There has been a lot about Leonard Cohen in the news recently, as his performance at the newly restored Beacon Theatre last Thursday was his first in 15 years in the United States.
In the New York Times, Nate Chinen wrote of him "bask[ing] in the rapture of the crowd, artfully courting adulation" and of how his "mix of humility and sovereignty felt effortless, entirely true to form."
And then a few days later in the New York Times, Larry Rohter published parts of an interview with him, in which Cohen busted out some George Jones lyrics and described the fact that his manager had run off with all of his money while he was in a Zen Buddhist monastery as the result of "a long, ongoing problem of a disastrous and relentless indifference to my financial situation."
Well, but wait a second here. If he was truly absorbing the teachings of Zen Buddhism, wasn't this "relentless indifference" to his financial situation really something akin to a successful Zen experience of dispatching with the cares of the world and not needlessly desiring after material things which only bring suffering anyway? How exactly should we think from a Buddhist perspective about the $9.5 million that Cohen recouped in legal proceedings?
I guess a boddhisatva could do a lot of good work with $9.5 million...
The latest news is a just-announced concert at the Highline Ballroom featuring Conspiracy of Beards, a 30-member male choir from San Francisco that performs "gritty, original arrangements of the songs of Leonard Cohen."
Yes, really.
April 4th.
You think I could make this stuff up?
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