Times of shit and roses

„My individual, psychological descent coincided, ironically, with my ascent into the public eye. They were putting me on a pedestal and I was wobbling… So I isolated myself and I made my attempt to get ‘back to the garden’. I moved up into the Canadian back bush to a small sanctuary where I could be alone, lived with kerosene, [and] stayed away from electricity for about a year. I turned to nature. I was going down and with that came a tremendous sense of knowing nothing. Western psychology might call it a nervous breakdown but in certain cultures they call it a shamanic conversion. Depression can be the sand that makes the pearl. Most of my best work came out of it… There is a possibility, in that mire, of an epiphany.“

(Joni Mitchell, looking back on the growing of her 1972 album „For The Roses“, that has quite often been seen as a transitory work between her milestones „Blue“ and „Court and Spark“ – but, hey, what a fine, multi-layered album it is!)