Jolene

So I flick on TV recently, and it’s Olivia Newton John, looking all 1970s. I remember.

Anyway, she’s singing “Jolene”, the song about one girl saying to another girl to please don’t take her boyfriend “just because you can”. You know, because of her “flaxen hair” and such.

It strikes me that this song, a conversation between two women, treats the man as completely captive to whatever the women determine as the agreed outcome. I mean, there’s no way he could make his own choice – especially if confronted with flaxen hair; I mean, what can one man do?

While contemplating my own ability to think above this level, I remember that Elizabeth had flaxen hair. And so did Olivia Newton-John in the 1970s.

The complicated pieces of the intricacies of ‘true love’ begin to assemble themselves in my mind into a coherent dissertation on flaxen hair (now informed by Elizabeth and Olivia, plus the not-seen, but imagined, Jolene).

At this point, Elizabeth flicks the channel. Suddenly Olivia is gone, and in her place is the Metropolitan of the Coptic Church, discussing the order of Bishops. His hair is not flaxen, and that’s the least of my concerns. Way to break a moment.