As we do on Friday nights in Jerusalem, we gathered once again to watch American Idol and the results show. I would have never watched the show back home, but here...it's a, it's a...a lot of fun.
Tonight we watched Crystal Bowersox (tied as my favorite with Shioban Magnus) play some nice Janis Joplin: Me & Bobby McGee. She was fantastic. I've been listening to the song since I was 14 and riding in my dad's pickup down dirt roads in Northern Minnesota but tonight I heard it as a preacher and in a completely new way.
Me & Bobby McGee paints an image from the word go:
Busted flat in Baton Rouge, waiting for a train
And I's feeling nearly as faded as my jeans.
Bobby thumbed a diesel down just before it rained,
It rode us all the way to New Orleans.
Written by Kris Kristofferson the song was originally performed by Roger Miller, but when Janis sings it, it's her and Bobby out on the road, busted flat and busted jeans, tired as the late afternoon sun. I love the line "I's feeling nearly as faded as my jeans."
The story continues after getting picked up and heading out with a trucker across the US:
I pulled my harpoon out of my dirty red bandanna,
I was playing soft while Bobby sang the blues.
Windshield wipers slapping time, I was holding Bobby's hand in mine,
We sang every song that driver knew.
You can smell her bandana and see where it's faded over the years. You can see the cracks in the truck driver's vinyl seats. And you know it, without seeing or hearing it, the measure of time in windshield wiper slaps.
Of course the lines that get you and hook you in come in the chorus; you know it:
Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose,
Nothing don't mean nothing honey if it ain't free, now now.
And feeling good was easy, Lord, when he sang the blues,
You know feeling good was good enough for me,
Good enough for me and my Bobby McGee
Na na na na na na na na na...
Ours is a story painted in luxurious strokes of imagery but often told in stingy lines of illustrations and polyvalent points that don't find connection. This song accomplishes in just a few words what we might hope to preach in our many and varied opportunities each Sunday: a coherent and real image. So tonight I'm adding Kris and Janis to my growing collection of giants on whose shoulders we might stand, seeing them as my teachers.
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