The Guardian Talks to Leonard Cohen

by Ben Atlas on 07.10.2009.8:38pm · 0 comments

Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass. Photo by Lorca Cohen ( Leonard's daughter)

Leonard Cohen and Philip Glass. Photo by Lorca Cohen ( Leonard's daughter)

A  great interview in the Guardian, you need to seep it like a great old wine. It can really teach you, put your ear to it – ‘I’m blessed with a certain amnesia’

“ I always had a notion that I had a tiny garden to cultivate. I never thought I was really one of the big guys. And so the work that was in front of me was just to cultivate this tiny corner of the field that I thought I knew something about, which was something to do with self-investigation without self-indulgence. Just pure confession I never felt was really interesting. But confession filtered through a tradition of skill and hard work is interesting to me. So that was my tiny corner, and I just started writing about the things that I thought I knew about or wanted to find out about. That was how it began. I wanted the songs to sound like everybody else’s songs.”

Photo via Shihlun

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