my first hallelujah

a few sundays ago i read a review of a new book called The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah" by Alan Light which reminded me of the first time i heard the song. i remember back in the mid-nineties when jeff buckley's grace came out and went to pioneer mall downtown to listen to some new cds and put his version on. it was so beautiful i had to listen to it over & over, i must have been there an hour, maybe two, and for the rest of the day i walked around in the state of hallelujah with that angelic croon of his looping continuously in my head. later that evening i went to the tuesday open mic at the now legendary cafe lena's. it was normally crowded but there happened to be a local tv crew there to do a piece about the poetry boom happening in portland. there's something about a camera, especially the possibility of getting on tv that does strange things to people and how they behave. suddenly, all these people who didn't usually read wanted to get on the already full list, which in those days could be thirty deep, and were walking around posing & trying really hard to look & sound interesting & cool, which made for a very weird & competitive atmosphere. i went to the back of the cafe and crouched in between the tables along the wall, crooning hallelujah under my breath in an attempt to preserve within that corrosive "me-me-me" atmosphere. when my name was called i walked up to the microphone at the front of the room and started crooning "ooh" for a full minute. the room fell silent and i did a passionate reading of a poem i wrote & lost about sitting in the pied cow coffeehouse and watching a romantic young couple across the room. the woman reached slowly across the table with her index finger and with extravagant gentleness stroked her smiling lover's nose. the room exploded and the tv crew ended up using footage of my reading on the news.