You Turn Me On I’m a Radio

This week I’ve been listening to Joni Mitchell’s “Hissing of Summer Lawns”. It’s an oldie but a goodie, although of course to me it sounds like yesterday. I can remember listening to it in late 1975; at the time I had been disappointed with its music. It had been almost 2 years since “Court and Spark” had been released, a record I must have worn out playing it several times a day (ah my old Dual turntable and Advent loudspeakers,) and a work that still qualifies as one of my favorite all-time records. If I created a top-five list of pop albums it would need to be included.

But Joni Mitchell has never been an artist willing to stand still, and she was in the middle of her seventies transition from folk to rock to jazz-influenced music and 'Hissing' was a beginning in the turning of that corner. I wasn't, but that's another story. On re-visiting it this week, I was impressed not only with the music, but the lyrics. They are sensitive yet astound. There’s a feminist thread running through the work, especially in titles such as “Edith and the Kingpin”, “Shades of Scarlet Conquering,” “Harry’s House,” the title song, and “Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow.”

That last one has taken up residence in my mind this week. I’ve been repeating “Anima rising” and “He says ‘We walked on the moon / You be polite.’” over and over and over (I’m doing it now in fact.) I know that lyrics separated from music do not do them justice (there’s a great bass line that leads you through the meter in an alluring serpentine rhythm.) But still these are some fine lyrics and deserve a reading:

DON'T INTERRUPT THE SORROW

Don't interrupt the sorrow
Darn right
In flames our prophet witches
Be polite
A room full of glasses
He says "Your notches liberation doll"
And he chains me with that serpent
To that Ethiopian wall

Anima rising
Queen of Queens
Wash my guilt of Eden
Wash and balance me
Anima rising
Uprising in me tonight
She's a vengeful little goddess
With an ancient crown to fight

Truth goes up in vapors
The steeples lean
Winds of change patriarchs
Snug in your bible belt dreams
God goes up the chimney
Like childhood Santa Claus
The good slaves love the good book
A rebel loves a cause

I'm leaving on the 1:15
You're darn right
Since I was seventeen
I've had no one over me
He says "Anima rising-
So what-
Petrified wood process
Tall timber down to rock!"

Don't interrupt the sorrow
Darn right
He says "We walked on the moon
You be polite."
Don't let up the sorrow
Death and birth and death and birth
He says "Bring that bottle kindly
And I'll pad your purse-
I've got a head full of quandary
And a mighty, mighty, thirst."

Seventeen glasses
Rhine wine
Milk of the Madonna
Clandestine
He don't let up the sorrow
He lies and he cheats
It takes a heart like Mary's these days
When your man gets weak