so someone awesome
Jan. 7th, 2011 02:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maevele
posted a Big Thoughts post about Hallelujah. and I wrote a novel in their comments section, of stuff I've meant to talk about regarding my embarrassingly personal relationship and overwrought thoughts to that song.
so, I copy paste
I need to sit with this post for a while. I may spend all day on this comment. This is the song I have the MOST feelings about. I have, honestly, a deep intimate relationship with this song.
I first heard Jeff Buckley's version, right around the time I was marrying Z. He heard one of Jeff's singles on the radio, bought the album, and was all "OMG YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS" and a lot of the album hit me hard as fuck, but it was Hallelujah that wrecked me first. So it's all tied up with the early part of my relationship, and i get that as a "love song" it's not, like, the one you want representing your relationship, but so it goes.
When we saw Buckley live, and he did the hallelujah, it was one of those epic exeriences that are rare even with great musicians. It was spiritual, sexual, emotional, too much. When jeff died, my grief tied to that song, and to that performance of it in particular.
I didn't start listening to other versions of it til after the death. It was too hard to listen to buckley's version, but the song was still a need for me, so I started hunting down other versions. The first time I heard cohen's original version, I realized that for all the pure aching beauty of buckley's version, the raw darkness of cohen's version was just as good, just more pained.
Once, I took HQ to open mic at the union. and he was restless, so we were wandering the edges of the terrace, and found these two guys with acoustic guitars practicing for their spot at open mic, and they were working on a two part harmony of Hallelujah. And they were a little rough, like they both knew the song but had never played it together, And we sat just out of their way, and listened to them work it through over and over for like at least half an hour, and by the time they took the stage, I felt like I really knew these guys, and sorta like I had watched them make love. And these two nervous little college boys fucking KILLED the terrace with that song.
A version I don't think you mentioned is Damien Rice's. He does it as part of his song Cold Water, which is a disturbing combination, and it's a pure jeff tribute version. I saw him do it live the same venue we saw jeff do it, and I was brought not just to tears but to wracking sobs.
The cover that I find most emotionally close to cohen's version though? Is Bono's. It's electronic and creepy, but it has the emotional harsh effect of the cohen versions for me.
Thinking on the content rather than different versions, I agree with your takes, and also want to add a layer of meaning I see in it related to your point about songs and chants. It's a song about a song. A song about the singing, even. (I have a whole meta post in my head about songs about the singing and this one is central to it, but I'll just do it here) It's about the very holiness of the nature of song to me. And of the physical act of singing. "from your lips she drew" "Nothing on my tongue but" "every breath we drew was" all, like, sanctifies the actual physical act. and I think the singing is not just a metaphor for the holy and romantic loves, but another facet of the love itself. If anything, the religion is a metaphor for the holiness of the act of singing, not the other way around?
Did I mention I have a LOT OF FEELINGS with this song? I'm listening to that Imogen Heap version right now and it is KILLING ME.
I may have more later, but I have to stop for now.
so, I copy paste
I need to sit with this post for a while. I may spend all day on this comment. This is the song I have the MOST feelings about. I have, honestly, a deep intimate relationship with this song.
I first heard Jeff Buckley's version, right around the time I was marrying Z. He heard one of Jeff's singles on the radio, bought the album, and was all "OMG YOU HAVE TO HEAR THIS" and a lot of the album hit me hard as fuck, but it was Hallelujah that wrecked me first. So it's all tied up with the early part of my relationship, and i get that as a "love song" it's not, like, the one you want representing your relationship, but so it goes.
When we saw Buckley live, and he did the hallelujah, it was one of those epic exeriences that are rare even with great musicians. It was spiritual, sexual, emotional, too much. When jeff died, my grief tied to that song, and to that performance of it in particular.
I didn't start listening to other versions of it til after the death. It was too hard to listen to buckley's version, but the song was still a need for me, so I started hunting down other versions. The first time I heard cohen's original version, I realized that for all the pure aching beauty of buckley's version, the raw darkness of cohen's version was just as good, just more pained.
Once, I took HQ to open mic at the union. and he was restless, so we were wandering the edges of the terrace, and found these two guys with acoustic guitars practicing for their spot at open mic, and they were working on a two part harmony of Hallelujah. And they were a little rough, like they both knew the song but had never played it together, And we sat just out of their way, and listened to them work it through over and over for like at least half an hour, and by the time they took the stage, I felt like I really knew these guys, and sorta like I had watched them make love. And these two nervous little college boys fucking KILLED the terrace with that song.
A version I don't think you mentioned is Damien Rice's. He does it as part of his song Cold Water, which is a disturbing combination, and it's a pure jeff tribute version. I saw him do it live the same venue we saw jeff do it, and I was brought not just to tears but to wracking sobs.
The cover that I find most emotionally close to cohen's version though? Is Bono's. It's electronic and creepy, but it has the emotional harsh effect of the cohen versions for me.
Thinking on the content rather than different versions, I agree with your takes, and also want to add a layer of meaning I see in it related to your point about songs and chants. It's a song about a song. A song about the singing, even. (I have a whole meta post in my head about songs about the singing and this one is central to it, but I'll just do it here) It's about the very holiness of the nature of song to me. And of the physical act of singing. "from your lips she drew" "Nothing on my tongue but" "every breath we drew was" all, like, sanctifies the actual physical act. and I think the singing is not just a metaphor for the holy and romantic loves, but another facet of the love itself. If anything, the religion is a metaphor for the holiness of the act of singing, not the other way around?
Did I mention I have a LOT OF FEELINGS with this song? I'm listening to that Imogen Heap version right now and it is KILLING ME.
I may have more later, but I have to stop for now.
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 10:44 pm (UTC)I think the Abrahamic religions are very much like this, or metaphors for the breath that animates both song and speech and thus at least one aspect of meeting another at the point of language's origin. There are some things I think that they get very wrong when they take off running with the metaphor, but if we stick with the event of the emergence of song (which I like even better than the emergence of speech--thank you!) then I think we can begin to appreciate the diversity of voices that approach us and possibly even begin to find a way to communicate with whatever waits before song, or underneath it: what cannot be captured in song but is immediately necessary for song to begin. The breath is something like a metonymic stand-in for the unsingable prelude to song and I think that we as an Abrahamic culture could learn something from other traditions which profess to be able to hear it as other-than-human song and speech, or not-the-word, or not-god.
If that makes sense. This is one of those things that I write thesis-long comments about. :)
no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 11:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-01-07 11:12 pm (UTC)