“A heavy burden lifted from my soul, I heard that love was out of my control.”
Organizing some things in my classroom, I came across an old book: Leonard Cohen Selected Poems. 📖 I fell for Cohen in my 20s. He would visit the park in Montreal and sit for hours on end. 🌳 A thinker. There was a time when many of us carried a book everywhere we went. 📚 Tales of woe & life lived, an adventure always on hand in one’s pocketbook. 💼 Those considered ‘people of words’ understand. Searching, always searching, the writers write for all of us -- a soundtrack to life.
Season 3’s finale of Billions, Cohen's You Want it Darker came on. My husband next to me, stopped what he was doing and together we listened:
A million candles burning
For the help that never came
You want it darker
Hineni, hineni
I'm ready, My Lord… 🕯
This song was released 17 days before Cohen died.
Fellow alumni of The O.C. know Cohen’s Hallelujah. In the finale of the first season we are gifted with Jeff Buckley’s cover. When tragedy strikes in Season 3, Imogen Heap’s version makes us weep. 💔
A good friend asked me last week, to give her a list of 5 songs to listen to. A sort of indoctrination from scratch. Quite easily, I gave her 12. Then, I added Hallelujah. 📝
What would be on your list? 🎵
Calm, hypnotizing, dark, lovely, at times we are transported back to our youth when we think of books and songs. 👀 Hope, dreams, excitement, fear. As time passes, we must never lose that thirst for life. With it comes chaos but also beauty. As we know from COVID-19, nothing is for certain. 😷 There will always be fear. There will always be madness. Look around. 🌎 But there is also -- in poetry and prose -- wonder, and love. 💫
To the poets, the thinkers, the dreamers, we owe you. You hold our hands when we are hurting. You shine with us when we are bright. You share with us your grace -- helping create balance out of all that is out there. Therapy for the heart, mind, soul. 🙏🏽
We never stop searching. I am grateful for this sweet reminder, in this dusty old paperback I found. 😊
“So much of the world is plunged
in darkness and chaos...
So ring the bells that still
can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
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