I saw Leonard Cohen and company perform last night. Something that you may not realize when you listen to his recordings is that he skips a lot. No, I don’t mean that he skips over lyrics. I mean he frequently man-gallops. Perhaps it was only for this Phoenix, AZ audience, though. And perhaps he only skips off and on stage. He did this for at least five encores. For one encore, he played my favorite song, “Democracy”:

It’s coming to America first
The cradle of the best and of the worst
It’s here they’ve got the range
And the machinery for change
And it’s here they’ve got the spiritual thirst
It’s here the family’s broken
And it’s here the lonely say
That the heart has got to open
In a fundamental way
Democracy is coming
To the USA

The quote of the evening might’ve been this: “Things are kind of shaky in the world right now. I hear this might be as bad as Y2K.” He of course followed this with “Anthem,” whose chorus is as follows:

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in

I’d say I loved the show, but, hey, let’s not talk of love or chains or things we can’t untie.