“All These Songs Are For You, D.I.”

EB-H: But you’ve never married.

LC: No. [Singing.] I never really fell in love, so I never saw the point. If I understood what “they” were trying to tell me, I was in love, but they all said that wasn’t good enough: I had to “fall.”

EB-H: And that’s never happened?

LC: It’s finally happened . . . if by falling in love they mean that life becomes impossible to live and you hardly know how to get from one moment to another, and that you cannot entertain the idea of living without the approval and love of “the object.” If that’s what falling in love is, I know what it’s like.

EB-H: When did this happen?

LC: A few months ago.

EB-H: Where is she?

LC: [Singing.] “Where, where, where is my gypsy wife tonight?” Not far. Just a heartbeat away.

EB-H: Will you stay fallen?

LC: Well, that really awful feeling has gone. I took a lot of antidepressants and spent several months in a monastery [Grins.] and that finally went. I never fell in love till I was a man of 52. And this new album is for her.

My Long-Overdue Love Letter to Leonard Cohen by Elizabeth Boleman-Herring (Huffington Post: July 2, 2012). The quotation is from a June 18, 1988 interview. The Dancing Couple Dedication image was contributed by Dominique BOILE.

Also See “Work. I did not stop working, nor did he… He wrote all the time.” Dominique Issermann Talks About Living With Leonard Cohen & About Marianne, Suzanne Elrod, Adam, Lorca…

Note: I am republishing selected posts from my former Leonard Cohen site, Cohencentric, here on AllanShowalter.com (these posts can be found at Leonard Cohen). This entry was originally posted July 5, 2018.