“You sing from a kind of thorn in your side, which may just be the human heart aching in its particular predicament. And all art is an effort to address that aching.” Leonard Cohen

Allan Showalter

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I don’t think any of us starts [writing songs] with a strategy. You start with some kind of urgency that is indistinct, and it takes a lifetime to uncover what the thrust of your activity was about. You sing from a kind of thorn in your side, which may just be the human heart aching in its particular predicament. And all art is an effort to address that aching. Not just Jewish or Irish art, though both do seem to be more strongly rooted in a verbal tradition, rather than a visual. The Irish ache volubly and it’s all there, in your words and music. That’s also true of Jewish people.

 

Leonard Cohen

 

From Songs Of Longing – The Joe Jackson Interview. The Irish Times: November 3, 1995. Accessed 05 April 2014 from LeonardCohenFiles. Photo by Ratnesh Mathur.

Also See The Human Predicament In Leonard Cohen’s Music

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 June 7, 2014 at DrHGuy.com, a predecessor of Cohencentric.

One thought on ““You sing from a kind of thorn in your side, which may just be the human heart aching in its particular predicament. And all art is an effort to address that aching.” Leonard Cohen”

  1. C’est parce qu’il savait cela qu’il pouvait autant toucher le cœur de ceux qui l’écoutait.

    Reply

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