Now, as we sit in his cabin one cold December morning, a string of Christmas lights twinkling sadly from the roadside shack across the street, »Mike & Suzie« scrawled into the pavement, he's telling me that he makes no claims to piety or knowledge: His training here is just a useful response to the »predicament of his life.« This »connection – the unavoidable presence of the Other – has driven us to religion,« he says, explaining why he thinks »the great religion is the great work of art.« We »form ourselves around these problems,« he goes on. »These problems exist prior to us, and we gather ourselves, almost molecularly, we gather ourselves around these perplexities. And that's what a human is: a gathering around a perplexity.« He sips some coffee from a cup with the logo of The Future on it, beside him the thick notebooks where poems hundreds of verses long will get condensed, often, into a single six-verse song. Around us, as we sit, almost nothing else except a bottle of Sparkletts water, a few candles, a toothbrush, and, tucked into a light switch, a picture of the Winged Victory. Cohen has not slept, most likely, for six days. »It's driven us to art,« he says, returning to his theme of the Other. »I mean, it's so perplexing, the humiliations, the glories that are so abundant, and it's such a dangerous undertaking. I was just looking through my notebooks, and I saw something nice. It was:

I set out for love, but I did not know
I'd be caught in the grip of an undertow
to be swept to a shore, where the sea needs to go
with a child in my arms, and a chill in my soul,
and my heart the size of a begging bowl.«

(The original poem was contributed by Courtois.)

The song was in Leonard's key, so I never thought I'd be doing the lead on it. The bg session started as usual, with me singing a harmony. When we played it back Leonard loved it so much that he made it the lead vocal, and his track was used as an effect to remind you of the murmuring sea. (...) As a result, there's a lead vocal that haunts you because you never get the satisfaction of coming to a melodic rest in the tonic; and that musical movement supports the themes of desolation and eventual surrender in the lyric.

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