A little Joni is good for the soul

I lay on the couch and listened to a two hour long radio program on NPR a couple of weekends ago called The Emergence of Joni Mitchell. If you have some time I highly recommend it. I was reminded of her brilliance and fearlessness as an artist — as a poet, a painter, a singer, a songwriter, and a musician. She is a modern day Renaissance woman, and I am in full awe of her talent. Court and Spark played practically non stop in my bedroom in my last years of high school, and I knew every word, note and nuance to every song on the album.

I found this video on YouTube from her Japan tour in 1994. In my opinion, this is what YouTube is for.

Hejira – Joni Mitchell

I’m traveling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
That shell shock love away

There’s comfort in melancholy
When there’s no need to explain
It’s just as natural as the weather
In this moody sky today

In our possessive coupling
So much could not be expressed
So now I am returning to myself
These things that you and I suppressed

I see something of myself in everyone
Right at this moment of the world
As snow gathers like bolts of lace
Waltzing on a bridal girl

You know it never has been easy
Whether you do or you do not resign
Whether you travel the breadth of extremities
Or you stick to some straighter line

Now here’s a man and a woman, sitting on a rock
They’re either going to thaw out or freeze
Listen: strains of Benny Goodman
Blowing through the pinewood trees

I’m porous with travel fever
But I’m so glad to be on my own
Still the slightest touch of a stranger
Sends up a trembling in my bones

I know - no one’s going to show me everything
We come and go unknown
Each so deep and so superficial
Between the forceps and the stone

I looked at the granite markers
Those tributes to finality, to eternity
And then I looked at myself here
Chicken scratching for a piece of immortality

In the church they light the candles
And the wax rolls down like tears
There’s the hope and the hopelessness
I’ve witnessed all these years

We’re just particles of change, I know, I know
Orbiting around the sun
But how can I have that point of view
When I’m always bound and tied to someone

White flags of winter chimneys
Waving truce against the moon
In the mirrors of a modern bank
From the window of my hotel room

I’m traveling in some vehicle
I’m sitting in some cafe
A defector from the petty wars
Until love sucks me back that way