Please just come and talk to me

Any old theme you choose

Just come talk to me

Mr. Mystery talk to me

You could talk like a fool--I'd listen

You could talk like a sage

Anyway the best of my mind

All goes down on the strings and the page...

Shut me up and talk to me

I'm always talking!

Chicken squawking!

Please talk to me.

Not only will this barrage estrange the character from the people around her, it is unpleasant to listen to, even with Pastorius's sweet bass line behind it.

YET Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is more than a series of uncontrolled, desperate self-portraits. Mitchell does impose some structure on the album, so that it forms a more or less cohesive whole. She is forever the wayfaring stranger of "The Silky Veils of Ardor," moving on, searching for something intangible. She longs to make life click joyously into place. She sees through other people's unsuccessful efforts to "get through this passion play." In "Otis and Marlena," for example, Mitchell depicts a couple visiting Miami Beach, down from somewhere in the north:

They've come for fun and sun