November 17th, 2011 at 8:47PM
  • Leonard Cohen: Everything keeps on going or it stops. I mean... you know when you're happy. There's been so much talk about the mechanics of happiness; psychiatry and pills and positive thinking and ideology. But I really think that the mechanism is there. All you have to do is get quiet for a moment or two, and you know where you are...
  • Interviewer: And for this knowing where you are, you don't need the help of anything like drugs or liquor or anything?
  • Leonard Cohen: Well... It's not a matter of the help. I mean, you can co-operate with the vision that alcohol gives to you. You can co-operate with the vision that LSD gives you. I mean, all those things are just made out of plants and they're there for us and I think we ought to use them. But also, there's another kind of high to get from refusing to use them. You know, there's all kinds of possibilities. Asceticism is a nice high too. Voluptuousness is a high. Alcohol is a high. I mean, the town gets beautiful under alcohol. I get kind of stupid and generally throw up. But some people get really beautiful with alcohol.
  • Interviewer: Do you see things in terms of highs and lows or is this just an appeal to sensation?
  • Leonard Cohen: Well... It's not just a matter of sensation. What I mean by high is not a manic phase of swinging nothing down buildings and laughing hysterically. I mean that you're situated somehow. There's a nice balance. That you're in the centre of your own orbit. Or as Dylan said, you fade into your own parade.
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    are...Interviewer:...anything?Leonard
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    Oh goodness, Cohen.
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