Part 3. The Future. Wherein the Author describes Dog’s presence in the babble and first words of children.

The primordial connection we feel towards dogs is more than the superficial replacement for meaningful human contact that cat people claim we are experiencing. In fact, recent research shows that owning a pet is actually a catalyst towards greater social contact. But the human-canine bond is deeper than simple coexistence and date-bait. Our relationship with dogs has influenced the very formation of human language. Our growth from vine swinging apes to blog spinning humans has been shepherded by dogs.

In the first part of this series I got around to discuss dogs at the end. The takeaway observation is that dogs hold a prestigious place in the short list of man’s oldest words. We’ve been talking about dogs since we began talking, and we haven’t slowed down since.

Modern English hints that dogs are a reflection of god, and anyone who has ever found that once in a lifetime pup would agree. Dogs worship us, they refresh our souls, they hold no conditions, and they never lie. They ask little and give much. They aren’t perfect, but man doesn’t deserve perfect and dogs are probably more than we deserve as well. For all the slandering the humble dog has taken in the various religious tomes, and even the lingering pejorative treatments of dogs in clichés and euphemisms, dogs endure and they don’t hold what we say about them against us.

As with any obsession, we might be saying more about the man-dog bond than we realize. “Dog” is the 310th most commonly used word in English based on the American National Corpus. We talk and write about dogs more than we talk about horses (311), birds (312), cats (673) or even our friends (323). More than rock (353) and roll (676), more than the moon (520) and stars (420), more than cause (532) and effect (998), and even more than death (953).

We honor dogs with more lip service than art (799), science (875), industry (894) and even God (779). We value them more than dollars (866), money (374), riches (865) and gold (662). And even our concern for the poor (688) doesn’t come close, nor does our quest for power (486).

We respect them more than Kings (390), Presidents (726), and the rule (483) of law (717). And recent press should confirm that we’d rather dish on dogs than discuss soldiers (825) at war (387), despite a plethora of war correspondents and not a single dog correspondent on any newspaper’s payroll.

Dogs are more genuine than truth (366) and impervious to lies (853). They give us more direction than North (372) , South (385), East (741) and West(581). We are for (13) dogs more than we are against (368) anything (514). Heck, we’ll even take dogs over hope (633) and love (531).

I suspect that we talk sex (???) more than we do dogs, but sex doesn’t even rank on the list. I think that it’s been edited from my source since even the Brits talk about sex (83 times per million words) just a little bit more than they do dogs (80 per million), and the Brits are renowned sexual prudes.

Other than sex, it’s certain we talk about just a handful of things more than dogs. Water (84), oil (88), land (171), work (107), and school (212). Home (173), family (299), mother (192), father (213) and children (253). Music (302) and song (296) and, of course, Animal House (187-188).

And really, that’s exactly the way it should be.

[ Part 1. The Ancient. ] [ Part 3. The Future. ]

The Ancient, Modern, and Future Language of “Dog.”

Part 3. The Future. Wherein the Author describes Dog’s presence in the babble and first words of children.

I ran across a border war today while reading up on an article I will discuss in the third part of this series. Like many of the conflicts that pique my curiosity, this one has a dog at its center. You can tell that an issue is likely a border war when you search for a topic (in this case “global etymologies”) on google and the first page is filled with rants against the fundamental idea instead of links to the original content.

Anthropologists study the history of human groups and migrations by examining the common genetic elements of those groups, searching for the most recent common ancestors (hypothetical ‘Eve’s). Interdisciplinary historical linguists study the history, migration, and interaction of language (and thus people) by comparing common sounds and word meanings between languages, and in doing so classify language families and construct proto-languages. The mother of all such languages is called the Proto-World Language.

I suspect that the Proto-World Language is like the Holy Grail for historical linguists. It’s more of a guiding concept than a reality. Many don’t believe it can be found, others don’t believe that it ever existed in the first place, and anyone who turns up a clue or a possible path is resoundingly attacked by everyone else. Some attack because they are atheistic to the idea, others because they too are on the hunt and another’s success is their failure.

Like many border wars, this one seems to fall in the “techie vs. fuzzy” mold, although to an outsider the differences between the two groups seem trivial, making the narcissism of minor differences a distinct possibility. The fuzzy linguists want to tell a good story, bask in romantic histories, ask how the languages feel about each other, and do it this way because they’ve always done it this way; this is the comparative method.

The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists.
– Sir William Jones 1786; Quoted by Lehman 1967 and Szemerenyi 1996:4

The techie linguists aren’t scared of letting numbers tell the story, of using new techniques to inform old debates, using old techniques with new tools, or of looking at data before they reach conclusions instead of telling a story and then looking for “data.” Their method of choice is called multilateral or mass lexical comparison. The obvious criticism from the fuzzies is that numbers can confuse coincidence for correlation, but any techies know that correlation does not imply causation. The fuzzies say that random coincidence is “quite high” although without doing an analysis of the expected random coincidence vs. the observed random coincidence (decidedly techie), I don’t know what basis the fuzzies have to state that such coincidence is tainting the techie’s results. The mass lexical comparison method seems pretty straight forward and sound to me:

If then, we find a mass of resemblances between different languages, resemblances that are not onomatopoetic in nature and do not appear to be borrowings, we must conclude that the similarities are the result of a common origin, followed by a descent with modification in the daughter languages.
- J.D. Bengtson and M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, p. 43.

In my usual interdisciplinary stance, I figure there is room for both methods and perhaps the two methods can inform each other. Not too many people agree.

Needless to say, the fuzzy linguists have launched a full scale border war on the techie linguists (numbers lie and are scary, scientific fan-fiction makes you feel good and what feels good must be true). Consistent with my Confederacy of Dunces theory, where the sound and fury from the establishment against a new and provocative idea is entirely inconsistent with the weight of the idea, this border war features a preemptive strike by the comparative f
uzzies. The old school linguists actually published an anti-global etymologies paper (Joseph Salmons, 92) two years before the original global etymologies paper (Bengtson & Ruhlen, 94) was even published.

The essential argument in the Language Log article is research that the group-think fuzzies don’t agree with shouldn’t even be published, because that’s the purpose of “peer-review:” to enforce group think. I especially like the hypocrisy where the author complains that because the referees are anonymous, there can’t be a “public debate” (read: mob lynching) to force them to censor unpopular views (read: antithesis of public debate). The author’s criticism that peer reviewers are unqualified to judge outside of their specialty is code speak for ‘they haven’t been indoctrinated into enforcing the group-think.’

Doctor Merritt Ruhlen and Linguistic expert John Bengtson fall in the techie group and are the target of the above article because they used technical analysis to discern a list of 27 “global etymologies.” These etymologies, also known as cognates, are similar words in different languages that are likely to have a common origin. Critics (read: confederacy of dunces) incorrectly classify these global etymologies as “reconstructions” of the Proto-World Language, and thus they have doubly attacked Ruhlen and Bengtson and any other linguists or anthropologists who use their work. But Ruhlen and Bengtson don’t make that claim and explicitly state so:

For each etymology…we present a phonetic and semantic gloss, followed by examples from different language families. …We do not deal here with reconstruction, and these glosses are intended merely to characterize the most general meaning and phonological shape of each root. Future work on reconstruction will no doubt discover cases where the most widespread meaning or shape was not original.
- J.D. Bengtson and M. Ruhlen, On the Origin of Languages: Studies in Linguistic Taxonomy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994, p. 14 note 3.

You’ll notice that Dr. William Poser uses “reconstruct*” no less than 25 times in his criticism. Too bad he didn’t make it to 27, it would have provided some nice symmetry to the 27 cognates Bengtson and Ruhlen unearthed. One linguist injected 25 mistaken words into his analysis because he wanted them there, two linguists arrived at 27 words because their technique spat them out. The problem with Dr. Poser is that he doesn’t have an excuse to fall so firmly into the fuzzy mindset, he studied Electrical Engineering along with Classics and Linguistics.

That’s the difference I see here: Bengtson and Ruhlen developed a method (the black box), and then took data and ran it through the box and waited to see what came out the bottom. Criticize the box all you want, substitute your own, but what drops out the bottom is governed only by the rules in the box and those rules are clear and explicit and easy to construct without bias. The fuzzy linguists don’t develop a method and then run data through it, they massage the method until the results make “sense” and tell a story. They don’t let an unbiased method put words together, they find a reason that two words they select make sense together. Untold degrees of intentional and unintentional bias infects the input data and the results when you try and make them say something you understand instead of trying to understand what they are really saying.

And what are those 27 threatening words? The source of the bitter bickering and posturing? The results of the black box and possible links to the holy grail of all languages?

You can tell one hell of a (R rated) story with those 27 words, and perhaps that’s why they are so interesting. They aren’t from a fuzzy story telling method, but a techie method. And before you think all of us techies still live in our Aja‘s basement, have tsuma on our backs and puti on the brain, jealous of prehistoric mano running around kamaing a large dinosaur kata, trying to get to pal base with kunas by bashing them on the head and dragging them back to our k’olo by their tsaku, we’re not. Some of us do shave our backs.

Now Dr. Poser isn’t all bad. He gives a very nice explanation of the ancient words for dog:

Although sound change is the main way in which words change over time, it is also possible for a word to be replaced by an entirely different word. For example, the Proto-Indo-European word for “dog” was something like *kuon. (The star indicates that this is a hypothetical form.) We reconstruct this form from attested (actually recorded) forms like Greek kuon, Sanskrit shvan, and German hund by asking what proto-form would yield the attested forms after undergoing the sound changes observed in the various languages, and also taking into account changes in word-formation. The direct descendant of this word in English is hound. But at some point the common Germanic word for “dog” took on a more specialized meaning and was replaced, as the general term, by dog, a word whose origin we do not know.

This fits nicely with the attention Ruhlen and Bengtson gave to dog in their work:

9. *KUAN—’dog’ — canine; cynic; hound; !Kung /gwi ‘hyena’; Proto-Afro-Asiatic *k(y)n ‘dog, wolf’; Proto-Indo-European *kwon- ‘dog’ > Sanskrit s’van, Phrygian kan, Latin canis, Greek kuon, Germanic hund; Proto-Uralic *küinä ‘wolf’; Old Turkish qanchiq ‘bitch’; Monglian qani ‘wild dog’; Proto-Tungus-Manchu *khina ‘dog’; Korean ka ‘dog’ (< kani); Gilyak kan ‘dog’; Chinese kou ‘dog’ (kh^jwen); Tibetan khyi ‘dog’; Proto-Oceanic *nkaun ‘dog’; Taos kwiane-, Tewa tukhwana ‘fox, coyote’

If we really could assign dates to the mutations in DNA and the changes in our language, we just might find that dogs became biologically distinguished from wolves at about the same time man used one word to describe a wolf and another to describe a domesticated dog.

The short hand for analogies compares two words, presents you with a third word and asks you to find a final fourth word that shares the same relationship with word 3 as the first two words share.

puppy:dog::kitten:____

The above can be read, “A puppy is to a dog as a kitten is to what?” All analogies can be read in the same manner, but the generic sentence doesn’t really help solve the relationship. To solve the analogy you can create a more specific sentence to link the words which illuminates the relationship more specifically. For instance, “A puppy is a juvenile dog, a kitten is a juvenile what?” The answer being cat.

Some of our first words as humans describe our most basic emotions and senses, so you’d assume that we’d have a good grasp and choice of words to describe sight, smell, taste, touch, and hearing.

My first observation is that of the 5 senses, 4 are straight up nouns but hearing is a gerund. A gerund is a verbal noun that ends in -ing; e.g., walking, talking, sitting, eating. There isn’t a common word for hearing that matches the form of sight, touch, taste, or smell; but there are gerund forms for all those words that do match hearing: seeing, touching, tasting, smelling.

My second observation is that the basic analogy sight:blind::[sense]:[lack of that sense] is hard to answer with a single common word for three of the five senses.

Two are easy:

sight:blind – Blindness is the lack of sight
hearing:deaf – Deafness is the lack of hearing

But what about…

smell: _____
taste: _____
touch: _____
?

I can’t think of a single common word to fill any of those blanks. Here are some unsatisfying candidates:

sight:blind::smell:anosmic

an·os·mi·a [an-oz-mee-uh, -os-]
–noun Pathology.
absence or loss of the sense of smell.

sight:blind::taste:ageusic

a·geu·si·a [uh-gyoo-zee-uh, -zhee-uh, -zhuh]
–noun Pathology.
loss or impairment of the sense of taste.

sight:blind::touch:anesthesic
an·es·the·sia [an-uhs-thee-zhuh]
–noun Pathology.
general loss of the senses of feeling, as pain, heat, cold, touch, and other less common varieties of sensation.

The last one is the most unsatisfactory. First, because anesthesia is a common word but only when applied to the medical inducement of a state of a non-feeling state and/or paralysis. Second, we have a few satellite words that are close in meaning but not sufficient: numb, paralyzed, dulled, unfeeling, desensitized, deadend, etc.

If I had to venture a guess as to why blind and deaf are so common and the other three are not, I would note that blindness and deafness are conditions which are likely to alter interpersonal relations, whereas the other three are not. We must adapt our communications for the blind and deaf, as sight and sound are the two primary means of relaying information.

We would hardly notice if someone couldn’t smell or taste, despite them being common enough maladies. Unless such a person were our chef, their impairment would likely go hidden and unknown.

Lack of touch in a limited region would also likely go unobserved, and universal lack of sense without conjoining paralysis is rare. In those cases, “paralysis” serves to convey the combined meaning. Chronic lack of feeling without paralysis is extremely rare and the name of the condition bares out the observation that one word can’t really capture the meaning: congenital insensitivity to pain.

While the hypothetical “would you rather be blind or deaf” is most often answered “deaf” because people value their sense of sight above others, learning about the consequences of congenital insensitivity to pain really makes you wonder if you wouldn’t rather be blind than anesthesic.

The casual reader might want to listen to the song by playing the embedded video, enjoy it, and move on. But if you’d like to delve into the lyrics, their allusions, and the deeper themes of the song, please, enjoy the rest and feel free to disagree and tell me about it.

Despite the tortured and dark themes in the lyrics, the hauntingly beautiful melody and religious references of Hallelujah fool many people into believing that the song is a spiritual paean the likes of which you’d play at a wedding. I’d recommend adding it to your playlist of “Songs To Breakup By” instead. It’s a weary, disillusioned, aching song; the passion is pain, the faith supplanted by remorse. The repeated “hallelujahs” are not reverent and sincere, they are ironic and anything but holy.

Cohen’s technique in his poetry and writing has been described as “deconstructing the identity of the main characters by means of combining the sacred and the profane, religion and sexuality in a rich, lyrical language.” You’ll probably agree that this pattern applies to “Hallelujah.”

To me, the superlative cover of the song is by Jeff Buckley.

Buckley especially just blew the song to pieces and every artist after him has tried and failed to put it back together.
- Muruch

During his famed early gigs at the New York club Sin-e, Buckley used to break hearts with his version of this Cohen prayer. Buckley called it an homage to “the hallelujah of the orgasm” and had misgivings about his sensuous rendition: “I hope Leonard doesn’t hear it.”
- Rolling Stone – who ranked Buckley’s cover 259 on the list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time“

As Cohen’s thoughts on this song show, he did craft the lyrics with deep religious meaning; however, his own feelings on the song (and the way he sang it) became more secular with time and adoption into the mainstream culture. Cohen himself became a Zen Buddhist from 1996-1999, so I guess reinterpretation is always possible. So, why don’t we start with the significance of the lyrics in a religious manner and see if we can discern a more secular meaning.

Seeing as the Old Testament references are specific and numerous, any analysis that lacks an understanding of them is incomplete. The identity of the David in the first stanza isn’t difficult, there’s only one in the entire Bible.

I heard there was a secret chord
that David played and it pleased the Lord

It’s worth reading up on King David.

“The prominent part played by song and music in the worship of the temple, as arranged by David, is readily explained by his poetic and musical abilities. His skill in music is recorded in I Kings, xvi, 18 and Amos, vi, 5. Poems of his composition are found in II Kings, i, iii, xxii, xxiii. His connection with the Book of Psalms, many of which are expressly attributed to various incidents of his career, was so taken for granted in later days that many ascribed the whole Psalter to him.”

Worth note:

• David defeated Goliath with a sling and stone
• David was a musician and most of the Psalms of the Bible are attributed to him
  
• David cured King Saul of his demons through his music
  
• David sang “imprudent songs” about women
• David had multiple wives, several of whom he won through killing and war
• David united (through war) the tribes of Israel under his rule
• After unifying the Israelites, David waged wars against the neighbors and enemies of Israel to solidify his reign
• During the war vs. the Ammonites, “he fell into the sins of adultery and murder” thus “bringing great calamities on himself and his people”

This last note refers to the indirect murder of Urias and the adultery with his wife Bethsheba.

“After his sin with Bethsabee and the indirect assassination of Urias, her husband, David made her his wife. A year elapsed before his repentance for the sin, but his contrition was so sincere that God pardoned him, though at the same time announcing the severe penalties that were to follow. The spirit in which David accepted these penalties has made him for all time the model of penitents.”

The song opens with a reference to a “secret chord” that is pleasing to the lord. This is a VERY powerful concept… for to please the lord is perhaps the greatest act a lowly mortal can accomplish, no? The idea that it’s secret means that it is hard to discover, known to only a few, or no
t meant for mass consumption. David has an inside track to the lord through song.

You can see that this has many parallels with the actual singer… as if his song was a prayer or a gospel. The music has power and its meaning isn’t all on the surface.

But you don’t really care for music, do ya?

The subject of who “you” is from verse to verse is a-whole-nother topic, as it appears to change repeatedly and is further complicated by which version of the song we choose to discuss.

The interrogatory tone of this line suggests that the addressee is unprepared for or unappreciative of any deeper meaning. “You” isn’t part of the inner circle, the initiated, the educated, or the informed. Religions are built on sacred knowledge, the leadership are people who know the secret will of God or prophets who can predict the future actions of God.

To juxtapose the powerful concept of a God-pleasing secret chord with the dismissal of an apathetic audience sets the tone for the rest of the song which serves to educate the ignorant “you” on why such matters are important.

Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Given the pedantic setup of the previous stanza, this stanza begins the lesson.

These lines work on many levels. First, we have the singer (the virtual David) playing chords: the fourth, the fifth… growing in pitch. I believe that this is following the ascension of David to power. The minor fall (a minor chord) is reflective of David’s fall from grace, his sin and lack of repentance. The major lift (a major chord) raising the tone with David’s repentance and the grace of God, growing throughout the line of the “baffled king composing Hallelujah.” As wisely stated before, David’s confusion is the confusion of man trying to discern the will of God or even the ways of a woman. I also prefer to interpret the Hallelujah of the last line as the song David is composing… he is writing the music in praise, the song, THIS SONG, is the praise…. it is the Hallelujah.

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof

The first line is ironic, because the need for proof would imply a weak faith, not a strong one. The bible is filled with the Doubting Thomas stories of faith being tested and failing.

You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya

The woman bathing on the roof is obviously Bethsheba, who we learn about in 2 Samuel 11:1:

Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.

Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.

So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.

The first stanza tells of a King who is derelict in his duty, staying in Jerusalem while his army is off fighting a war.

The power of the moon to drive men mad is ancient and popular is cultural myth and spiritual belief. It’s where we derive the word lunatic, and the myths of vampires and werewolves.

“Her Beauty…overthrew ya,” here is the first sign we have as to the lust that is present through out this song. higland04 does a very insightful analysis, but I think he fails to fully appreciate how sexual this song is.

And she tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair

Here we have a merging of the story of David and Bathsheba and Samson and Delilah. The parallel between these stories is the seduction and emasculation of man by woman. For a woman to overpower a man, she must overcome his physical power and she has done this through her feminine wiles.

Now, I’m not sure if the “kitchen” aspect has anything to do with domesticity or if it’s just a parallel image to getting your hair cut at home. It was not uncommon for a mother to cut her children’s hair (and her husband’s hair) in the kitchen. The kitchen is certainly more the woman’s domain than the man’s.

The overriding image here is of woman conquering both forms of man’s power: physical and political, force and authority. The throne obviously being the symbol of man’s political authority and the hair a reference to the muscular physical strength of Samson. If you buy into the domestic aspect, then perhaps the kitchen is a place of power for women and thus the man is playing (and losing) in her arena.

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Ok, lots of ways to interpret this line. The woman can be giving so much pleasure that the man is praising god is a moment of ecstasy. I don’t buy that one. Perhaps he is so enthralled by her that he is in fact singing HER praise, not God’s. More likely.

If you want to take an even darker line, her drawing out his “Hallelujah” is her tempting him to lose God’s grace… her corruption of him. It is the woman’s role in procreation to draw the man out and to literally draw out his soul or seed. Perhaps here we have the woman drawing out his faith too.

Baby I’ve been here before
I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor,
I used to live alone before I knew ya

The singer has returned to life alone. He has been rejected and now he is BACK to being alone.

If you want to pull in some bible imagery that isn’t really supported by a direct reference, but seems to fit the theme, perhaps the story of John the Baptist. He was a hermit, he lived alone. But he too was demised by the wiles of a woman, Salome. When he returned to the room of the king he was beheaded. Now that’s a cold and broken Hallelujah.

What I take out of this stanza is a half hearted attempt for the broken lover to re-establish some sort of credibility. This is the “I’m ok, I can live without you” part of the break up. All of the images here are of experience, being here before, seeing and walking and living as an individual.

And I’ve seen your
flag on the marble arch
and love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

The marble arch is a commemoration of a great triumph and a flag is a statement identity, a placeholder for a greater concept. These two images do come together in a victory march, but who is the conquerer and who is the vanquished? Do we have the woman planting her flag on the man’s (king’s) triumphal arch, thus claiming him and obsoleting his past victory? Are we referencing King David who was conquered by his lust for a woman, killing her husband in his war, and prevailing over both his enemies and the man who beat him to Bathsheba?

Regardless of who has the power and the identity, the singer is rejecting their sway on love. I don’t know that personal experience would agree with this, I mean, isn’t it almost cliche that confidence and charisma (identity) and power (in the form of wealth, good looks, or ability to provide) are aphrodisiacs?

Is love really cold and broken? Not when it’s good, but certainly when it’s gone. And that certainly must be the point. No matter how wonderful it was when you had it, if you brought about its demise, it’s our love that makes it hurt when it’s gone. Even after the fall of empires and the death of identities, the arches and statues and flags remain. No such artifact exists when love is broken since it never manifests itself in a lasting physical form.

There was a time when you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you?

Sex is knowledge, even in the bible. When we talk about “knowledge” of someone, it is sexual knowledge, to have committed intercourse…it is even a joke to insert “biblically” after “I know her” as a sexual joke and the bible uses the verb “to know” to represent sexual intercourse. I take these lines to mean that there was a time when “we” were sexually intimate but now she has cut him off.

But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Raw Passionate Fucking. Intercourse. Ejaculation. In Out In Out.
Ok, there, I got it out. This stanza isn’t a fond remembrance of a holy time with god, it’s about sex. Remember when we were in the moment, when we fucked? (sorry, to “make love” just doesn’t have the intensity reflected in the lyrics) It was a religious experience, we were so in tune, so rhythmic, we even breathed together… we had simultaneous climax. Hot and heavy breaths were as praises to the bliss we were experiencing.

Remember, the holy dove, the holy ghost, is God’s seed, his sperm. When God impregnates Mary, he sends the Holy Ghost. When St. Teresa is experiencing her ECSTASY, it is spiritual AND sexual and the holy dove is there. You can view the amazing sculpture by Bernini for a strong visual on this. Remember, ejaculate is life, it is “seed,” it is the distillment of life.

Maybe there’s a God above
…

This is questioning the existence of God. You can read the words of a Christian discussing the song a little and his need to rewrite it to be more appropriate for his wedding. He goes so far as to add New Testament images to the song. I don’t think Cohen’s original and certainly not the version Buckley sings really brings Christ into the picture. Remember, Cohen did sing a version of the song with the line “it’s not some gleeful Christian who has seen the light.”

The shift in the song at this verse is unquestionable. We have turned away from God. The woman has conquered us in the previous stanzas, now there is no close relationship with God… we are beaten.

…
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

This brings us back to the David story. David stole Bethsheeba from Urias, having him killed because he “outdrew” David by marrying Bathsheeba before David had a chance. The question at hand would be, is the singer the shooter or the victim of another shooter. I’d argue for the later, since you aren’t likely to lament the guys you stepped on if you’ve won the girl and still have her.

The image is one from the old west or perhaps from the colonial times where men would settle disputes by dueling. A duel was an honorable exchange, face to face. It was a means to level the field between unequals. David did away with Uriel in a dishonorable manner. He was the man’s superior, but he used a lowly tactic to have him killed. He cheated at the duel. He was willing to forfeit his honor, his manhood, for lust. Not love, lust. All is fair in love and war, eh?

Ok, but there’s more, we’re not still talking just about David. The song isn’t the song of David. It’s using David and Sampson as a dual figure to the singer. The next lines are more abstract than the myth. That’s why it’s so easy for the author to switch between the images and it’s also why he doesn’t begin each line with David did this and David did that.

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

The subject of each of the three “It’s” is LOVE. The cry you hear at night is vague (but none-the-less a powerful image), but I see one of the meanings of the cry to be the moans of ecstasy during sex, (you might say it could be the cry of Uriel as he’s killed in battle, but why at night?). A cry at night is almost animalistic, a male cat looking for some tail, a wolf baying at the moon. Note, it’s not crying at night, it is A CRY. Crying is an extended emotional outlet, it is feminine. A CRY is more akin to a war cry, or a masculine shout of pain (I hear STELLA! from Marlin Brando echoing in my ear).

These lines are depressing, not uplifting. They’re saying that love isn’t just a burst of emotion or some brainwashed born-again. There is no clarity of vision or purpose or faith here. There isn’t a close personal relationship with Jesus. He’s saying that it’s complicated and fucked up and not perfect and dark and sacrificial and C
OLD. Giving in to love risks rejection and THATS WHAT HE’S SINGING ABOUT. He has been rejected by his object of love/lust. She has stopped putting out. They no longer fuck, they no longer connect in a way that words can’t express, he no longer moves within her…. no more ecstasy.

Now, what do you make of the song when it’s a powerful woman singing it?

The casual reader might want to listen to the song by playing the embedded video, enjoy it, and move on. But if you’d like to delve into the lyrics, their allusions, and the deeper themes of the song, please, enjoy the rest and feel free to disagree and tell me about it.

Despite the tortured and dark themes in the lyrics, the hauntingly beautiful melody and religious references of Hallelujah fool many people into believing that the song is a spiritual paean the likes of which you’d play at a wedding. I’d recommend adding it to your playlist of “Songs To Breakup By” instead. It’s a weary, disillusioned, aching song; the passion is pain, the faith supplanted by remorse. The repeated “hallelujahs” are not reverent and sincere, they are ironic and anything but holy.

Cohen’s technique in his poetry and writing has been described as “deconstructing the identity of the main characters by means of combining the sacred and the profane, religion and sexuality in a rich, lyrical language.” You’ll probably agree that this pattern applies to “Hallelujah.”

To me, the superlative cover of the song is by Jeff Buckley.

Buckley especially just blew the song to pieces and every artist after him has tried and failed to put it back together.
- Muruch

During his famed early gigs at the New York club Sin-e, Buckley used to break hearts with his version of this Cohen prayer. Buckley called it an homage to “the hallelujah of the orgasm” and had misgivings about his sensuous rendition: “I hope Leonard doesn’t hear it.”
- Rolling Stone – who ranked Buckley’s cover 259 on the list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time“

As Cohen’s thoughts on this song show, he did craft the lyrics with deep religious meaning; however, his own feelings on the song (and the way he sang it) became more secular with time and adoption into the mainstream culture. Cohen himself became a Zen Buddhist from 1996-1999, so I guess reinterpretation is always possible. So, why don’t we start with the significance of the lyrics in a religious manner and see if we can discern a more secular meaning.

Seeing as the Old Testament references are specific and numerous, any analysis that lacks an understanding of them is incomplete. The identity of the David in the first stanza isn’t difficult, there’s only one in the entire Bible.

I heard there was a secret chord
that David played and it pleased the Lord

It’s worth reading up on King David.

“The prominent part played by song and music in the worship of the temple, as arranged by David, is readily explained by his poetic and musical abilities. His skill in music is recorded in I Kings, xvi, 18 and Amos, vi, 5. Poems of his composition are found in II Kings, i, iii, xxii, xxiii. His connection with the Book of Psalms, many of which are expressly attributed to various incidents of his career, was so taken for granted in later days that many ascribed the whole Psalter to him.”

Worth note:

• David defeated Goliath with a sling and stone
• David was a musician and most of the Psalms of the Bible are attributed to him
  
• David cured King Saul of his demons through his music
  
• David sang “imprudent songs” about women
• David had multiple wives, several of whom he won through killing and war
• David united (through war) the tribes of Israel under his rule
• After unifying the Israelites, David waged wars against the neighbors and enemies of Israel to solidify his reign
• During the war vs. the Ammonites, “he fell into the sins of adultery and murder” thus “bringing great calamities on himself and his people”

This last note refers to the indirect murder of Urias and the adultery with his wife Bethsheba.

“After his sin with Bethsabee and the indirect assassination of Urias, her husband, David made her his wife. A year elapsed before his repentance for the sin, but his contrition was so sincere that God pardoned him, though at the same time announcing the severe penalties that were to follow. The spirit in which David accepted these penalties has made him for all time the model of penitents.”

The song opens with a reference to a “secret chord” that is pleasing to the lord. This is a VERY powerful concept… for to please the lord is perhaps the greatest act a lowly mortal can accomplish, no? The idea that it’s secret means that it is hard to discover, known to only a few, or not meant for mass consumption. David has an inside track to the lord through song.

You can see that this has many parallels with the actual singer… as if his song was a prayer or a gospel. The music has power and its meaning isn’t all on the surface.

But you don’t really care for music, do ya?

The subject of who “you” is from verse to verse is a-whole-nother topic, as it appears to change repeatedly and is further complicated by which version of the song we choose to discuss.

The interrogatory tone of this line suggests that the addressee is unprepared for or unappreciative of any deeper meaning. “You” isn’t part of the inner circle, the initiated, the educated, or the informed. Religions are built on sacred knowledge, the leadership are people who know the secret will of God or prophets who can predict the future actions of God.

To juxtapose the powerful concept of a God-pleasing secret chord with the dismissal of an apathetic audience sets the tone for the rest of the song which serves to educate the ignorant “you” on why such matters are important.

Well it goes like this:
The fourth, the fifth, the minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Given the pedantic setup of the previous stanza, this stanza begins the lesson.

These lines work on many levels. First, we have the singer (the virtual David) playing chords: the fourth, the fifth… growing in pitch. I believe that this is following the ascension of David to power. The minor fall (a minor chord) is reflective of David’s fall from grace, his sin and lack of repentance. The major lift (a major chord) raising the tone with David’s repentance and the grace of God, growing throughout the line of the “baffled king composing Hallelujah.” As wisely stated before, David’s confusion is the confusion of man trying to discern the will of God or even the ways of a woman. I also prefer to interpret the Hallelujah of the last line as the song David is composing… he is writing the music in praise, the song, THIS SONG, is the praise…. it is the Hallelujah.

Well your faith was strong but you needed proof

The first line is ironic, because the need for proof would imply a weak faith, not a strong one. The bible is filled with the Doubting Thomas stories of faith being tested and failing.

You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya

The woman bathing on the roof is obviously Bethsheba, who we learn about in 2 Samuel 11:1:

Then it happened in the spring, at the time when kings go out to battle, that David sent Joab and his servants with him and all Israel, and they destroyed the sons of Ammon and besieged Rabbah. But David stayed at Jerusalem.

Now when evening came David arose from his bed and walked around on the roof of the king’s house, and from the roof he saw a woman bathing; and the woman was very beautiful in appearance.

So David sent and inquired about the woman. And one said, “Is this not Bathsheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite?”

David sent messengers and took her, and when she came to him, he lay with her; and when she had purified herself from her uncleanness, she returned to her house.

The first stanza tells of a King who is derelict in his duty, staying in Jerusalem while his army is off fighting a war.

The power of the moon to drive men mad is ancient and popular is cultural myth and spiritual belief. It’s where we derive the word lunatic, and the myths of vampires and werewolves.

“Her Beauty…overthrew ya,” here is the first sign we have as to the lust that is present through out this song. higland04 does a very insightful analysis, but I think he fails to fully appreciate how sexual this song is.

And she tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair

Here we have a merging of the story of David and Bathsheba and Samson and Delilah. The parallel between these stories is the seduction and emasculation of man by woman. For a woman to overpower a man, she must overcome his physical power and she has done this through her feminine wiles.

Now, I’m not sure if the “kitchen” aspect has anything to do with domesticity or if it’s just a parallel image to getting your hair cut at home. It was not uncommon for a mother to cut her children’s hair (and her husband’s hair) in the kitchen. The kitchen is certainly more the woman’s domain than the man’s.

The overriding image here is of woman conquering both forms of man’s power: physical and political, force and authority. The throne obviously being the symbol of man’s political authority and the hair a reference to the muscular physical strength of Samson. If you buy into the domestic aspect, then perhaps the kitchen is a place of power for women and thus the man is playing (and losing) in her arena.

And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Ok, lots of ways to interpret this line. The woman can be giving so much pleasure that the man is praising god is a moment of ecstasy. I don’t buy that one. Perhaps he is so enthralled by her that he is in fact singing HER praise, not God’s. More likely.

If you want to take an even darker line, her drawing out his “Hallelujah” is her tempting him to lose God’s grace… her corruption of him. It is the woman’s role in procreation to draw the man out and to literally draw out his soul or seed. Perhaps here we have the woman drawing out his faith too.

Baby I’ve been here before
I’ve seen this room and I’ve walked this floor,
I used to live alone before I knew ya

The singer has returned to life alone. He has been rejected and now he is BACK to being alone.

If you want to pull in some bible imagery that isn’t really supported by a direct reference, but seems to fit the theme, perhaps the story of John the Baptist. He was a hermit, he lived alone. But he too was demised by the wiles of a woman, Salome. When he returned to the room of the king he was beheaded. Now that’s a cold and broken Hallelujah.

What I take out of this stanza is a half hearted attempt for the broken lover to re-establish some sort of credibility. This is the “I’m ok, I can live without you” part of the break up. All of the images here are of experience, being here before, seeing and walking and living as an individual.

And I’ve seen your flag on the marble arch
and love is not a victory march
It’s a cold and it’s a broken Hallelujah

The marble arch is a commemoration of a great triumph and a flag is a statement identity, a placeholder for a greater concept. These two images do come together in a victory march, but who is the conquerer and who is the vanquished? Do we have the woman planting her flag on the man’s (king’s) triumphal arch, thus claiming him and obsoleting his past victory? Are we referencing King David who was conquered by his lust for a woman, killing her husband in his war, and prevailing over both his enemies and the man who beat him to Bathsheba?

Regardless of who has the power and the identity, the singer is rejecting their sway on love. I don’t know that personal experience would agree with this, I mean, isn’t it almost cliche that confidence and charisma (identity) and power (in the form of wealth, good looks, or ability to provide) are aphrodisiacs?

Is love really cold and broken? Not when it’s good, but certainly when it’s gone. And that certainly must be the point. No matter how wonderful it was when you had it, if you brought about its demise, it’s our love that makes it hurt when it’s gone. Even after the fall of empires and the death of identities, the arches and statues and flags remain. No such artifact exists when love is broken since it never manifests itself in a lasting physical form.

There was a time when you let me know
What’s really going on below
But now you never show that to me do you?

Sex is knowledge, even in the bible. When we talk about “knowledge” of someone, it is sexual knowledge, to have committed intercourse…it is even a joke to insert “biblically” after “I know her” as a sexual joke and the bible uses the verb “to know” to represent sexual intercourse. I take these lines to mean that there was a time when “we” were sexually intimate but now she has cut him off.

But remember when I moved in you
And the holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was Hallelujah

Raw Passionate Fucking. Intercourse. Ejaculation. In Out In Out.
Ok, there, I got it out. This stanza isn’t a fond remembrance of a holy time with god, it’s about sex. Remember when we were in the moment, when we fucked? (sorry, to “make love” just doesn’t have the intensity reflected in the lyrics) It was a religious experience, we were so in tune, so rhythmic, we even breathed together… we had simultaneous climax. Hot and heavy breaths were as praises to the bliss we were experiencing.

Remember, the holy dove, the holy ghost, is God’s seed, his sperm. When God impregnates Mary, he sends the Holy Ghost. When St. Teresa is experiencing her ECSTASY, it is spiritual AND sexual and the holy dove is there. You can view the amazing sculpture by Bernini for a strong visual on this. Remember, ejaculate is life, it is “seed,” it is the distillment of life.

Maybe there’s a God above
…

This is questioning the existence of God. You can read the words of a Christian discussing the song a little and his need to rewrite it to be more appropriate for his wedding. He goes so far as to add New Testament images to the song. I don’t think Cohen’s original and certainly not the version Buckley sings really brings Christ into the picture. Remember, Cohen did sing a version of the song with the line “it’s not some gleeful Christian who has seen the light.”

The shift in the song at this verse is unquestionable. We have turned away from God. The woman has conquered us in the previous stanzas, now there is no close relationship with God… we are beaten.

…
But all I’ve ever learned from love
Was how to shoot somebody who outdrew you

This brings us back to the David story. David stole Bethsheeba from Urias, having him killed because he “outdrew” David by marrying Bathsheeba before David had a chance. The question at hand would be, is the singer the shooter or the victim of another shooter. I’d argue for the later, since you aren’t likely to lament the guys you stepped on if you’ve won the girl and still have her.

The image is one from the old west or perhaps from the colonial times where men would settle disputes by dueling. A duel was an honorable exchange, face to face. It was a means to level the field between unequals. David did away with Uriel in a dishonorable manner. He was the man’s superior, but he used a lowly tactic to have him killed. He cheated at the duel. He was willing to forfeit his honor, his manhood, for lust. Not love, lust. All is fair in love and war, eh?

Ok, but there’s more, we’re not still talking just about David. The song isn’t the song of David. It’s using David and Sampson as a dual figure to the singer. The next lines are more abstract than the myth. That’s why it’s so easy for the author to switch between the images and it’s also why he doesn’t begin each line with David did this and David did that.

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

The subject of each of the three “It’s” is LOVE. The cry you hear at night is vague (but none-the-less a powerful image), but I see one of the meanings of the cry to be the moans of ecstasy during sex, (you might say it could be the cry of Uriel as he’s killed in battle, but why at night?). A cry at night is almost animalistic, a male cat looking for some tail, a wolf baying at the moon. Note, it’s not crying at night, it is A CRY. Crying is an extended emotional outlet, it is feminine. A CRY is more akin to a war cry, or a masculine shout of pain (I hear STELLA! from Marlin Brando echoing in my ear).

These lines are depressing, not uplifting. They’re saying that love isn’t just a burst of emotion or some brainwashed born-again. There is no clarity of vision or purpose or faith here. There isn’t a close personal relationship with Jesus. He’s saying that it’s complicated and fucked up and not perfect and dark and sacrificial and COLD. Giving in to love risks rejection and THATS WHAT HE’S SINGING ABOUT. He has been rejected by his object of love/lust. She has stopped putting out. They no longer fuck, they no longer connect in a way that words can’t express, he no longer moves within her…. no more ecstasy.

Now, what do you make of the song when it’s a powerful woman singing it?

Was high school composition the last time you analyzed a piece of literature line by line? Do you remember the feeling when you heard or read a line and understood exactly what the allusions and references meant and that knowledge elevated your appreciation for the source material to a higher level and made you feel like you were “in” on something special?

You don’t have to be exhaustively well read or a collector of Cliff’s Notes to find enrichment by delving a bit deeper into a “text.” And when the text is more approachable, more immediately relevant to your interests, the analysis is nowhere near as tedious as you might remember from English class.

Textual analysis is like a treasure hunt or a criminal investigation, putting together the pieces that were intentionally or unintentionally left behind, inching toward illumination and the rewards of understanding.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be bringing sexy textual analysis back with a series of posts on word and song.

Oh but we’d be myopic if we thought ebonics was the first time. The same process degraded Latin into Italian over a few hundred years and when someone with an IQ above room temperature wrote something decent in the new mongrel dialect, Italian’s place was secured as a language in history. Word. …err…Parola!

If you don’t like test results, you can either raise the level of performance or you can lower expectations. At every step our Teacher’s Union has fought for lowering expectations and getting rid of any kind of test, benchmark, or measure of performance that would make them accountable for doing their job. We can’t fire the bad ones and socialist policies of seniority, tenure, and command economy style salaries mean that we can’t keep the good ones by paying them what they deserve and what we could afford if we didn’t need to support mediocrity with the same budget.

Our schools are failing and it shows:

Now most of you lefties out there will squawk that teachers need more money and more perks. Barack Obama has said as much in several of his speeches, just like every Democratic candidate before him in history.

That might be true, but unlike your idea of bribing the NEA with anything it wants, if we are to pay more, we need to be paying different (and better) people. Most of our current teachers need to be kicked to the curb or given jobs flipping burgers. If we are to pay more, we need to be getting more in return and that means firing huge numbers of idiot teachers. And that’s saying nothing of the bloat, the untrimmed fat, the excess of “administrators.” These wack jobs severely outnumber the teachers and they do little and are accountable to no one.

Paying more money to TEACHERS instead of administrators is not what the NEA wants to hear. Paying more money to DIFFERENT teachers instead of the bottom of the employment barrel we have now is not what the NEA wants to hear. They don’t want more money for better teachers, they want more money for the crap we have now, just so long as a fixed percent of every salary comes back into their coffers. They don’t want standards, they want job security for teachers which translates into guaranteed cash flows for them.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Obama has more to say when he gets specific, and the NEA doesn’t like what it hears. As nicely as an NEA ass kissing candidate could possibly be without risking their wrath, Obama told the NEA last year that he supports merit pay. Merit pay is anathema to the NEA and most of its members for the simple reason that most of them lack any merit whatsoever. I’ll do without the promise of riches Obama used to soften the blow of merit pay, but even hearing those words out of a Democrat is refreshing.

In fact, despite disagreeing with almost everything Mr. Obama wants to do with this country, I have to admit that listening to him speak is refreshing. He’s really the only orator running for President and you’d really have to go back to Ronald Reagan to find the last orator of note. Bush senior was tinny and annoying, Clinton was a say-anything sleaze, and Bush junior is a mush mouth. If you had to quote the first two, you’d likely recall a vehement lie over anything inspirational (read my lips, no new taxes; I did not have sexual relations with that woman), and anything inspirational the last one has said is buried in all of the spoonerisms and gaffs he produces on a daily basis. All three will be forgotten to history, yet the great orators past are still relevant. No one name Bush or Clinton will ever join their ranks.

Now, would Mr. Obama be as inspirational if he were speaking in vernacular instead of pristine English? Would he be giving the Clinton machine a run for their money, winning over huge percentages of uppity well to do whites if he could be dismissed like the holy and tax free “Reverends” Al Sharpton or Jessie Jackson and their pale imitations of King-speak? Or even worse if he spoke like your average urban or suburban high schooler? Not a chizzle in hizzle, my nizzle.

Language is the best proxy for intelligence we have. People who speak well are assumed to be intelligent and people who speak poorly are assumed to be idiots. A nice British accent will even add a few points to that perception, along with bonuses to credibility and authority. Why do you think a plethora of advertisers in America use accented announcers to push their products, especially when they are appealing to class, intelligence, and trustworthiness?

If you want to be taken seriously with your bumper sticker sized mottos, or tattoo length messages to the world, at least get the spelling right people. Grammar and Spelling are the things DREAMS are made of. American dreams. Presidential dreams.

Part 3. The Future. Wherein the Author describes Dog’s presence in the babble and first words of children.

In the first part of this series I got around to discuss dogs at the end. The takeaway observation is that dogs hold a prestigious place in the short list of man’s oldest words. We’ve been talking about dogs since we began talking, and we haven’t slowed down since.

Modern English hints that dogs are a reflection of god, and anyone who has ever found that once in a lifetime pup would agree. Dogs worship us, they refresh our souls, they hold no conditions, and they never lie. They ask little and give much. They aren’t perfect, but man doesn’t deserve perfect and dogs are probably more than we deserve as well. For all the slandering the humble dog has taken in the various religious tomes, and even the lingering pejorative treatments of dogs in clichés and euphemisms, dogs endure and they don’t hold what we say about them against us.

As with any obsession, we might be saying more about the man-dog bond than we realize. “Dog” is the 310th most commonly used word in English based on the American National Corpus. We talk and write about dogs more than we talk about horses (311), birds (312), cats (673) or even our friends (323). More than rock (353) and roll (676), more than the moon (520) and stars (420), more than cause (532) and effect (998), and even more than death (953).

We honor dogs with more lip service than art (799), science (875), industry (894) and even God (779). We value them more than dollars (866), money (374), riches (865) and gold (662). And even our concern for the poor (688) doesn’t come close, nor does our quest for power (486).

We respect them more than Kings (390), Presidents (726), and the rule (483) of law (717). And recent press should confirm that we’d rather dish on dogs than discuss soldiers (825) at war (387), despite a plethora of war correspondents and not a single dog correspondent on any newspaper’s payroll.

Dogs are more genuine than truth (366) and impervious to lies (853). They give us more direction than North (372) , South (385), East (741) and West(581). We are for (13) dogs more than we are against (368) anything (514). Heck, we’ll even take dogs over hope (633) and love (531).

I suspect that we talk sex (???) more than we do dogs, but sex doesn’t even rank on the list. I think that it’s been edited from my source since even the Brits talk about sex (83 times per million words) just a little bit more than they do dogs (80 per million), and the Brits are renowned sexual prudes.

Other than sex, it’s certain we talk about just a handful of things more than dogs. Water (84), oil (88), land (171), work (107), and school (212). Home (173), family (299), mother (192), father (213) and children (253). Music (302) and song (296) and, of course, Animal House (187-188).

And really, that’s exactly the way it should be.

[ Part 1. The Ancient. ] [ Part 3. The Future. ]

Hint: You’re not proof-reading very carefully. Perhaps your editor needs to be fired.

YAY, you win the game of life!

Your well deserved prize is to enjoy the splendor that is DogEatDoug.