LOVE IS NOT A VICTORY MARCH

On Saturday night I heard a singer/songwriter cover "Hallelujah".

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

I've heard the song many times in many iterations.  There's the original Leonard Cohen version, of course, and the Jeff Buckley, which is phenomenal.  I remember the song played over the final credits of Julian Schnabel's movie Basquiat (a flawed but good movie, I still contend, despite the historical irregularities and art hysteria.  For more on Schnabel see this post.)  I once heard a Balkan gypsy band cover the song at the Ukranian National Home in the East Village, and I have sung it myself, looking out at Manhattan and at the river, when I could still see those things from my living room windows, while my boyfriend accompanied me on his classical guitar.  Our audience was ourselves, some unwitting neighbors, and my cat who, if asked the question at the end of the stanza quoted above would answer if she could:  No.  No I don't care for music.  Thanks for asking.

It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
Its a cold and its a broken Hallelujah!

There's a long tradition of Jewish songwriters writing Christian spirituals.  Summertime was written by a Jew, after all.

I always loved this part:

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.

I used to live alone before I knew you--we're in a world, as my last writing teacher would say.  And the world has things in it that are hard to understand, things like The Lord of Song and oblique sexual references and the problems of songwriting.  But it also has people who know rooms.  People who sit on chairs.  People who have histories that are filled with things we all understand like loneliness.  I used to live alone before I knew you.

She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

It is a beautiful song, which is why I've heard it so many times in so many ways.  And there is something so therapeutic about singing Hallelujah over and over again, unapologetically, as if speaking to  the Lord of Song or love or something or someone equally big and important.  But there is something that is also sad about it.  I think it is the quietness of the droning repetition that makes it seem like whomever the singer is addressing is not listening, is gone.

THERE'S NO BUSINESS LIKE IT

On Friday night I went with my boss to see Guys and Dolls on Broadway. After the show we went backstage and congratulated his friends in the cast, of which there were many. It is intensely awkward back there, in the wings of the theater, re-introducing oneself to people who just performed for thousands. "Thanks for inviting me to your Bar Mitzvah," I said lamely to one of the stars, in a poorly-conceived attempt to dissipate the awkwardness. "Here's your check for eighteen dollars. Don't spend it all in one place."

I always hated seeing people after my own shows. I could never stomach those exchanges.

We ended the night at Bar Centrale, a restaurant on 46th Street, that is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful in New York. Before we ordered I excused myself to use the bathroom. Finding it occupied I turned back towards our table. I saw my boss, his friends, his girlfriend. The place was lousy with actors and theater enthusiasts, underlit and hushed, dressed in perfect casual finery, leaning over tables under oversized light fixtures, or perched on zebra-print bar stools. I stood for a minute and I thought about "show people", and how lucky I'd been to find myself with such priveledged access to this environment. I thought about being a young girl and listening to Barbra Streisand's Broadway album from my white dual-deck stereo, imagining Broadway as a magical, glamorous, glistening place where all the women wore hats and stoles and all the men could jump to high heaven and hold a long note.

"Bess, you is my woman now," I'd sung to my reflection. "You is, you is, and I ain't going no where no how, less'n you share the fuuun!"

A CONVERSATION FROM LAST NIGHT

A friend of mine (a cantorial soloist) argued that really good Jewish music can be as joyful and transcendent as good gospel music. I am currently listening to Aretha Franklin's album, Amazing Grace. Now, nobody loves the hora more than I do. The sweaty-handed, nauseating circle-of-fun, accompanied, as it so often is, by the terrified expressions and white knuckled chair-grips of the uplifted guests of honor, is my favorite part of a Jewish wedding. I have been known to rock out to a good V'shamru or Adon Olam, as well. But as much as I love Barbra and Bette and Benny Goodman and the Gershwins, nothing makes me want to sing Hallelujah! like a large-boned, big-titted black lady. You be the judge.