Well, I finally succumbed to the temptation to do a cover and to explain why this is one of my favourite songs of all time. As a songwriter myself, I have a passion for great lyrics and few writers have produced lyrics as poetic and profound as Joni Mitchell. I once wrote a poem defending poetry and lamenting that so few people read it today. In that poem I point out how, in reading poetry, we get to experience a level of intimacy that gives us a greater insight into the mind of another human being than almost any other form of communication. Poetry allows us to "touch the souls" of another human being in a way that can be more intimate than we can ever get even with our life partners.
So, here is my "essay" on how I read this song / poem and why I think it is a masterpiece of the songwriter's art:
In this necessarily long song, given the breadth of its scope, Joni reveals her own insecurities as her break up with her boyfriend leads her to reflect on where she is at this moment in time, what caused the break up and what it is about her that stops her having the longed for long term love she has sought and written about in so many of her earlier songs. It is an intensely personal reflection, but as most of us have experienced a break up at one time or another, it is one that we can empathise with, even if the details of our own personal experience may be wildly different.
Verse One: Joni opens the song describing her car journey across a bleak and scorching desert terrain. With nothing particularly interesting to see, her eyes drift skyward to spot six jet planes (perhaps single jet fighters) leaving six white vapour trails (commercial jets usually leave a pair of trails, one from each wing). She is reminded of the I-Ching. As she is no doubt familiar with the I-Ching, she will probably be aware that six unbroken lines is the first hexagram of the 64 possible. It is known in English as Strength and is associated with creativity, God and Energy. Jet fighters leaving the strongest hexagram is a powerful image in itself.
As a biography tells us, when she wrote this song, Joni had not long broken up with her long term lover. She was feeling really down about it, so this happenstance in the sky could be read as a good sign for her - besides it also echoes the strings on her guitar, the focus of much of her creativity and a big contributor to her means of earning a living. But then seeing flying planes she is reminded of Amelia Earhart and her tragic last flight and Joni realises that she may be merely projecting her feelings and associations on this image in the sky and imagines telling Amelia that she has now dismissed this image as a mere false reality she has created.
Verse Two: Here she lets her mind drift, as she drives, and thinks about her own relationship with jet planes. They carry this world famous star all over the world on her tours. That can be positive (wild and blue) or negative (jet lag and flitting from hemisphere to hemisphere messes up your natural rhythms and your body clock). Then she realises that she travels a lot, but hardly ever really experiences the places where she stays on tour. Rock star tours, as a means of travel, give the performer as little true insight into a place as the postcards of the tourist sites in a place do. So, that style of travelling is also another false reality.
Verse Three: Perhaps reflecting on her fame as a result of the previous verse she warns those of her listeners who may be jealous of her lifestyle, that unless you experience something for yourself you will never know if it would be a great event for you or not. She seems to hint here that her fame is not exactly the dream she thought it might be. As she tells her imaginary friend (the spirit of Earhart) her life style has turned out to be another false reality.
Verse Four: Now the song shifts gear as she reveals the reason she is in this reflective mood with its depressing undertones. Her lover has told her to keep clear of him. In response she has set out on this car journey (which, in fact, is the main theme of the entire album). However, that escape into movement, so typical of the road movie genre in the US has also not eased her mind like she thought it would. Her favourite form of escapism "the refuge of the roads" has also become a false reality for her.
Verse Five: Now she turns her thoughts back to Amelia Earhart and her tragic last flight. Amelia was following her dream and it led to her disappearance and probable death. Joni has been following her dream and it doesn't appear to be going according to plan. Reading between the lines, perhaps her globetrotting life style has contributed to the split with her lover.
Then she is reminded of another pioneer of flight, the mythical Icarus, whose pursuit of a dream (to reach the sun) also led to his fall into the sea. Earhart, Icarus and Joni - three dreamers brought down by their dreams. Dreams that proved false realities.
Verse Six: Her thoughts turn again and like the floods of tears we experience in waves in moments of grief, she bitterly dismisses her "search for love that sticks around" as she put it in her earlier song "The Same Situation". But she puts the blame for this lack of a long term commitment squarely on her own shoulders. And in a wonderful reference to the flight metaphor she has been using throughout the song she imagines that her emotional life has been like a jet plane up at icy altitudes, hinting that she has not truly allowed the warmth of another to really get through to her. That is until she met her latest lover. But even he has not managed to keep it together. Her relationship to him has turned out to be another false reality.
Verse Seven: Finally she brings us back to Earth. She stops travelling and checks into a motel, perhaps hinting that she is amused at the rather obvious choice of this name for a hotel in the desert. Here she manages to sleep, but the pillows give her little rest, they are not the familiar pillows of home, but rather ones that her wanderlust has forced her to experience. Even sleep does not purge her of her thoughts of the day previously. Her unconscious mind brings back to her, in dreams, images of jet planes and the view she has probably seen so many times from plane windows of geometric farms. Farm is an evocative word for Joni, who, according to a biography, as a young girl wanted nothing more than to marry a farmer and have a family. Something her friend Sharon (who she contrasts herself with in "Song for Sharon" on the same album) did. In the last line she reflects that the dreams she has followed may be nothing more than that dreams and false realities.
