Welcome to the JMDL, blonde in the bleachers! As a vivid image in Joni's lyrics, I would differ from I think all of the other posts on this one and say that I think "Sex Kills" is right up there. I am very wary of saying this because I am clergy and this is *not* some moralistic rant - you should know me better than that by now - but sex does indeed sometimes kill. Back in 1996 while working with a bunch of college kids during STD Awareness Week (something we never had when I was that age) which was just about the time - but still before - I got Turbulaent Indigo, I was discussing the whole STD thing with some of my co-workers and one of them looked at me and said, "The difference between your generation and mine is that when you discovered sex, you worried about disease; we worry about death." Take this to Africa now: the debate about whether American pharmacutical companies should market AIDS meds in Africa, or distribute at a reduced price than is done in the US... as South Africa questions whether AIDS is indeed sexually transmitted in the midst of the skyrocketing numbers of AIDS cases in Africa, suspecting that AIDS is a form of biological warfare directed against Africans by whites (which sounds fantatsic to us, but given the history of apartheid, and current bio-chemical warfare trials in SA, a legit question there) ... these are justice issues, and Joni alone shows us that there is another dimension to sex in today's world, it is a justice issue and sex can indeed, in some defined circumstances, kill. The fact that the image, "sex kills", is jarring to so many is because we needed Joni to lift that that dimension of the reality to make us think. It bothers us... it should... Joni disturbs our complacency, and right on to her for that. As well, sex is sometimes used a weapon in personal relationships... and can be a killer that way too. And as far as Jonathan Livingston Seagull... didn't the book by Richard Bach get published around 1969 or 1970, several years before the Neil Diamond album? I recall reading it towards the end of 1969 but I could be off a year or so. I think Joni's Song to a Seagull still predates the book, I think there was a seagull thing going on back then. If Otis Redding in 1967 told us we should be sittin' by the dock of the bay, hey, what are you going to see? Seagulls! So no wonder a few years later seagulls started showing up in words and music. (the Rev) Vince
