Read Online Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell by Katherine Monk - Free Book Online

I always try and look for some optimism you know, no matter how cynical my mood may be. I always try to find that little crevice of light peeking through. Whatever I’ve made—whether it’s a painting, a song, or even a sweater—it changes my mood. I’m pleased with myself that I’ve made something. 33
    Mitchell’s limitless creativity is informed by the signs around her. Whether it was a crow flying in front of her windshield that made her look at her odometer reading “88888” or stumbling into a guy who just happened to have some much-needed wolf recordings, she says she believes in creative synchronicity. “I have a lot of voodoo following me around, whether I like it or not,” Mitchell recently told an audience at a $175-plate dinner. “I just know that this is a very mysterious place we’re in.”
    Being open to this mystery, and dancing to the magic of the universe, is what the creative process is all about, because it helps us find meaning in the seemingly random unfolding of events. The meaning is self-created, but that only brings the power of the divine back home. Mitchell has mastered the creative waltz. She can dance with her shimmering muse as well as her fragmenting shadow. Most importantly, she can laugh.
    â€œI do have this reputation for being a serious person,” she told Cameron Crowe. “I’m a very analytical person, a somewhat introspective person; that’s the nature of the work I do. But this is only one side of the coin, you know. I love to dance. I’m a rowdy. I’m a good-timer,” she said, proud of her ability to kick up her heels when the world gets a little too dour. “There’s a private club in Hollywood that usually is very empty, but on one crowded evening, I stumbled in there to this all-star cast: Linda Ronstadt was running through the parking lot being pursued by photographers, Jerry Brown was upstairs, Bob Dylan was full of his new Christian enthusiasm—‘Hey, Jerry, you ever thought of running this state with Christian government?’ Lauren Hutton was there, Rod Stewart,” said Mitchell, offering an inventory of the glamour factor. “There were a lot of people and this little postage stamp of a dance floor, and nobody was dancing on it. These are all people who dance, in one way or another, in their acts.” 34
    Unlike her peers, who no doubt felt too cool to surrender to the primal beat, or too protective of a manufactured image, Mitchell wanted to move her body. “I just wanted to dance. I didn’t want to dance alone, so I asked a couple of people to dance with me, and nobody would. They were all incredibly shy,” she told Crowe, noting an oft-overlooked truth about most performers. “So I went to the bathroom, and a girl came in and hollered to me from the sink over the wall, ‘Is that you? I’ll dance with you.’ I said, ‘Great.’ It was just like the fifties, when none of the guys would dance. And it was at this moment that the girl confided to me: ‘You know, they all think of you as this very sad person.’ That was the first time that it occurred to me that even among my peer group I had developed this reputation. I figured, these guys have been reading my press or something,” she said, laughing. “But as far as shattering preconceptions, forget it. I feel that the art is there for people to bring to it whatever they choose.”
    Mitchell says all her art, even the dance, is designed to address the binary creative forces of life. “That’s what I love about [the ballet]... You look at those beautiful kids and think ‘what a beautiful animal the human being is,’” she says. “But the words are very critical of [humans]. It’s a stupid animal. It hasn’t learned anything. It doesn’t learn from history. It makes the same mistakes.” 35
    We’re a deeply flawed species, but