Day 252. Clouds illusions. (9/9/13)

I think it was Love Actually that did it to be honest (and I don't care what you say, I don't care how cheesy you think that Love Actually is, I know the films cheesy, doesn't stop me liking it, file under guilty pleasure if you must)

Anyway, the scene where Emma Thompson (woefully undervalued compared to her actual talents) opens Alan Rickman's Christmas gift to her and finds, instead of the expensive jewellery that she knew she was getting, a Joni Mitchell CD. And immediately, instinctively, she knows that her husband is, at the very least, on the edge of an affair. 

As she stand in their bedroom and attempts to compose herself in order to appear normal before her family, Joni's 'Both Sides, Now' plays. It's a masterful use of music in film, externalising the inner turmoil of a character with the very item that has just been used as a plot device.

Now, I've never really 'got' Joni Mitchell. So many people over the years have tried to convince me that 'Blue' (that defining slice of early 70s West Coast melancholia) is a masterpiece but never quite succeeded. I'm just not hearing it, it simply sounds miserable. And I say that as a Smiths/Joy Division/Leonard Cohen fan. I'm not looking for fits and giggles here.

There are albums that I do 'get' by her, the later jazz tinged ones. I'm more than capable of quite enjoying those but Both Sides? Absolute masterpiece.

The version in the film is a late career re-recording, orchestrated, symphonic, darker, smokier (quite literally after a lifetime of tobacco) wiser, more rueful.

And you'd expect that with age and experience and regret and choices made and not made, but the original is equally (genuinely) profound; a meditation on the difference between the love imagined in youth and the reality of actually being in love and spending your life with another person, the way that fame and success changes people's perception of you, the way that your life isn't what you expected it to be.

She was in her early twenties, ridiculously young to be able to write something with such depth, such meaning and to give these feelings such a melody to carry them.

I think that every artist has one piece that comes to them from somewhere else, from some higher intent. Something that exists to connect people, to affect people, to 'chime' with something bigger.

This is hers.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

15.4.89 (15/4/13)

There's only one thing that I can write about today. I wasn't at Hillsborough. 24 years ago today I was in work. My memories of the day are ridiculously vague, they come through in little snapshots and emotions all out of order rather than anything concrete unlike our Keith - the account in his book 'We Had Dreams And Songs To Sing' is utterly vivid. He was there. So was our Kev. And my Dad. And my Uncle Dave and, I'm fairly sure, my Uncle Len. And everybody that I knew from going to the match, the lads that we stood with. I wasn't as regular a match goer as Keith and Kev and generally didn't do away games, I'd been to a couple of Milk Cup finals over the years and two semi finals - one at Goodison and the replay at Maine Road. Nothing with too much travel. I was a part timer. I remember hearing the first news of what was happening in Sheffield. My manager, Pete, was a Man United fan from Bury. He came to me on the shop floor, grinning, and said "Se...
Read more

A Manifesto For The Morning After

Some days you wake up and feel the need to share stuff from ages ago.  I wrote this in one sitting in December 2019 as a response to the previous night's election - the one that Labour didn't win. This was my manifesto for going forward. With no idea of what was coming a couple of months later, or how shoddily Boris Johnson and his scabby government would deal with the crisis.  I've not read this back but I've a feeling that it still stands now, with a Labour Party that's representing someone other than the people it used to and is determined to mollify the far right (though the reset with the EU of yesterday might be a tiny step in the direction that it should have gone; I don't honestly know, I've lost the will to read the details) The main reason for sharing this now? For sharing a piece that only about 100 people ever saw?  It was performed by Mike Noble, now much more widely known as Banksy from This City Is Ours. The fact that someone who's on tell...
Read more

Day zero. How do you see in a New Year?

 7.10pm 31st December 2024 How do you see in a New Year?  With the news that Johnnie Walker has passed away. A fixture in our live, a sound on Radio 1 then Radio 2, somebody we didn't listen to all the time but loved when we did. He just felt honest, felt warm, reassuring. Always there. And we knew he was sick, knew he'd finished with radio after 58 years, but didn't expect this quite so soon. A towering presence. One of the greats. With the news that Real Madrid have put in an offer total Trent Alexander Arnold now. Like now. Which probably means he's going there in the summer. Which isn't unexpected but disappointing all the same. He'll win more there, probably get more credit for how good he is there than he has here but will fit feel the same?  For him, maybe. Not my place to judge. I'm not going to hate him for leaving, people leave things. I'm not going to hate him for leaving for no fee, it's not my money. And once he leaves? I'll stop thi...
Read more