"To this end, we provided the pair with a couple of wine glasses, a microphone and tape recorder and we closed the door."
The discussion that ensued - consistently compelling, at times exotic - has yielded into a transcript. In fact, the conversation represents one of Suzanne Vega's most in-depth interview sessions to date and provides poignant insight into her motivation for making the innovative 99.9 F° album.
With a new album of both Suzanne and Leonard Cohen (The Future) this unique interaction will be used as an additional promotional tool.
In the next issue of Language we will publish the most interesting parts of this very special interview. For now we leave you with this little teaser.
Cohen: That's another theme in this record, or at least in one of the songs,
two of the songs, that there is something you find out too early. Now
I don't mean to be tedious with this emphasis on this secrecy but not
everybody writes every song about something that happens offstage, about
something that is concealed. about a secret that is not told, not
whispered.
It appears in a number of the songs. It's a strong theme in the
record, and that's why I'm just poking around trying to find out what
this is. Not what the secret is but what your devotion to the secret is
and how it became in a certain sense the aesthetic irritation around
which the pearl of the song formed. It's something that seems to be
very
present in your psyche, this notion that there's something to be
concealed, something to be discovered, something glimpse behind the
veil.
It seems to be there over and over again and forgive me for trying to
uncover something which has been so deliberately concealed.
Suzanne: Well, I understand your reasons for it, but I suppose in the long run, it's become the way I prefer to work because there's something beautiful in it to me. There's something beautiful in presenting it that way with the whole mystery about it intact. I think the kind of writing that I always loved was the kind of writing that had all the complications in it and everything was not explained completely. You have to say the same thing about your own work. You don't reveal everything, relationships are not always clear. There's a lot of specific things that are hinted at and you fill in the rest with your imagination but you don't come out and blurt out the sort of obvious arithmetic of it. You don't come out and say, "Well, I loved you and you don't love me" although maybe you have said that.