Joni Mitchell / Healing / Resurrection

(Self-portrait by Joni Mitchell on CD cover for Turbulent Indigo from 1994)



From Joni Mitchell's liner notes for Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced, released November 17, 2014:

"This box set is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of two dead projects -- a ballet and a horrendously ill-conceived box set. They started it without me. They hired two incompetents to "do" me. It was to be a 2-disc set -- peppered with discarded and damaged work -- for the sake of something "new." They hired a burglar to enter my storage space (ironically called "A Safe Place"). He rummaged around and came back with the dregs. "Why are you doing this?" I asked the bosses. "That's the way it's done," was the reply. "Not to me," I said and I squelched it. A little while later, the bosses were fired, and just before the company went belly up, I got the bills -- for their mistake.

The ballet is a dream I hope to somehow resurrect. We'll see. Meanwhile, with these notes coming to an end, my work is done. I'm celebrating. I'm pouring myself a glass of wine. I'd like to drink a toast. If God is dead and love is dead, is talent the next fatality? Let's drink a toast to talent. Here's to you, talent -- may you be resurrected, too."

From "Love Puts On A New Face" (1998):

"Everyday
Love puts on a new face
Love puts on a new face
Love has many faces
Many, many faces."

And "My Best To You" (1998), the closing song for Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced:

"So here's to you
May your dreams come true
May old father time
Never be unkind
And through the years
Save your smiles and your tears
They're just souvenirs
They'll make music in your heart

Remember this
Each new day is a kiss
Sent from up above
With an angel's love
So here's to you
May your skies be blue
And your love blessed
That's my best to you

Remember this
Each new day is a kiss
Sent from up above
With an angel's love
So here's to you
May your skies be blue
And your love blessed
That's my best to you"

Woman With Heart

In 2007, I bought Joni Mitchell's CD called "Shine." That was a bleak year for me, and the CD brought me some light and some perspective on darkness. It was released in September, just after R had a brainstem stroke which left him in a coma for two weeks at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto, California. I would have heard about "Shine" after returning home from a yoga teacher training intensive in Eastern Washington that convinced me that I did not want to become a yoga teacher. I did not yet know that R had the stroke and didn't learn of his stroke until the last day of the year when his sister sent me a Christmas card. It is occurring to me that I may have stopped listening to "Shine" after R died the following April.



Listen to Joni:

Holy Earth

How can we heal you?

We cover you like a blight...

Strange birds of appetite...

If I had a heart I'd cry

Today I pulled "Shine" down from my small hard-to-reach up-near-the-ceiling shelf of CDs that I have kept but do not listen to very often. The CDs are more or less in chronological order, beginning with some early rock 'n' roll and ending with a 3-disk set called "Autoharp Legacy" (scroll down). Although that CD is from 2002, my recent interest in the autoharp places it there in my sense of history.

A few months ago, I put all my Bob Dylan CDs in a box which is now in the small storage closet in my hallway. They have been easily accessible to me for as long as I have had them, but I have not had any desire to listen to them, except occasionally in my car. As a long-time listener of Bob Dylan, I also have another box filled with his music on tape, and a shelf containing all his vinyl albums previous to the years when music began to be put on tape. Although I am still stopped in my footsteps and find myself close to tears when I hear Bob Dylan's voice as I did in the Bellingham Community Co-op grocery store a few days ago, and am moved to the core as I have been since I was 13 years old, something told me to put his CDs away and be open to hearing another voice. It's been very quiet here for some time anyway. Beginning in spring, when I can open my windows, I listen to the sound of birds. If I want to hear music, I sit down with my autoharp, dulcimers, and ukulele. It has been silent during the time that I have been making the first eleven mandalas, which was last September after most of the birds were gone.

A few days ago while checking for updates on Joni Mitchell's health, I discovered that on November 17, 2014, she released a 4-disk collection of CDs titled "Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting To Be Danced." Because I am living on my dwindling savings, I went to our local public library's website to see if they had a copy. I've been listening to the library copy ever since. It's a work of art. Hers is the voice I want to listen to while I am drawing and when I weave on my inkle loom sometime in the future or when I just want to hear the voice of a complex creative woman with heart.

It appears that I may be employed for 20-28 hours a week as a medical transcriptionist and editor sometime soon, working from my home. This is the first June in years that I haven't suffered from situational depression, and I am hopeful that I will be able to keep working as a transcriptionist for the rest of my life. That job will provide me with a modest income that will allow me to continue buying food, paying my bills, buying paper and colored pencils for drawing, buying strings for my musical instruments, buying yarn for weaving and other necessities of life.

I don't take anything for granted anymore and am grateful to have found Joni Mitchell and her fierceness and gentleness and her music and her art work once again.

"... But more than that / I know / You’ll be alright / You’ll be alright ..."

Ever since I heard the news about a month ago that she was in the hospital, I have been thinking about Joni Mitchell and how much her music has meant to me since I first heard her in 1968, when I was 18 years old. I had looked for and found no updates on her condition, and a few days ago I went to her website to check again. I didn't find an update, but I found 300 pages documenting her art work. Although I knew that she was a painter, I had no idea how much work she has done throughout her life. The catalogue opens with pieces of undetermined dates and then moves year by year through her art work that can be dated, beginning with drawings when she was 3 years old in 1947.

It has taken me several days to look at all the art work and notes. That was time well spent.

Here are some of my favorites:

"Untitled" -- 1947

"Calico Cat" -- 1969

"Ladies of the Canyon" -- 1969

"Sweet Sucker Dance (Abundance and Decline)" -- 1976

"Georgia O'Keeffe" -- 1978

"A Chair in the Sky" -- 1978

"In the Park of the Golden Buddha" -- 1995

"Untitled" -- 2001

"Untitled" -- 2002

"Dreamland" -- 2004

Panel 2 of "Green Flag Song" exhibition -- 2007

Panel 17 of "Green Flag Song" exhibition -- 2007

On her website, I also found that a video documenting her exhibition of 60 new works in Los Angeles in 2007:

IF (Joni Mitchell's adaptation of Rudyard Kipling's poem)

If you can keep your head

While all about you

People are losing theirs and blaming you

If you can trust yourself

When everybody doubts you

And make allowance for their doubting too.

If you can wait

And not get tired of waiting

And when lied about

Stand tall

Don’t deal in lies

And when hated

Don’t give in to hating back

Don’t need to look so good

Don’t need to talk too wise

If you can dream

And not make dreams your master

If you can think

And not make intellect your game

If you can meet

With triumph and disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same

If you can force your heart

And nerve and sinew

To serve you

After all of them are gone

And so hold on

When there is nothing in you

Nothing but the will

That’s telling you to hold on!

Hold on!

If you can bear to hear

The truth you’ve spoken

Twisted and misconstrued

By some smug fool

Or watch your life’s work

Torn apart and broken down

And still stoop to build again

With worn out tools

If you can draw a crowd

And keep your virtue

Or walk with Kings

And keep the common touch

If neither enemies nor loving friends

Can hurt you

If everybody counts with you

But none too much

If you can fill the journey

Of a minute

With sixty seconds worth of wonder and delight

Then

The Earth is yours

And Everything that’s in it

But more than that

I know

You’ll be alright

You’ll be alright.

Cause you’ve got the fight

You’ve got the insight

You’ve got the fight

You’ve got the insight

©2007; Crazy Crow Music

Still no update on the Joni Mitchell website, but I found this. 

Sending love and gratitude to you, Joni.