Looking forward, looking back

Both Sides Now (2000); Joni Mitchell, vocal

Joni Mitchell was twenty-four years old when she penned the words and music to “Both Sides Now”. It’s a work of genius. Rolling Stone magazine placed the song at number 170 on its list of the “500 Greatest Songs of All Time”.

Genius? Yes. The perspective from which she philosophizes, in the lyrics, seems to emerge from a lifetime of loves, experiences, life encounters, friends and lovers. Life, as depicted from this mature point-of-view, has brought, to the person in the song, vistas that afford prospects from many different angles. A little toy dump truck may, in the end, be just a little toy dump truck – but what it means to a six-year-old boy may mean more to a sixty-five-year-old man.

I Corinthians 13 remarks that:

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

Of course, the Apostle Paul takes a longer view than Ms. Mitchell, but parallels manage to materialize, nonetheless.

Why is it genius? Joni Mitchell was only twenty-four when she wrote the lyrics! To the rest of us, she hadn’t lived nearly enough of life to intuitively, yet accurately, presuppose and conceive of the nostalgic outlook of one in their twilight years. But, Mozart wrote music beyond his years. I suppose Mitchell can write lyrics beyond hers.

We learned this song in junior high chorus. I remember Mrs. B. playing a recording of Ms. Mitchell singing this song before we started learning it. It sounded, to my ears, like a well-written folk song. And I thought it was very pretty.

I like the movie “The Player”. Robert Altman directed this movie in 1992. Tim Robbins – the player - plays the part of a producer at a studio in Hollywood. He begins to receive death threats and “unintentionally” kills the person that he thinks is writing them. Yet, after the killing, he continues to get death threats. The police can’t produce a witness to prove that the producer killed the guy. But the writer of the death threats knows that he did it. The producer and the death threat writer, at the end of the picture, come to an agreement: no more death threats – if – the producer makes a movie about the whole ordeal and gives writing credit to the death threat writer. And – all of a sudden – the movie turns into itself. Cool, huh?

When my friend L. told me to download Joni Mitchell’s 2000 re-recording of “Both Sides Now”, L. hadn’t properly prepared me … bless her heart … for the impact of emotion, depth and charge of Mitchell’s presentation. All of the notes in the melody, and the words in the lyrics, remained the same. But the landscape of the harmonic foundation, orchestration and ethereal atmosphere, matched with Joni’s later-in-life dusky contralto, laid out the terrain of a life frought with trees, pock marks, lawns, dumps, oceans, deserts, sunshine, storms, unions, attacks, affection, war, balloons, disease, picnics, homelessness, clouds, love and life.

In short, when Joni Mitchell sang this song thirty-three years after she wrote it – her song turned into itself. Cool, huh?

Tears and fears and feeling proud

To say “I love you” right out loud

Dream and schemes and circus crowds

I’ve looked at life that way

__________

But now old friends are acting strange

They shake their heads, they say I’ve changed

Well, something’s lost, but something’s gained

In living every day

__________

I’ve looked at life from both sides now

From win and lose and still somehow

It’s life’s illusions I recall

I really don’t know life at all

As I approach the end of my writings, October, 2010, doesn’t appear much different from October, 2009. Same job, same truck, same friends, same family, same gigs, same computer, same electric fan, same favorite soup place, same wallet. Different printer, different glasses, different house, new socks. Despite the sameness … and not because of the newness … I’m a little different. I’m one year different. And some things have a little more meaning than they did before. I understand a little better how I’m different – yup, that’s the word I’m going to use – from you.

And God bless you.

Credits: To Paul of Tarsus, model Christian, before there was any such thing as a Christian.

This is my normal Saturday individual track posting.