who knows where the time goes

 Sometimes to kill time I go to fb and just scroll down just to see if there is anything interesting there.  And a couple of weeks ago I came across this image. With that church in the background and that park in the foreground, it looked like it might be a few blocks east of Lake and Ashland, an area I pass through from time to time.  But who were those people?  It turned out that the photo was taken in England and they were the grandparents of Sandy Denny.

Sandy Denny?  Name sounded familiar, or was I thinking of Sandy Dennis, the actress?  No this was somebody else, English folksinger (I wonder if Beagles has ever heard of her), wrote Who Knows Where the Time Goes.  Was a big hit for Judy Collins on one of her early albums.

Back in my late hippy days there was a woman who also tended bar at Chin's who I maybe a had a bit of a crush on.  She was all beer and good times, as we all were, but I remember one time she was kind of pensive and she mentioned that song from the Judy Collins album.

Here is the Sandy Denny version.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OkOB57UcYk8  I have the link going into another window so you can listen while you read.

Ah what a sweet sad song.  Near the end, walking the desolate beach one imagines, she says she will not be alone as long as her love is with her, but then who knows how long he will be with her because who knows where the time goes.

So anyway I did some googling and you tubing, and oh my god, where had this woman been all my life?  Beautiful, beautiful music I think.  Ordered a three CD collection of her best songs, have been listening to them over and over again the past few days.

Where had she been all my life?  Well she had been there in England doing folk songs, but I wasn't listening to folk songs at the time.  She knew she was good, she wanted to move on, she wanted to oh, be popular the way Judy Collins was popular.

But you know, she was chubby, and well, not a great beauty.  I always wondered why the girl singers were almost always beautiful.  Do looks and musical ability go hand in hand?  

Made her insecure is what the story was.  She was one of those artists who are really great and know it, but then a turn off the head and they are looking down the abyss, and thinking it's all some kind of illusion and they are nothing at all.  And then comes the booze, the pills, the cocaine.  Drunk and abandoned she fell down some stair and hit her head and was dead after about a week in 1978.

In 1978 I was still tending bar at the House of Chin, still thinking I had it made, a plate of chop suey with every shift, all the beer I could drink as long as I could make change and pour beer, hanging out with my buds while getting paid for it.  I had it made.  Maggie, that was the name of the woman who liked the song, had moved on from Chin's, but when I went to the bar downtown she was almost always there putting down tall screwdrivers.  After a few she would look me straight in the eye and ask me, did I think she was a good person, did I think she was crazy?  I always told her that she was a good person and she was not crazy, though I wasn't sure of that at all.

Sandy Denny died forty-four years ago, all the songs I am listening to now were recorded like fifty years ago.  Who knows where the time goes.