Not exactly. I think her feeling about Christmas are quite complex, really.
I've always felt that Joni has an amazing intuitiveness and understanding of
the emotional impact of Christmas to some - the hopefulness and wistfulness,
comingled with tradition and melancholy. These expressive elements in her
music and writing are part of what has drawn me to her. The feelings she
imbues "River" and "Facelift" with, for example.
This time of year represents major milestones in Joni's life. From her
"Rolling Stone" interview with Cameron Crowe in 1979:
"I guess I really started singing when I had polio. Neil {Young} and I both
got polio in the same Canadian epidemic. I was nine, and they put me in a
polio ward over Christmas. They said I might not walk again and that I would
not be able to go home for Christmas. I wouldn't go for it. So I started to
sing Christmas carols, and I used to sing them real loud. When the nurse
came into the room I would sing louder. The boy in the bed next to me, you
know, used to complain. And I discovered I was a ham. That was the first
time I started to sing for people."
I'm super-anxious for Joni to go forward with her promised Christmas album.
Remember that? From an interview with Hotpress in April 2000:
"Indeed, Mitchell says her latest album (BSN) is the first in a trilogy. The
next will feature her own songs in a symphonic setting. And the third album
will take her all the way back to the moment she first discovered music
while hospitalised as a child, and is tentatively titled Have Yourself A
Dreary Little Christmas. Cynical? You bet.
"It will include four of my 'something bad always happens at Christmas'
songs, four secular Christmas songs and four carols. I want to make a play
out of it," she explains."
She also has said she likes to gift people on Christmas. From a radio
interview with Lindey Moon in '88:
DJ: You are an accomplished painter. You've had exhibitions. By the way,
what do you do with your pictures? Do you just keep them all at home?
JM: Yeah -- you know, I was reluctant to put a price on their head for many
years. But at the end of every graphic project, putting together the albums,
we would have -- Glen Christiansen, who is my art director and I -- we would
have bits and pieces that we felt were fine art as opposed to commercial
art. So we would make a limited edition. This limited edition was
traditionally paid for by the record company. We would then split the pieces
fifty-fifty. They would give them out at Christmas to their A mailing list
people, and I would give mine away to friends. And I enjoyed this process of
being able to give my work at Christmastime, and, you know, if I go into the
homes of my friends, this is all prominently displayed, whereas the A
mailing list people began to sell theirs.
-Julius
