Hallelujah

it was just over six years ago that my friend Nicole and I were rounding a bend in California, on highway 1, she was driving. I'd never listened to Jeff Buckley before. She told me that this one song, Hallelujah, was something that she had listened to every night before going to bed, at one time, for a time.

"No, no, we have to start it over again. Did you hear him sigh?"

I hadn't. We started the CD over. I listened for it. Jeff Buckley, at the beginning of this song, breathes a sigh, that feels more like a way of gathering energy to tell a tale that's hard to recount.

From the moment I heard that sigh, I was in. I loved the song. All I remember is hearing that sigh just as we're getting onto an on-ramp. The rest of the song plays out as I look at the green hills, one bigger than the next, on my right. On my left, an ocean - blue and white and crashing into rocks black and brown and wet.

It was beautiful. I needed to see it.

When I was editing a group of photos tonight, I saw this one, and I heard that song immediately. This image has sky and sea and land. More than what the photo depicts though, whenever I really felt that Jeff Buckley song it had more to do with leaving one existence and trying to inhabit another. But, when I first heard that song, it was like angels singing. I felt like it had captured the beauty and the immediate abandonment of something beautiful. Leaving earth feels that way. Flying feels that way. Saying goodbye in an airport feels that way.