“Raditz and Mitchell shared a cave for a couple of months, travelled around Greece together, and parted ways. That’s where you and I come in, because Mitchell wrote two songs, among her greatest works, about her “redneck on a Grecian isle”: “California” and “Carey.” I’ve been singing along to those songs, or trying to, since I was fifteen. I learned from them what you learn from all of Mitchell’s music, that love is a form of reciprocity, at times even a barter economy: “He gave me back my smile / but he kept my camera to sell.” Mitchell’s songs were the final, clinching trade.” Joni Mitchell’s Openhearted Heroism https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/10/09/joni-mitchells-openhearted-heroism
Discussion
“That freedom was hard-won. Men often wanted Mitchell to be a wife, a muse, a siren, or a star. Instead, they got a genius, and one especially suited to deconstructing their fantasies of her. When David Geffen, her manager, implored her to write a hit, she came up with “You Turn Me On, I’m a Radio,” which mocks the request while heedlessly fulfilling it:
I come when you whistle
When you’re loving and kind
If you’ve got too many doubts
If there’s no good reception for me
Then tune me out, ’cause honey
Who needs the static
It hurts the head
And you wind up cracking
And the day goes dismal
From “Breakfast Barney”
To the sign-off prayer”
~Dan Chiasson
“Her tunes wander and veer; they manage their own beauty, bringing it forth at variable intervals. She wanted to create what she called “plateaus” for her lyrics, spans that she could prolong or cut short depending on the demands of her words and the emotional content that they ferried. In “A Case of You,” a song about Leonard Cohen, the lyrics turn on two reported fragments of speech. Both contain literary allusions; Mitchell was drawn to Cohen’s bookishness:
Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star and I said
Constantly in the darkness
Where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar”
I wonder wtf happened to her (and to neil young)
life! And putting Joni Mitchell & Neil Young aside for a second & tuning into a larger issue— this leads me to think about the artist as an individual vs art. How one often struggles to separate the two if an artist does something that upsets a person. I was rereading Joseph Brodsky’s thoughts on Ezra Pound this Friday.
pound for sure is the best example in modern age. I try (and actually do) separate, otherwise I wouldnt read none of my friends and colleagues, mainly after pandemic lol reason why I still listen to those two old lovely (and fascist, who would guess) pricks.
damn, it’s been a troublesome week, sorry I havent replied earlier.