John, You’re very welcome to my Writers Chat series. We’re going to chat about your latest publication, Absent Friend (The Harvest Press: Carlow, 2023), a memoir and reflection on your friendship with Leonard Cohen.
SG: Let’s start with the title. It both sums up the friendship now, and how it endures despite Leonard’s death, and also the friendship as it formed and evolved over geographical distance. Did the title come easy to you?
JMacK: Thanks for the invitation. I’ve long been aware of the tradition in some religious communities of setting a place at table for absent friends – in fact it’s one we’ve adopted in our house. It’s a way of remembering those who are away from home and those who have died and it never fails to bring a moment or two of reflection on some or all of the missing people in our lives. So when I began writing this book the title, more or less, suggested itself. It seemed to sit very easily with what I had in mind as the theme of the book – the friendship and the absence of that friendship after Leonard died.
SG: That’s very moving – your writing as a table with a space for absent friends. It’s quite an incredible story, your lifelong communications with Leonard. How did you work out the structure for the memoir in terms of chronology of friendship/ your own chronological life?
JMacK: That was a challenge. I had many thoughts on how to approach it but, in the end, I thought the songs are the binding force. The songs are what drew me to Leonard when I was eighteen and the songs remain after he’s gone. So I used the songs and albums as guideposts to the journey of his life and my life and our friendship. And it seemed to work.
The parallels between events in my own living and the emotions and events gathered in his songs worked in tandem in terms of the writing. There’s one moment in the book where I’m driving and listening to If It Be Your Will (a song about the holocaust) and I come upon a car accident and that produces its own small holocaust – that’s just one moment of the parallels being shocking.
But the fact that Leonard was so open and so reflective of his own life – and by extension all our lives – makes the work incredibly accessible, moving, educational and emotionally connected.
SG: There were a few moments in the book where there were uncanny parallels and perhaps these actually connect to your own openness and reflection. You also capture the philosophy behind many of Cohen’s songs that have carried you through rough and tough times. You show us the power of his words and music. Why do you think he’s been painted so often as just writing about the underbelly of emotion?
JMacK: I had one brother who was ten years older than me and he was a wonderful guide in life. Leonard was eighteen years older than me and I thought of him as a brother, too. So the guidance, the sharing of experience and direction were important to me. But Leonard’s life was radically different from mine – he came from a wealthy, Canadian, Jewish family. And, yet, much of what he wrote about in terms of emotion was blindingly familiar to me – an innate darkness; a struggle with emotional intimacy; an interest in the spiritual.
So, yes, he does write about that dark spaces and those muddy waters. What is sometimes forgotten is his wonderful humour – it was quiet but it was always there in his songs, in chatting with him, in his letters and emails. That’s something that is often missed about his personality. And sometimes his dismissal and the dismissal of his songs as razor blade music is just lazy journalism.
SG: And that’s a gift – being able to combine dark and deep spaces with humour. You write about your own relationship to form (books, songs, poetry) as well as the impact and/or influence of teaching (the system) on your creativity. The “links” that pull you in to Leonard’s work are also what work in writing:
an idea, an experience, a phrase, an image
To what extent did you learn or work on your writing craft through exploring Leonard’s songs? (For example, your novel Once We Sang Like Other Men)
JMacK: I first heard Leonard in 1971 when I was recovering from meningitis and I can still clearly remember the shock of hearing a story I was very familiar with (the Biblical story of Isaac) retold in the song Story of Isaac but hearing it told in the voice of a nine-year-old boy. The familiar became the fascinating. That was the first step on a writing road toward the realisation that old stories, familiar characters, well-worn situations can be viewed and re-told freshly. That was inspiring.
The other thing I learned from Leonard’s work was that less is more – his ability to suggest things is powerful. There’s a line in a very late song about angels scratching at the door. That one verb is extraordinary in what it suggests and how it avoids the cliched.
The subject matter of a lot of Leonard’s work is the spiritual and that’s an area that fascinates me and, as you say, I’ve examined it in Once We Sang Like Other Men and Joseph. It’s a road we were both interested in, that place where spiritual and human collide.
SG: Yes, that verb “scratching” alongside the softness (perceived) of angels is great. Absent Friend also serves as an exploration of religion. You speak about going to a monastery church in Moone, Kildare
in search of spiritual consolation and calmness
and at length about Leonard’s time in a monastery. How important was it to Leonard and how important is it to you in your writing?
JMacK: Leonard said the monastery at Mount Baldy and his times there saved his life. He went from absolute fame and an absolute dependence on alcohol to a time (six years) of reflection and removal from the demands of the world. It got him back on an even and healthy keel.
For me the quiet times spent at Bolton Abbey are important in two ways. They reconnect me with summers in my teenage years spent working in the gardens there – a wonderful time of ideas and debates and discussions and laughter with the monks. But they also connect me to a way of life that isn’t mine but one in which I recognise the importance of silence, of contemplation, of peace, of communal spirit.
And that feeds into my writing. As I get older I find myself looking more and more (in fiction and non-fiction) at the place of the human in the world of the spiritual. Belief wise, I’d describe myself as an agnostic but I love the search, I love the things that are part of the monastic life – the internal and external landscapes in Bolton Abbey. And I get a tremendous reassurance and uplift from time spent there. The monks are good men, interesting, funny, they have a depth you don’t often find in the world.
SG: How do you think you’ll carry Leonard’s legacy forward – in music and in writing – and do you see Absent Friend as part of this process?
JMacK: I was honoured to work with Leonard on Between Your Love and Mine, a requiem for theatre that we completed in the summer before his death. That requiem has had two extremely successful tours – playing theatres across the country as well as the NCH and Aras an Uachtaráin. The requiem will be restaged next year to coincide with Leonard’s ninetieth birthday so that, I feel, is important.
I hope Absent Friend contributes, in some small way, to spreading the word of Leonard’s genius as a wordsmith and musician.
SG: I am sure your book has already contributed – we see Leonard through the eyes of a friendship that endured a lifetime. I very much look forward to experiencing the requiem next year. So we’ll finish up, John, with some short questions:
- Coffee or Tea? Coffee
- Silence or music as you write – and if so, what music? Music – I normally choose one CD to listen to per book – for Clare it was 19th century hymns but it could be anyone from Paul Simon to Mary Chapin Carpenter. Always there are words involved.
- Longhand or laptop? Laptop – except for poems, they’re longhand
- What are you reading now? Steeple Chasing by Peter Ross – a book on English churches!
- What are you writing now? I’m redrafting a short novel set in my home village of Castledermot in the winters of 1963 and 2010 – the years of the big snows.
Thank you to The Harvest Press and John for the copy of Absent Friend. Purchase Absent Friend here.
Shauna Gilligan Writer 