happy birthday, joni mitchell

I don’t remember the first time I heard Joni Mitchell because it seems like her songs have always been there, in the background, providing the soundtrack to my life.

I do remember spending hours and hours in my bedroom, listening to Blue, For the Roses and Court and Spark over and over again, deep in self-absorbed teenage thought and filling notebooks with poetry in which I poured my heart out about love, peace, being a girl – you know, the things that matter.

Joni’s lyrics took my breath away. They were achingly beautiful poems set to music and they miraculously nailed the emotions going on in my own head.

When I was in high school, I won a contest where I got to choose a dozen albums from the record department at Korvette’s. I completed my Joni collection, and became obsessed with songs like “Cactus Tree” and “Urge for Going,” which resonated strongly with me. It was so reassuring and empowering to know that I wasn’t alone in my feelings.

I guess it’s no wonder that I now live in “California” and married my own “Michael” (uh, minus the mountains).

Joni is, in many ways, the voice of a generation — at least the female half. As the seasons have gone round and round, she’s carried us from the magic of “Woodstock” to the paving over of paradise to the disappointment of settling down in suburbia in “Harry’s House.”

So, today, on her 70^th birthday, I want to say thank you to Joni for helping me look at life from both sides now, for putting my own feelings so eloquently into songs that still play on repeat on my iPod and for representing all of us women of heart and mind.