Joni
Mitchell must like the word Blue. Throughout her early albums, the word appears
(as a colour or a concept, blue or blues) with extraordinary frequency.
On Clouds (1969) there is a song, ‘Roses
Blue;’ Ladies of the Canyon (1970)
has ‘Blue Boy;’ For the Roses (1972)
another song, ‘Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire;’ and on Hejira (1976) there is ‘Furry Sings the Blues,’ and ‘Blue Motel
Room’ – not to mention that ominous Black Crow.
But
I have missed out one crucial album. Many fans consider Blue (1971) to be her masterpiece, although others would argue that
the more cerebral album, The Hissing of
Summer Lawns better deserves the accolade. Blue is an intimate album, not least in its pared-down style,
minimal instrumentation and close-miked vocals.
The
four songs with piano accompaniment alone, when played back-to-back, make a
pretty depressing set. In the more up-beat ‘My Old Man’ the lonesome blues
collide; a bluesy rendition of Jingle Bells is the basis of ‘River,’ and a
nihilistic dark cocoon ends the album, and the song, ‘The Last Time I Saw
Richard.
The
intimate lyrics convey an artist’s vulnerability in a way that became a
blueprint in the canon of confessional female, singer-songwriting. At the time,
Melody Maker described it as
‘vicarious heartache,’ and Joni later described herself as being ‘like a
cellophane wrapper on a pack of cigarettes.’
The
word ‘blue’ appears some 15 times over seven songs.
For
Joni, ‘blue’ is deeper than mere melancholy, or mawkish autobiography; it’s a
condition to which we all relate. She says, ‘If I sing in the first-person,
they think it’s all about me, but many of the characters I write about … have
nothing to do with my own life in the intimate sense.’ As we know, art is a
lie, an artifice.
I’m
often keen to claim or emphasise that my own writing, especially poetry, is not
autobiographical, although I draw heavily from everything I experience around
me. To describe the 10th poem of this year’s sequence as ‘a personal response’
suggests exactly that.
The
'truth' is in the possession of the beholder.
Twelve Tones of Blue
Recalling the heartfelt yet emotionally intelligent
naïveté of the album, as a personal reaction and interpretation, the
poet journeys through each of the ten songs of Joni’s Blue.
Canto X
All I Want
You wanted a world –
I gave you a life:
The blood poured free,
Blue
My Old Man
You wanted a ring
to bind us true;
I played a warm chord,
Blue
Little Green
The child pretending
was lost to you;
Imagined spring turned
Blue
Carrie
You ran away: laughed
with the bright red devil
as the moon appeared
Blue
Blue
I sang you to sleep;
you sank deep into a
fuggy, drug-induced
Blue
In dreams your shadow
yearned for home:
calling ergo ego
Blue
This Flight Tonight
Flying from the myth:
Regret, the deadliest sin,
Turned envy-green
Blue
River
You cried a river
of frozen tears to
skate away into
Blue
A Case of You
Drawn to my escape
I poured out my soul,
bled the bitterness
Blue
The Last Time I Saw Richard
The empty tomb,
the dark cocoon,
the jewel you lost.
Blue
