I Really Don't Know Life At All
​
Imagination and Mystery in
​ Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now
​​

The Practice of Imagination

by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
in Spirituality and Practice
​

​In the spiritual life, imagination has two meanings. First, it is a human faculty — the part of us that traffics in images, symbols, myths, and stories. It is the capacity we all have for innovative thinking and creative expression. Second, the imagination is an inner reality, a boundless realm not defined by our senses or reason that we know from our dreams and can enter via certain exercises while awake. The practice of imagination encourages us to use this faculty and enables us to explore the realm.
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Begin by learning the language of imagination. Keep track of the images that come to you spontaneously in association with your feelings and thoughts. Draw pictures of what you encounter in your dreams. Contemplate art and see yourself as part of the picture. Read myths and tell stories. Remember, through the ages spiritual pilgrims have found that it is possible to step into the inner realm of imagination. There you can find fuel for your journey and gifts of wisdom.

​The Practice of Mystery

​by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
in Spirituality and Practice

​To be spiritual is to have an abiding respect for the great mysteries of life — the profound distinctiveness of other souls, the strange beauty of nature and the animal world, the ineffable complexity of our inner selves, the unfathomable depths of the Inexplicable One. The wisdom traditions challenge us to live within a cloud of unknowing.
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The first step in the practice of mystery is to cherish the baffling, curious, hidden, and inscrutable dimensions of your existence and the world around you. Live with paradoxes. Give up the idea that you can always "get it." Be suspicious of all the "ologies" that try to explain everything — from astrology to psychology to theology. Whenever you are honestly stumped by the existence of evil, injustice, or suffering, resist the temptation to ask "Why?" And never be afraid to admit "I don't know."

Lyrics to Both Sides Now

Rows and flows of angel hair
And ice cream castles in the air
And feather canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way
But now they only block the sun
They rain and snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way
I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down and still somehow
It's cloud's illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all

Moons and Junes and ferries wheels
The dizzy dancing way that you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way
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

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say, "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way
Oh, but now old friends they're acting strange
And they shake their heads, they say I've changed
Well something's lost, but something's gained
In living every day
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
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It's life's illusions that I recall
I really don't know life
I really don't know life at all

About Joni Mitchell

​'Her songs ask us to live within trouble, to see the mirrors embedded in its cracks: the trouble we make, the trouble that waylays us, that makes a nest that we then fill with more trouble because we are made of it, too.'

'Laughing and crying, she knows, it's the same release. As Mitchell's music becomes repertoire, it continues to challenge listeners to make room in their hearts for more than one feeling at once.'

Joni Mitchell At 75: Trouble Is Still Her Muse
​Nov. 9, 2018
Ann Powers, NPR

About Both Sides Now

From the start, Joni Mitchell was obsessed with the way that time changes us, how helpless we are to its sweep. It seems fitting that her signature song—the one she carried with her from the beginning of her career—addresses this fascination head-on. The arrangement is all sunny ’60s folk—ice cream castles and feather canyons made real—but Mitchell’s delivery exposes a helplessness in that light. “So many things I would have done,” she sings. “But clouds got in my way.”

The spark of “Both Sides, Now” arrived when Mitchell was on a plane, reading Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow. When she came to a line about the miracle of air travel, she put the novel down, looked out the window, and turned to her own thoughts. In her head, she was trying to parse the fine line between regret and wisdom, embracing mystery and seeking enlightenment—all topics she would return to in the ensuing decades. The song would become a hit for Judy Collins and appear on two of Mitchell’s own albums, including a 2000 collection that bore its name. Its beauty is contained in this transience: Like Mitchell herself, it has never stopped moving.

Pitchfork, Sam Sodomsky

A Sense of Mystery

One of the liabilities of philosophy and theology is that too often makes a god of  clarity.   An overriding concern for clarity is the bane of small minds.  Some things in life are vague yet beautiful; and some are inherently undecidable.  They are like clouds.  We can only see them from both sides now.  A healthy life carries within it a sense of mystery.  Not all things can be contained within verbal frames. 

​One of them, by the way, is God.  Not that we can do without images of God.  An open and relational understanding of God as love is, to my mind, preferable to the image of God as angry monarch.  But these images are maps, not territory.  It is best to remember that the territory is always more than the maps, and that it will never be settled by colonizers, philosophical or theological.   God cannot be colonized.

And people and animal and plants are likewise more than our concepts of them.   We may think we 'understand them' but they are always bubbling forth in our lives as more than our concepts of them.   We ourselves are bubbling, too.   The post-colonial imagination is one that knows that nothing can be colonized.  It lives with respect for the mystery of the particular, clouds included.