I think you work out something [by writing songs]. I wouldn’t call them ideas. I think ideas are what you want to get rid of. I don’t really like songs with ideas. They tend to become slogans. They tend to be on the right side of things: ecology or vegetarianism or antiwar. All these are wonderful ideas but I like to work on a song until those slogans, as wonderful as they are and as wholesome as the ideas they promote are, dissolve into deeper convictions of the heart. I never set out to write a didactic song. It’s just my experience. All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience ...…most of the time you’re just scraping the bottom of the barrel to find any kind of voice at all. It could be a few words, a tone of voice, two chords together–it’s a ragpicker’s trade as I practice it- I don’t stand on the mountain and receive tablets - Leonard Cohen http://1heckofaguy.com/2013/04/30/cohensubstantiation-leonard-cohen-tra…
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