Newport

2022

And the seasons, they go round and round
we’re captive
on the carousel of time

we can’t return
we can only look

behind

YouTube is full of videos of the 2022 Newport Folk Festival, and my favorites are those with Joni Mitchell.
In 1968, I was there in Newport sitting on a hard, wooded, folding chair and listening to unknown folk singers. Now, 54 years later, a 78 year-old Joni Mitchell shows up to perform. 

Looking behind, for me, doesn’t mean living in the past, because it was better than today – that’s pure bullshit. Rather, looking behind is about acknowledging where I’ve come from, what I experienced, who I met, because all those variables will impact where I’m headed and how I’ll respond the the experiences of the last part part of my life.

The pundits constantly put in front of us the screaming voices of those who reject the present; they put in front of us the horrors the Right wants to unleash in order to stop the present, to stop the future. But in the end none of that will work, because we can’t return from where we came.

– women aren’t going to accept second-class citizenship
– queer people are not going to accept marginalization
– black and brown people are not going to accept slave-labor wages
– non-believers are not going to embrace Christianity, and
– young people are not going to accept the restrictions the old, fat, white men are insisting on

The post-title is from Both Sides Now, (how can you pass up an opportunity to use the phrase moons and junes) but the sentiment of the post is more accurately summarized by the simple words from The Circle Game.

The featured image is the moon and the spiral of the Mole Antonelliana in Torino.