A Broken Hallelujah: How SNL Helped Us Grieve

There’s a reason they call it a “cold open.” There is no intro. No setting up of context. No opening music or credits to know the show has started. One minute it’s your local news, maybe some commercials–and then, there you are. The opening segment of Saturday Night Life, with little transition from wherever you just were.

Kate McKinnon has so effectively embodied the voice and spirit of Hillary Clinton during this campaign season, that all she had to do was appear in a pantsuit. We didn’t need anybody to tell us, “Hey, this is a Hillary segment!” Even without the usual backdrops of newsrooms and debate nights–even without her usual foil, as portrayed by Alec Baldwin–that suit and that hair were all we needed to know what character she was in.

So when she started the opening bars of “Hallelujah”–the iconic, probably best-known song of composer Leonard Cohen, who passed away this week–we knew we were to hear these words as if they were coming from Hillary herself.

I took the bait. I sat there for a few measures, waiting for it to be funny. Waiting for the punchline. That moment of wondering and uncertainty is exactly what they wanted to provoke, I’m sure.

And then I realized–at exactly the moment they meant for me to realize–that this was not meant to be funny. This was not a joke.

This was an elegy. This was a moment of shared grief.

This was a funeral.

When Kate-as-Hillary rounded the turn into the 2nd verse, I think I muttered “Jesus” under my breath, and realized that I had not, in fact, used up all my tears. I was wrecked. But maybe a more cathartic wreck than I was the day before, but wreck all the same.

I did my best, it wasn’t much
I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch
I’ve told the truth, I didn’t come to fool you
And even though
It all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Jesus.

It was, on the one hand, a moving tribute to a beloved composer; one who has captured the delicate balance of our collective light and darkness with his life’s work. That he made his exit just now, during a time when that tension seems especially poignant, lends a whole new depth of meaning to the phrase “poetic justice.”

At the same time, it was a much-needed memoriam for a dream that died this week. It was not just the dream of a woman President, though that dream, too, has been tragically displaced. It was more a grief for the country that we thought we were; and for the long-held vision of progress toward equality and justice and dignity for all. As the election results played out on Tuesday night, that America grew smaller and smaller. We watched it give way to a darker side of our collective soul; one that has always been there, certainly, but never quite legitimized and vocalized as it is now.

What we witnessed this week was the death of a particular version of the American dream. It’s not surprising that many of us needed a space to observe this moment and grieve it for the loss of life that it is. What is surprising is who gave us the space to do so.

Comedy has always held the power to deliver prophetic truth–there are certain things the court jester can say that would get a regular peasant killed. And in America, political satire has always been a great vehicle for social change, and a true expression of our constitutional rights. So there was something especially powerful about a late night sketch show providing us what no other space has been able to provide–a wake; a eulogy; and a closing benediction.

I remember reading about this particular song–covered by so many artists, given so many expressions–in a Rolling Stone feature a few years ago. They were doing an extensive story on Leonard Cohen, and inquiring minds wanted to know… what the heck is this song about?? It has been argued and debated for years. Is it about sex? (Obviously) Is it about God? (Sure). Is it about scripture, love, or the existential angst that we all face in death??

If I recall, Cohen’s response pretty much amounted to… you tell me.

He said it was meant to be confounding. It was meant to blur the lines between the holy and the profane, the spirit and the flesh. He said this song intentionally “pushes the sacred deep into the secular world,” demonstrating that the two cannot be so easily separated.

With that in mind, last night’s observance was even more remarkable. It gave closure for two deaths–one literal and physical, one philosophical and existential. It was the blurring of two realities–one imagined and one now painfully real. It was a hymn to the complexity of life and death and all that we might create in between. In other words, it was a trip to church when we least expected it. And it was a strong reminder that art has the power, not just to tell, but to transform.

For the artists and the musicians; the poets and the storytellers; the prophets and the comedians, who are so often one in the same; now is the time for that cold and broken hallelujah. Let every breath strike that secret chord–of grief, of hope, and of life observed in unexpected places.