But you don't really care for music, do you?

My brother-in-law, L, never listens to music. He says it holds no attraction for him; in fact, he finds music a public annoyance because it's always destroying his train of thought. When he's not listening to music (ha!), L is one of the foremost philosophy scholars in Canada. He's also the National Champion for his age group in track cycling. Oh yes, my husband's genes are of the intense, purist variety. Of the four boys, two are professors, one's an anesthesiologist and the other's a stay-at-home dad. The SAHD dad is a Birkebeiner racer (that's x-country skiing for 55 kms while carrying a baby, fyi) and, as you know, MadDad is a marathoner. Like I say, intense.

I got to thinking about L's disdain for music last Tuesday night when my attention was briefly captured by American Idol. I used to be an Idol-head but the show has long since lost its brassy shine for me. In the few minutes the TV was on, I saw a frightfully inarticulate pretty-boy with dread locks do a passing karaoke imitation of Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah (ok, Cohen's Hallelujah but no one would ever try to imitate Cohen's vocal stylings, now would they?). The song was trimmed down, of course, to meet time constraints and wouldn't you know it the verses that were removed were the sacred and profane ones. The song became nothing more than a neat break-up song with Old Testament overtones.

The judges were very much pleased with Dread Boy's performance. In fact, Simon Cowell commended it saying, "That was brilliant. The Jeff Buckley version of that song is one of my favourite songs of all time."

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Yes, Simon Cowell, our greatest pop culture arch-villain, the man who gave us The Spice Girls and Hunky Tenors Who Sing Air Supply (aka Il Divo), the man who packages cult of personality entertainment and formulaic pap tunes, actually lists Buckley's version of Cohen as an all-time favourite. I need not mention that neither Cohen nor Buckley would have ever got a record deal under Cowell or that a 7 minute song of delicate timing and ethereal precision would never cut it in the Cowell industrial complex. Why, Dread Boy's version on YouTube is only 4 minutes and 24 seconds and that includes his pre-song interview and the judges comments. There's no grace in that. Yet, Mr. s'Cowell loves this song. As do I.

The Cohen version was on one of the first CDs I ever bought. I picked up Buckley's Grace in the mid-90s and, then, just before Miss M was born I treated myself to kd lang's Hymns of the 49th Parallel. When Miss M was a newborn, we would frequently dance together to lang's version of the song. While I suffered the psychic gashes brought on by lactation and all manner of deprivation, my daughter wooed me with her own cold and broken hallelujah. Her fathomless infant eyes never left my face as we swayed around the room.



Then one day, when she was three weeks old, I looked up from one of these dances and saw my husband looking at me enraptured. My sister was there too, having traveled a great distance to initiate me into the rituals of motherhood. It was there that I found grace: in love, in family and in a simple pop tune well executed.

I am no philosopher. The things that I have faith in need no proof. I can live without intensity or purity of purpose. I cannot, however, live without poetry, without music, without art, without veiled glimpses at all that is sacred and profane. Last night, Miss M and I listened to Buckley's Hallelujah while she brushed her teeth. She danced away from the sink wearing nothing but a pj top, her pale bum in the lamplight overthrowing all that I am.