A few days ago EPI decided to surprise me by bringing home a DVD about Joni Mitchell. This because, although I no longer speak in Joni lyrics on a daily basis (as I used to) I still think she’s one of the greatest artists to ever walk this earth. And YT is not someone prone to blubbering adulation, so you know it’s got to be for real!
ROCKING-CHAIR RECOLLECTION AHEAD…
Yet it wasn’t always so. I recall one of my numerous flights ‘home’ from New York to Iceland during my adolescence. During one I was seated next to an ‘older’ woman who was probably around 25 or something (slightly hippy look, long hair, beads) and we got chatting, as you do. Onto the subject of what music we were into … can’t quite recall what my idols were back then, probably Olivia Newton John or Queen or similar. Meanwhile, this … lady got a faraway, dazed look in her eyes and said ‘Joni Mitchell’.
Eeek! Joni Mitchell? That ditsy broad who sang those songs about Paving over Paradise and being all Free in Paris? – I turned on a dime and beat a hasty escape into my magazine.
Well. Those were the days when I thought that as long as you just kept toeing the line, life would be simple and benevolent. Before I entered Adulthood and discovered that, line or no line, the rug could be pulled out without warning – repeatedly! And that was when I really discovered Joni. She lived it! She bared it! She survived it! Her lyrics were exactly what it was all about, and she made music that sounded like emotions twisting – and not only that, but it changed as the emotions went from sweet complacency to the deepest pit of human devastation. She got to the essence of the human condition – it was uncanny!
BACK TO THE HERE-AND-NOW
So EPI brought home the DVD as a surprise – however, SADly I happened to see it before he could pull it out with the complementary “Ta da!” so it kinda rained on his parade. But no matter. Last night we put it on and what a glorious descent into nostalgia it was! All sorts of little factoids and things that I Was Not Aware Of – told with the same forthrightness that one has come to expect from JM. We only got as far as Hejira (it was late) so there’s still lots left to see. Like having half a box of candy left – yay!
WEATHER
I seem to recall that yesterday I made the mention of snow? “May snow later” I think was the precise phrase? Yah, well, IT SNOWED LATER. It snowed later so much that the whole city became submerged in the space of a couple of hours. It snowed so much that, even here in Iceland, where a major blizzard is generally treated as a minor inconvenience, traffic ground to a halt. It snowed so much that EPI left his car at work and walked home, then got out his cross-country skis and went whizzing through the neighbourhood like Han Solo. It snowed so much that, while I know I have a car out there somewhere, I can’t quite see it. It’s probably underneath that white pile – the one with the tires sticking out the bottom.
Meanwhile, gearing up for a storm, with a warning in effect and everything. Whoo-hoo! Lots of white stuff blowing around in gale-force winds coming up. And I’m supposed to be going to the theatre today to see a dress rehearsal of my friend Auður’s new Tanzteater piece at the National! I sure won’t be taking The Unit, what with the absence of winter tires and everything (tire-changing workshops still packed) so cross-country skis may have to be the way to go. Except they probably won’t work when facing the wind.
Sunrise was at 10.01; sunset 16.21.