Dylanology 101: the hate songs

Go 'way from my window

Leave at your own chosen speed

I'm not the one you want, babe

I'm not the one you need

You say you're lookin' for someone

Who's never weak but always strong

To protect you an' defend you

Whether you are right or wrong

Someone to open each and every door

But it ain't me, babe

No, no, no, it ain't me, babe

It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go lightly from the ledge, babe

Go lightly on the ground

I'm not the one you want, babe

I will only let you down

You say you're lookin' for someone

Who will promise never to part

Someone to close his eyes for you

Someone to close his heart

Someone who will die for you an' more

But it ain't me, babe

No, no, no, it ain't me babe

It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

Go melt back in the night

Everything inside is made of stone

There's nothing in here moving

An' anyway I'm not alone

You say you're looking for someone

Who'll pick you up each time you fall

To gather flowers constantly

An' to come each time you call

A lover for your life an' nothing more

But it ain't me, babe

No, no, no, it ain't me, babe

It ain't me you're lookin' for, babe.

So here we are on another Monday morning (it's an afternoon, actually, but that Daylight Savings thing always messes with my head). And I've got Dylan on my mind once again. 

This song sticks in my head, as so many of his songs do. This was one that was picked up and covered by such diverse and unlikely recording artists as the Turtles, Johnny Cash, and even (inexplicably) Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix. Why? Because WE can't write songs like that, even though we long to. We. Can't. That's. Why. We might as well not even try.

The reason I want to dig into this sere and juicy masterpiece is not because of those covers. This is usually viewed as one of Dylan's cruellest hit-and-run songs, a nasty one because of his (as I've touched on before) naked honesty, which can be breathtaking. It's said and widely believed that this song was aimed at his first great love, Suze Rotolo, the beaming girl glommed onto his arm on the cover of his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan. She was also "the creative one" in his notorious Ballad in Plain D (which, I must admit, is pretty strong in places, though I wasn't there to witness that awful midnight scene: "Beneath the bare lightbulb the plaster did pound/Her sister and I in a screaming battleground/While she in between, the victim of sound/Soon shattered as a child to the shadows.")

This one, though. Let's focus on it. The opening line immediately calls to mind one of those primal Appalachian ballads - or if it isn't Appalachian, it should be:

Go away from my window
Go away from my door
Go away, way, way from my bedside
And bother me no more
And bother me no more

My sister used to sing this in a totally inappropriate, histrionic, quasi-operatic style drenched with pretentious mannerisms. ALL her songs were self-pitying and grim, with not one celebrating life or music or anything else. I call these her "I've been wronged and I'm not going to forget it" songs. But I digress.

Dylan seems to be building on that first line, but elaborates on his need to see the back of his lover once and for all. "Go 'way from my window" hooks us emotionally with that old (how old? We don't know, we only know it hooks us) song of mourning.

"Leave at your own chosen speed" seems pretty nasty - at first. But then look at it, lift it up, turn it over. Fast or slow, high or low - just go - but go slowly, he seems to be saying. Why slowly? Because this woman DOES NOT want to leave him. Obviously, she doesn't, or he would not have to sing this song. So her "own chosen speed" wouldn't be very fast - would it? It might just leave him enough time to change his mind.

"I'm not the one you want, babe/l'm not the one you need." This isn't really a "get lost" statement at all, but an acknowledgement of his own inadequacy. He goes on at length about this ("You say you're lookin' for someone. . ."), and seems to be listing his shortcomings. This illusive/elusive ideal is "never weak, but always strong", protecting and defending his lover whether she is "right or wrong": now is that fair, realistic, or even possible? And just who is it who can "open each and every door"? Obviously he's talking about someone who is making impossible demands on him, or perhaps exposing his vulnerabilities, which is pretty much the same thing.

It goes on like that: I'm not the one you want, babe/I will only let you down. But oh boy, here comes those lines that make Dylan seem like a total bastard: "Go lightly from the ledge, babe/Go lightly on the ground." Here he seems to be telling her something unthinkable: go jump out the window! But he doesn't mean that at all. Look at the word "ledge". It's a reference to that first line, and the way his spurned love keeps hanging around his windowsill in hopeless hope (and note it's not a door - a window into his soul, perhaps? Oh boy, it must be Monday.)

Then look yet deeper. It's not "off the ledge", is it? It's "FROM the ledge", as in "go 'way FROM my window", and moreover, he admonishes her to go "lightly", which you could not exactly do if you jumped out the window! No, I now think (and I just realized this moments ago when I cracked the walnut shell of this thing) "go lightly" means "leave, but with a light heart." Don't carry baggage from this. It'll only weigh you down. So "go lightly on the ground": walk with a light step. If you committed suicide, it wouldn't exactly be "lightly", would it? (And here's another meaning peeping out: "don't take this lightly," but in this case, "DO take it lightly", perhaps to spare her the kind of heartache he is feeling.)

All, some or none of this might be true. But it points to layered poetry, even in this, one of Dylan's "simpler" songs.

The verse goes on, each line piling on the demands she is making of him, so that each one seems more impossible than the one before. Is he feeling inadequate to the task? You tell me."Someone to die for you and more" - what "more" is there for him to do? But how much of this is true? If we're angry with someone we love, we accuse them of all kinds of shit they wouldn't even think of doing. We stack the deck against them to shore up our own weakness. What more do you want from me?  I see evidence of a glass house here. What exactly did he expect of her? Was he performing that classic lover's ploy: reject her before she could reject him?

The most haunting lines are in the last verse: "Go melt back in the night" (echoing the gentle leavetaking of that "lightly off the ledge" line), a line that bespeaks a sort of illusion or beautiful dream evaporating into mist. "Everything inside is made of stone. There's nothing in here moving" - his emotions deadened by a loss he cannot accommodate - and, the one line that really looks like a slight, "and anyway, I'm not alone".

Dylan was almost never alone. I'm re-reading the several Dylan bios I have, and if ever a Lothario existed, it was him. I am sure he was unfaithful to Suze, in spite of her deep devotion to him: and in this, he may have felt inadequate, not good enough for her, and ready to defensively strengthen his own wobbly position any way he could.

And perhaps he was right: he wasn't worthy. This vibrant, intelligent woman, "the could-be dream lover of my lifetime", died of cancer in her early 60s, while Dylan still grinds along, his energy stretched thin like Bilbo's in The Hobbit because somewhere along the line, he grabbed the Ring of Power. He even told someone (was it Ed Bradley?) that early in his career, he made a deal with the devil. 

So here is Joan Baez singing this hurt/hurting song so tenderly, it's heartbreaking. There's no rancour here at all, merely sadness and regret. Baez still sings Dylan's songs in her concerts, and Dylan always speaks highly of her in the rare interviews he gives. "I generally like everything she does," he said when she recorded a double album of his songs in the '70s. And to explain the casual way he ignored her on that infamous London tour, he says, "You can't be in love and wise at the same time."

For it was Baez who broke up Bobby and Suze. There's no mistaking. Whether she knew it or not, whether it was really Suze's trip to Italy that did it, whether it was Suze who told Bobby to take a hike and get out of her face, Baez stepped into the turmoil that erupted in Ballad in Plain D, and grabbed the prize. I think it was a melancholy victory, however, for she never really "had" him after all: Baez went to see him when she heard he was sick, and a strange woman answered the door, a gorgeous exotic creature who looked like a model. 

She was. It was his new wife, Sara Lowndes, and Joan had had no idea he was married.

No, no, no, it ain't me, babe.

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He only drank wine: the Ballad of Stewball

Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.

He never drank water, he always drank wine.


His bridle was silver, his mane it was gold.

And the worth of his saddle has never been told.


Oh the fairgrounds were crowded, and Stewball was there

But the betting was heavy on the bay and the mare.


And a-way up yonder, ahead of them all,

Came a-prancin' and a-dancin' my noble Stewball.


I bet on the grey mare, I bet on the bay

If I'd have bet on ol' Stewball, I'd be a free man today.


Oh the hoot owl, she hollers, and the turtle dove moans.

I'm a poor boy in trouble, I'm a long way from home.


Oh Stewball was a racehorse, and I wish he were mine.

He never drank water,he always drank wine.








What I like about this subject is the obscurity, the confusion, and the layers of muddled meaning, with fragmentary overlap revealing possible authenticity that may go back several hundred years. We all used to sing Old Stewball ("was a racehorse. . . ") in the 1960s during the folk boom, along with Where have All the Flowers Gone and Masters of War ("And I hope that you die, and your death will come soon/They'll carry your casket in the pale afternoon"), and I used to wonder: how weird is that, that you'd call a horse Stewball. What could it mean, if anything? I just found out tonight that it means a lot.


I now see that I should have had a clue. I was a horse-crazy little girl who read everything she could get her grubby little mitts on about horses, and I am sure I had come across the term skewbald, a synonym for piebald, which means. . . to us North Americans, anyway, pinto or paint. These are black or chestnut or sorrel horses with splashy white markings. Either that, or they are white horses with black or chestnut or sorrel. . . well. Are the zebra's stripes black, or white?


They look like cowponies to me, and for some reason I never took them very seriously.





I don't associate them with thoroughbreds, because the skewbald gene doesn't seem to be very active in modern bloodlines. But if you go back more than 300 years, racehorse DNA was quite different, with fast and gracile Arabians being crossed with the muscular European horses we see rearing up in historical paintings. Skewed, they might have been, with all that genetic confusion. But from the first time the Godolphin Arabian leaped off his springboard to service the fair Lady Roxanne, some fuse was lit, giving rise to the fastest horses in human history.


The name Godolphin pops up in Stewball's fictional/factual pedigree, making me wonder if he truly was descended from that stunning foundational sire, the amazingly prolific stallion who begat Lath, who begat Cade, who begat Regulus, who begat. . . and on and on, unto Man o' War and War Admiral and even Seabiscuit. A little horse who stamps his get.





I tried to find explanatory quotes that didn't go on and on for volumes, This neat paragraph from a Gutenberg site seems to suggest there really was a Stewball, and someone really did write a song about him, wa-a-a-a-a-a-a-y back when.


The horse was foaled in 1741, and originally owned by Francis, 2nd Earl of Godolphin, and later sold. His name has been recorded as "Squball", "Sku-ball", or "Stewball". He won many races in England, and was sent to Ireland. The Irish turf calendar states that he won six races worth £508 in 1752, when he was eleven years old, and was the top earning runner of that year in Ireland.[1] His most famous race took place on the plains of Kildare, Ireland, which is generally the subject of the song of the same name. The early ballad about the event has Skewball belonging to an Arthur Marvell or Mervin. Based on the horse's name, Skewball was likely a skewbald horse.


I also found far too many versions of the Stewball ballad and didn't know where to start: should I throw all of them at you and let you pick and choose? I finally picked out a few that demonstrated some overlap. Songs are like fairy tales in their tendency to drift and drool and slop over into each other, but always with some essential kernel of truth, some nub of the story that has real staying power.







My source for most of this material is an extremely detailed site called Thoroughbred Heritage, which serious horse-ites should visit forthwith:

http://www.tbheritage.com/index.html

Skewball: The Ballads

In America, the Stewball ballad was "...most popular in the Negro south, where the winning horse is known variously as 'Stewball' or 'Kimball," and was apparently one of the chain-gang songs. The song was recorded by Leadbelly in 1940 (CD available via the Smithsonian Museum), by Joan Baez (album title Joan Baez), by Peter Paul and Mary, and a number of successive artists.

Skewball (Harding B-6 (54) 00668)

You Gentlemen Sportsmen I pray listen all

I'll sing you a song in the praise of Skewball

And how they came over you shall understand

By one Squire Irvine the Mell of [of] our land.


500 bright guineas on the plains of Kildare

I'll bet upon, Sportsmen, that bonny-grey mare

Skewball hearing the wager, the wager was laid

He said loving master, its don't be afraid.


For on my side thou'st laid thousands of pounds

I'll rig in thy castle a fine mass of gold.

Squire Irvine he smiled, and thus he did say,

You gentlemen-sportsmen to-morrow's the day


Your saddles and bridles, and horses prepare,

For we will away th [to] the plains of Kildare.

The day being come, & the horses bro't out,

Squire Irvine he order'd his rider to mount.


All the people then went to see them go round

They swore in their hearts that they ne'er

touch'd the ground.

And as they were riding this was the discourse

The grey mare will never touch this horse.


O, loving kind rider come tell unto me,

How far is the grey mare behind you said he...

O loving master you bear a great smile,

Grey mare is behind me a large English mile


For in this country I was ne'er seen before

Thou hast won the race & broken lord Gore.





This one strikes me as the most authentic-sounding, but who's to say there aren't much older versions that you couldn't understand worth a tinker's hoot because Irish people have marbles in their mouths. It has the nicest sportsmanlike, cantering rhythm to it. Skewball actually speaks in this one, which is kind of nice, and is very encouraging to his master. One element that remains the same in practically all of these is Stewball's rival, a grey mare, though her name changes from one version to another.

Skewball (Steeleye Span)

You gallant sportsmen all, come listen to my story

It's of the bold Skewball, that noble racing pony

Arthur Marvel was the man that brought bold Skewball over

He's the diamond of the land and he rolls about in clover


The horses were brought out with saddle, whip and bridle

And the gentlemen did shout when they saw the noble riders

And some did shout hurray, the air was thick with curses

And on the grey Griselda the sportsmen laid their purses


The trumpet it did sound, they shot off like an arrow

They scarcely touched the ground for the going it was narrow

Then Griselda passed him by and the gentlemen did holler

The grey will win the day and Skewball he will follow


Then halfway round the course up spoke the noble rider

I fear we must fall back for she's going like a tyger.

Up spoke the noble horse, ride on my noble master

For we're half way round the course and now we'll see who's faster


And when they did discourse, bold Skewball flew like lightning

They chased around the course and the grey mare she was taken

Ride on my noble lord, for the good two hundred guineas

The saddle shall be of gold when we pick up our winnings


Past the winning post bold Skewball proved quite handy

And horse and rider both ordered sherry, wine and brandy

And then they drank a health unto Miss Griselda

And all that lost their money on the sporting plains of Kildare


Not all these lines rhyme, obviously, but who notices with a thrilling song like this? The lines "and horse and rider both ordered sherry, wine and brandy" may be the forerunner to the strange lines, "he never drank water, he only drank wine", though it's not unheard-of for winning horses to have their water trough spiked with a pint or two.

Stewball: A Version

Source: Fiddle Players' Discussion List, Meghan Merker

Way out in California

Where Stewball was born

All the jockeys said old Stewball

Lord, he blew there in a storm


CHORUS: Bet on Stewball and you might win, win, win

Bet on Stewball and you might win


All the jockeys in the country

Say he blew there in a storm

All the women in the country

Say he never was known


When the horses were saddled

And the word was given: Go

Old Stewball he shot out

Like an arrow from a bow


The old folks they hollered

The young folks they bawled

The children said look, look

At that no good Stewball


Here the Irish roots of the thing are pretty much buried, but it's a fast-paced, exciting version, with the very strange lines, "All the women in the country/Say he never was known". Known in the Biblical sense? It may be that, as with the Black Stallion, Stewball is one of those horses that came out of nowhere, with no papers to prove himself, nothing but a supernatural capacity to set the track on fire.





Stewball: Another Version

Source: Fiddle Players' Discussion List, Meghan Merker

There's a big race (uh-huh), down in Dallas (uh-huh)

Don't you wish you (...) were there? (...)

you would bet your ( ) bottom dollar ( )

On that iron ( ) grey mare ( )

Bet on Stewball & you might win, win, win

Bet on Stewball & you might win!


Way out / in California / when old Stewball / was born

All the jockeys / in the nation / said he blew there / in a storm


Now the value / of his harness / has never / been told

His saddle / pure silver / & his bridle / solid gold


Old Stewball / was a racehorse / Old Molly / was too

Old Molly / she stumbled / Old Stewball / he flew


And here are more fragments of the version I know: "now the value of his harness has never been told/His saddle pure silver, his bridle solid gold". I wonder who makes these decisions as the song morphs from decade to century, from artist to artist. Leave one detail out, add another. I'm actually quite grateful to have learned (just tonight!) that Stewball wasn't really Stewball at all, but Skewbald, with crazy skewed markings like forked lightning: a horse that could run up a storm.

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Are you listening, George? Somebody finally got it.

The one that got away

The night is bitter
The stars have lost their glitter
The winds grow colder
And suddenly you're older
And all because of the man that got away.

No more his eager call
The writing's on the wall
The dreams you dreamed have all
gone astray.

The man that won you
Has gone off and undone you.
That great beginning
Has seen the final inning.
Don't know what happened. It's all a crazy game!

No more that all time thrill
For you've been through the mill
And never a new love will
be the same.

Good riddance, goodbye!
Every trick of his you're on to
But fools will be fools
And where's he gone to?

The road gets rougher
It's lonelier and tougher.
With hope you burn up
Tomorrow he may turn up
There's just no let up the live-long night and day.

Ever since this world began
There is nothing sadder than
A one-man woman looking for
The man that got away...
The man that got away.

Harold Arlen, Ira Gershwin

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And the wheels in my head started turning

I'm Lookin' Up From Somewhere Below
The Atmosphere Is Warm And They've Got Plenty Of Coal
Maybe Someone Above Can Hear My Story
How A Fool Lost His Soul For A Moment Of Glory


Chorus
And That's All, That's All, That's All
THAT'S ALL THAT I CAN REMEMBER


Now Bill Was My Friend, Throughout My Short-Lived Life
'Til I Caught Him Out With Mary, My Wife
Then The Wheels In My Head Started Turnin'
A Death Plan I Made Up For Both Of Those Concernin'


REPEAT CHORUS


They Took Me To Prison And They Locked Me In A Cell
They Gave Me My Last Big Meal Then Strapped Me To A
Chair
Then They Turned On The Juice, And I Felt Somethin' A
Burnin'


REPEAT CHORUS TWICE.

SPECIAL NOTE... Alternate First Verse exists... it was
only ever used in Burl Ives' rendition of the song...
Neither Lefty Frizzell nor Cowboy Copas used it in
their renditions. Frankly, I like the first verse in
the Frizzell and Copas versions better... however I
have printed the alternate first verse below:


Come Listen While I Tell You 'Bout A Man That's Gonna
Die
Be Patient With Me Won't You Please, If I Should Start
To Cry
Maybe One Of You Can Understand My Story
How A Fool Lost His Soul For A Moment Of Glory...

As usual, this came in the back door.

My dear friend David West is facing a medical crisis, will soon be having what amounts to emergency surgery to install a pacemaker, mainly because his pulse is dropping to as low as 30 beats per minute. He needed a ride from Abbotsford to Vancouver and back, had no prospects, but suddenly after a Facebook request, two people stepped forward who are happy to be of service.  I pray this is a good sign and that he'll come through it and feel better than he has in a long time. 

Pooh and Piglet can't be separated.

At any rate, in the midst of all this, David finds a skinny little stray cat hanging around his place, obviously direly cold and hungry. He took it in and began to plump him up, though Kitty is still understandably wary. In reading about all this on Facebook, suddenly a song sprang into my head, a song by Burl Ives that is lodged in my head forever:

Well, here it is! A few months ago I looked for this album and couldn't find it. When we first got our cat Murphy back in 1990, I kept singing this song, and my kids kept saying, "That's not a real song. You're making that up." I got most of the lyrics wrong, so they were almost right. But here it is! And it's about someone finding a stray cat and taking it in.

But that led to something else, and I still can't find it. On one of his more obscure, darker albums, Ives recorded a song called That's All I Can Remember. It was sombre and almost sinister, with Ives singing in a very low-key and almost resigned voice. Very spooky. It reminded me a bit of Long Black Veil, and the story is essentially the same except that in this one, like in a gangster movie from the 1930s, the guy gets "the chair". One can almosts see him screaming and convulsing and clutching the arms of the chair as the plumes of smoke rise above his head. 

I can't find the Ives version anywhere, though I know it will sneak onto YouTube some day. There are only a couple other versions, and this one is nice, but a little too cheery and Latin-sounding. There are some variations in the lyrics, with Ives introducing and setting up the story in a more dramatic fashion. Understandable, since he was such a kick-ass actor.

Ives was supposed to be folksy and recorded lots of children's songs, but in his soul he was Big Daddy, surly and menacing, with a sense of restrained power that might fly out and do terrible destruction. As in this song. It's literally sung from the pits of hell, where he will fry for all eternity. Not exactly a song you want to sing for the kiddies.

Look at the little kitty cat
A-walkin' down the street
I bet he's got no place to go
Or nothin' good to eat
Look at the little kitty cat
With tiny tired feet
He ought to have a place to go
'Cause he's so very sweet

Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty, here little kitty
Here kitty, here kitty,
Here little kitty cat.

I'm gonna ask my mama
If she'll let me take him home
Where I can hold him close to me
So he won't have to roam
He oughta have a lot of milk
And lots of fish and meat
Instead of finding what he can
In the alley or the street

(Musical interlude)

Now look at the little kitty cat
A-sleepin' in his bed
He's got a place to rest his feet
and lay his weary head
I'm going to see that he will stay
As happy as can be
And now when he goes walking
He'll go walking next to me

Oh kitty oh kitty oh how I love my sweet little kitty
Oh kitty oh kitty 
Sweet little kitty cat.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Sunday Underwear and other signs of longing

When the mellow moon begins to beam,

Ev'ry night I dream a little dream,

And of course Prince Charming is the theme,

The he for me.

Although I realize as well as you 

It is seldom that a dream comes true,

For

To me it's clear

That he'll appear.

Some day he'll come along,

The man I love

And he'll be big and strong, 

The man I love

And when he comes my way

I'll do my best to make him stay.

He'll look at me and smile

I'll understand ; 

And in a little while,

He'll take my hand ; 

And though it seems absurd, 

I know we both won't say a word

Maybe I shall meet him Sunday 

Maybe Monday, maybe not;

Still I'm sure to meet him one day

Maybe Tuesday will be my good news day

He'll build a little home

Just meant for two,

From which I'll never roam, 

Who would - would you ?

And so all else above

I'm waiting for the man I love.

Woody Allen sings "September Song"

Y'know, if you asked me abaht it, I'd have to say this: it's, kind of like a lwoong lwoong time from May to Decembah, which is when my pahrents go to Flahhrida every yeahh and stay there for, like, six months or something, and I haven't gahht time for things like, y'know dating, when I nevah know whethah the gehrl is  going to "dig" me or not, not that I think "dig" is the proper expression for what you'd cwall, amorous attachment to someone that lasts more than, say, two minutes? (pause for laughs and bodily contortions). Speaking of two minutes, I was trying to figure out why my gehrl friend awll-wees calls me "minute man". (pause) I asked my analyst abahht it and he said it had something to do with an egg timer. That I should use one. Becwosse my egg timer lasts at least twice that lwoong,you know? But then she said to me, honey, your time is up and it hadn't even, you know, beeped yet. Am I supposed to be singing a swoong here? Sahrry. I haven't got time for that, y'know, "waiting game" they twoahhk about in the sahhng, because to be hahhnest with you if I wait much lwwoonger I'm going to be dead! (riotous laughter, applause) Being dead isn't exactly conducive to amorous attachment unless you're, y'know, one of "those" people, and I'm nahht, I sweahh! No matter how it looks, I've never been that desperate.  I know it's very stylish right now to be a zahhmbie and all that sort of thing, but most of my gehrl friends have been zahhmbies to begin with! The sahhng says something about the days dwindling down. Reminds me of how I always go over-budget on my pick-chas. You know, the cash dwindles down.  (scattered applause) By the way, if you wondah why I cwaall them "pick-chas", it's becwooahs my cinematic style hasn't really changed since, you know, Take the Money and Run, when wooa-di-ences really appreciated good cinematography and really hot gehrls. I'm kind of an old-fashioned guy, y'know, I don't use a computer, in fact even typewriters are too modern for me, so I use a unique system, maybe you've seen it, it's called a Gutenberg? Run by hamstah, and hand-cranked when the hamstah dies. Most of my budget goes into replacing all the hamstahs that die of ex-woahh-stion after printing out all those pages, and besides, the Humane Society has been getting after me for some reason. So I spend a lot of twoyyme hand-cranking, you know? It's given me carpal tunnel so I can't indulge in my favorite athletic activity. Guess I'll just have to take up synchronized swimming. Thank you very much, good night. 

Kathy from Consort

I confess I am a recovering k. d. lang addict. Recovering, because I'm starting to think she's falling into her own cliches: the little groan at the beginning of the phrase; the breathless/breathy passages, the upswoop like a coyote or a cowboy yell, and (less frequently) the half-yodel. When she sang Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah at the opening of the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver (a very big deal for us: we live there!), she was on a big pedestal and dressed in a baggy men's suit. My husband said, "She looks like Wayne Newton."

It was true. She looks sort of puffy, and she doesn't smile much. I never expected her to stay androgynously waiflike (if there is such a thing), boyish with knife-trimmed nails, and cheekbones to die for. But I never pictured her getting this bulky, stolid like a middle-aged businessman at a Shriner's convention, getting lost in her (always-ugly) clothes. Long ago she was in a Canadian-made movie called Salmonberries in which she appeared, for a split-second, in the nude, and everyone revelled in the fact that she looked like a woman. Well, she IS, folks, no matter how gay or lesbian or woman-loving she may be. The physiological underpinnings are the same.

So, how does this affect my feelings for her? I don't know when I started to get turned off. Nothing ever matched her breakout Ingenue album, which I listened to about a billion times. Still Thrives This Love was my fave (and I'll try to find it), though there were no duds in it at all.

She's not quite phoning it in now, but the lang cliches are wearing a deeper and deeper groove, so that something has fallen down in and gotten lost. I think. She still has that legendary flexible voice, but it doesn't seem to speak to me any more. She doesn't produce the overtones that make a voice jump alive, and God, that swooooooping up to every note. Once in a while, attack it head-on, will you?

Nevertheless, this one is pretty good.