{"id":56826,"date":"2025-09-12T07:26:45","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:26:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=56826"},"modified":"2025-09-12T07:26:45","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T12:26:45","slug":"tea-and-oranges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wlbott.com\/?p=56826","title":{"rendered":"Tea and Oranges"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There’s always a danger when researching something you’ve held in your imagination for years. Do you really want to know your hero’s dark side? Is that noble institution actually founded on greed and exploitation?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’ve recently read two books – a biography about Joni Mitchell and an autobiography by Sin\u00e9ad O’Connor. In both cases, the luster of their stardom is tarnished, but a deeper appreciation of their lives is achieved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So I’ve been recently thinking about Leonard Cohen’s song “Suzanne”. This song came out in the mid-to-late 60s, and I was captivated by the lyrics. <\/p>\n<\/div>

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Remember, this was a time was access to music was incredibly limited, and you might search for hours in a record store looking for a song you’d heard once on the radio, and can’t remember the musician, and if you were lucky enough to find it, did you have the money for the LP?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Leonard Cohen took his Darwinian mandate seriously[1]<\/sup>. “God bless your appetite, my son!” For all this lyrical brilliance, there’s a raw carnality that underlies so many of his songs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1]<\/sup> Survive \/ reproduce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And you know that she's half crazy, and that's why you want to be there
And she feeds you tea and oranges that come all the way from China
And just when you want to tell her that you have no love to give her
She gets you on her wavelength, and lets the river answer
That you've always been her lover

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you think you'll maybe trust her
For she's touched your perfect body with her mind

And Jesus was a sailor when He walked upon the water
And He spent a long time watching from a lonely wooden tower
And when He knew for certain only drowning men could see Him
He said all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them
But He himself was broken long before the sky would open
Forsaken almost human, He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone

And you want to travel with Him
And you want to travel blind
And you think you'll maybe trust Him
For He's touched your perfect body with His mind

Suzanne takes you down to a place by the river
You can hear the boats go by, you can spend the night forever
And the sun pours down like honey on Our Lady of The Harbor
And she shows you where to look amid the garbage and the flowers
There are heroes in the seaweed, there are children in the morning
They are leaning out for love and they will lean that way forever
While Suzanne holds the mirror

And you want to travel with her
And you want to travel blind
And you think maybe you'll trust her
For you've touched her perfect body with your mind

Suzanne, by Leonard Cohen<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Suzanne Verdal, the Inspiration<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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“Suzanne” was inspired by Cohen’s platonic relationship with the dancer Suzanne Verdal. Its lyrics describe the rituals that they enjoyed when they met: Verdal would invite Cohen to visit her apartment by the harbour in Montreal, where she would serve him Constant Comment tea, and they would walk around Old Montreal past the church of Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours<\/strong>, where sailors were blessed before heading out to sea.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Verdal has said she met Cohen twice after the song’s initial popularity: once after a concert Cohen performed in the 1970s and once in passing in the 1990s when she danced for him, but Cohen did not speak to her (and possibly did not recognise her). Verdal never benefited financially from the song’s commercial success.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\nWikipedia<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
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Saunders:<\/strong> Do you at all resent the fact that he, if you like, milked you for all the artistic inspiration and then moved on, having created this lovely thing from you? You can almost be said to have created this song yourself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Suzanne:<\/strong> That may be, but I think poets do that. Poets, when they have a vision or an image, of course, use that. That\u2019s their material. You must do this and being used is not even part of it at the time. That doesn\u2019t exist. What came later was not remaining friends with Leonard and not knowing why. And that\u2019s why there was some ill feeling there or some sadnesses that were not there at the beginning at all. Now the words have more meaning in a sense, because there\u2019s a kind of detachment in the song that I hear now, that I didn\u2019t hear then. Does that make sense to you?<\/p>\nBBC Interview \/ Leonard Cohen Archives<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Suzanne tells her own story on her web site<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Thank you for the opportunity to introduce myself, to authenticate my identity, and finally emerge from self imposed absence from social media and other avenues of communication. I assure you that the statements and documents herein, long overdue, validate that I am in fact, the Muse behind the poem, later the song, \u201cSuzanne\u201d, penned by Leonard Cohen.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\nSuzanne Verdal’s Web Site<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n