Can You Hear Me Now

It is better to have your head in the clouds, and know where you are than to breathe the clearer atmosphere below them, and think that you are in paradise.

Henry David Thoreau

Every so often I play the same song over and over again. For the past two days, I have done that with Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now. While I generally prefer her work from the 1960s and 1970s, this particular rendition of the classic song is from the collection of American standards she released in the year 2000. You may know it from the movie, Love Actually. In one of the most powerful scenes from the movie, Emma Thompson’s character played it as she planned to face her unfaithful husband.

Joni’s voice, strained from years of cigarette smoking, has a haunting effect as she sings of clouds, love, and life. She is not the carefree young woman who penned these words over fifty years ago. Much wiser, and perhaps a little jaded, she is now a woman who can sing the song with an honesty that only comes from age and experience. She earned the right to re-claim it as something new.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way

But now it’s just another show
You leave ‘em laughing when you go
And if you care, don’t let them know
Don’t give yourself away

As a man fast approaching his 70th year of life (yikes!), I often think about the people I’ve been and the person I hope to be before my number comes up. My life has been an endless series of peaks, valleys, and plateaus and I can honestly say that I anticipated very few of them and quite a few knocked me to the floor.

I’ve known love and I’ve known love lost. I’ve put myself out on the line only to feel the sting of rejection. Sadly, I have also found myself on the opposite side of the fence and been the one doing the rejecting. I’ve been hurt and I have caused hurt.

Mine has not been a bad life, though. I have been blessed in so many different ways. Still, I look ahead at what’s to come and ask myself if I will ever be the man I hope to be. I don’t do this in an effort to depress or shame myself. Many times in the past I have ignored difficult questions and they now follow me around like the chains of Jacob Marley.

Tears and fears and feeling proud to say “I love you” right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds, I’ve looked at life that way
But now old friends are acting strange,
they shake their heads, they say I’ve changed.
Something’s lost but something’s gained in living every day

Joni Mitchell sings of looking hard at something only to find that what she is seeing is an illusion. I often wonder if that is what the American dream is. With all our money, prestige, job titles, degrees, and possessions, do we really have anything of lasting value? I will be dead before too many more years have passed and what exactly will I leave behind that will be of benefit to anyone? Two generations from now will anyone remember my name?

There have been points in my life where I held onto professional jobs that were suffocating me and yet I always told my children how important it is to go to college, get a degree, and find a safe place in the workforce. Can I honestly say that my professional pursuits have taken me to where I want to be? To where I need to be?

Of course, it’s all fine and dandy thinking these thoughts when I do not have to worry about putting food on the table or a roof over my head. If I hadn’t earned my degree and entered the corporate world would I be looking back and kicking myself for not doing so? Would my life be any better if I became a poet or history teacher? Would I still be dealing with the same questions with a lot less money to deal with them?

I’ve looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose, and still somehow
It’s life’s illusions I recall
I really don’t know life at all

There are songs that evoke powerful emotions within me. Both Sides Now (both the flower child version(s) of the mid 60s as Joni’s more mature reworking) has great meaning to my life and the feelings it brings out are good, bittersweet, and painful — sometimes all at the same time.

All life is not illusion, but illusion plays a big part in living. Some illusions are used to mask painful memories with something less anguished. Some are used to heighten an already amazing recollection. When I listen to Both Sides Now, I experience the amazement and the anguish in the same breath.

Thank you for reading.

The poet
musician
the lover
the dreamer of splendor and light

Standing at the water’s edge
watching the rise and fall of ocean waves
crashing against buoyant, sonorous breasts and tanned pink skin
kissed by wind, sun, and starfish nipples