"Hallelujah" Leonard Cohen, performed by kd lang

Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen

Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this
The fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you
To a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Baby I have been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you.
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
This is love not some kind of a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

There was a time you let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light
In every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah

Yeah but it's not a complaint that you hear tonight
It's not the laughter of someone who claims to have seen the light
No it's a cold and it's a very lonely Hallelujah.

Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah…

Leonard Cohen 1984 & 1994

kd's voice truly is a gift from some otherworldly place.  magic.  And this song is nothing short of genius, and if you don't hear that, then you need new ears, or a new brain, or something.

On Getting Over Yourself

"Something tells me, though, that what you need to do for your art and your mental health is cure yourself of romanticism, of the need for being out of your head, of drama and longing and cleverness, cure yourself even of your own attractiveness, cure yourself of your image of yourself as a woman living a creative life, cure yourself of desire, of the need for acceptance, cure yourself of cuteness and the need for cuteness in others.

Cure yourself of rock 'n' roll and thinness and artistic ideas and academic titles, cure yourself of studios and theses and advisors and tuition, cure yourself of matriculation and postgraduate research. Cure yourself of ambition and boredom and self-defensiveness and self-consciousness and be very uncool for a while; be as uncool as you possibly can be. Give up on thrift shops. Grieve for the heroin addict. Wear only Ban-Lon shirts. Stop going to the nightclub you keep going to. Disappear so your friends wonder where you are and when they finally see you, be evasive. Become difficult and stubborn. Concentrate on your art. Concentrate on technique. Sit on the floor and try to breathe normally.

Try doing that for the rest of your life, and see if it doesn't help."

Cary Tennis
salon.com
5/28/02

Barf-Worthy (UPDATED WITH SPOOF)

Okay, I don't normally post the cynical side of myself here, but seriously? Dude?  You make me want to throw up.

From one of those "poor women in New York of a certain age," I have to say, grow the fuck up and move ON, dude.

And a hearty "fuck you," too.

UPDATE:  Here's a send-up.

"Simple" -- kd lang / David Pitch

Simple
kd lang / David Pitch

Flawless light in a darkening air
Alone...and shining there
Love will not elude you
Love is simple

I worship this tenacity
And the beautiful struggle we're in
Love will not elude us
Love is simple

Be sure to know that
All in love
Is ours
That love, as a philosophy
Is simple

I am calm in oblivion
Calm, as I ever have been
Love will not elude me
Love is simple

Be sure to know that
All in love
Is ours...
Is ours...
That all in love
Is ours

That love, as a philosophy
Is simple...
And ours...

Just listen. It's almost a prayer.

On Self-Trust

Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of
    imaginary things,
and stand firm in that which you are.

Kabir

Ciao! (meow in my general direction for more info -- contact information in my profile)

On Grief

All those years I fell for the great palace lie that grief should be gotten over as quickly as possible and as privately. But what I've discovered since is that the lifelong fear of grief keeps us in a barren, isolated place and that only grieving can heal grief; the passage of time will lessen the acuteness, but time alone, without the direct experience of grief, will not heal it. San Francisco is a city in grief, we are a world in grief, and it is at once intolerable and a great opportunity. I'm pretty sure that it is only by experiencing that ocean of sadness in a naked and immediate way that we come to be healed -- which is to say, that we come to experience life with a real sense of presence and spaciousness and peace.
* * * * * * * * * *
I was terribly erratic: feeling so holy and serene some moments that I was sure I was going to end up dating the Dalai Lama. Then the grief and craziness would hit again, and I would be in Broken Mind, back in the howl.
* * * * * * * * * *
A fixation can keep you nicely defined and give you the illusion that your life has not fallen apart. But since your life may have indeed fallen apart, the illusion won't hold up forever, and if you are lucky and brave, you will be able to bear disillusion. You begin to cry and writhe and yell and then to keep on crying; and then, finally, grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.

Anne Lamott
Traveling Mercies

On Expectations and Responsibility

The ways I think the world expects me to be are the ways I've been taught to believe I should be.
People are judging and criticising and dismissing me all the time, but as long as I'm meeting my standards of how I should be, I don't even notice.
As soon as I don't meet my standards, I think other people know that I'm not and are judging me as harshly as I'm judging myself.
Are you willing to give up your life for what you think other people might be thinking?
Think about it.
Has giving up your own life brought the acceptance and approval you've always wanted?
Has not being who you really are brought the joy and fulfillment you've been seeking?
* * * * *
Whatever you do, recognize that you are doing it for you and enjoy it. If you realize you no longer want to do it, STOP.
"Isn't that irresponsible?"
You'll never know until you stop and find out. You could practice with some of the many little things you do and hate but continue to do because you believe you should or someone told you you should.
If you're responsible because you're afraid not to be, you're not responsible, you're afraid.

Cheri Huber

On Conditioning

The part of us that holds a conditioned belief is not going to give it up willingly. A part -- in this case the part of you that holds beliefs about selfishness, about who is and who isn't selfish, about what does and does not constitute selfish behavior -- will cling to an identification with your conditioning -- not in spite of the suffering created by those beliefs, but because of the suffering created by those beliefs. This is a perfect example of the world of conditioned illusion, or delusion. The stage is set: Life is this way, people should be this way, people who are the way they should be are good and will be rewarded, people who are not the way they should be are bad and will be punished. It may sound familiar -- but none of it was ever true.

"I don't understand how my seeing their lack of care (selfishness, which is proven in a reality check) makes me selfish." Ah, the subtleties.  First of all, was there a reality check? Consulting our conditioned views for verification of our conditioned views and getting a verification is not a reality check. The critical piece we have to grasp is that our conditioned view of the world is simply our conditioned view of the world. We can find others whose views are the same, but that just means our conditioning is the same; it doesn't mean that we're right or that our view is "true." (emphasis mine)

"I see a person as selfish." Well, where does that idea come from? It comes from my conditioned standard of selfishness. That person's behavior doesn't meet my standard, that's all.

Cheri Huber
How to Get From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be
2000, Hay House

On The Soul

The Greeks told the story of the minotaur, the bull-headed flesh-eating man who lived in the center of the labyrinth. He was a threatening beast, and yet his name was Asterion -- Star. I often think of this paradox as I sit with someone with tears in her eyes, searching for some way to deal with a death, a divorce, or a depression. It is a beast, this thing that stirs in the core of her being, but it is also the star of her innermost nature. We have to care for this suffering with extreme reverence so that, in our fear and anger at the beast, we do not overlook the star.

Thomas Moore
Care of the Soul
1992, HarperCollins Publishers

* * * * * * * * * *

We would rather be ruined than changed.
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

- W.H.Auden

On Fear

Fear is not what you think it is. Fear is not who you are underneath your facade. Fear is not the real you that you must somehow fix or improve or overcome. Fear is a very useful signal along the path to freedom. The stronger the fear, the closer you are to what you are seeking. If you want to stay "safe (i.e. stuck where you are), fear tells you to stop what you are doing, But if you want to be free, fear lets you know you are on the right track, it is a signal to push ahead in the same direction, to pick up the pace.

Cheri Huber

On Forgiveness

I don't know if I continue, even today, always liking myself. But what I learned to do many years ago was to forgive myself. It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes- it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, 'well, if I'd known better I'd have done better,' that's all. So you say to people who you think you may have injured, 'I'm sorry,' and then you say to yourself, 'I'm sorry.' If we all hold on to the mistake, we can't see our own glory in the mirror because we have the mistake between our faces and the mirror; we can't see what we're capable of being. You can ask forgiveness of others, but in the end the real forgiveness is in one's own self. I think that young men and women are so caught by the way they see themselves. Now mind you. When a larger society sees them as unattractive, as threats, as too black or too white or too poor or too fat or too thin or too sexual or too asexual, that's rough. But you can overcome that. The real difficulty is to overcome how you think about yourself. If we don't have that we never grow, we never learn, and sure as hell we should never teach.

Maya Angelou

* * * * * * * * * *

Forgiveness is the final form of love.

Reinhold Niebuhr

On Kindness and Conditioning

It is possible that with the awareness that you have been unkind toward someone, you might realize, in a gentle sort of way,

'I don't want to do that. It doesn't feel very good.'

And it's not that you're a bad person, or even that you shouldn't be that way; it's just that you don't want to be unkind because it hurts your heart.

When you are open to that awareness, you won't need to try to be different, for in that gentle approach, you will already have changed.

* * * * * * * * * *

When we sit still in meditation, we don't scratch if we have an itch.  Now, this drives people crazy. I've had people say, 'This is demented. How could not scratching when you itch have something to do with spiritual practice?' It has everything to do with spiritual practice because it's that "It itches, I must scratch" response that is at the root of most of our suffering.

But you can just notice that it itches (ah, itching) and not have to do anything about it. You can realize that you are having a conditioned response to a sensation. You don't have to take it personally. You don't have to respond to it.

If you once learn that you don't have to respond that way, you're free of it. You prove to yourself that you won't die and you won't go crazy and parts of your body won't fall off. You can just be there and be perfectly fine. Then something hurts and you can sit through that. It just becomes interesting. You're not resisting it any more. It's just kind of fascinating how it hurts there and pretty soon it hurts here and then it doesn't hurt at all.

And then you think, "You know, my leg was hurting." You're sitting there quietly, breathing in, breathing out, and this helpful little voice says, "Wasn't your leg hurting a little while ago?" Suddenly you're in pain again. So we learn to sit still with that. Or, maybe you're obsessing about something. The voice says, "You know, I can't sit here. I can't stand this. I've got to get up and..." And you just sit there. You don't respond to it.

Maybe you become interested in obsession itself. (What is obsession? How do I do that?) Pretty soon you lose interest in that. You become bored with it because it's not making you do anything. Then, maybe you turn your attention to boredom...and you just sit there.

Eventually, it all begins to quiet down.

In the same way, when something happens in life, you no longer believe that you have to respond to it. You've sat still through so many "emergencies," so many "life and death issues," you no longer believe them. In not responding, the very energy, the force, the karmic conditioned force that is behind them, begins to have to feed on itself. It's no longer feeding on you because you're no longer participating in it. It has no fuel. And, eventually, it simply burns itself up. It simply burns itself away.

Cheri Huber
There Is Nothing Wrong With You
1993, Keep it Simple Books