"Walking Distance," Wordsworth's Immortality Ode (Ode on the Intimations of Immortality), and Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game"

THE CIRCLE GAME

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THIS SONG, FROM Joni Mitchell's album, Ladies of the Canyon, covers many of the issues in the Twilight Zone episode, "Walking Distance." The studio version is not available on youtube. Several live versions are available.
    This live version is from Mitchell's Miles of Aisles collection of live performances, slower than her studio recording. I think this song sounds better a little faster, as in the studio version. After all, the tempo should mimic the theme of time, which (according to the song) is certainly not moving slowly, as in the image of the carousel.  Before her song, Mitchell gives an introduction, which I've transcribed  below/
    This song is rich with images and ideas. But Mitchell was only 25 when she recorded it on her Ladies of the Canyon album.
    As in Wordsworth's great Immortality Ode, where the poet writes that "nothing can bring back the hour / Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the flower," Mitchell suggests that nothing can bring back the primal emotions of childhood, as in the words, "wonder," "fearful," "tearful"; when "thunder" and "the falling of a star" are major events (adults don't even notice them).
    But time passes, evoked in images of childhood ("skated over ten clear frozen streams"). The "painted ponies" take the child into adulthood, from which he can never return (as in "Walking Distance").
    Note the echo of the poet, Wordsworth in the line, "though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true" (the way the grass loses its splendor and the flower its glory in Wordsworth's Ode).
    And there's the same consolation of "the philosophic mind" that replaces the splendor and glory of childhood. In Mitchell's version, "there'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams."
    The link to youtube follows the lyrics.

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There's one thing that's always, like, been a major difference between like the performing arts to me and being a painter, you know. Like a painter does a painting and he does a painting, that's it. You know, he's had the joy of creating it and he hangs it on some wall. Somebody buys it. Somebody buys it again, or maybe nobody buys it and it sits up in the loft somewhere until he dies. But he's never, you know, nobody ever says to him, nobody ever said to Van Gogh, paint a Starry Night again, man. You know. He painted it, that was it. Let's sing this song together. This song doesn't sound good with one lonely voice. It sounds good with the more voices on it the better and the more out of tune voices on it, the better. It was really, it was made for out of tune singing, this song.
Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder
And tearful at the falling of a star

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams
Words like, when you're older, must appease him
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game.

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now
Cartwheels turn to car wheels through the town
And they tell him,
Take your time, it won't be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and round
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur
Coming true
There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look behind
From where we came
And go round and round and roundIn the circle game