Ten Of The Best: Joni Mitchell (9)

Much as I love Carole King, Joan Baez, Emmylou Harris, Gillian Welch, Kate Wolf, Lucinda Williams and many other female singer-songwriters, for me Joni Mitchell is in a class of her own — right up there in that hallowed realm alongside Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan. Clouds, Ladies of the Canyon, Blue, For the Roses, Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira, Shadows and Light, Turbulent Indigo — all these records are absolute favourites of mine and, much like Bob Dylan's releases, form the soundtrack to different periods of my life. Blue has to be one of the classic LPs of all time; I still get the shivers if I play it now. Perhaps I didn't appreciate some of her later CDs quite as much, though Shine (2007) is superb, I think.

The video is a really good live version of Song for Sharon (from Joni's fabulous album Hejira), performed at a concert in London's Wembley Arena in 1983.

We Are Stardust, We Are Golden

We introduce ourselves/To Planets and to Flowers/But with ourselves/Have etiquettes/Embarrassments/And awes EMILY DICKINSON

Hello? Are you looking? Can you see? Ah, there you are. And this is me. I know I must often disappoint you, as you often disappoint me. But that is a fact of life. It should not be a disappointing fact. It is just a fact of nature. That is all. If we are disappointed with each other we might as well say we are disappointed with a frog, or with the beached shards of flotsam and jetsam at the sea's edge, or with the gentle soughing of the wind in the alder trees encircling the lake. In other words, 'disappoint' is the wrong word. In this context the whole idea of 'disappointment' is the wrong idea, and a uniquely human idea.

I will put it another way. Here I am. And there you are. Yes, I am somewhere in here, and you are somewhere out there. Indisputable fact? I think you may be in a small space, perhaps in a woodpecker's hole, or in a hare's form maybe, hidden in a little resting place in the woods or the corn fields, in a small refuge scooped out and sheltered from the wind and the rain.

Or perhaps you are to be found in one of those bigger spaces, exposed in the vast nothingness or somethingness between the stars, in the interstices of thought, or somewhere out among the uncaring, ice-cold molecules of the oceans.

Wherever we are, whoever we are, we are both insignificant - from the perspective of the universe. But from another viewpoint - and everything has another viewpoint - we may possess some tiny piece of significance, some unique, pulsating, significant identifier, some beating energy pulsing at our own eccentric rate, an erratic rate unique to ourselves.

We are all frighteningly yet also comfortingly unique. We are all the product of a completely individual set of genes and influences and experiences and other unalterable circumstances. And if we can recognise this uniqueness, this potentially alienating, yet also healthy, human, natural, necessary, inevitable difference between us, and respect it, and not fear or fight or criticize or ignore or reject it, then I think we may be getting somewhere. We may even be able to embrace this unique difference which keeps us apart; indeed, in the end, it may be the very thing which binds us together.

Hello? Let's look. Let's look and see. Here am I and there are you and you and you and all of you. A million miles away, yet somewhere here inside of me too, in some peculiar, mystical, electromagnetic way. Didn't Joni Mitchell once sing about us all being stardust? And about getting ourselves back to the Garden?

Let us all bow our heads to the different gods within each one of us.

Namaste.

Borderlines

Well, if you're travelin' in the north country fair/Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline... BOB DYLAN Girl Of The North Country from The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan

Good or bad, we think we know/As if thinking makes things so!/All convictions grow along a borderline... JONI MITCHELL Borderline from Turbulent Indigo

There's a place, so I've been told,/Every street is paved with gold/And it's just across the borderline... BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Across The Borderline from The Ghost Of Tom Joad

What is this thing about borderlines? I've been crossing lots of them myself on the Chemin, on the Camino, as I walk from country to country, region to region, province to province, field to field, stone to stone.

Of course there are the negative aspects, the geo-political aspects. Borders can mean division, barriers, hostility. The best book I've ever read on the political-emotional effects of borders is Michael Ondaatje's poetic novel The English Patient. I'll bet a lot more people have seen Anthony Minghella's film than read the book. The film is good - but the book's a whole lot better.

Borders, borderlines, borderlands. Frontiers, limits, edges. Crossing-points. This whole subject fascinates me. I've always loved those transitory places, those evolving places, the wind-beaten and sea-crashed places, those places on the furthest edge and at the outermost limit. Fisterra in Galicia, Finisterre in Brittany, the Lizard Peninsula in Cornwall. The Lleyn Peninsula in Wales. Scotland's Cape Wrath. The Florida Keys. Sicily. The French Camargue. The extremities of countries.

My favourite times of day are dawn, the border between night and day, and dusk, the border between day and night. Strange things can happen at these transient, fast-moving times. You feel alive.

Celts, white witches, Wiccans long recognized the magical power of the calendar's turning-points: the solstices, the equinoxes, the pagan festivals of Imbolc, Beltane, Lughnasadh and Samhain.

The border between water and land at the sea's edge. Between land and sky, or sea and sky, at the horizon. These are potent places.

This is a huge theme and I can only try and touch a chord.

Let's end with the lyrics of the song When I Get To The Border by Richard and Linda Thompson, which appears on their wonderful record I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight. Well, it is a Monday.

Dirty people take what's mine
I can leave them all behind
They can never cross that line
When I get to the border.
Sawbones standing at the door,
Waiting till I hit the floor,
He won't find me anymore
When I get to the border.
Monday morning, monday morning, closing in on me,
I'm packing up and running away
To where nobody picks on me.
If you see a box of pine,
With a name that looks like mine,
Just say I drowned in a barrel of wine
When I get to the border,
When I get to the border.

A one way ticket's in my hand,
Heading for the chosen land,
My troubles will all turn to sand
When I get to the border.
Salty girl with yellow hair,
Waiting in that rocking chair,
And if I'm weary I won't care
When I get to the border.
Monday morning, monday morning, closing in on me,
I'm packing up and running away
To where nobody picks on me.
Dusty road will smell so sweet,
Paved with gold beneath my feet,
And I'll be dancing down the streeet
When I get to the border,
When I get to the border.