If you are a waylaid wanderer like me, a sailor who usually sails on six-lane channels in flyover country, riding the waves of wheat and maize, where the barnacles come from roadkill and accidentally jumping the curb in a parking lot, where the gale winds come from thunderstorms rolling off the Rockies, where the poop deck resembles a rest stop off of Interstate 5 or 15 or 25, then you are never happy being stuck in the dry-dock of a familiar yet unfriendly harbor. It does not matter if it’s the finest harbor on the Seaboard, or the world at-large, you are still stuck in a place you can’t get out of, stuck with a decision you’ve made yet can’t undo.
I’ve never felt more stuck in my entire life as I have in New York – I have never felt more like an outlier, an outcast, a misfit, an injured athlete who looks back at the game they once played so well with a quiet disdain for those who came after. The automobile is a 20th century invention, and it has caused a chain reaction that is perhaps unsustainable and destructive, not to mention selfish and indulgent, but we’re all on the precipice of societal doom as it is, so why not let me have my freedom? There is nothing more satisfying to me than a good road trip – it does not have to be anywhere special, anywhere will do. The 472 stations of the New York City Subway do not compare – the Rockaways are not the Rockies, and the old-growth forest that is theoretically a few miles from my apartment, is almost pathetic in its diminutive size, a patch of elm trees in a menagerie for occasional city slickers to look at as if it was a zoo animal or a curiosity that came on a gypsy caravan from a hobo highway. I want the real thing, the wide open spaces, not necessarily of beauty, but wide open possibilities that living here does not permit.
I provide myself some kind of cold comfort by thinking of a time when the world was first introduced to Joni Mitchell, when she had just emerged from the ocean of Saskatchewan, ready to chart a path that few, including herself, could ever have predicted, would be so long, so rewarding, and so important to the modern identity. I absolutely love watching and listening to Joni Mitchell at her very earliest – the earnestness is charming, the messages are direct, the talent she possessed is obvious, and this is all before she had even really experienced the world. Performing one of her earliest songs, “Born To Take The Highway”, on a Canadian TV show called ‘”Let’s Sing Out”, was her first televised performance, even if it was only broadcast from Manitoba. She was not even yet Joni Mitchell; she was Joni Anderson.
Her self-deprecating introduction to the song is perhaps the best part.
This is a travel song; It’s the only travel song that I’ve written, and it’s what you might call a very idealistic kinda travel song.
And the reason for that is that I wrote it before I ever traveled any place.”
The song is my prayer of sorts for a tomorrow where I could leave without stain or damage done to that which I left behind. Would it have been as sincere if it was written any later? I always wondered what I would say to Joni Mitchell if I had a chance to meet her, and I would simply say that I was born to take the highway. She would very much understand and see the lines of my face from navigating the harbors and seas of false flag alliances and abysses that are blacker than black, but she would understand that any place is where I’ve been.
