Max's Musings

Hallelujah

Certain times are forever in our memory.

The night my daughter was born is one. Cradling her in my arms while snow fell outside and her mother slept--those are moments that will always be with me.

Other memories still sear. I remember my friend Sue McCausland, running into the lunch room at school in tears, telling us that our President had been shot. That was November 22, 1963.

There are memories of 9/11, too, seeing that airliner crash into the tower, and later seeing it fall. I'll blog more about that one later--that one has a musical echo that belongs in my soundtrack.

Bad as that day was, my worst memory is a recent one, barely eight years old: election night, 2016. I listened in horror as first one state, then another fell to Trump. Despair consumed me. The ensuing four years turned out even worse than I feared, though not as bad as they might have had the insurrection succeeded.

But there is one positive memory from that horrible week, and it's a musical one.

Back in the 70s, we watched Saturday Night Live every week. I was in graduate school, and we got together weekends with another couple for bridge and dinner. But we'd stop at 10:30 so we could watch the opening of SNL

Years had passed, and SNL ceased being a weekend staple. By 2016, I hadn't watched it in at least a decade, but for some reason that week it was on TV, and I watched. By purest chance, I happened to catch the opening of SNL that week. There, on the screen, was Kate McKinnon, in character as Hillary Clinton, singing Leonard Cohen's glorious ballad "Hallelujah." When she sang, "even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my toungue but Hallelujah," tears fromed in my eyes.

Kate ended the song and then looked into the camera and said, "I'm not giving up, and neither should you."

That marvelous song, soulfully sung, and those words, they gave me hope.

Here's a link to McKinnon's performatnce:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG-_ZDrypec