{"id":15946,"date":"2013-06-22T10:37:57","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T14:37:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=15946"},"modified":"2013-06-22T06:57:09","modified_gmt":"2013-06-22T10:57:09","slug":"it-gets-harder-and-harder-lorraine-to-believe-in-magic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2013\/06\/22\/it-gets-harder-and-harder-lorraine-to-believe-in-magic\/","title":{"rendered":"It gets harder and harder, Lorraine, to believe in magic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

David McFarlane<\/a> offers his heartbreaking, yet hopeful reflections on a heartbreaking, yet hopeful song: Patty Griffin\u2019s \u201cSweet Lorraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s gorgeous and tragic and funny in the way that terrible things said honestly can sound funny,\u201d he writes. And he resonates with how the song \u201cis about being a pariah and losing hope and how sad this world can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the album version<\/a> and here\u2019s a live version.<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\n<p>McFarlane highlights the lyrics, so let me say something about how the music embodies them in a way that just slays me.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2013\/06\/ghosts.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-15947\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2013\/06\/ghosts-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\"><\/a>We meet poor Lorraine: G, C9, D, D(sus4). Bad things happen to her, but she strums on: G, C9, D, D(sus4). Lorraine takes everything the world can throw at her. She has every reason in the world to break down, to give up, to stop.<\/p>\n<p>And then we hear this again: G, C9, D, D(sus4); G, C9, D, D(sus4) \u2026<\/p>\n<p>She just. Keeps. Going. And it\u2019s beautiful.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Patty Griffin, here\u2019s a bit of a mystery regarding her never-released album <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=IEgH_7-mPCY\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"><em>Silver Bell<\/em><\/a>. All of those spammish song-lyric sites including the following lyrics as a bridge in her grinding, bluesy song \u201cPerfect White Girls\u201d:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>If you kiss their asses long enough<br>\nThey might let you kiss their asses<br>\nIf you kiss their asses long enough<br>\nThey might let you kiss their asses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>That\u2019s a terrific description of the corporate ladder, or of the 1 percent, or of The Powers That Be, or of pretty much any hierarchy anywhere.<\/p>\n<p>But, alas, those lines aren\u2019t <a href=\"http:\/\/www.pattygriffin.net\/showLyric.php?id=52\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">included in the song as it was recorded<\/a>, or in the one performance of the song I could find on YouTube:<\/p>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=P9FIgqCwlHs\">http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=P9FIgqCwlHs<\/a>\n<p>So did Griffin write them? If not, where did they come from?<\/p>\n<p>Somewhere there must be high school seniors who want to use those lines as their yearbook quotes. And it seems like they\u2019re something speakers ought to quote in commencement addresses. But who should we attribute them to? Patty Griffin? Or some online mischief-maker?<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>David McFarlane offers his heartbreaking, yet hopeful reflections on a heartbreaking, yet hopeful song by Patty Griffin. And I try to verify some unrecorded lyrics from Griffin’s unreleased album.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[239],"class_list":["post-15946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","tag-music"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>It gets harder and harder, Lorraine, to believe in magic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"David McFarlane offers his heartbreaking, yet hopeful reflections on a heartbreaking, yet hopeful song by Patty Griffin. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"It gets harder and harder, Lorraine, to believe in magic","description":"David McFarlane offers his heartbreaking, yet hopeful reflections on a heartbreaking, yet hopeful song by Patty Griffin. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15946\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}