Hallelujah

Good discussion, peeps! I read all the comments.

To limit this song within one realm of strict definition is to miss its voluminous luminous bituminous cumulus canonical methodological ontological tumescent quiescence epiphany. The words are saturated with poetry.

Summarizing its meaning is a personal & herculean task. There is a surface text to the immediate situation in the world of the speaker of the lyrics, commented upon by the songwriter, & these weave & meld interacting with a mythology riffing off of poetic universal & socio-historical biblical figures, mingling with the listener's life experience. On the skeleton of the words is a complex body & it speaks to the soul.

In a discussion with a woman friend about Cohen's "Hallelujah, we disagreed about the verse There was a time when you let me know what's really going on below but now you never show it to me, do you? And remember when I moved in you the holy dove was moving too and every breath we drew was Hallelujah

She clings to the biblical references earlier in the song to support her interpretation of these words as being about the soul & feelings under the skin & how they connect & entwine with the other. I thank her for turning me on to this window into the song, but maintain she doesn't understand the first thing about Cohen if she doesn't see the immediate meaning is him talking about what's below the belt & panties. Reading Beautiful Losers, its apparent both poetic notions co-exist, as the altar of the woman is where Cohen prays. I note this is the verse most female singers of the song seem to walk through ~ it's a particularly male notion, to be shown it & be "moved in you."

The song is mystical. When Cohen wrote about standing before the lord of song, I believe he was speaking to the canon of all songs throughout history, as well as as the muses, as also biblical canon & the big lord, to offer this "Hallelujah" with its myriad complexity of the brilliance & fragility in its poetics (as well as his body of work, his canon toned & tomed, tuned & tombed, not to mention his physiological cannon) as his song about the exaltation & misery of human love (body born, spirit born, body driven, spirit driven). It's his Palchelbel.

Of course, for him, there was probably a specific catalyst for the song. While he wrote it for her, all of the rest spilled out. Whenever we experience sex &/or love, so much swirls in our consciousness (pasts, presents, futures, iconography, conceptions, rules, fact, fiction, truth, beauty, acceptance, disappointments, hopes, & burgeoning passions we cannot always name, define, or control our place in). He reveres & takes for granted sex, love, the mysticism of life. He loves & chides his partner. He at once speaks to & for the person of affection in the song, simultaneously with storied relationship predicaments. Even if the fire of this love is embers & ashes, he remembers a fondness beyond bitterness.