11 september 2012, I love to speak to leonard

For my birthday - ten to midnight, 9 9 69, though officially the tenth - I got a surprise trip to see leonard cohen, a wonderful old trooper who's a cross between a blues brother and al pacino, who he strongly resembles. It was an absolutely magical evening, four hours from start to finish, with no support and endless songs that I somehow knew smoothly going from one to the next even as you thought there couldn't possibly be more. It was simple and elegant, melodic and poignant and the most mysterious lyrics of anyone, stroked out ever deeper, in every sense. They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom, for trying to change the system from within. I'm coming now, I'm coming to reward them. First we take manhattan, then we take berlin.