But the ecosystem that exists around the JVM also comes with both a bunch of awesome libraries, and a whole bunch of cruft and ceremony.
If, like Clojure, you're trying to pull in compatibility with JVM libraries, then you pull all that in. So now if you want a little C in your Clojure, you have to go through JNA or something.
I would like the option of going native with a Clojure dialect, without passing through either JVM (Clojure) or JS (ClojureScript).