Perils of Caffeine in the Evening

I see it there, in friends’ Facebook posts, in ads targeted to my superannuation, in exhortations from Brandi Carlyle’s lovely venerations, the links to Joni’s recent appearance at the Newport Festival

But I find I can’t click on the links, it’s like I’m standing on the Deception Pass Bridge at flood tide and staring into the shape-shifting whirlpools of impermanance and starkly beautiful loss and I just can’t…

 Joni in many ways was the soundtrack of our 70s and 80s, and the arc of her poetry and musicianship mirrored our own maturation, from the effervescence of Chelsea Morning to Help Me (which was not yet a cry for help, but a cry for how to keep going), to the barely constrained angst of Hissing Of Summer Lawns, to the unconstrained freedom of the open road of Hejira.

I want to leave these musical memories, these totemic depictions of my youth, right where they were as I was being formed.

 ”It always seems so righteous at the start,
When there’s so much laughter
When there’s so much spark
When there’s so much sweetness in the dark”

 I can’t bear to click.