Beryl Fox (Interviewer): What happens to your own personal anguish when you see it spread across the country and you know that you are making money on it.

 

Leonard Cohen: Well, I don’t know if I am gonna make any money on it. [Laughs] I don’t know if you can, if you can sell your anguish then you have probably done one of the best possible things you can do with anguish you know, anything you can do with anguish is good. Like Frank Sinatra said “I’m for anything that gets you through the night.” Print is a minor form of invisibility. I think that if you really get good then you do disappear.

 

From This Hour Has Seven Days
CBC: May 1, 1966. [Underlining mine]

 

There are a surprising number of links between Frank Sinatra, the crooner known as “The Voice,” and Leonard Cohen, the Canadian singer-songwriter “born with the gift of a golden voice.” Posts on this topic can be found at Frank Sinatra.

 

DrHGuy Note – The Sinatra quote referenced by Leonard follows:

Basically, I’m for anything that gets you through the night – be it prayer, tranquilizers or a bottle of Jack Daniels.

 

Also See “I think it’s impossible to get through this vale of tears entirely sober. I’m more like Baudelaire: let me be drunk with wine, with women, with poetry – whatever the thing is” Leonard Cohen

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 April 4, 2014 at DrHGuy.com, a predecessor of Cohencentric.