Country music legend Loretta Lynn has been around the block a few times. I can identify with that useful cliché, except during my tenure at Douglas College it feels like I’ve been dragged around the block. As the end draws near for the two-year program in which I’ve been slugging it out, a growing awareness of having to get a job and get on with life is generating a palpable anxiety. I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. This past week was witness to a bizarre mixture of student meltdowns and instructor indifference. Combine this with boozy commiserating in crappy New Westminster bars and you’ve got an existential crisis resulting in questions such as, Who Am I? Where am I going? What have I done? Will I get a job? Can you lend me 20 bucks so I can have another drink? Loretta Lynn, God bless her she’s still around, knows how some of us feel. She knows what’s going on. She ain’t no dummy. You don’t get a voice like hers without doing time in the darkness.

“Have Mercy” is taken from an album called Van Lear Rose released in 2004. On this record, Loretta Lynn collaborates with retro blues-rocker Jack White. The result is a country album backed by humming electric guitars and a bass-heavy rhythm section. “Have Mercy” is about romantic longing, but the turn-it-to-eleven, rocking-out nature of the song suggests coveting on a more visceral level. Behind Loretta’s ballsy southern belle’s voice, Mr. White’s playing is pure raunch guitar and all sex. In fact, the song sounds like a striptease, but this time with a slighted lover performing for an indifferent audience. A momentary jazz detour only confirms the ready-to-go, “I’ll do anything for you baby,” sexual nature of the music.

The lyrics are an approximate reflection of the music too: desire on a monumental scale. In a voice suggesting the desperation of the slighted, Mrs. Lynn, however, never loses her sexy cool. “Have mercy on me baby/I’m down upon my knees/Have mercy on me baby/I’ll do just as you please…” But of course, the satiation she is crying for ain’t coming. All she can do is plead with her former lover using a variety of tactics, from bargaining, “I’ll put no one else above you;” rationalizing, “She’s got you hypnotized;” to downright begging, “I’ll do just what it takes.” Anyone who has ever been dumped before knows exactly what she’s talking about.

So how does all this relate to the final slog of school? As we are nearing the end, especially those of us are who are about to embark on an at times seemingly uncertain future, we can all stand to give and take a little mercy.