Friday, April 3, 2009

Leonard Cohen on Fresh Air Today


Who but Leonard Cohen, when asked to describe a raincoat he once owned, called it a sort of the opposite of an invisibility cloak...."the garment that will lead you to erotic and intellectual adventures...."

It's always a joy to hear Leonard unexpectedly as I did on my way home from work today. That remark and a bit of the song Famous Blue Raincoat is about 9 minutes or so into the featured program on Fresh Air today. You can go to the website below and hear it.


NPR's Fresh Air ran parts of Leonard's 2006 interview...and intermingled his readings of some of his poetry from Book of Longing. You will also hear snippets of several songs...and I must say interviewer Terry Gross did a wonderful job picking them. You can tell she is a fan. Asking him about different lyrics and asking insightful questions. She gets him to talk about his 5 years at Mt. Baldy at the Zen Center...and he reveals a suprizing insight...it is not as reclusive to go to a monastery as you would think. There are more private moments on Boogie Street.

His voice..though much lower and gravelly than in his youth still rings with his spirit. I can almost hear the younger Leonard underneath in his phrasing...with his pauses, and a smile peeking through the darkness and that sense of longing which Leonard is known for.

There's no better way to hear Leonard's poetry than him reading it. I loved "Titles" and "A Thousand Kisses Deep" (which I taped to my wall a long time ago)

Toward the end a discussion of beauty, prompted by a phrase in the song Chelsea Hotel. "We are ugly...but we have the music." The song is about a tryst he had with Janis way back when. The encounter is immoralized in the song.


"I'll be waiting on the corner where there used to be a street." A snippet of a poem/lyric he wrote for Anjani, comes at the end. There's more to it, but I won't spoil it. Terry Gross seemed awed by it.

He makes me want to write so much better.

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Leonard's new CD is called "Live in London" and it was recorded last July.

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