For what I could recall, Joni Mitchell had never been particularly lenient and merciful towards religions in general, the absurdity of their doctrines and their ridiculous and hypocritical taboos about sexual matters. Denouncing the hypocrisy of a priest, in this context, therefore seemed to make full sense to me.

Still, my English had betrayed me (it would not be the only time that this would happen), which caused Joni Mitchell much laughter. She explained that the priest here was just supposed to look at his prey with the lust of a salacious look in his eyes -the famous "pornographic watch"-, adding with a giggle that she actually found my interpretation -as "unexpected" as it was-, still "very interesting", punctuating her remark with a big burst of laughter!

For the record, I did experience similar types of confusion again with my future translations into French of other Joni Mitchell's texts. This was often due to my imperfect knowledge of the English language at the time, or ignorance of facts specific to the Anglo-Saxon culture with which I was not that familiar. An example of this occurred towards the end of this cycle of works inspired by the writings of Joni Mitchell. I produced a painting in 1989, inspired by The Tea Leaf Prophecy (Lay Down Your Arms), a track that appeared on the Chalk Mark in the Rainstorm 1988 album.

Set in the Second World War, it was the story of a woman, Molly McGee, (the embodiment of the musician's mother, Myrtle) and her meeting with a soldier on leave, who was back visiting his town –the soldier in question being the musician's own father, Bill Anderson. The soldier returned to the front and one year later a daughter was born - Joni. All this was predicted by a gypsy who told Molly McGee what she had read in the tea leaves about her future, fifteen days before she met Bill in the tearoom of the Saskatchewan Grand Hotel in Regina, Saskatchewan.