Blessed Be

June 10, 2021



A few weeks ago Benjamin Woo - a friend from college - sent me his album, "Blessed Be." It's him singing solo, with simple guitar accompaniments. His lyrics mix the prosaic with the spiritual, moving between sentiments of faith, renewal, isolation, and struggle.

    My two favorite tracks are "Hallelujah" and "Across the Sea." In "Across the Sea," Ben slowly strums chords, grounding his lyrics in a periodic, but expressively uneven ebb and flow. He sings to an unnamed lover across the ocean:

"[...] talking everything the mind can't think of
while I'm in prison wishing I could be there"

"[...] won't you call me when you're free"

There are multiple meanings of 'freedom' in the album - there's freedom as peace of mind, as the pleasure of companionship, as a mode of witnessing and roaming. Throughout "Blessed Be," this state of togetherness seems to be in the past, or else deferred to some point at the end of time. In this song isolation is its own imprisonment, but so is the busy-ness of life miles away.

    "Hallelujah" takes place in the aftermath of losing a lover, but it also dwells on memories of togetherness, which unfold across a repeated, falling refrain. There's a memory of watching a performance by the beach, and another of smoking cigarettes by a park:

"and the wind blows the smoke across the field
smoke with no regrets."

It's not the only image in the album that attributes emotion to motions of the air; in "Across the Sea," the wind sings too. The free mind roams, at ease, like the smoke, the wind, or the song's refrain. "Hallelujah" is a prayer, a moment of peace and repose, evidenced in the chorus:

"hallelujah
hallelujah
hallelujah
all will be well"

    The penultimate song on the album, "Last Dance," tells the story of hearing ghosts on a morning walk:

"they said the path is long and heavy
they didn't tell me where it goes
and I can see myself upon it
it's not a life I ever chose."

Whereas the first song on the album speaks to the world's capacity to renew itself, this one speaks to a world of spirits, to last suppers and days, to being together again at the end of time. 

    The album serves as a tribute to the importance of seeing and hearing, of finding meaning in the people and places immediately around us. The sung refrains, the poetry of the story-telling, the gentle ease of the guitar, all serve as a hypnotic respite from feelings of isolation and unease. Ben's singing grounds me in his personal modes of declamation, phrasing, and witnessing, in my own memories of finding peace and companionship with others.

    It's worth reminding each other that even if we're not immediately present for each other, we are out there, listening.


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