█ █ █ █ Joan Baez is a singer-songwriter, poet, and activist who has performed for more than 60 years and released over 30 albums throughout her illustrious career.

She has been honored with a Recording Academy Lifetime Achievement Award, and her 1960 debut album was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.

Her first book of poetry, "When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance: Poems," connects fans to the real heart of who Joan Baez is as a person and artist, inspiring millions around the world.

Joan Baez is joined in conversation by Diane Rehm, a journalist and host of the Diane Rehm, On My Mind podcast.

She is also the author of "On My Own," an eloquent and deeply moving memoir about life and loss.

And she is the former host of The Diane Rehm Show, an NPR talk show that had a weekly on-air audience of nearly three million listeners.

Recorded at the University of Louisville Kentucky Author Forum, this is Great Conversations, Joan Baez & Diane Rehm.

[applause] Thank you.

It's so wonderful to see you, to have you here.

Right back at you.

Thank you.

[laughter] Joan, why did you begin writing poetry and when?

Okay.

1991, and all of these poems come from that time.

They were written between '91 and '98.

And it was during a time that I was going through recovery work for early childhood trauma.

And I was diagnosed with multiple personalities.

And sure enough, there they were.

[laughter] And started writing.

And really, basically, that's where this book comes from.

The poems were here and there and everywhere.

And I asked my assistant to find this -- when I started remembering.

Can you find the one about this and that and the other?

And she found a computer that was 40 years old.

And she cranked the thing up until she found them.

But she couldn't get them off, so she had to transcribe everything.

And then, a few years back, decided to make a book out of it and scrambled around looking for all these poems.

So, some of the things that are written here branch off from the many years ago.

And I did some writing.

But mainly, it's as though they're written by somebody else.

And then, I just kind of check in periodically.

[chuckles] Read to us from page 17 when you talk about that early writing.

Thank you.

It's called Poetry and Me, An Author's Note.

What do I want to say to you who has, by chance or design, picked up this little book?

That it's filled with unschooled techniques, undisciplined phrasing, haphazard thoughts, and much channeling from sources residing within me and sources unknown.

It's filled with mystery and clarity, fire and darkness, blunders and eurekas, deities and demons.

Some thoughts and images arrived on lightning.

Some have crept up from deep below the damp sog.

Early drafts of many poems in this book were written between 1991 and 1997.

During that time, I wrote obsessively.

I was, in part, writing for many little authors, or they for me.

In 1990, I began therapy that led to a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder.

That's clinical speak for developing multiple personalities as a way of coping with long-term trauma.

Some of the poems in this collection are heavily influenced by, or in effect, written by, some of the inner authors.

Together, we were swept up effortlessly in a tidal wave of imagery and words and discovered what we already knew.

Poetry is like love.

It can't be forced.

All we could do was await its birth and celebrate its arrival.

Can you talk about some of those inner personalities who were coming forth with poetry?

You know, they are so ready to be acknowledged.

It's sort of embarrassing.

I will spare you the accents and so on, but one of the writers is a 12-year-old German boy.

I'm trying to think of how I can explain this.

It isn't completely wacky.

But it's all kind of wacky.

It just turned out to be very creative wackiness.

So, this little boy appeared to me when I was in a snowstorm in Würzburg, Germany.

I look out the window, and I see this little boy trying to get uphill in the snow.

Part of that you'll see in the book.

Then, that just becomes part of me, part of my life.

It turns out this little boy can write.

Some of it in here is written by Yasha, for instance.

Yasha.

How much do you know about Yasha?

Whatever he has told me about his past and the reasons he's showing up and that his parents -- he says, "My parents were killed in a holocaust," and describes what it is he sees around him, which is all pretty awful.

And then, describes that he -- Joan believes he's put here to write, and so he writes.

[chuckles] And he gives to you to transcribe?

Kind of, yeah.

I would say that, yeah.

It's extraordinary.

It's kind of extraordinary, yeah.

Do these voices, do these people continue to come to you and through you?

Well, there's a point at which you try and take -- I had lots and lots of different personalities.

You try and bundle them up, and there were different words for it, integrate them.

I hated all of that.

I just wanted them to be who they were, but they kind of dispersed when it was time for them to have their own lives, and sometimes I check in periodically.

I found Yasha at college, Ivy League.

He's gay.

He has a boyfriend, and he has a bunch of heavy-duty books.

He's the scholar, and he sort of liked me to stay out of his life.

[laughter] The thought of singing no more, did that influence your ability to write this poetry?

You mean giving up touring, quitting touring?

Giving up using your voice.

Oh, yeah.

Well, that wasn't all that hard.

The voices had gotten so difficult to maintain, to try and sing in a voice that I liked hearing.

The range diminishes and diminishes until it's really, really low.

When I accept that lower voice, I kind of enjoy it.

But for years I was scrambling trying to get the vibrato, get the high notes, and that's not possible.

When I gave up thinking that I could, then I'd be able to enjoy the lower voice.

And did that transition to poetry develop organically?

Or was it always there?

Well, I'm remembering a time when I was touring on the bus, and I'd started painting.

So, my little section of the bus, I call it the Dolly Parton suite.

[laughter] I have this nice room, and everybody else has these bunks.

So, I'm in my Dolly Parton suite, and it has a vanity.

It's supposed to have all your makeup and curlers and everything.

Well, mine was just four-by-four-inch canvases.

And I was painting and painting.

And to the point where it was like, "Joan, it's time to go on."

I'd say, "Okay, put the paints away, go out and give a concert."

I couldn't wait to get back to painting.

So there were transitions that happened like that.

Interesting.

And then, when I went home, I painted for real.

And that painting, which we are now seeing in this book of yours, which is extraordinary, is painting upside down.

Well, that's different, Diane.

That's another thing.

That's the book of upside-down drawings, and I love what you say about it.

You have to tell them, too.

But it's a book of, say, if you're sitting there and I'm sitting there and I draw it for you, it's right-side up.

For me, it's upside down.

And that was a whole book of that.

That's different from the painting.

In the painting, I started painting portraits.

And I painted for two exhibits worth of portraits, which I called Mischief Makers.

See, they're all people who had made social change through nonviolence, or at least without violence.

And so, when I came off touring, I just kind of landed in an art studio and painted for about 11 years.

Of course, you would have been called more than a Mischief Maker during the Vietnam War.

Talk about that experience and what that felt like for you.

Well, in general, the places that I've been, which have been dangerous, where people say, "Don't go there," and that's where I'm comfortable.

Because I know I'm one of the few people on Earth who could do what it is I do and take it there and do it.

In Chile, under dictatorship, in Argentina, in Czech Republic, when it was still Czechoslovakia, they're all dangerous situations.

I'm courageous that I'm stupid [laughter] Those are what you need in order to do those things, in order to take risks.

But I somehow, maybe not stupid, but carefully guarded that I didn't feel what I might have been feeling in such a dangerous situation.

But people were calling you a traitor.

People were using the worst language about you.

How did that make you feel inside?

Proud.

[chuckles] [laughter] [applause] Do you feel any scars from that era?

I don't think so.

[laughter] I don't think so.

[chuckles] It was something you had to do?

It was something that I loved to do.

And I've always been, and until now, up until now and now, happiest when I was wearing both hats, singing and the social action.

And that's where I'm at home.

That's where home is.

We were introduced talking about octogenarians, as you and I both are.

I don't know what you're talking about.

[laughter] How does it feel to be part of that octogenarian generation?

It feels different things.

Different things at different times.

I appreciate what I have learned from these many decades, and sometimes I get really pissed off because my body betrays me.

It doesn't give me any warning.

All of a sudden, boom, this side of my eye, kind of gravity takes over, and then, boom, this hip really starts to hurt.

I fell out of a tree, but that was 15 years ago.

So, it's coming back now to haunt me.

[chuckles] And so, yeah, my balance stinks.

All those things are really time-consuming, and I haven't come to terms with them where I could feel okay.

But how does the age affect or move into your sense of creativity and wanting to keep creating?

Now that you ask, I think that I'm not really happy unless I am creating, and I'm not sure how healthy that is.

I retired from touring, but the word retire just means nothing to me.

And then, I think, "Maybe I should take it a little more seriously and slow down."

Maybe.

[laughter] Maybe, and yet you're going to Nashville.

Well, hell, I'm here.

[chuckles] [laughter] And now you're here.

I'm here.

And just keep traveling.

It may come to you occasionally that you're in your 80s, but creatively it doesn't seem to have affected you negatively.

Not really, no.

Not really?

Which is absolutely wonderful.

But I want you to tell them your response to my upside-down drawing book.

Well, I grew up as a child who thought I could not draw.

I mean, I couldn't even draw a tree or a book.

[chuckles] And then, I had a woman called Betty Edwards on the program who wrote a book called Drawing on the Right Side of Your Brain.

Does that mean left?

Never mind.

[chuckles] [laughter] And that taught me how to turn everything upside down and draw.

And I was astonished.

I thought some magic was controlling -- It was.

My hand because I produced a likeness of Rembrandt.

And I was shocked when I looked at it.

He would have been, too.

[laughter] Someday maybe you'll sit for a portrait [chuckles] ..

I'll draw you, but I'll turn you upside down.

You draw me upside down.

That's perfect.

Indeed.

I'd love for you to read for us another poem.

And this is on page 21.

It's called Goodbye to the Black and White Ball.

Okay.

I used to think the alternative to black and white must be gray.

To avoid living a dull life, I dressed in black and white.

I thought in black and white.

Not just good or bad, mind you, but perfect or damned, gifted or worthless, ethereal or demonic, emblazoned or cast out.

I scoffed at anything average and avoided middle ground, you know, the gray area.

As a result, I let slip most of my life.

I was chronically anxious, insomniac, promiscuous, multiphobic, depressed, hypervigilant, and luckily immensely talented.

I had antennae that could turn corners ahead of me, protect me from the mortal danger of, say, eating dinner in a restaurant or making a new friend, you know, the gray area.

When I was half a century old, I tore off the antennae and turned my life over to a power greater than myself, which by that point could have been a toothpick.

[laughter] I pitched myself into a sea of memories and headed blindly like a hoodwinked shark for the marrow of the inner core me.

I pictured pustules of venom, but my therapist suggested it might be diamonds.

For months, I thrashed about recording dreams, grasping for clues, fighting for my life and the life of my son.

When I came up for air from my flailing, I began to see shards of color.

Slowly, I began to see my life as sanctified, matchless, and I would trade it for no other.

I should not have been shocked to find that a diamond was in fact the core of me.

I continued to scrape off tenacious parasites.

I discovered that sorrow is an ocean, fury is blue, pain is my companion, but love has not been smashed to bits so badly as to not be mendable like a gypsy violin crushed beneath a Nazi boot.

I needed patience and an artisan.

My therapist became my artisans.

People around me unearthed the gems I had been promised and held my heart in their cradling hands as I split up into a hundred pieces, a hundred bright souls, sorting out their places in a dazzling necklace.

Taking in and reflecting sunlight, working to mend me, to help me survive my deliverance and transcend my survival.

[applause] Therapy is something that's been so important to so many of us.

Did it take you a long time to decide that you needed therapy?

Well, I was in therapy from age 15 on.

An excellent therapist who helped me get around the issue or under it or over it safely so that I sang, I did concerts.

I did what I did, but I always had these basically panic attacks.

And then, at one point, I knew there was something in there I hadn't dealt with.

There was something that was causing all this.

And so, that's when I took the deep dive.

I found the right therapist to do that with and held my nose and jumped in.

And that's when I found all this stuff out and got help from all my people.

You make reference to abuse.

Mm-hmm.

What kind of abuse?

Well, probably just about everything.

When you say early childhood trauma, whatever comes to your mind first, it was that kind of abuse.

Not just my parents, but people I didn't know.

And then, you forget it all.

You forget it all.

You bury it all.

And what I believe is that my parents, for instance, don't remember or didn't remember anything either.

It's a generational abuse.

So, my parents' parents had to have had that struggle and that sickness themselves and then pass it down to my parents.

And then, it came to me.

And because I was able to dig down in here and find it all, I think I'm able to stop the generational switch from evil to evil.

And I know my son knows about me and my past and my life, and we have talked about it and decided that we're grateful that we're able to stop that because he has a chance at a real life and I have a chance to be a good mom.

Do you feel that you were a good mother to your son?

I know that I was a better mother after I figured this, after I unjumbled my own life.

There are little poems in here that still sort of break my heart because they're about my not being able to be present for my little boy.

And then, the issue becomes, how do I forgive myself because we forgive each other.

And there's a great Buddhist -- it's not a saying.

There's a friend of mine who's a Buddhist teacher, and he says about forgiveness, you can forgive a little bit and feel a little bit better.

You can forgive a lot, feel a lot better.

You can forgive everything and be free.

I'm asking you questions, which imply that this is a totally serious, hard book, and yet there are some very funny poems in here, one called Little Piggy on page 41.

This little piggy played the violin.

This little piggy played drums.

This little piggy played sticks and bells, and this little piggy played none.

The last little piggy ran and ran and ran all the way home listening to the lovely trio in his head.

And he got so involved that he wet himself, which is where the wee, wee, wee comes from.

[laughter] And soon thereafter he taught himself to play piccolo and stayed dry.

[laughter] I love that poem.

I just love that.

Now, where did that come from in the midst of all of this other very, very serious stuff?

I have no idea.

You have no idea?

No, I have no idea.

That's wonderful.

It just came to you.

Yeah, yeah.

I love that poem.

There is a beautiful photograph on the cover of this book that was taken when you were how old?

I think I was 20, 19 or 20.

Yeah.

It was the second Newport Festival.

And your hair was how long?

Oh, it was very long.

Wow.

Yeah, yeah.

And then, you decided to cut it all off.

It was there for a long time.

It was there because I had the guitar in front of me and then I had my hair like this, so all I could really have to deal with was my nose and my mouth.

Because I needed the protection of the guitar and the hair.

So, it worked out nicely that way.

Beautiful.

I think your gray hair is beautiful.

Hey, sister.

[laughter] Can you tell me a little about your time with Thomas Merton since we're here in Kentucky?

Thomas Merton was in touch with me and my then sort of guru type, Ira Sandperl, who ran the Institute for Nonviolence with me.

So, that's how we came across Merton.

And he invited me and Ira to come visit him in Gethsemane in his monastery.

We thought it would be really cool.

And we went and I was sort of expecting it was really solemn.

These monks were flying all over the place.

I think they were looking for chocolate.

[laughter] I know that when you take chocolate into a place like that, they go crazy for it, but they can't say anything.

Anyway, so I thought, "Oh, we're going to have lunch with Thomas Merton.

They'll probably have some homemade dark crusty bread and mush or something."

He wanted to go out to have lunch, so we went out to a field somewhere and he wanted a hamburger.

He had two hamburgers and a milkshake.

[laughter] And something else as sleazy.

And he was so happy.

And he didn't want to go back to the monastery.

[laughter] We went back to his little place.

What did you call it, this little...?

Gethsemane.

No, the little house.

Hermitage.

His hermitage.

The hermitage.

So, he brought out the whiskey.

[laughter] I didn't drink, but Ira did.

And the two of them, they drank each other under the table.

This is what happened.

[laughter] So, Thomas started spilling the beans about this nurse the hospital where he'd been.

He'd spent some time in the hospital.

And he was trying to convince himself and us it was a purely platonic response he had to this woman.

[chuckles] So, as the booze went down and the stories came out, there were no boundaries left between anybody.

But he rescued himself just before he was going to leave.

He was going to skip vespers and come and get on the plane with us and go to wherever we were going.

[laughter] He came out of it just in time to rescue himself from that.

[chuckles] So those are my stories about famous people.

But you spent, what, about 25 hours with him?

Wow.

I didn't know if it was that long.

Yeah, it was quite a while.

Yeah.

And did you keep in contact with him?

A little, not a lot.

Not a lot.

Yeah.

Did you like him?

Oh, he was so lovely.

And it was a wonderful combination of that devotional life.

And his quandary was that he wanted to take that spirit and take his talents and his gifts out into the world.

And the hierarchy of that church wouldn't let him.

And then, he finally got permission later on in his life.

The record holds it and I say the record, the newspapers, the reports, were that Thomas Merton was taking a bath and that an electric fan fell into the water and he was electrocuted.

Do you believe that?

No.

No.

I mean, there was a reason I think they wanted to keep cloistered because it was dangerous for him.

Written about peace, written against the war in Vietnam, he was certainly a target for people who didn't want to hear that.

And then, he was taking it from a platform that made it even more frightening because he was a serious man.

He was a religious man.

He was a politically conscious man.

That combination was really too much for it.

My guess is that the government, American government, couldn't handle that.

It's a conspiracy theory, but most of them are true.

[chuckles] [laughter] You know, I have watched your career and loved your music and your appearances and your strength for so many years.

And yet, on page 45, you write a poem called simply, Afraid.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

I did use to count that it helped me pass unpleasant moments.

This is called Afraid.

When I was afraid, I would count.

1,001, 1,002, the plane will land.

1,003, 1,004, the trunk will open, the arm will move, the scream will come, the baby will be born.

1,050, 1,051, life is only seconds, they say, one after the next and the next and on and on forever until you die.

If that's really true, why not fill every second with light?

1,001, 1,002, bright lights, shafts, rays, sparks, illuminating the fear and to let blanches into whiteness.

1,003, 1,004, there's my hand, on it my ring.

There's the window, beyond it the blue sky.

There's my mother pouring a tea.

I am breathing in and out, in and out.

1,005, 1,006, I am not afraid, I am not afraid.

Not afraid.

[applause] Were you afraid when you stood up and sang?

Oh, at the beginning of my career, I had terrible stage fright, so the answer is yes.

I was very afraid.

For a long time that happened, and then little by little chipped away at it until I did the deep dive in therapy.

And then, really, it's gone.

So, you were singing, you were performing.

You were in therapy, and slowly you began to overcome that fear?

Yeah.

It's like a lot of things under the more traditional therapy I was in.

Things got better little by little.

And it's sort of like forgiveness.

If I got better, really better, I could be free.

But I didn't get really better until I did the deep part of it, the deep search.

So, your temper flares every now and then?

Mm-hmm.

Give me an example.

[laughter] Oh, tying my shoe.

[laughter] And you'll have to bleep this, but it's, you know.

A thing tied, and it just frustrates me.

I think, "God, with all the preaching I've done about patience and nonviolence, shouldn't I be able to do something so I can scream obscenities at my foot?"

[laughter] What about your sister?

Tell me about her.

Which sister?

The younger sister and the older sister.

Yeah.

The younger sister, Mimi, complicated relationship because I loved her, and we were so close for years.

It explains this in the film as well.

I never wanted her to try and be a singer because I knew she would be in my shadow for her whole career, and she was.

And she was, I'm sure, angry at me for saying that I didn't think it was a good idea for her.

And she had a career.

Mimi had a career.

She was a beautiful singer, brilliant songwriter, and played guitar better than I did.

So, she needed to get credit where it was due.

Yeah.

We were together till the end, and I tried to help Mimi on her way out.

And my other sister, Pauline, she kind of absented the family and the outside world at a certain point.

She just couldn't deal with any of it.

It was too much for her, and she moved deep in a canyon.

And I wish the film had had more about this.

She built houses.

She built a mud house into the mountainside.

And there's a poem about it in there.

And she wouldn't saw anything or cut anything.

She'd stick in the mud as it was.

And then, the inside of it was all just beautiful, insane stuff, all stuck in mud.

She did that.

She built other houses.

I mean, she was so quiet.

And she called them the silent arts.

She was a seamstress and mud house builder.

And your mother.

My mom?

Tell us about your mom.

Well, I'll do two things.

One is tell them what I told you before when we were talking because mom was a really unique combination of things.

And to describe her one way the best was that when she was getting close to 100 -- she wanted to live to 100.

She was fed up with everything else.

100 was the goal.

So, we're all trying to plan her 100th birthday.

We can do this, and we can do that.

We have cupcakes, and we can have blah, blah.

I said, "Mom, what do you want to do in your birthday?"

She said, "Drop dead."

[laughter] One week after her birthday party, she was gone.

Interesting how that works.

But actually, when she was in her early 90s, she said, "Well, I'll stick around as long as you keep me entertained."

[laughter] And then, when she was about 97, she said, "I'm not interested in your entertainment anymore."

[chuckles] [laughter] And there's the wonderful title poem from the book, When You See My Mother, Ask Her To Dance, on page 145.

Yeah.

Well, it explains it.

It's just a little poem that took off by itself.

When I was growing up, my mom would play this Swedish tenor named Jussi Bjorling.

And that would bring her -- the image I have was her leaning on the broom like that.

She had to clean the entire boarding house and do all the cooking.

I mean, she was exhausted.

And then, she'd hear that voice, and she'd lean on the broom, and we'd all come to a halt.

His voice was so beautiful.

So, something in here wanted my mom to have this fantasy with Jussi Bjorling.

On a dance floor somewhere on the eastern seaboard in the summer of 1931, a crowd of girls and almost men.

In the cool shadows, my teenage mother.

In the warm lights, Swedish tenor Jussi Bjorling.

I courteously ask you, dear Jussi, when you see my mother, ask her to dance.

She's the dark girl.

She's a gypsy and a vamp.

A foster child.

She's a flower.

She gazes up, her eyes immense and frightened.

Her lips are painted red, but sewn in silence.

Just behind a fluttering and insufferable shyness, she thinks, though no one ever says as much, she might be beautiful.

You can tell her, Jussi.

She would hear the words from you.

This little bird adrift in flight would hear the words from you.

She's but 18, you are that plus two.

A prodigy.

A star already risen.

My mother is too shy.

Your English is so weak.

So, please extend your hand accommodatingly and with a smile lead her out around and through the glittering crowd and snapshot faces.

Grip my mother firmly by her waist and to the surging strains of violins how just slightly, bow just slightly and begin to waltz.

Your light upon your feet, young man, for one of such sturdy stock in the land of ceaseless winters, frozen lakes, and nights that never end.

Your eyes are royal blue or aquamarine or slate or powder.

They're Nordic sea-change eyes set in your round and pleasant face, deceptive in its jovial effect.

Save for the force of an unyielding jaw and chin, your armor in the war against giving up of childhood.

In this ballroom, you're everything to catch the eye, handsome tux and fluted tie, and now my gypsy mother by your side.

She moves with you in tandem, leaning close upon your mighty chest with no more weight than a small bird alighting in its nest.

When she makes a move to leave at song's end, keep her hand and dance again and then again until she's flushed and her vermilion lips at last have parted in a smile.

So then, guide her through the noisy coterie and pour this girl a glass of punch.

How disarming is your presence as you move tonight, Jussi, schooled in the opera at the age of four.

Toured with your brothers by age of eight, debuted with the Royal Swedish Opera at 19.

And so in silence, but with smiles in whatever bond was born of the dancing and the heat, sip your drinks until they are, but melting bits of ice.

I ask you, dear Jussi, please take my mother out into the leafy balcony, dappled, dark, and deserted.

Hear the click of her high heels supporting slender legs and tender feet.

Do you see the concrete bench tucked in among the roses over at the farthest end?

Notice the light of chandeliers and the sconces trapped inside the teeming hall, but casting muted rectangles, which stretch as softly as the breeze against the ivy-colored walls?

The night cloaks her elegant little gown, arranged by her foster mothers, all of whom meant well, I guess.

They took the Scottish waif into the most prestigious stores in town and hinted to her, coaxed her, and suggested to her any pretty dress she might prefer.

Try as they might to pin her down, she stood a frozen silhouette against the shipwreck of her childhood.

Where, in all the ruins, there was not a shard of mirror to reflect her beauty or show her some fine things she might deserve.

So, the foster mothers did the choosing and though trying to be kind, they tied fine lace and ribbons all around her and they tied her tongue at the same time.

And what of you, dear Jussi?

Your tongue quite clearly was not tied, but whither went your childhood?

It was barely started when at 16 your mother died.

Had I been your mother, I would surely have been torn between the grooming of a genius and the countless ways childhood's careless days are formed.

Did she hear the timbre of your voice the moment you were born?

Or in the summer breezes as you sing about and mourn?

Your voice resounds with tears accumulated from the age of four, when mystery's infant intuition warned you the coming hardships you would certainly endure.

Out upon the darkened balcony, my mother feels a rush of expectation as she follows closely on your arm.

Hold her hand, dear Jussi, lead her to the bench and sit her down and then sing to her.

Oh, Jussi, sing her anything.

In the ballroom, the orchestra has just struck up some current hit you know by heart, and so you sing to her.

You sit next to her, hold her hand, and sing.

And as you sing, she feels a quickening of her heart, a tingling from head to toe, or might it be from wing to wing.

Oh, dear Jussi, how your tux lends splendor to the night.

It was your voice that kept a pale ember burning deep inside the guarded walls beyond my mother's frozen silhouette.

So, out upon the balcony, what happens next?

The song is over, my mother's eyes shimmer with a shock of tears with life.

The orchestra flips pages to another song.

You put your free hand to my mother's cheek.

She's quite lovely, after all.

Her eyes close as she tilts her cheek into your wrist.

Does she clutch your hand?

Does she brush it with her lips?

When she meets your gaze again, your sea-change eyes have imperceptibly shifted to something like surprise and curiosity, an unsuspecting awakening to this half-seductive waif, this shining bird, this wild, heather-scented Scot.

What choice have you, dear Jussi, but to kiss my mother?

Kiss my mother.

Kiss her now, before you even know her name, that your initials are the same; Jussi Bjorling, Joan Baez.

It's but a soft embrace, a tender kiss.

My mother's not surprised.

She's happy.

I make of this all that I please, all that I wish, all I believe.

And I believe with all my heart and all my soul the filament that lies the burnish edge of my own voice, the naked talent I was given without choice, that part of me looks wistfully and listens longingly to songs sung on a balcony a half a century ago.

My voice knows instinctively it was conceived that night, and the dancing shadows, and the dancing light.

As the years passed, my mother remained to her dreams in black and white, true to her youthful heart delight.

And when she headed swiftly toward the very edge of glory, I pressed into her stubborn hand a copy of this story.

A ticket, as it were, to where sumptuous curtains glide in silence to reveal in living color a familiar figure on a stage.

And she stands, her frozen silhouette, against the splendor of the present.

It's said the spirit has no fixed age when it awakens to its change of circumstance, but I think it is the age of a certain moment of exquisite chance.

So, when you see my mother, ask her to dance.

[applause] How did you and your mother interact during your career?

My mom was my best audience ever.

My mother would have thought I was terrific have I just sat in the crib and fiddled with those beads for the rest of my life, but she did love and appreciate my voice.

She was my greatest fan.

Yeah.

And your father?

Dads have a hard time saying, "That was great, honey."

He would say, "That was good."

And I'd say, what did you think of the concert?

"It was good.

It was good."

Of course, I was sitting up there and the acoustics were -- he's a scientist, you know, and he was a dad and he was a man.

So, finally, at the end of my career, ending the concerts, and the concerts are whoop-de-doo, everybody's screaming and hollering and they all lined up to say how terrific I was, and there's my dad.

And I said, "What did you think of the concert?"

"It was good, honey."

I said, "No, I mean, wasn't it terrific?

Fantastic what your little girl did out there tonight?"

Well, I said, "No, no, just say it.

Just say how wonderful it was."

So, he did his best.

[laughter] He did his best.

So, here you are in a whole new world of writing, of drawing, of painting -- Of griping.

[chuckles] [laughter] And it really seems as though you have so much creativity left to offer the world.

It's exhausting, isn't it?

[laughter] It's awesome.

[chuckles] It's awesome.

Don't you feel that way?

Yes, and I think I'm lucky and that refers to the burnished edge of my own voice, which I was given without choice.

And have enjoyed using it.

And it's gotten me into trouble.

It's gotten me into glory.

And I just feel grateful for that.

Would you rather be back in California in your comfortable home than touring now?

No, I'd rather be here sitting with you and going, "Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around, turn me around.

Turn me around.

Ain't gonna let nobody turn me around.

Keep on walking, keep on talking, marching up to freedom land.

Ain't gonna let no hypocrisy turn me around no, no, turn me around, no, no.

Ain't gonna let no hypocrisy turn me around.

Keep on walking.

Keep on talking.

Keep on singing.

Keep on swinging marching up to freedom land."

Oh.

[applause] It's just beautiful.

Just beautiful.

I think people could listen to you sing and talk no matter what range you were in for the rest of your days.

[applause] It's beautiful.

It's just beautiful.

And as someone who has had voice problems, I can so appreciate the courage with which you continue to use that voice in so many different ways.

Thank you.

It must feel good to you to sing out that way.

It does, it does.

Those are my four good notes.

[laughter] No, I -- Well, make that eight.

I think you have many, many more notes.

Would you do us the honor of an encore?

Oh, Jesus.

I have to find another six notes somewhere.

[laughter] ♪ Wade in the water ♪ Wade in the water ♪ Children, wade in the water ♪ God's gonna trouble the waters ♪ Wade in the water ♪ Wade in the water ♪ Children, wade in the water ♪ God's gonna trouble the waters [applause] How wonderful.

[cheers and applause] I cannot tell you what an honor it's been to be with you again this time in person and before this wonderful, adoring audience.

[applause] It's lovely to be with you and realize that I can understand and appreciate a little bit of your struggle, vocal stuff, yeah.

Thank you for sharing yourself, your whole self with us tonight.

My pleasure.

It's been a great honor.

Thank you, all.

[applause] █ █ █ █