I Want To Cry At The Opera
I’m trying to get into opera bit by bit. I like music, so I like it. I want to be like those people that cry at the opera. But I am not there yet. I’ve written about this before but again: I think aside from my some genuine interest in being as cultured as possible (not in some vacuous sense of wanting to impress at some cocktail party, in the real sense), my art is really pop culture. Film of course, and books, of course. And songs. Pop songs, rock songs, song songs. Shit that plays or played on radio. The full range. I don’t cry at the opera yet but I can cry at Michael Jackson's Human Nature for a myriad reasons. It's hard to get through Springsteen's The River. I cry at Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now, at this particular moment in life. Not the original but the one she re-recorded with the full orchestra, on the Both Sides Now album. The breathy one, that lays over all her years. I think when she wrote the song she didn’t know it so well as she does when she sings it in this version. Joni Mitchell singing this on this album is way older than me, My mother used to listen to her “Coyote” when I was little; it’s one of the main ways that we discovered I could understand English for no apparent reason. We were
If she is older and I relate, then I too, when I am older will hear the song all over again for the first time. I wish I could sing but I can’t—so I listen. I imagine, about lyrics and poems and pieces of prose that they are a merry-go-round that binds us. And that we all take a turn watching it go by, unengaged. Then suddenly we get kicked and fall into line, into the circle going around. And as we take our place in it, we say: I know this circle’s arc, I recognize this rhythm, I am a part of this. It’s amazing when the kick is say, your first love. Or your first child. It’s not so amazing when the kick is from pain, or from knowing things that hurt, I guess. Still, I suppose feeling alive and in motion and connected should be its own reward. It is better to feel as though you fall into line with a larger expansive woman experience that has been witnessed by others than to feel you’re in a lonely free fall. Art (in this case, my Joni Mitchell song) does that, it is that merry-go-round testimony. I think having almost not made it past 21, and having lived many years completely disconnected from myself, I’ll always recognize that the moments when it clicks that you are alive and your circumstances not unique (like when I watched “Volver” recently) is a kind of ultimate good. Maybe that’s why some people cry at the opera.
Both Sides, Now
By Joni Mitchell
Rows and floes of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons evrywhere
Ive looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on evryone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
Ive looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its cloud illusions I recall
I really dont know clouds at all
Moons and junes and ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As evry fairy tale comes real
Ive looked at love that way
But now its just another show
You leave em laughing when you go
And if you care, dont let them know
Dont give yourself away
Ive looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
Its loves illusions I recall
I really dont know love at all
Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say I love you right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
Ive looked at life that way
But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they say Ive changed
Well somethings lost, but somethings gained
In living evry day
Ive looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
Its lifes illusions I recall
I really dont know life at all
Ive looked at life from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
Its lifes illusions I recall
I really dont know life at all
posted by me @ 11:57 AM
