V.V. 3 wrap and Rachel's blues

[Don Corathers]

Resending this cause the first attempt seems to be lost in the server someplace. 

T. Mustadid wrote:

> Listen to Robert Johnson's blues
> and bring you daisy chains
> and take away your screws.

Me I been having a hard time figuring out the meter and rhyme scheme of that blues. Rachel's I mean, not Terrance's. Rachel's last line seems to want
another couple of syllables, and is it supposed to rhyme with "time" or
"man," or none of the above?

Not that we're a stickler for the rules of composition in this juke joint.

Two pages earlier is Rachel's meditation on the manipulative quality of
relationships, particularly (she seems to think) in Nueva York, "this long
daisy chain of victimizers and victims, screwers and screwees." That
mechanistic assessment of how people treat each other is neatly turned from
a figurative to a literal reference to the sex act in the next sentence,
when Rachel wonders who it is  s h e  is screwing, and "she thought first of
Slab... between whom and a lack of charity toward all men she'd alternated
ever since coming to this city."

The song might trail off into ellipsis because the narrator decided we had
spent enough time in the shower with Rachel and it was time to move on and
have a look at Paola's clock. Or it could be that Rachel let the song go
because she's not sure how to finish the line. What does she want? The
schlemihl Benny Profane? That's what she said on the phone New Year's Eve. What quality that Benny possesses makes him a good man? Or a kind-hearted man? Or anyhow a man worthy of the attention of Rachel ("You felt she'd done a thousand secret things to her eyes") Owlglass?

Jes' wonderin' what y'all think.

Don





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