It’s funny, after I finish writing these pieces, usually posted on Sunday morning, my very next thought is, what the hell am I going to write about next week? I don’t seem to take much consolation or confidence from that fact that I have been doing this for six years now. I guess some degree of insecurity is what keeps writers writing and painters painting and anyone, who has to dig inside themselves in order to travel just one blink outside their skin. I guess it would be easy if all I did was share stories from my past. I have an endless supply. However, I have this problem about repeating myself and I have done them to death, at least in my mind.
As usual, I began the week with the good old tabula rasa, figuring something would pop up, because it always has. At the same time, thinking nothing will happen, that uncomfortable itch that always needs scratching. Even though I do my weekly worry, I try and give myself my Monday reward for having gotten away with it one more time over the weekend.
Comforting in my free, mental ride, I got on my stationary bike, securing the earbuds in place, beginning the harmonious interplay between music and muscle, peddling into the sounds and rhythms I have grown to love over the years. I own them as if their creation is mine alone. Somewhere within this neurotically, induced syncopated thirty minutes of movement, Jeff Buckley slipped in, singing Hallelujah.
I don’t know much about Jeff Buckley, but I do know his life was steeped in sadness. His musician father, Tim, died of a heroin overdose at the terribly early age of twenty-eight. Listening to Jeff, you get the feeling this guy is paper thin and everything gets through to him, screaming in pain just under his skin, permanently damaged by his history. Listening to him sing Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, stops you where you breathe, at least that’s what it always does to me. It’s this soulful prayer to God, hoping to be heard and blessed for being here, just trying to see beyond the clouds, where heaven awaits.
I have read when the suits originally heard this song, they all jammed their thumbs down on the possibility of it having any commercial legs. Well, K.D. Laing has made it one of the song she owns and her rendition is spectacular. Leonard Cohen has always sung it as if the lyrics were carved into several, stone tablets, carried down with him from heaven. Jeff Buckley sings it like an angel, whose wings have been fractured, forcing him to be earthbound, drowning under the weight of his own breath, which is what happened to this delicate creature.
Having no idea where I was going at the beginning of my weekly, creative trek, I knew this song and my feelings about it, would be a part of the empty page I had yet to fill. Hell, I have maintained for years and years now, there are no accidents and everything that happens is supposed to happen. A few days after the Hallelujah Hosea epiphany, I had an exchange with a dear friend. She was troubled by two unrelated issues, the incredibly surreal political theatre, which all of us have front row seats for and the reality that her children were growing up and to a degree growing away.
I have this writer’s affliction. I feel I must respond to every communication, whether from friend or stranger, with some words showing I have been incredibly thoughtful and introspective. With people I care about, it is especially infectious. I want to share with you what I wrote to her and then get back to Hallelujah, dumb as it sounds.
“I was going to let your response go and call it done, but you know me. If you stepped back and watched what is going on and maintained a degree of disconnection, it hurts far less. We are both witnesses and participants in all that goes on around us. We actually have very little control over any of it. Two obvious examples are our political theatre of the absurd and our relationship with our children. However, neither situation is a justification for victimhood, which I am definitely not accusing you of.
I am going to take a wild guess and say that coming to terms with the independence of our children is the bigger deal. I am also going to go out on a very short limb and say that mothers have a much more challenging time than the guys. I don’t think men really bother to think about the extraordinary nature of pregnancy and birth and how we can’t touch that kind of connection. The funny thing is that the better job you do of nurturing your kids, the stronger they will grow. When they leave the nest, our physical importance diminishes dramatically. With that said, the blood connection is forever. Of course, when it goes askew, which frequently happens, the nest can morph into an emotional prison. This has been partially my parental experience. I know you have done a great job. Mothers and fathers are forever in the hearts of their children, whether they learn to understand this primal dynamic or not.
As far as the bigger picture goes, that’s precisely what it is. The pictures that are far smaller, the ones about our lives and how we live them, are the ones where we can control the focus and the lighting. I now try and look through the lens of my everyday life, growing an album of moments I feel good about. Sure, every now and then, there are some lousy ones I could do without, but overall there are none I would throw away.”
Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is both a paean and an elegy to love and life, the light and the dark, that lives within all of us. It is a terribly fragile balance and embracing that frailty is where our true strength comes from. The idea that life is easy is a myth and so many of us are shocked and fractured by the truth. After all my years and hopefully more to come, I believe with all my heart life is worth living. Mistakes and miscalculations are inevitable, but today is a precious gift.
“I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah”