Abstract
In this chapter, Clark remarks on the apparent absence of Canada in Joni Mitchell’s work and in writing about her and examines the extent to which she is fundamentally influenced by, and representative of, the Saskatchewan origins she left behind. Does she conveniently assimilate Canadian experience into generic American identity for mass appeal, or continue to express a uniquely Canadian perspective? Focusing on her early work, Clark argues that Mitchell represents a post-colonial identity involving an ‘urge for going’ that means both departure and return. With reference to Northrop Frye, Clark explicates the symbolism of history, geography, and climate that resonates within the lyricism of her songs, while tracing allusions to poetic tradition including Shakespeare, Milton, and Yeats. By seeing a social dimension in her love lyrics, Clark argues that Mitchell develops a ‘civic appeal’ envisioning ‘a new kind of communal belonging’. In describing erotic love, Mitchell also describes the love of country, and the interplay of tensions and desires inevitable in both, illuminating the troubled romances of English and French, Canada and US, individual and collective, self and other.
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Notes
- 1.
On alternate possibilities for hemispheric division, see Adams, ‘Imagining North America’, in Continental Divides: Remapping the Cultures of North America (1–28).
- 2.
I would slightly enlarge the boundaries from 1971–1975 of what Sean Nelson regards as Mitchell’s major period, but otherwise concur in his valuation that these albums ‘constitute a body of work that is as important and impressive as that of any artist of the twentieth century’ (8).
- 3.
‘California’ on Blue (1971). In the song the description is presumably of ‘Paris, France’, where the speaker is situated in the first line, but ‘cold’ and ‘settled’ can apply to Canada.
- 4.
‘River’ on Blue. The song’s evocation of her prairie childhood was prompted by celebrating Christmas in ‘the ‘strange and confining landscape’ of Los Angeles (Mercer 86).
- 5.
On Hejira. The upward motion of ‘Icarus ascending’ simultaneously prompts the precipitate descent of ‘I crashed into his arms’.
- 6.
Evocative place-names abound in her songs, such as ‘The wind is in from Africa/…Maybe I’ll go to Amsterdam/Maybe I’ll go to Rome,’ from ‘Carey’ on Blue (1971).
- 7.
Compare ‘I’ve always been a girl at home in a guy’s world’ (qtd. in Mercer 4), and ‘I think women have an aversion to me…I’m a thinking female and not a feminist’ (qtd. in Marom 248–249).
- 8.
On Blue.
- 9.
O’ Brien quotes her first husband Chuck Mitchell – ‘Hustle, hustle. I could not believe she was so forward’ (58) – who also claims his wife moved out the day that her green card arrived (62). On being sexually ‘competitive’, see Mitchell’s own account of seducing Tony Simon (in Mercer 138).
- 10.
On SIQUOMB, see O’Brien (57) who also glosses Crosby’s comment as affectionate (5).
- 11.
On ‘rejected sororities,’ see O’Brien (34). Mercer also notes that praise for Laura Nyro represents ‘one of her few flattering comments on fellow female musicians’ (84).
- 12.
On Ladies of the Canyon (1970).
- 13.
On Court and Spark (1974). For Geffen’s handsome tribute to both song and artist, see Sornverger and Sornberger (132–133).
- 14.
On Blue.
- 15.
On Ladies of the Canyon and The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) respectively.
- 16.
Typified by the pool languidly depicted on the inner cover of The Hissing of Summer Lawns.
- 17.
‘Carey’ on Blue.
- 18.
As formulated by Nicholas Jennings (qtd. in O’Brien 40).
- 19.
Some of the same protagonists feature in both contexts, such as Phil Ochs and Dave van Ronk (see O’Brien 48, 54–56).
- 20.
The index to the (predominantly formalist) study by Whitesell, fellow Canadian and Associate Professor of Music at McGill University, gives 11 references to Canada (plus 3 footnotes). The first indexed reference to Canada in O’Brien’s Shadows and Light occurs on page 98 (at which point Mitchell’s upbringing and early career have already been covered).
- 21.
As well as ‘Urge for Going’, the collection includes ‘The Tea-Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms)’, ‘Cherokee Louise’, ‘Ray’s Dad’s Cadillac’, ‘Let the Wind Carry Me’, ‘Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’, ‘Raised on Robbery’, ‘Paprika Plains’, ‘Song for Sharon’, ‘River’, ‘Chinese Café’, ‘Harlem in Havana’ and ‘Come in from the Cold’.
- 22.
There is not a single reference to Vietnam indexed in O’Brien’s entire biography. The aerial formation also prefigures ‘the bombers/Riding shotgun in the sky’ in ‘Woodstock’ on Ladies of the Canyon.
- 23.
Compare Frye: ‘Civilization in Canada, as elsewhere, has advanced geometrically across the country, throwing down the long parallel lines of the railways, dividing up the farm lands into chessboards of square-mile sections and concession-line roads’ (348–349).
- 24.
On Canadian cartography, see Berland, ‘Mapping Space’, in North of Empire: Essays on the Cultural Technologies of Space (242–272). On Franklin’s doomed expedition, see Atwood, Strange Things: the Malevolent North in Canadian Literature (7–34).
- 25.
For example, ‘Like the nights when the northern lights perform’ (‘Little Green’ on Blue). For lengthy, if perhaps indulgent, discussion of Mitchell’s art, see O’Brien (291–323).
- 26.
On Clouds.
- 27.
For a video of the ballet, see ‘Complete Vancouver 2010 Opening Ceremony’.
- 28.
‘Twisted’, the Wardell Gray/Annie Ross cover that concludes Court and Spark, jokingly alludes to the issue of schizophrenic double identity, in its punch-line, ‘Two heads are better than one’.
- 29.
Compare the oscillation implied by ‘I hate you some, I love you some/Oh I love you when I forget about me’ (‘All I Want’ on Blue).
- 30.
Hence the importance of the comma of apposition which implies logical aporia. O’Brien notes this was omitted from the title in the original pressing (74).
- 31.
Similarly, the ‘pretty lies’ of ‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’ can be re-evaluated if ‘When you gonna realize’ is glossed as ‘convert into real existence or fact’ (OED 1).
- 32.
Other usages in Paradise Lost include ‘recall’d/To life prolongd and promisd Race’ (XI.330–331); ‘how soon/Would height recall high thoughts’ (IV.94–95).
- 33.
Chuck Mitchell spent the entire royalties from his share of the sale of Gandalf Publishing on a Porsche which he promptly proceeded to write off in a crash (O’Brien 62).
- 34.
Compare Philip Larkin: ‘Life is slow dying’ (‘Nothing to be Said’, in Collected Poems 138).
- 35.
Mitchell’s daughter, Kelly was young enough to be imagined ‘laughing’ at the moment of separation for adoption: ‘I’ve gone and lost the best baby/That I ever had’ (‘River’ on Blue). O’Brien stresses Mitchell’s ‘rare gift of remaining good friends with ex-lovers’ (167; a point repeated in Mercer 140).
- 36.
Bellow, incidentally, was born in Montreal.
- 37.
‘Protegera nos foyers et nos droits’ in Routhier’s original French version, composed 1880. Mitchell’s ‘circus crowds’ (plus ‘ferris wheels’ and ‘another show’) also seem to allude to Yeats’ ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion’.
- 38.
A perhaps apocryphal quip by Mitchell, quoted by O’Brien (135) and Mercer (120), who both seem to assume a predominantly female audience, though gay Irish novelist Colm Toibin, for example, recalls ‘I was a sad nerd when I was a kid, and I just used to sit in my room listening to Blue over and over again’ (qtd. in O’Brien 330).
- 39.
Frye also comments that ‘Folk song is essentially a public and dramatic genre; the most subjective emotion it admits is sexual love’ (‘Turning New Leaves’ 240).
- 40.
‘Maybe I’ve never really loved/I guess that is the truth/I’ve spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes’ (‘Amelia’). Mitchell has commented that ‘the cold (Canadian) winters and Scottish and Irish blood create an emotionally withholding people’ (O’Brien 260).
- 41.
On Blue. The album as a whole similarly opens spaciously with ‘I am on a lonely road and I am travelling’ (‘All I Want’) and progresses to final entrapment: ‘Only a phase, these dark café days’ (‘The Last Time I Saw Richard’).
- 42.
Though it was also included on her compilation album, Misses (1996).
- 43.
‘The song’s blue notes gives its sound a bluish cast that approaches synesthasia’ (Mercer 113).
- 44.
‘Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire’, on Court and Spark.
- 45.
Frye emphasizes the ‘tone of deep terror with regard to nature’ in Canadian poetry (‘Conclusion’ 350). In Atwood’s account, the Wendigo similarly embodies the spirit of winter, privation, and the threat of starvation (Strange Things 62–86).
- 46.
Whitesell does not engage with the latent bodily eroticism of the song. Mitchell’s own critique of an Augustinian model of confession is quoted in Mercer (29–32).
- 47.
‘Woodstock’ on Ladies of the Canyon. Here she writes an anthem for an American cultural event par excellence, but from an outsider’s perspective in more ways than one: she missed the festival. Her manager had instructed her not to risk missing a prior engagement on the Dick Cavett show (O’Brien 109).
- 48.
‘Big Yellow Taxi’ on Ladies of the Canyon.
- 49.
‘Help Me’ on Court and Spark.
Works Cited
Mitchell, Joni. Blue. Reprise, 1971.
Mitchell, Joni. Court and Spark. Asylum, 1974.
Mitchell, Joni. Misses. Reprise, 1996.
Mitchell, Joni. Ladies of the Canyon. Reprise, 1970.
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Clark, S. (2017). ‘Something’s Lost but Something’s Gained’: Joni Mitchell and Postcolonial Lyric. In: Connolly, T., Iino, T. (eds) Canadian Music and American Culture. Pop Music, Culture and Identity. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50023-2_2
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