I’ve always been mesmerized by Joni Mitchell’s 1969 song Both Sides Now which she wrote at 21. It was introduced in her second album Clouds and has become her best known song. But I was uncertain about watching her perform her poetic lyrics last Sunday at the Grammys while sitting in a living room chair sixty years later. The longer I watched and listened, however, the message held new meaning for me as we are both now close in age and have experienced both sides of a life well lived.
It seems that Joni found the
inspiration for the song while sitting at the window seat in an airplane and
noticing the flip side of clouds, as we’re the first generation to see from
that perspective. She observed that she
had always saw them as beautiful ice cream castles from below, but also concluded that they
can block the sun while raining and snowing on everyone. By this time, she had fought and won a
struggle with polio at age nine, the “win and lose” of life, and given
up her baby daughter at 20 that she had with a fellow student that wasn’t ready
for parenthood, the “give and take” of love. Clouds got in the way. I too have observed the dark, menacing,
underbelly of thick clouds only to discover beautiful skyscapes on the other
side once the plane gains altitude and breaks through to the other side.
Joni continues the dichotomy observing
that “old friends shake their heads and say I’ve changed, but ‘something’s
lost and something’s gained’ in living every day.” She finally concedes that “I really don’t
know life at all.” But today at age 80
she has the advantage of reflecting back from the other side of life with the wisdom
of age and the writings of those who have come before us. We all have the succinct words from authors
like M. Scott Peck that “Life is difficult” and Robert Frost who summed
up everything he learned about life in three words, “It goes on.”
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