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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