Morning.  Happy Friday.

Relate much?

Buckle your seatbelts, kids.  It’s the end of our second round of Joni-Fest, and things are going to get deep.

A few things you need to know:

Amelia Earhart.  She was the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, in 1932.  She then upped the ante by flying from Hawaii to California in 1935.  And finally, in 1937, she set out to fly around the world.  Two-thirds of the way through, somewhere near the International Date Line, her plane disappeared, and she was never seen or heard from again.

Icarus: in Greek mythology, Icarus, son of Daedalus, was the first human to break the laws of gravity by using the wings his father crafted out of osier branches, bird feathers, and wax to soar into the sky.  Young, enthusiastic, and thrilled by the feeling that flying gave him, he ignored his father’s warning about flying too close to the sun: the wax melted, and Icarus crashed into the sea and drowned.

Steps:

1.  Outer Space

• what do you need to do to prepare the space around you?

2.  Inner Space

• what do you need to do to prepare the space within you?

3.  This is an interpretive drawing.

We’re going back to Hejira, and one of its most famous tracks, “Amelia.”  Just like you did 1,000 years ago (by which I mean April), your job is to listen closely and to draw what you hear.

There is no right or wrong: you can interpret the beautiful, complex lyrics; you can interpret the amazingly intricate music; just images, images and words – totally up to you.

Before you begin, though – have you actually done Steps 1 and 2 above?  If not, please do so now.

If you wish, you can read the lyrics before you begin – this is not required.

Like “Hejira,” Joni wrote this song in Joan Black mode, travelling solo in a borrowed Cadillac across America – without a drivers license.

“I wrote the album while traveling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it… the sweet loneliness of solitary travel. In this song, I was thinking of Amelia Earhart and addressing it from one solo pilot to another, sort of reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do . . . I don’t know how many hotel rooms later, the song was complete.”

Deep breath.  Do your best to allow what happens to happen.  Go.

4.  Title: “Joni Mitchell – ‘Amelia’.”

5.  Date it.

6.  Send it to me.

If you’d like to see a live version of the song, go here.

If you’d like to hear Joni sing it several decades later (and several octaves lower) with the London Symphony orchestra, go here.

If you’d like to see how various artists have represented the Icarus myth, go here.

See you at 10:00!