Thursday 9th August
And we are back to the music again; of course, it never went away. I first heard Leonard Cohen in a grotty flat in Stockwell. I was 18, and Carol only 15. We were lovers, but not like that. In fact we were desperate lovers, besotted and blind, at least I was. Carol was still experimenting and I was scared she would leave me, which of course she did eventually. I still had time to listen to Leonard singing So Long Marianne, and it was time for me to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again. The years went by, and when another woman was leaving I was listening and crying in the night ‘Where, oh where is my gypsy wife tonight.’ When I had recovered and was dating again I felt that I was your man, but when it all went wrong I knew that there was indeed a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in. And I saw him in 1983, and then a long time later in 2009 and again the following year, when a sprightly old man in a suit and a fedora held an audience captive in his hands for nearly three hours as we sung our own Hallelujah’s together. So along with Leonard, the constant poet of my heart, I have changed my style to silver, and even in the darkest moments I am brought back to life by the man who told me when he came he was a stranger. Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye. Of all the artists I love and cherish, none are so important as Leonard Cohen, singing each day in the tower of song.
