Articles from the Archives — Ralph Waldo Emerson RSS

California Music and Personal Transformation of True Nature From Vulnerability to Artist Leading the Way:  Joni Mitchell In Her Own Words: Conversations with Malka Marom   Originally published 25 October 2014 [Note from On Being (2019): "They were desperate to take down that wall, in so many ways, as the documentary Both Sides Now: Live At The Isle Of Wight Festival 1970 demonstrates. Joni's realness in her Songs in that very moment will send chills through your body. She is the very Moment of change that through this Being even the institutions would be altered. Even in vulnerability, Joni's Being never wavers.It is more formidable than Ben Hur, far more powerful than armies. With an unshakable spirit she sings, 'We've got...

Completing the Story of Richard V. Francaviglia’s Go East, Young Man:  Imagining the American West as the Orient “The lives we live depend upon the stories we tell.”  Lee R. Edwards (paraphrasing Joan Didion) “The secret point of money and power in America is neither the things that money can buy nor power for power’s sake . . . but absolute personal freedom, mobility, privacy.  It is the instinct which drove America to the Pacific, all through the nineteenth century, the desire to be able to find a restaurant open in case you want a sandwich, to be a free agent, live by one’s own rules.”  Joan Didion “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become...