Although these days I primarily write non-fiction essays or books, in my heart I’m a poet. For reasons I’ve never fully understood, when something personal needs to be expressed, it comes out as a poem. It certainly wasn’t high school English class that inspired my lyrical writing; I found classic poetry as difficult to comprehend as a foreign language. Instead, I discovered my muse after the school day, homework unfinished on my bedroom desk, while I listened to the real poets: pop singers offering their verses from radio airwaves or my hi-fi.
I had no trouble relating to the singer-songwriters of my teen years. Neils Diamond and Young, Paul Simon, with or without Garfunkel, Jackson Browne, Cat Stevens and others, stirred emotions in me that my English teachers hoped I’d feel from their elusive poets. If those teachers could have observed me studying my favorite lyrics I might have at least earned a little extra credit. One song in particular would have landed me an A.
Joni Mitchell’s Both Sides Now was the first song I heard as a poem. Though I didn’t know it at the time, Joni used a poetic technique known as metaphor to tell her Both Sides story. Metaphors are words or phrases that compare two things not normally thought of as relatable, and within the opening stanza of her song, Joni accomplishes this three times:
“Rows and flows of angel hair
and ice cream castles in the air
and feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way…”
Who among us hasn’t looked at the white shifting shapes above and seen something more than condensed water vapor? Now that was a poetic image I could comprehend.
Throughout Both Sides Now, Joni relies on metaphor, expressing love as “moons and Junes and Ferris wheels and the dizzy dancing way you feel,” then imagines “dreams and schemes and circus crowds” as life. By building her song with those unique images, Mitchell does what the best writers always manage to do: they let us see the world in new ways.
Inspired by her uncommon vision, I started writing my own observations of the world. Ideas for poems started coming fast and furious, sometimes two or three a day. I stopped seeing significant events as if they were only newspaper headlines. Things didn’t seem black or white anymore, nor did I feel compelled to label them good or evil. Instead, I chose to think of them metaphorically, comparing my latest inner conflict with the signs of struggle found on a nature trail, or using observations of the birds at my feeder to describe acts of human kindness. It was a refreshing outlook and I had Joni Mitchell to thank. But there was more she would teach me.
About fifteen years ago, a friend gave me a copy of Mitchell’s latest CD, a retrospective of her long career. As you’d expect, Joni included Both Sides Now, but along with her original version she also offered an updated rendition. What I heard shocked me.
I hadn’t been following Mitchell’s career for a couple decades, but even though I expected her voice would have matured with age, it sure sounded like something beyond growing old had affected Joni’s. Her vocal range was dramatically lower. Aware that she’d been a lifelong smoker, I assumed this radical shift could be traced to too many cigarettes. Joni, however, claims the change is an unfortunate combination of vocal nodules, a compressed larynx and the lingering effects of polio, which she’d contracted as a young girl. Whatever the reason, Mitchell had slid from her famous soprano to a female tenor. Take a listen to her two versions of Both Sides Now back to back:
Once I got over the shock of her huskier voice, I began to appreciate Joni’s revamped Both Sides Now. The song’s lush orchestration and slower interpretation made the song more believable. I’d always had trouble trusting that as a young adult—Joni was 24 when she composed Both Sides Now —she could have written such a wise perspective. How could a 24-year-old write about looking at life and love from two points of view? Hadn’t young Joni only lived one?
Here’s where Mitchell offered me a second poetry lesson. The new Both Sides Now was also more believable because I was entering the period of life kindly referred to as later-middle age. I was already composing poems that examined what I’d learned and lost, using handy metaphors like meandering creeks and insurmountable mountains. Once I heard Joni’s mature voice convincingly comparing two sides of life, I began to see her as an inspirational metaphor.
Throughout Joni’s career, rather than remaining typecast as a ‘60s folksinger, she ventured off to explore jazz, bebop and, with her reinterpreted Both Sides Now, symphonic music. I thought of her career choices as proof that we are not defined by our accomplishments, nor are we a reflection of our bank accounts or relationship status. By living like her best years are not behind her, Joni suggests a new way to ponder the end of my life.
As I move toward that end, I keep all my Joni Mitchell CDs close at hand. Some days I need the wisdom of her young voice; other times it’s her graceful dance with aging that ignites my imagination. Either way, Joni Mitchell never fails to send me to pen and paper, where I continue to write my version of a life lived from both sides.