A great inspiration for me is Joni Mitchell, and the humility she has kept throughout her career and life, and specifically, her song "Both Sides Now." I find great inspiration in her second recording, late in her career, of the song.

It helps me stay in touch with how small I am...how small we all are, really...in the face of the vastness of space, time, and the mysteries of the universe. That, for me, is also a lifeline to "wonder" and retaining a sense of it as I age.

"Both Side Now." Wrote it in her early twenties, it became her signature tune, at least of her initial folk period. It's lyrically, at first glance, a song about her realizing how little she knew, how much she had to learn, and how life was going to be a great adventure:



And she sings it "on top of the beat" eager, anxious...and it all fits...

...and she goes on to have a remarkable career, with several distinct "periods" --and then decades later, towards the end of her career, her voice nicotine soaked, ragged and several notes lower, she revisits the song, singing these same words, "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"



--and it's a really powerful moment. We know she wrote and sang the song in her youth, and that it took her writing the song, living a life, and then revisiting the song (much later in life) to lead to this moment, and to me it's devastating in it's beauty: she's singing behind the beat with a kind of jazz swagger now, she has lived and learned, and yet, she's still in touch with how "small" all that living and learning is in "the bigger picture", and is affirming that for her, life is STILL a questing, an adventure. Something beautiful ("life's/love's illusions") to render us speechless might be around the next corner. It's the most vulnerable, honest thing...and whenever I feel a need for inspiration, I want to re-connect with "wonder" and humility, I reach for this later performance of "Both Sides Now."

Last edited by Michael Zaneski; 03/13/23 07:08 PM.
Fate doesn't hang on a wrong or right choice
Fortune depends on the tone of your voice

-The Divine Comedy (Neil Hannon)
from the song "Songs of Love"
from the album "Casanova" (1996)