Joni Mitchell before she was Joni Mitchell

[fortyearspickn]

That's poetry. Should be in every American Lit class.

.... but most of the kids in those classes would not be able to appreciate it.

"Youth is wasted on the Young." At least it was in my case.

[Cibby53]

1421769556[/url]' post='1617662']

 

Glad I asked about Four Strong Winds...always liked the Neil Young version and remember hearing Ian Tyson's recording years ago but couldn't remember the name. Talking about aging my dad always said the only thing that gets better with age is wine and cheese...he smoked from age 9 til the day he died not from cigs but from a gallbladder surgery that went bad.We all begged him to stop over the years. I turned 60 last summer and nothing works like it did I've had back surgeries and knee surgeries can't hunt like I did when I was younger or hit a golf like I did in my 30's..lucky for me I can still play the guitar . I like this picture of a young Joni along with Linda Ronstadt and Carly Simon they were my favorite females of the 60"s and 70"s

[milod]

Too soon oldt, too late schmardt.

 

Frankly I think Joni looks fine as a fellow "somewhere around 70" type.

 

As for doing the interview in her home, she wouldn't have to put up with the niconazis and live and do what she will.

 

And yeah, all the "I hate smoking and even smokers" folks reeeally hate it when an elderly smoker dies of an infected spider bite or something.

 

It's not the smoking thing.

 

It's the generation thing.

 

Joni and I are pre-baby boomers. Baby boomers tended to group. "Inbetweeners" now nearing 70 and 80, tended not to group. Tended, whether their politics were right or left, to hold them and act on them but not necessarily find a group to howl about it with a nice feedback loop.

 

You can see it in Mitchell: I am what I am and if you don't like it, go take along walk on a short pier.

 

It's actually a rather nice way to be. One can be a painter of delicacy and a raw delta slide picker on guitar and play a little bluegrass mandolin and turn around and fall asleep re-reading a specific bit in Plutarch. Then have a bit of bulgogi with mashed potatoes and gravy and finish off with a snifter of brandy, a side of heavily brewed medium roast coffee and a cigar or vanilla-cured tobacco in a meerschaum pipe.

 

Then... head off to watch the neighbor kids at a roping on a new roping horse. Talk about it with the kids' grandpa and remember how they'd crow-hop in Cheyenne and have you gone prairie mulie deer hunting lately... and

 

Then fall asleep to a Beethoven string quartet.

 

Don't like it? Okay, go away.

 

That, I think is the pre-boomer. Not the grouping traditionalist of his/her parents' age, nor the grouping boomer of the younger 1947 and later set. Work hard and show respect but have your own internal freedom and if that's stepped on... do what's the most practical mode to alleviate it.

 

And perhaps also why so many of the boomers don't get it, nor the younger generations. As Joni notes, she did what she did for her own reasons and if folks don't like it... Okay. That's cool too.

 

Too, the advantage of age, is you figure you'll croak soon enough and if people don't get it, no big deal. "Mine is the most selfish generation in history." Yup. Not that they aren't caring, generous, Just less willing to accept conventional "wisdom" or whatever... Woodstock, the deprived kid who couldn't go, she said. I'd have evaded it - as I did - because it was mostly for groupers.

 

So... Joni... yup. We'll croak soon enough as it is, so look at the life led for oneself and for others, not for what others expected.

 

As she said, it's generational, not that there haven't been individuals in the past, present and future with that slant - but I think as a generation, it seemed easier to wanna play Bach, BB, Bebop, bluegrass and a bit of George Jones or George Strait and Ian Tyson and hey, what's wrong with Gershwin and swing?

 

I've a hunch that Joni and I likely do not share political views. We'd likely laugh and find common ground and at best feel we'd met a kindred spirit of another dispensation but of the same essence.

 

m

[E-minor7]

Then have a bit of bulgogi with mashed potatoes and gravy and finish off with a snifter of brandy, a side of heavily brewed medium roast coffee and a cigar or vanilla-cured tobacco in a meerschaum pipe.

 

Backing that - keep the ink liquid, good milod. .

[fortyearspickn]

Milod - that sums it up nicely! "Too soon old, too late 'schmardt' ! Yes - that's an old German saying passed on from to us by our grandmother.

I'm not sure exactly when it was I fully understood it. Sometime well after middle age.