowly I came to her Slow and resentfully came to her bed Came to her table in hunger and habit came to be fed...                              "Slowly I Married Her"                                  Death of a Lady's Man                         & Stranger Music

The following article appeared in the Los Angeles Reader, August 27, 1993.

The Prophet of Love Looks into the Abyss: A Conversation with Leonard Cohen By Thom Jurek For more than thirty years, Leonard Cohen has hungrily pursued the truth in both his poetry and his music. Since his first collection of poems, Let Us Compare Mythologies, appeared in 1956 in his native Montreal, Cohen has publicly chronicled standing on the edge of an emotional abyss. He accepts and even celebrates carnality, despair, apocalypse, hope, holiness, and disintegration as equal and necessary parts of the human journey. At fifty-eight, Cohen is considered by many to be Western culture's prophet of love and the elder statesman of the bedroom, due to his uncanny ability to chart the commonality of the unspeakable -- the joy, ecstasy, guilty, panic, and regret that take place in the recesses of the human soul when expressing its desire for another. His oeuvre is impressive, if not prolific. It includes two published (and many unpublished) novels, among them Beautiful Losers, which has to date sold more than eight hundred thousand copies; eight collections of poems; eleven records, including a live album and a "best of" collection; and a film. He recorded the sound track to Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller. His songs have been recorded by everyone from Judy Collins (who in 1966 brought Cohen's songwriting to international attention) to Joan Baez to Nick Cave; he has been the subject of a number of film documentaries; his music and poetry have been used in a Broadway production and ballet; two tribute recordings have been done in his honor -- Jennifer Warnes's phenomenal Famous Blue Raincoat: The Songs of Leonard Cohen, released in 1985, and last year's I'm Your Fan, which included such artists as R.E.M. and John Cale. He has also edited Stranger Music, a collection of his lyrics and poems, for publication by Knopf later this year. The publisher is also reprinting Cohen's novels. While Cohen's infrequent recordings regularly reach the Top Ten in Canada and throughout Europe, in America, he remains a cult figure whose records sell steadily, but not in great numbers. But that is changing. His 1988 release, I'm Your Man, was universally acclaimed and went gold within months of its release, and his latest album, The Future, may even surpass that achievement. This most recent collection of sharp art songs may be his finest recorded moment. He examines the apocalyptic course the world is on with both moral authority and empathy, calling himself on the title track, "the little Jew who wrote the Bible." The album examines amorous relationships as if they too were at the end of time, calling for trust and emotional risk in proportions that have never before been witnessed. As with all of his records, it is at once pastoral, shocking, seductive, vulnerable, and direct -- qualities that have guaranteed Cohen's endurance in the pop marketplace. Cohen spoke to me from Montreal, where he lives half the year (the rest is spent in Los Angeles). In interview, Cohen was gracious and intense, listening carefully to questions, attempting to put as much information in his answers as possible. His smoky voice never quavered, but was insistent and sure of itself. To what do you attribute your longevity? It's as if you're in your prime right now, and a whole new generation of young people is getting hip to your work and claiming it as having relevance to them. From the very beginning, I was in it for the long haul. And the long haul for all of us is a lifetime. At fifty-eight, if I'm in my prime, I believe that's how it should be. Any artist should get better with time; there's more experience, more maturity, hopefully more vision, perhaps one even looks death a little squarer in the eye. As far as continuing relevance, I feel blessed to be part of a continuum that includes both Bob Dylan and Nick Cave. I'm gratified that I can speak to someone who is twenty-five as well -- though I believe differently -- as to someone who is fifty-five. Although you've been recording for twenty-six years, your output hasn't been exactly prolific -- nine studio records in all that time. Is there a reason you work so slowly? The process of songwriting for me is arduous and painful because I have to go to the place where the song is. I have to inhabit it and allow it to have its way with me. I have to write perfectly many verses that get thrown away because they are imperfect for a particular song; and it takes time and patience and tears to get there. I have to get ripped apart in the process. Did this happen to you on The Future? Yes. This record was every minute of the four years it took to get it out. Some of the songs were ten years in the making; in fact many of them were old songs that weren't finished for one reason or another until now. I'm speaking to you after the struggle. It's easy to talk about now, but in the process of making that record, just like all the ones that came before it, I get wrecked. I wish I could say to you, "I write my songs in fifteen minutes in a taxi, or in a hotel lounge," but, unfortunately, it isn't true. Perhaps this is why your records last: what you put into them is possibly evident to the listener? I don't know if it is or not, I don't have any sense of that, but it would be agreeable if that were the reason. The Future as a record is here and will stay here because there's flesh and blood in it. The title track has such an apocalyptic feel to it. There seems to be a nostalgia for the conflicts of old: "Give me crack and anal sex... Give me Stalin and St. Paul..." I think the future is already here. I think that there is a collective despair that everything has collapsed, that the world has been destroyed. People are saying to each other that they can't take the reality they're living in anymore, they're actually admitting it to one another. The evidence that everything is still running is in place -- the mail, garbage pickup, going to work -- but there's a panic that everything isn't what it seems. And that's essentially what the song says. That's a real trait with you -- you speak elegantly, but so accessibly, it's easy for people to understand the things you say. You never try to cover them in alliteration or specialized language. Even your metaphors are spare and to the point. Because I have no secrets. A lot of writers have secrets that they spend their whole lives getting to, hinting at in their work, that there is something there that they're not revealing. I am completely open and transparent, and therefore it's easy for anyone to grasp the emotion that's there. I'm the person who tries everything, and experience myself as falling apart. I try drugs, Jung, Zen meditation, love, and it all falls apart at every moment. And the place where it all comes out is in the critical examination of those things -- the songs. And because of this, I'm vulnerable. There's the line in "Anthem" that says, "There's a crack in everything / That's how the light gets in," that sums it up; it is as close to a credo as I've come. Perhaps that's why the critics who have derided you used the adage about "Leonard Cohen has continually rewritten the same song, he never has any new ideas." And they're absolutely right. I have explored the same territory -- in many different ways -- because I have no answers to the problems and because I keep going to the same sources because they are timeless. And as I get older, I hope I can explore them more deeply, and with more courage and honesty rather than just urgency. Irving Layton, the great Canadian poet, once wrote about me that "Leonard Cohen has been blessed with never having had an original idea," and I take that as a compliment because these things are what everybody goes through. Everybody lives the life of the heart, and we all know what it's like to feel and break down, and I think we cherish that in our musicians and singers when they reveal that. These themes you explore so often: sex, religion, contact, disintegration, war, and apocalypse -- you were far from being PC in the sixties and seventies -- all seem connected in your songs and poems. Do you look at life and art that way? They are all connected. If you leave God out of sex, it becomes pornographic; if you leave sex out of God, it becomes self-righteous. Religion and war are obviously connected, and all of it is connected to the person who has to live through it; I am living through it, trying to make sense out of it, or not or let it go. Those themes are timeless in themselves. One of the reasons I use biblical references continually is because even though the culture has changed in terms of where it gets its information -- from television, mostly -- the images contained in the Bible have remained. So how does it feel to be a "commercial success" in the U.S.? I have never shunned success. I have always tried to write hits that people would find enjoyable. My record company and I have an agreeable relationship; I sell enough records to keep them happy but few enough so that they don't worry about the next one. If anything, I would have liked for them to treat me more as a commodity than an artist because I worry about the artist part enough for both of us. At the times when commercial defeats and setbacks happened, I wasn't too troubled, because I knew the worth of the work, and I look back on a lot of my songs and poems and feel good about them because a lot of them have lasted. But it's an agreeable thing. Even my books, which haven't been in print in America for a while, are being reprinted. I have always been able to provide for my children and make a decent living, so I haven't much to complain about. Sounds like a nice life. It is, but it's a fragile one, too.

The following article appeared in Musician Magazine, November, 1993. The photograph of Leonard Cohen can be found at Corbis, a photographic showcase, and is dated 11/10/95.

Leonard Cohen By Dev Sherlock You're publishing an anthology of your lyrics, prose and poetry, Stranger Music. What were your feelings, going back over all of your past work? Well, I've been struggling with this collection for many years, and really could never get around to confronting the various dismalities that were presented me, just the meagerness of the whole thing. But I think I'm glad to have this period of my work over and documented. It kind of cleans the drawer. You know, the devil laughs when you make plans, but I think I can start now. It's nice to have this work out. It goes from my very first book, Let Us Compare Mythologies [1956] to the 1992 album, The Future, and I feel that brings to conclusion a certain cycle of work. A long cycle! A long cycle, yes. But don't forget, the Hindus believe that Krishna appears once every 8 billion years in human form. So, compared to those kinds of clocks, this is a very swift-moving pace. Did you feel proud? I'm not disgraced by it. I don't think that pride comes into it after a certain point. Because if you examine the matter with any kind of understanding, you know that you're up against Dante and Homer, and Shakespeare and Auden and Yeats and Ginsberg--you're up against some pretty heavy hired guns who have taken this on. But I think it deserves to be collected. And how much of it deserves to live is anybody's guess. How do some of the lyrics compare, then, with more contemporary songwriting--say, the last 30-40 years? Well, it's always interesting to speculate on how important you are, y'know. Or if, indeed, you have any importance. And each generation so radically revises the opinions of the generation previous to it that it's pretty hard to survive in this racket at all. So, as I'm fond of saying, my work has lasted about as long as the Volvo: 30 years. And whether it will go on, like some of those old Ford trucks you see in certain parts of the country where someone has taken care of them since 1922...I don't know how long I'll last. It's been my best shot so far, I never played with it, I never fooled around with it. I always thought I was in it for the long haul. And I never deliberately--once or twice I weakened and let a line go by that probably needed another year of incubation. But not in my last few records. Has songwriting become easier or more difficult? It remains difficult. And even though you get a little bit slower--I guess matadors, hunters and fishermen will tell you, you do get a little bit slower, but you learn a few shortcuts. But it's the same risk, and the same time, and it doesn't get any easier. And I must always make this caveat--the fact that the song takes a long time to write is no guarantee of its excellence. You know, people write great songs in half an hour, 20 minutes. There's two tribes: There's ones who do it like that, and ones who do it like me. Do you still view songwriting as a "heroic enterprise"? Only for myself. I think if anybody hangs in there long enough at whatever they're doing--whether it's fishing or journalism or cabinet making--it represents a kind of heroic attention, because almost everything in the world conspires to whisper in your ear, at increasing volume, "Sit down and shut up." So, anybody who continues to show up at whatever they're doing deserves a certain kind of applause. Who currently blows you away as a songwriter? This isn't quite the moment to ask me, because I've been on the road for a long time and one's disinterest in music becomes Himalayan in proportion. But, you know, if I hear George Jones singing "Grand Tour," it can blow me away. If I hear Otis Redding singing "These Arms." But your interest in music diminishes dramatically when you're on the road. In fact, we've created a "music crime" on the bus, which is, y'know, if you play music... The first time was the night before last, when we actually listened to some bebop, some jazz, some Miles, Bud Powell. It's been a long time since anybody dared to play a note of prerecorded music on the bus. [laughs] We're coming to the end of the tour. How about kindred spirits--do you feel you have any out there? Innumerable. Numberless. Way beyond this tiny enterprise in which I'm involved. Any thoughts on what you want to do next? Again, the devil laughs when you make plans. But I feel that with this last album and this compilation and the reissuing of my novels, a big space has been cleared which, God willing, I'll be able to repopulate with some interesting creatures. And I look forward to being able to do that, God-given the time. What is the most rewarding aspect of what you do? Love is the reward for work. Norman Mailer said that and I thought it was very, very good.

Once again, a special thank you to Dick Straub for all your beautiful cards and letters. The Corbis site provides its visitors with an opportunity to send a Cohen email greeting card and there are plenty of photographs to enjoy too.

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