Women's voices: Where in hell can you go

On the subject of standup women who live by the choices they make, you can’t make a clearer statement than Edith Piaf’s “Non, je ne regrette rien.”

For those unwilling to fire up Google Translate, it means “I don’t regret a thing.” And the somewhat inexorable beat of her delivery underscores the message.

Besides—it’s Edith Piaf. A lesser woman would have regretted about 80% of what Piaf did during her lifetime. But that’s the whole point.

My second entry today comes from Natalie Merchant, who has one of the most compelling voices I’ve ever heard. You may recall her from 10,000 Maniacs.

Or possibly not.

My association with this song came a couple of weeks after I’d returned to Virginia from the UK; so six weeks after 9/11, one week after being officially laid off along with 6,599 of my closest colleagues. I was driving down Route 7, listening to NPR and heard Scott Simon interview Merchant about the album she’d completed on 9 September. Then she sang “Motherland” in the studio.

I felt as though someone had reached past my sternum and squeezed my heart, wringing out anguish and sorrow in great flowing streams. I kept driving until I got to the Tower Records store in Tysons Corner, and I bought the CD. If it had been vinyl, I’d probably have worn out the grooves by December.

It’s not possible for me to listen to this and not be transported back to that nightmarish time, when I made some world-class mistakes worthy of that mass grave in Arkansas.

Perhaps I’ll just play “Non, je ne regrette rien” one more time.