My goal as a writer is more to comfort than to disturb.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a writer's intention to provide solace through their work rather than provoke discomfort.
Joni Mitchell emphasizes her aspiration as a writer to create comforting and soothing narratives. She believes that the primary role of a writer should be to offer peace and solace to the audience, suggesting that art can serve as a refuge in turbulent times rather than merely a source of provocation or disturbance.
In practice
In a speech about the role of artists in society.
There's a man who's been out sailing In a decade full of dreams And he takes her to a schooner And he treats her like a queen Bearing beads from California With their amber stones and green He has called her from the harbor He has kissed her with his freedom He has heard her off to starboard In the breaking and the breathing Of the water weeds While she was busy being free
Unlike some of my peers, I haven't really hit a writer's block. When I hit a block I just paint, which is an old crop rotation trick.
This is a nation that has lost the ability to be self-critical, and that makes a lie out of the freedoms.
You wake up one day and suddenly realize that your youth is behind you, even though you're still young at heart.
I have an aversion to being mislabeled. Here's a label I'd accept: I'm an 'individual.' I'm someone who can't follow, and doesn't want to lead.
What I do is unusual: chordal movements that have never been used before, changing keys and modalities mid-song.
All forms of art are consciousness expanders, and I am convinced that they will take us further, and more consciously, than drugs.
People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. F**k them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If you see it, dear, then it's there. ... I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics. ... I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.
If there is no dance, there is not music.
Music knows no barrier of age or culture. It isnβt about being politically correct or even making a statement. Music is what appeals to the ears and touches your soul.
Reading a poem in translation is like kissing a woman through a veil.
It's not that he lacked poetry. But his poetry was of the body, not the mind. He spoke it in the way he moved, the way he held a hammer, rowed a boat, built a fire. I, on the other hand, was like a brain in a box, a beating heart in a coal scuttle.
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