You'd have to see my copy of his first LP, possession of my adolescent years, to understand-- the cover barely holding together, the outline of the record worn through. The record player could just keep repeating one side of the album over and over; you could lie on your bed and drift off. ("And then leaning on your window sill he'll say one day you caused his will to weaken with your love and warmth and shelter And then taking from his wallet an old schedule of trains, he'll say I told you when I came I was a stranger.")

I was also big then on Judy Collins's Wildflowers and, say what you will about Judy Blue Eyes, she had a knack for finding new songwriters, like Joni Mitchell and Leonard Cohen. Wildflowers included "Sisters of Mercy" and "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye" and "Priests."

Also, the novels and poetry. I carried Poems of Leonard Cohen and The Spice-Box of Earth around with me with my schoolbooks, and swooned over lines like: "I am speechless/because you have fallen beside me/because your eyelashes/are the spines of tiny fragile animals." (And that's from memory.)

1971: The soundtrack for Robert Altman's McCabe and Mrs. Miller, a gorgeous, moody dream of a movie, included "Sister of Mercy," "Stranger Song," and "Winter Lady," a dazzling marriage of music and image. (Apparently, Altman's copies of that first album--they say he wore out several-- were as tattered as mine.)

Lost track of him (Cohen, not Altman) for a time; he retreated for a time; I rediscovered him now and then, that voice so familiar, somewhat soothing, sometimes vaguely ominous, because he's been places and knows some secrets.

You probably heard about the business associate who absconded with his dough a few years ago, but thank god there's "Hallelujah" to pull in the royalties. And if economic necessity means he has to tour, well, I'm thrilled to pony up, because for all the shows I went to see back in the '70s (and I think I saw nearly every singer-songwriter there was, some now lost to obscurity), somehow LC and I never crossed paths, so it's about time we did, and it's now or maybe never.

Hence, the newly restored Beacon Theatre last night, me and some other aging Upper West Side folkie boomers; couldn't be a more suitable neighborhood venue, I tell you, steps away from Zabar's and Fairway and H & H Bagels, a neighborhood where you still see Obama buttons. The congregants showed up at temple to hear a spiritual adviser offer some prayers and meditations on the past and the future, on love and loss and endurance. He's wise and wry, gray and gallant, a monk and a mystic, and still, inevitably, a poet, and I don't use that often-pretentious word to describe any old tunesmith who can throw some pretty phrases together; probably only he could recite, say, "A Thousand Kisses Deep" and come across sincere, not sentimental. He's more playful than you'd think: "I turned to a study of religion and philosophies, " he says, "but cheerfulness kept breaking through." He offers a nearly three-hour set, including what you think he thinks we all want to hear (Famous Blue Raincoat, Sisters of Mercy, Suzanne, Hey, that's No Way to Say Goodbye, Chelsea Hotel, First We'll Take Manhattan, Anthem, I'm Your Man, Hallelujah [of course], So Long, Marianne [!], etc.), introduces his musicians (twice) with gratitude, bows a namaste bow, tells us it's cold out, don't catch a cold, and skips (literally, skips) off the stage.

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