“It is a miracle”: The 1967 song Leonard Cohen admitted he would never surpass
If you ever need wisdom or even reassurance about writing, turn towards Leonard Cohen. Despite being the writer of some of the most beautiful songs ever put to tape, as well as book after book of brilliant poems and novels, the artist was endlessly fascinated by how on earth even he did it.
“If I knew where the good songs came from, I would go there more often,” Cohen said to journalist Paul Zollo. In so many interviews, when asked about his writing process and his method of getting inspired, the writer made it clear that perhaps his ultimate work was the work, the doing, the trying.
He captures that beautifully in ‘Tower Of Song’. Imagining every artist in one big, tall apartment building, he sang, “I’m just paying my rent every day in the tower of song.” To him, the job he had was at once both a privilege, obviously, but also exactly that – a job.
And so it was a job he clocked into. “If it is your destiny to be this labourer called a writer, you know that you’ve got to go to work every day, but you also know that you’re not gonna get it every day,” he said as he would sit down and write each day, trying his best, editing and redrafting and actively working on his songs or his poems. There was real effort put in, and almost more pride in that effort than there was in the actual final product, as he wisely understood that it was the effort that contributed so much of the magic.
But not all of it. While effort and work were essential, all art is a mysterious thing, and that’s where Cohen’s fascination came in. He could work and try, but at the end of the day, there had to just be a spark, either to start it off or get it finished. That’s the mysterious bit where, as Cohen put it, if he understood that, or knew how to make that work, he would stay there, shortcut it, live forever in that mythical place where songs and art were born.
While sometimes songs were the product of effort, other times they seemed to fall fully formed from that place. His song ‘Suzanne’ was one of them as Cohen put it plainly – “It is a miracle.”
As the song traverses through beautiful images of intimacy, tenderness and seduction, even Cohen himself was never all that sure about where it came from. Over time, he only came to understand it more through people’s reactions to it, telling Zollo, “There’s always someone affirming the significance of a song by taking a woman into his arms or by getting through the night. That’s what dignifies the song. Songs don’t dignify human activity. Human activity dignifies the song.”
To him, the song itself, and where it comes from, is nothing but a sheer strike of mythical, miraculous power from some place he’s not sure of. But how does a song keep its power?
That’s a deeply human thing, born somewhere between the effort he put in and all the hands that come to hold a song, giving it meaning and context through their own lives.
