This, the first song in the chronology of Joni’s studio albums, is, in my opinion, among the most luminous, the most enigmatic, and the most heart-wrenching of anything she’s written.
This is the section that always sticks out to me the most viscerally:
“I had a king in a salt-rusted carriage / who carried me off to his country for marriage too soon / beware of the power of moons / there’s no one to blame / no, there’s no one to name as a traitor here”
Perhaps it is the sudden strength with which she sings of “the power of moons,” or perhaps it is the rather violent, callous imagery of both the “salt-rusted carriage” and also the invoking of a “traitor” that makes this verse strike so... strikingly. It speaks to the uncontrollable changeability of a relationship, the meditative hurt that occurs when it ends (”was it me? was it someone else?”).
The refrain – especially the one that buttons this song – supports this:
“I can’t go back there anymore / you know my keys won’t fit the door / you know my thoughts don’t fit the man / they never can”
It is as though, on the walk down to the ocean from her “tenement castle,” Joni arrives at that final conclusion, with a throaty acceptance: “they never can.” Her keys don’t fit anymore, her thoughts don’t fit, she doesn’t fit. Nor will she ever, she concedes – first softly – denying, perhaps – then, once more, knowing.
It is perhaps fitting that Joni’s first studio recorded track starts at the end of a relationship – with unknown change figuring as an apartment, a key, a paint color. It seems that Joni is the one who doesn’t change – as though the world around her changes. One can, I think, certainly read her music as telling that tale – walking through a world that is shifting around her. However, a line (that I think is the most evasive in the entire song) threatens that framing:
“He lives in another time / ladies in gingham still blush / while he sings them of wars and wine / but I in my leather and lace / I can never become that kind”
The man (presumably her first husband, Chuck) still sings, and yet, Joni cannot “become that kind.” Both are unmoveable, living in the wrong time. And the fairytale falls in on itself when there is no bad guy, no “traitor.” This is the magic of this song, I think – and, poised so uniquely at the opening of her repertoire, it doesn’t end the journey, but rather begins it.
This song is a magnificent end-beginning. And we’re off with our Joni. Changing and staying exactly the same.
theartofmadeline
baratheonpilled
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