erasing clouds
 

Goodwill Hunting: Joni Mitchell

essay by matthew webber

The Big Yellow Circle Game (Ostensibly, a Joni Mitchell Review)

1. The Prologue, The Apology, or
Getting What You Give

Joni Mitchell hates modern music – except for that one New Radicals hit.

I wish I could cite the source of this outrageousness in order to let you look it up yourself, or at least to prove I’m not insane. The problem is, I read it once – at least, I’m pretty sure I did – so now it’s a fact I drop in conversation, along with other awesome facts like who co-wrote “Rump Shaker” (The Neptunes’ Pharrell Williams!), which Smiths song does T.A.T.U. cover (“How Soon Is Now?”!!), and what’s “The Lemon Song” actually about (not lemons!!!)? For these three facts, I own the proofs: a tape, a CD, and a forehead-slapping duh. Few things in life are known with such certainty. Sadly, friends’ birthdays are not among these things.

But Joni’s screed? I’m sure, but I’m not. Doesn’t it seem like something she’d say, something that should be true, if it isn’t? If nothing else, she likes the New Radicals, putting their song on some “Favorites” kind of mixtape, something I’ve seen at Target, I believe, or some other place with crap you don’t need. Whatever it was, wherever it was, I obviously didn’t purchase the thing, choosing instead some more recent works, possibly something by Avril Lavigne, an artist Joni wishes dead. (Hint: I sometimes dabble in fiction, but also a bit of autobiography.)

From the little I’ve read about Joni through the years, I’ve gathered she’s proud of her work, which she should be, even if she gets kinda prickly about it, and disses other artists who aren’t named Bob Dylan. Her work is “dense” and “rich” and “obtuse,” and other short adjectives that show you I don’t get it. She’s one of those artists whose brilliance I recognize, whose towering influence is something I acknowledge, whose timeless contributions to the arts are unassailable. She’s all that and a bag of fat-free chips.

And yet, I don’t really like her music. Although I certainly appreciate it on an intellectual level, I seldom actually want to play it. I seldom choose to listen to Joni. Even now, as I’m typing this essay, respecting the hell out of everything she’s done, I’m choosing to listen to newer, lesser artists, just like I pretty much do every day. I mean, sure, A Fine Frenzy, whom I’ve seen in concert twice, can write a pretty song – but will they last for forty years? Will Feist outlast her iPod commercial? Who, besides me, even likes Tanya Donelly? Is Jewel even writing songs anymore? Has anyone heard of Charlotte Martin? None of these artists has a trace of Joni’s genius, but yet, they’re all artists whose work I prefer.

So, yes, just to clarify, yes, you’re right, yes, I am absolutely telling you that I’d rather listen to Belly (both albums), Jewel (her first two albums), and an artist (or two) whom you probably haven’t heard of than the great Joni Mitchell. And yes, this makes me a horrible person, and probably an even worse critic to boot.

And Avril? Yeah, I’d totally hit that. Wow, that totally came out of nowhere.

This is something I can’t defend, but something that, yes, is a part of who I am. The Joni thing; the Avril thing; the sellout, contrarian essayist thing – each of these things is but one little piece of the puzzle I’ve titled “The One-Piece Puzzle.” Tangents? Cheap shots? Crappy, unworkable metaphors? All of them, too, are who I am, in part – a hack, no doubt, whom Joni would hate. I even write songs that Joni would excoriate. Wouldn’t it be funny if the two of us had beef?

Really, what I am is sorry. I mean that. Sorry for being so, I don’t know, glib. For actually liking a cover tune better – namely, The Counting Crows and Vanessa Carlton version of “Big Yellow Taxi,” which is funkier, poppier, and all-around catchier to my ears – than the Joni original. (Note: According to everyone else I’ve ever met, the cover tune is way more craptacular.) As always, Vanessa’s cooing is sexy, and Duritz and Co. don’t fuck it up too badly. (Note: According to everyone else, they actually do.) I think, again, it’s less obtuse. Sorry, again, for being so terrrible.

To Joni and her fans, I’m sorry. I am. Don’t blame her for inspiring this, even though she truly did. Like, that’s how awesome Joni really is, if she can even inspire me, when I really don't even like her that much! Please continue to listen to Joni – if I’m not doing it, someone has to!

But surely, there’s an artist you also don’t get, someone whose praise you’re tired of hearing, someone whose fans you’re tired of debating, someone you know you’re supposed to adore, even though you’ve tried, and nope, you still don’t, someone like The Beatles, The Clash, or Wesley Willis, someone whose cult you’ve tried to understand, someone whose blah blah greatest band blah. I wouldn’t get too angry if you mocked Tori Amos, probably ‘cause your mockery would finally break my heart. “Tori? Not Joni?” you’d ask as I lay dying. “You know she’s like the originator, right?”

And isn’t that the thing about our All-Time Favorite Artists? We can’t understand why the whole world’s smoking crack. “What do you mean you don’t like My Band? Haven’t you heard Their Life-Changing Album? Doesn’t That Song, The One That Really Speaks To Me, likewise tell you The Truth About The World?”

Me, you, Joni, everyone – perhaps we can all agree on this: The New Radicals’ “You Get What You Give” is one of those timeless songs, despite or because of its happy generalities. (Also, the dude wore this huge floppy hat.) Joni and I completely agree. That is something I know to be true. Except for the whole hating-modern-music thing.

And finally, do you remember the ending, when the Floppy-Hatted Guy dissed all those other artists, some of whom he probably liked? (You do remember this song, though, right? "You Get What You Give"? The New Radicals? No?) Well, maybe you’ll remember me for dissing Joni Mitchell, even though I respect her very, very much, ‘cause that’s just me attracting publicity. That's just me being clever and stuff. If nothing else, I’m just being honest. Because hey, if I thought it could make me superfamous, I’d even be willing to diss my favorite artists. That’s why Ben Folds is dead to me now. And also Jeff Buckley. What? Too soon?

It worked for ol’ Floppy Hat, so why not for me?

Responses to music are never objective. This, I know for a fact.

Hence, I circle, around and around, dancing, while seated, to a dusty old record.

2. The Unread Epic, The Rhyming Interlude, or
If a Tree Gets Killed to Print This Page, Does That Mean Someone’s Actually Reading It?

Sadness is an epigraph, read and forgotten,
Fading to yellow, discarded, unwanted,
Signature ghostly, book cover haunted.
Sadness is an epigraph, read and forgotten.

– “The Unread Epic”

No, that’s not a Joni Mitchell lyric, although Ladies of the Canyon is full of such wisdom, words worth savoring, saving, then sharing – and memorable melodies for the Counting Crows to cover. (“Big Yellow Taxi” appears on the album.) That’s actually a poem I wrote this very day, to share with the people who visit this page, to maybe remember and secret away, ‘cause I write reviews like Pinter writes plays. Joni’s work deserves much better; sorry for writing this, what? This letter? Whatever you think I’m saying, I mean, ‘cause nothing lasts forever, even unrecycled reams. Hey, f’reals, you should read this album, ‘cause Joni’s poems are better than this pathetic pablum. And if there are problems? Yo, I’ll solve ‘em. Check out a book while this record revolves ‘em.

Hate the reviewer, love the reviewed? The point is, her insights are really, really shrewd. And yes, my skills are kind of crude. Thus, you’re going, “Really, dude? Joni Mitchell to ‘Ice Ice Baby’? What’s next? A riff on Britney’s ‘Crazy’? That songs sucks. And so do you. She’s a pro; you’re just a tool.”

You’ve probably forgotten my epigraph already. Even though I wrote it, I’ve forgotten it myself. And even though caffeine makes my hands unsteady, I’ve no one to blame for this game but myself. Before I slide her on the shelf, I better write what I wanted already, especially since I’m repeating myself:

Sadness is an epilogue no one will read.
Rhyme time’s finished. I’ll proceed.

3. The Essay Proper, The Unloved Inscription, or
This Is the Sound of One Hand Scribbling

They break my heart as few things do, those loving inscriptions from parents or lovers, those names and dates on the insides of books, closed for years and given away, to sit on sagging thrift-store shelves, to wait for some cheapskate to find them and read them and take them home for a dollar or less and place them with love on his own sagging shelves. (The aforementioned cheapskate is me, of course.) He can’t understand his fortune and luck, paperback gifts to himself, for a buck? (I have to get my heartbreak from somewhere, right? [Also, I have to bust a rhyme.])

I fear that the books I’ve given as gifts have met with similar, dust-covered fates, maybe read once, if even at all, and put in a box in some dust-covered place – closets, attics, garages, trunks – and finally in the place where they often end up, the place where maybe they’ve always belonged, the place marked “Donations” or “This Is Not Trash,” smelling like memories, mothballs, and mold, next to limp boxes of souvenir cups and screen-printed T-shirts for now-defunct clubs.

You know the place; it's behind your local supermarket. Sometimes it's a big red mailbox-looking thing. Other times, it's just a Dumpster.

In other words, I worry that you've tossed away my gifts, instead of cherishing them forever and ever.

Thus, I don’t write inscriptions anymore. I’d hate for some stranger to read what I’ve written and know the end of my story already. Worse, I’d hate to read it myself, my very own words in my very own scrawl, and know that it’s not just the book that’s been pitched. That is one bargain I never want to find, not in a thrift store or any other place, especially not on the new boyfriend’s shelf, a thing that’s actually happened to me, but only if “actually” really means “never,” which naturally means that it’s possible, right? That is a fiction I never want to live.

I’d much rather find some stranger’s inscription – it’s like a free gift for buying the book! – and squint to decipher the hard-to-read letters and answer the questions the words seem to pose. It’s easy to do if the reason is mentioned: a birthday, graduation, First Communion, just because... It’s harder to do, and more fun, if it isn’t, if I’m left to my guesses for why the book was given – or why this particular copy of Ladies of the Canyon that I now have in my possession features handwritten annotations like “strange but alright,” “bought it for this,” and “don’t care for much” next to every song.

This is a riddle I’ll have to write myself.

Who would write such things, and why?

4. The Complete Annotated Tracklist, or
Joni Mitchell’s Two-Star Review

Here's the back of Ladies of the Canyon, saved from a Goodwill store in Waukesha, Wisconsin, with the previous owner’s comments in italics. (They’re actually written in blue ink.)

“Morning Morgantown”: nice
“For Free”: good
“Conversation”: OK
“Ladies of the Canyon”: tune OK
“Willy”: don’t care for much
“The Arrangement”: strange but alright
“Rainy Night House,” “The Priest,” and “Blue Boy”: strangish
“Big Yellow Taxi”: good
“Woodstock”: quite good
“The Circle Game”: * bought it for this *

These words in blue ink are what inspired mine. That's what inspired whatever this is.

5. The Essay Continued, Completed, and Capped, or
This Is a Girl, and This Is Me

I picture a girl who’s about to turn thirteen, asking her parents to buy her this record, even though they’ve banned all records from their house, fearing, old-fashionedly, they’ll inspire sex and drugs. It’s 1970, the record is new, and people are amazingly walking on the moon. The future is full of rockets and boyfriends, and all this girl wants is a record of her own, made by an artist who speaks both to and for her, as well as to her friends, whom she’s worried have outgrown her. Her two best friends can loan her this album, but owning it is almost as vital as hearing it. It’s something to touch whenever she wants, something to look at, something to play. It’s something to keep as a secret in her room. Joni understands what her parents never will, trapped as they are in their paved-over paradise, looking out windows only when they're closing them – it’s curtains for them; for them, it’s always twilight. Joni understands there’s more to life than this: clear-cut forests, freshly planted saplings, and brand-new subdivisions ironically named for trees.

Anyway, the girl, whose name is something seasonal, wishes on every shooting star, as well as the ones that merely, feebly twinkle, for Big Ideas like Truth and Love, Understanding and Independence, Becoming a Woman and Seeing the World. She maybe wishes her parents were dead. She closes her eyes to wish and dream; at all other times, she keeps them open wide.

She’s turning thirteen, and this is what she wants. Far from all canyons, she wants to be a lady. What she wants most is to find her perfect self, whoever that is, whatever her soundtrack.

Anyway, of course, her parents disappoint her. Her birthday arrives; her gift does not. Instead, they get her something for them. A book, perhaps; it doesn’t matter. It’s something she won’t remember in a year.

Defiantly, she takes her money (at least they had the foresight and the kindness for that), and buys this record, her first, for herself.

To commemorate this first small transgression of hers, this act of doing something forbidden, she scribbles her thoughts on the back of the record, the first time she'll substitute music for a diary.

The record doesn’t disagree. Joni sings, but she also listens. The girl, our heroine, listens back. Her favorite songs are conversations, revealing her heart and most of its mysteries. (Some will remain for the rest of her life.)

So, she answers. So, she writes. Describing these songs, she’s describing herself – just as I’m doing, right here, right now. Long before blogs or Amazon reviews, I'm giving this girl an outlet for self-expression. I'm substituting Joni for Tori or Belly, as well as fiction for autobiography, while totally projecting myself onto the girl. That’s what all the great writers do. That’s a technique I’m trying to copy.

The problem is, the girl is real. Or rather, someone scribbled those notes. The scribbler is not a fictional character. And here I am, projecting away, and probably getting it totally wrong. I'm probably nowhere near the truth. (The cryptic words could just be graffiti.) Still, it seems we shared the same impulse, to define ourselves through the music we love, or at least to write words for no one but ourselves.

For just one dollar, I got to sneak a peek. For free, I'm giving the world the same chance.

But back to the scribbler, the real-life girl. She wrote those wonderful words for herself: "bought it for this" and "good" and "quite good." What did she mean? She’s the only one who knows.

I read her handwriting, whoever she is, and I hear her talking, now, to me. I hear her voice, and I answer back. More than the album on which they’re written, this lonely girl’s pen strokes inspired me to type. They saddened me, too, like Joni does for others. I think I'm starting to get the appeal. Some of her best songs wrap you up like blankets. Once discovered, now discarded; once a treasure, now a bargain – it’s up to me to save them, reclaim them: the songs, the girl, and maybe myself.

This is not about Joni at all.

Spending our time in music stores and libraries, is anyone reading this grasping for our dreams? We haven’t thrown them away yet, have we? I mean, we’re still writing our lives, are we not? On record sleeves, in unread blogs, we’re still conversing – we’re still alive?

Or else, have all of us – to quote the great New Radicals – "cured the dreamer’s disease" already? Forget Courtney Love and Marilyn Manson – has life come around and kicked our ass in?

I know I spend way too much time in the bargain bins. I know I should make some music of my own. That would be nice, and even OK. That could be quite good.

A final thought, which I'm not making up: They recently paved my apartment building’s parking lot. Across the street, they cut down some trees, in order to put up a similar building. How soon will it be before it blocks the creek? Now, it already does, I think. Not that I actually look out my window. Instead, I sit and type in the dark. Instead, my blinds are tightly closed. The record stopped, but I kept on typing, and all I hear now is the rush of traffic. It kind of sounds like the rush of water – and yet I know it’s not. It’s gone. But don’t it always seem to go?

Yes, it’s strangish. Don’t care for much.

Paradise, for me, is more than one reader.

Visit the author's website at www.matthewwebber.net


this month's issue
archive
about erasing clouds
links
contact
     

Copyright (c) 2007 erasing clouds