--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > I'd like to dedicate this song video to Pope Ratzinger > on his first visit to America.
http://home.earthlink.net/~vajranatha/Joni_Mitchell.html I'd like to follow up on this, if I might. I think that this is a remarkable video, and an interesting moment captured. This is Joni Mitchell being asked to explain what the inspiration for her song, "The Magda- lene Laundries" was, and then performing the song. The subject of feminist thought has come up here recently. I consider this song, and the telling of "where it came from" about as feminist a statement as I have ever heard in this incarnation on planet Earth. Joni just nails it. But it's the *way* that she nails it that makes this video so interesting to me. She could have written an overtly angry song, denouncing the hypocrites who did this in the name of religion and in the name of God. But she didn't. Instead she took a happy melody and found a way to sing it from the first-person perspective of one of the women consigned to the Magdalene Laundries for life, for the crime of being noticed by men. Now that's Art, in my book. But also compassion, in spades. By singing the song from the perspec- tive of one of these women, she invites you into that woman's life, and allows you to *feel* it. I think this song has some "legs" under it for a potentially interesting discussion. Here are the lyrics. You can hear the song and watch it performed at the link above. The Magdalene Laundries I was an unmarried girl I'd just turned twenty-seven When they sent me to the sisters For the way men looked at me Branded as a jezebel I knew I was not bound for heaven I'd be cast in shame Into the Magdalene Laundries Most girls come here pregnant Some by their own fathers Bridget got that belly By her parish priest We're trying to get things white as snow All of us woe-begotten-daughters In the streaming stains Of the Magdalene Laundries Prostitutes and destitutes And temptresses like me-- Fallen women-- Sentenced into dreamless drudgery ... Why do they call this heartless place Our Lady of Charity? Oh charity! These bloodless brides of Jesus If they had just once glimpsed their groom Then they'd know, and they'd drop the stones Concealed behind their rosaries They wilt the grass they walk upon They leech the light out of a room They'd like to drive us down the drain At the Magdalene Laundries Peg O'Connell died today She was a cheeky girl A flirt They just stuffed her in a hole! Surely to God you'd think at least some bells should ring! One day I'm going to die here too And they'll plant me in the dirt Like some lame bulb That never blooms come any spring Not any spring No, not any spring Not any spring
