Joni Mitchell by Malka Marom

Author:Malka Marom [Marom, Malka]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Music
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2014-09-01T04:00:00+00:00

Joni and Malka, on the way to Neil Young’s place soon after the ’73 interview was concluded | Courtesy Malka Marom

© Malka Marom

© Malka Marom

J: Well, when I’m dismissed as something that ended a decade ago, because I don’t have the publicness of hits and slapping my picture into magazines. This is all available to me. It’s all a matter of my own choice. The low profile I had hoped would give me some anonymity and invisibility, it hasn’t. It’s not the prize I want, deeply, but on a superficial moment when you’re weak and vulnerable, you could feel underestimated. Basically, I know that the path that I have chosen is not going to make a big roar in that particular manner.

Also, I haven’t been a good girl politically in some ways. I’ve been asked to MC at the Grammys and do those things, and I haven’t showed up at any of them, which people find offensive. I don’t like those kind of things. Not when the spotlight’s on. I like to go and sit in the backroom. I like to be an observer. I don’t like to be the centre of that kind of activity that much. So I would rather leave it to those people that like it, you know. There’s plenty of people that like it. [laughs]

Those prizes are not too valuable to me. They don’t seem to be a fair measure. Neither do Academy Awards. They’re not given to the most imaginative, you know — the most imaginative kids in the school system were not the A students. So I’m kind of a freak. I was a freak in the school system and I’m kind of a freak now. But then I’ve always been a rebel.

Well I looked at the granite markers

Those tributes to finality — to eternity

And then I looked at myself here

Chicken scratching for my immortality

In the church they light the candles

And the wax rolls down like tears

There is the hope and the hopelessness

I’ve witnessed thirty years

We’re only particles of change I know, I know

Orbiting around the sun

But how can I have that point of view

When I’m always bound and tied to someone

White flags of winter chimneys

Waving-truce against the moon

In the mirrors of a modern bank

From the window of a hotel room

I’m travelling in some vehicle

I’m sitting in some café

A defector from the petty wars

Until love sucks me back that way

(“Hejira”)

M: Is it difficult to be a maverick or a freak, as you called it?

J: Yes. The time I get lonely is when I have friends from a few years back who are on a treadmill, who are at the state of opportunity to make a change, and can’t find the creative energy or something to get them through. As a matter of fact, one of my friends, I almost shook him, I said, “The reason that I am prodding you like this is because I feel lonely. You’re capable, you know.” I don’t want to be alone this way.

I want to be challenged, Malka, because I know I’ve made something unique, with the help of some unique players.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.