From: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org (onlyJMDL Digest) To: onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Subject: onlyJMDL Digest V2007 #275 Reply-To: joni@smoe.org Sender: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-onlyjoni-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk Archives: http://www.smoe.org/lists/onlyjoni Websites: http://www.jmdl.com http://www.jonimitchell.com Unsubscribe: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe onlyJMDL Digest Sunday, September 9 2007 Volume 2007 : Number 275 ========== TOPICS and authors in this Digest: -------- shine in tomorrow's NewYork Times [Deb Messling ] On a Joni mission ["Oddmund Kaarevik" ] Re: shine in tomorrow's NewYork Times ["Randy Remote" ] From Leonard Cohen, now sjc? ["Patti Parlette" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2007 09:42:45 -0400 From: Deb Messling Subject: shine in tomorrow's NewYork Times It's online now and will be in the print edition tomorrow: September 9, 2007 Breaking Her Silence With a Dark Shine By JON PARELES FOR three decades Joni Mitchell wrote songs that were equally daring in their personal revelations and their musical restlessness. They traced a womans romantic and intellectual life in progress, from bright-eyed aspiration to cosmopolitan wanderlust to political bitterness, from folky sweetness to pop sheen to open-ended, jazzy excursions. Along the way her music spawned countless disciples and admirers, among them Herbie Hancock, who is releasing a tribute album, River: The Joni Letters. But after her 1998 album, Taming the Tiger, Ms. Mitchell fell silent as a songwriter. She was suffering from the muscle degeneration of post-polio syndrome, having had the disease as a child. She called the music business and its star-making machinery a cesspool, and she completed her major-label contract with albums of cover versions and remakes. Her last one was Travelogue in 2002. The album Shine, due out on Sept. 25, will break the silence. (Its the first release in a two-album deal with Starbucks Entertainments Hear Music label.) Describing its opening song, One Week Last Summer, Ms. Mitchell wrote on her Web site that she was in a house by the sea, looking at seals and flowers, when a bear arrived to rummage through her garbage. That night the piano beckoned for the first time in 10 years, she said. The new songs are not happy ones; they worry over war, the environment and a bleak future. Whats coming out of me is all sociological and theological complaint, she told an interviewer. But the music isnt strident; its inward-looking and rhythmically complex. Some of her new songs are part of The Fiddle and the Drum, a collaboration with the Alberta Ballet that is named after her antiwar song from 1970. The ballet also incorporates Ms. Mitchells paintings, which will be exhibited in New York this fall. As she makes her voice heard again  lower, darker and far more knowing  she continues her evolution from Candide, hoping for the best, to Cassandra, foreseeing disaster. - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Deb Messling -^..^- dlmessling@rcn.com http://www.sensibleshoes.vox.com - ---------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 16:52:02 +0200 From: "Oddmund Kaarevik" Subject: On a Joni mission Regarding our dear siste Annie Lennox (who also relaeses an album approximately at the same time as Joni, according to the information provided by Amazon) In her past she said: "You can fool with your brother - But don't mess with a missionary man." Ten years ago, I was kind of a christian missionary man. I was young. I was idealistic. And I had a strong belief I wanted to share, wherever and whenever. It was a rich time in many ways. I spoke to all kinds of people, and got to know people very different from myself, they teached me, after a while, that things weren't black and white. So after a while I gave up on my mission. It didn't feel right. It feels like such a long time has passed, but really it's just ten years, just so many things have happened. Coming out of the gay closet, for one, as maybe the most important feature to my life and ny bekief. Now thes days, I really sucks as a christian missionary. I'm not doing any mission at all. Doesn't feel right, doesn't feel me. And it feels good not to, because I feel that people have to find their beliefs themselves, it's no help me forcing anything on anyone... Although I've made some exceptions. When there is things I'm burning with interest and enthusiams for, than I'm happy again to be a missionary man. These days my main-mission is to read and evaluate books and to recomend the tremoundously web-site www.onskebok.no (http://www.whichbook.net/) But I'm also a Joni missionary man. So yesterday I went to this christian-gay church I sometimes attend to. And there was a party afterwards and we started taking about obsessed music lovers/fans. One was shocked about Elvis fans who goes to Graceland in sort of a pilgrimage. Others talked about the Abba Museum that are soon being built, and about how likely it would be that fans would go on a pilgrimage to Sweden too. Then, I couldn't help nyself, I just had to get out of the closet as a Joni fan. I said: "I'm such a fan, I'm such a fan who would take a mortage just to see Joni in concert if I had a chance." Poeple looked at me amazed, and a bit shocked, 'till this guy supported me and said "Oh yeah, Joni is great, you should really go if you had the chance..." And I told the "Oh well Joni is releasing a new album in end of september" One older guy asked me what the album was called and I told him "Shine" And I asked them if anyone knew Rudyad Kiplings poem "If" which is being featured on the disc. The one who knew it said that he was really into Cat Stevens (or Yusuf Islam) an we agreed that the seventies was such a great time for music. I threw in a good word for the faboulous Sandy Denny (Fairport Convention) before I threw in the towel. Quite satisfied. The old missionary man strikes again, but not for God this time, this time it's for Joni. And I*'m sure I can do a good Herbie Hancock mission as well..... So To all of you with all kinds of predjudism and traumas with missionary men, I hope you can apologize me for bringing in the term. I just did it, to show that it can also be attended on Joni. And it made me very happy (-: So there. Have a great week-end Love ! Oddmund, Norway ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 8 Sep 2007 10:33:43 -0700 From: "Randy Remote" Subject: Re: shine in tomorrow's NewYork Times From: "Deb Messling" > The new songs are not happy ones; they worry over war, the environment and > a bleak future. Whats coming out of me is all sociological and > theological complaint, she told an interviewer. So we can call her a folk singer now....? ------------------------------ Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:35:17 -0400 From: "Marianne Rizzo" Subject: shine This is beautiful Kakki, How did you get a copy? >true Joni duality mode, it is like the lyrics are the shadows but the music >is >the light. Since there is light with the darkness, it tells me Joni still >hopes and tries to reach the heart and spirit. This is some of the best >music >she has ever composed - it is really a mindblower. this is beautiful. . . Marianne ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~ ~ _________________________________________________________________ Get a FREE small business Web site and more from Microsoft. Office Live! http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/aub0930003811mrt/direct/01/ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 09 Sep 2007 03:06:56 +0000 From: "Patti Parlette" Subject: From Leonard Cohen, now sjc? Hola Miguel y otros Joniamigos! Muchas gracias for the Leonard Cohen words on parenting. And I welcome you, too, as another Joni parent! (I have a photograph of Joni hugging Leonard Cohen and his guitar right here on my wall. She has a huge smile and is wearing a striped shirt and a mini-skirt, and funny pointy Sixties shoes.) He said (on parenting): "There are many marvelous aspects of course; the beauty is indisputable. But the destruction of your self image is inevitable." Both sides now, of course. I'm thinking of that old Marine ad (was it the Marines?): "It's the toughest job you'll ever love." Joni has accompanied me on my parenting journey, helping me keep my "self" intact....albeit a little hidden for a few years, but still there throughout all the damned hockey games (which I actually loved.) Now that my kids are grown and gone (like the turn of a page) I am now free to go back and see what I missed from her. She was always there, though (yellow checkers for the nursery, if not the kitchen) and of course lots of Joni music in the background. I could write a book on parenting w/ Joni, but will just share a few things tonight. 1. At my new daughter-in-law's bridal luncheon I had to give a little speech. I was not prepared for that, and got choked up, of course, and blurted out that "I have always tried to raise my sons to be emotionally honest, and to speak from their hearts." Holy Merde! I was raising them to be like Joni, and I didn't even know it. 2. My oldest son always jokes that HE is writing a book and the title will be: "How I Was Raised by a Crazy Joni Mother, But Still Turned Into a Genius." (I suggested that the subtitle should be: What's So Strange When You Know You're A Wizard At Three?") Miguel, you also wrote: "I think that the real sad thing are those children without the care and the protection parenthood shoul provide, especially in the earlier years." Oh yes, that is the very saddest thing. My younger son works with adolescents and so many of them are very troubled. How do you make up for bad parenting, especially the negligence and lack of love? He took 4 very troubled boys on a white-water camping trip and they said it was the best time they ever had. Their parents were glad to get rid of them. I find that heartbreaking. How can you teach the children well when they come from such dysfunctional homes? I was lucky to stay home with each of my sons for 3 or so years. Expensive, but priceless. You know those social security statements we get in the U.S.? (You probably don't of course, but we get them.) Mine is so telling. A portrait of For Love or Money! 1976: $5,000 or something 1977: $2,000 1978: 0 1979: 0 1980: 0 1981: $3,000 or something 1982: $6,000 or something 1983: $8,000 or something 1984: $3,000 or something 1985: 0 1986: 0 1987: $1,000 or something 1988: it starts to climb again Some watch their kids grow up Some watch their stocks and bonds Waiting for that big deal American Dream...and some cherish those "zero years". (NPIMH: Can you tell me how to get to Sesame Street?) And then, on a magic night, your oldest son will dance to you at his wedding to Circle Game (probably one of the happiest moments of my life that I will share with you someday when I process it all), and the other will call when he hears that SHINE is to be released on September 25th. Yet before those magic moments, when it was really hard work and earaches at 2 a.m. and terrible twos and driving them all over the place w/ no time for yourself and the teenaged angst and cartwheels turn to car wheels (I worry sometimes!) and occasional hostile comments ("You don't know ANYTHING about life!"....LOL!): But you keep your feelings deep inside You talk of them and think of pride Now is the wrong time But maybe if a dozen days are warm and right You'll hear them say in a Mother's Day card: Dear Mom, Words cannot express how thankful we are to have such a caring and loving mother. All of your hard work and dedication has not been overlooked, and we are who we are today as a result of your selfess efforts. Thank you and enjoy the grill. Love, C & M (tears in my eyes now) I call it my Barangrill! I'm grateful to Joni for keeping it all real. No matter what your life has been like -- kids or no kids -- I know you all will always feel the same. Love her forever, and forever, love her with all our hearts... And she's coming back with MORE! Seventeen more days, is it? Love & Peace, Patti P. NPOMTV (no sound): UConn 38, Maine 0 (both of my boys got to go to UConn, "for free", and we love our Huskies) P.S. Look, Ma! No politics! I agree with you about Cohen being interesting to be read and listened. Not so much with the rest... Most of the people don't know if they do or don't want to have children untill they actually do; I do have mine and I'm quite proud of have been mature enough to have them when it was the right time, not for accident or just because I didn't think too much about the subject. Cohen seems to have a deep sight of the whole process, he mention it in various ways along the conversation, like in the following part: "It is only when you have children that you're truly forced to give up looking only at yourself and start worrying about some other lives. If you attempt to respond to a child, you can never think of yourself in the same way again. You stop being the center of your drama, which becomes very secondary in light of your children's needs, of their urgency. I understood right away that the trap had slammed shut (laughs)... There are many marvelous aspects of course; the beauty is indisputable. But the destruction of your self image is inevitable. There were many things that I didn't like about myself. I was very selfish, I was only concerned with myself. I wouldn't admit that other beings were legitimately worth my attention." Just read the whole article. But he also talks about how much he enjoys their company now, or how he took care of his ailed son at hospital. My wife would say it's easier once they don't need changing diapers every two hours :) I think that the real sad thing are those children without the care and the protection parenthood shoul provide, especially in the earlier years. That's why I respect Joni decission about giving her daughter to adoption, I know too many sanctimonious parents that would yell at that idea, but never give any attention to what their kids really need. Regards, Miguel _________________________________________________________________ Get a FREE small business Web site and more from Microsoft. Office Live! http://clk.atdmt.com/MRT/go/aub0930003811mrt/direct/01/ ------------------------------ End of onlyJMDL Digest V2007 #275 ********************************* ------- Post messages to the list by clicking here: mailto:joni@smoe.org Unsubscribe by clicking here: mailto:onlyjoni-digest-request@smoe.org?body=unsubscribe ------- Siquomb, isn't she? (http://www.siquomb.com/siquomb.cfm)