While Muslims stick up Washington...

Otis empties out the trunk

On the steps of that celebrated dump

Sleazing by the sea

Bow down to her royal travesty...

Always the grand parades of cellulite

Jiggling to her golden pools

Through flock and cupid colonnades

They jiggle into surgery

Hopefully beneath the blade

They dream of golden beauty...

Otis and Marlena vacation in Miami, looking for pleasure and relaxation. But it's a lie: their attempt is hollow.

Mitchell portrays a variety of doomed efforts. In "Jericho," she sings of the birth of a love affair, hoping that this time she will be able to "keep the good feelings alive," where she failed in the past. In another song, "Cotton Avenue," she presents a young woman, preparing to go out dancing in the city on a warm summer night. She never says Cotton Avenue is fun--in fact, she describes it as a crowded, coldly sexual scene, where the men are out "hustling," sizing up the women. She goes there out of compulsion, out of the same need that runs through the album: Find something to hold onto, something real, because what I'm doing now isn't making it.

Throughout her career, Mitchell has blurred all the ways of enjoying life--love, lust, escape, delight--into the word "dreaming." In the title cut from Don Juan's Reckless Daughter, Mitchell is still looking around, still trying to lose herself in dreams, in Hell. The song has a dark feel to it, almost predatory, with a driving beat punctuated by sinister, percussive bass notes. Mitchell sings that the serpent in her cannot be denied. But neither can the antithetical pull for clarity and simplicity, for the innocent child within her.

On the final cut, "The Silky Veils of Ardor," Mitchell sets aside Hell and dreaming and escape. In this simple, sad song, Mitchell plays unaccompanied acoustic guitar, and sings of the long, lonely ride home. She sings as if she plans to make it: