Leonard Cohen used to live alone before he knew THIS secret chord!
Baffled Kings, Let’s Talk About David’s Secret Chord in “Hallelujah”
If it’s potent enough to please the Lord, won’t it make our lovers sing “Hallelujah” too?
M̶a̶y̶b̶e̶ i̶t̶’s̶ M̶a̶y̶b̶e̶l̶l̶i̶n̶e̶
Now, I’ve heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don’t really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
— Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”
Baffled kings, it’s time to put one of music’s greatest mysteries to rest.
What was David’s secret chord?
Assuming no magical fuckery was involved, David had access to all the same notes and scales we have today.
Yet, anyone who has ever been tied to a kitchen chair by a scissor-wielding lover would agree:
Love is a form of magical fuckery that cackles in the face of logic.
What pleases our lovers can be as elusive as what pleases the Lord.
So what was it?
G-Maj-7?
Maybe?
Dsus2?
Hmm…
A?
Who knows… maybe God’s Canadian?
‘A’ is also the first letter of ‘Alpha.”
And ‘Ass.’
But let’s stay focused, kings.
This goes deeper than wolf pack mentalities and dominance hierarchies.
This is the kind of deep spiritual shit you can’t find between the covers of Men’s Health or Cosmopolitan.
This is about love.
Maybe it’s Metonymy?
If you don’t really care for music, you might not know it was Leonard Cohen (not Jeff Buckley) who penned and sang the OG version of Hallelujah.
Here’s the song that spawned a thousand covers:
Regarding the secret chord, Cohen’s lyrics give a cryptic answer:
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall, the major lift. The baffled king composing Hallelujah.
— Leonard Cohen, “Hallelujah”
Wait, isn’t that a chord progression?
Is Cohen saying all these chords are the secret chord collectively — in that sequence, and that sequence only?
Maybe Cohen is using a figure of speech called a synecdoche, a type of metonymy, where part of something (a chord) serves to represent a larger whole (a chord progression). It also sounds like a gastrointestinal medical procedure.
This gives the “secret chord” a sense of grandeur, suggesting a phenomenon that cannot be described in plain and direct language.
Plain and direct is how queens prefer kings to communicate anyway regarding matters of intimacy.
It’s probably a bad idea to beat around the bush with metonymy.
Getting your throne broken (and hair cut) because you don’t know how to communicate with your queen is so not king shit.
Now for the major lift…
Maybe it’s a Metaphor?
Baffled kings, I forgot the times we are living in and how we can now unbaffle ourselves through the magical fuckery of Chat-GPT!
So enough dilly-dallying around the point.
Let’s ask Chat-GPT instead.
And there you have it!
To open the portcullises of our hearts!
Baffled kings, we hunger for this!
And by we, I mean the Royal me.
Don’t we all wish to commune with a divinity beyond the limits of chainmail, coats, and crowns?
Love strips us bare and allows us to see each other bathing naked in the moonlight.
Crowns make our heads heavy, but love makes our hearts weigh less than a bird on the wire.
Wait…
Wait, Chat-GPT doesn’t care for music… does it?
What does an AI know about love and divinity anyway?
It’s probably just as baffled as we are, kings.
Pretty sure there are other chords that God likes too.
You’d have to be higher than Hosanna to believe otherwise.
Thanks for reading, and keep it regal, kings.
Hallelujah!
