| Joni Mitchell – River Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I think you had to have been raised in a cold climate to really appreciate the subtleties of this remarkable piece. I say that because whenever I hear it, the mention of ”a river I can skate away on” evokes this powerful memory from when I was about 10 years old. I grew up across the street from the Naugatuck River in Connecticut, and spent a large part of my childhood winters skating on the thin ice that formed there. Out there on the ice by myself one cold January day, I ventured farther downstream than I had ever gone, past the rocks and rapids, until I found myself on a long, very smooth expanse that stretched down the river as far as I could see. It was like a road leading out of my small town into the great big world. The wind was at my back, so I opened my jacket as a sail and blew about two miles down the river — it felt just like flying. I was more exhilarated than I had ever been in my young life, and truly felt as though I could fly. And somehow, I got this glimpse of the long life I was about to embark upon. I’m a hard-hearted 55 year old man, and yet this evocative piece never fails to bring a tear to my eye because of that memory. By the way, there is a version of River on Herbie Hancock’s tribute to Joni Mitchell called the Joni Letters. On this CD, he performs the song with Corinne Bailey Rae on vocals, and it is absolutely wonderful. The two of them simply find the tune. Enjoy. |
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| Joni Mitchell – Amelia Lyrics | 15 years ago |
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I believe this sad and wonderful piece is about the stark and difficult choice many of us face in our lives between our life's work and our life's love. The reference to the guitar in the first verse goes to the discovery of her muse, and the second verse is about the exhilaration of success. I have experienced both, and its eerie how her choice of words strikes directly at my heart. By the third verse she has begun to understand the sacrifice she has made, and in the fourth crystallizes that sacrifice in her words of hard lost love and the pain that goes with that loss. I find it interesting that in this verse and only this verse she addresses Amelia not in the first person (as a confidant), but in the third person in a much more clinical way (“I tell Amelia”). A ghost of aviation, swallowed by the sky…she has lost her way in her devotion to her career. These verses are all about the wreckage of her life, as a consequence of her own choices. And then that lovely last refrain, in which she speaks of resignation to her lonely life of dreams (twice, in case you missed it the first time) and false alarms. |
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