My Music Journal 2025: April 3, 2025

 

Thursday, April 3, 2025

Time: 7:55 AM
Song: The Long Black Veil
Artist: Johnny Cash
Mode of Consumption: Listening to MP3s on the way to work.

Link to the song: https://open.spotify.com/track/1MD5D5cFRKBAwbooPvifjN?si=170b330d6bfa4ea6

Playlist Pandemonium this week is looking for songs from our favorite albums from the 1960s. I had considered “At Folsom Prison” by Johnny Cash earlier this week, and hearing this song this morning put it over the top. The hard part is still to pick just three of the songs from the entire album to include on the playlist.

I like this song because of the crowd interaction especially the laughing after Johnny sings the line about the narrator sleeping with his best friend’s wife.

That line had mind turning a few years ago, and as a writing exercise, I wrote the poem below, but this one from the point of view of the wife.

Beneath the Long Black Veil

I met them both when they were twelve
Looked so alike, dark eyes, fair skin, just like elves
Nobody knows all the secrets they told
Forming the sort of youthful bonds that hold.

As it turns out, I married one, but fell for the other
Seldom, it seemed, my husband cared to be my lover.
So, to his best friend’s arms I strayed from my vows
Nobody knows about this betrayal, even now.

 Then a man was killed under the town hall light
Nobody knows the cause, but a drunk’s eyes saw the fight.
And he claimed to see my lover in his flight
Only he was with me that night. 

Nobody knows it’s me under the veil at his grave
For my lover stayed silent, so it was he who they hanged.
Was it for my honor? Or loyalty to his old friend?
The same friend, I suspect, who likely caused his end.