It’s Monday morning. January 3rd, thank God. I’m having coffee and the only sound in the house is the central heat going on and off. For a little while anyway.

I meant to put on my tattered jeans and go straight to work but I got side-tracked. Literally. Sorta.

I’ve lost many things through the years but thankfully, not my record albums. Not even a fist full of 45s. I play them on a turntable, using a needle ordered from somewhere in California ages ago.

Maybe I’m a romantic but there’s something about the ritual of playing records that feels right. Like carefully sliding the album out and laying it down by its rims. Gliding the record cleaner around the record just before the needle hits. Hearing a pop or two on records that are real old. I just like all this.

Everyone, I believe, has a song in their heart. Maybe many songs. On this Monday morning, there’s a mess of them playing around in my head so I go to a turntable instead of the computer.

These songs belong to one album by Joni Mitchell called Blue. Talk about rich! What songs written by Joni Mitchell aren’t? But taken all together, the one’s on Blue will take you around the block a time or two. Over years maybe, through life times. It’s as though Mitchell’s been riding in the passenger seat of my car forever. She gets me more than anyone I know.

In her song, “California,” Mitchell’s “sitting in a park in Paris, France,” feeling homesick like I’ve felt for Louisiana.

“Oh, but California
California I’m coming home
I’m going to see the folks I dig
I’ll even kiss a Sunset pig
California I’m coming home.”

In “River” she describes a yearning I’ve had for years.

“It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on.”

In her song “A Case of You,” Mitchell nails a characteristic others have described in me as not nearly so positive. She’s “frightened by the devil” alright but not of people who “ain’t afraid.” Bingo beautiful.

“Little Green,” sounds like mythology married a lullaby. Mitchell’s guitar strumming on this one will probably stay with you awhile.

Strumming turns into an all out jig in, “All I Want,” a song, that ought to be required listening for everyone before starting each day. Listen to it and you’ll know what I mean.

“Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive”

I have this urge all the time but if you haven’t done so by the song’s end, you’re more than likely NOT alive!

Thumbing through the rest of my records, I travel all over the place.

I come across the “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” album and travel back to college. I played it so many times that my roommate threatened to throw me out.

Flipping through some 45s, I travel to the Jefferson Theater in Beaumont, Texas. I saw the larger than life James Brown on the big screen. His feet fluttered across the floor like miniature propellers, shoulders steady, as he sang his legendary song, “I Got You (I Feel Good).”

Seeing every record pulled up something sorta sweet. Albums that mark moments in my life. Like when you suddenly see a friend from way back or come across a bookmark saving a certain place.

Nostalgic, sensory stuff that never leaves you. Similar in a way to how my friend, Glen Hunsucker, said in dance class one day: “You never stop dancing even if your body isn’t moving.”