Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Something about Jeff Buckley singing "Hallelujah."
Maybe it was the wine. I don't roll in her arms much these days, so one ruby touch makes me raw to the aches and warm whispers of the world.
But I really do think it was Jeff Buckley. Lightly tapping on the door. His hands still wet, muddy from the Mississippi. Looking for someone to let him in. To let him sit and ready himself for leaving. To let him sit with his mortal voice once more before it falls still.
I think he drowned in the song. That there is nothing so perfect as his "Hallelujah" and he just had to breathe it in.
I think it broke Leonard Cohen. That he couldn't shoulder it. Every line is his face carries the mark of "Hallelujah." That he tried to speak of it's golden plumes, it's floating vapors with his heavy tongue. "Hallelujah" couldn't bear the blackness of the ink of it creator's pen. A beautiful child, but a bastard child still. Uncertain. It sullied itself in Leonard Cohen's throat, wallowed in the coldness of cheap organ treatments and a gospel choir-for-hire and it died there.
But Jeff Buckley simply tied it around his brow and floated off to heaven.
And so did I.
I hugged my daughter first. I breathed her in and drowned in the goodness of her little being.
Hallelujah
Maybe it was the wine. I don't roll in her arms much these days, so one ruby touch makes me raw to the aches and warm whispers of the world.
But I really do think it was Jeff Buckley. Lightly tapping on the door. His hands still wet, muddy from the Mississippi. Looking for someone to let him in. To let him sit and ready himself for leaving. To let him sit with his mortal voice once more before it falls still.
I think he drowned in the song. That there is nothing so perfect as his "Hallelujah" and he just had to breathe it in.
I think it broke Leonard Cohen. That he couldn't shoulder it. Every line is his face carries the mark of "Hallelujah." That he tried to speak of it's golden plumes, it's floating vapors with his heavy tongue. "Hallelujah" couldn't bear the blackness of the ink of it creator's pen. A beautiful child, but a bastard child still. Uncertain. It sullied itself in Leonard Cohen's throat, wallowed in the coldness of cheap organ treatments and a gospel choir-for-hire and it died there.
But Jeff Buckley simply tied it around his brow and floated off to heaven.
And so did I.
I hugged my daughter first. I breathed her in and drowned in the goodness of her little being.
Hallelujah
