[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxxY5RvkoPI[/youtube]

It was supposed to be part 2 of Kirsten’s birthday present (the first was the Stevie Wonder’s concert), but Kirsten is away, so I went with Maya. Which is great news: you don’t want to be with the love of your life when Leonard Cohen is around.

Leonard Cohen was the first music I have heard in my life. My older sister, Orna, made me sit and listen to him when I was about ten years old. His music is the soundtrack of my life: the love I missed, friends that I don’t see no more, hopes and dream that will never be fulfilled, sex, music, lies, emotions, memories, longing. Leonard Cohen is an angel who can make love to 10,000 people and still be intimate. He is kissing you on the cheek and makes you feel like you were ran over by a tank. He is the angel of rain demanding his due from your eyes.

When Cohen sings, I close my eyes. First I’ll take Manhattan and then I’ll take Berlin, I am a bird on a wire, in a Chelsea Hotel, I also know that the rich get rich and the good guy lost. As a writer, I should despise Cohen–he wrote some lines that you can only dream of writing. But he makes me want to be a better man, to have a chance at getting to heaven. I know: when God gets in the shower, he sings about Famous Blue Raincoat.

Leonard Cohen didn’t sing any new material tonight in Berlin. He doesn’t need to. His songs are timeless (“You told me again you preferred handsome men
but for me you would make an exception”), and he belongs to eternity (“I was born like this, I had no choice/ I was born with the gift of a golden voice”).

At some point I thought about Orna. She died when she was only 19. I opened my eyes and there was Maya in my arms, her first concert. We gave her a second name, Lior (a light for me, in Hebrew), after my older sister. There is in fact a crack in everything. And that is the only way the light comes in.