The year was 1988, the place was Thessaloniki, and I was only eighteen.
One night a friend invited me at his place to listen to a record that had just been released: LEONARD COHEN �I�M YOUR MAN�.
I had never heard that name before but when a deep voice started singing the first lines of the first song: �They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom/ for trying to change the system from within�� one thing became clear to me: This man was going to take, if not Manhattan, at least a part of my heart.
But who was he? My friend couldn�t tell me more than he was a Canadian -Jew, a poet, a writer and a troubadour. A poet who sings his lines, a writer who composes music? He must be a �phenomenon� then!
The next day I got all the albums he had released until then. But it wasn�t so easy to find any of his books, in English I mean, there was no question about finding any of his books translated into Greek
�Maybe I should try one day to translate them� was my thought then - which turned into a strong wish when later I learned that the man had lived in Greece. He even owned a house on Hydra! But then why wasn�t he as known as he should be in my country?
Many years later I found myself in Canada.
I was breathing the same air now and could pic-ture better lines like these: �It�s dark and it�s snowing / I�ve got to be going / St.Lawerence River is starting to freeze�
But where was Leonard? Nobody seemed to know. Then, one evening, while searching for Cohen-related stuff in Toronto�s Public Library, I found a site: �The Leonard Cohen Files� main-tained by a guy, Jarkko Arjatsalo was his name, somewhere in Finland.
At last! All I was looking for about the man and his work was there, before my eyes. Even Leonard himself!
Yes, Mr.Cohen, who in the meantime had re-treated to a Zen monastery, was blackening pages in the brave new world of Internet from his Mt.Baldy cabin!
And what�s more, there was a whole community of people who liked his work gathered around that superb site. Heavens! I wasn�t the only one in the world looking for him!
I could never imagine that evening in the library that one day I would get to meet those people on Hydra!
Since then my life took many turns. Back to Greece, in various hotels, with a woman and the- with Matisse�s paintings book - �Dance me to the end of Love� lying on the bed - a smell of tobacco and cognac filling up the room and Leonard�s voice in the background.
Now the year is 2002, the place Kozani and I am already 32. The woman and the book �are de-parted or gone�. I don�t ever listen to that song now. Times have changed. Even Leonard�s voice has gone deeper - but it is always there in the room. His books are still not translated into Greek.
I still want to translate them one day.
I love Leonard Cohen�s poetry and I forgot what I started telling you. Goodbye.