and from your lips she drew the hallelujah.

if you know my heart
you know it's engulfed in music.
naturally, i have a lists of songs that have changed my life.

leonard cohen: hallelujah
is first.

this song has layers of meaning.
it has over 15 verses, only a few are used in the original.
he performs a different version at every concert.
this song is alluring.
bottomless mystery pours out of it.

it begins as a love song to music itself.
its first verse describes the song’s chord pattern.
the type of progression that might have been sung at high mass.
on the most sacred occasions.

biblical allusions pile up:
david plays his harp to soothe king saul,
and then has an affair with bathsheba.
at the end of the second verse, lyrics become twisted:
a reference to samson and delilah.
and intimations of sadomasochism and death:

“she tied you

to a kitchen chair

she broke your throne,

she cut your hair

and from your lips she drew the hallelujah.”

this song about
 sex, temptation, adultery and religion spirals inward.
it becomes a meditation on the meaning--
or perhaps the meaninglessness--
of life.
the shout of devotion morphs into an ecstatic cry.
then a defeated moan.
the interjection that means “praise ye the lord” turns hollow.
in the end, “it’s a cold and it’s a broken hallelujah.”

“maybe there’s a god above

and all I ever learned from love

was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you.”

the narrative explores how the..
erotic becomes political,
how relationships are defined.
not by trust but by conquest,
 and how lovers become trophies to be discarded.
and, somehow, the survivors hope it will be different next time.
the broken hallelujah is life itself.