#513 Strange, dear, but

true, dear. The Cole Porter song enters
my morning mind as if it had every 
right to be there, as if it lived there & 
was returning home after a night out. 
But not simply the song, a specific rend-
ition of it. k.d. lang's, first heard on the
Red Hot + Blue tv special & subsequent 
album compilation. What is stranger is 

how to interpret the locus of the singer, 
of the mindsong. In the video, k.d. lang
sings as if she is person who is being
sung to; & in my mind, it is also as if I 
am the recipient. To personalize, it is the 
not-I singing to the other which is me. It's
a tableau that has a logic only because
of its similarity to that Magritte painting

La reproduction interdite in which a man 
is looking into a mirror in which his re-
flection is thrown back, but as if seen 
from the back. Twenty years ago I wrote
of this painting: "Shown from the back
the image is androgynous — think k.d.
lang in her man's suit phase." & here she
is again. Strange, dear, but true, dear.