Wednesday, November 16, 2016

Did India "Cure" Leonard Cohen's Depression?

An interesting piece from the BBC for your consideration:
"...he seemed to have fallen in love with the city," Malathi Narayanan, who worked with Cohen's music label, Sony Music, told me."

"She had managed to persuade the reclusive singer, now on his second visit to Mumbai in 2000, to attend a dinner hosted by company executives"

"He arrived in his single-breasted Armani linen suit, the corners frayed," remembered Ms Narayanan."

"He told me he wanted to buy a 'humble abode' in Mumbai. But he was put off by the red tape here," she said. Another time, Cohen joked to Mr Mathur: "I am settling down here. Why don't you find me a good Jewish bride?"

"But something more transformative happened to Cohen's visits to India for conversations with his guru and friends."

"Something, as he told [singer and writing collaborator] Sharon Robinson, 'just lifted' - the veil of depression through which he had always seen the world," wrote Simmons.

"Cohen told his biographer that over the space of several visits to Mumbai in the next few years, the clouds in his mind had lifted - by "imperceptible degrees this background of anguish that had been with me my whole life began to dissolve"."

"I said to myself this must be what it's like to be relatively sane," he told Simmons.