Leonard Cohen – June 8th in Toronto – A Night of Intense Prayer

I’m still high from the concert last night. I have been beating my head against a wall trying to come up with the right words to describe the experience. And I’m a writer. I work with words on a daily basis. I look around me at these word bricks and none are bright enough… none are majestic enough… none will do. These bricks are blasé. They just will not capture the essence of the experience no matter how I rearrange them and sort through them for prettier ones that may be trapped at the bottom of the pile. It’s sad when that happens– when you have so much you want to say and you can’t find the words to say it. A friend asked me today what it was like. In my frustration I blurted out, “It’s like being in Church on the very day that God shows up!”

Beautiful is a generic word… it’s used so often it has kind of lost most of its meaning. I wanted to say the concert was beautiful, but it wasn’t enough.

What I saw: 10 year-olds and 90 year-olds. Suits, evening gowns, shorts and tank tops. Sweats and jeans and mops and raven-twisted beauty parlor miracles. Bald heads, aged heads, liver spots and creamy complexions of eternal youth. Leonard Cohen is a man for all of these people. He is a maestro for the ages. It’s a strange thing to go to a concert where children run with the ancient. But it is a beautiful thing (there’s that impotent word again).

What I heard: Dance Me to the End of Love, The Future, Ain’t no Cure for Love, Bird On a Wire, Everybody Knows, In My Secret Life, Who By Fire, Anthem, Tower of Song, Suzanne, Gypsy Wife, Boogie Street, Hallelujah, Democracy, I’m your Man, A Thousand Kisses Deep, Take This Waltz, Waiting for the Miracle, First We Take Manhattan, That don’t Make it Junk, If it be Your Will, Closing Time, I Tried to Leave You, and last but not least a prayer for leaving, Wither Thou Goest.

What I experienced: Total Inner Peace.

The audience… that’s the most unique thing about a Leonard Cohen concert, besides the man himself. There is a love emanating from every person present… too much love. More than they know what to do with. And there is Leonard on the stage receiving it all… appreciative of it all and sending it back in folds uncountable.

I remember being 8 and 9 years old (that was over 30 years ago now), listening to Cohen albums on my turntable and losing myself in his language–in his words. I was able to do that last night while he performed his 3rd Toronto sell-out performance. I was lost in his golden voice, in the music, in the applause and prayers of the audience. It is a concert I will never forget.

Thank you, Leonard.