Memories of Diana
She was tall and came from Toronto. Her mother was Latvian and her dad was a black American soldier. We were the same age and got on quite well at first. Soon after I arrived we drove to Malibu Beach where she brought up "Leonard Cohen". I think this was a fact-finding mission for the Zen Center and Leonard who was its major funding source.
I told her I was in LA to speak to him, if possible -- I wasn't optimistic because back in Montreal his daughter Lorca had overdosed after telling a bunch of his friends he had molested her in childhood. I lived next door and the toxic fallout from her near-death was making my life very unpleasant. I had been broken into twice and was the object of a slander campaign. I felt he should own up to causing the gossip that swirled around Lorca's accusations of incest, and his own deep fear of women and "feminists" finding out.
She said Leonard was a pervert, in her opinion. She seemed to know him slightly, or have known him in the distant past when she designed his 1979 album cover, back in the days when she was the mural-painter at the House of Blues.
It became clear to me on arrival that Lorca had since made a deal with her dad. She looked radically different now than in the fall of 1993 when at 19 she knocked on my door in her black Goth outfit, with piercings, tattoos, and half shaved head of purple hair. This was a few weeks before she OD'ed on heroin in the building on the corner between Leonard's place and mine.
In her teens Lorca had been a walking billboard for childhood sexual abuse -- dressing in black from age 6, displaying dissociative brilliance which people took for artistic genius inherited from her father.
At the Zen garden party where I met Dianne, Lorca also showed up as a guest with her father. Surprised to see me, she looked the picture of wholesomeness in a frilly peach blouse and tailored skirt. All her tattoos now gone, she smiled coyly and the conversation went something like "How are you, Lorca?" "I'm okay." "You're okay?" "I'm okay and you?" "I'm okay, are you okay?" "You're okay, I'm okay." Better than last time when she was not okay.
At the Zen Center where most guests wore their black monks' robes to these friendly gatherings, the newcomer Dianne stood out in bright lipstick, tilted lime-green sunglasses and a flashy outfit dating back to her heyday. A fish out of water in that spiritual crowd, she swam in deep financial straits from her cocaine habit that had left her $40K in debt. The head monk whom she knew had let her move into a room in the house across the street where she attempted to revive her painting career in her room with the blinds closed and TV blaring.
Arlington Heights where the Zen Center sprawled was a mainly black neighborhood, built by black entertainers. Oscar-winning actress Hattie McDaniel had lived down the street in one of many beautiful craftsman-style homes from the 1930s. Singer Marvin Gaye's huge yellow mansion stood abandoned a few blocks away.
At some point that summer Dianne's car broke down, so as roommates with common artsy interests we often took long walks around the neighborhood of East Arlington meeting locals like 70 year old Mary McGee, whom we chatted with over the fence one day at her bungalow off the Santa Monica freeway. Being Canadian, Dianne and I had no fear of walking, but most of the Zens at the Center believed it was dangerous even to go to the corner to mail a letter.
"Nine times out of ten you won't get shot..." as a monk once advised me. There were nightly exchanges of gunfire in the back alleys.
Being half black, Dianne had no racial prejudice or fear of the neighbors. She rescued dogs-- like a black and brown Rottweiler she named "Buddy." This friendly mutt was with us one evening we walked to the mall. Dianne went inside to buy groceries while I stood on the sidewalk with Buddy. Seeing the dog, a little boy, about 9 years old, did a double take. "Beethoven?" he said. Buddy perked up and wagged his tail. "He remembers me!" Buddy /Beethoven barked and pulled on his leash.
They were both overjoyed. When Dianne found out she called the boy's mother who said when her older son went to prison for drugs, Beethoven ran away.
It was heartwarming to see the family reunited but Dianne says I made all this up. In her amazingly blank memory, we never roamed the neighborhood together, or shared a kitchen table as she plotted to kidnap and "rescue" the Roshi's wife's Akita, chained up in her backyard two houses over.
An email she wrote Jasun Horsley is garbled and contradictory. She claims she didn't know, and then elsewhere she claims to have witnessed me "stalking Leonard Cohen". She concocted this flimsy narrative for "Cohen biographer" Michael Posner who went around trolling for confirmation.
She mistakenly states she knew me "in the late 80s," an era she seems to have got stuck in. She says I was obsessed, and begged her for Cohen's phone number -- I didn't need to. I'd had it for years. She also remembers me acting sweet as pie- but of course I was pure evil, faking innocence while hounding poor Leonard, the humble monk whom everyone "in the beloved community" adored and looked up to.
Dianne felt she didnt need Buddhism and told me about her Hollywood days: nude meetings in hot tubs with Robert de Niro and Jack Nicholson. She had been friends with Gilda Radner of Saturday Night Live fame. They both came to LA as aspiring actresses and comedians but Radner died young. Diane drifted and got into drugs. Like many failed starlets she was quite talented, and still sang jazz occasionally, e.g. in a club on Rodeo Drive one night where I went to see her with our other roommate Bob. The same Bob who took me to a computer fair in Pasadena where I found the Stones' Voodoo Lounge CD-Rom in a bin with my image and name in the credits. I didn't tell anyone about that strange find, knowing they wouldn't believe me. I didn't have anywhere to play the CD-Rom so it was weeks before I could view it.
Most of that summer, when not cycling to the beach and back, 15 miles each way, I was in my tiny upstairs room writing a novel, Dead White Males, which got published in 2001. Meanwhile Dianne stayed in her big room downstairs, with her TV on, painting tropical flowers on small canvases mounted on an easel.
In August a friend, Pat Rodriguez, came from Montreal and I accompanied her to Hearst Castle for the premiere of a film in which she played the mother of the young William Randolph Hearst.
One day in early September I was pedaling up Washington Boulevard and caught sight of another friend from Montreal, Allan Moyle, out chatting with an elderly neighbor. I hadn't seen Allan since the early 80s. He invited me to an opening that night at the Academy of Motion Picture Art and Design where we ran into Wim Wenders.
Back at the Zen Center I introduced him to Dianne - they chatted about people they knew including Leonard.
Allan was nearing 50, in the throes of divorcing from his young girlfriend, and I saw him a few more times. He picked me up with a friend and we went out to eat. On the way he and the friend started screaming - Allan's newfound method for releasing anxiety. It was silly but therapeutic. We all started letting out high pitched screams in the car.
Back at the Zen Center I sat on the porch and Dianne came out, dressed up for a date, all "Eighties" and shoulderpads. As she descended the steps in high heels I let out a scream and giggled.
She took my two-second scream as a comment on her wardrobe -- she had obviously spent some time getting ready for this rare outing. I apologized. "Just kidding, Dianne, it's not about you. Alan and I were just screaming in the car... "
My scream had rattled her to the core. I think it ripped the false-friendly facade covering the fact she was spying for Leonard, who needed an excuse to get me thrown out of the Zen Center.
She stomped off with her date and never spoke to me again. Instead she wrote letters to the head monk, accusing me of "screaming", and demanding that I be evicted.
I left of my own free will, two months later. By then the Zen Center was in a crisis and I was the reason. I had finally found out Leonard was telling them all I was there to "destroy" him. "She's phoning me every day from Culver City" -- not just untrue, but impossible. I'd never been to Culver City.
In the weeks after I left for Montreal, Leonard lost a chunk of his popular support at the Zen Center . He had been pouring $$ into their operation, gaining the trust of the monks who viewed him as a father figure and celebrity successor to their 90-year-old Roshi. Maybe he overdid things by putting the whole community on High Alert over a "vindictive ex-girlfriend" and "crazy stalker" who didnt ever stalk him. I was the dangerous threat that never materialized.
I never knew what went on behind closed doors,but I tiptoed around for the last month, sensing the unspoken vibes. Nobody asked me why I was there and nothing happened. I didnt even phone Leonard, not once. I waited. From years of Zen practice with the Roshi, I had learned the power of doing Nothing. It must have been nerve-wracking for Leonard -- to prove I was out to get him, he needed that phone call that never came.
Back home in Montreal at Christmas I received a postcard the Roshi sent out that year to all his students. On the front was a photo of him seated, flanked by his wife and Leonard in monks robes. The caption read
"Dear student, Happy New Year. Please help me. I am 90 years old and I have no successor. "
Late in 1996, I sublet my Montreal apartment, moved to Greece and never returned to LA. I was deeply disappointed by the Zens over their failure to respond maturely to a possible case of child abuse by the venerable monk who just happened to be rich and famous. All they needed to do was call a meeting, and discuss the matter honestly and openly. I wasnt seeking revenge, just acknowledgement that a child had been hurt and a whole community damaged by one man's egomania posing as greatness or divinity. Why not talk about that?
Leonard abandoned the Roshi for India in 2000 and supposedly began studying with Ramesh Balkesar, a Vedic scholar and guru who had been convicted of financial fraud and sexual misconduct. Based on a series of depressing self portraits he produced during this time spent between Mumbai and Tel Aviv, I think the spiritual studies were a front for Israeli intelligence leading up to the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament.
In 2012 the Roshi died leaving no successor to continue his teaching in America. Sadly, in his final years (he lived to 105) he was embroiled in a serious sex scandal, accused by some female students of molesting them in private interviews.
Leonard, having lost all his money to his former agent and earned it all back from concert tours, returned to LA and remained with the Roshi, caring for him to the end. Dianne Lawrence went on to found The Neighborhood News, a community paper based in East Arlington. She and I exchanged text messages a few years ago. She didn't remember anything from that summer except my "scream".
Leonard died in 2016, in a lot of pain. The last time we spoke was in the parking lot of Rinzai-ji Zen Center, twenty years earlier in May 1996. He drove up to the door in a black SUV, rolled down his window and said hello. I said "Leonard, have you been a good boy?"
Chomping down hard on the big cigar he had clamped between his teeth, he growled: "I'm the best there is."
Everything I have described here is in my journal and really happened. If I "stalked" Leonard it was just due to my being there, mainly in his guilty mind..
After she took me to the beach that first time -- thinking back it was more like an interrogation -- I never talked to Dianne about Leonard again because I felt I couldn't trust her. I certainly didn't "use her to spread a disgusting narrative", as she claimed somewhere. I spoke to the head monk, once. He likely reported our conversation to Leonard who was effectively his boss since he paid the bills.
Dianne's cynicism towards the Zen community came up often. She constantly ridiculed the older nuns, and had no use for Zen practice. She was living in one of their buildings as a personal favour which probably stemmed from knowing Leonard. I doubt she ever met Sasaki Roshi and she openly hated his wife. Maybe she thought by moving in upstairs I was recruiting her into my "campaign". I was just waiting for someone in authority to get back to me.
Needless to say, nobody did.
Comments • Anne McLeanNovember 13, 2025 at 6:59 AM This comment has been removed by the November 13, 2025 at 7:05 AM It's very peculiar that Dianne Lawrence wrote Jasun Horsley on July 17 2022 to defend Camille. Camille and Dianne have nothing in common except Michael Posner. Dianne is not a "heavy in the music world" - she was a jazz singer at some point. She ran a community paper which is now defunct. Posner interviewed her for his book on Leonard- she made it all about their sexual encounter which was suppodedlyvery "spiritual". Camille would label that Satanic sex magic. Dianne laughs at silly Christians like Camille. Yet they both wrote to Jasun who was annoyed and blocked Camille who continued frantically emailing me accusing me of lying about my father (???)
This is bizarre, and was obviously organized by Posner who pushes the lie about me "stalking Leonard." There was never any stalking- there was celebrity pedophilia and blackmail. And likely Leonard was being blackmailed by women working for "heavies in the music world."
Camille is very confused and doesn't seem to know Dianne is a long standing pawn of the Cult, and Posner uses people like her for his own agendas and to please his bosses in Tel Aviv.
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November 13, 2025 at 10:35 AM Speaking of heartwarming tales, here's Dianne's -- shared by Posner
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid0UssA9aSnN7ySYcVrHJBX5RCZejXhmVeHXhbwbPjQ4sT7doo9PsLuB4M5pVre5JNtl&id=1388527636
• November 14, 2025 at 7:05 AM Thanks for the memories, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for the erasures. I never wanted to write this pathetic final chapter to The Man Next Door, exposing Leonard as the cowardly false Messiah he really was, encircled by followers who took his money gladly and nevet asked questions.
Camille and Dianne - you are good little.slaves. In your next lifetime try to stay off drugs. And next time some "journalist" invites you down his wormhole, just say no.
I told Posner this story back in 2018 but it was just too morally complex for his thick skull so he went for the "stalker" bs 🤥😶😶🫢🫢🫢😑😑😑😑😑which you swallowed whole
Congratulations on enabling another pervert. There's a judgment coming so please get ready.
Thanks for helping me finish my memoir. I wouldn't have done it without your "input."
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