Patsy Cline

The stripper writhed around, shoving her tits in my face. I grinned appreciatively, and reached for another dollar bill.

“Where you from?” she purred.

“Oh, I live down the street in…”

“No, no,” she arched her back, “where are you from? Nobody who lives in LA is from here.”

“Right, like NYC,” I replied

“Exactly.” She licked her lips.

“I’m from Michigan,” I admitted.

“Really?” She perked up. “I meet lots of cool people that were from Michigan.”

“Yep.” I replied, slipping a damp dollar into the waistband of her thong. “That’s because everybody cool who’s from Michigan leaves as soon as they get the chance.”

She rubbed her knee up the inside of my pant leg, and arched an eyebrow at what she didn’t find.

“So, you’re cool?” she teased.

“Ice, ice, baby.”

Growing up, I didn’t realize what a joke of a state Michigan is. It was just where I happened to live. But I started to get an inkling in high school, when I saw an ad for the state on television. Generally, you’ll occasionally see ads for other states on TV (Virginia is for lovers, or whatever), and they always have a faint whiff of desperation about them. But the pro-Michigan ad (with the catchy tag “Say Yes to Michigan” since I suppose you had already just said no to drugs) was being aired in Michigan, as though they weren’t even bothering trying to get anybody else to go there, they were just anxious to keep the few people they had.

To be fair, I knew there were some problems earlier than that. Northern lower Michigan was the poorest, whitest place I had ever been, and the populace seemed to take a perverse pride in how ignorant they were. I was sheltered somewhat from the local community by living within the bubble of the Interlochen Center for the Arts, where my mom taught ballet for fifteen years. It did mean that I got the best of both worlds growing up – the cultural advantages of being in an arts-rich environment and the safety and freedom of being able to roam around a small country town – but it also led to some cultural schisms. The locals weren’t crazy about the artsy fartsy types that overran the town in the summer (even though they helped keep the economy afloat) and the faculty and their families weren’t all that fond of the conservative, repressive views of the locals. In fact, one local ran for Mayor, or whatever the high political position was in town (Fuhrer?), on a platform to severely limit the amount of “noise” (i.e. students practicing their instruments) that came out of the National Arts Camp during the summer, saying, “I’d rather listen to a snowmobile than some goddamned violin”. The faculty and staff community came out in force and soundly defeated him.

I used to get my hair cut in a little one-room shack in town called the Village Barber (or, because of the severe haircuts he’d give me and my friends, the Village Butcher). He was very much of the town and the place would usually be full of men who clearly did not need a haircut hanging about reading magazines and talking hunting and fishing with the butcher. It was a predictable (and dreaded) routine going there to get my hair cut and once, in the car on the way down, I told my mom exactly what was going to happen when we got there. I told her how he’d call me either “Guy” or, if he was feeling particularly friendly, “Gil” (the name of another boy in my class at elementary school). Then, as soon as he had me in the chair, he’d light a cigarette, get on the phone, and turn up the country music. Then some bald guy would come in and they’d start chatting and he’d burn my head with the hair drier. All of these things happened in rapid succession once we got there and my mom started laughing so hard that she was practically wetting her pants. I was desperately trying to keep a straight face, until he burned my ear, and then I just cracked up. The poor guy probably thought we were laughing at him (which we were), and gave me an extra bad haircut, just to spite us.

I had been taught to revere classical music and hate country music and, for the most part, that was pretty easy to do. The songs that came out of the Village Butcher’s radio were inane and simple and the lyrics were laughably unsophisticated. But there was one singer that caught my ear. Although the music was nothing spectacular, the arrangements were polished and refined and the singing was arresting. I didn’t know who it was, but she had such a beautiful, clear voice and sang with such emotion that I was taken aback. Perhaps country music wasn’t all bad after all. Years later, I found out it was Patsy Cline.

Patsy Cline is the preincarnation of kd lang. Made legendary by her early demise, Patsy had an amazing voice that was both incredibly powerful and extraordinarily smooth. She could blow the roof off the house without sounding like it was any effort whatsoever. She also carried a world of pain in her beautiful voice and poured it all out in these classic songs from the golden era of country music. As good as her voice is, it was the presentation that her producer, Owen Bradley, wrapped it in that really made such a beautiful and polished product. Wanting to give country music a touch of respectability so that the city slickers might listen to it, he added strings and delicate piano touches and brought it out of the honky tonk and into the night club.

Although this song isn’t as famous as Sweet Dreams or Crazy, it is a good example of her sound. Country music’s strength lies in its simplicity, in its direct communication of powerful, universal emotions, and this is one of the most beautiful examples of that I have ever heard.

It took me years to outgrow my prejudice towards country music (now it’s just current country music I dismiss out of hand), and it was Patsy who really helped me to hear the light.