Today's run was an easy 11 in the late afternoon, with the Emily Dickinson slant light you get this time of year. It's pleasant and calming to run in this dull afternoon light, not opressive like like the heft of cathedral tunes. What the hell are cathedral tunes anyway? Probably not the protestant hymns whose meter all her poems employ.
Speaking of church music. Tammy Wynette's songs, and many country songs for that matter, leap up and down in intervals that sound to me a lot like hymns. My wife would know better than I. Anyway, there's something about a Tammy catharsis that suggests a singalong, so maybe this is where the church music hunch comes from. She's probably less well-regarded than Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn for the very reason she's such an excellent performer, her unabashed, self-negating displays of vulnerability and sadness. Dolly's glitz and crystalline vocal tone, Lynn's sass and self-assertion overshadow the retiring Tammy, who lands the corny punchlines that make up the wit and soul of country music with absolutely withering pathos. Listen to her second best-known hit, D-I-V-O-R-C-E for a taste of what I mean.
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