As I ate my eggs this morning at a neighbourhood breakfast joint, almost every song playing in the background could have been mistaken in its early bars for a Joni Mitchell song: high strummed strings and thoughtful piano progressions, and a woman’s voice speak-singing in intimate tones about first-person matters of the heart.
Mitchell was far from the first woman to find fame writing and performing her own pop music. For that you would have to look back to some of the female blues singers such as Bessie Smith, to chanteuses such as Edith Piaf and to pop and country icons such as Peggy Lee. But the Saskatchewan-raised singer was the woman who made the boldest pitch to take up the gauntlet of Bob Dylan’s redefinition of the singer-songwriter role, coming out of the 1960s folk revival, and, in so doing, set a precedent that at least subliminally guided hordes who followed.
She opened doors that it is now hard to realize were ever closed, becoming the kind of innovator whose influence is so pervasive that it is paradoxically invisible, a figure lost in the background she herself had painted.
That, at least, is one explanation for why Mitchell often seems neglected relative to many of her boomer-musician peers, many of them represented in the past couple of years by majorly hyped biographies and autobiographies—including Dylan, Neil Young, Leonard Cohen, both Keith and Mick of the Rolling Stones, Pete Townshend and others—and documentaries about the likes of George Harrison, Young again, Bruce Springsteen and more. On that level, Katherine Monk’s Joni: The Creative Odyssey of Joni Mitchell is welcome, but I am afraid it lacks the heft to balance all that is weighted against it.
Jake Pauls
One of those elements, as Monk nearly but does not quite say, is outright sexism: Mitchell is still stereotyped as the blond soprano folk-goddess (the one whose cheekbones dominate this book’s cover) as well as a kind of earth mother/harlot, a Woodstock holdover fetishized for her love affairs as much as for her work—with an undercurrent of shaming for being as wilfully individualistic and promiscuous as the male rock stars who were her friends and lovers. This is the most solid of Mitchell’s many grievances with the press.
But there are other, more idiosyncratic causes. One was surely positive in the long run: having cast her own mould, Mitchell went on to break it repeatedly, expanding musically into jazz fusion, funk-rock and even proto-“world music” African-influenced suites, and lyrically from her early pastoral and Blue-period confessional modes into broader character portraits and social landscapes. Those moves confused and alienated many listeners who wanted her to, as she famously complained, “paint A Starry Night again, man.”
It is now acknowledged that the resulting mid 1970s albums such as Hejira and The Hissing of Summer Lawns are career highs that still sound contemporary. Her technical originality as a guitarist is also talked about these days as much as her lyrics. But these recognitions came too late; a bruised defensiveness marks most of the music she has made ever since, an assertive rigidity that supplanted her exploratory openness.
That might not have mattered so much—few pop musicians can sustain inspiration over so many decades—if Mitchell had not always seemed given by nature to such withdrawals. As Monk notes, by her late twenties Mitchell began a pattern of “retiring” from the music business every few years. Unlike Dylan, Cohen or Young, who have all followed similarly erratic paths, she has not chosen to consolidate her legacy in her advancing years with lengthy world tours to reconnect with her audiences.
Finally, her public persona, on the rare occasion that she consents to an interview or appearance, is not what one would call charming. Although certainly bright and tough, with a piquant sense of humour, she tends to carp about being misunderstood, to rail about dubious health complaints (fibromyalgia), to snipe at her equals (calling Cohen and Dylan plagiarists, for instance) and to dismiss her heirs, accusing women from Rickie Lee Jones to Suzanne Vega and Tracy Chapman of being mere copycats. She also refuses to call herself a feminist.
It is not hard to imagine where all these feelings come from. Having been underestimated, she overcompensates. Having been burned by celebrity’s spotlight, she keeps to the shade. Having been reduced to type, she objects to any labels. And having lacked female confederates in the macho (or sensitive-macho) scenes of 1960s folk-rock and 1970s Laurel Canyon singer-songwriters, she holds on to her capacity to be “one of the boys,” even if she was punished for that, too. No doubt the guys also get more dispensation to be old and cranky. But the consequence is that Joni Mitchell is not exactly her own best ally or anyone else’s.
And unfortunately, she does not find the advocate she needs in this book, a hybrid of biography and critical study that does not really succeed as either. It is hampered as a life story because Monk, a former arts journalist, does not do any original interviews or other research—she does not say whether she tried to get Mitchell’s cooperation, but neither does she speak to any collaborators, friends, family or other associates. The book is based entirely on previous press coverage, so anyone who has followed Mitchell over the years will find much (although not all) of it familiar—and, in places, inaccurate. For example, Monk says that Mitchell had a Buddhist teacher recommended to her by Jack Kerouac during Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue tour in 1975, when Kerouac had been dead for six years; Monk probably means Allen Ginsberg, who was on the tour.
That is not the only way Monk misses the beat. She has chosen to organize her chronicle thematically rather than chronologically, with chapters on “Impersonation and Identity,” “Illness and Survival” (a formative childhood bout with polio), “Expecting and Expectation” (about Mitchell giving up a daughter for adoption), “Myth and Mythmaking” (about Woodstock and the sixties), “Business and Bullshit,” “Gods and Monsters” (religion and influences), “Love” (both romance and collaboration), and painting and dancing. This is frustrating, as episodes in Mitchell’s life appear at first somewhat out of context and then later in contexts that have to be reintroduced and repeated.
The bigger problem, though, is that Monk has chosen to use Mitchell’s story as a case study in the nature of creativity, and the result is too much like an undergraduate paper. It fixates on Mitchell’s trendy 1960s-autodidact influences, such as Nietzsche and Jung, hashed in with undigested bits of Lacan, child psychology and deconstruction, and draws from them mostly predictable clichés.
Also, overselling her thesis, Monk lapses into addressing Mitchell not only as a superb artist but also as the apotheosis of the artist, practically the greatest who ever lived, echoing the singer’s own worst exaggerations. Its first proper chapter gobsmackingly launches with an uncritical account of Mitchell going to a Hollywood party in blackface, and several statements in which she claimed somehow to “be” a black man, as if this were a great tale of artistic self-invention rather than an artifact of late 1960s radical-chic white privilege and social confusion.
These tendencies subside some as the book goes along, and Monk eventually hits on unexpected themes such as Mitchell’s creative investments in fashion and in dancing, for instance, or the significance of her changing vocal range. But the reader might hurl it across the room before getting there.
Still, I hope not. Yes, Joni lacks both narrative completeness and the perspective to help us hear her art anew. It is, however, diligent and detail-dense enough to immerse the reader in Joni-Land for a few hours—and what a multitudinous country it is, full of frozen rivers, bottle-green back alleys and blue dive bars, open-tuned weather systems and sprung-rhythm grandfather clocks, ecstatic peaks and bullshit mountains. Until it gets a worthy atlas, at least Monk’s map is here to help remind us where to listen and look.
Carl Wilson is the author of Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (33 1/3 Series, Continuum Books), a book about class, aesthetics, democracy, and Céline Dion. He lives in Toronto, where he works at The Globe and Mail and as doorman of the Trampoline Hall Lecture Series.
Related Letters and Responses
Kevin Sorenson, MP
As chair of the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Development, I appreciate Jennifer Welsh’s acknowledgement of the bold innovative vision behind the committee’s recommendations and the case that Canada can do more and better in this field (“Promoting Democracy Abroad,” December 2007).
The committee, in its use of extensive testimony, fact-finding missions and thorough review of the critical literature, was fully mindful at the same time of potential pitfalls and obstacles. Strongly arguing for addressing knowledge and evaluation deficits, we did not claim to have all the answers. We did hope to advance the debate and Professor Welsh’s thoughtful review, as well as the positive response of the Government of Canada released on November 2, 2007, is evidence of having some success in that regard.
I would caution against reading too much or too little into the report. The assertion by some that the committee wants to centralize everything under one big new institution is contradicted by others’ complaints that our proposals would only result in institutional proliferation. Both interpretations are wrong. Fortunately, the government understood our intentions in its carefully considered response.
Of course, we knew that the idea of creating a new independent foundation for international democracy support would be controversial, even though it could serve as a needed knowledge centre and as a funder for worthy initiatives in underdeveloped areas, including a multi-party development component that would only be established with all-party approval.
Welsh does recognize the parallel with the arm’s-length International Development Research Centre established almost four decades ago. IDRC’s work is clearly seen to be both in the Canadian and global long-term interest. IDRC is a Canadian institution operating internationally to Canada’s credit. Why can we not do the same for advancing democracy?
Welsh worries we may be too concerned about furthering Canadian foreign policy objectives. The IDRC example shows how these can coincide with internationalist goals. Far from neglecting the multilateral dimensions of democracy support, we were impressed by the contributions Canadians are making through institutions based in other countries. But we also heard from them about their frustrations in being underutilized by Canada.
In responding to the committee’s report, the government has announced important actions and will commission an expert study to ensure capacities exist “to deliver effective, high-quality and responsive democracy support.” Welsh concluded that calling for a new Canadian body now was putting “the cart before the horse.” We will be satisfied so long as what emerges is a substantially improved cart with enough horsepower to pull it.
Jeffrey KopsteinToronto, Ontario
The most convincing argument for democracy promotion, according to Jennifer Welsh, is that it “emerges from Canadian values.” I agree that democracy helps define who we are as Canadians. But what really makes democracy promotion so appealing is that it combines our ideals and interests in one and the same policy. In this way it is much like economic aid. While doing good, we also make the world a safer place for Canadians. This line of argument bothers Welsh but it bothers me much less. There is nothing wrong with enlightened self-interest.
Even so, what makes democracy promotion so tricky is that our ideals and interests sometimes run in opposite directions. Leaders who talk up democracy while meeting with dictators (as they sometimes must) run the risk of appearing hypocritical. How does a Canadian prime minister roll out the carpet for China’s tyrants while continuing to insist that we are really backing the good guys, the democrats? It is important here to getthe message right. I would suggest something like the following subtext to any such meeting: “We’ll meet with you but we’re also backing your opponents.” Hitting the right note will require a finely tuned ear but it is something the Canadian public wants to hear, even if, as Welsh rightly notes, for domestic political reasons it can’t be cast in the American idiom of “freedom” and “liberty.” (By the way, isn’t it a shame that we can’t speak those beautiful words just because they constitute part of the American creed? Maybe we should just get over it and use them anyway.)
Backing the good guys means casting aside absolute notions of sovereignty. Democracy promotion implies not only supporting civil society and the rule of law abroad but also doing so with the intention of destabilizing dictators and siding with the democrats during transitions to democracy. Canadians, so long focused on the United Nations, an organization set up to promote peace, stability and national sovereignty rather than democracy, have been prepared for this new doctrine by changes already articulated under previous governments—by the Responsibility to Protect and the war in Afghanistan.
So much for doctrine. What about practice? Policy makers would do well to read Welsh’s thoughtful article, even if they reject its conclusion. Welsh is highly dubious of the report’s call for a new umbrella organization for promoting democracy. Little value added will be found, she maintains, by centralizing the efforts of the many ministries, agencies and organizations in Canada already doing important work in promoting democracy. Yet I’m not so sure that Welsh has captured the spirit of the recommendation. Reading the dissenting opinions (written by the NDP and the Bloc Québécois), it is all too clear what the status quo would be: avoid democracy promotion altogether or, better yet, use it to puff up the budgets of already existing programs. With few exceptions, however, these programs are housed in agencies and ministries whose primary function is not democracy promotion. The results are apparent enough. Translating doctrine into responsible and coherent practice requires creating precisely the umbrella organization that Welsh rejects.
Les CampbellWashington, DC
Jennifer Welsh’s lucid and informed analysis of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs report on international democratic development provides a balanced take on a policy often associated with Washington Republicans. Of course, the idea of democracy as a universal precept precedes the neo-cons by some decades—think Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared in 1948 that “the will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government.” As Welsh notes, Canadian values, particularly a belief in good governance based on the consent of the people, compel us to place the ideal of democracy near the top of the foreign policy pyramid. My only quibble with the author, a fellow expatriate Canadian, is that her vision of Canada’s role in democratic development is too Canadian in its modesty.
Significant numbers of Canadians are employed or associated with the Washington-based National Democratic Institute, International Republican Institute, International Foundation for Election Systems and National Endowment for Democracy. In the multilateral realm, Canadians help manage the United Nations Democracy Fund and the UN Election Assistance Division, and there are Canadians working on democracy issues at the Commonwealth, the Organization of American States and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The committee suggests repatriating some of this talent.
Welsh argues that Canadians need not be attached to a particular organization, based on Canadian soil, to serve Canadian objectives. Maybe, but as it stands, the efforts of Canadians abroad contribute to the strengthening of foreign institutes’ initiatives and other countries’ foreign policy, with precious little knowledge, experience or relationship-building accruing in Canadian circles. I agree with Welsh that Canadians should hold influential positions outside Canada, but the numbers of Canadians involved in the democracy field, and their effective exclusion from current Canadian democracy efforts, point to a potent capacity and energy that has been successfully channelled elsewhere.
Welsh is cautiously skeptical about the centrepiece of the committee’s report, a new Canadian democracy foundation. I would posit that a new foundation would not become, as Welsh fears, a “bureaucratic monster,” but a focal point for debate, discussion and creativity, a significant source of new funding and, at long last, a genuine point of engagement for those expat Canadians longing for a way of supporting their own country’s efforts. Welsh rightly worries about stifling the inherent creativity of a plurality of approaches by creating an umbrella institute, but, if done properly, a new focal point for democracy programs will unleash latent potential only hinted at under the status quo. If Canada gains some much needed international profile in the bargain—so much the better.
Ernest J. DickGranville Ferry, NS
My experience of being “bilingualized” in the 1970s, in Ottawa, might afford your readers another perspective. As a child of refugees, I managed to get through school without learning a word of French, but after taking a master’s in history at Trent University, I was convinced that I had to become bilingual to become fully Canadian. My initial job with the public service was unilingual, and I jumped at the chance to take French language training when they needed to bilingualize public servants. My initial proficiency tests were not promising, but I was accepted for a year’s full-time language study.
This was immersion as I never had experienced or heard of — as we never heard nor saw a word of English once we entered the doors of a nondescript facility in Ottawa’s east end. We also never saw a textbook or blackboard — and never knew whether our instructors could actually speak English. I loved every minute of it, except when our instructors wanted to tape us speaking French. I knew that if I ever watched myself speaking French, I would become self-conscious. Admittedly, we did not learn to read or even write in French, but we could hold conversations on any topic under the sun. I never did learn much about tenses — but I learned how to order beer, play squash, and do many other things that I made daily use of for the next thirty years.
My profession as archivist, first at the National Archives of Canada and then with the CBC, meant that my colleagues and I had to work in both languages. No one questioned or challenged the obvious necessity of that. Anyone fully proficient in both languages was highly valued.
Personally, I also appreciated being able to think in French, even if I could never disguise my “Anglo-cisms.” And while my bilingualism has eroded over the past twenty years, now that I live in a unilingual environment, I never pass up an opportunity to try out my French — just to see if it still works.
