watcha listenin to crispy? i'm obsessed at the moment with the louvin brothers' incomparably beautiful and intense song 'satan's jewel crown.' i'm an atheist, but let's just say i yearn hopelessly for god anyway, or at any rate for redemption. ira louvin, i would say, was your classic addict, and the degradation and infinite longing to which such a thing gives rise are completely expressed in this lyric. maybe i don't believe in god, but i feel that satan is real. or let me put it like this: i sort of have the inner life but not the cosmology of a puritan: the whole deal: sin. self-loathing, desperation, the possibility of redemption but not from within.
here is a link to an especially amazing performance of the song by emmylou harris. this is more or less what she looked and sounded like when i used to see her in coffeehouses and such around dc in the early seventies; how could you not have a transcendent crush? her love could redeem you, even if you didn't want to be redeemed. well i still feel that way about emmylou.
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