Friday, March 13, 2015

Joni Mitchell - "The Gallery"



This is rather poignant, don't you think? Clare's Joni collection in the car includes this from 'Clouds' (1969). It's become my latest .. well, you know.

Here are the lyrics:
When I first saw your gallery
I liked the ones of ladies
Then you began to hang up me
You studied to portray me
In ice and greens
And old blue jeans
And naked in the roses
Then you got into funny scenes
That all your work discloses

Somewhere in a magazine
I found a page about you
I see that now it's Josephine
Who cannot be without you
I keep your house in fit repair
I dust the portraits daily
Your mail comes here from everywhere
The writing looks like ladies'

I gave you all my pretty years
Then we began to weather
And I was left to winter here
While you went west for pleasure
And now you're flying back this way
Like some lost homing pigeon
They've monitored your brain, you say
And changed you with religion

"Lady, please love me now I was dead
I am no saint, turn down your bed
Lady, have you no heart," that's what you said
Well, I can be cruel
But let me be gentle with you.
One suspects that everything Joni sang about she also lived through - it turns out that the subject of this song was Leonard Cohen, who briefly dabbled in Scientology.