Near the end of my Zoom interview with Jarvis Cocker, the inexhaustibly creative Pulp frontman excitedly reached for something just beyond the screen's frame. He was sitting in the house he's been sharing with his longtime partner and recent bride, Kim Sion, and his well-appointed office had some talismans nearby, apparently. Cocker waved an envelope toward the camera, one marked with some Buddhist script. That made sense — we'd been talking about Leonard Cohen, one of Cocker's heroes, who'd been a Zen monk during the latter part of his life. I thought Cocker might pull out some kind of prayer card, but what he soon showed me was a blank check.

Cohen spontaneously gave Cocker that gift (not genuinely cashable, of course) as they talked about the strange and sometimes stressful life of the

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