Perhaps no line of Cohen’s better captures the essence of his vision. He is telling his listeners what prophetically inclined rabbis have been telling theirs for thousands of years, namely that the world is a place of suffering, that no celestial cataclysm could ever change that, but that there are things here on this earth - art, love, friendship, kindness, music, sex - that have the power to redeem us.
Liel Leibovitz, A Broken Hallelujah: Rock and Roll, Redemption, and the Life of Leonard Cohen
leonard-cohen, music, suffering