[Sorry about the first one of these: cut off in its
prime as I fumbled and accidentally sent it before I
was done]
Joni's music, more that anyone else's, paints
wonderfully vivid mental pictures for me. I was
chatting to Steve T last night and we hit on this
point, and specifically that a lot of songs, and
sometimes whole albums, evoke not not just images,
but colours, times of day, almost a particular
cinematic style. And the same ones for both of
us, at that.
So, I'm wondering, do we all share a Joni subconscious
when we put on a record, dim the lights, and shut
our eyes?
A few examples:
The whole of the daytime songs on Hissing become
green-tinged, at the very least, and I keep
returning to the mental image of lawns and
sprinklers.
Most of Hejira is shot in monochrome... Coyote is
joyous and sunlit; Refuge is at dusk; Furry
is old film: grainy and documentary-style;
Sharon just evokes images of Manhatten from
the ferry: it's misty, with the sky-scrapers
looming in the grey distance; the only one I
see in colour is A Strange Boy.
Most of DJRD is kinda yellowy, desert-coloured,
probably influenced by the title track.
All the imagery from Blue is blue-tinged...
Now, sure, some of these are influenced by the album colour,
which forms the basis for some of the other mental imagery.
So, get out your boxes of mental 8mm film, and tell us
what you see.
--Chris
