By The Time I Get to Phoenix

By the time I get to Phoenix, she'll be rising
And she'll find the note I left hangin' on her door
And she'll laugh when she reads the parts that says "I'm leavin'"
'Cause I've left that girl so many times before

And by the time I make Albuquerque, she'll be working
And she'll probably stop at lunch and give me a call
But she'll just hear that phone keep right on and ringin'
Off the wall and that's all

And by the time I make Oklahoma, she'll be sleepin'
She'll turn softly and call my name loud
Lord and she'll cry just to think I'd really leave her
Though time and time I try to tell her so,
Guess she just didn't know that I would really go

No, she didn't know I'd go
She didn't know I'd go

I love this song and have done ever since Glen Campbell made it popular in 1967. I've got it on my ipod sung by Jimmy Webb. He actually wrote it and does a better version of it in my opinion.
It's evocative of childhood times and memories for me. I reckon "she" would have had a nice mod phone like this one on her wall. "She", wiki informs me, was Susan Ronstadt (cousin of Linda).

It occurred to me recently as I was listening, that no one could write a song like this anymore.
The version written today would have to go something like this:

By the time I get to Phoenix she'll be rising (auto correct would fix this error)
and she'll find my text I sent 11:43pm.
And by the time I make Albuquerque she'll have texted me 16 times from her desk and emailed me,
she'll probably call me again and get message bank "the person is unavailable".
And by the time I make Oklahoma, someone will have tweeted that they saw me in the street, she'll have located me on her smart phone and have snapchatted me several times.
She'll be lying in bed with her laptop, changing her facebook relationship status and blogging about our break up
"I just didn't know, he would really go"

Ahh, simpler times when a man could just walk out on a woman. Wiki also tells me Jimmy and Susan remained friends after this. :)

Stereotypes

Stereotypes.

I do love it when we get our preconceived stereotypes blasted out of the water. I suppose because it challenges our thinking and opens us up to how wrong we've been all along.
The youtube currently doing the rounds of a young nun belting out an Alicia Keys song on the Italian version of The Voice does just this. I did notice she'd been severely criticised on some of the comments. One comment suggested she's prostituted herself singing a worldly song and dishonoured God and her vows.
Nuns are good fodder for stereotyping. I know as a child I was brought up on a good solid dose of nun material from movies and TV. The Flying Nun, Sound of Music, Airport to name a few.

I did know real nuns weren't as beautiful as movie nuns though!!

My favourite nun who did this for me back in 1992 was Sister Wendy. I loved Sister Wendy's Odyssey and seeing her leave her little caravan where she lived her consecrated hermit life, and travel the great art galleries of Europe giving us a commentary on masterpieces. I loved how this tiny little unassuming woman would stand before over sized scenes of naked, muscular gods and men, and talk about the rapes, passions and lusts and all the worldly stories and emotions that went along with them. I love art commentaries, but this one was so different.

Sister Wendy wasn't naive, uneducated, unintelligent, foolishly innocent just because she was nun, something I might have easily assumed. Maybe some criticised her too for pursuing worldly, self-interested projects in her art documentaries, I don't know.

Anyway, I though she was great and I love to be reminded that we can't just presume we know people by their outward appearance, their job, where they live. People are so gloriously surprising.