I knew that a vast majority of her audience could claim the same kind of experience, with all possible variables attributable to each personal story. But in my case (and this is truly the only reason why I have recounted the very intimate story above), it is because this episode left on my life a mark so striking, the scar was so deep and so aching that the outlet of art became the only possible therapy. My story with that boy explains fully why and how my work came to pictorially reflecting the writings and music of Joni Mitchell.

In this respect and because I had discovered her music only in 1976, I jumped on a train that had already left the station, since at that time her ninth album, Hejira, had just been released. Mesmerized by Court & Spark, I remember going to the local Fnac Rennes music store and buying all the albums prior to that disc and the three that followed, including Hejira that had just landed in the trays. I listened to all of them in loops. In disorder, and in order for months and months, which quickly turned into years. I found that I listened to Joni Mitchell's music more and more, and the more I listened to it, the more I was fascinated, and the more I could see of myself in her so-called "confessional" works ("introspective" works sounds more appropriate to me). I was equally charmed and bewitched by the works more distant from my personal concerns, such as for example, those developed in The Hissing of Summer Lawns. The Hissing of Summer Lawns’ compositions fascinated me musically and made me discover another aspect of Joni Mitchell's writing : her keen talent as a storyteller and chronicler of human societies, of their moments of glory and successes as well as of their pettiness and their inadequacies. Experiencing Joni Mitchell's work in a random order probably spared me the disappointment of her fans of the first hour, who did not accept that the flayed bleeding waif from Blue (1971) had turned her back on them by focussing more on the suburban housewives' emotional sorrow than on their own (sorry for the shortcut that is a bit of a cliché, as, I suppose, all shortcuts often are).