Light

It reminded me of an interview I read with Leonard Cohen a good few years ago, in which he talked about the time he had spent at a Buddhist retreat on Mount Baldy. I looked it up earlier this week: “During the day, you hear bells and they tell you to go somewhere - that’s the nature of those places. They are kind of hospitals for the broken-hearted and for people who have forgotten how to walk and talk,” he said. Later, he explained the appeal of zen meditation: “After a while, the activity of thinking, that interior chatter, begins to subside from time to time. And what rushes in, in the same way that light rushes into a room when you switch on the light, is another kind of mood that overtakes you.”

Laura Barton
Hail, Hail, Rock ‘n’ Roll