Leonard Cohen Concert

I attended a Leonard Cohen concert at the Paramount Theater in Oakland on March 3, 2013. It had been held over a second night due to the first night's sold out performance. The theater was again packed. Scheduled for 2 hours, it lasted 4 hours with 7 curtain calls and ended with the entire audience dancing and singing in the isles. He began the concert by whispering, in his deep, whiskey voice: “I don't know when we will meet again, but tonight we will give you all we've got”.

Cohen was 78 years old. I have always cherished his poetry and music but age has perfected the man beyond anything I imagined in the past. His orchestra and accompaniment are pitch perfect. He appropriately delivers many of his songs on his knees: they are deeply personal metaphors; often more prayer than song: “Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my own way to be free”.

During the magnificent performance my mind kept wandering to recently published photos of our 'Milky Way” galaxy . It is easy to feel small and powerless viewing these photos. We are dwarfed by the tiny rock we ride upon, which, in turn, is surrounded by incomprehensible immensity. In my imagination I saw the Cohen group, with Cohen's verse, musical score and the complexity of the music the musicians were making, as a defiance of the meaninglessness the universe imposes upon us. From the smoky stage I dreamt of a giant fist rising into the starry night.