Joanna in the title is Joanna Krotz. She hosted a mixed-gender consciousness-raising group back in the 60’s. Not sure how much our consciousnesses got raised but there was some romantic linking up and it was here that I first met Carolyn Bell, who is the real subject of this song (Joanna makes a brief appearance in the third verse). The wonderful Joanna was not a love interest (although many years later we took a brief, unsuccessful stab at it). The song is full of the New Age imagery and thinking that I was immersed in at the time. And it’s I believe my longest song. This is one of many songs that my 12-string guitar wrote; I just filled in the blanks.
Lyrics
A Song That Like Joanna Rhymes in Many Places
The old Franciscan mission bells
Possess a lovely chime
To those in fields and those in cells
The music is sublime
They toll like thunder, ring through the trees
They clang for the clergy, yet cry for you and me
And so we tremble while passing near
They speak like gods, yet cannot hear
Too bad these simple notes
Cannot be our anecdotes
For they reflect us
But we choose words instead
Pesky thoughts that fill our heads
And don’t respect us
There is a simpler way to say it
Undaunted by our fears
We take some tune that’s haunted us for years
And play it
And when we’re gone
Be so good to bear in mind all that time
That the things that we were when we were
Still go on when we’re gone
You saw the wall and chose to go
To make it on your own
You cursed it all and rose to go
To take it on alone
You are the bricks, you are the wall
You are the mason building it so tall
So face to face, one last embrace
We’ll meet next in some other place
And all is well and good
And quite misunderstood
Before the altar
We stand here hand in hand here
The text minutely planned here
And yet we falter
There is a simpler way to do it
This obstacle we found
we won’t go over, under or around
But through it
And when you’re gone
Be so good to bear in mind all that time
That the things that you were when you were
Still go on when you’re gone
I scale this mountain feeling certain
Every ledge I climb
Will be the peak, finally reached
Yet every single time
What was a summit from below
Reveals that I have but just as far to go
I look back down where I’ve come from
What paltry hills this mountain’s become
Joanna is a stone
Where travel weary bones
May come to rest on
She rubs her calloused foot
She says she’s found no answers but
Knows the right questions
There is a simpler way to see it
Mold yourself with your hands
Into some form you cannot understand
And be it
And when I’m gone
Be so good to bear in mind all that time
That the things that I was when I was
Still go on when I’m gone.