Through the Looking Glass

Sandy Denny died 40 years ago this month, on April 21, 1978. This is not something I have wanted to examine.

I first read of Denny's death in Rolling Stone. I hadn't yet heard any of Fairport Convention's music, much less Denny's solo work. 

After that obit, I didn't want to. 

There was something wrong, something hush-hush, the obit implied -- not just about Denny's death, but about Denny herself. Wherever I was in my life, I didn't want to go down that particular rabbit hole -- not even after I fell head over heels for her music 10 years later. Sure, she was brilliant, but wasn't there something dark and rotten at the core?

Fast forward to the present, and a career spent examining the lies people tell. Such is the life of an ad copywriter with even the barest shred of ethics. 

A dear friend floated the gentlest of suggestions: What about taking another look?

So, here I am.

Listen Listen to him do
He is the one who is for you
Listen, they say
He'll come and take us all away

-- Listen, Listen


But man has come to plough the tide,
The oak lies on the ground.
I hear their tires in the fields,
They drive the stallion down.
The roses bleed both light and dark,
The winds do seldom call.
The running sands recall the time
When love was lord of all.

-- The Quiet Joys of Brotherhood


You take away homes from the homeless,
And leave them to die in the cold.
The gypsy who begged for your presents,
He will laugh in your face when you're old.

-- Genesis Hall


While we fumble in the darkness where once there was light
Roaming the land of the ancients.
Oasis of love, sweet water of life,
God bless the poor ones whose patience never died.

-- One Way Donkey Ride


Sad, deserted shore, your fickle friends are leaving
Ah, but then you know it's time for them to go
But I will still be here, I have no thought of leaving
I do not count the time
For who knows where the time goes?

--Who Knows Where the Time Goes


Denny's lyrics, whether she wrote or merely sang them, were hardly superficial declarations of principle. Yet everyone, from gossipy obit writers to her dearest friends, felt the need to posthumously trash her for behavior that has earned famous men celebration -- even acclaim.

No one is without hypocrisy and contradiction, but neither do alcoholism and addiction spring from shallow roots, despite the cheap diagnoses of those in the know. Did she jump, or was she pushed indeed.

It's nothing more than 20/20 hindsight to say that everyone around her missed the signals Sandy Denny kept sending. The science of addiction treatment has made great strides since she passed -- so, too, common knowledge of it. No one can go back and change their responses, and we shouldn't guilt them into trying.

All we can do is clean up our own act. 

We can stop imagining it's cool and edgy when men go this way, but perverted and unnatural when women do. We can stop using other people's pain to gratify our cruelest impulses. We can do the hard work of discovering where our ideas come from, and reversing course when we discover how wrong we have been.

We can stand up for those whose weaknesses are different from our own, and we can shed grace by the boatload. If Sandy Denny spent her life saying anything, it was this.

This is Sandy Denny, out front of Fairport Convention, singing "Genesis Hall".