Hallelujah

There's a blaze of light in every word,

It doesn't matter which you heard,

the holy, or the broken, Hallelujah.

-Leonard Cohen

Sometimes liking a song becomes a relationship.  For me, my love for Leonard Cohen started pretty young, much younger than most, thanks to having a Father who was into strange music.  In fact, I owe most of my acquired musical tastes to my Dad: Dylan, Cohen, Zappa, even Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (if you know that last one, you too are into weird music).  I picked up Tom Waits in college and that pretty much rounds out my collection of artists who are sort of like scotch, coffee, dark beer or really strong horseradish, in other words you might not like them at first, but if you give them time you might just become obsessive about them.

I was already familiar with Cohen's song Hallelujah, before Shrek came out, and admit to a practically giddy response when Loudon Wainright's rendition of the song started during the decisive scene of a movie about an animated ogre.  It was one of those, "yes, now the regular world is more awesome!" sorts of moments.  Like when I discovered that Tom Waits wrote Downtown Train instead of Rod Stewart, the universe made more sense.

Hallelujah is an absolutely amazing song.  It can be sung as a fairly standard, but touching love song, as it is most commonly performed by sources as diverse as K.D. Lang, Jeff Buckley, Loudon Wainright and freaking Justin Timberlake.  In fact, it has gotten to the point where I say, "Momma, there that song again," whenever someone breaks it out for some benefit concert or an American Idol performance.  In these cases, it is mostly distilled down to three or maybe four verses.  The first two are always the same, it begins "I heard there was a secret chord, that David played and it pleased the Lord..."  And then proceeds to conflate the story of David and Bathsheba with the narrative of Sampson and Delilah, Cohen is Jewish so I'll grant him the liberty to do such things with the Hebrew texts.  The third verse sometimes, depending on the version, sometimes delves into the theology of the original song, which as recorded and published is six verses long, though I read somewhere that Cohen has written as many as 80 verses to the song, and performs various renditions here and there.  Given his skill as a songwriter, I don't doubt it.

However, truncating the song after the third verse can leave you with the notion that it's just a song about how difficult human love can be sometimes, which is true and powerful and beautiful all at the same time, don't get me wrong, but allow me to bless you non-Cohen-aphiles with the lyrics to the last three verses of the song:

There was a time when you let me know,

What's really going on below,

but now you never show that to me do you?

But remember when I moved in you?

And the holy dove was moving too?

And every breath we drew was hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above, 

but all I've really learned from love

was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you.

There's a blaze of light in every word,

it doesn't matter which you heard

the holy or the broken hallelujah

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

Even though it all went wrong,

I'll stand before the Lord of Song

with nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah.

Now, I get why these verses have not made it into the more popular renditions of the song, first of all six verses tend to leave a lot less time for riffing on the chorus, which can be done with large gospel choirs or gravelly folk voices alike, but also because they ask really difficult questions and make it rather clear that this song is not a song to a difficult lover, but a prayer to God.

Blurring the lines between the spiritual journey and a difficult love affair is pretty deep water indeed.  That's why Cohen is a great songwriter, because he swims there.  He swims there like the prophets and the psalmists, he swims there like Jesus in Gethsemane, he swims in the water that is terrifying and unknowable.  He swims in pain and heartache and in absolute faith.

He swims where much more polite and safe religious music never does.  It's not praise per se, but it expresses a deep love for God.  It's not clean and safe, it's holy.

There are a few songs that I cannot get away from, and this is one of them. (If you're curious, That Feel, by Tom Waits and Keith Richards is another, and Hard Rain, by Bob Dylan is another, as is Hurt by NIN or Johnny Cash, as is The Needle and the Damage Done, by Neil Young).  But I think it is telling that the popular version of the song has de-thorned the rose.  Because that's what we do in order to make things popular, we radio-edit them, take out any bad words or challenging thoughts, sometimes it's borderline ridiculous.

So have we done that with church?

Have we sanitized the Gospel for mass appeal?

Have we hidden the wrestling and the lament in order to appear to have answers?

Have we mopped up the blood on the floor so that it doesn't offend?

Maybe, in our desire to be popular, we have lost something.

Hallelujah.