God's iPod 8 - Joni Mitchell

I said earlier in this set of posts that music can be almost like a sacrament. And there's a strong theme of sacrament on one album that I consider a classic - Blue, by Joni Mitchell. I've written about Blue before, about its theme of longing and travelling, about the way that songs (like tatooes) get under your skin, about how every song is about being in one place and wanting to be somewhere esle.

The theme of sacrament is present, in its broadest sense, meaning that physical things are both representative of, and at the same time part of, some deeper meaning that they convey. Late in the album, Joni sings "a Case of You", which is, like many of her songs, lyrically extraordianry, capturing in a few neat phrases some truth about life that everyone recognises. The idea of symbol and sacrament are hinted at in the way she begins weaving together everyday and throwaway things, and places, and people, and the investment of the heart, captured in lines like this:  "On the back of a cartoon coaster, in the blue TV screen light,  I drew a map of Canada, with your face sketched on it twice".  (Blue - count the times it appears incidentally in the album of the same name.) But she then deliberately emplys the idea of sacrament to describe human love - "you are in my blood like holy wine, you taste so bitter, but so sweet, oh I could drink a case of you, and I would still be on my feet."  I like this, not just because it's clever, but because it is profoudly true that we discover and experience the love of God more powerfully through the love of fellow human beings than through any doctrine or spiritual exercise. There is something sacramental about the way human love refuses to be divided up into physical and spiritual, about eating together, about a friend who will cry or laugh with you, or just be there when words run out, or about someone who will hold you - body and soul - in complete acceptance. I can already hear the commenters beginning to type about how this idea is open to abuse - and yes, it is. But in a sense it is  precisely the fragility of the medium that makes it work as a sacrament. Bread has a tendency to fall into crumbs too, and wine is undoubtedly a double-edged sword. Love, like bread and wine, is not completely dependable, not the same from day to day, and sometimes falls to crumbs instead of giving nourishment. But when it does work, it connects you to the Holy like nothing else.