Tag: Joni Mitchell

Party Piece

The years roll back, forty, forty-four,to someone’s kitchen, somewhere in Dublin, where the cider’s flowing, there’s Guinness and more,guitars are tuned, and the girls are gathered in. We’re smiling, Rita and I, sitting on the floor,enjoying the music, voices rising and falling. It’s a proper session, everyone joins in,but it’s fallen quiet. “Come on,” someone […]

Hejira

When the wanderer returns,what does she bring you?The skull of a bald eaglepicked clean, white and flightless.You call it Icarus,and wax rolls down like tearsas she writes you epic songsabout the refuge of the roads,and you think she’s finally home,but her mind is constantlyon travelling, travelling, travelling,a personal odyssey,not a false alarm. Kim M. Russell, […]

Blue Period

I was a quiet, sensitive teenager, who felt songs deeply, like tattoos. I’d never been to sea or travelled abroad, and longed to sail away. But I let someone underneath my skin, where there was an empty space to fill. That was where I went wrong, trusting someone who didn’t have my best interests at […]

Self Portrait with Clouds

I’d heard the voice but never seen its owner,loved the songs but never seen her face,but then I found her self-portrait on a coverwith the words; inside the music and her voice. It was the first time I’d ever seen a portraitor even a painting on a record sleeve;now there was a blonde woman’s blue-eyed […]

Sonnet for Joni

One sunny April afternoon, I wanderedonto the edge of your atmosphereand devoured your records. I meanderedfrom old songs to new, from there to here, and found I could not choose. No favouritefor me. If I could mix all the melodies,all the lyrics, inhale your music, savour itlike spring air, I might forgive the parodies, the […]

Kissing Beneath Wood Smoke and Stars

Those first kisses beneath wood smoke and starswill stay with us forever, exploding with capriciouspiquancy that still lingers, effervescent in our mouths.The drought had broken like an ocean wave,a tang of North Sea air, ice-cold and delicious,and all we wanted was to drown in our embrace,heartbeats echoing, rhythmic and auspicious,lost in wood smoke kisses, stars […]

I stick these pages together with blue

The blue-tack tucked in the side of the drawer reminds me of days when I listened to your voice non-stop. My younger self wrote your lyrics with a blue ink italic calligraphy pen on index cards; I even copied artwork from album sleeves, shaded in with rainbow-coloured pencils. Leaves unfurled and fell with your smoky […]

Joni’s Colours

I listen to her voice paint a light and rainbow coloured folk song about a child whose eyes were bright but would never see, of crayons, trees and love. The colours flow through a Chelsea morning, with crimson beads and yellow curtains and a taxi, as if she’s singing just for me. A little green […]