Conclusion

This chapter's content is based almost exclusively upon Joni Mitchell's discography.
Its structure was willingly designed as such. Therefore, it commenced under the auspices of a seagull. Then followed the musician's path, and stopped at all its steps -its masterpieces. Then, it found not an end, but a continuity : in 2020, the musician gave her audience access to her first recordings, archived until then and henceforth available. The Early Years.

Therefore, after the chronology of these first studio steps followed by the magnificent journey we all know, it was structurally important for me to end this chapter's content by evoking a Joni Mitchell studio album - in this case her last one to date, Shine. Because my own life has been marked by those albums' release. And because Joni Mitchell’s work represents for me the quintessence of inspiration, the latter being the matrix of the compositional work, which finally transcends its genitor. The writing and the composition, combined rough diamonds that the studio subsequently sculpts, chisels under the guidance of the chief silversmith, with the help of all those who accompany the latter in his task.
I am thinking here particularly of Joni Mitchell's dear friend and faithful recording companion of a lifetime, Henry Lewy - to whom Paprika Plains (one composition among many others) owes so much. This, despite derailing violins, in spite of Mingus' mischievous teasing on the subject. And because of the added bonus of Mitchell's sunny humor when the jazzman pointed out to her the (wonderful) dissonances of the strings there (Joni's mischievous reaction: "Yeah!! You noticed!..."). Laughters, and good spirit.
Thus, Joni Mitchell closed her last album of original material published to date by revisiting a

Rudyard Kipling's text, reinterpreting his poem if to which she set some of her finest music. Where Charlie Mingus' compositions had offered her Joni I-VI, so that she could give these musics a title and some words and finally sing them, she tackled the reverse process by putting to music the words of another author.

And what words! If expresses perfectly what Joni Mitchell herself seems to think. The language is so beautiful there that for someone who is not a connoisseur of Kipling's work (which is my case), it is difficult at first listening not to imagine that this text did not pour directly out of the Canadian musician's pen. Yet, it does not. Only at the end of it does Joni Mitchell add to the original text these concluding words, "I Know You'll Be All Right, 'Cause you've got the fight, You've Got The Insight."

Seeings things beyond what they look like.
This is what sets Joni Mitchell apart.

Right from the start and back to the mid-Seventies, I never could see her as a good-looking blonde with a voice, a romantic who wrote exceptional love songs and sang them like no other could. A frail being, tossed about by her heartaches, as much plural as they were publicized. How mistaken. No, I always saw Joni Mitchell first and foremost as the one who saw beyond the looking glass. And also, and mainly, as a warrior : the one who breaks the looking glass. I saw her frightened by the devil -a name for those so many perilous moments in our lives-, but also as the one who had the courage of the heart and the weapons that spirit and talent give to face evil. An example to be followed, then. This helped me understand, while I painted what I did at the time, and when I look today at these paintings inspired by her art, why some of these