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Ruth Charnock: 'Hejira’ by Joni Mitchell.
78 Plays7 months ago
Every now and then, there comes a song that has space for everything - all of it. Good, bad and ugly; brave, wild and hilarious. This is one such song (and we know the perfect person to introduce you to it). Meet Ruth Charnock.
Ruth is a queer writer, tarot reader, artist, creative mentor, facilitator and lapsed academic. She makes work about feelings, music, sex, knots and words. She is the author and editor of Joni Mitchell: New Critical Readings and is working on a book about tarot and queer motherhood. She is one half of the collaboration ‘Witching the Institution’ with Karen Schaller and newly the co-steward of the Beyond Form creative platform alongside Sarah Amsler.
Show notes:
Website: www.ruthcharnock.com
Instagram: @ruthcharnock
Help us a grow a community of survival song listeners by joining us on over on Substack:
https://survivalsongs.substack.com/
‘Hejira’ by Joni Mitchell can be found on our community playlist on Spotify along with our listener’s Survival Songs. Check it out and add your own!
This episode contains small portions of ’Hejira’ by Joni Mitchell. Survival Songs claims no copyright of this work. This is included as a form of music review and criticism and as a way to celebrate, promote and encourage the listener to seek out the artists work.
Find out more about Joni Mitchell here:
https://open.spotify.com/artist/5hW4L92KnC6dX9t7tYM4Ve?si=HvAZj0oVTy28rz_MOsMH9Q
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Transcript
Introduction & Theme: Survival Songs
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Lydia. I'm Ed. We're friends with a playlist for everything. And it turns out, we both have one called Survival Songs. And he got us thinking, what are other people's Survival Songs? So we thought we'd find out.
00:00:15
Speaker
Welcome to Survival Songs. A podcast where each episode our guest tells us about a song that gets them through the best and worst of times. Sensitive topics might be discussed. So look after yourself. The show contains portions of copyrighted material. We'd love for you to support and celebrate the artists by streaming, downloading and buying their brilliant music. And go give our guests a follow on social media.
00:00:38
Speaker
Help us grow the community of survival song listeners by joining us over on Substack and add to our public playlist on Spotify. Links are in the show notes. We hope you enjoy the show. That is another episode of Survival Songs. You came back and we're glad you did. It's Lydia again
Guest Introduction: Ruth Charnick
00:00:55
Speaker
this week and I'm speaking to the amazing, thoughtful and brilliant Ruth Charnick, who is a queer writer, tarot reader, artist, creative mentor, facilitator and lapsed academic.
00:01:11
Speaker
She makes work about feelings, music, sex, knots and words. She is the author and editor of Joni Mitchell, New Critical Readings, and is working on a book about tarot and queer motherhood.
00:01:26
Speaker
She is one half of the collaboration witching the institution with Karen Schaller and newly the co-steward of the Beyond Form Creative Platform alongside Sarah Amsler. I loved this conversation and it's no surprise after hearing the projects that Ruth has been involved in that her choice is Hijira by Joni Mitchell.
00:02:10
Speaker
So that was A Little Bit of Hijira by Joni Mitchell, which is the survival song of today's guest, the wonderful Ruth Charnick.
Discovering Joni Mitchell
00:02:19
Speaker
Good morning. Thank you for taking the news. Thank you for inviting me. I'm so, so, so, so pleased. This is a gorgeous song and not one that I knew very well before you chose it, although I've been waiting for someone to choose Joni Mitchell because survival and Joni, right?
00:02:37
Speaker
and it's like How did you meet this song? How did it find you? um It found me probably through the Joni Mitchell album that everyone will have heard of, which is the album Blue. um So a really good friend of mine, Joe,
00:02:55
Speaker
ripped me, this this date's this story, ripped me a copy of Blue for my 21st birthday. And I'd never really listened to Joni Mitchell before, other than Big Yellow Taxi, which is the, you know, the sort of most popular Joni Mitchell song, I guess. um And I always in my head actually got sort of confused with Joan Byers. They were in a sort of cluster together where it's like, m which is which?
00:03:19
Speaker
which now I feel, I mean, not appalled by it, that'd be too strong, but just a bit like why did I confuse them other than their names sound similar and they're around at the same time. But um yeah, I'd never really listened to it. And Joe
Obsession with Joni Mitchell's Music
00:03:32
Speaker
um is is basically one of those people in my life, ongoingly, he's like,
00:03:38
Speaker
you need to hear this and he's always ahead of me with music so and i trust him implicitly as well so when he told me that i was like okay all right and it was the day after my 21st birthday um and we were sitting in our living room in Norwich we lived together smoking very hung over and he put this on blue and I just was completely floored by it. like I was probably on the floor anyway, but I was i was actually floored. um and From that point onward, I i became completely obsessed with Joni Mitchell. in in like i mean It wasn't that far past being a teenager, but in that sort of teenage way where you just have to have everything.
00:04:26
Speaker
And a few days later, I went to Robin Hood's Bay with my dad and my stepmom, and I bought um from a record shop there all the Joni Mitchell CDs that they had. And one of them was Hijira, which the song Hijira comes from.
00:04:44
Speaker
um So I guess I came to, I didn't come to this song sort of in and of it itself. It was part of a longer process of discovery and an exploration of Joni Mitchell. But, and you know, was as I think with with any musician that you listen to over a long period of time, which, you know, now I've been listening to her for Well, exactly 21 years, actually, which is a bit weird, because I'm 42 now. Wow, it's the halfway point. I know. Towards what,
Significance of 'Hijira'
00:05:12
Speaker
though? Oh, God. It's like what the song's about. It's kind of what the song's about. Well, if you're in the halfway point of life, goodness me, that would be bleak. No, I meant she's been with you exactly half your life. Oh, yeah, that's much less morbid reading. I'm not afraid of going there. Just not where I was going. I'm going to have to go there because it's a song about death apart from anything else. So we're going there. But
00:05:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think, yeah, so I've had a lot of different, different favourites, different phases, you know, returns back to songs, returns back to albums, albums have had different significances over time. But this one's, this one's stuck it It's lodged and it's stuck in a way that the others are in. They're all in there. like I don't want to to you know like ah don't want choose a favorite, but if I had to, it would be it would be this one and this one certainly. like It endures. It's also about endurance, but it has endured. like and it's the one if If I had you know three minutes and I needed to listen to Joni Mitchell, it pretty much would always be the one that I'd go to.
00:06:22
Speaker
My question was going to be, when did it sort of pull away from the crowd? But it sounds like that's not the way it happened. it's sort of It came back to find you at the right time. When when are you playing this song? I think I go reaching for it. ah moments where I need to come back to myself, which is is quite a broad, that could be any number of moments. All day, every day. In fact, let's just stop this and put it on. I think in moments, i but it it's served as in moments where I felt lost and I've needed to come back to the centre of myself.
00:07:05
Speaker
i'm And I've needed to be reminded of of some of some big things, um which is is a song of big things. that I was thinking about this morning and I was thinking like,
00:07:17
Speaker
she delivers it in like a series of like koans I guess i'm which are like short short pieces of wisdom you know it's a word just I think it's it's Japanese but me yeah say the word again it's not a word I've heard koans yeah k-o-a-n-s so it's kind of like look we're there with this this we're going to feel this, you're go to you're going to experience this, this is what life is, you know. um And it it does flick between, you know, we're and an I, so she does go back to the first person because it has that sort of function as a kind of wisdom dispensing song.
00:07:57
Speaker
I think I've gone to it in moments where I needed those those moments of wisdom, but also where there was something something good had happened that needed to be marked with ah with a, and this is a big life moment, sort of a song, you know? So I think when I got, I've got a really distinct memory of getting my first studio space, which was a really big deal for me because I was I was working as an academic in a university. I really didn't want to be working as an academic in a university. I really wanted to to to be free of that and and to run away honorably, which instantly is what Hijira means. It means to leave or to leave, but to run away rather than just to leave, but to to to leave with honor, you know. um and And that was my relationship to academia at the time was I didn't want to feel like I was
00:08:52
Speaker
fleeing it but I knew that I needed to leave and what I wanted to move towards was life as an artist. Yeah, when
Transition & 'Hijira's' Influence
00:09:00
Speaker
I got my first studio space, which felt like the first time that there was a really possible portalling into that life, pretty much the first thing that I did as I was sitting on the floor in my studio, nothing in there, like amazing light coming through the window, golden hour, I think it was, probably about this time of year actually.
00:09:22
Speaker
was i had a big I had a sheet of A3 paper and I wrote one of what at at the time was like my favorite booklet from the song. It never has been easy whether you do or you do not resign, whether you travel the breadth of extremities
00:09:53
Speaker
And I was like, this this moment in this studio is about me choosing not to stick to a straight line. Like it's about me choosing to step into a more expansive life, to to feel that a more expansive life is available to me, to feel that a more expansive version of myself is available to me. um
00:10:19
Speaker
And also something about queerness as well, I think, which I don't know that I would have fully named to myself at that point, but something about not sticking to straight lines has come to feel like it was.
00:10:32
Speaker
was about choosing a queerirer ah queerer life as well. So I think, yeah, it's been it's been there in moments of like lostness, but it's also been there in moments of foundness as well. i Sounds like there's a sort of bravery piece to it, that it's it's the song that either creates the container or the conditions for for bigger bravery or acknowledges that bravery has occurred here.
00:10:57
Speaker
yeah like right yeah Joni's witnessing the bravery somehow because because she knows it and you know she knows it and you resonate with with the way that she knows it.
00:11:08
Speaker
Is that couplet that you described just now, is that the bit that you always wait for or are there different moments for different moments? I'm really i'm really interested in how this, one it almost doesn't it doesn't have a chorus, does it? it it's story, it rolls, it rambles, she's a rambling woman, it feels like travel, it's about travel and so I wonder if there's, if there is a bit for you which is one of the questions that we ask or whether it's different bits for different days, different years, different eras. So I think at the moment the line that that's more
00:11:47
Speaker
lodged in me or I don't know if I, I think I wait for all of it, like all of it. I'm just like, oh yes, Choni, yes, yes. that was But I think the one, if I was thinking about like possible tattoo lyrics, which I do think about um and do feel, you know, I do feel the need for some it sound a bit weird but put some Joni on my body, you know, I mean she's on my body anyway in all sorts of ways but if I was thinking about specific lyrics, um the one that's with me at the moment is a bit later on in the song and it's where she sings, um where only particles of change, I know I know, orbiting around the sun,
00:12:35
Speaker
But how can I have that point of view when I'm always bound and tied to someone?
Exploring Life's Contradictions
00:13:01
Speaker
It's just so good and I think what I really love about this song, among the many things that I love about it, is her refusal to resolve those kinds of contradictions.
00:13:12
Speaker
that she's just like, I can know this, this thing, which is that we are made of atoms, those atoms change, we're all, you know, we're all changing all the time, like there's nothing fixed about us, absolutely nothing. We're in this bunker scenario where we're on this piece of rock that's spinning around another piece, you know, like it's crazy, it's crazy, she can hold that and she can name it. You know, the logical sort of conclusion from that thought would be,
00:13:42
Speaker
okay well then we're all radically free in some way and radically indeterminate and we could be anything or we already are everything and and nothing and you know all of these things and then she sort of she's not it's not like it's not an anticlimactic move or a kind of undermining move but in the in the second part of that statement she's just like but i always I'm always in love with someone or I always fancy someone or there's always someone that I'm just you know desiring or that I'm leaving or that we're not free. We're free and we're not free. you know i'm And it's difficult to hold on to the thought or the recognition of our like endless indeterminacy when also, I don't know, you fancy like
00:14:38
Speaker
Bob from the chippy or whatever. I mean I feel like Joni would never fancy Bob from the chippy but whatever the like Joni equivalent of that is you know. I mean hey I could fancy Bob from the chippy he's shoveling chips. What might he be? I mean he's fancy chips a lot.
00:14:58
Speaker
I'm interested in, I think you've alluded to it in in lots of separate places of this conversation, but if you had to speak to what survival means for you, if if it helps in specific relation to this song, what what kind of survival are you speaking to when you choose this? What does survival mean for Ruth Charnick?
00:15:21
Speaker
I do you think that it is is something to do with what I just said and in the last part, which is about living with and in contradiction and in the space between two thoughts or the space between feelings coming to realize that the way to survive is not to push yourself or others into resolving the irresolvable. Like that's what it means to survive is to hold is to hold the holes of things as much as as possible and that building capacity for life and by that I mean like letting as much of it in as you can bear and then letting a bit more in has to be about allowing for the for the complexity and and the contradictoriness of it. um It has to be because that's the only way that that we can
00:16:19
Speaker
let let of much as much of it in as possible and and then letting it it in, we're letting ourselves in. And what it means is is not to kind of um exile parts of yourself in service of having a ah clear or cogent self-narrative, you know, is not to do that. Are you all right? Yeah, if this was ah if this was a video medium, you would see me gurning at this point. I am pulling, but this is just... I feel you and youre youre you're just articulating it so beautifully. i'm just um um I'm doing some deep listening, but you just... ah
00:16:58
Speaker
It just rides me out to the crowd. That's what it is. I think that's what I call it. I think that's what survival means. I think every time that I felt that I couldn't or wasn't surviving. And I mean that, you know, I don't I'm not using that as a as a in a figurative way. I mean, like actually in those places.
00:17:21
Speaker
i'm what has been happening usually is that like I've been killing parts of myself or or I've been allowing other people to kill parts of myself. you know that has but I think that's that's that's the key. This sounds like a rare song to me that is that speaks to the the the dark days, but it's the same song you would reach for when the days get lighter or when when the when the parts are being regained. and ah I think it's quite rare that it's the same song that does both things.
00:17:51
Speaker
Agree, yeah, I mean, I just think, I just feel like it contains everything. I think it's, and I think because she plays with scale so much in the song, umm not, I mean, yeah, yes, in ah in a musical, the musical sense of scale, like her tunings are always bonkers. I love that about her, like that she's always looking for notes in between notes, you know, ah like Grace notes, this sort of thing. but but But in the song itself, lyrically, she plays so much with moving from the particular out to the universal, back to the particular and showing us the correspondences between those things and and how easy it is
00:18:42
Speaker
how easy, you know, that that that theyre that they're not distinct from each other, that you can move, we can move and and we should be moving always between those two places, like the individual and the universal, you know, and and realizing that they're indistinct from each other. And I think that's what makes it ah feel like such a capacious song for me, that yeah, like you said, does does have the capacity to kind of hold me whether I'm in like the depths of despair or whether I'm you know, sitting in an amazing patch of sunlight on a studio floor, a feeling that my life's about to take a turn for the better, you know. Yeah.
Personal & Universal Connections
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah. And we've had a lot of people talk about, I think the the sort of running theme of these conversations is that the song that's chosen connects
00:19:32
Speaker
uh the person either with other people or with themselves and this sounds like sort of both and for you it's um it's it's yourself as you are it's yourself as you would wish for her to be and it's everyone and everything which is yeah talk about capacious that's that's about the widest song i can imagine thinking of letting mcq's wide dancing this is just a wide song and it's a wide song for her as well for Joni Mitchell as well like that's what I think she's Like it's a song about her being within her own temporalities and like the layers of her own temporality, you know, where she's like, she models such honesty with herself, you know, about her ego, about what it wants, about like her inconsistencies. It's never like Joni is great, you know. There's something so
00:20:27
Speaker
I don't know it just makes me feel very safe around people who are honest about themselves you know there's for me I'm just like oh good like thank you because it gives you permission to to have that relationship with yourself and with other the people. I've absolutely loved every scrap of this conversation thank you for saying yes thank you for saying yes early in the morning um thanks for breaking my heart and putting it back together again in the space of 20 minutes but win How do people find out more about your work, get in touch with you, see what you're up to? You've got you've you've got so many strands to what you do. and Plug yourself, please.
Connect with Ruth Charnock
00:21:00
Speaker
who um So you can find me on Instagram, at RuthCharnock. You can find me on my website, which is RuthCharnock.com. I, a few years ago, edited um and wrote part of a book about Joni Mitchell. So if you're interested,
00:21:20
Speaker
in her and reading some brilliant writing about her. That came out with Bloomsbury in 2019. It's called Joni Mitchell, New Critical Readings. And then, yeah, any other things that you're interested in that I might do, like writing, editing, tarot reading, you can find out more about all of that pretty much on my website. Thank you so much for doing this. I love you loads. I love you loads.
00:21:56
Speaker
We really hope you enjoyed the episode. If you want to support the podcast further you can choose to upgrade your subscription on Substack, but most of all we'd just love it if you told your friends about what we're up to. Thanks for listening.