Blue

California, California...

This week celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Joni Mitchell's album, Blue, released in 1971. And that summer is so very clear in my memory.

It had been two years since the summer I had spent in Hawaii with my friend Pam. After the vehicular deaths of our friends and Waikiki roommates, Larry and Ray, there was a swift unraveling of that group of friends. I think it was painful to be together, painful to feel the absence of two such integral members. And we were so young, without the tools to handle grief other than to try to get away from it. As if.

In 1971 I was back at home, and back in school at a local community college. But it was summer, and I was not working. I was also not in a relationship, but hanging out with some high school friends, including Debbie, who we called Clev in abbreviation of her last name. Clev was my best friend through most of high school, and who would remain so through college. And I think it was she who heard about the party.

Parties in those days were casual, or perhaps more appropriately called loose. It was pretty much just a gathering of kids and a smattering of a variety of consciousness-bending substances. If you were lucky, there might be beer. Usually there was cannabis, more or less always available. In this era of Covid, I squeamishly remember how much was shared in those days. Sometimes someone would forage up one beer, and we all drank from that bottle. For certain, we passed things around.

Somewhere during that night I found myself in conversation with David. We had graduated in the same class at the same high school, and I recognized him by sight, but had never known him. I had never even spoken to him. But now we were in a lively conversation. He seemed to like my hair, worn in a loose shag cut. And he said that he remembered me from high school. He added that he remembered my eyes. What about them? I asked. That they were different. I later told Clev that he had said that. Do you think he means different from each other?!?

David drove me home in his funny little Fiat, which another friend described as being shaped like a top hat. Sometimes I see these models in old films set in Europe, and I am reminded of him. On this night, he had lost his ignition key, and scrounged around in his car for a tool to start his engine. He found a carpentry device, a square ruler, and remarkably it started up the little Fiat.  Losing his car keys wasn't the only clue that led me to feel he was a bit too untethered for me. I directed him through the back streets to my house, a circuitous route, designed to not be able to replicate. And when he asked for my phone number, I transposed two numbers.

The next day he showed up at my house and rang the doorbell. I went outside and sat with him on my parent's lawn, under a walnut tree where a neighborhood boy had long ago carved our initials inside of a heart. My friend, Therese, was spending the night, and we were leaving in the morning to drive up to San Mateo, where my sister and her husband had recently moved. And it was there, in San Mateo, that I happened into a record store and saw Joni Mitchell's new album, Blue. I bought it, and at the same time I also bought The Who's Who's Next. David would take me to see The Who later that year. A stunning concert, part of the Who's Next tour, at The Forum in Los Angeles. And we would see Joni Mitchell several times in the coming years at the Universal Amphitheater, which became one of our favorite spaces to see outdoor, summer concerts.

Perhaps my travel from trying to elude David to beginning a relationship that lasted five and one-half years was partly attributable to Joni's Blue. Blue taught me that it might be ok to be tortured in love as long as you were also enraptured by it. Her songs were about emotional intensity and sexuality, as well as the freedom of a love affair danced away in a taverna on a Greek island. I didn't just listen to Blue. I lived it. River became the anthem to my heartache just as Carey remains an anthem to freedom and joy. It still shows up on the playlists I create. All I Want will forever be about the hopes I had as I fell completely into love with David. He was my first. He was passion, heartache, and ultimately is now my friend. And all of the memories of those years, our return to college together, and the final tumultuous breaking apart, are entwined with Joni's music. There was a time when I could not listen to her music anymore because it evoked a memory of despair. But that is long past and this summer, Blue will be in rotation.

A close friend once made a comment to me, derisively, about someone she knew "being in love with love." I said nothing, but felt grief for her. There is nothing, nothing in my experience, no drug, no epic experience that compares with falling completely and passionately in love with something or someone. Nothing that makes life worth living more than those pivotal moments of euphoric transcendence whether brought about by theater, a concert, dancing, or especially time and intimacy shared with a lover. Without those epiphanies, my life would be flat. And if you haven't experienced this, I suspect that, whether you know it or not, you haven't fully lived. Life is good mostly, but those moments -- the rest of life is only spent living in the comfortable spaces between. Those other times are my drug.

There is certain music that I think of as the soundtrack to times in my life. Stevie Wonder's My Cherie Amour will always bring to my memory a ride from Waikiki to the Honolulu International Airport, sitting in the back seat of some large American sedan, on Larry's lap. All of us singing; Pam and I later crying at the airport as we regretfully left the summer on Seaside Street behind us, and boarded the plane to take us home to LA... barefoot. The Rolling Stones' Beast of Burden takes me back to my first car with a built-in cassette player, a brand-new convertible VW Bug, white with a black top, which I kept for ten years and then sold to the actress Maura Tierney for $100 more than I had paid for it new. And, Luis Enrique's Yo No Se Mañana, which is Joel's and my very special song. My life's playlist is long.

I have written here before that Sondheim's Move On, and his No One is Alone have helped me move through rough patches in my life. And, I suppose I did move on from Joni and from Blue. But, oddly, as I look back, Joni also gave me a sense that no one was alone with feelings of angst and passion, those feelings that my generation wasn't quite sure how to manage. We mostly got through it all. And Joni was there. And still is. I listened to My Old Man recently and realized how well it not only fit my feelings for David back in the day, but describes the relationship I share with Joel. He's a dancer in the dark.

So, as I finish writing this post, I will download the CD I have of Blue into my iTunes. I will listen to it a lot, especially driving around during our splendidly warm summer nights; the nights of my youth and now the nights of salsa dancing. Though older, I don't feel my age in my heart, nor in my soul. Am I blue? Sometimes. But this summer, Blue will represent something different. It will stand as a brilliantly evocative soundtrack and, in its glimmering hue, for all of the passion and intense emotions that it underscored. Thank you for reading my blog. And, thanks for it all, Joni Mitchell! 💙