Leonard Cohen Interview

Most of us are not open most of the time, we pretend that we are open, but mostly you’re running your own dramatic event of which you are the hero or the heroine. Usually that’s what we are doing most of the time.

I never had much inspiration. I like the activity of work, and I always feel that I’m working at the bottom of the barrel. I wish I were inspired. I don’t know what it is – if I knew where the good songs came from, I’d go there more often. I don’t know how it works. I’m inspired by the idea of making something good. That has always inspired me, rather than… I’ve never had much to say, things have come out that have some meaning for some people, and even some meaning for me. But I don’t start with those ideas, they arise out of the work itself.

I just keep working until something arises that is better than me. Better than my thought. Better than my conception. It arises out of the work itself, just growing out of the activity. But it’s always better than me, and it always surprises me. So it’s always the appetite for work that I have that hasn’t left me. So out of that work things have raised that I wouldn’t say delight me, because I don’t think they’re that good, but they surprise me that they have any significance.

Interviewer: But you have some themes….

You know, those themes have got me rather than I’ve got those themes. Somehow they are in the air, and they are looking for expressions themselves, and you become a receptor for those ideas. If you’re Einstein…, if you’re Mozart…but if you’re Leonard Cohen they come up as little songs. I always have known where I stand in the figures of the pop world, I know, I don’t have any illusions. I’m a good songwriter. Sometimes the songs are really good, sometimes they are ok, I hope. I pray that I can continue to serve these themes that are not my own. They’re not terribly important, but they’re the ones that hover around me. Things in the air that scratch me and itch me so that I can do something with them.

LEONARD LOOKS BACK ON THE PAST

Interview with Leonard Cohen
by Kari Hesthamar, Los Angeles, 2005

(Unedited interview for the Norwegian Radio)

http://www.leonardcohenfiles.com/leonard2006.html