Patty Griffin: "Mary"

In 1998 Patty Griffin released “Flaming Red”. It was her second album. Her first, “Living with Ghosts”, had been released two years earlier. Griffin wrote all the songs. One characteristic of her songs is their note of bitter compassion for the lost, the hurt and the outcast. This thread runs through songs on both albums. The presentation of her songs in “Living with Ghosts” is simple and consistent throughout – just Griffin singing over her own aggressive and impassioned guitar. No subtlety, just full, harsh chords. Try Moses, Poor Man’s House and Sweet Lorraine.

The production in “Flaming Red” is less consistent. In several songs her voice is swamped by a punkish electric band obscuring some very interesting lyrics (on Flaming Red and Wiggley Fingers for example). Nonetheless the album does contain three of her greatest songs – Tony, Christina and Mary. The punkish band accompanies her on Tony but, I’m glad to say, is kept in check. The balance favours her voice, thin and rough edged, in this cry of anguish over the suicide of a young, harassed homosexual.

He looked in the mirror
Saw that little faggot staring back at him
Pulled out a gun and blew himself away.

In Christina she captures a young woman’s aching and desperate search for love, isolated, forever deceived and self-deluded. It is a withering portrait

If you had the real thing how would you tell
Liars can say it just as well…….

But love would fall to pieces in the rain
Who would know better than you
A hundred love letters and none of them true.

In some of her songs there is strong religious sentiment which mixes eroticism and pain. A Roman Catholic taste for self-laceration.

Then there is Mary. Here, in full, are the lyrics of this extraordinary song.

Mary, you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ashes,

You’re covered in rain,

You’re covered in babies, you’re covered in slashes

You’re covered in wilderness, you’re covered in stains.

You cast aside the sheet, you cast aside the shroud

Of another man, who served the world proud.

You greet another son, you lose another one

On some sunny day and always stay, Mary.

Jesus said, “Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer”.

He flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face.

While the angels are singing his praises in a blaze of glory,

Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place.

Mary, she moves behind me.

She leaves her fingerprints everywhere.

Every time the snow drifts, every way the sand shifts

Even when the night lifts, she’s always there.

Jesus said, “Mother I couldn’t stay another day longer”.

He flies right by and leaves a kiss upon her face.

While the angels are singing his praises in a blaze of glory,
Mary stays behind and starts cleaning up the place.

Mary, you’re covered in roses, you’re covered in ruin,

You’re covered in secrets,

You’re covered in treetops, you’re covered in birds

Who can sing a million songs without any words.

You cast aside the sheets, you cast aside the shroud

Of another man, who served the world proud.

You greet another son, you lose another one

On some sunny day and always you stay, Mary.

In Mary there are two Marys, each a different aspect of the other. The Mary “covered in babies….slashes…..stains”, the fallen Magdalene, in whom sin, sexuality, fertility, pain and repentance are all embodied. And Mary the mother, nurturing, devoted, dutiful, loving and deserted. The Mary who "stays behind and starts cleaning up the place”.

There is a third figure - it is the singer herself, the prism through whom these other Marys are refracted. It is she, Griffin, seeing for us, that the other Marys are beheld and merge with her into the eternal Mary who “moves behind me” and is “always there”. The singer invests this female Trinity with a permanence and universality that persists through time, change and death. Jesus dies, Mary casts away his shroud and turns to love another son (John XIX v 26 and 27 – ‘Son behold thy Mother, Mother behold thy Son’).

It is a religious song. It is not orthodox. It does not attach itself to any comfortable liberal interpretation. Traditional feminists might have difficulty with it. But I know of no other song that has attempted in this way to capture the elusiveness of a woman’s search for reconciliation with human loss and hope for redemption. It is heartlifting. It is simply and achingly sung.