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I want to be Leonard Cohen & be absurdly beautiful, right through my life, a beauty only added to by ageing.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & write in the mornings on an old typewriter, next to an ashtray in a cold water tenement in New York. Or on paper, in a sunny yard, round the back of a cottage on a Greek Island. In the afternoon, when I was done writing, I would have tasteful affairs.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & always wear incredibly cool suits.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & give off a permanent air of sad-eyed eroticism because I understand the eroticism of sadness, the sadness of eroticism.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & have lovers who are all dark and gypsyish, & our affairs will end with heartbreak but without rancour. We will all of us stay friends. They will be grateful I touched their lives. We will eat casserole together and discuss poetry and wine.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & be possibly religious but in a good and unobtrusive way that upsets no one.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & sing in a voice like caramel coffee and tell people I’m not a singer.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & probably be a really good cook, without making a fuss about it. I would cook for my gypsyish lovers, we’d eat chachouka on a warm Mediterranean night, there’d be laughter and someone would have a guitar.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & absolutely control the words. “The words control me,” I would laugh. I’d shrug and smile in a way that also conveyed shrugging, and some pride.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & be above rock music.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & be brave enough to approach cliche and win.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & to have written many masterpieces.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & move you even with a Casio backing.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & know about Lorca.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & stroll through the market nodding at fishermen and stray cats who all trust me & sense I am like them.

I want to be Leonard Cohen & leave at the right time.