The sorrow-saturated strains of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ filled my stark, cavernous room in the gloaming of an autumn twilight. I was raised in the sacred crevices of Catholicism, my faith woven with hymns, prayers, and profound reverence for the divine. But now, it seemed frayed and fraught. The echoes of my childhood convictions seemed anachronistic, an ill-fitting skin within the existential landscape where I stood at the cusp of a quarter-life crisis.
And so, the melancholy melody of ‘Hallelujah,’ a poignant overture to the symphony of my life, drove me to brave territories of self-questioning. My trials – a disquieting fallout with a long-time friend, the dissolution of my youthful dream job, and a haunting brush with mortality – had eroded my once absolute faith. The tapestry of my existence, echoing Cohen’s refrains, was now spun with questions, casting troublesome reflections that screamed back at me from the mirror each dawn.
Cohen’s divine quest mirrored the symphony of my night of the soul, giving voice to the doubtful whispers that permeated my once resolute spirituality. In this abyss, I plunged headlong into the icy waters of introspection. “But now I’ve done my best, I know it wasn’t much / I couldn’t feel, so I tried to touch…”— Cohen was a fellow pilgrim speaking my unspoken language. His songs were the lighthouses amidst the stormy seas I tossed in, struggling to retain the lifebuoy of faith.
I realized faith was not a simple concession but an intricate dance of challenge and surrender. Not the absence of doubt but a passion-fuelled wrestle with it. This realization was a liberating force, pulling me from the foggy wilderness of existential crisis into a lit pathway where my doubts became the stepping stones to spiritual growth.
My faith could be more than a chiffon-thin veil of ideology passively accepted by my forebears. It could be a rich, personally woven tapestry, made thicker with the threads of my earnest questions and sincere doubts. The shackles of passivity were shattered; a new dawn of faith, fiercely personal and independent, was birthed from the ashes of my conformity.
It was the curiosity for existential reckoning echoing through Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ that coaxed me into embracing doubt. I realized that my journey wasn’t about finding an omniscient truth but persistently grappling with the poignant questions that led there.
Embarking on this new path required accepting the inevitable storms that would challenge my resolve. But while the wind might tear at my sails, I knew I possessed an anchor molded from newfound conviction. My faith was no longer a fixed star in the distant heavens; it became a constellation of ever-evolving truths formed by my ceaselessly pondering heart. Though battered by life’s upheavals, my faith was more vibrant and alive, its heartbeat in sync with mine.
Echoes of ‘Hallelujah’ imprinted on my mind, I embraced the liberation that came with this acceptance, a newfound peace. My faith, once teetering on the frail axis of blind acceptance, had transformed. It now dared to thrive amidst philosophical questioning and the chaos of life’s relentless trials. The once imposing silhouette of existential crisis had been recast from a villainous shadow into a challenging yet trusted companion. Night had given way to dawn, and with it sprang forth the raw beauty of authentic faith, bitterly human, profoundly divine.
import logging
import unittest
from timeit import default_timer as timer
from textblob import TextBlob
from vaderSentiment.vaderSentiment import SentimentIntensityAnalyzer
# Setup logging
logging.basicConfig(level=logging.INFO)
logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
# Constants
LYRICS_FILE = "hallelujah.txt"
class LyricsAnalyzer:
def __init__(self):
self.vader = SentimentIntensityAnalyzer()
def analyze(self, lyrics):
"""
Analyze sentiment of lyrics using TextBlob and VADER.
Log and catch any exceptions.
Return list of (sentence, polarity, vader_score) tuples.
"""
try:
results = []
blob = TextBlob(lyrics)
for sentence in blob.sentences:
polarity = sentence.sentiment.polarity
vader_score = self.vader.polarity_scores(str(sentence))["compound"]
results.append((sentence, polarity, vader_score))
return results
except Exception as e:
logger.error("Error analyzing lyrics: %s", e)
raise
# Read lyrics from file
with open(LYRICS_FILE) as f:
lyrics = f.read()
# Unit tests
class TestLyricsAnalyzer(unittest.TestCase):
def setUp(self):
self.analyzer = LyricsAnalyzer()
def test_analyze(self):
results = self.analyzer.analyze(lyrics)
self.assertGreater(len(results), 100)
first_result = results[0]
self.assertAlmostEqual(first_result[1], 0.1, delta=0.1)
self.assertGreater(first_result[2], 0)
if __name__ == "__main__":
# Download VADER data
logger.info("Downloading VADER data")
import nltk
nltk.download("vader_lexicon")
logger.info("Starting lyric analysis")
start_time = timer()
analyzer = LyricsAnalyzer()
results = analyzer.analyze(lyrics)
end_time = timer()
logger.info(f"Analyzed in {end_time - start_time:.4f} seconds")
# Print more comprehensive results
print("\nTop 10 sentence analysis results:")
for result in results[:10]:
print(result)
# Run tests
unittest.main()