dolly_parton nr it was very hard to focus on the 9-to-5 today. much easier to tear up in the nail salon. rest well, legend. 260825 ... raze oh, dolly. not you too. you were supposed to be eternal. would you believe me if i told you what made me love you wasn't even one of your songs in its unadulterated form? it was "jolene" played at 33rpm, slowed to make you sound like a sad-eyed older sister to yourself. i know it doesn't make a lick of sense. but that beautiful accident let me stare into your soul and finally understand the secret of your smile. surgically enhanced as it might have been, there was more meaning tucked into your laughing lips than most people manage in the mouths they were born with. once i dreamed i was a country singer who lost his way. i was a star. i had all the money a man could want, but the fame had gone to my head. commercial considerations were holding me back from being the artist i wanted to be. i was going through the motions of auditioning new band members in my grandmother's basement. it was just a cynical excuse to pump up the live show and drum up some publicity. more bullshit i didn't care about that had nothing to do with the music. a woman with blonde hair showed up. come to think of it, she looked a bit like you. she went ahead and told me she was in the band. she said she was bringing her boyfriend with her. he played bass. i laughed at her. typical singer with an overfed ego. "you haven't heard me sing your songs," she said. we sat on a couch in the basement. i strummed a guitar and improvised a song out of nothing. she sang almost every line with me. like she walked out of the womb knowing the words i was making up as i went along. like her voice had been designed as the perfect counterpart to mine. we sang: "something's happening somewhere. i don't know what it is. but i can taste it in the colour of your faded morning kiss. last night i heard you talking. heard you talking in your sleep. you said your fire was a promise i could never hope to keep." when the words ran out, i latched onto a name. the only one i could think of was jolene. i sang it over and over again. i shot up an octave without warning and changed the vocal melody on the fly. the singer with the bassist boyfriend flew up there with me. we pressed our foreheads together. whatever i'd lost, misplaced, or pissed away, there it was. staring right at me. in a strange way, i always felt like you gave that to me somehow. 260825 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Hi radio, you made me sad today because two people I didn't know died. One I didn't know at all, the worker at Dorval Airport who got hit by a plane backing up. Scary how a moment's accident can cause death. Dolly Parton wasn't hit by a senseless accident, but she still wanted to do more things in her life. She was someone who used celebrity for good. raze, that's a good choice - I find "Jolene" beautiful and strange, sort of fairy-tale like. You can take it apart and question the narrator 1) Why stay with a man if you're sure he would leave you for someone else, given the chance? and 2) Are *you* the one who secretly likes Jolene, describing her hair and eyes and all that? But these aren't questions that reveal plot holes or lyrical absurdity. They reveal depth. You have a gem that can be seen from different angles. (I should sleep - my similes are getting both overwrought and twee. "Gem" indeed. An emerald green one! But whatever I say and however I say it, it's sad to lose someone like her.) 260825 what's it to you? who go blather from