yarnivore

When I decided to see Sierra Hull two nights in a row last May, I told my friends the second night would be “Sierra Hull and some guys.” Two of those guys were Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, who don’t need my introduction. And maybe you’re all caught up, and Billy Strings doesn’t need my vouching for either.
But just in case you’re where I was eight months ago, catch up with me: I knew there was a young man calling himself Billy Strings, and I didn’t give him credit for having earned his name, and I imagined he was playing straight bluegrass, and I thought I didn’t want that. I might have seen he was playing Doc Watson tunes or somesuch.

I love being wrong. At least, I love it when the outcome is a whole bunch of music I’m going to enjoy. I didn’t buy tickets for the concerts when they dropped. I bought them when it finally really sank in that I would not be seeing someone in May, whose visit would have included those days. What good medicine I chose for myself! Sierra Hull’s two shows absolutely deserve a full review. Today, I want to focus on what an amazing reward Billy Strings was for my gamble on a last-minute lawn seat at the Outlaw Music Festival.

I drove up by myself without trying to convince anyone else they’d like the bill. At some point, I figured I should check out the act I didn’t really know. And I put on Billy Strings’ most recent album, Highway Prayers. It started lifting my heart immediately. A traveling song for my traveling! The second verse included “Highway 80, way out west,” the third verse, Sacramento, the direction I was headed (the show was in Wheatland).

The chorus captures part of what I wanted out of my drive:

Where the air is clear and the road is straight

All the choices have been made

I’ll keep rolling right along,

leaning on a traveling song.

Billy’s set blew me away. More than one song had me teary, mostly with the joy that the world had this in it, and I had been missing it, and nearly missed it right in my own patch. What other miracles am I ignoring? And you know, it might not have even looked to anyone like I was enjoying his set, since I had my phone out through most of it, but I was so fully engaged finding what songs he was doing, and their lyrics, discovering setlist.fm. It was over way too soon, I thought.

But honestly, that concert is still happening in my heart if I just try a little.

In July, I had my encounter with a Billy Strings song that is among my favorite ever musical experiences, in a lifetime filled with amazing soundtrack moments. On a day that had begun with a medical appointment worthy of its own essay, that afternoon I found myself so close to the ocean I thought it would be churlish not to visit. That was a terrific choice. Among the many delights was the few minutes I spent watching two vast men strip to shorts, leaving a pile with their friend, and then running into the surf. The sight of them frolicking together, laughing and hollering, and so full of joy, filled me with joy. When I turned toward the shore, the first thing I saw on the beach was a bouquet of white roses that had been scattered. White roses make me think of Die Weiße Rose, and Sophie Scholl’s bravery against the Nazis. And of course, they make me think of me. I took a few to draw later, as well as several small chunks of charcoal, pure black leftovers from innumerable beach bonfires, so lightweight, they scatter on the surface of the sand. They seemed like a perfect memento, an art supply made of other people’s fires. Walking back, I got nearly to my car when I remembered that I had especially wanted to nature journal, or at least draw while I was at the beach. And doing it with location-specific charcoal felt great. There was a stand of cypress trees between the parking lot and the dunes, and I drew them and a few of the seagulls I’d been enjoying before finally going to my car.

That afternoon while I was driving around. I had remembered how much I’d enjoyed Billy Strings, and I put on a long playlist to get to know more of his music. I was unprepared for the song that came out of my speakers as I sat there. The opening words, “Sitting under the cypress tree, I saw a miracle flying high,” gave me chills. I looked up the trees to confirm that they’re cypresses! So that was lovely, and I knew I would always feel fondly about the song, which I restarted. And then it kept going, being wonderfully oracular.

Staring into the wishing well has got you feeling a particular way.

You can’t stand to see your own reflection.

So, toss a penny and close your eyes and try to think of something to say.

And don’t waste your wishes on perfection.

That felt like a powerful message from the musical universe, one I often need reminding about. What a gift. Two startling moments in my first listen to “Gild the Lily” were great, but we weren’t done yet.

They say that April rain will fall to resurrect the flowers of May.

You can’t know who you love until you miss them.

Oh my whole entire heart. Last year as April rains brought me May flowers, I was acutely aware of someone I miss, who I certainly do love.

I don’t claim I’ve got a deity looking out for me, making sure I have a good soundtrack with lots to think about. That would be grotesque when there is so much so wrong with the world. But a friend’s family has a belief they share that has only grown over the years. Six siblings, and when they hear an incredibly perfect, ridiculously appropriate song for some moment, they thank their musician father. He passed away in a terrible accident, doing what he loved, flying in the Arizona canyons. They figure he’s looking out for them, sending songs as little messages: Pay attention! I’ve started thanking him too, although I didn’t know that story in July. But I’m telling the story in February. And I say: Thank you to Sarah’s dad. Because he’s really holding it down, up there in heaven.

If you’ll give Billy the 23 minutes NPR gave him, I highly recommend his Tiny Desk Concert. If you only have time for one song, then try the version of “Gild the Lily” that Apple produced.

(Post title from the perfect song “Mad World,” which Sierra Hull often covers, always beautifully.)

When I was 22 years old, I met a small child who changed my heart and my life. He was almost three. We spent so much time together those next few years. I cherish that time, and still tell improbably many stories, even decades later, about the brilliant, charming, loving, creative, in-every-way exceptional child I was fortunate enough to love and care for.

These last couple of days, I have been remembering the many hours we spent with books and music. A song and a book before every nap and bedtime add up, especially when the soft-hearted adult is easily coaxed to sing one more song or read one more book.

Of all the songs, the one I probably sang most often was “Roseville Fair,” which I first knew as a Nanci Griffith song. I refuse to overthink the attached recording. It’s a cappella as it was on the couch in the ’90s. Singing for two generations, and for any friends who listen in, is an honor and a pleasure. I’m so grateful for the opportunity.

Here’s a song for all of the lovers

Here’s a tune for you to share

May they dance all night to the fiddle and the banjos

The way they did at the Roseville Fair

Journal entry from the evening of 5/15/25

Tonight I’m sitting at my vintage work table with a cup of tea I made from the self-heal growing in a lush patch in my yard, in a handmade mug I love. I am looking at a triumph: Today I made relief printing ink using powdered pigment I bought in Venice, and I printed my self-heal linocut. This pigment is green earth, it is a bit of Italy, and I only spoke Italian in the shop, and we discussed all sorts of fine points about art materials. After 30 years, I figured out I’m allowed to go to Italy even if I don’t have a PhD from Yale. In every way, this little print and all its circumstances represent triumph.

And also I am deeply sad. Love, as we know, moves the sun and the other stars, as Dante told us at the end of Paradiso, but lately I’ve been more lost in the middle of the way of my life. This winter I became so depressed that I withdrew from all the activities and friends and places I know give me strength and sustain me, and eventually retreated into the tiniest, most shut-down version of myself. I knew something was wrong, but I was thinking through mud. 

I haven’t had a full night of sleep since my IUD was removed in January. Never enough hours, and always interrupted. Since January. (We’re working on it. I have been having hot flashes again, and brain fog, night sweats, and overwhelming emotional surges — I already did second puberty, and no one told me this could happen, but I have been struggling through a new wave of menopausal bullshit for over four months.) The last time I was sleep-deprived in a big house that wasn’t quite warm enough, I was enduring abuse that has haunted me for 25 years. Abuse that has felt extremely present, given the Neil Gaiman reports, and the horrific French rape trial. The political everything happening at the same time has been an existential threat. They hate people like me, and want to eliminate all the ways I made myself up out of whole cloth. 

Then my psych meds were fucked up for most of a month. The meds that were keeping me hanging on as hard as I could, using every skill from every worksheet and book and therapy session I have learned from. It was the last straw. When I had a phone call with someone I love, and felt detached and empty and confused, I lashed out and blew up plans we’d made, wonderful plans that never seemed in any way real to me. 

My horror when I began to comprehend what I had done, what I had been doing, kicked me out of the depression, right into some kind of new-fangled, extraordinarily beneficial nervous breakdown. It hurt like hell, and I will also always be grateful for the experience — I have been mining it for all of the treasure I can drag out of it. This disintegration has led to a huge leap of progress in healing from that long-ago abuse. I was never suicidal at any point, even though I started out in agony. Careening through my thoughts, I saw both sides of every pop song and book and scrap of culture I have cared about, in ways that brought me some compassionate acceptance of my behavior. (If I am only as stupid as Joni Mitchell, and not nearly as terrible as Diego and Frida, then maybe I’m just a traumatized weirdo doing the very very best I can to be a good person, to show up for my people, to teach what I know and share what I have. When I break, it is not because I am a bad person.) The comparative religion aspects this all kicked up have been fascinating (having an experience of rebirth and awakening while casting off a slave mentality, during Passover/holy week — it was so interesting to lean into, and I felt companionship with every other human who has suffered, bringing in my Buddhist learning.) Seeing all the ways I was neglecting to take care of myself, and then feeling neglected, has me trying to do better for myself. Not for anyone else, for me. I deserve my good fortune. I deserve life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, even. 

It’s so good to have my head on straight, to be feeling real emotions again, even though some of them are painful. I’m grateful and largely content. And also I am journaling about my recovery from trauma instead of living my life. I am alone when I should be showing off my new house and trying my houseguest’s patience with too many garden stories. 

Since I don’t have a houseguest, and you’ve read this far, you can have a garden story. 

Last fall I went to Annie’s Annuals, one of the last days they were open*, and before they’d announced the closure. We’d put in an offer on the house, but there was so much waiting. At the nursery, I thought, “I wish I knew what my abuelita grew, I wish I had her wisdom.” Just then I turned a corner and found a stunning sage, at least four feet tall, dark green leaves and bright chartreuse calyces, with brilliant purple flowers. Salvia mexicana, v. Limelight. I decided this was a sign and I brought one home. I drew it and pruned it, and when we got to the new house I put it in a much bigger pot, and then I kept an eye on it. 

It was winter, and I fretted that it wasn’t doing well, because I had expected it to take off with the rainy season. But that isn’t this plant’s way. It held onto the last leaves of the fall all through the winter, as they looked more and more bedraggled. I was sure I had harmed it when I transplanted it, but it was green, so I let it do its thing. The days got longer and longer, and since I had stopped checking every day (depression!) I was happily surprised when I found new growth, both on the tips of the two old branches, and also coming up from the soil. 

The new growth from soil level was vigorous, and quickly grew taller than the old stems, yet I didn’t want to cut the old stems — they were still trying! But I finally decided to try rooting the new growth from those stems, as separate plants, and I cut them off. 

Those two old stems withered completely in the time it took for the new little plants to make roots. When I potted them up, I cut off last year’s growth at the base. Some plants thrive when you completely cut them to the ground and let them start again in a new season, a fine metaphor right there. I finally read the fucking manual on this specific plant and learned it is a little more complicated.

Leaving the old growth until the new growth starts is correct — it helps the plant overwinter and gain strength for spring. Cutting it off after it’s done its job is also correct. My two new baby plants are lagniappe — a little something extra that I get because I rescued the growth on the otherwise withering stems. One of them is going to my neighbor, because gardens are for sharing.

My plants have so much to teach me when I slow down and listen to them. And they teach their lessons over and over again, so those of us with attention problems, or who are particularly stubborn, keep getting chances to tune in to their wisdom. 

Saturday 5/17 addendum:
I am still very sad. None of this insight or progress or healing gets me ten days in northern California in May with one of my favorite people in the world. It does have me cherishing being alive, taking better care of myself and loved ones, even understanding Dante and Borges better, so it could surely be worse, however much it hurts. I was so unwell, and I am recuperating, and I am sharing what I learned. And here’s one more gift from the breakdown: This has given me a new yardstick for my mental state. If I feel unloved, that is some brain weasel depression nonsense. That is crazy. I am so loved, by such a spectacular array of humans (and cats!). May I never forget it again.

(Post title from Jesca Hoop’s exquisite, piercing song, “Enemy”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp-AxSnUtCo)

*Annie’s Annuals is dead, long live Curious Flora, the worker-led successor to our beloved local nursery, right on the grounds where it’s been for years. (Annie’s lives on nearby as a mail-order nursery, but isn’t open to the public.)

Journal entry from 4/11/25

from my notebook, 10/23/24: “Who will I be, with almost no artificial constraints? Myself, just more so, is my guess.”

What is hell, if not the inability to enjoy a glorious spring day due solely to the conditions inside one’s head? That’s my new definition. And so I am trying bravely to walk out of hell yet again. Sometimes other people put me there, sometimes circumstances, but this visit has been entirely on me.

Because my life is a magical realist fable, soon after I started telling people that my abuelita had been a curandera I noticed a new plant at the edge of my garden. When I looked it up, I was delighted to learn “self-heal” had found me. Also called “heal all,” “woundwort,” and carpenter’s herb,” it is a well known and widespread medicinal herb, described by Linnaeus, sure, but in Chinese herbals a couple thousand years earlier as well. Its reputed uses cover a range of maladies, mostly physical, though one herbal I found specifically described its use for “blocked anger” and “overheated emotion.” My yard’s Prunella vulgaris (which is going to be my burlesque name when I’m 80) might be a European introduction, or it might be the native North American species, or it might even be a hybrid, which would make it just right for a mutt such as myself.

Late this winter I was having some feels, and I woke up one morning with the most vivid image in my mind, of my small side yard cleared of grass and weeds so the little patches of self-heal I had found there could get a chance to grow. Few gardening tasks have ever, in decades of gardening, given me as much satisfaction as ripping out that grass and literally rematriating the land. I got down on hands and knees several cold days in a row, seeing my vision through one trowel full of weeds at a time.

After clearing a small area down to moist dirt and dark self-heal, I scattered a package of California wildflower seeds a friend had given me as a housewarming present. It was the beginning of March, and not at all the best time to start native seeds. That would have been last fall—and I had a chance to do it, but there were so many things to do, and so I had neglected the project. Those dense little rosettes wanted friends in their plot, though, so I decided to give it a try. If I hadn’t, I would have had to put the whole thing off until next fall, which felt intolerable.

Our spring weather this year has been extraordinarily favorable for late-sown seeds. Watching their wee cotyledons open, their tiny leaves find the sun, has cheered me every single day I’ve had the good sense to spend some time with them.

The self-heal is thriving with less competition. When I get home from catsitting, I’m going to make myself some tea from it. The herbalist I’m going to consult for advice helped me tend the broken heart I mostly gave myself in 2006; she will be happy to hear from me, and maybe she can help with my current grievous self-inflicted wounds.

May this little herb and my art and my story bring you some of the healing you yourself might need on this glorious spring day in 2025.

(Post title from the intensely comforting Sierra Hull song, “Truth Be Told”)

This year I began working with wildflowers as the primary subjects of my art. Their diversity of forms and charming tenacity inspire me constantly. One series of pieces began as a shadow tracing of one small bouquet. The flowers were re-established native California plants, growing in a rewilded backyard in San Francisco. As I worked with them, I contemplated the remarkable chain of events that led me there. I am a middle-aged, queer, disabled, self-taught Mexican-American artist from south Louisiana. I live in northern California, though, an exile from my homeland due to the inhospitable climate there — both political and meteorological. My leisure to sit drawing flowers in a backyard was bought with my disability. Because I cannot work in the larger economy, I have time to explore the production of art. Those flower species do grow natively in our part of California, but those particular examples were cultivated, not weeds but instead the prized small meadow behind a $2m house.

Tracing and drawing those flowers makes their transient forms concrete and more permanent. I prefer to work on site, as close as possible to where I cut the plants, when I work with their shadows. The length and character of the traced outlines is specific to the time and place they grew. Working outside, as the plants do, grappling with wind and clouds, as the plants do, I feel kinship with my tiny cousins. The subset of available flowers is also specific to time and place; many wildflowers are highly perishable and difficult to transport. This art can only be made in that place — then the art can bring that place to other observers, across space and time.

When I came across Ivan Argote’s site-specific installation, Descanso, at the Venice Biennale this week, I wanted nothing more than to do the same thing with those plants. I’m going to send this post to a few people with a request for access to do this. Wish me luck!

(Post title from Tom Petty’s nearly perfect song, “Wildflowers”)

Just as my garden is made of other gardens, so too my garden writing — I have been reading folks talking about gardens even before I had my own garden. May Sarton’s books about her little house in Vermont gave me the idea that gardening had emotional and intellectual relevance, which I had not noticed yet ( I was about 20). Jamaica Kincaid, Thalassa Cruso, Michael Pollan, Wendell Berry, bell hooks — writing about continuity, and place, how plants get us to move them all around the world.

Right now I’m planning to move some plants, and it’s an extraordinary comfort, a deep-in-my-bones reminder that I’m in a different story now, with agency and resources. The willow and self-heal and purple sage that volunteered in this yard get to come along to a new one. The pineapple sage Bill grew from a neighbor’s cutting will be so happy to go in the ground so it can get properly huge. The sages I bought on my last trip to Annie’s*, which seemed like a possible folly, will now (WE HOPE!) have homes next to NyttHus where they can be delightful xeriscaping.

I’m bringing a huge, healthy jade that we rehabilitated. Bill went to pick up some free pots and a very sad jade was on offer as well. Its glossy leaves and wee buds attest that it’s currently thriving — it’s nearly to my shoulder! It was so hard to grow jade in Brooklyn — this level of success would be impossible without infrastructure, whereas here, it looks easy. My thriving might look easy to an outsider, a newcomer, and yet every second of contentment I’m able to appreciate these days was very hard won. I know with appalling specificity how terrible one’s life can become; what a joy to contemplate the opposite. Some plants, and fish, are limited in size by their immediate environments, but when they are given abundant resources, they can really take off. I wonder what it might be like, to live in a house with so many rooms, so much space, so much opportunity to grow into who I am, and who we are. Who will I be, with almost no artificial constraints? Myself, just more so, is my guess and plan. For as long as we get this grand chance, may Bill and I be able to wring as much happiness and satisfaction from it as humanly possible.

*[Post title from Secret Sisters’ sweet song, “Late Bloomer” — “It doesn’t matter when you bloom / It matters that you do”]

* Annie’s Annuals, RIP and we hope someday LONG LIVE ANNIE’S as it rises from the ashes?

9/22/24

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to deny that my life is a fantastic fairy tale. Of course another less balmy narrative could start up at any moment (and perhaps already has, since I live this fairy tale life in the 100% real world), so I should take this breather to tell it thus.

Once upon a time, when I was heartbreakingly young, I ran headlong into a villain. My life to that point had not included any men of his type, and I was relatively defenseless. Through shameless manipulation he lured me from my studies, selfishly misused my talents, and sucked very nearly every bit of life out of me to fuel his own pursuits. It was a classic “misuse the muse” story of the Sandman #17 version.

One of the places that gave me life through those terrible years was my garden. On the grounds of a house built in 1847, with the help of a professional gardener for advice and a small library of reference books for raw knowledge, he and I built a garden. It would be wrong of me to suggest that it was only my garden, solely, but it was absolutely mine, a bit of land that absorbed my blood and sweat and tears, as gardens do.

The ensorcelment lasted for over six years, but I eventually broke the spell, and found what was left of myself, and made my escape. The way I know this to be a fairy tale? Who but a fairy tale villain would behave this despicably: He refused to let me take anything from my garden. NOTHING. No cuttings or transplants, no seeds or bulbs, nada. It takes real effort to be so stingy about a garden — it is a perversion of gardening, in my opinion, which is fitting, given the perpetrator.

Because my life is, at least in some tellings, a fairy tale, his attempt to keep me from my garden backfired. I mean, he clearly succeeded on some metrics: I did not take, and do not have, anything whatsoever from that garden that is tangible. And his villainy really did hit me where it hurt, one of his superpowers.

However, because fairy tale, very nearly every person who has been fool enough to cross me, who has had the temerity to keep things from me (gardens, knowledge, companionship with others, even my home) has been thwarted spectacularly: In this case, gardens, riches started pouring in immediately. The friends who took me in let me tend an herb garden out front; another friend shared her community garden plot and taught me about vegetable gardening. My psychiatrist gave me a start from his exquisite jade plant. And the first official act F. and I set our names to, when I landed in NYC: A membership to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The message was unmistakable. That guy would deny you even a fraction of his ⅖ of an acre? Here, have 52.

It wasn’t just that first year, though. My life has been filled with gardens and plants shared over the years. This morning, fall equinox, walking around my garden gathering a bouquet to make art with got me onto this topic.

This little bouquet has three kinds of sage — a purple one I found on the property, a red one that was a gift from a friend, and an electric blue sage I bought at Berkeley Hort — I’ve seen hummingbirds drink from all three in my yard. The marigold I grew from seeds I saved from last year’s ofrenda*. Two kinds of California poppies (I have 5 or 6 in my front yard, in a postage stamp-sized meadow). Pink and white and orange cosmos, all from seeds I saved from last year. Mint and purple basil, flowering (I love seeing their square stems and knowing they are kin). The seed stalks are Clarkia, and a native local abutilon, and self-heal, which showed up in my yard after I started telling folks that my abuelita was a curandera, and which I just discovered is also a Lamiaceae cousin.

The bouquet, picked this morning, embodies this day, this place. I’ve arranged it in a dark blue Heath Ceramics bud vase, and I love that the pottery is also local. I’ve already made a bunch of art documenting it (photos, shadow tracings) and I’ll make more (watercolors, pen and ink drawings). I could even write a multi-book series, Transcendence of Things Past, about this particular bouquet and how it comes to be that I live alongside these plants, but I’m pretty sure I’ve already exceeded the “good bits version” length for this morality tale, so I should wrap it up.

My garden now is made of other gardens, and it makes yet more — I share my seeds and starts and cuttings. I choose to live in an abundant world. The villain of our story today stole some particular plants and made a small patch of ground off-limits to me, and by doing so showed me the door to every other garden and pointed me towards finding Real Home (which was inside me all along). It’s hard to even be mad — he chose to be small and mean, and I have chosen to be vast and kind, its own intrinsic reward in every present moment.

Honestly, I hope that garden continues to be thriving. May it grow lush and be a constant reminder of what was squandered by his villainy.

As for myself, your loving narrator, well. I don’t know about living happily ever after. That’s only in real fairy tales, and I am decidedly human and mortal. But I have the capacity for joy and awe and transcendence at any moment, the love of a small army of friends and lovers and relatives, and many gardens full of endless treasures and knowledge where I am welcome.

That’s a fairy tale reward if I ever heard one! It’s my intention to appreciate every drop and crumb of this good fortune, and to find ways to use it to benefit others.

Living well turns out to be the legit best revenge. People who don’t treat me well don’t get to stay in this ongoing story. That’s it. Seems like just punishment to me! And all I have to do to enact it is to let old, bad stories go. I resign my role as the implementor of past villains’ dastardly schemes!

*NB: Refusing a personal invitation to see someone’s ofrenda is rude.

[Post title from the fine Taylor Swift song, “Karma” 🔥]

9/16/24

When I say my life often feels like a novel, a magnificent picaresque romance, this is the kind of thing I mean: This morning I drove over to O—– Avenue, in Richmond, to look at a house for sale. It is a 30-sec walk from where I lived on C—– Avenue, with the friends who took me in 8 years ago. (One of those friends bought that house, in fact!). It’s a 2-min walk to the entrance of the Ohlone Greenway. It’s adorable, and there is a treehouse. I drove away musing about where I might volunteer, and guerilla gardening some open spaces, and just how big a thorn in Chevron’s side I might choose to become.

From there to Catahoula Coffee, on San Pablo Avenue (which began its existence as the Camino de la Contra Costa – the “opposite shore” from the Presidio – and which is an extraordinary urban sociology laboratory for its entire length). I came specifically for one of my favorite decadent treats, a “Mexi-mocha,” a mocha with cinnamon. I got to chatting with the manager, and said they should sell stickers – he said, “Oh, no, here,” and pulled an arm’s length of them off the roll (they seal bags with them). In thanking him, I explained that I am from Louisiana, and that my father grew up in Jonesville, which is in Catahoula Parish. He’s heard something like that before, I’m guessing from his smile, and he told me about the owner and his four Catahoula Curs. Turns out there is a woman in Richmond, CA, who breeds Catahoula Curs as search-and-rescue animals. I honestly couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried, so I’m thinking maybe I’ll try a little harder to document some of it.

xoxo – Rosa

[Post title is a line from the lovely boygenius song, “Without You, Without Them”]

If you would like to spend about half an hour contemplating aging and impending death with several versions of a beautiful song, I seem to have you covered. [The footnotes are partly for me, but also I showed this to a friend who copyedits. 🙂 ]
————
Over and over again these last weeks I’ve been seeing various situations I’ve been in from different angles. In some cases, it’s because there is a factual thing going on in which I have a different role than I did the last time I was in that story. Other times it’s been a song or someone else’s story that comes into different focus. As I told my friend F., when I was asking for their thoughts on all the connections I was seeing: “Apophenia turned to 11, it’s fun but it is a LOT. Help?”

It’s as apparently trite as the song “Both Sides Now” — but that song is not trite. That song is profound and heartbreaking. When I hear Joni sing it as a young woman, with her clear, high-pitched voice, I find the song is precocious and bittersweet. Even at 26, her wisdom was shining out.

https://genius.com/Joni-mitchell-both-sides-now-lyrics

I actually first heard it sung by Judy Collins, and although Collins herself has grown on me over the years, the horrible bouncy (electronic?) (harpsichord?) in this recording, at that tempo, made Joni’s compelling, specific, original lyrics feel rote to me.

Hearing Seal sing it at Joni’s 75th birthday concert, I was openly weeping in the theater. His phrasing, the instrumentation, the gravity of his performance, all contributed to an elegiac mood. “So many things / I would have done / but clouds got in my way”.* When he spoke directly to her across the concert hall, I felt like I had snuck a glimpse at their private life. So beautiful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K3J2nqeDf2g

Joni performing it at Newport this year had me straight up ugly crying. I’ve seen the recording several more times now, and I no longer sob or weep so hard I have to stop the video, but that has happened a couple of times. (I find it’s actually more cathartic if you keep watching while you cry, FYI. Ymmv.)

Joni Mitchell. Many of us thought she was done. She was a lovely old lady who came out to various events, was praised, didn’t say much, had horrifying health problems. But Joni in 2022 has significantly recovered from a stroke that ruined her hands, among other things. She can play guitar again. She relearned her own songs by watching videos of herself playing the songs. She performed at Newport this year, her first public performance in TWENTY years. It was an emotional performance and viewing experience from the get-go, but when she sang the lines, “And now old friends are acting strange / they shake their heads, they say I’ve changed / well, something’s lost and something’s gained / in living every day” she knocked every bit of breath out of me. I was not alone; I’ve seen many accounts of people saying that was the actual second** that their tears started.

More than one friend (and nearly every asshole on the internet) has mentioned Wynonna Judd fidgeting during the concert when she wasn’t actively singing. She looks so uncomfortable at times. Well. Wynonna’s mama, Naomi Judd, shot herself in the head the night before she and Wynonna were to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame, just under three months before Newport. Naomi Judd was depressed and frantic and miserable. She decided to kill herself rather than be seen in front of her peers and fans looking older or fatter or lower-voiced or crazy or…. When I see Wynonna watching Joni, I see a woman thinking to herself: Mama. Joni’s doing it. You could have done it. You could have heard every person still alive who has anything to do with country music say nice things to you to your face***, but you noped out.

One true thing I know, after a challenging life to date, is that being dead is far worse than looking foolish or fat or old in front of your friends.

_________

*I have been coming to feel that the period should go outside of the quotes. Perhaps because I read a lot of UK content? But this is not a careless error; it’s me as author(!) asserting a non-standard preference. If the universe keeps giving me presents, I will discuss this with Teresa Nielsen Hayden someday. (Patrick just posted that Making Light is going back up! Huzzah!)

**Side topic — the power of recorded music to invoke emotional states down to the split second. [Side side topic: I want to talk to someone who knows about music programming in NBA arenas. I have SO MANY questions.]

***In “Girls Against God”, Florence Welch opens with “What a thing to admit / That when someone looks at me with real love / I don’t like it very much / Kinda makes me feel like I’m being crushed”
[NB — I have a LOT to say about this song, and also the album. It’s tremendous. That might be the topic on 11/2.]
https://genius.com/Florence-the-machine-girls-against-god-lyrics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CoahSZdx-eA (edited)

In kindergarten, no one else knew how to read, so I kept my mouth shut about it. My kindergarten teacher was gobsmacked when they assessed my reading skills at the end of the year and discovered that actually, I could read at a fifth-grade level, at least. (They ran out of readers to test me with, because my school only went to fifth grade.) 🙂 First grade was much happier for me, because I was free! Freeeeeee! And the librarians had been told about me, and they offered me ALL THE BOOKS. <3 I couldn't possibly love librarians more than I do.