This Waltz

“Asked whether he also does yoga to build strength and agility for his stage shows, Mr. Cohen, his demeanor courtly but reserved, smiled and replied, “That is my yoga.”’
- The New York Times. Feb. 24, 2009.

Last year I saw Leonard Cohen in concert. Wearing a sleek dark suit and a black fedora he did his amazingly elegant and sexy brand of yoga for three hours in front of a full house. And the audience responded with their own asana, one called Standing Ovation which occurred after almost every song.

Breathing and singing, singing and breathing, circular and deep, Mr. Cohen moved through his oeuvre like an angel moving through heaven. As for me and my yogic inhalations and exhalations, well, Mr. C just stole my breath away.

My partner and I paid huge bucks for seats close to the front and it was worth it. The first thing Leonard said after he ran out on stage was: "Thank you for being here. I know you've been inconvenienced...financially... to get here..." Thunderous applause for his humility and humour. "I haven't been on stage in 15 years,” he told us. “I was 60 then - just a kid with a crazy dream."

I grew up with Leonard’s poetry and music. In high school my best friend and I quoted his poetry and sang his mystic refrains. We hitchhiked to Long Beach on Vancouver Island one summer where the hippies were squatting in shacks of their own devising and perhaps searching for “heroes in the seaweed”. And there I learned to play Suzanne on the guitar.

Leonard sang Suzanne at the concert last year. It was the only song he did that night with an acoustic guitar. I had the great pleasure of sitting just seats away from Joni Mitchell who had also come to assume a prayer pose of the heart for Leonard Cohen, street poet, troubadour, yogi, magician. He gave us four encores.

At night's end he stood in the spotlight, his extraordinary nose cutting into the white light as he took his hat off, put it over his heart, and sang: “There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” I believe him.

photo "Star at Long Beach" by Marie Wilson
profile pic by Aaron Schwartz