But the essential and structural difference between an illustration and a painting is that a painting tells a story of its own, occult or obvious (even in some cases, no story at all possibly), and does not service anything else but itself.

In the late 1980s, I presented to a selection of British and American publishers the model of Hommage to Joni Mitchell, which the musician had reviewed in Ashcombe House, and on which she had encouraged me and had given me her verbal agreement regarding a possible publication that included her texts. A French edition in parallel with the English one was planned in the articulation that I had presented to Joni Mitchell. Insofar as at this date of 1987, I had translated into French all of the compositions of her published albums till then. In this enterprise, I had received the help of a young American student of my age in Paris. A boy named Michael, immediately nicknamed Michael From Mountains in a nod to the composition of Song To A Seagull, and whom I completely lost sight of since then. If he ever reads these lines one day and recognizes himself, I would be curious to know what has become of him. His punctual intervention probably avoided many pitfalls of the "Babel Incident" type, as it had occurred before with The Boho Dance, and as it would happen later with The Tea Leaf Prophecy.

Incidentally, translation is a word that I don't like, when it comes to doing justice to an author's own language and style- and especially in Joni Mitchell’s case and in her work's scope. One must translate and respect a text's meaning of course (in order to avoid small problems of the "Babel" type), but then one must necessarily rewrite the French and interpret it to find a musicality and a strength of its own (if not equivalent to the English, a mission impossible often), but which at least tends to restore the original text’s span and its personality.
One must understand but also feel the author, intellectually, emotionally, and almost carnally.