Joni Mitchell is my favorite songwriter. She and Bob Dylan wrote the lyrics that, when I was a teenager trying to make sense of the world, made me love English for being both evocative and concise. Playful. Evolving every day. This image of us, mankind, as stardust, caught in the devil’s bargain, trying to get back to the garden of Eden, which is hard but “life is for learning,” really strikes a cord with me. That’s Crosby, Stills and Nash there behind young, jodeling Joni. Sweet … and funny.
Woodstock
Written by Joni Mitchell
Well, I came upon a child of God
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, ‘Tell where are you going?’
This he told me:
Said, ‘I’m going down to Yasgur’s Farm,
Gonna join in a rock and roll band.
Got to get back to the land and set my soul free.’
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon,
And we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.
‘Well, then can I walk beside you?
I have come to lose the smog,
And I feel like I’m a cog in something turning.
And maybe it’s the time of year,
Yes and maybe it’s the time of man.
And I don’t know who I am,
But life is for learning.’
We are stardust, we are golden,
We are billion year old carbon.
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
By the time we got to Woodstock,
We were half a million strong
And everywhere was a song and a celebration.
And I dreamed I saw the bomber death planes
Riding shotgun in the sky,
Turning into butterflies
Above our nation.
We are stardust, we are golden,
We caught in the devil’s bargain,
And we got to get ourselves back to the garden.
That was in 1969. Then came her adulthood, and in 1983 Joni recorded it like this:
englischlernen mit liedern 🙂 learning english with songs
