hejira

the sun hasn't risen yet and the streets are glistening with a light rain. the music is low. the music this morning is soft and reaching. the music of a woman arriving at a point in her life where she sees some of its arc. she sees enough to be able to begin to recognize herself as who she has been and who she is to be becoming.

joni mitchell, like her compatriot neil young, has left behind a legacy of powerful, life affecting music. joni’s iconic role as a post sixties intelligent female artist in a business that has traditionally marginalized intelligent women or subsumed them into so much floss, was what first drew me to her. i loved her intelligence, her creativity as a singer, and as an artist, and i loved that she created music that was more than the sum of its parts.

like most people, my first experience of her music came through her big breakthrough hit “big yellow taxi” which included the memorable line ...” they paved paradise and put up a parking lot...” and the equally memorable line “don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone?”

it wasn’t until several years later that i happened across an album that i still listen to regularly entitled hejira.

i first heard hejira while living in a residence room in otonabee college at trent university in 1976. the album as a whole has highs and lows which are reflective of her lyrical depiction of the dance of self in a world torn between predictability and chaos.

one of the more melancholy songs, the title track hejira stands out for me as the highlight among many highlights in the lifelibrary of words and music she has crafted in her more than fourty year career. the songs on hejira were largely written by joni on a road trip from maine back to los angeles, california. this likely explains the many references to highways, small towns and snow. joni said of the album: "the whole 'hejira' album was really inspired. ... i wrote the album while travelling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it. ... the sweet loneliness of solitary travel. ...."

the laying bare of joni’s inner self is never more complete than when she sings in “hejira”, “there’s comfort in melancholy when there’s no need to explain”. later when she sings, “you know it never has been easy, whether you do or you do not resign, whether you travel the breadth of extremities, or stick to some straighter line” she drives home the essence of the painful inner torment that plagues all creatively driven individuals - the need to strive for some form of balance between acceptance both within and without themselves - the two being mutually incompatible, sometimes even destructive.

joni has often drawn stunningly talented musicians into her circle, and this track is no exception featuring the brilliant and now sadly flown away bassist jaco pastorius (who first found fame with jazz group “weather report”), wrapping the most beautiful and memorable arcing bass lines like velvet ribbon around the gift of her words.

here then are the beautiful words to hejira.

hejira

i’m travelling in some vehicle
i’m sitting in some cafe
a defector from the petty wars
that shell shock love away
there's comfort in melancholy
when there's no need to explain
it’s just as natural as the weather
in this moody sky today
in our possessive coupling
so much could not be expressed
so now I’m returning to myself
these things that you and I suppressed
i see something of myself in everyone
just at this moment of the world
as snow gathers like bolts of lace
waltzing on a ballroom girl

you know it never has been easy
whether you do or you do not resign
whether you travel the breadth of extremities
or stick to some straighter line
now here's a man and a woman sitting on a rock
they're either going to thaw out or freeze
listen...
strains of benny goodman
coming through the snow and the pinewood trees
i’m porous with travel fever
but you know I’m so glad to be on my own
still somehow the slightest touch of a stranger
can set up trembling in my bones
i know - no one’s going to show me everything
we all come and go unknown
each so deep and superficial
between the forceps and the stone

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 cafe
a defector from the petty wars
until love sucks me back that way

Joni Mitchell