Both Sides, Now — Joni Mitchell

Clouds can look like a ceiling when you are standing underneath them. Get above them, and suddenly the same sky opens into something different.

That is where this song finds me.

Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides, Now” makes room for the possibility that we can experience something deeply and still have more to learn about it. Love. Life. The people we thought we understood. Ourselves.

I have been a musician, a writer, a father, and a man trying to find his footing again. Some chapters came with a stage and a band. Others asked me to sit quietly, listen, and make it through the day.

Music has traveled with me through all of them.

There are songs I hear differently now than I did years ago. The recording stays the same; the listener brings another lifetime to it. A line that once passed unnoticed can suddenly stop me in the middle of whatever I am doing.

Maybe that is part of growing older: discovering how much feeling was waiting inside a song until you had lived enough to hear it.

My faith gives me somewhere to bring the questions. My friends remind me to keep showing up. Recovery keeps bringing my attention back to today, where there is usually something small and useful I can do.

And WeRockTV gives me a place to gather these songs and the memories they carry.

This is becoming a living anthology: a musical memoir, one entry at a time. I want to remember what made me laugh, who stood beside me, and which songs helped me understand a little more.

Tonight, this one belongs here.

I can look back with gratitude and still admit that some things remain unfinished. I can love a memory without understanding every part of it.

For a few minutes, I am happy to listen and let the sky be larger than my explanation of it.

There is still room for wonder. There is still music to share.

Good music. Good memories. We rock.