1971 - the year I moved back to California after a forced exile. The year Joni Mitchell released her amazing album "Blue." I bought it instantly and have owned every format of it since - including the one now on my iPod.When I first heard it I thought "this is my life Joni is singing about" from "Green" for my own love child to flying home from trip number 1 to Europe:
"California I'm coming home
Oh will you take me as I am
Strung out on another man
California I'm coming home"
And then, other trips, with other lovers haunting my goodbyes:
"You got the touch so gentle and sweet
But you've got that look so critical
Now I can't talk to you baby
I get so weak
Sometimes I think love is just mythical
Up there's a heaven
Down there's a town
Blackness everywhere and little lights shine
Oh, blackness, blackness dragging me down
Come on light the candle in this poor heart of mine."
Through all the years, and all the formats, Joni's "Blue" has been with me. Each song brings up a memory of a person or a place or that time which will never be again for me or for the world.
I never thought I would live again a song - but now I know the true pain she felt when she sang "All I Want." Now I know the deepest pain that only can come with the darkest finality:
"I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me
I want to be strong I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive
Do you want - do you want - do you want
To dance with me baby
Do you want to take a chance
On maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby
Well, come on
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause - life is our cause
When I think of your kisses
My mind see-saws
Do you see - do you see - do you see
How you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue
I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
It's the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be
I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun
I want to be the one that you want to see
I want to knit you a sweater
Want to write you a love letter
I want to make you feel better
I want to make you feel free
Hmm, Hmm, Hmm, Hmm,
Want to make you feel free
I want to make you feel free."
Free you may be - but not me.
So, Joni, what more will be revealed in my life to come from this album? We shall see.
