We saw it in how she tried to live her life. Being a little more Dolly could help us all.
We saw it in how she tried to live her life. Being a little more Dolly could help us all.
‘Y our smile is like a breath of spring; Your voice is soft like summer rain. And I cannot compete with you, Jolene.”
“In world of Jolenes, be a Dolly,” is a phrase you can buy on a plaque for your wall, a sticker for your water bottle, or a mini sandwich-board sign that I bought at a Cracker Barrel in Nashville, Tenn., last fall.
We’re a nation mourning the death of Dolly Parton — missing her because she was such a hopeful, joyful presence in American culture. I’m determined to wear a little more pink and rhinestones for at least the next month, possibly longer, as an act of gratitude and an invitation to strike up conversations about a woman who united us as very little seems to have the power to anymore. The unity of love that was expressed for her following her death is an indication that we have not lost all sense of common culture. Even how she interacted with untraditional parts of the culture is a model to us about what good neighbors, and certainly Christians, can do in a pluralistic society where we are never going to agree on everything — even fundamental things. Love one another. Share what you have. Don’t judge. Don’t tear down.
And we see how she doesn’t even tear down this Jolene woman who could destroy her life, wreck her heart, by taking the love of her life. It’s because Jolene is so beautiful, Parton tells us in the song she wrote, that she’s a natural threat to Dolly. “Your beauty is beyond compare. With flaming locks of auburn hair. With ivory skin and eyes of emerald green.”
To be a Dolly instead of a Jolene means a lot more, of course, than not going around stealing other women’s men. It means noticing the good even in our enemies — and even their desire for the good. Dolly Parton could have written a bitter song. She could have been promised to exact revenge on Jolene if she didn’t back off. “Please don’t take him just because you can,” Dolly sings, appealing to Jolene’s common decency.
“You could have your choice of men. But I could never love again. He’s the only one for me, Jolene. I had to have this talk with you. My happiness depends on you. And whatever you decide to do, Jolene. Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, I’m beggin’ of you, please don’t take my man. Please don’t take him just because you can.”
I know you know the words; they are worth not only repeating but also reflecting on. How quick are we to assume the worst about people? Jolene might have entered like, if you will, a potential wrecking ball, but not maliciously — just naturally. It might be understandable from the songwriter’s perspective. How often do we give people the benefit of the doubt? Don’t we tend to operate more often based on a guilty-until-proven-innocent assumption? And in matters that don’t even come close to the intimacy and potential devastation the song “Jolene” is about.
“It’s God spark,” Dolly said in a Vogue interview ten years ago, when she was asked what “it is that people see in you?” She continued: “I really do ask God every single day to let me do something, say something, be something that matters to somebody else. To make somebody feel good. To let people see a spark of love. God is love; that’s the scripture.” She went on to talk about how she grew up believing “that through God all things are possible.” She was humble, not militant about it, and clear: “I’m a sinner like everybody else. But I do believe that there is something greater. I try to find the good.” She tried to love even Jolene.
Over the years, we came to learn that Jolene was a hybrid. There was a bank teller with red hair who was paying a little extra attention to Dolly’s husband, Carl, and he may have enjoyed it. And there was a fan named Jolene, whose name was tucked away for poetic use. But the vulnerability Dolly clearly expresses could be in the heart of any woman — the fear that the good thing could fall apart so easily, leaving her delicate feminine heart in ruins.
Dolly Parton was no wallflower, needless to say. When Barbara Walters was downright rude in a 1977 interview and asked: “Dolly, where I come from, would I have called you a hillbilly?” Parton responded, unflinchingly — graceful and firm: “If you had have, it would have been something very natural, but I would have probably kicked your shins or something.”
Dolly wasn’t going to lower herself to insulting Walters. But she also wasn’t going to invite Walters to continue disparaging her upbringing. “Jolene” is a dramatic contrast to a lot of latter-day music and our typical interactions, generally and broadly speaking. We can stand our ground without being cruel, rotten, or dismissive. We can be virtuous, with a God spark in our lives, and create beautiful things and experiences that encourage others to be better angels, too.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.