The Unspeakable by Meghan Daum

Author:Meghan Daum
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780374710064
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

THE JONI MITCHELL PROBLEM

The Joni Mitchell problem is essentially a problem of perception. It plays out like many problems of perception do, under a cloud of insecurity that sweeps in on the winds of cluelessness. Here is a common scenario. You are spending the weekend in the country with friends. These friends are educated and possessed of that patina of coolness that comes from liking certain musical artists (say Leonard Cohen and Paul Westerberg and Wilco and Sonic Youth) and majoring in something not altogether useful in college (English or Art History or Medieval Studies—certainly not Business) and working at a creative and/or intellectually stimulating and/or do-gooder, socially conscious type of job. They read serious literature and hip graphic novels and when they watch TV (if they watch TV; even though it’s now possible to watch TV without an actual TV, some of them still cling to the late twentieth-century smarty-pants posture of “I don’t own one!”) it’s almost exclusively the high-end cable dramas. Again, their musical tastes run toward coy minimalism. Except when it comes to Prince. They all like Prince. They really hate Sting.

So you’re in this house in the country, doing the dishes after a communally prepared meal, and somehow the subject of Joni Mitchell arises. Maybe it was prompted by someone asking “Who’s the best singer-songwriter of our time?” or “Who’s the best Canadian recording artist?” or “What do you mean Björk is derivative—derivative of whom?” And Joni Mitchell’s name will be invoked and someone will say, “God, I can’t stand her,” and someone else will say, “Yeah, it’s like she’s yodeling or something,” and yet another person will say, “Yeah, but Blue is an amazing album.”

Before you know it, the proprietor of the country house will have gone to the record cabinet and pulled out one of Joni’s records. This record will invariably be either Song to a Seagull or Clouds. Moments later, the room will be drowning in Joni’s trembling soprano and aching schoolgirl lyrics—“Marcie in a coat of flowers / steps inside a candy store”—and someone will be yelling, “Christ, turn that off now!” and someone else will say, “I remember my mom listening to this,” and the proprietor of the country house (who may be one and the same as the person who remembers his mom listening to Joni; in fact, this may be his mom’s copy of Song to a Seagull, stashed away in the country house with John Denver’s Rocky Mountain High and all seven volumes of the Firestone Christmas albums) will say to you, “But I thought you wanted to hear it. You just said you liked Joni!” to which you will sputter some jumble of “Yes, but not this” and “Never mind” and “Forget what I said.” And you will insist that he stop the music immediately and replace it with Sounds of Silence or, better yet, actual silence. And later that evening you will lie in bed clutching your iPod and scrolling through the hundreds of Joni tracks that, in some cases, feel less like songs than an aesthetic nerve center.

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