BG: The song called «Anthem». Can you sing the refrain for me? LC: Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in. BG: What is the light? LC: The light is the capacity to reconcile your experience, your sorrow, with every day that dawns. It is that understanding, which is beyond significance or meaning, that allows you to live a life and embrace the disasters and sorrows and joys that are our common lot. But it’s only with the recognition that there is a crack in everything. I think all other visions are doomed to irretrievable gloom. And whenever anyone asks us to accept a perfect solution, that should immediately alert us to the flaws in that presentation. BG: I thought you were going to say the light was love.
© Leonard Cohen’s interview with Barbara Gowdy
