Anyone seen the horse?
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Martha was enthusing about hearing K D Lang singing Allelujah this morning on the radio. Several times I've listened to Leonard Cohen who wrote the song, mostly in reruns of Leonard Cohen Live in London. Being hearing impaired, I've never been able to understand the words, except for the chorus. When there's only one word repeated with intense passion, the singer falling to his knees, how could I not hear that?
I confess my vision is acute, thanks to a skilled surgeon in London, and I have been as attracted to the back-up singers, yes, more attracted than to the lead. I've seen them often enough to get past the animal response to feminine pulchritude and notice some small faults in their physical parts. Of course there are male back-ups in the troupe, but they don't register unless they get in front of the women.
Knowing Cohen's reputation, I have always supposed the lyrics were erotic. Today I read them on line and yes, there are erotic overtones, but not in the first stanza. It describes a secret chord that the harpist King David discovered which pleased the lord. You have to know something about chord progression to follow the words, and Cohen addresses the listener's lack of interest in theory of music. He cuts right to the core of his message.
Cohen sings of someone bathing on a roof, and of someone else being tied to a chair and having his hair cut. Those who know of Bathsheba and Delilah get the message.
Finally Cohen tells the listener, that would be me, that the words don't matter, it's "the blaze of light," in every word of both the holy and the broken hallelujahs that count.
Music is seductive. The songs of soul singers can move us deeply whether we accept them literally or not. Songs can drive us to face death in war. Songs that mock can destroy us.
I'm reading Tesla: Inventor of the electrical age by W. Bernard Carlson just now. Carlson describes how Tesla's early education which was to prepare him for the priesthood had a profound effect on his method of approaching a problem in science. It's an example of cross-pollination between fields of study.
Most inventors begin by trying various ways of putting parts together to see what happens. Even Thomas Edison used this approach in search of material to make filaments for his light bulbs. He's quoted as saying something like, "Now we know 650 things that don't work."
Tesla applied the words from the Gospel of John to search for the basic process of creation. When he understood the fundamental science of his project he began assembling parts to get the results he wanted. He built the foundation for the science that brings these words from my desk to you through the air, to a satellite where there is no air, half way across Canada and back to you.
Bureaucrats who are charged with helping people who suffer crippling depression could save money and emotional pain as well as loss of productivity by using Tesla's approach. Instead of waiting to provide support for those who get into trouble, ask what's driving the increase of emotional ill health? When the cause is identified, treat that.
When things went wrong on the farm in the good old days, we often said there's no use locking the barn after the horse is stolen.
How many times do we hear that steps are being taken to see that such a thing never happens again? Latest example is sending letters that identify users of medical marijuana. They may become targets of thieves and robbers.
Why did one user's photo appear on the front page of a daily paper last week?