Life Soundtrack: Hallelujah

Angry, defiant -- sad, beautiful -- weeping, angelic -- consuming, passionate.

This song has haunted me for a very long time. It first discovered me in a dark theatre in Harvard Square, a scared little boy who wanted to take the world hostage and had no weapons to do so with. It followed me and stayed by my side even when I no longer had the fight in me. I heard it as I beat the keys of my manual Smith Corona, as I stared up at apartment ceilings from the street below, wondering "what does one have to do to live in there?" and posed other big questions. When the rains hit and I had no coat. When my feet were tired and the trains stopped running. When money was scarce and friends were working or out of town... when I would lie awake in an empty loft staring at the ceiling through a nicotine cloud, the song was my companion. It was there throughout the nursing of my bruised heart, throughout my championing of a wildly distorted ego and throughout the aching, painfully real loneliness. When I split fifths of Jim in Williamsburg, burst into tears and danced myself into oblivion -- it laughed with me. But it was also there to be shared and rediscovered when new love and life took a chance on me. When discovery and revelation was no longer something to be wished for, but was present and vibrant, thriving. It was there to enchant us with finally something to agree upon... to push me through the peaks and valleys of adventures in three cities, too many bad jobs, a marriage in Vegas (and two revenge-soaked receptions), fights about nothing and fights about something, ailing family in denial and lost friends whose silence begged acceptance and the joyous birth of my beautiful boy.

"And it's not a cry that you hear at night... it's not somebody who's seen the light... it's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah."