Discovering Joni Mitchell. Again.
When I was young, I loved Joni Mitchell, but as I moved from vinyl to cassette to CD, I didn't replace her music.
Then I married Mars. I believe our first argument was over whether Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins was the more accomplished artist (I didn't have strong feelings and argued for the fun of it, but he convinced me it's probably Joni because of the alternate tunings she does, not to mention the songwriting and all the instruments she plays).
And he had Joni CDs!* I was delighted, and he was thrilled to play his favorites for me.
But an odd thing happened. It just didn't reverberate in me like I'd remembered. He'd play something from Hejira or Court and Spark, and while I thought the music was beautiful, it just didn't reach into my soul and grab me by the ... uh ... whatever. So I finally decided the quality I remembered was just color from my young angst, that Joni was an amazing artist, but not my soul's voice.
When k. d. lang released Hymns of the 49th Parallel in 2004, we both began listening to Joni again a lot, and bought "Jericho" and "A Case of You" on iTunes (to replace the old vinyl). To our little, growing collection, I added Blue (one of Keri's Noble's important influences).
Then this week, Mars came home from work saying, "I found this great video on YouTube of Joni Mitchell singing 'A Case of You.'" He said he'd always loved the sound of the instrument she plays. Until he saw the video, he'd assumed it was a guitar with one of her unusual tunings. But no, she's playing a dulcimer.
So I watched the video, and I was mesmerized. I spent the rest of that evening and into the night searching out and watching Joni videos.
This one especially haunts me:
I watched her singing this, and I believed that this woman, singing in the U.K., truly does miss her home and long to return. Then I found "For Free", about her sense of selling out as she watches a street performer and realizes she only plays "if you have the money or if you're a friend." And "Cactus Tree", where she sings of a woman whose "heart is full and hollow like a cactus tree while she's so busy being free," and I thought of Graham Nash who was probably the love of her life but who she refused to marry from fear of being trapped and stifled, as both her grandmothers were (my interpretation only). I went to iTunes to buy "Little Green" (the story of the daughter she gave away soon after birth because unmarried women just didn't keep babies in the 1960s), and I found myself weeping (you can see her talk about the experience here).
I ended up buying Song to a Seagull and Ladies of the Canyon and a couple of pieces from Songs from a Prairie Girl, and I've been listening to them over and over since.
She's so brutally honest, and she looks so vulnerable in the early videos. How courageous it is to open oneself like that! I want to do that -- express my hidden heart so eloquently that people like me find their own soul-strings humming in the vibration.
But if I can't? If I try and fail? It won't hurt quite as badly now. Because Joni Mitchell has already sung my soul.
I mentioned to Mars that I'd put all the new music on his desktop computer, and he promptly downloaded it onto his iPod. When I asked what he thought, especially of Song to a Seagull (which he'd never even heard of), he hesitated. Finally, he said, "I probably have to listen to it several times." Then he added, "But I listened to Hejira again. Wow! That's incredible music! I can never get tired of it."
I guess she sang his soul too. Just on a different album.
*When Mars and I married, our music collection literally covered the spectrum. We both have widely eclectic tastes, but I didn't have any hiphop, and he didn't have any opera. Between us, we have samples of everything. And yet, we only had three duplicates: one Sarah McLachlan (can't remember which one), one R.E.M., and Gord's Gold, which we'd given each other. We realized after a couple of years that we can never divorce: even if we hated each other, staying together would be easier -- and less painful -- than trying to separate our music.
Then I married Mars. I believe our first argument was over whether Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins was the more accomplished artist (I didn't have strong feelings and argued for the fun of it, but he convinced me it's probably Joni because of the alternate tunings she does, not to mention the songwriting and all the instruments she plays).
And he had Joni CDs!* I was delighted, and he was thrilled to play his favorites for me.
But an odd thing happened. It just didn't reverberate in me like I'd remembered. He'd play something from Hejira or Court and Spark, and while I thought the music was beautiful, it just didn't reach into my soul and grab me by the ... uh ... whatever. So I finally decided the quality I remembered was just color from my young angst, that Joni was an amazing artist, but not my soul's voice.
When k. d. lang released Hymns of the 49th Parallel in 2004, we both began listening to Joni again a lot, and bought "Jericho" and "A Case of You" on iTunes (to replace the old vinyl). To our little, growing collection, I added Blue (one of Keri's Noble's important influences).
Then this week, Mars came home from work saying, "I found this great video on YouTube of Joni Mitchell singing 'A Case of You.'" He said he'd always loved the sound of the instrument she plays. Until he saw the video, he'd assumed it was a guitar with one of her unusual tunings. But no, she's playing a dulcimer.
So I watched the video, and I was mesmerized. I spent the rest of that evening and into the night searching out and watching Joni videos.
This one especially haunts me:
I watched her singing this, and I believed that this woman, singing in the U.K., truly does miss her home and long to return. Then I found "For Free", about her sense of selling out as she watches a street performer and realizes she only plays "if you have the money or if you're a friend." And "Cactus Tree", where she sings of a woman whose "heart is full and hollow like a cactus tree while she's so busy being free," and I thought of Graham Nash who was probably the love of her life but who she refused to marry from fear of being trapped and stifled, as both her grandmothers were (my interpretation only). I went to iTunes to buy "Little Green" (the story of the daughter she gave away soon after birth because unmarried women just didn't keep babies in the 1960s), and I found myself weeping (you can see her talk about the experience here).
I ended up buying Song to a Seagull and Ladies of the Canyon and a couple of pieces from Songs from a Prairie Girl, and I've been listening to them over and over since.
She's so brutally honest, and she looks so vulnerable in the early videos. How courageous it is to open oneself like that! I want to do that -- express my hidden heart so eloquently that people like me find their own soul-strings humming in the vibration.
But if I can't? If I try and fail? It won't hurt quite as badly now. Because Joni Mitchell has already sung my soul.
I mentioned to Mars that I'd put all the new music on his desktop computer, and he promptly downloaded it onto his iPod. When I asked what he thought, especially of Song to a Seagull (which he'd never even heard of), he hesitated. Finally, he said, "I probably have to listen to it several times." Then he added, "But I listened to Hejira again. Wow! That's incredible music! I can never get tired of it."
I guess she sang his soul too. Just on a different album.
*When Mars and I married, our music collection literally covered the spectrum. We both have widely eclectic tastes, but I didn't have any hiphop, and he didn't have any opera. Between us, we have samples of everything. And yet, we only had three duplicates: one Sarah McLachlan (can't remember which one), one R.E.M., and Gord's Gold, which we'd given each other. We realized after a couple of years that we can never divorce: even if we hated each other, staying together would be easier -- and less painful -- than trying to separate our music.