Make Space → One Song

both sides now

I’ve been listening to covers of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” for the last hour. It’s 15 degrees outside, brilliantly sunny, a few inches of fresh snow mingling with fallen leaves in the backyard. I just ate a banana. It’s been a nice morning.

Supposedly Mitchell was reading Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King on a plane when she started to kick around the lyrics in her head. Bellow writes,

“And I dreamed down at the clouds, and thought that when I was a kid I had dreamed up at them, and having dreamed at the clouds from both sides as no other generation of men has done, one should be able to accept his death very easily.”

In her song—which she originally wrote for Judy Collins—Mitchell employs Bellow’s central conceit, but she moves away from death, away from an elite “generation of men.” It’s a love song, through and through. But it’s also about the moment when, as Anthony Doerr writes, “the urge to know scrapes up against the ability to know.” Clouds may become “rows and flows of angel hair/and ice cream castles in the air,” but only for an instant. Ultimately, metaphors fail. Language fails. “It’s clouds illusions I recall,” Mitchell concludes. “I really don’t know clouds at all.”

There are nearly 50 covers of “Both Sides Now” on Spotify. If only Bellow knew how generative that single sentence would become. Art begets art, ad infinitum.

But at least one cover is missing. In 1968—a year before Mitchell would lay down her own version of the song—Davy Graham pressed a 45 for Dacca Records. (It’s currently priced at a cool $108 on Discogs.) I first heard it on a mix by the Animal Collective dudes nearly 15 years ago. It rules, my favorite version by a mile.

Graham’s tune is one motivation for starting an off-shoot of this whole Make Space thing. Every now and again, I’ll write about one song—or maybe a pair of songs, or maybe a single DJ mix. Some will be tracks that, like this one, don’t exist on Spotify; others will be murder-your-darlings tunes, favorites that never seem to work on a playlist, favorites that always end up on the cutting room floor—too long, too idiosyncratic, a vibe all their own.

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Before I sign off, I would be remiss if I didn’t add one more video. Have you see Joni Mitchell perform “Both Sides Now” at last summer’s Newport Folk Fest? You should! Brandi Carlile cries while singing backup. Then I cried. Then I showed it to the girls, my eyes drowning all over again.

Mitchell wrote the lyrics when she was 23. Here she’s 78. It’s a moment. She’s a vibe all her own.

I've looked at life from both sides now
From win and lose and still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all

Thanks for listening.

Your bud,

Ross