Sarah wrote: > Kakki, as Lori wrote elsewhere, Joni "lived, artistically, in a > Magdalene Laundry of her own making, supervised by her mother's > morality." I think that psychological point is the important one > here.
I missed Lori's comment but I think there is a lot of insight in it. Although her mother and father both encouraged her creativity, her mother was stuck in the old rules and ways, while her father seemed more liberal and openminded. I just don't see Catholicism as being the root of all social evils of the time. I recall most all religions being pretty moralistic during that era. Many were much more moralistic, strict, punitive and unforgiving than the Catholics in my experience. > And it doesn't say that the adoption agency wasn't Catholic. If the hospital was, the agency > is likely to have been, although I don't know that for a fact. I'm pretty sure it was a state-run agency based on other interviews she has given. She kept the baby at times and then placed her in foster homes on and off. She was trying to keep her. She did not agree to give her up for adoption until eight months later. >My idea about self-hatred, or more accurately lack of self-definition, > comes from her early lyrics, and I wondered whether her exposure to > the Catholic hospital when she had polio may have contributed to > that, although I don't know how long she was in hospital for then. I think she was in the hospital with polio for many months. Still, she seemed to me to have a well-developed sense of self prior to the time. Based on her stories of childhood, she was already showing an independent creative streak and was already smoking cigarettes at age 8. She also in a way stood up to her caregivers at the hospital by insisting that she could walk and by making them take her outside so she could prove it to them. She proved it and was discharged. > Whatever caused it, I hear in her lyrics that she didn't think much > of herself. Put that on top of the horrible social pressures, and > there was little hope she'd feel able to keep the baby. That's interesting - I never thought of her not thinking much of herself. I thought of her as vulnerable and sensitive and questioning, but interpreted that as typical of a highly creative person. Kakki
