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Don Juan's Reckless Daughter Lyrics
I'm Don Juan's reckless daughter
I came out two days on your tail
Those two bald-headed days in November
Before the first snowflakes sail
Out on the vast and subtle plains of mystery
A split tongue spirit talks
Noble as a nickel chief
Striking up an old juke box
And he says:
"Snakes along the railroad tracks"
He says, "Eagles in jet trails ..."
He says, "Coils around feathers and talons on scales ...
Gravel under the belly plates ..."
He says, "Wind in the wings ...
He says, "Big bird dragging its tail in the dust ...
Snake kite flying on a string."
I come from open prairie
Given some wisdom and a lot of jive!
Last night the ghosts of my old ideas
Reran on channel five
And it howled so spooky for its eagle soul
I nearly broke down and cried
But the split tongue spirit laughed at me
He says, "Your serpent cannot be denied."
Our serpents love the whisky bars
They love the romance of the crime
But didnt I see a neon sign
Fester on your hotel blind
And a country road come off the wall
And swoop down at the crowd at the bar
And put me at the top of your danger list
Just for being so much like you are!
Youre a coward against the altitude--
Youre a coward against the flesh--
Coward--caught between yes and no
Reckless this time on the line for yes, yes, yes!
Reckless brazen in the play
Of your changing traffic lights
Coward--slinking down the hall
To another restless night
As we center behind the eight ball
As we rock between the sheets
As we siphon the colored language
Off the farms and the streets
Here in good old God-save America
The home of the brave and the free
We are all hopelessly oppressed cowards
Of some duality
Of restless multiplicity
(oh, Say can you see)
Restless for streets and honky tonks
Restless for home and routine
Restless for country, safety and her
Restless for the likes of reckless me
Restless sweeps like fire and rain
Over virgin wilderness
It prowls like hookers and thieves
Through bolt locked tenements
Behind my bolt locked door
The eagle and the serpent are at war in me
The serpent fighting for blind desire
The eagle for clarity
What strange prizes these battles bring
These hectic joys, these weary blues
Puffed up and strutting when I think I win
Down and shaken when I think I lose
There are rivets up here in this eagle
There are box cars down there on your snake
And we are twins of spirit
No matter which route home we take
Or what we forsake
Were going to come up to the eyes of clarity
And well go down to the beads of guile
There is danger and education
In living out such a reckless life style
I touched you on the central plains
It was plane to train my twin
It was just plane shadow to train shadow
But to me it was skin to skin
The spirit talks in spectrums
He talks to Mother Earth to Father Sky
Self indulgence to self denial
Man to woman
Scales to feathers
You and I
Eagles in the sky
You and I
Snakes in the grass
You and I
Crawl and fly
You and I
I came out two days on your tail
Those two bald-headed days in November
Before the first snowflakes sail
Out on the vast and subtle plains of mystery
A split tongue spirit talks
Noble as a nickel chief
Striking up an old juke box
And he says:
"Snakes along the railroad tracks"
He says, "Eagles in jet trails ..."
He says, "Coils around feathers and talons on scales ...
Gravel under the belly plates ..."
He says, "Wind in the wings ...
He says, "Big bird dragging its tail in the dust ...
Snake kite flying on a string."
Given some wisdom and a lot of jive!
Last night the ghosts of my old ideas
Reran on channel five
And it howled so spooky for its eagle soul
I nearly broke down and cried
But the split tongue spirit laughed at me
He says, "Your serpent cannot be denied."
Our serpents love the whisky bars
They love the romance of the crime
But didnt I see a neon sign
Fester on your hotel blind
And a country road come off the wall
And swoop down at the crowd at the bar
And put me at the top of your danger list
Just for being so much like you are!
Youre a coward against the flesh--
Coward--caught between yes and no
Reckless this time on the line for yes, yes, yes!
Reckless brazen in the play
Of your changing traffic lights
Coward--slinking down the hall
To another restless night
As we center behind the eight ball
As we rock between the sheets
As we siphon the colored language
Off the farms and the streets
Here in good old God-save America
The home of the brave and the free
We are all hopelessly oppressed cowards
Of some duality
Of restless multiplicity
(oh, Say can you see)
Restless for home and routine
Restless for country, safety and her
Restless for the likes of reckless me
Restless sweeps like fire and rain
Over virgin wilderness
It prowls like hookers and thieves
Through bolt locked tenements
Behind my bolt locked door
The eagle and the serpent are at war in me
The serpent fighting for blind desire
The eagle for clarity
What strange prizes these battles bring
These hectic joys, these weary blues
Puffed up and strutting when I think I win
Down and shaken when I think I lose
There are rivets up here in this eagle
There are box cars down there on your snake
And we are twins of spirit
No matter which route home we take
Or what we forsake
Were going to come up to the eyes of clarity
And well go down to the beads of guile
There is danger and education
In living out such a reckless life style
I touched you on the central plains
It was plane to train my twin
It was just plane shadow to train shadow
But to me it was skin to skin
The spirit talks in spectrums
He talks to Mother Earth to Father Sky
Self indulgence to self denial
Man to woman
Scales to feathers
You and I
Eagles in the sky
You and I
Snakes in the grass
You and I
Crawl and fly
You and I
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this is a song about duality of personality, of spirit. genius. very underrated.
my best friend is really in to this song. she tells me it is about the struggle of freedom verses security, that they are really the same thing....i dont get it.
my best friend is really in to this song. she tells me it is about the struggle of freedom verses security, that they are really the same thing....i dont get it.
I struggle to understand why Dylan is held in such accepted esteem, while Joni is relatively overlooked and always judged on "Blue" much more than her jazz-influenced masterpieces.
Glad to get that off my chest!
@irkthepurists It is now 2020 and time has only increased her stature while Dylan has back slid - Blue got airplay but her other later work?...gets accolades but never got much airplay except shortly after it came out. Isolated here during COVID-19 I'm re-listening to all her work and realizing why she was called "Beethoven".
@irkthepurists It is now 2020 and time has only increased her stature while Dylan has back slid - Blue got airplay but her other later work?...gets accolades but never got much airplay except shortly after it came out. Isolated here during COVID-19 I'm re-listening to all her work and realizing why she was called "Beethoven".
@irkthepurists Now it's 2023 and Dylan is almost forgotten while Joni's art becoming more popular and appreciated. And I also hate when the others judge her only on "Blue" and treat her only as a "love" songwriter. "Blue" is a good record but she has much better albums like "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter", "The Hissing of Summer Lawns", "Wild Things Turn Fast" or Turbulent Indigo" that are a kind of experimental art rock/ jazz fusion. Her love songs are great because as a woman she was bold that time writting about her real feelings but she has also many songs...
@irkthepurists Now it's 2023 and Dylan is almost forgotten while Joni's art becoming more popular and appreciated. And I also hate when the others judge her only on "Blue" and treat her only as a "love" songwriter. "Blue" is a good record but she has much better albums like "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter", "The Hissing of Summer Lawns", "Wild Things Turn Fast" or Turbulent Indigo" that are a kind of experimental art rock/ jazz fusion. Her love songs are great because as a woman she was bold that time writting about her real feelings but she has also many songs about different issues like politics, feminism, sociality, people's natures, difficulties in an artist world and many other topics. But people seem to forget about it or they even ignore it. Here I could agree with Björk who claims that music industry expect women only composing not so art songs and writing about romances/ boyfriends. The same's about for example Stevie Nicks. Once I heard that her albums like "Bella Donna" or "Wild Heart" are good only because of the other guys who worked on it (xddddd) while the fact is that she almost always composes and has her own vision about the tracks . And I always get pissed when I read how poeple interprete her songs only as a love songs about L. Buckingham while she clearly explains in interviews that many of them are not even about romance. And the same fate faced Kate Bush or Björk. But fortunately years after years female musicians are more apreciated and taken seriously and that's why now poeple care more for chicks like Joni Mitchell instead of Bob Dylan or the other men.
flying over the united states, looking down over the midwest checkerboard, one MUST put this song in their ears. it is one of the reasons you exist! to hear this song at 25,000 feet over kansas!!
eagles in the sky, you and i
yin and yang
'the spirit talks in spectres...
I am here again and I've found what this song is exactly about: "Joni Mitchell has always been a traveler. From Song to a Seagull to Hejira, she consistently chooses freedom and a life on the move over settling down into domesticity - though the choice is never an easy one to make. On Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, she tackles the idea of home head on, utilizing experimental musical techniques and imagistic, stream-of-conscious lyrics to delve into what she feels is her home - as the place she lives in, the world she comes from, and the parts of herself that she cannot escape - and the ways in which "belonging to her home" is a complicated and challenging notion for her to make peace with." And I got it from this site: https://jonimitchell.com/library/view.cfm?id=4998. But actually it is about the all songs from "Don Juan (...)" so you can read it if you're interested :D.