They're rerunning The OC this year.

Hmmmmmm. The title may appear like a response to that first line. Not exactly. I have often gushed that wantonly, but I wouldn't cheapen that word that way at this moment.

They started with the finale of the first season, which I missed due to a Tivo glitch that still had me smarting. Wow. Ryan leaves at the end. Had me all blubbery several times, but I had no idea. The doorbell rang, he turned to go, and . . . the most beautiful guitar notes began. So familiar, but I couldn't place them. Until Jeff Buckley started to sing:

Man. And that's just the first verse.

One of my all-time favorites, and I have only the vaguest conception why. Some of its power I'm aware of, but something else moves it me, moves very powerfully, that I can't come close to grasping. (In a way that only Leonard Cohen songs ever seem to. Hmmmmm. I wonder if Josh named the lead characters after Leonard.)

For the next three and a half minutes--the last of the season--Josh Schwartz told his story entirely in pictures; while three more amazing verses of that song ripped my heart out. And I don't mean he pieced together some cheesy montage. I mean he told a story in pictures. It had a plot, powerful characters, harsh choices, moral dilemmas, and more grief than I could bear.

All playing out over a soaring melody and bitter, brutal, yet strangely joyful and glorious lyric which at once echoed, commented upon, and stood apart from the picture show.

Man. Anybody who thinks this show is just cheap, silly, bubblegum filler has no idea what art is.

The other six verses:

I hope it comes across on the page. You've got to really sing out those hallelujahs, like you were in church, like you did when you were six years old, when you still believed with a purity and intensity that the world hadn't clouded, and with an innocence beyond the words, when your heart pounded in your chest at the mere intensity of the musical emotion. (Your early childhood may vary, but perhaps you've met a little boy like me. Surely.)

Just makes me want to sit down here and create something beautiful. Hard to compete with, but inspires me to try.

Especially since, of all the things that song is about, not the biggest thing, but definitely on the list, it's a song about writing. About creation, for sure, exaltation at the joy of Creation, and the humble attempt to echo it vocally. That's what any hallelujah is, right? And this one in particular can't you feel it bubbling up inside him as he writes it? Hallelujah.

He opens with the musical creation idea with the secret chord, but naturally it's the part about birthing the text that speaks to me. There's a blaze of light in every word? Yeah. Only a writer would say that. Or put another way, how could anyone feel that and not write?

Hmmmmm. What a stupid thing to say. Because they can't, I guess. How many thousands of times have I thought that about music? And not an ounce of talent to produce it. So I guess only a writer or reader would say that.

And then there are the last lines from the fifth and seventh verses:

And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.

Obviously that's primarily about the intensity of the love affair. (And God, what a way to express it!) But somehow, as a writer, and maybe I'm just projecting here--so what if I'm projecting, isn't that's what art is for, to draw from and project back upon?--I can't help but hear him exuding an equal joy at his ability to express it. A second little hallelujah for capturing the first one so profoundly.

And the last line. With nothing on my tongue but Halleluljah. That whole last verse. Man. Standing before God to be judged, and the god specifically of his particular art, asking for final judgement on the work he has just created. And nothing on his lips but exaltation at the idea. Or is it nothing on his lips but the name of his own song?

Ahhhhhhh. Exaltation at your own work. Someday I'll be that proud of what I've done.

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And if you find bits of it as baffling as I do, great discussion of it here. (Also the place I cribbed the lyrics. Thanks.) Just a bunch of people trying to make sense of it all. Doing a pretty good job of it. At least one person is. The opening entry kind of made me gape, not in a good way, but hey, he was trying, and he got the discussion going. Luckily I chanced into page 5 of the discussion, and a person named Shamanka really helped me unravell some of it, here.

And quotes from Leonard about it over the years here. One slightly surprising one which really made me smile: