IE: Like Leonard Cohen’ s final album You Want It Darker last year. You can feel it in

myself again as a child, as the pure being I was before I started taking in all those painkillers. And it’ s just very, very beautiful not to be numb, even though the lows are very, very low. You’ ve got your highs and your lows back – you can really feel stuff again. And if you’ re going to put life and sexuality together as a metaphor, it’ s like you decided to war a latex suit the whole time you’ re having sex – that’ s what drinking and doing drugs is to life itself.

IE: There’ s an old adage that sadly says

every line that he’ s been to the edge of the abyss and looked in. AW: Ilove Leonard Cohen. And you find yourself inadvertently responding, like,“ Yeah, maybe I do want it darker! I’ ll go there with him!” But if you’ re too scared to go to the abyss, then you’ re just not strong. You’ re not strong enough to be beautiful.

IE: Speaking of which, you’ ve been clean and sober for nearly a decade. You survived the abyss and lived to tell about it. AW: Yeah. And the money and the dignity – I’ d like to have both of things back from coke! And now this is going to sound like real schoolgirl hyperbole, but for me, being clean and sober has been a real rebirth, and now I can check in with

The older you get, the less you look with wonder at the world. And you have to rage against that. AW: Right. And do you think someone like Jane Goodall is just hanging around somewhere with her device? No. She is feeling. She is feeling it, and she couldn’ t still be doing it at her age if she didn’ t have that great energy to recognize truth and beauty in those animals, and the connection she has with them, and the connection they have with the whole species of us. So I don’ t go along with that whole“ The older you get, the less wonder you feel” thing at all. I think you have to fight against that until the moment your spirit jumps.

IE: Inspiration is all around if you pay close attention. AW: Right. Every morning when I wake up, I’ ve got a mirror in my little yoga room, right off my bedroom. And when I wake up, the sun is hitting that mirror just right, so I’ ve got all these streaks of spectral light on my wall, and that’ s the first

Ann and Nancy Wilson, 1977

thing I see in the morning. And that is what matter is made of – light – and that’ s evidence right there that light is bouncing around as a physical entity, just like sound. It’ s a very, very concentrated form of light, so you feel it when it hits. So with the spectral light on the wall, there you see it – it’ s proof, proof of the ultimate beauty. So I see

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