Meeting Philip Glass

Last night I had the pleasure to attend the Taiwan debut of Philip Glass's work Book of Longings: Song Cycle Based on the Poetry and Artwork of Leonard Cohen at the National Concert Hall. It was a very pleasant evening, one of the most enjoyable performances I can remember, and it cast a wondrous spell on me by almost making me believe that I was watching the performance in a theater in New York City on a cold winter night.

Book of Longings is a sophisticated piece of art, featuring 22 songs in 90 minutes, integrating elements of poetry, music, visual art, and vocal performances. On the mostly darkened stage, the eight instrumentalists and a quartet resemble what you might see in a high-end bar in Chicago, New York, or Paris. Or more probably, a private performance for a group of fifty VIPs. It felt intimate, even from the 32nd row.

The first song made an especially strong impression on me. The song was called I Can't Make the Hills. The song set the tone for the rest of the night, but mostly it was Leonard Cohen's deep baritone voice reciting his poem, set to an eerily affecting music, that sent chills down my spine and made me fall in love with the work. At that instant, I felt an overwhelming gratefulness to have come to the performance. I knew I was going to enjoy the evening.

I had been looking forward to that particular evening for several weeks already ever since I listened to an interview with Philip and Leonard at the Aurora Forum at Stanford University, and became fascinated with the two men. Being a movie lover, I knew the name of Philip Glass and have heard some of his movie scores, but Leonard Cohen was a complete stranger to me. It was only through the interview that I realized how famous and prolific this Canadian singer-songwriter-poet-novelist had been all this while. The way Philip and Leonard talked in the interview---as incredibly talented collaborators would, but collaborators who respected each other so deeply they credited the success of their work on the brilliance of the other---their conversation immediately inspired in me an awe for the two men and their love of art.
At the concert, I felt like I was an ardent fan of Mr. Glass meeting him for the first time. I was so thrilled when I heard that Philip Glass was signing autographs at the ground floor after the performance. When the performers were giving their final bow before a cheering audience, my father and I slipped away to the ground floor and found ourselves in a mostly empty room in front of the ticketing booth. A lady handed us a small plastic card that read National Concert Hall, No. 1.

About 20 minutes later and with 40 more people lined up behind us, Philip Glass came out through a side door and everyone clapped. The staff ushered him to the autograph table, and another lady motioned me to come forward. I went up with my big coat on my lap and several program sheets in my left hand, and fumbled a bit as I handed him the DVD cover of the documentary about him, Glass: A Portrait of Philip in Twelve Parts. At close range, I took in his whole wrinkled face with his big eyes and slightly crazy hair. He could very well have been a passer-by I met in Paris, or perhaps my favorite uncle in an alternate life. But he is Philip Glass, and I was star-struck.

I thanked him for signing his autograph, and told him that I love his work. He said thank you, very kindly. "This is a wonderful crowd tonight," he said.

Meeting Philip Glass was one of those moments that, for ten minutes afterwards, you couldn't stop smiling, and which you had to remind yourself to wipe the smile off your face every time you thought of it for the next 24 hours. But it was quite an odd feeling too, that the morning after an evening enjoying the collaboration between a 71-year-old composer and a 74-year-old poet, I found myself in the hospital with my grandmother, my parents, and several aunts and uncles, discussing whether my frail 83-year-old grandfather should have a bypass heart surgery.


The sum of a man's life can be expressed so beautifully in poetry and music, but it seems to require a certain number of years in a man's life to gather the wisdom to do so.