Why do I do this to myself?

Long ago, oh-so-long-ago, when I didn't yet completely appreciate the whir and blur of time rocketing forwards, or rather backwards, I discovered that my daughter and I both loved the same song. I still do. And to see Sir Elton, not Sir yet, not touched by life yet, the richness and the agony. His first hit, and his best, I think (though I have to say, Bennie and the Jets is right up there).

Would I go back and fix what I did wrong then? Oh, would I. But I can't, and besides, I didn't really know what I was doing that was so wrong. Some of it I truly could not help, but I was treated as if I could, if I only pulled my socks up and tried a little bit. The fallout was immense, but when I finally got better, there was no acknowledgement of that mammoth task, the task that nearly broke me. As usual, people only seem to notice when you're getting it wrong. I never should have done those things to begin with.

Marcie in a coat of flowers: the brilliance of Joni Mitchell

Joni Mitchell – Marcie

Marcie in a coat of flowers
Steps inside a candy store
Reds are sweet and greens are sour
Still no letter at her door
So she'll wash her flower curtains
Hang them in the wind to dry
Dust her tables with his shirt and
Wave another day goodbye

Marcie's faucet needs a plumber
Marcie's sorrow needs a man
Red is autumn green is summer
Greens are turning and the sand
All along the ocean beaches
Stares up empty at the sky
Marcie buys a bag of peaches
Stops a postman passing by
And summer goes
Falls to the sidewalk like string and brown paper
Winter blows
Up from the river there's no one to take her
To the sea

Marcie dresses warm its snowing
Takes a yellow cab uptown
Red is stop and green's for going
Sees a show and rides back down
Down along the Hudson River
Past the shipyards in the cold
Still no letter's been delivered
Still the winter days unfold
Like magazines
Fading in dusty grey attics and cellars
Make a dream
Dream back to summer and hear how
He tells her
Wait for me

Marcie leaves and doesn't tell us
Where or why she moved away
Red is angry green is jealous
That was all she had to say
Someone thought they saw her Sunday
Window shopping in the rain
Someone heard she bought a one-way ticket
And went west again

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Adele: Grammy loves her!

I confess, I didn't know who this girl was until very recently: that is, until her face was plastered over every available surface. Predictably, this avalanche of hype ended up with an astounding Grammy win last night, something like six trophies. I didn't even know you could be nominated in that many categories. Busy girl. (And I say girl because she's barely in her 20s: you'd better pray for her now.)

As you can guess, I'm not really in touch with all this, but when I saw her - really saw her on TV, not in her carefully-lit, cheekbone-sculpted publicity photos - I was reminded, startlingly, of someone else.

I wonder if her image is meant to be '60s retro, as in Amy Winehouse's famous towering beehive. Whether it is or not, I'm going to mix up some photos here.

Just a coincidence?. . . You Tell Me!

                                                         

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http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Across the wide Missouri

This is without a doubt one of the most beautiful things I have ever heard. I was casting around YouTube to try to find an orchestral version of one of my favorite melodies, the haunting folk song Shenandoah. I couldn't find it, of course. Instead there were some awful versions by high school bands, and innumerable overblown abuses by (mostly) opera singers trying to make it sound Dramatic, Rich and Bold.

This just somehow came to me, sung by one Randy Granger, someone I'd never heard of. He has one album out which is mostly Native American flute music. After hearing this, I wish he would play flute less, sing more.

I can't describe his voice, and describing it at all would be desecration, but I must try. It has a warmth and a complexity, a richness of shivering overtones, and that incredible, nearly impossible stone-skipping (I can't think of the technical term, but it's those tiny, rapid steps up and down between tones - somewhere between a trill and a yodel - can you hear it?). But it's the tenderness, the longing and the caressing of the deceptively simple lyric that I love the most.

I may never find that passionate, roiling orchestral version that caught me up like a dangerous current all those years ago. Instead I found this. A human voice displayed naked, so that every nuance is exposed.