A singer who does not age and is old

The baker gives me my coffee with milk and says: "Oh, girl, sorry, I only slept two hours today and I'm..." The retirees having breakfast put down their phones and conversations and listen. "So how come you slept two hours? Was your night complicated?" I ask, laughing. "Complicating the night" is the funny synonym for when someone has had a date that ended with a handstand. "I went to Sabina!" he exclaims.

At the bar, some of the women, aged fifty and up, ask him how it was. They all know him and all the songs. The baker, while she's serving coffees (all with a small croissant on the saucer), says: "I gave it my all. He didn't!" And they start talking about how old he is, how he was sitting the whole time, how his longtime backup singer sings some of the most famous songs... He doesn't even see the point, nor does he jump around the stage (which he never did: singer-songwriters don't jump). Witty lines, as always, and the jokes about age, inevitable, it seems. I've never been a fan of Sabina, but I understand very well what they're saying.

There's always a day when, seeing your artist on stage, you think that maybe this will be the last time. I thought about it with Leonard Cohen, in Barcelona. Looking at those people, talking about this, in this small village bar-oven, I understand very well, perhaps more than ever, the idea of art. You go to a concert not for what your favorite artist is, but for what they were. And you, remembering who you were when the artist you love was also, call and scream your head off to cover up the fact that they no longer have a voice. But they did. And that voice you had, singing those songs, is a huge part of your story.