Hallelujah is one of those rare songs that ushers from the back of the universe with a shudder. It dwells in the Valley of Majestic Doubt and demolishes sanctimony without getting sanctimonious. My kind of spiritual! Paul Celan is a revelation with his cosmological prescience. It's hard to think of a better poet in the last fifty years.

Kabbala's 'broken vessel' is an allegory for the Big Bang event. And who better than Leonard Cohen to have a brush and shovel out for the shards? Here, it's a broken hallelujah. 'If It Be Your Will', is a broken hill. Both songs appear on the 1985 'Various Positions' CD. Lenny's clearly wrestling an archetype. The lumpiness of matter evidences the haphazardness of the Big Bang crisis. It's as though our universe fell off somebody's mantelpiece. Kerplat!

Only to land on its feet...

I'm convinced there's an aesthetic speaking to a sentience. There's simply too much beauty NOT to ordain the intentionality of an onlooker. Why would the universe have straightened up if it didn't know someone was coming to dinner? That's where we come in! And until little green men turn up, we must operate as though we are the sole visual-beholders of this bonanza. So quit fighting and play nice with the other kids!