Learn From It

It always throws me, perhaps more than it should (but then again, maybe less than it should), when certain wishes come true. And when one doesn't even know the wish, and it comes true anyway, well, what the hell do you do with that?

I speak of k.d. lang's new album, Hymns of the 49th Parallel. And actually, I speak of a particular song on that album, Hallelujah.

This is a song written by Leonard Cohen and I originally heard it as part of a tribute album, I'm Your Fan sung by John Cale. It's a quiet and intimate song that, at times, also achieves soaring heights with expansive intervals. It's a song that contains, in my mind, the single most story-dense lyrics ever written:

I heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord,
But you don't really care for music, do you?

It's a commentary on another person, both scathing and dispassionate, bitter and resigned. In the context of the relationship in question, it speaks just as much about the singer. Maybe even more.

John Cale's voice is a good fit; someone with a far more powerful voice would have been better, I always thought. So when Bono of U2 did his own version of the song, I was thrilled. Then I was disappointed: he sang it with one of his whispery—and, dare I say it, all-too-precious—voices. Well past October.

So it's a song that I've been going back to for years. It's a bit of a respite from the world, saved for those times when I'm particularly sensitive (some might say over-sensitive) to the lack of importance the world places on the marvelous, the enchanted, the live-a-day numinous.

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

The world in these times is lousy with the ordinary; the letters of the law grab pitchforks and oil torches in hopes of exorcising the spirit of the law. The legions of the faithful who demand proof, who don't want to feel so they insist on merely touching (sometimes violently), who fear being made the fool to such a degree that they're willing to sacrifice joy as well.

We all make our own ways in the world, each and all ultimately alone, though there is joy and comfort and companionship and love along the way. Why do so many trade that multiplicity for a foolish consistency of abject, defensive rancor?

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Give k.d. lang's version of this song a listen. There is absolutely no literal value to the song, but an embarrassment of riches in all those other things that mean so much to me. There's a blaze of light in every word...