You know that song you hear that just seems to carry a smell and a memory and an entire feeling with it? The song that delivers a blow to the solar plexis?

I could go on and on about the first time I heard Heart's Magic Man, and Stairway to Heaven, and dear goddess the first time I really heard Stevie Nicks. But the one woman in existence who transferred all of my youthful hopes and imaginations and heartaches onto a piece of vinyl is Joni Mitchell.

This is what I hear when I hear a song like Free Man in Paris: I'm 21 and going through the break-up from hell. My g/f of 3 years has just kicked me out and moved her new girlfriend into OUR BEDROOM! So I'm living in a room on the 3rd floor of a gay men's collective in Des Moines, ditching classes, smoking ridiculously large amounts of weed, and listening to Joni. Over, and over, and over. When I'm not in class (which is most of the time) I'm either wandering through the snow, often under the influence, or holed up in my room reading and listening to
Joni. And crying whenever "River" came on. "I wish I had a river I could skate away on."

Well, I survived being young and heartbroken. I don't think I'll ever survive hearing Joni Mitchell, and don't know that I want to.

So tonight I've just put my daughter to bed. And I hit the bong (yeah, I'm an old pot-head, hehe. So sue me.) And Joni still takes me a million years down the line. Bless her.

Who hits you in the heart? Who makes it a little hard for you to breathe for a second, feeling the rush of memories?