tomorrow never happens

it's all the same fucking day.

Before I was born, back in July 1970, Janis Joplin gave what some have said was "arguably one of the best performances of her short, but legendary career." It's not like my parents played Janis Joplin around the house when I was growing up. Eventhough I've been accused of being a hippie many times, Janis Joplin music wasn't anything I sought out for myself either. I made fun of the Grateful Dead for years before I ever found myself at one of their concerts. (Miracles happen all the time.)

I don't know how Janis came into my life, but I resonated deeply with that long version of Ball and Chain, the 8-minute one that was recorded live. Here are some links, but who knows how long they'll last, information gets disappeared all the time now. Is this the version on that Greatest Hits album? Live at McMahon Stadium in Calgary, July 1970? Maybe. I don't have my record and tape collections anymore. I don't even know what happened to all the CDs. Everything got digitized and now we pay for a service to access music that could be there one day and gone the next, prices increasing all the time. I miss my old record player, but I couldn't keep lugging things around. Moving means letting go of whatever I'd been clinging to.

What I love about this version is the talking that happens around 5 minutes in– dharma. If you didn't hear it in her voice earlier, she reinforces it here speaking about suffering: "I don't understand why half the world is still crying, when the other half of the world is still crying too, man." Common humanity and dukkha, that's what that is. More than fifty years later and we're still crying. What happens to the oceans of tears?

I've seen some debate about this song, about what she's saying. Some people think she says "care," maybe you want to care. I heard it as "cat"– you want a cat, I know I want cats all the time. It was the 70s, people were cats. There's also debate about where she made her discovery, whether it was on the "terrain" or on the "train." It makes sense to people as the political terrain of 1970, sex, drugs, rock and roll, Vietnam etc. Look up the astrology for background. There was terrain, for sure, but they were also literally on a train, the Festival Express touring Canada– there's a film about it– Janis Joplin, the Band, The Grateful Dead.

I thought she was talking about love and desire, I hear it like this:

Now especially feels that way, and so the title of this blog– tomorrow never happens. It's all the same fucking day.