The weather is best described as grey. That single word speaks volumes about a day like today.
While spring as officially begun, according the the calendar, winter seems to have sneaked back into Edmonton. It has brought grey with it. And that has put my body back into hibernation mode.
I had trouble waking up this morning. That ended the moment I hit the shower, however, as the water would not warm up. Even with only the hot water running, it was still cold.
I was in and out of the shower in record time.
I had made my coffee a few minutes earlier, while letting the shower run in the hope that the water would warm up by the time I got in. No such luck.
At least my coffee will be warm, I thought, as I poured it into my thermos and prepared to rush out the door. (Having struggled to get out of bed, I was running mere seconds ahead of the bus—were it not for a red light, I’d have been stuck waiting 30 minutes for the next one.)
As the bus pulled away from the stop, I realized that my thermos was not with me.
My mind flashed back to my apartment, where the thermos was sitting by the door, waiting to be taken to work. Alas, it will be cold and lonely by the time I arrive home this afternoon.
Next, I forced my way off of an over-crowded bus—one stop too soon.
As I trudged through the greyness, without coffee, I turned up the volume on my iPod. As I approached the office, something wonderful happened. Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” as covered by Justin Timberlake and Matt Morris, shuffled it’s way up the headphone wire and into my ears.
“Hallelujah” is my favourite song, and I have yet to hear a version that I didn’t enjoy. Where many versions of the song are melancholic, this particular version—recorded, as it was, for a CD benefiting victims of the recent Haitian earthquake—seems strangely uplifting.
This combination of “favourite song” and “uplifting interpretation” carried me through the grey and into the building where I work. I stopped first at the cafe on the ground floor, took a dark roast and a muffin, and headed toward the elevator.
2 Comments
I personally like Rufus Wainwright’s version and of course k.d. Lang’s version. However I struggle hearing it sometimes these days because I feel like it’s so overplayed, and every artist and their dog seems to cover it these days!
It’s true, there are a lot of covers. I remember reading somewhere that it is believed to be the most frequently covered pop song of all time.
I actually tend to prefer the original version. A lot of people prefer covers—especially the two you mentioned—because Cohen isn’t exactly the world’s greatest singer. But, I have a fondness for the original, which you rarely hear unless you actually have a copy of it, so it never really gets old for me.