Various Positions (34 page)

The Canadian documentary filmmaker Harry Rasky traveled with the group and used footage from the European tour for what would become a
CBC
film, “The Song of Leonard Cohen.” Rasky showed Cohen performing in Europe and interviewed him in his Montreal home where he philosophized about his career and his attraction to music. In the film, Cohen explained his “rejection” of life on Hydra as the result of his inescapable marriage to music: “
The song seized me and an appetite for reaching many people seized me. [But] when I began to make money, the quality of my life deteriorated swiftly, and even when I could afford a decent hotel room in a dark city, it compared unfavorably with a beautiful sunlit room on a Greek island.” He said he now felt more rooted, less restless. He was prepared to settle in Montreal after a decade of wandering.

Much of the film was shot in Montreal and at his home across from Parc Portugal. The use of extensive family photographs deepened the
feeling of an exile’s return. There was, he told Rasky, “
a new spirit in my work. Songs I will write will not have that elegiac quality any longer…. A song, or a poem, or a piece of work or even where a man is in the world—it withers if it isn’t based on what is authentic and what is true.”

The appearance of Irving Layton in the film confirmed the ongoing mutual admiration between the two writers. “
Genius,” Layton pronounced, “is seeing things exactly as they are.” And Cohen, he said, was able to do that in his work. Layton linked this condition of sadness and song to that of fourteenth-century balladeers and to being Jewish, defined by him as “
the gift of anxiety, of pain, of alienation, of solitude.”

In the Rasky film Cohen looked healthy and fit. His performances from the 1979 tour show a polished entertainer, with more rhythm and energy in his songs. Jennifer Warnes and Sharon Robinson harmonized perfectly with Cohen’s sometimes raspy voice. The tour seemed to release much of the anger and stress he had experienced over the breakup with Suzanne and the removal of his children to France.

Back in Los Angeles, Cohen taped a series of unreleased poetry readings with Henry Lewy, including one that conveyed his unhappiness at being separated from Suzanne and his children:

————

WITH HIS CHILDREN
gone and his album finished, Cohen gave up the house in Los Angeles and began to spend more time in Europe, Montreal, and New York. Paris became a frequent stop on his way to Roussillon, with its ochre cliffs, and then to Bonnieux in the heart of the Luberon mountain area, where Suzanne later moved with the children. Cohen’s access to the children was limited, even though he rented the house for them in Roussillon and purchased the home in Bonnieux; at one point he lived in a trailer parked outside the country house where the children stayed. Cohen and Suzanne wrangled over custody of the children and the terms of a settlement from 1978 to 1984. “On Seeing Kabir’s Poems,” written in 1981 at Roussillon and printed in
Stranger Music
, recalls this period.

Cohen began to study the Talmud at this time, always traveling with a copy of the text. It became a source of spiritual sustenance, always with him when he visited his children. His new circumstances meant a renewal of the now tedious vagabond life, traveling from hotel to hotel, with frequent stops at the Royalton in New York and the Cluny in Paris.

In 1979, Cohen, along with Richard Cohen and Eric Lerner, also students of Roshi, bought a house in South Central Los Angeles at a foreclosure sale. It was cheap and near the Cimarron Zen Center. Although
he rarely lived there over the next five or six years, Cohen eventually made it his Los Angeles home. He didn’t bother to furnish his part of the two-story house. Steve Sanfield recalls that at this time Cohen led the life of “
a wandering monk,” with very few possessions, and that his home was strikingly bare and simple. The kitchen was the only place to sit down, since there were no chairs in any other part of the house, only tables or cushions.

Cohen became involved with a journal Roshi wanted to start entitled
Zero
. Mixing Roshi’s philosophy with contributions by creative writers, the journal appeared for several years. The title of the journal expressed Roshi’s philosophy: “
Zero is activity that is complete and full of good will…. In the state of zero there are no questions.” By the third volume, the journal listed Eric Lerner as editor, Richard Cohen as associate editor, and Steve Sanfield and Leonard Cohen as contributing editors. That issue included an interview with John Cage, a collage of haiku by Allen Ginsberg, poetry by John Ashbery, an interview with Joni Mitchell, and the lyrics of several songs from
Recent Songs
by Leonard Cohen.

For Roshi, zero was the central Zen tenet, a detachment from the distractions of the self, or the absence of the self. It was the condition of positive emptiness. Only by dissolving the fixed self is one’s true nature made manifest, Roshi argued. For Zen to begin, the ego self must die: “
As long as we see things dualistically, we shall never see the truth.” In an essay entitled “On The Nature of Zero,” originally a 1979 talk at Mt. Baldy, Roshi summarized his understanding of the concept of zero: it is manifested in the practice of Zen mastery over impermanence “
through realizing oneself as a sphere alternately expanding and contracting.” The ultimate goal is the state of absolute tranquility where “
everything is oneself.” Enlightenment, Roshi said, “
is the possession of two kinds of wisdom: one which looks, in a personal way, upon everything as yourself and another which looks in an impersonal way upon yourself as Zero.”

Cohen spent whatever time he could with Roshi at Mt. Baldy and occasionally accompanied him to other Zen centers. Together they visited the Gethsemane Monastery in Kentucky, the former monastery of Thomas Merton. At the headquarters of the Trappist Movement in Spenser, Massachusetts, they talked with the abbot and attended Mass,
observing another form of spiritual commitment. While they were there a monk confided to Cohen that every day he questioned why he was there and thought about going over the wall. Roshi believed that his monks should be a part of the world, telling them, “
After you realize the mountain, go back to the world. Don’t stay here too long.” Roshi encouraged Cohen to play tennis and to join a nearby tennis club in Claremont. He did, but admitted that regular play did not improve his game much. As Cohen reports, “
Roshi saw that I knew how to work; what I didn’t know how to do was play.”

Cohen’s attachment to Rinzai Buddhism remained unswerving. He admired Roshi’s willingness to get up at 3: 00 a.m. and to meet four times a day with his students in
sanzen
, his commitment to the rigors of the
sesshins
, and his determination to teach at the various Zen centers in Vienna, Ithaca, or Puerto Rico. Roshi adapted to American ways, offering his
teishos
(lecture/sermons) in Japanese but giving
sanzen
in English. His Zen practice was considered the most vigorous in America.

Cohen’s commitment to Zen, however, was never at the sacrifice of his Judaism. He told an Australian journalist that “
I am not a Buddhist, but a Jew.” Despite more than a twenty-five-year involvement with Zen, a religion he once described to Nancy Bacal as “
for the truly lost,” he has constantly affirmed his Jewishness. Cohen may criticize the lack of a meditational dimension in Judaism and devote himself physically, as well as financially, to Zen, but he has never renounced his identity as a Jew. In a 1993 letter to a Hollywood trade paper he wrote:

————

IN OCTOBER
1980 Cohen began his sixth European tour, using the same musicians as the 1979 tour, although Jennifer Warnes did not join them. They started in France, where he again played to sold-out houses. In Berlin he created a controversy when he asked his fans at the packed stadium to remove the chairs. “
If you see this terrible plastic, you see the dark side of our lives,” he told them, an allusion to the Nazi past. Unlike the 1979 tour, which mainly featured material from
Recent Songs
, the current tour provided more of a survey of his best-known songs.

In Frankfurt, after his concert, Cohen was woken in the middle of the night by a loud knocking at his door. He opened the door to find a six-foot-two-inch blonde woman dressed only in boots and aluminum foil. Cohen nobly refused her wish to enter but she persisted and so Cohen gave in. By morning he was determined to take her with him for the rest of the tour. She declined and prepared to leave, despite his pleas and declarations of her beauty. Smiling, she said to Cohen, “
One more star in my constellation,” and left. The tour ended in Tel Aviv and Cohen was once more at loose ends.

A December 11 entry in a journal describes him in Room 700 of the Algonquin Hotel in New York with a chassidic prayer book, his grandfather’s
tefillin
and woolen
tallit
, a box of Barton’s Hanukkah candy, and a set of Hanukkah candles, all in preparation for celebrating the festival with his children. Four days later in the same journal the first draft of “If It Be Your Will” appears.

On Hydra in 1982, he met a woman who became important in his life: Dominique Issermann, a fashion photographer from Paris. Carole Laure, the Quebecois actor, and her husband Lewis Furey, had established careers in Paris, and they introduced Cohen to Issermann when she came to visit Laure on Hydra. Cohen and Issermann began a long-term relationship, characterized by maturity and a mutual devotion to work. Issermann took publicity stills of Cohen and directed two of his videos: “Dance Me to the End of Love,” and “First We Take Manhattan.” Cohen frequently stayed with her in her Paris apartment, writing songs and visiting his children.

Issermann stimulated a new intensity and vigor in Cohen’s songwriting, marked by his strenuous efforts with
Various Positions
, his 1984 album. Her work habits influenced Cohen, who relied more on effort
than inspiration. His career was faltering and Issermann became a graceful working companion who understood his anguish and commitment to his task. In his words, Issermann helped him “
dig in.” A period of “
diligent application to this whole affair” began.

But the same pattern began to emerge. Cohen, uncomfortable in a stable relationship, found it necessary to wander as his creativity appeared to become restricted. So he spent time in New York at the Royalton, in California with Roshi, and in Montreal at his home. Dominique visited when possible and Cohen stayed in Paris when he could. He became unwilling to make space for her and her career in his life, either in Los Angeles or Montreal, and after a period of reassessment, they chose to separate. They remain close friends, however, and Issermann’s photographs of him are frequently reprinted in his songbooks, in his concert programs, and on French postcards. She anchored his life in the eighties and became an important creative force. An inscription on his album
I’m Your Man
reads, “All these songs are for you, D.I.” Issermann was a crucial, if little recognized, figure in Cohen’s recovery from depression, the redirection of his musical career, and the renewal of his spiritual life.

On Hydra in the winter of 1981–1982, Cohen began to work on the libretto of an opera for which Lewis Furey would do the music. Variously titled “Merry-Go Man, “The Hall,” “Angel Eyes,” and finally
Night Magic
, Cohen actually thought of it as a ballet. The title derived from the name of a popular nightclub in Old Montreal named
Nuit Magique
. It was run by a friend of Cohen’s named Bob Di Salvio, who had first heard the phrase in Van Morrison’s song “Moondance.” A back room at the club was named
Les Beaux Ratés
, “the beautiful losers.” Cohen described
Night Magic
as a cabaret opera about a broken-down Montreal singer who has his wishes granted, “
a combination of Brecht and Disney.” The plot involved a music hall star named Michael who was preparing a show that would revive a run-down theater named the System, the same theater used by Cohen in
Beautiful Losers
and the name of an actual Montreal movie house. In the course of one night, three female guardian angels visit him, and one falls in love with him. A series of songs on the clash between art and life result.

The work was a musical pastiche that reflected Cohen’s renewed interest in regulated form. He wrote the entire opera in Spenserian stanzas.
This Renaissance verse structure, first used in the epic
The Faerie Queen
, consists of nine lines, eight five-foot iambic lines, with the ninth, an iambic line of six feet. Cohen felt he needed to locate himself in a literary tradition in order to give his work resonance.