Before I get into some thoughts about this song I wanted to let you know that I’ll be playing solo this Sunday, Nov. 17th at Guilt & Company in Vancouver, Canada, 7–8pm. No advance tickets so first come, first served. I’ll likely pull out one of these Joni tunes I’ve been reflecting on recently and maybe some new songs I’m working on. If you plan on coming and have any requests, feel free to leave a comment here and I’ll do my best to put it in the set. I look forward to seeing you there.
I learned Joni Mitchell’s Come In From The Cold at the same time I was reading Claire Keegan’s beautiful short story Walk The Blue Fields.
There is a shared wisdom in both pieces—
That tenderness is “more disabling than injury.”
That empathetic touch can release us from ourselves.
And that an unexpected gesture of warmth contains the power to renew.
“I feel your leg under the table, leaning into mine.
I feel renewed, I feel disabled.” - Mitchell
“He folds his sleeves up neatly to the elbow and reaches out to touch the priest. It is three years since anyone touched him and the tenderness in the stranger’s hands is alarming. Why is tenderness so much more disabling than injury.”- Keegan
In Joni’s song, the gesture sparks “bonfires in [the] spine” and in Keegan’s story it animates God for a priest who wishes desperately to see signs of Him.
These gestures pierce the veil of yearning. A yearning summed up most succinctly in Joni’s lead lyric: “All I ever wanted was just to come in from the cold.”
When Joni echoes this refrain in a chorus of harmony, however, the yearning itself is transformed. No longer a want; now an invitation to the listener: “Come in, come in, come in from the cold.”
It is an invitation of tenderness.
An invitation to lay down our burden.
A gesture of warmth that contains the power to renew.
love,
David
If you’d like to hear the other Joni pieces you can listen here and here.
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