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“The blizzard of the world has crossed the threshold,
and it’s overturned the order of the soul”

“And even though it all went wrong,
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song. . .”

When we got off the Frontier Airlines flight at the Denver International Airport on that rainy Tuesday, Tlaloc was roaring.  The sky looked like a giant gray sandbag.  The wind blew wet and cold.  We stood at the Advantage Car Rental pick up area for what must have been a half hour.  We joked as the Advantage sign hung over our heads:

“What are we doing here?”

We’re waiting for Godot!”

A fellow customer smiled, “So this is why they are a third the price of the competition!”

The Advantage van finally rescued us.   I had pulled out my jacket that I normally use on mild winter days.  Doug had put on his “Famous Blue Raincoat.”  Our umbrellas were open.  We knew the weather would be bad, but the tickets read “rain or shine.”  We knew it would rain,  and we were prepared to sit though the cold and the wet.

When we arrived at the Advantage counter, we found ourselves among several Cohen fans, all who had come from out of town, all having flown in to see the concert.  They had come from Little Rock, New York, Miami, Dallas.  An animated Scottish man claimed to have met “Lenny” in New York through someone who knows his sister.

I asked him, the Scot recounted,  Lenny, are you ever going to do another tour?  His eyes lit up like diamonds, and he said ‘I would love that!’  And he was–you know–just a regular guy, a guy like us. . .  He put me totally at ease. . .

In the parking lot, we talked to our Scottish friend, who had seen Cohen perform recently at some of his other shows.  Tlaloc continued his relentless tantrum of wind and water, and it didn’t bother us.  They sky looked like it was going to come down.  We commented on the violent weather, not on the unmentionable possibility.  I maybe thought it once or twice, but quickly dismissed it.

Rain or Shine, the tickets read.  Rain or Shine.

His voices sounded so good, and the band, the band is amazing.  So tight.  The best band I’ve ever heard.  There’s this guy from Barcelona, Javier Mas, who plays these stringed instruments that nobody’s seen before–and those background singers, that woman who collaborates with him, what’s her name. . . Sharon Robinson, and the Webb Sisters!  Incredible!  Incredible!

Rain kept on falling, and our friend kept on raving.

. . .and they played for over three hours, and did–like–five encores.  Incredible!  You guys will be amazed. . .

Doug’s trusty GPS led us to the Holiday Inn, in Golden.  I kept sticking my hand out the window to see if the rain had stopped.  Rain or Shine.  Tlaloc fought on.

***

A pretty young blonde whose bangs were dyed dark was working the check-in counter:

Are you gentlemen here for business or pleasure?. . . Oh, oh, I’m sorry!  You see all those people there in the lobby?  Oh my God, I’m so sorry!  It’s been canceled!  They’re postponing it until Thursday. . .

I think we both went numb.  The lobby was full of pilgrims like us.  Travelers from afar: L.A.; Miami; Spokane; Perth, Australia; Iraq.  Somebody came from Iraq to see Leonard Cohen at Red Rocks!

We did the math, talked to our families, tried to contact our bosses.  If it would have been one night. . .but two?  Two more nights in the hotel.  To more days with the car.  Meals.  Missed days from work.  A new return ticket.

To stay would not be feasable.  The trip was already a financial sacrifice for both of us.  Thursday I had graduation rehearsal for the high school where I taught.  And was there any guarantee that the concert would go on Thursday?

“Your students need you to be there,” my mother said, when I called to ask if she would be willing to watch my children for a couple more days while my wife attended her evening college courses.

***

“I can’t stay.  You stay if you want.  I won’t mind,” I told Doug.

“Alright, that’s all I need to hear,” he said.  “We’ll go home tomorrow.  It’s just a rock show.”  But is was much more than that, and we both knew it.

Neither one of us had eaten since early morning, and despite our profound disappointment, we were both hungry.  We got in the small Toyota that we had rented, and we drove out of town, to see where it would take us.  We swerved up a mountain road, and unknowingly, flew past the Red Rocks entrance, and went into the town of Morrison.  We saw a small restaurants, and opted for Mexican, comfort food familiar to us westerners.  I don’t remember the name of the restaurant (my web queries lead me to believe that it was The Morrison Inn.)  The food turned out be average, but they serve margaritas and 34-ounce mugs of locally microbrewed beer, and have an Addams Family pinball machine and an Air Hockey Table.  Enough said.  We also became the bearers of bad news to several other hapless concert-goers, several fellow pilgrims.

From there we went to the mall, hit a couple more bars, and eventually retired to our room at the Holiday Inn.  The occasion was not, overall,  morose.  We told jokes, quoted lines from favorite movies, and reminisced about people and experiences from our mostly innocent youth.  Occasionally, between the laughter, quips and one-liners, we would remember why we had come, and we would go silent, holding in our disappointment, wanting to rage like Tlaloc.

At about 3 a.m., the power at our hotel went out.  It didn’t matter much, not to us–not even reason for complaint after what we had been through.   We rose early, packed up, ate breakfast and headed to the airport, with the same mostly jovial spirit in which we had spent the evening.  At worst the trip had turned out to provided an extended period for two old friends and fellow travellers, long separated by time and circumstance, to reaquaint.  That is not a bad thing.

***

Back in Utah, two weeks have passed, and Tlaloc has been active every day since we returned home.  Unusual weather for Salt Lake City.  Doug had to return to Denver on Friday, the day after the rescheduled concert, to attend his step son’s lacrosse tournament, a trip that would last until the following Monday.  His son did well in the tournament, but he ended up spending part of Monday in a tornado shelter.

Thursday night, however,–the night of the rescheduled concert–the weather was “cheery”, though.  No rain.  Tlaloc was appeased by the Cohen’s poetry and deep, deep voice.  He was appeased by the angelic choruses of the “sublime Webb Sisters” and Sharon Robinson, by the transcendent arpeggios of Javier Mas and his arsenal of double-stringed instruments.  The Denver Post gave a rave review.

I remain heartbroken.  I will never regret the trip, never regret spending time with a good friend, and never regret almost being able to see Leonard Cohen in concert.  But there will always be something tugging quietly at my soul.

His North American tour has ended, and he and his band will get a much-needed break before they head to Europe and Israel.  Rumors fly on the web about another North American leg.  Someone on the Leonard Cohen forum even mentions a rumor of plans to play in Salt Lake.   I don’t take these seriously at all, but what if they are true?  Cohen does seem like he has gotten his second wind.  He and his band play generously and enthusiastically in the Live in London video, and reviews of his tour have been stellar.

Odds are, though, we will never see another extensive tour from Leonard Cohen.  Whatever happens, we have his recordings, and for most of us, that will have to do.