Hejira by Joni Mitchell

Imagine walking into a mid-western diner sometime in the mid 70s. There’s a woman by the counter with a red wig and sunglasses, who says her name is Joan Black, or was it Charlene Latimer? She tenses up every time a cop car cruises past, and then lets out a sigh of relief when it doesn’t stop. You get talking to her while the waitress is fetching your coffee, and she pulls out a dozen gas station road maps of different states from her purse.

She tells you about every stop on the journey, old lovers who let her down, and the ones that got away, and meeting an old blues musician on Beale Street in Memphis, and the sad details of his life. She’s looking for something that she can’t quite explain, and it’s like that famous aviator Amelia who went missing and nobody knew what had happened to her.

Somewhere in the background you can hear a band, noodling some jazz and setting her words to music that evokes wandering and wondering on an endless exodus - a Hejira if you will.

That’s what listening to this album is like. Your road trip mileage may vary.