The Baffled King Composing
Songs, individual pieces of music by one artist or another, they carry with them the resonance of memory. As the artistic experience we can share in time and space with other people, these communal events capture a place in our beings which can echo thoroughly through us when they are repeated.
I was sitting in a student bar last night (as you do) having a few drinks and teaching Masa from Japan the right context to say 'nice one tiger' in (as I do) and a certain song came on over the sound system. Two flashes of feeling, separated by years and continents and much more besides, rose without warning within me, connecting three isolated events in my life with a sense of dramatic urgency, and when my focus returned back to where I was I thought it was interesting how music can do that.
(Been in Prague: short hiatus. Back again, top dollar.)
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Wow mark - Hallelujah to you too. If that's the song it's ringing round my head at the moment because a mate and I - both Leonard Cohen tragics from way back - went to 'Came so far for beauty' in Sydney a couple of weeks ago. Totally sensational tribute concert - Nick Cave, Rufus Wainwright, McGarrigals and a host of others.
I have 3 versions of the song on my computer play list too.
And yes - music is the biggest Star Trek type transporter of all. An aural madeleine. If I started thinking about the songs that do it I'd be going on forever!
That gig sounds great. I'm a big Nick Cave fan. First time I heard Hallelujah was Jeff Buckley's, but have since heard Leonard Cohen's. Both good.
I have Jeff Buckley's and LC's and k.d.lang sings it well on a newish CD - Hymns of the 49th parallel. I'm not normally a fan of hers but she does it well.
Rufus Wainwright has made it his own after Shrek and his performance was a highlight of that night.
I'm intrigued by the way each artist picks different verses - it alters the meaning with each performance, and it's enigmatic enough already.
(sorry tony - not exactly political but that particular song hits me where I sing)
(maybe this thread could go under the heading 'personal politics')
I saw it performed live here in the CR at a gig by Glen Hansard, the lead singer of The Frames, an Irish band. He's in love with a seventeen years old girl who lives here and so plays a gig here every year. This year she supported him, and the final encore was the two of them singing this song. Very nice. During the chorus, the crowd sang along with them. Very memorable moment.
Well as a bit of personal politics I am now getting so sick of the way the song is being hacked into anytime there is a 'poignant' moment in any TV show. West Wing, The OC, and recently I swear I heard it on Home and Away or something similar. I have to run out of the room.