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IF IT BE YOUR WILL A radio documentary featuring Leonard Cohen

By Kari Hesthamar Technical direction: Kåre Johan Lund Consultant: Berit Hedemann

Music

COHEN: Just fooling around, just remembering. Just remembering. I forget what these songs are, I really got to learn them again.

NARRATOR: Leonard Cohen has forgotten his old songs. He hasn't played them in 12 years. Now he's sitting at home in his little house and trying to play, because I would like it so much.

COHEN: Dog barks It’s from ”If it be Your Will”, but I don’t remember it. I have to learn it.

Waves

NARRATOR: There are no waves here. But if you wish, there are.

COHEN: I've been blessed with amnesia, I hardly remember anything from the past. I don’t have any good memories or bad memories.

NARRATOR: Leonard Cohen says he has been blessed with memory loss. That he doesn't remember anything.

COHEN: Do you want some of this? Shall I cut you a piece?

INTERVIEWER: Yes please.

COHEN: What do you feel like, a little bit of everything?

NARRATOR: I wanted to ask questions and make him remember. But he had warned me in an email before my arrival. ”My memory isn’t all that good.”

COHEN: My life has always felt the same. One day bleeds into another. It’s been a lot of sunlight. And then just working. It seems to be the… My inner voice seems to be saying ”make something” !

NARRATOR: His inner voice says ”make something”! Something beautiful or important or unimportant. Just make something! One day bleeds into the next, and life has always felt the same. Don't know when this morning begins or when this evening will end. Just a few things stand out from the canvas. When your children were born, or the first time you entered the stage with your guitar. 2

Music If it be Your Will From this broken hill I will sing to you From this broken hill All your praises they shall ring If it be your will To let me sing

Telephone rings

COHEN: Yes, my daughter, what is it? How are you, sweetheart? Forget it, darling. Is Daniel here? Dog barks He’s at your store? Ok, sweetheart. Thanks a lot. Speak to you later. Bye. Those aren’t my daughter’s dogs. Those are the naughty neighbour's dogs.

INTERVIEWER: Your dogs are the nice ones?

COHEN: My dogs are the nice ones.

Waves

NARRATOR: There is no beach. No moon above the ocean. Just a villa suburb of Los Angeles. Small gardens, playing dogs. A daughter in the basement apartment. And Leonard Cohen, 71 years old and tacit. Thin, a little shorter than me. In a grey suit and white shirt.

NARRATOR: But what was he like before, as a young poet?

COHEN: What was I like as a young man? I don’t know. I had a calling. I wanted to be a writer, from very very early time I just knew I was going to be a writer. And it was a writer not in the popular culture, on the contrary, it was a very…, it was a writer whose allegiance was to writers who were already dead.

NARRATOR: To write, always write, born with a golden tongue. Write for the old great poets. Be one of them.

COHEN: I just wanted to be one of those guys that did that kind of thing. And my feeling was that if I did those things with the kind of integrity, and the gift would be given me. I wouldn’t have to worry about my life, there would be money, there would be women. Not in any abundance, but there would be enough for me.

Music I was born like this Tower of Song I had no choice I was born with the gift of a golden voice And twenty-seven angels from the Great Beyond They tied me to this table right here In the Tower of Song

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COHEN: I’ve never had much to say. So I just keep working on something till something arises that is better than me. Better than my thought.

NARRATOR: Never had a choice, never made a real choice. Life just unfolded of its own accord.

Music Tower of Song I was born like this, I had no choice

NARRATOR: Always the same. Write a page. Finish a song.

COHEN: There is nothing like ending something, like a song, or a book or a record. There are periods when you don’t believe that you’re ever going to finish it, things are just not going well.

INTERVIEWER: Do you have any plans of making a new record with your own voice on it?

COHEN: Oh yes, I’m just starting it now. I have high hopes. laughs I don’t know. I need 10 songs or something like that, you know. I have to fill up 50 minutes, and you want it to be good, you know, so I’m going to give it a try.

Waves

NARRATOR: I wanted to take him back to an island in Greece. I had made a documentary about Cohen's old-time sweetheart Marianne, his Norwegian muse. Her that he met on the Greek island of Hydra and gave the song ”So Long Marianne”. I had brought along the programme on a CD and an English transcript.

INTERVIEWER: Would you like to listen to the beginning of the documentary?

COHEN: Sure. Let’s hear it.

NARRATOR: I wanted him to be able to hear the great love of his youth tell her story, and get him to remember.

INTERVIEWER: So that’s the script.

COHEN: Thank you. Can you put it loud?

Music/Marianne sings along on ”So Long, Marianne”

COHEN: Very good.

Marianne sings along

MARIANNE: I was standing in the shop with my basket waiting to pick up bottled water and milk. And he is standing in the doorway with the sun behind him. And then you don't see the face, you just see the 4

contours. And so I hear his voice, saying: ”Would you like to join us, we’re sitting outside?” But I remember well that when my eyes met his eyes I felt it throughout my body. You know what that is. Drums her fingers It is utterly incredible. Whispers

COHEN: She’s terrific. It is her way of telling a story. It’s just delightful. There wasn’t a man who wasn’t interested in Marianne. And there wasn’t no one who wasn’t interested in approaching that beauty and that generosity. She was a traditional Nordic beauty, that was indisputable. But she was also very kind, and she was one of the most modest people about her beauty. You know, looking at her from a distance of 40, 45 years almost, I see how very rare those qualities are. And she just knew things about the moment, about graciousness, about service, about hospitality, about generosity. And she had that other side too, where she drank wine and danced and became wild and beautiful and threatening and dangerous, you know, if you were a man with her. movement You’re hungry now, darling?

INTERVIEWER: We’ve been talking so much, so I just grabbed the opportunity to finish my cake..

COHEN: Yeah, have a little. Marianne doesn’t know, but this is her corkscrew. And we got this one together.

INTERVIEWER: Where is it from?

COHEN: I think it’s… I don’t know, but it looks Norwegian to me. unscrews cork This isn’t a very good wine, but it is ok. pours wine Skål! Cheers!

INTERVIEWER: Skål! There you see, you have a good memory, you can recall.

COHEN: I could come up with this stuff if you ask me specifically.

INTERVIEWER: You’ve given many interviews during the years…

COHEN: Not for a long time. I haven’t given any interviews for a long time.

NARRATOR: Not given interviews for a long time. Says he doesn't remember anything, that the past doesn't interest him. But those memories that are worth anything, one stores, surely, to be able to bring them out and look at them once in a while? I was searching for the past. He believes in the power of the moment.

COHEN: The cordiality of the moment is much more important than the content. But, you know, I accept that I can’t really rise to the occasion, it’s just the way it is. It’s not exactly a lie what I’m saying, it’s just not deep enough.

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NARRATOR: Feels it is difficult to formulate any truth about what is and what has been, but does the best he can.

COHEN: We’re in this together, I want to make this as good as we can. Dials a phone number I’ll just invite Daniel.

-Daniel, do you have any wood? Listen, this is Leonard in case you haven’t noticed. How are you, man? Good. If you’d like to come up for shabbas dinner tonight you’re most welcome, there’s a few people coming up.

NARRATOR: Cohen invites guests for his regular Friday night dinner.

COHEN: So come up around 6.30. You can make yourself a drink.

NARRATOR: Family. Friends.

COHEN: You know what to do.

NARRATOR: Traditional Jewish food.

COHEN: Ok, man. Later.

Music. Leonard Cohen improvises on guitar

I don’t know what I could play for you.

Improvises

Well, I must have been in my late twenties, or beginning 30, and I had just come to the realisation that I couldn’t make a living. I had expected that money would come, just ordinarily. Not great amounts of it, but I thought that if I wrote well and books were published, and they were, that there would be enough to finance my next book. I had, you know, always played songs, I had always been interested in music and played music. But never professionally, so I was beginning a musical career for which I though I was totally unsuited. I didn’t play guitar well, I didn’t sing well. I thought my lyrics were ok, my tunes were good. I thought I had a voice, but I thought it was a written voice. So I never thought of presenting that voice on the stage. I was testing out the possibility of being a singer.

Plays guitar You can fit it in somewhere, right?

INTERVIEWER: Yeah.

Music

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NARRATOR: Tones from the latest record Leonard Cohen has produced emanate into his living room. Tones so fresh they haven't yet been released.

COHEN: You tell me when you’ve had enough, otherwise we’ll just sit and listen to it.

NARRATOR: Cohen lyrics about life and love. Anjanai Thomas’ soft voice.

Music ”San Francisco” from the album ”Blue Alert”

INTERVIEWER: How has love changed throughout the years?

NARRATOR: Has loved changed during his life?

COHEN: I never though I was very good at it, you know. I had a great appetite for the company of women, and for the sexual expression of friendship. You know, I wasn’t very good at the things that a woman wanted, which I don’t know if any men are. I wanted that immediate affirmation of the.., what can I call it, just of the possibility of escaping from the sexual loneliness. The pure loneliness of living with an appetite that you couldn’t ever satisfy. So that nearly drives everybody crazy, that drives all men crazy. So, of course, it drove me crazy too. So, you know, that’s what I wanted. So it seemed to be that’s all that I wanted. Anything after that I was ready to negotiate. And I was very fortunate because it was the 60s, and that possibility was very very present. And for a tiny moment in social history there was a tremendous cooperation between men and women about that particular item. So I was very lucky that my appetite coincided with this very rare what… religious social, I don’t know what you call it, some kind of phenomenon, you know that allowed men and women, boys and girls we were, to come together in that kind of union that satisfied both the appetites.

music

It’s so soft and deep, you just live in it.

INTERVIEWER: But your lyrics about love have changed from the 60s till the 80s till…

COHEN: …till tonight

INTERVIEWER: …today?

COHEN: Yeah, well, yes. But, as I say, I don’t know what the changes are, and I don’t know what they signify. I don’t know what is happening. I’m trying to find out, and I don’t care what is happening, to tell you the truth. So something is happening, as Dylan says, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr Jones? 7

Eh, so that’s the way I feel. I’m not interested in the explanation, even my own. I know that the past produces the present, and the present produces the future, but I have no interest in the past and I have very little interest in the man I was then. It doesn't present a mystery to me, it doesn’t present a puzzle to be solved. I just feel that I embody it. You know.

Do you want something to drink? Some wine, some aquavit?

MARIANNE: Now we need a little tea.

Music ”Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye” I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm, your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,

MARIANNE: Mmm. It's utterly incredible whispers to the music

COHEN: Marianne and I were in a hotel in Piraeus.

NARRATOR: Back in the 60s. Marianne and Leonard in a modest hotel in Piraeus.

COHEN: And we were both about 25.

Music but now it’s come to distances and both of us must try, your eyes are soft with sorrow, Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye.

COHEN: And we had to catch the boat back to Hydra. And we got up and got a taxi. And I’ve never forgotten this. Nothing happened, just sitting in the back of the taxi with Marianne, lit a cigarette, and thinking: I’m an adult. I’m with this beautiful woman, we have a little money in our pocket. That feeling, I think, I’ve tried to recreate it hundreds of times unsuccessfully. Just that feeling of being grown up, with somebody beautiful that you’re happy to be beside, and all the world is in front of you. You’re body is sun-tanned, and you’re going to get on a boat.

Waves

MARIANNE: We lay in the sun, we walked in the sun, we listened to music, we bathed, we played, we drank, we discussed. There was writing and lovemaking and... It was absolutely fabulous, you know, to have it like that. During five years I didn't have shoes on my feet, you know. When he went back to Montreal it didn't take long before I received a telegram: ”Have house, all I need is my woman and her son. Love Leonard.” That's how it was. subdued laugh

COHEN: I remember her arriving at the airport in her fur coat. And she had two heavy valises in each hand. And I was prevented from 8

entering that area, but I could see her through the glass, and she couldn’t wave to me because she couldn’t lift the suitcases up, and she didn’t want to drop them because she was moving, you know, so she waved to me with her foot. I remember that very very clearly. laughs Phone rings Excuse me. Hey, sweetheart. What are you doing? … Oh, listen darling, I’m just in the middle of an interview. …Yeah, I speak to you later on tonight. Bye.

INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that love was risky sometimes?

COHEN: Risky? It’s dangerous, it’s fatal. It’s a risky business. piano ”I had to go crazy to love you, I had to go down to the pit, I had to go crazy to love you, I had to let everything fall…” music ”I had to be people I hated, I had to be no one at all. Tired of choosing desire, I’ve been saved by a blessed fatigue, the gates of commitment unwired, and nobody trying to leave.”

That’s the way I describe certain moments in that process. ”Thanks for the dance, thanks for all the dances, it’s been hell, it’s been swell, it’s been fun. Thanks for the dance, thanks for all the dances.” One, two, three, one, two, three, one. Music ”Thanks for the dance” from the album ”Blue Alert!"

Kitchen sounds

COHEN: This is brisket, a friend made it for me.

NARRATOR: There is a dinner smell in Leonard Cohen's old, white-painted kitchen. He's preparing food for this evening's feast. Guests will arrive in a couple of hours.

COHEN: It’s kind of traditional.

NARRATOR: Cohen's old friend Eric pops by and sniffs the pots.

ERIC: Hey, how are you?

COHEN: How are you doing, bro?

Uncorks wine bottle

COHEN: That’s Marianne's.

ERIC: Oh, my God…

COHEN: It’s the best opener I ever…

ERIC: Yeah.

Puts down glass 9

COHEN: I’m very grateful when the kids and my friends come the Friday night, and I know what the form is. You know, what the form of the meal is going to be, and what the tone is going to be, so for that reason it’s very relaxing.

Music ”Closing Time”

NARRATOR: Leonard Cohen thrives at home. Likes that nothing much happens. He hasn't toured for 13 years, he was a wreck after the last round, with over 100 concerts.

”Closing Time” Ah we're drinking and we're dancing and the band is really happening and the Johnny Walker wisdom running high

COHEN: I was wrecked at the end of it, because I started to drink an enormous amount of red wine just to get on the stage. It wasn’t that I wanted to get drunk, but it was this particular wine and the music that went together perfectly. And after that I had a bottle or two. I really wanted to sing. So I started with a few glasses. Then it was a bottle, then it was two bottles, and in the end I would drink three bottles before I went on stage. I don’t think anybody knew that I was drunk. I don’t think I was drunk. In fact I know I wasn’t drunk, because I can’t play when I’m drunk.

At the end of a tour you're being dumped into the desert and you don’t remember, you know, where your house is or what you would do with your drivers licence, or if you still have a car or a girlfriend or a wife or children. You know, you're just lost.

Music It’s closing time…

NARRATOR: Tired after the tour, over 100 concerts, then full stop. Like being dumped in the desert without knowing what you did with your driver's licence, or if you have a car or a girlfriend or a home. Nothing felt more important than withdrawing. Leonard Cohen entered a monastery.

COHEN: I didn’t know what else to do, and nothing seemed to be as urgent as studying these matters.

NARRATOR: Was ordained a monk and served his Buddhist teacher Roshi, whom he met and became fascinated by nearly 40 years ago.

COHEN: So I moved up to the mountain. And after a while I became ordained as a monk. I mean, you’re doing it for a reason. It’s not just to build up your muscles, it’s not just a macho exercise, it’s to kind of cook your mind so that you can hear what you’re saying. Because you can’t hear what you’re saying if you’re all full of 10

yourself. So there you get so tired that you can’t pretend, and that’s all that a monastery is. It’s a place were they make you so tired that you give up pretending. Music

I never stayed in show business. I guess I should have, if I had wanted to really establish a certain kind of career. But I didn’t have any appetite for that. I always wanted to go back to a little room in Montreal, or go back to my house on Hydra. Or just stay in that corner where you are sitting.

NARRATOR: Record releases. Tours. Then back to a quiet room. Back to a small room.

Music ”Love itself” The light came through the window, Straight from the sun above, And so inside my little room There plunged the rays of Love.

COHEN: But you know then you run into your life, and it shipwrecks like everyone else's life. And you mess up, and it collapses, whether it is the woman or yourself or your own mind or your own confidence. Whatever it is, it just goes and it happens to everybody.

NARRATOR: Then you collide with your own life. And it breaks down for you, like for everyone else. For this life is created to bowl you over. No one masters it.

COHEN: So, you know, that happens to you, and then it gets kind of tricky, because sometimes it collapses so thorough that it… it destroys your capacity to work so you really be in trouble. If you're lucky you can somehow protect just that tiny little corner of your life from complete destruction. And everybody experiences this, because this life is designed to overthrow you. Nobody masters it.

Music Love itself I’ll try to say a little more: Love went on and on Until it reached an open door – Then Love Itself Love Itself was gone.

COHEN: I’m very happy when my life is uneventful, and I don’t have strong feelings about one thing or another.

INTERVIEWER: But it didn’t used to be like that?

COHEN: No, it didn’t used to be like that. It was very much a sense of struggle and of, not defeat actually, but weariness. Weariness of the struggle. After a while you just get tired of your own laughs …of you own drama. 11

NARRATOR: Tired of his own drama, tired of everything being a struggle. Always on the road. What was it like touring when his son and daughter were little?

INTERVIEWER: How was it to go on tours when they were small?

COHEN: There was no problem. I always knew that they were well taken care of. I was always escaping anyways. A large part of my life was escaping. Whatever it was, even if the situation looked good, I had to escape, because it didn’t look good to me. So it was a selfish life, but it didn’t seem so at the time, it just seemed a matter of survival. You know, I guess kids suffered and people close to me suffered because I was always leaving. Not for very long, but I was always trying to get away. Music ”Minute Prologue” I've been listening to all the dissension. I've been listening to all the pain. And I feel that no matter what I do for you, it's going to come back again. But I think that I can heal it, but I think that I can heal it, I'm a fool, but I think I can heal it with this song.

INTERVIEWER: What makes you really happy today?

COHEN: Well, I have a little drawing here. It says… it says: Only one thing made him happy, and now that it was gone, everything made him happy. So that’s pretty close. I feel tremendously relieved that I’m not worried about my happiness. There are things, of course, that make me happy, when I see my children well, when I see my daughter’s dogs, a glass of wine… But what I am so happy about is that the background of discomfort or distress has evaporated. It’s not that the emotions don’t come, it’s just that the background is clear. Before it was all one piece, it was very dark. A sense of things being deeply not right, and, you know, by the grace of God, that feeling has evaporated, so I can feel real sorrow now. It’s not just the sorrow that emerges from the sorrow, it’s not just the melancholy that emerges from the melancholy. So when things touch me in a sorrowful way I can speak about them, and, more important, I can feel them.

NARRATOR: Before everything was dark. A sense of things being deeply not right. Now that dark background has evaporated. Can feel real sorrow now. Not just the sorrow that emerges from the sorrow, nor the melancholy from the melancholy. Those years in a monastery on a mountain in California perhaps made things a bit brighter? 12

COHEN: That was connected with it, but I don’t know what it was. I honestly don’t know. The religious life generally strengthens the ego, and makes people really miserable. Because the religious promise is so cruel. The promise that you will live a life free from pain. If you get enlightened you will never suffer again. It’s a very cruel promise. Because nobody can live without suffering. It doesn’t matter how advanced or fulfilled or enlightened an individual is, he will never be free from the sorrows and the pains of the moment. If someone steps on his toe he’s going to cry out. And if someone steps on his heart he’s going to cry out.

INTERVIEWER: Is life easier now than before?

COHEN: Oh yeah, much easier.

INTERVIEWER: Why is that? Wisdom?

COHEN: No, I told you, the brain cells with anxiety begin to die. It just feels better. laughter It doesn’t depend on meditation or whether you brush your teeth in the morning.

Waves

NARRATOR: There are no waves here. But if you want to there are. Waves like those that wash onto the beaches at Hydra.

COHEN reads poem: Days of Kindness

Greece is a good place To look at the moon, isn’t it You can read by the moonlight You can read on the terrace You can see a face As you saw it when you were young There was good light then Oil lamps and candles And those little flames That floated on a cork in olive oil What I loved in my old life I haven’t forgotten It lives in my spine Marianne and the child The days of kindness It rises in my spine And it manifests as tears I pray that a loving memory Exists for them too The precious ones I overthrew For an education in the world

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Dinner party

GUESTS: Alright, alright, applause sweet, sweet. Something silly about that song…

NARRATOR: Friday night and dinner party.

GUESTS: Applause Sweet, sweet… Oh man, 1967 coming back on us, hvao. Beautiful

NARRATOR: Old friends are gathered around the dining table in the living room. Cloth napkins on the plates. Silver cutlery. Old-fashioned stemmed glasses with gold rims.

GUESTS: What a great song. Always been one of my favourites. No one has ever really… Well, Rod Stewart… Hvao. It’s beautiful. Let’s play it one more time. It’s incredible

NARRATOR: Cohen brings out his "Jew's" harp, and the sound man prepares the guitar.

GUEST: Are you getting the “Jew’s” harp? I knew it.

Music

COHEN: What do you want? Where do you find your real pleasure? What kind of table do you have to sit at? Who does your company have to be, to satisfy the same criteria that you had when you were young? I mean, does everybody have to be beautiful? Does everybody have to be rich and smart? Do all places have to be well appointed? Does your own life have to be yielding applause and admiration? If you’re lucky, the scale gets reduced, but you still want those things.

Music/song

NARRATOR: Cohen goes to the kitchen to do the washing up. At 10 o'clock he's standing in boxer shorts and sweater bidding good night. The guests continue. The rest is party and next morning. Music

Birdsong

NARRATOR: It is morning in a Los Angeles suburb. Leonard Cohen has cleaned up after last night's party. He's sitting in his blue sofa with his legs on the coffee table. On the table lies an outline of the new volume of poetry he is going to publish in the autumn. 14

INTERVIEWER: What’s your favourite?

COHEN: In the book? There are some nice drawings. I don’t know if I have a favourite… What I like about the book is that… it doesn’t try to be important. I think that is what I like about it, it pretends to be modest.

INTERVIEWER: Pretends to be?

COHEN: Yeah it pretends to be modest. laughs Well, how modest can it be, actually, when, you know, it’s going to be published and I’m going to be asking people to pay money for it.

INTERVIEWER: Would you read me something?

COHEN: Ok. I’ll try to read you something… leafs through book I can’t really find anything that…

INTERVIEWER: …that you like?

COHEN: … that I could stand reading. laughs Eh.. There must be something, eh? Well, let’s read a little later.

Music

INTERVIEWER: ”If it be Your Will.” Leonard Cohen who doesn't want to remember plays his old songs. dogs growling

If it be your will If there is a choice Let the rivers fill Let the hills rejoice Let your mercy spill On all these burning hearts in hell If it be your will To make us well

and draw us near Oh bind us tight All your children here In their rags of light In our rags of light All dressed to kill And end this night If it be your will

If it be your will.

COHEN: I remembered that one. Well, they gave me that one song, you know.