Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell (24 page)

Any time you try something new, you will be attacked for it—or “crucified” as Nietzsche says: “They crucify him who writes new values on the new law-tables, they sacrifice the future to themselves—they crucify the whole human future!”

Mitchell seems happy to let herself be slaughtered for stepping away from the fold, but that hasn't stopped her from speaking out against rigid thinking. When
Shine
, her last album, came out in 2007, she told Tim Murphy of
New York
magazine
that she had remained silent for half a decade because she was too angry: “Angry at the American people. At Christians. At theology—the ignorance of it. And I didn't want to write about it. I removed myself from society and painted. It was a method of avoiding the anger, not addressing it.” But she eventually confronted the rage through research and creation: “I confronted a lot of it and worked it out to a point. I read the Koran, I started Genesis, Augustine, did a lot of theological research.” When Murphy asks if she's religious, she says the “God of the Old Testament is the depiction of evil” and she prefers a Buddhist view, which is more compatible with “original Gnostic Christianity. It's not theological. You have to work on yourself—you don't have a saviour. It's self-study.”
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When Mitchell tells us she has no saviour and she's self-studying spirituality, she's affirming the core Nietzschean idea of emancipation through creation: the old Creator is dead; long live the new creator. It's an empowering sense of purpose, but living in a world without God can be alienating. Mitchell articulates this sense of dislocation, as well as several Nietzschean metaphors, in the oft-covered song, “River,” which begins:

It's coming on Christmas
They're cutting down trees
They're putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river I could skate away on

Just about everyone can agree that this is one of the saddest yule-time tunes ever written. Ask your friend why it's so sad, and she'll tell you it's because she's just broken up with her boyfriend—“the best baby she ever had.” There's no doubt that's one level of the narrative, but the whole backdrop of the song refers to Christmas and the idea that people are putting up reindeer and singing songs of joy and peace. The narrator seems unable to relate to these actions, and so she pines for a long stretch of frozen water she can escape on—she wants a frozen river.

“River” can be a big word in philosophy, because it's often used as a metaphor for life itself. Ever since Heraclitus said you can't step into the same river twice, the image has been used to convey the notion of flux and change, the unknowable dimensions of existence. Nietzsche pushed the metaphysical metaphor into a trenchant question about God when he likened a frozen river to the icy, thin veneer of religious meaning. The river of life is always moving, but in a god-state we live with the illusion the world is fixed—that good and evil are absolutes and that we can pass from one side of river to the other without drowning. “Over the stream everything is firmly fixed, all values of things, the bridges, the concepts, all ‘Good' and ‘Evil:' all are firmly fixed!” writes Nietzsche in “Of Old and New Law Tables” from
Zarathustra
. “But when the hard winter comes, the animal-tamer of streams, then even the cleverest learn mistrust; and truly, not only the simpletons say then: ‘Is everything meant to stand still?'—that is a proper winter doctrine, a fine thing for unfruitful seasons, a fine consolation for hibernators and stay-at-homes. ‘Fundamentally, everything stands still'—the thawing wind, however preaches to the contrary!”
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This notion of “fundamental” ideals getting in the way of spiritual flow resonated for Mitchell when she wrote “River.” She understood that a long, frozen stretch of water isn't just an icy river: it's a spiritual escape route. Nietzsche used the frozen river as a metaphor for what happens to the soul in a God-dominated deep-freeze, and Mitchell skates away with it on the tune that cranks up every Christmas. She wants a God she can love and believe in on Christ's birthday, so she can belong to the same reality where kitschy Christmas decor feels good and she can fly away in distracted bliss. But she doesn't. She has no him. And she has no Him, which explains why “River” is such a melancholic Christmas song: it's not just mourning the end of a relationship; it's a dirge for the dead God.

“Circle Game”

“Don't Interrupt the Sorrow”

“River”

“A Case of You”

“The Three Great Stimulants”

“Passion Play”

“Slouching Toward Bethlehem”

“Sire of Sorrow”

“All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause—life is our cause
When I think of your kisses my mind see-saws
Do you see—do you see—do you see how you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue.”
—Joni Mitchell, “All I Want,”
Blue

Even the Word was made flesh. So now is the time to strip the meta off the physical and get down to the naked truth of Joni Mitchell: she, like the rest of us, is an animated bag of water subject to great emotional swells of feeling. The only real difference between Mitchell and the masses is her ability to channel those tidal movements of emotion into song—and not just any songs, but music that will most likely last the ages because it continues to resonate in the hearts and minds of so many, particularly when it comes to matters of love.

Romantic love tears off the clothes of intellect and forces us to rub up against the Other and, in so doing, understand ourselves a little bit better. And that's just spiritually. Creatively speaking, we're “making” love—and experiencing the same immersion in the moment as artists describe when making a masterpiece. The sexual act offers proof of our fleshiness and in its explosion of fluids and hormonal secretions, reminds us we are physical and, as such, mortal. The pleasure and the pain, the fullness and the emptiness, all the dimensions of the human condition find immediate and accessible form through the hot pulse of romantic love. As a result, songs about this swollen feeling in our soul have a tendency to stick around and form the soundtrack of our lives.

Joni Mitchell's music is on the jukebox of a generation. Her songs of love and heartbreak form an emotional and sonic prairie of experience. The love song—seemingly trite when in bloom and cathartically pure in mourning—lets us surrender to the human condition through creative communion.

Mitchell's image as the wailing lover and mentor for mopes is a large part of the Joni mythology: it's the reason why she was labelled “confessional” despite her many protests. Yet the reality of Mitchell's love life is actually far more cryptic than her open-artery songs would lead you to believe. And her feelings about sex seem far more convoluted than any chart of hearts and arrows.

When Morrissey interviewed Mitchell for
Rolling Stone
in 1997, the black-trousered sex symbol asked her if she was ever promiscuous. “In terms of the times, I guess we all were. It was a hedonistic time, you know,” she said. When he asked her if she was still promiscuous, she said: “No. I've always been a serial monogamist. But there was a time when you were traveling—a traveling woman, like a traveling man—and there were some brief encounters.”
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There's just a hint of revisionism in this. Evidently, she was embarrassed by the indirect accusations she was a slut, but she herself sings: “I used to count lovers like railroad cars / I counted them on my side / Lately I don't count nothing / I just let things slide.” The lyrics for “Just Like This Train” (off
Court and Spark
) continue: “The stationmaster's shuffling cards / Boxcars are banging in the yards / Jealous lovin' will make you crazy / If you can't find your goodness / 'Cause you lost your heart.” The honesty of these lyrics is the core of Mitchell's mythical power as love's poetic oracle: she's honest enough to bare the ugliness of jealousy and the “sour grapes” of losing on the battlefield of love. Her reflective courage gives us permission to indulge and purge at the same time.

Mitchell draws so much content from her romantic connections, there are times when you have to wonder which need is serving which: is she making love to a variety of different men because she's eagerly seeking a lifelong mate? Or is she using the relationships to stoke the wood stove of creativity? The answer is both, because as much as Mitchell has been hurt by her love affairs, she's managed to transcend the heartbreak through creation. Moreover, she seems to assume an almost voyeuristic role in romance as a way of maintaining a safe distance, as well as critical perspective. Like many women, she's used sex as a tool—even a machete.

Mitchell blazed an impressive trail through the sexual moonscape of L.A.'s arid canyons and dry gulches. After conceiving with Brad McMath only to be abandoned with a baby in her belly, Mitchell appears to have made a decision to take charge of her own sexuality—and make it work for her, regardless of how many hearts got broken along the way. And she was a heartbreaker. David Crosby admits he fell into the so-called “cement mixer,” and that Mitchell just isn't the “kind of person you have a relationship with.” Another ex, Dave Naylor, points out Mitchell's ability to create and re-create the thread of history using her own will: “If you're in Joan's life, you're going to get blamed,” he explains in Sheila Weller's book. “Joan rewrites history really well, and once she tells a story once or twice in her head, it comes true to her—I call it her iron whim.”
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We know Mitchell hates talking about her love life. She says the music speaks for itself and the gossip is unimportant, but it's part of the historical record thanks to the big names she bedded, so even if it's distasteful, we have to catalogue the highlight reel of her apparent conquests. There were more than are listed here, but this is a book about the creative experience, not a coffee klatsch about Mitchell's sex life. The focus of the sexual encounters will follow the arc of her creative evolution, because love begets creation, and no one found a way to make love work—emotionally and creatively—better than Joni Mitchell.

If we go back to Mitchell's descriptions of growing up on the Canadian flatlands, boys don't really figure into the mix. She was attached to cigarettes, her first uke, and dancing on the wrong side of the so-called tracks. She was also transported by Rachmaninoff's
Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini
and confesses to having a hopelessly romantic side. The first real boyfriend of note was McMath, the art student who headed to California when he found out Joni was pregnant. He didn't last long as a lover, but his actions did indirectly inspire “Little Green.” He also forced the young artist into a completely different life track, forever making her Joni Mitchell and setting her on a creative journey where love, and its fleshy expression, could always be seen as a potential liability.

Chuck Mitchell followed, and while the marriage did not last, it was a creative endeavour. They toured together, but when egos started to clash, the relationship disintegrated—but not before Mitchell was legally entitled to work in the U.S. While single and exploring her sexuality in New York City in 1967, she wrote the song that would lay the foundation for her career and cement her into the annals of popular culture: “Both Sides Now.”

It's almost impossible to believe a love song as profoundly wise and tempered as “Both Sides Now” came from the brain of a twentysomething kid from Saskatchewan, but it did, and even Mitchell seems mystified by the process that led to a timeless look at the reality of love. “I was reading
Henderson the Rain King
on a plane,” she says, “and early in the book Henderson... is also up in a plane. He's on his way to Africa and he looks down and sees these clouds. I put down the book, looked out the window and saw clouds too and I immediately started writing the song. I had no idea that the song would become as popular as it did.”
3

Mitchell says she started writing “Both Sides Now” while she was still married to Chuck Mitchell, which almost explains the world-weariness within the song—as well as its long view of life: “Something's lost, but something's gained in living every day.” She sounds like an aging matron sitting with a granddaughter on her knee, darning socks: “Life happens, dearie.” The song's timelessness resides not only in its lyrical acceptance of life's disappointments, both romantically and spiritually, but also in its obvious melodic appeal. “Both Sides Now” is a catchy tune—as witnessed by its
Billboard
ranking (number eight pop single) and Judy Collins's Grammy for best folk performance. A few years after Collins's single, Mitchell recorded her version and ditched the glossy production used by Collins in favour of a more stripped-down sound. Mitchell's vocal phrasing also feels more grounded, avoiding the grand gymnastic runs in the climax—as if to say: life is what it is, and we don't know shit.

“Cactus Tree,” off her debut, was written after “Both Sides Now” but recorded earlier, and from the beginning, it establishes Mitchell's emotional distance as a thematic strand. “She will love them when she sees them / They will lose her if they follow / And she only means to please them / And her heart is full and hollow / Like a cactus tree.” Mitchell told Penny Valentine that “Cactus Tree” was a song about a “modern woman” who saw the world was full of “lovely men” but found herself driven by “something else other than settling down to frau-duties.” Mitchell said the song “has to do with [her] own experiences” because she, too, is a seeker—a woman on the move obsessed with freedom. She wants to find a way of living that allows her to extract all the wonders without sacrificing huge slices of herself.

The quality of “Both Sides Now” and “Cactus Tree” suggests there are great creative riches to be extracted from love that's not quite right, as well as romantic partnerships that sit like a burr under the saddle.

Mitchell carried this lesson forward, and by the time she met Leonard Cohen, it appears she was on the same page as he was when it came to romance. After all, Mitchell had already given birth, gotten married, and was now divorced. She had boyfriends. She went drinking alone. She was only in her early twenties, but she had a secure sexual ego. She was the “greatest lover.” She played the fearless conqueror with an almost manly bravado. From the famous face of Leonard Cohen, she moved on to bona fide rock star David Crosby—whom she tossed into her cement mixer and emerged with concrete creative results: a record deal that guaranteed her creative autonomy, big buzz as the hottest new thing in folk music, and an association with Guinevere—the legendary beauty who made King Arthur a cuckold, as well as the song Crosby wrote around the time he met Mitchell in Coconut Grove.

If she had been writing a book on success in show business, Mitchell couldn't have scripted it better. “She was such an unusual, passionate and powerful woman,” says Crosby. “I was writing things like ‘Guinnevere'... things like that made me very attracted to her.”
4
Mitchell's first impression of Crosby was nowhere near as glamorous, or as fawning, but it was affectionate: “I remember being introduced to him and thinking he reminded me of Yosemite Sam. I used to call him secretly Yosemite Sam in my mind... David was wonderful company and a great appreciator. When it comes to expressing infectious enthusiasm, he is probably the most capable person I know. His eyes were like star sapphires to me. When he laughed, they seemed to twinkle like no one else's.”
5

It was those twinkling eyes that seduced her into singing into a piano and forever established the “bell jar” soundscape that affirmed the Mitchell optics: chiselled, pure, and oddly fragile. We know now that was largely a creative fiction—Mitchell operated more like a piece of heavy machinery than a dainty floral specimen—but that's where the listener's imagination takes over and ascribes meanings to songs that may, or may not, be entirely accurate.

People have looked at the words and music for “The Dawntreader,” for instance, and immediately associated it with Crosby because of its sailing references, but Mitchell is loath to pin any tune on a particular romantic donkey. She's far more eager to distill the universal so that the range of emotion is accessible to anyone. “I have felt that it was perhaps my role on occasion to pass on anything I learned that was helpful to me in the route to fulfillment or a happy life... including anything I've discovered about myself,” she told Jenny Boyd. “I feel that the best of me and the most illuminating things I discover should go into the work. I feel a social responsibility to that. I think I know my role: I am a witness. I'm to document my experience one way or another.”
6

This conviction in the larger purpose of the music is something Mitchell shared with another ex who proved a creative inspiration as well as a compelling romantic partner. Graham Nash met Mitchell in Ottawa, the quaint Canadian capital city, in 1968. Nash had already been warned about Mitchell by his new friend, and soon-to-be singing partner, Crosby. “Watch out for this woman,” Crosby said, according to Nash. When the former singer for the Hollies laid eyes on her, he was immediately smitten. “I saw this woman sitting by herself with what looked like a Bible on her lap. She was something to behold,” says Nash in Sheila Weller's book. “So I walked over and introduced myself and she invited me to her room in the hotel, and I ended up spending the night with her, and...” Nash drifts off into space. “I haven't been the same since.” Mitchell didn't use her physical presence to woo the Englishman, though it was clearly part of the love elixir brewing that night. She pulled out her instrument and started strumming. “She played fifteen songs, almost her entire first record, and a couple of different ones too.” Nash says, “By the time she got through ‘Michael from Mountains' and ‘I Had a King,' I was gone. I had never heard music like that.”
7

Mitchell and her new love eventually moved in together and set up a common creative hive in Laurel Canyon. As in previous love relationships, there would be a lot of creation going on—and just enough conflict to keep things cooking. “She was a little skittish about commitment,” Nash told Sheila Weller. “She didn't want to be like her grandmothers: They had given up artistic careers to take care of husbands... [it] was always an unspoken thing between Joan and me.”