“But now it's just another show
And you leave 'em laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away
I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take and still somehow
It's love's illusions that I recall
I really don't know love
Really don't know love at all” (Both Sides Now/Joni Mitchell/1967)
1967, the year I graduated high school. The year of so many folk styles, hippie-dippy, personal ballads from my favorites Crosby Stills, Nash and Young, the Mama’s and Papa’s, Leonard Cohen, and Miss Joni Mitchell to name a few. Clouds and Both Sides Now, the opportunity to think that illusions made sense, and life could be a form of give and take; and the caution of just don’t give yourself away. WOW, I was a high school graduate, and the world seemed big enough to find the choice and chance to make a difference…at least from the promenade of the sets of staircases from my high school Taylor Allderdice, whose motto was “Know Something Do Something Be Something”, as I looked dramatically into the heavens. (I expected a block or brick or mortar to fall from the sky, but as I remember a pigeon flew by and pooped on me!)
During these very depressing and dark days brewing and churning as if a few BAD WITCHES, threw together a bevy of poisonous potions in a cauldron, and set it on fire for the smoke to surround the world, and permeate a dense doom-filled fog on America, memories of what once was and what supposed to be have floated, like clouds around me…and SOMETIMES, the edginess and ugliness seem too overwhelming and unfair! And I THINK, NOPE there are NOT BOTH SIDES, now or ever when it comes to Murdering Black People/Inciting an Insurrection/Denying Transgendered Kids access to a bathroom of their choice OR playing Intramural Sports/Denying Access to Protest and Free Speech/Any News Outlet To Provide Fiction instead of Fact/Polluting the Environment/Permitting any well known or wealthy person to escape the law as they participate in Rape/Child Molestation/Tax Fraud/Collusion. And while we still are counting from the number 570,000 deaths due to COVID…THERE IS ABSOLUTLEY NO FUCKING BOTH SIDES NOW, to the question of mask-wearing, becoming vaccinated, and social distance.
