I'm reading "50 Reasons to Love Joni Mitchell’s ‘Blue’/The singer-songwriter questioned everything on her fourth album. Twenty-five musicians speak about the LP’s enduring power on its 50th anniversary" (NYT), and there's this, from Graham Nash:
Obviously there are a couple of songs on the record that I recognize, from when she would write them in the house, that involved me. “My Old Man,” “River.” She finished the album after we parted, but for many months I saw her there writing this stuff. It was a fascinating process to see, I must confess. It’s as if she tore her skin off and just released all her nerves into music. I was repairing the house in Laurel Canyon, I was actually laying the kitchen floor when I got a telegram from Joan saying that our affair was over, officially. And she put it in a very interesting way. She said, “If you squeeze sand in your hand, it will run through your fingers.” I thought, got it. And that was it.
When was the age of telegraphy? I'm 70 years old, and I've never sent or received a telegram. I remember telegrams only as a way of communicating that someone had died. Maybe there's some poetry in using a telegram to convey the information that the relationship has died.
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8 comments:
EDH quotes this WaPo article from 2019, which says: "she sent him a telegram from Greece."
That makes the telegram seem less cold and weird. He says: "I suppose at the time if you wanted to deliver a written message quickly from Greece, you'd telegram."
R.T. O'Dactyl writes:
"Who breaks up with you by telegram?"
An old girlfriend did it to me! When I was in college, my girlfriend went to a student conference in Hawaii. I was supposed to pick her up at LAX, but the day before her return I got a telegram saying that there had been a change in the schedule and there would be ad hoc arrangements for her to get home. Of course, there was no change in schedule, she had taken up with a new guy while at the conference. Just as well -- who needs that sort of girlfriend?
Rose writes:
The only telegram I have ever seen was the one sent when my brother was wounded (not severely fortunately) in Vietnam. My Dad was working in the steel plant when he was notified there was a telegram in the office waiting for him – a distance of nearly a mile from where he was working. Despite being nearly 60 he ran the distance in steel toed boots.
For those who may question the process, I am from a small town and it was 1969. The government may have sent it somewhere else but that was where it was delivered. My Mom was out of town with a family emergency and people knew where my Dad worked.
What a terrifying situation!
Sue writes:
What an interesting juxtaposition…
Handyman Graham Nash repairing the home, laying the kitchen flooring while Joni tears off her skin to produce her music. The sand in the hand metaphor captures the conflict perfectly.
No wonder the relationship couldn’t last and he readily accepted its demise.
Peter from Hong Kong writes:
Two telegrams tales:
1. When I got back to Oz in 1975 after three years overseas, I was a “telegram boy” for a while in Canberra. I would deliver dozens a day, on a little scooter. Once a lady I delivered a telegram to offered me a new-born Burmese kitten; I accepted and called her “Burma”.
We saw the telegrams’ contents before we enveloped them and not one was, iirc, about a death. They were usually just practical and informative, often with good tidings.
2. The famous British comedian Spike Milligan (one of the Goons) was for a while on no-speaking terms with his wife. He got up from the dinner table one day, went to the telephone in the hall, returned, sat down, wordless. A short time later a knock in the door. A TELEGRAM for his wife.
It said “Please pass the salt. Spike.”
Those were Wodehousian days; when telegrams were sent back and forth within a day, almost as IMs.
LA_Bob writes:
"Maybe there's some poetry in using a telegram to convey the information that the relationship has died."
Not the same as the association of the telegram with news of death, but there is some irony in the first minute of this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV-KPl9Y0JY
Bill writes: "When I was a New York Times college stringer in 1981, the editor sent his assignments to us by telegram. I still have it because it was the only time I ever saw one."
Ted writes:
I have still one telegram - received as I finished my MS at Madison and was ordered to report for
military service in DC the following week.
But the story started another thought for me.
I know the USPS receives some bad raps, but here is a bit of history.
My wife and I attended different small colleges in Indiana that were in towns
about 25 miles apart. We were freshmen in 1956. I could mail a letter to her
(for 3 cents) by 9 or 10 in the morning, and get a reply from her the same afternoon.
That was real service!
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