Joni Mitchell is other-worldly – a goddess of poetics, melody, and musical range. A few in history have shared talent like this, but the list is short and distinguished. I am clearly not alone in this opinion and her resonance with millions of people over the last 60 years bears this witness.
I’ve often wondered about music like hers. It sits in a plane that isn’t fully explained by science and logic. Perhaps her music connects us to the underlying hum in our souls…it reaches our very vibration. Take a moment and listen to an early Joni song like “Tin Angel” or “Marcie” with your eyes closed and feel yourself float away.
And summer goes,
falls to the sidewalk like string and brown paper.
Winter blows up from the river,
there’s no one to take her to the sea.
Joni composed the soundtrack of my childhood. My mother, who possesses a similar deep mystical voice, would sing along to her on an almost daily basis. This was my comfort as a little girl – a delicious serenade each time I walked in the dining room to find my mother at her easel.
Oh, I am a lonely painter; I live in a box of paints.
I’m frightened by the devil, and I’m drawn to those ones that ain’t afraid.
Joni’s colorful, self-drawn album covers sat at the front of my mom’s extensive LP collection and entranced me with their whimsy and mystery. I would stare at them for hours watching the stories unfold with the curve of each line. The cover to “Song to a Seagull” was one of my favorites – deep purples, lemon yellows, candy pink.
As my mom and I rolled along Oregon back country roads in our white Chevy station wagon, Joni’s 8 tracks drummed along with the rhythm of potholes and puddle sprays.
My mom’s choice of Joni’s record was purposeful – it fit the mood we were in or sometimes it turned our moods right-side up. A rainy day turned to laughter with a few lines of “Twisted”.
My analyst told me that I was right out of my head
But I said, “Dear doctor I think that it’s you instead…”
My mom taught me to harmonize to Joni.
I wish I had a river so long,
I would teach my feet to fly.
I wish I had a river to skate away on.
I made my baby say goodbye.
And my mom’s voice would dip low and then climb unbelievable octaves to meet the next moment. Then she would look at me, “Now try to find the note two down from Joni’s first and ride along with the melody in parallel like railroad tracks.” She would jump right in and I would stumble along behind.
Eventually, I got the hang of it. When I hit the right sequence, she would nod at me and smile. It was thrilling. We harmonized to Joni, to hymns at church, to John Denver. It became a thing we did – a shared secret talent.
Joni taught me much about life as a woman sometimes strong, sometimes soft and supple. Sometimes heartbroken, sometimes victorious in love. Sometimes alone and independent, sometimes hopelessly intertwined.
Help me, I think I’m falling In love again,
When I get that crazy feeling, I know I’m in trouble again.
I would venture along with Joni in my mind. Skating down a frozen pond, astride a carousel horse, or sashaying down the Champs-Elysées. Who needs a holy text when you have Court and Spark.
So, I guess it’s natural for me to have developed an odd fascination with clouds. I notice them as they appear out of nowhere, shift and change, and then depart with barely a hint that they had ever been there.
Dark and looming one moment; fluffy and nonsensical the next. I nod to them as they paint a pattern of color across the sky – navy, periwinkle, fuchsia. And I sigh at their luminescent backdrop behind an outcropping of mountains or horizon of seas below.
To me, a cloudless sky just seems lifeless.
I’ve indeed looked at clouds from both sides – from the ground and air, from coast to coast, from my youth and now middle age, from behind tear-stained eyes and squinting through laughter.
Ever mysterious, ever hopeful, ever delightful, ever knowing. Clouds.
Today on the drive to school, it was an ice cream cloud kind of day. Bright white clouds billowed up like and over-indulgent display cake. The ethereal Riviera sky stood behind them, a brilliant Azur blue after a night of heavy storms, reminding us that nothing lasts forever.
My younger son, Evan, noticed them as well from the front seat of the car and pondered them quietly for a while.
“Momma, why don’t they just fall down?” he asked. “Why do they float along like that?”
And this time, instead of launching into the scientific explanation of phases of matter, differential density, and the water cycle, I just left the question float along in the air. Adrift like the clouds that enraptured him.
Because I think he already knew why. And he wasn’t really asking. He wanted to wonder aloud. It was a place I understood – a place of quiet curiosity.
He was starting his own relationship with clouds; tracking the railroad tracks of his own harmony.
Go where you will go to
Know that I will know you
Someday I may know you very well.
40 Weeks in France 