So, I can’t listen to a Joni Mitchell song and not feel like I’ve been taught to see all over again. Like everything before the moments the lyrics paint was a myopic mystery, the buzz of a delicious first impression. The music plays and then she sings, and like the kick, push, and glide of the smoothest board ride, everything I’m hearing is where I could be heading, at least for as long as the song remains.
To be able to write for any time, for times ahead of your time and those you have had all at once is a kind of sweet sorcery. A gentle and powerful magic that affords you eyesight in front and behind. Moons, Junes, Ferris wheels, feather canyons, and ice cream castles. The wishful sight of fantasy and fancy. The conjuring of places from where you may well be able to see with a clarity life forces you to see with.
Mitchell is a lens on the pieces and parts of life that provoke, tease, cajole, and sometimes mercilessly affect. She painted a picture of the freedom a river could cast. A thing that could teach feet to fly and skate away on.