I have to agree with this comment:
As difficult and delusional a person as Joni Mitchell is — and as little desire as I have to actually meet her — I find it extremely hard to harbor any personal animosity towards the person who wrote “The Urge for Going”, “That Song About the Midway”, “All I Want”, “California”, “River”, “A Case of You”, “Free Man in Paris”, “Refuge of the Roads” and numerous other brilliant pop songs, and who also recorded the definitive — indeed, timeless — versions of most of them.
Yes, she was an amazingly talented young woman. I’ve never been able to figure out what she does on guitar, with the weird and haunting tunings. Beautiful voice, beautiful melodies, poetic lyrics, great piano and guitar.
This Morgellons condition has people believing themselves to be infected with parasites, but there is nothing wrong with them?
People do show symptoms, but the hives and rashes are regarded to be psychosomatic, that is, “all in their head”? Do the persons affected actually believe they have parasites or do they claim they have a neurological condition giving symptoms of parasites? And if it is “all in their head”, isn’t there a continuum between a psychiatric disorder and many neurologicial conditions (dementias, Parkinson’s) treated with some of the same medicines?
It appears that doctors attempt to treat this with anti-psychotic medicine, which many patients refuse, believing doctors to be dismissive of their problem. But it seems that Ms. Mitchell accepts that what she has is a psychiatric condition in that she is taking a medicine leaving “a fog” in her head without doing much to help her?
So is she suffering from major mental illness, or does the medical profession dismiss a self-diagnosis of mental illness as being “all in your head.”
Part of the syndrome of mental illness is social withdrawal along with people seeking to engage with you socially (her “deadwood” friends) finding you “difficult.” Do you suppose her misanthropy is simply the consequences of liberal ideology or perhaps a manifestation that she is not well?
I know the suffering artist is a trope, but could there be something to it in her case, that the mental state that is making her miserable, keeping her friends at arms length, and engendering amusement at her naive environmental ideology, could have contributed to her creativity?
I confess I never got Joni Mitchell; just not my taste. Give me Sandy Denny (and the rest of Fairport Convention, esp. Richard Thompson – one of the top five guitarists of the last 50 years) for the folk-styled stuff, and Patti Smith as the black leather poetess of punk (and a great interpreter of other people’s songs – her cover of “So You Want To Be a Rock and Roll Star” is definitive).
Very sad to read of Ms. Mitchell’s current condition though. I don’t subscribe to the tortured artist trope; I suspect that a better adjusted artist would yield more and possibly better art.
So many artists rely getting pass based on the “beautiful art, awful person” theory.
‘America is like really into Velveeta (the processed cheese). Everything has to be homogenized. Their music should be homogenized, their beer is watered down, their beauties are all the same. The music is the same track’.
Yep, delusional.
One wonders where this “America” she sees is, if anywhere outside her head, and what passing vague resemblance it has to the actual America…
As Laura Ingraham said, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Linda Rondstadt, et al should just shut up and sing. Thats what they’re good at, and nobody is too interested in your views of how life is in your world.
Didn’t Joan Baez, at least at one point, “own up” to the consequences of what she was advocating, i.e., the Cambodian killing fields?
To admit “I was wrong” goes a lot farther than many people, if you know what I mean.
She thought she was once golden, fancied herself to be made from stardust. But the truth is, on the way to the garden, she fell into the Devil’s bargain and was trapped…..