Stardust, Billion Year Old Carbon

Last night I streamed Woman of Heart and Mind: A Life Story (2003). It is a lovingly crafted documentary about the immensely influencial Canadian musician, songwriter, and painter, Joni Mitchell.

I owned most of Joni's vinyl in the 70s. I picked up her most intensely personal album Blue in high school, then carried it with me in a wooden crate to Montana and Minnesota.

The Woodstock Phenomena

I didn't realize that Joni Mitchell didn't perform at the Woodstock Festival.

She wanted to go to Woodstock, but she was booked on the Dick Cavett Show the next day in NYC. Her manager was concerned about getting her in and out of Woodstock, 100 miles due north of NYC, in time for the Cavett show. She lamented, "the boys were all going". The boys were the iconic band Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

Joni wrote the tune "Woodstock" from a hotel room in NYC as she watched TV reports about the festival. She says,

"The deprivation of not being able to go provided me with an intense angle on Woodstock."

"Woodstock" later became a major hit for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, which included from then-boyfriend, Graham Nash.



Anyone in their 50s or 60s who doesn't recognize Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock" from opening three chords should be ashamed. In these iconographic chords, repeated 3 1/2 times, she encapsulates all the hope and all the tragedy of her generation.

The Poet Philosopher

Joni Mitchell was the poet of her generation.

We are stardust
We are golden
And weve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden

Take the Christian symbolism "back to the garden" with a grain of salt. She's a spiritual person who understands Christian mythology. She uses back to the garden as a metaphor to reject the alienating and dehumanizing Nixonian military-industrial movement. A movement that, sadly, most of the Woodstock generation would eventually be co-opted by.

In the next verse Joni Mitchell speaks to thinkers and existential tinkerers with the brilliant lines

We are stardust
Billion year old carbon

Thank you Joni Mitchell.

Painted Ponies Go Up and Down

I’m a serious person. But the gods of hubris should taze my sorry ass the instant I take myself seriously. And for the matter, the gods of the patronizingly dogmatic should electroshock my super-sized melon if ever I conclude that life has a purpose other than monkey-humping procreation.

I have a hunch about why so many societies have faith in unseen magical powers. I, for one, like to imagine unseen magical powers.

I think about concepts like god, or concepts like the fundamental constituents of matter, but that's as far as reason permits me to go.

It's not that the ancient texts extolling the virtues of one prophet over another -- obviously created second-hand by humans -- aren't convincing as convenient and comforting truth. But divine? Meh.

It's deeper -- DNA deeper.

My hunch is that humans are genetically predisposed to believe in the divine. At some point, humans started burying their dead. It became a comforting ritual -- an offering to the gods.

Burying a corpse effectively stunts any disease vectors emanating from rotting flesh and coagulating blood. The buriers of corpses - those who contemplated a higher power - were naturally selected to survive societies without burial rituals.

A Carousel of Time

We can't return. We can only look behind from where we came. Which brings me to painted ponies and a sweet but profound tune by Joni Mitchell:

We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and 'round and 'round
In the circle game
   ~Joni Mitchell, The Circle Game

Twenty-Something Epiphany

At an age of twenty-something, I realized our lives are an absurd but infinitely interesting carousel ride. After that, I saw the painted ponies go up and down with renewed vigor.