Grading Leonard Cohen
I’ve been trying to promote this fundraising project on the social media sites Twitter and Bluesky, which means I’ve had to spend a lot of time posting on those sites. If I just popped on every once and a while and made a post asking for money, my account would never get any engagement, especially since most social media sites downrank posts that would send users off the app. This means that I’ve had to act like a regular user of those sites and, as Kurt Vonnegut pointed out (perhaps with some help from George Orwell), “We are what we pretend to be.” I’ve had next to no success raising money from strangers on those platforms, but I’ve had a lot of success getting angry at strangers about their opinions on late-stage social media. I’m fascinated by the way my brain and body are unable to tell the difference between a real physical threat in the real world and an annoying post from a complete stranger on the internet. Earlier this week, I got so angry about people’s posts about Leonard Cohen on Bluesky that all of my physiological flight or fight responses—- elevated heartrate, dry mouth, muscle tension—- kicked in. I think I understand why and what it means, and I’m writing this blog post instead of fighting with people on Twitter about it, so I think that’s real personal growth.
Before I can explain why I got angry at former The Michael Richards Show guest star John Fugelsang on Bluesky, I need to explain why I get angry grading essays (it’s all a rich tapestry, bear with me). I teach both speech and composition, and I’ve been reflecting on the fact that I find myself getting frustrated and aggravated grading essays in a way that I never do listening to speeches. Reading substandard essays for hours and hours makes me grind my teeth, and if I don’t take breaks to recenter myself I can start to lose perspective and start writing feedback that is… less than helpful. This never happens when I grade speeches that fall short of my expectations—- not that grading speeches for hours at a time is necessarily fun, but I never find myself getting angry at the students if they fall short of my expectations. This might just be because grading essays is a much more demanding process, but I think there’s something else going on there, too. I talked to a teacher colleague about it, and his theory was that when you grade speeches you can’t lose track of the human being up there doing their best, so it is harder to judge them harshly. I think this is true, but I’ll take it one step further—- when I grade essays, unless I constantly focus on the identify of the student who wrote the essay, I don’t just depersonalize the author, I actually project myself into their position. I would never forget to alphabetize my Works Cited page. I understand that I should edit out unnecessary -ly adverbs and limit my use of the passive voice. I’ve actually read The Scarlet Letter—- multiple times!—- and understand all the symbolism in it. So, when I read an essay that fails to do those things, I can get frustrated because I lose track of the fact that those things are much more challenging for a fifteen your old than they are for me.
At this point, you might be judging me pretty harshly and preparing to write an email to the school board. But, let me talk about Canadian poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen first. Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen multiple people— including the aforementioned lesser known Politically Incorrect contributor Fugelsang—- on Bluesky and Twitter posting that they are so annoyed/disappointed/aggravated that people think Cohen song “Hallelujah,” made famous by Jeff Buckley’s cover and imprinted on a generation of millennials by the movie Shrek, is a Christmas song. These posts have then generated huge numbers of responses (far more responses than my efforts to raise money for kids who need diapers…) from people agreeing that it’s so disappointing that people misunderstand the meaning of the song. This is all based, I think, on a particular interpretation that the song is an ode to sex/orgasm, and that it is therefore ridiculous to treat it as in some way religious/Christian/appropriate for kids. This drives me up the wall for two reasons—-
The meaning of the song is in fact much more ambiguous than that one interpretation. In fact, the line about it being a celebration of the orgasm is in fact a sort-of quote of one review of Buckley’s cover, not the original Cohen song itself. Reading the Wikipedia entry alone shows that Cohen himself didn’t have a definitive interpretation of the song, only that he thought it was a kind of spiritual celebration of the secular/finding the divine in the physical world. This can be sexual, but that’s hardly the only interpretation. For example, the cotemporary celebration of Christmas is pretty clearly a simultaneously secular and spiritual celebration.
More importantly, there’s not a right way or a wrong way to enjoy art! For example, the Leonard Cohen song “So Long Marianne” (my favorite of his) is about a breakup between him and his longtime muse, but if you told me that you loved that song because it always reminded you of watching Gilligan’s Island reruns after school with your mom, you wouldn’t be “wrong,” and if I snarked at you for that I would just be an asshole! My favorite album of all time is Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks. I love to listen to that album on a hot summer afternoon, sitting out in the sun and looking up at a blue sky and thinking about rebirth and new beginnings. Famous and important rock critic Lester Bangs also really liked the album, but his review and interpretation of it is that it is best enjoyed in winter and that it is all about pedophilia. Even if Bangs is correct, I don’t think listening to that album on a late summer evening waiting for the grill to heat up as the sun goes down makes me wrong OR a pedophile.
So my initial response was to get angry at these people who were judging others for enjoying “Hallelujah” at Christmas time. “Why,” I wanted to shout/post, “do you care so much about the way other people enjoy music!!!!” But I think the more interesting question is why was I so angry about other people getting angry about this?
Well, to begin, if I have an opinion about Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” it is… slightly negative? I find the song a little too earnest and cloying and would never put it on to listen to and enjoy, regardless of what holiday season we are in. I found its use in Shrek to be actively off putting, but I’m not quite sure why. But I also don’t find it actively irritating and don’t mind if it’s being played in a coffee shop or whatever. If I went to your Christmas party and it was playing in the background, especially if it was the Rufus Wainwright version, I wouldn’t mind. I guess if you insisted that we all do a sing along to every verse I would roll my eyes. I also don’t get invited to many Christmas parties, so I suppose this is all moot. Regardless, I’m not upset about people criticizing the song.
I think this really comes down to the same point I was trying to make about grading essays—- when I see people posting an opinion I don’t like online, I get angry because I’m imagining another version of myself saying that thing, and since I think that thing is stupid I get frustrated and angry. I want to point out to the person—- this cypher that I’ve turned into a version of me—- that they are doing it wrong and they need to get it in line. But of course, the person who posted that is NOT me. Maybe they just aren’t as enlightened about music and art criticism as I am—- when I hear someone say, “Well, did you know that song is ACTUALLY about S-E-X” I want to make fun of them for being so proud of coming up with a pretty superficial reading of the lyrics. But just as possible, maybe their musical taste is in fact MORE sophisticated than mine and they understand it in a deeper way. Or maybe they are just trolling. Maybe they took too many edibles. Maybe (and this is a very real possible) they are not a person at all but in fact a computer program designed to promote engagement as part of some long play scheme to rip me off.
And if I was having a face to face conversation with this person, I would be able to tell that immediately. If they were someone I knew and cared about, this minor point would fit into a much larger matrix of things I like about them and I would just keep if moving. Or if they were a stranger, I would say, “Well, this is a person I’m not interested in talking to” and I would keep it moving. It’s only in the online space, where all I know about them is their BS opinion about Leonard Cohen and maybe a half remembered idea that they were on MTV’s sketch comedy show The State back in the day (was that John Fugelsang? or Michael Ian Black? Or some other VH1-adjacent celebrity?) I project someone just like me but with this one stupid opinion and it just drives me crazy.
So, once again, when I find something that makes me anxious or angry or depressed and there’s nothing I can do about it, I have to find other solutions. Play with my kids. Do a jigsaw puzzle. Write out all my thoughts in a blog post that may not ever be read but at least gets them out of my head. Try to do something that makes the world a little bit better, even if it is still filled with people with the wrong opinions about Canada’s answer to Bob Dylan (or is that Neil Young?). And hey, if you want to do some small meaningful thing to improve the world, and you’ve read this far, how about clicking the Donate button at the top of this page and making even a small contribution to my fundraising project?
