Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I found some real problems with "But Beautiful."  The primary one is
that there is only one photo reproduced that refers back to the text. 
This from a book that riffs off of photos to construct a narrative. 
And I like Dyer and am a big fan of John Berger's writings.  
  

    
Dan <sunspot> - your follow up post about resonance by women not being
necessarily about Joni having a "feminine" voice really resonated for
me. 

>And now that I think about it, reflecting on something I said last
night, maybe *that's* why so many women connected with Mitchell as
well.  It's not that she was a strong female voice necessarily - it's
that women were hearing something *other* than a male voice and
sensibility (or a female voice of the era, which like most of the male
voices tended to concern itself with things stereotypically female for
the times).  Women had this whole inner life that wasn't being fully
reflected much in the broader culture, and suddenly here were these
thoughts and feelings that had gone unreflected being bounced back at
them. 

I think it was EXACTLY that the voice was not the stereotype
"feminine" voice of the time. It was deeper. Now, back to movies and
books (I just bought the Bear book and downloaded the Herbie Hancock
music. YOu are bad on my budget, folks!)
  

    
Yeah, not what pop culture was presenting as an "approved" feminine
voice, but saying and observing things actual women felt and observed -
things that weren't properly "feminine" by the ridiculous standards of
the time.  And doing so in a genderless way, so that plenty of men
(especially gay men) could immediately relate to it as well.

Prince was a huge Joni devotee, and he also transcended race and
gender boundaries in his work.  He was lumped in with the gender
benders of the '80s, but in a way I think he went far beyond what Boy
George or Annie Lennox accomplished in regards to crossing and blurring
gender lines, and did so in a genre where that kind of thing hadn't
been done before in such a prominent way.  

During the '80s I recall reading a critic who said Annie Lennox was
the link between Joni Mitchell and the future, and I think that more or
less turned out to be the truth.  Lennox had an androgynous sound and
perfected an incredible androgynous look (something she was driven to
by sexism in the music business), but her work was very much rooted in
a strong feminine perspective.  What made her unique was combining such
forcefulness with that perspective - "I've got a delicate mind, I've
got a dangerous nature, and my fists collide, with your furniture..." 
It was militant, and I think the LGBT community of the time immediately
and strongly identified.  I think she kicked down a lot of doors for
the in-your-face female singer-songwriters who followed, everyone from
Tori Amos to Alanis Morissette to Pink.  I don't think they transcended
gender the way Mitchell or to a degree Prince did, but they achieved a
greater degree of equality for music from a woman's true point of
view.

I think Carly Simon was instrumental in setting the stage for acts
like Annie Lennox and Chrissie Hynde as well (although I gather
Chrissie's not a fan!).  She didn't transcend gender the way Mitchell
did, but I certainly think she was one of the first (along with Laura
Nyro and Janis Ian) to really get the no-bullshit, uncensored versions
of a woman's thoughts and feelings into the pop charts.

Boy George was a transvestite performing these sublime Motown love
songs, written to another man.  He didn't bend gender, he really broke
it!  It's amazing to look back and realize how successful Culture Club
were, and I think they made it on pure pop talent.  It's a pity what
the drugs did to him - "Karma Chameleon" was on the Muzak at the
grocery store yesterday, and I was immediately struck by what a
wonderful pop song it still was, and by that incredible sound they had.
 He was able to produce brilliant work like that for 2 or 3 years, and
then...

>Well, she [Taylor Swift] strikes me as an incongruous and even
>bizarre casting choice.

She's blonde.  She's pretty.  She can sing (well, kinda).  She can
play.  That's close enough for Hollyweird.  Hell, if she put on 30
pounds they'd try to cast her as Boy George in the Culture Club biopic.

Anyhow, could be worse.  They coulda tapped Lohan...
 
>"Furry Sings the Blues" is one of the great moments in music 
>in terms of confronting the debt that white musicians owe to 
>the black experience and the distance that can never fully be
>bridged.  It certainly doesn't say everything that could be 
>said about the subject, but it says a lot.  

Yeah, was listening to Hejira in the car yesterday on the way to Pt.
Reyes.  It's an interesting track both in its observational power
related to that subject and also as another vignette on the album
detailing Joni arriving somewhere in her travels as a total outsider,
one who can't really ever hope to fit in.  "While our limo is shining
on his shanty's street."
  

    
This is a wonderful interview! Thanks to <tnf> for alerting me to it.

Michelle, alas I haven't had the chance to read your book yet.  On the
basis of your thoughtful comments here, I surely will!

I have a very long relationship with Joni's music.  I also had the
utterly mind-blowing experience of being a 19 year old student at
Naropa Institute when "Hejira" came out. When I heard "Refuge of the
Roads," my first thought was, "Oh my God, she's talking about Chogyam
Trungpa!" (the Tibetan Buddhist teacher who founded Naropa). But then I
thought, "Jesus Christ, Steve, not everything is about YOUR LIFE." So
I ran out in the hall and asked an older student if Joni ever met
Trungpa. And of course she had, and of course my first impression was
correct!  Michelle, did you ever talk to Joni about her experience
meeting Trungpa, or about Buddhism in general? To my ears, it has
informed her music even when she isn't talking directly about it, with
"Sweet Bird" and "Chinese Café" as ready examples.

For the record, I love pretty much all of her music up through "Don
Juan's" -- and I have to assume that anybody who says she lost them
after "Hejira" just hasn't listened to "Don Juan's" very carefully; the
first time I heard her play "Coyote" live, it just segued into "Don
Juan's Reckless Daughter" as if it was a single epic song. You probably
know that she changed one lyric in "Don Juan's" for the album, and
while the final version is just fine, the earlier version is also
great.

Final version:

"The eagle and the serpent are at war in me. The serpent fighting for
blind desire, the eagle for clarity."

Original version:

"The eagle and the serpent are at war in me. The eagle for high
ideals, the snake for sensuality."

Dare I ask, what's going on with the Morgellons stuff?  I read that
recent interview with her in the LA Times, and frankly, as much as I
love and respect Joni and fully consider her the artistic equal of
Picasso or Miles Davis, she seems to have become *so* bitter and
defensive and obsessed with Morgellons of late.  I'm a science writer,
and I've looked very carefully at the evidence for Morgellons. While
I'm sympathetic to people who believe they have disorders unrecognized
by medical science, I haven't been convinced by the evidence for
Morgellons.  Is she as obsessed with it as she seems from a distance?

That said, she gets a lifetime pass from me for nearly anything, and I
consider her a Living Global Treasure (in the Japanese sense).  She
should be able to do WHATEVER she wants for the rest of her life in
peace and comfort.  I just wish she seemed more comfortable!
  

    
By the way, I love a lot of her post-"Don Juan's" music too.  I
thought "Mingus" was an awkward record (though I adore "The Wolf that
Lives in Lindsay"), but there are great songs on every record that
followed, even if they're not "perfect" like the earlier albums were. 
For instance, I think "Taming the Tiger" is terribly underrated --
"Love Puts on a New Face," "Crazy Cries of Love," and the title track
are all sublime to me. For anyone who thinks Joni's later music is all
crap, put on "Night Ride Home" -- to me, it's a classic up there with
her best early work (but in a new way). I like "Shine" quite a bit too,
particularly "If," which I think is a masterpiece.
  

    
how common are "perfect" albums?
I was about to agree with steve, but, and I'm sure I'm as manic a joni
fan as anyone - I don't find her pre-Hejira output any more perfect
than her post Hejira work - I skip, or skipped, about as many tracks on
"Clouds, For the Roses, Court and Spark, Hissing of Summer Lawns as I
did, do on Wild things..., Dog Eat Dog, Night Ride Home or Turbulent
Indigo (for examples) ...
  

    
Well, uhm, the word "perfect" was probably the least important word in
my posts.  And I forgot to mention how much I love "Turbulent Indigo."
  

    
Steve Silberman: Trungpa and Buddhism, so happy you've asked! Those
are the primary subjects of my book's final chapter, which looks at
Hejira as the culmination of Joni's Blue Period. Along with tracing the
lineage of autobiographical literature up to Joni and looking at the
idea of landscape in her music, teasing out the influence of Buddhism
on Hejira was a big goal of mine. (These themes just scream mass
market, don't they?) 

Joni tells a fascinating story about meeting Trungpa, who somehow
caused her to lose her sense of "I," as she puts it, for three days
afterward.  After visiting Trungpa in Boulder, she traveled East with
friends. Then she traveled back West alone, writing much of Hejira
along the way.  I hear Hejira as her attempt to compose herself into
the grace of those three egoless days.  She tried to write her way back
to that temporary state of equanimity. 

We spoke about this quite a bit.  Here's a relevant quote from Joni:  
.
“Everything about the journey was unusual. but the journey back was
reflective. I went and bought all Trungpa’s books to understand this
abnormal consciousness that had occurred and how he’d done it to me.
And the journey back was one of detoxing basically from Rolling Thunder
the year before . . . process of cleaning up from the drug habit. So
that whole album was written coming out of the fog and having been
really delivered from the fog into a state of absolute mental health
temporarily with no ‘I’ thing. The journey was quite an exceptional
journey, mentally and physically, and I think that the writing on that
album reflected it.”
 
  

    
Dan <sunspot>: I want to join the Well just so I can read your posts. 
  

    
The story about Trungpa Rinpoche is one of the most interesting to me
of all the Joni Micthell stories.

<<"He was the bad boy of Zen. I wrote a song about a visit I made to
him called "Refuge of the Road." I consider him one of my great
teachers, even though I saw him only three times. Once I had a
fifteen-minute audience with him in which we argued. He told me to quit
analyzing. I told him I couldn't - I'm an artist, you know. Then he
induced into me a temporary state where the concept of "I" was absent,
which lasted for three days. [Later], at the very end of Trungpa's life
I went to visit him. I wanted to thank him. He was not well. He was
green and his eyes had no spirit in them at all, which sort of stunned
me, because the previous times I'd seen him he was quite merry and
puckish - you know, saying "shit" a lot. I leaned over and looked into
his eyes, and I said, "How is it in there? What do you see in there?
And this voice came, like, out of a void, and it said, "Nothing." So, I
want over and whispered in his ear, "I just came to tell you that when
I left you that time, I had three whole days without self
conscious-ness, and I wanted to thank you for the experience." And he
looked up at me, and all the light came back into his face and he goes,
"Really?" And then he sank back into this black void again.>>

jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=7
  

    
Joni and I actually discussed this at length, so there's a much more
elaborate version of the story in my book, as well as quite a bit of
analysis. Maybe you didn't read that far, Chrys.   
  

    
I'm also sympathetic to people with conditions not recognized by
mainstream medicine. Still not convinced about Morgellon's, though.  

Me, not so long ago: "How's Joni?"
Joni's close friend: "Much better than she thinks."

Sad & telling.       
  

    

<Maybe you didn't read that far, Chrys. >

Oh no,  I read the whole book.  

The heart of the Rinpoche story got muddled, I thought, in the tale
about the Reiki healer, Robben Ford's wife and the roadtrip with the
former lover and the new object of flirtation.  Though it *was* good to
get down the "this is my god and this is my prayer" part of the story.
(Which I'm not inclined to type that up. Page 191 if anyone wants to
check it out.) I thought it would have been better set in terms of
Mitchell's music and how that experience led to Hejira.
  

    
Chrys, it's strange to me that you'd read the chapter in this way. Its
subject is Trungpa, Buddhism, and their impact on Joni and on Hejira.

There is no "tale about a Reiki healer" in the book. There is a story
about a dinner I had with Joni, during which she re-told the Trungpa
story, and at which Joni's friend, whom I identify as a Reiki healer,
was present.  

When I quote Joni on her roadtrip with the two men, it is because
she's explicitly discussing Trungpa's effect on her interaction with
them.  

You are of course free to dislike my book. And even though I'm an
invited guest here, you are also free to be less than collegial toward
me on this board. But you are not free to misrepresent my book. 
      

    
  

    
I'd be sorry to see this end on an uncomfortable note. I think Chris
read your book entirely and came away with a story you didn't intend;
knowing her as I do I'm sure no insult was intended, and I didn't get
from her remarks that she disliked the book (surely, she wouldn't have
finished it if she had).

I'm sorry my schedule didn't allow me to read the book at all, but I've
enjoyed this conversation, and I've felt compelled to revisit this great
period in Joni's career.
  

    
>Dan <sunspot>: I want to join the Well just so I can read
>your posts

Because they're so good or so bad?  Well whatever.  I was an only
child and always the entertainment.

>Still not convinced about Morgellon's, though. 

I have a theory that it's possibly related to neurological damage of
some sort, in Joni's case perhaps caused by polio.  Other diseases and
even parasites are known to impact mammalian behavior - for example,
toxoplasmosis.  If a parasite from cat crap can cause mice not to fear
cats, who knows what polio can do to a human brain.  See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Possible_link_to_psychiatric_disord
ers
(and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toxoplasmosis#Behavioral_changes
from the same article).
 
  

    
The conversation's not over until tomorrow, though -- or, put another
way, we have a new one up starting tomorrow, but this one can continue,
and Michelle is, after all, a Well member for the entire run of this
conversation and a while afterwards, so she's free to roam the wilds of
Well discourse if she chooses.
  

    
Thanks, Scott. And Dan, I meant to praise the excellence of your
posts, of course. May my entertaining only child grow up to think and
write half as well as you.  

One more thing, before the curtain falls.   

A body of work as rich and masterful as Joni's rewards reexamination. 
We can go back to songs and albums and hear sly humor we didn't hear
in our earnest youth, for instance. And I'm still discovering choice
music/lyric pairings in her work, even on my 311th listen.     

A body of work as rich and masterful as Joni's is also hard to get a
handle on.  I've talked to culture-makers who say, "Oh yes, Joni
Mitchell. Of course she's widely revered. She's a legendary
folk-singer. " That covers maybe three years of her career.  

Now, especially, with the announcement of Taylor Swift's willingness
to play Joni in a film, I've beent thinking about artistic legacy. 
Some fans argue Taylor Swift would bring a new generation of fans to
Joni's work. She would. But she'd also popularize a very narrow vision
of Joni's life and work. I'm afraid that narrow vision of Joni is the
one that would stick for good.  

I wonder, though, if it's even possible for Joni to be widely
recognized and remembered for the full scope of her contribution to
music and culture. Can you all think of any complex artists who are? 
  

    
There aren't many artists -- at least in the pop music arena -- who
are that complex, and the ones who come to mind immediately (Bob Dylan,
Van Morrison, Patti Smith, John Cale) guard access to the full
spectrum of their complexity pretty tightly. 

Who are you thinking of here?
  

    
<milkmaids>, you're seeing <sunspot> at his very best in this discussion.
His contributions elsewhere on the Well are more complex.
  

    
Heh.  But I do hope you'll stick arund - the WELL is a pretty interesting
place on many levels.
  

    
This has been a good one!   

For ongoing participation, you may want to add the <music.> conference
to your List.  It's a great way to get new insights and music tips.
  

    
And <byline.> and maybe <writers.> and <newmusic.> and lots of others.


But we're not through yet, are we?
  

    
I have a slightly rude comment, in relation to Joni's legacy.  It's
about the one song that is an earworm in a negative sense, and it's
that damned jinglebells thing about it's comin' on Christmas.  I used
to love it, and then eventually I clearly did not.   Anybody else have
a least favorite of the time?  
  

    
Big Yellow Taxi is song I could go without hearing for a long while.