I kind of gave up hope wishing Leonard Cohen would come to South Africa. Of course he couldn't during the apartheid years and later I suppose he just didn't want to. Finally, I heard a concert was taking place in Ireland. Not as far as Australia and no visa expenses for us like the UK.
My husband and I thought right we hadn't been abroad for years and years but we just had to get passports and go see Mr Cohen before he dies on us!
We booked flights for a week in Dublin and flew out via Istanbul. A friend from England flew out for the weekend to join us. What a great day the day of the concert was! It began in sunshine, but while we were eating breakfast down came the rain. I started the day walking along in a crinkly pink plastic bag raincoat, grinning insanely with happiness. Dublin's four-seasons-in-one-day make Cape Town's look like a mere child's in comparison!
Before the concert, I stopped eating. Just clamped down. I turned into Ramadan Hazel. I suppose my subconscious was warning me to have nil by mouth so that I wouldn't miss even a moment of my Leonard Cohen experience by going to the bathroom. Mr Cohen started singing at twenty past seven. The gates had opened by four: unforgivably people were still milling about after it had begun. Meanwhile 'Dance me to the end of love', 'The Future' and 'Bird on a wire': the man's heavenly voice was pouring out these fantastic lyrics. I was wearing an ancient alpaca coat (imagine a bag lady's accoutrement and you get the picture) - my teeth splitting my face in half like a slightly off orange! Happiness. Leonard Cohen looked so little on the stage. He was small and slight, and danced every now and then, exuberantly, after a song. We sat 27 rows from the front, on the side, and had a perfect view. I can't remember when last I felt so delighted. I thought of my husband crossing the finish line after running the Comrades. He said it was the happiest moment of his life, and I thought, yes, this is comparable, certainly.
He sang: 'Everybody knows', 'Who by fire', 'Sisters of mercy' 'Amen' I've left some out, maybe, and I can't remember exactly how 'Amen' goes, and sometimes it was purely instrumental - the guitar or mandolin (?) - and oh, the musicians were great! There was someone on this huge double-bass, and Sharon Robinson's voice has deepened and mellowed, as at the same time her face has wrinkled and aged! He played so many old favourites. We were all singing along, and my friend and I kept grabbing each other. The weather behaved itself beautifully, after acting out like a fractious toddler all day. Meanwhile, I was having an Oberammagau moment. The situation reminded me very much of the feel and look of the Passion Play I attended - ahem! - 42 years ago! (grts). The stage, covered over and with the performers all there, and us in the sun and the wind, all ten thousand of us. Little phrases of the songs - fragments - kept leaping out at me and getting stuck in my brain. Some words kept jumping out like those stereoscopic pictures that suddenly stand out of a messy-looking pattern, like "do not stoop to strategies like this". Isn't that lovely? I'll have to go look them up in the songs, just to remember. To embed them. He sang: 'In my secret life' 'Waiting for the miracle to come' 'Going home' and then 'Anthem'. After all those, it was only interval! There could have been more. Definitely there was something that I had never heard before, sung by the girls, the Webb sisters, who looked Irish. (I don't know if they are: they played the Irish harp, anyhow). Of course we had to have The Few that needed to step out to buy beer just as interval stopped who had to walk in front of us while the lovely man was singing 'Tower of Song'. But the irritation dropped off like snow melting as he moved into 'Suzanne', 'Crazy to love you', 'Night comes on' 'Field commander Cohen' 'Heart no companion' 'Gypsy wife', 'The partisan' 'Democracy' 'Coming back to you'. (I simply can't remember all in order. Just LOOK how we were spoilt, guys!) LC started singing 'Alexandra leaving' and then Sharon Robinson took over. I am not usually a fan of someone who covers one of his songs, but boy oh boy, did she render this beautifully! My husband got a lump in his throat and tears were streaming down my friend's face! Then he said and sang 'I'm your man'. By this time we were gasping and clutching each other's upper arms like schoolgirls as one after the other of these beautiful songs just kept coming and coming! We were transported. Transmogrified! He did 'Hallelujah' in this new chocolatey-deep voice of his (my daughter told me his voice has dropped an octave every decade!) and it was just gorgeous. When he started with 'Take this waltz' people moved to the aisles and the front and started waltzing. I hung back because of course I can't dance, but my friends said come on, and so I did! I loved it! I danced alone all the way up to the front where I was within spitting distance of the man, who was smiling and enjoying himself hugely. How exuberant he has become, manically enjoying the adulation as well he might. So many, many people adoring him. How lucky can he get! Not really, he deserves every bit of his fans' adoration. He is so gentlemanly and kind. This was the end of the show. But people would not stop clapping! So he did encore after encore. First: 'So long Marianne'. The audience (so many of us old and decrepit, but amazingly, a big proportion of twenty- and thirty-year-olds! I didn't see anyone in their late forties, I thought. Nor in their seventies! Those guys did NOT ever take to Leonard Cohen! All I can say to them is to what lack in themselves do they attribute their shortsightedness?) Then we all marched to 'First we take Manhattan'. We didn't stop clapping so the man gave us 'Famous Blue Raincoat'. Thank you, thank you!( At this juncture my mom would have said "Come let's go, you're murdering the poor old man!" - but did we care? No! We felt the Big Sleep is waiting in the wings, let's just keep going!) Then he did 'Anyhow' (You know, /it really is a pity/ The way you treat me now/ I know you can't forgive me/ But forgive me anyhow/ The ending, that's so ugly I even heard you say/ You never ever loved me/ But could you love me anyway/) Then these, finally, on top of all that!
'If it be your will' 'Closing Time' 'Tried to leave you' 'Save the last dance'
The songs were becoming really pertinent to the situation! . And then at last we all packed up and moved equably towards the tram, which was still running even though it was nearly midnight! He was on the stage for four hours. Wow! And, wow, wow, wow!