Poetry of music: Circle ’round…both sides, now

Back to when it all started…here’s Joni on the CBC in ’68 with Both Sides Now & The Circle Game in the days when her star was rising, and people began to see & feel the way she gave voice to a generation.

When she write it in 1967, she noted where it began:

I was reading Saul Bellow’s “Henderson the Rain King” on a plane and early in the book Henderson the Rain King is also up in a plane. He’s on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too, and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did.

Pete Seeger wrote an extra verse for the song, which he added with Joni’s permission in a 1970 duet (here it here) :

Daughter, daughter, don’t you know,
you’re not the first to feel just so?
But let me say before I go,
it’s worth it anyway.

Someday we may all be surprised.
We’ll wake and open up our eyes
and then we will realize
the whole world feels this way.

We’ve all been living upside down
and turned around with love unfound
until we turn and face the sun.
Yes, all of us, everyone.

Meanwhile, The Circle Game is a reminder that young people want to be old, and older people come to a place where they wish they were younger, and either way, it just a circle….

Thanks, Joni!