Liars and Saints

 There are three "enshrined" Dolly numbers: "I Will Always Love You," "Jolene," and "Coat of Many Colors." I've covered the first two, and now it's time for Number Three. "Many Colors" is an origin story. It's like Dolly's version of "X-Men: First Class." Dolly, a poor girl, needs a coat in the depths of a cold, cold autumn. Mom doesn't have cash--but she has several colored scraps. So, like an artist, Mom does some fancy stitchwork, and she talks about the Bible, and then Dolly is ready for the bad weather. Dolly skips to school where, of course, she is not greeted warmly. The twits around her mock her rags. And the song steers toward its Third Act: Dolly serenely tries to educate her tormentors. "You're poor only if you choose to be." The small-minded kids can't understand, and Dolly feels pity. She wanders off on her own, and she enjoys her coat. This looks so simple, but I'm obsess...

 I share Dolly Parton's puzzled response to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame -- because Dolly Parton doesn't write rock and roll. But anything that highlights Parton's genius is also not so bad. A favorite Dolly moment of mine is "Travelin' Thru," which nearly won the Oscar. Dolly was writing for a transgender character; DP took the idea of a "journey," inner and outer, and began thinking about Joseph on Christmas Eve: Like the poor wayfaring stranger that they speak about in song, I'm just a weary pilgrim trying to find my own way home.  Oh sweet Jesus, if you're out there, keep me ever close to you -- As I'm travelin'....travelin'......travelin'.....as I'm travelin' thru. Parton's thoughts on emotional pain and oppression take the form of a homily: Questions I have many, answers but a few. But we're here to learn -- the spirit burns -- to know the greater truth. We've all been crucified, and they nailed Jes...

  When I look back on this crazy time, I will think of the Zodiac killer. Mid-summer, months into Covid's long reign, my family and I took a short trip. That's not important. What matters is that we took the Garden State Parkway to get home, and our tire exploded. Or something like this. It stopped working. There we were on a busy highway, and I had a small infant in my arms. My husband reached a towing company by phone, and--with admirable speed--a happy, wheezing, middle-aged man arrived on the scene. He didn't have a mask--didn't apologize for lacking a mask--but this seemed to be a bad time to hop on a public-health soap-box. ("Sure, I died of Covid--but at least I didn't offend anyone! ") We all climbed into the cab of a tow-truck, and as we drove along, my new friend gave a speech about his health problems, and about the advantages of savvy gambling. "I made a pile that weekend, and let's just say my winnings were helpful with my ex-wife.......

Most of the time, I sing Dolly Parton to Joshua. "I Will Always Love You" has three perfect verses. The first is an announcement: If I should stay, I would only be in your way. So I'll go, but I know-- I'll think of you every step of the way. I want Josh to know: These apparently simple lines have internal rhyme. Also, they aren't flashy; they are plainspoken. (So seemingly effortless, and so hard to pull off! Stephen Sondheim says, You don't want to gild the lily. You aren't writing poetry. You just want to let the melody do a great deal of the work.) In the second verse, Dolly's thoughts turn to her "luggage": Bittersweet memories-- That is all I'm taking with me. So goodbye: Please don't cry. We both know I'm not what you need. Again, the restraint! (My other favorite lyrics are similarly "toned-down," and they're from "Fiddler on the Roof." "At ten, I learned a trade...I hear they pi...

Dolly Parton's great songs involve a tense humming--tension that isn't (or isn't quite) resolved. In "9 to 5," our heroine has dreams of her ship coming in, but, for the moment, she is also contending with a troglodyte boss. "Jolene" famously pits Dolly against a temptress; the stakes are Dolly's husband. "I Will Always Love You" says that Dolly is going, yes, but also? "I'll think of you every step of the way." My new favorite Dolly--"Marry Me"--is the story of a young bride squaring off against her (prospective) mother-in-law. The chatty bride is confiding in us; we are her friends. "I met a boy from Grassy Branch, fine as he can be." With her standard, effortless economy, Dolly gives us an image of the boy: "Sky-blue eyes, big wide smile; tall as a sycamore tree." These two are going to marry--surely! ("He knows a lot about love and stuff and he's gonna marry me.") ...

*There isn't big Dolly Parton news on the horizon. At least, not that I'm aware of. And I'm not a Dolly Parton expert. I guess one Dolly Parton topical thing to point out is: A major Parton interpreter, Stephanie J. Block (alumna of Broadway's "Nine to Five"), is about to win the Tony Award for Best Leading Actress in a musical. Block has Parton to thank--Parton, among others--for her career. *All that said, I want to observe something about Parton. I think her greatness comes from her awareness of ambivalence. I think there is unresolved tension in her big songs. For example, in "I Will Always Love You," there's an obvious conflict between the speaker's serene wishes ("joy and happiness") and the major heartbreak of the chorus. And, in "Jolene" (my favorite), the speaker feels any number of difficult things: helplessness, unease, self-doubt, irritation, panic. The problems don't go away. They're well-articulated...

I'm pretty awful with middle schoolers. This wasn't a happy time in my own life, and I don't recall a truckload of gracious adults working to "connect" with me when I was in seventh or eighth grade. (I do remember a teacher confronting me after a big speech, a speech I was proud of. I imagined this teacher might say something nice. Instead, he rolled his eyes and said, "Your collar buttons were undone the whole time." A comment that seemed small to the adult--but not to the middle-school kid. A moment I'll never forget.) When I try to "relate" to my middle schoolers, I lean heavily on movies. I once asked a group of tweens if they had seen "A Star Is Born": The smartest of the group guffawed and said, "We *might* have gone to see that....if we were forty-year-old housewives." I later learned that this kid had recently given a big presentation on Stephen  Sondheim,  and that her mother writes books on Dolly Parton for a...