Malcolm Gladwell, in Season 1, Episode 7 of his Revisionist History podcast, discusses the history of “Hallelujah” with Alan Light. You can read the fascinating history of that song in Alan Light’s book, The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah”. He never could complete it, even after 30 verses! Their styles reflect the different philosophical approaches of ‘first thought, best thought’ versus ‘revise, revise, revise’. Cohen later told this story to an interviewer and confessed that it took him more like 5 years to write that song. I think he said he wrote it in the back of a cab. Then Leonard asked Bob how long it took him to write “ I And I“, and he replied 15 minutes. Cohen was embarrassed to tell him the truth so he lied and said 2 years. During their conversation, Dylan, one of the first to sing Cohen’s song “ Hallelujah” in his concerts, asked Cohen how long it took him to write it. They happened to be in Paris at the same time and decided to meet at a certain café. There is a story about Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Other famous artists and writers have said and done the same thing. As Leonardo da Vinci once said: Art is never finished, only abandoned. At some point, though, he must’ve given up, admitted his imperfection, and sent them out into the world. Of course there is a kind of irony here when he says, “Forget your perfect offerings,” since he labored for months, sometimes years, on getting the lyrics to his songs perfect. Leonard Cohen’s music lit up a dark worldĪ tanka in honor of the poet by Ken Chawkin I wrote this tanka in honor of Leonard Cohen.
See mine below.* I think he sang about finding that divinity within and among our broken humanity.
#BEATLES PAST MASTERS 2009 RARE CRACK#
There may be a crack in everything, but how does the light get in-from without, or is it released from within? I’ve often thought about the profundity of those lines, and there have been many interpretations of what he may be implying. There is a repeated stanza in one of his songs, Anthem, that conveys the redeeming acceptance of light illuminating the darkness, compassion and love overcoming bigotry and hatred: “ Ring the bells that still can ring/ Forget your perfect offering/ There is a crack in everything/ That’s how the light gets in.” He never claimed to have found all the answers, but seemed to have reached a kind of inner peace toward the end of his life, between himself and his God. Cohen’s evolving understanding of life, beautifully expressed through his music, shone a light through the cracks of a broken humanity in a dark suffering world. His search for redemption also influenced his fans. True to the end, Leonard Cohen‘s work charted the arc of his career, between life and death (S– Nov 7, 2016).
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