On the Road, for Reasons Practical and Spiritual - Leonard Cohen

[groovedaddy]

The day after his first American concert in more than 15 years, Leonard Cohen sat in a Manhattan hotel suite warily submitting to an interviewer’s questions, including one about the music in his laptop’s iTunes. In response, he played a klezmer-style Hebrew hymn, then followed it by singing along with one of George Jones’s weepy country morality tales.

“I’ve had choices since the day that I was born,/There were voices that told me right from wrong,” Mr. Cohen crooned in his stern baritone. “If I had listened, no, I wouldn’t be here today,/Living and dying with the choices I’ve made.”

Religious devotion weighs heavily in both music and life for Mr. Cohen, and it takes many forms. After a five-year stint in a Zen Buddhist monastery and various legal distractions, he is back on the road: an undertaking that seems to combine his quest for spiritual fulfillment with an effort to regain his financial footing, lost when his former business manager made off with his money while Mr. Cohen was living as a monk on a mountaintop above Los Angeles.

“It was a long, ongoing problem of a disastrous and relentless indifference to my financial situation,” Mr. Cohen said on Friday of the resulting legal proceedings, which awarded him $9.5 million — money he has yet to collect. “I didn’t even know where the bank was.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/25/arts/music/25cohe.html?th&emc=th

[Heidi]

1. I love LC and believe he probably has given more to the world than he has gotten.

I realize there are many who'll have absolutely no sympathy for anyone who amassed $9.5 million in the first place, much less any sympathy for a person whose lack of oversight caused them to lose it. Mr. Cohen has done good things in the world, and I sympathize with him. To the critics, I'd say, "Do we need more starving artists, or fewer?" I'll err on the side of fewer.

[maxsolomon]

2. wasn't clear is the 9.5 million was what was stolen from him

or what was stolen + damages.

regardless, i will be in the theatre when he comes to town. his lyrics & example have made my life better.