We are Stardust, We are Golden and I’m Just Back from the Garden
Brains, beauty and braun. The majestic Joni Mitchell. Photo by Nicola Dill.
November’s blog is out early this month because I wanted to capture this once-in-a-lifetime experience before the tumult of election week. (May it not be as tumultuous as many of us have been fretting.)
I was among the 17,000 enthusiastic fans at the Hollywood Bowl a few weeks ago to see Joni Mitchell, along with a few other musical superstars.
I’m not over it and hope to never be.
So much has been written about Joni’s life, lyrics and loves. Her Canadian background, painting, musical evolution, illnesses and maternal history. Writers study her lyrics. Musicians study her tunings. The only thing I can add to this chorus of voices is another line of harmony from someone who was imprinted with her influence at an early age. My appreciation of the personal narrative form - in which strength and vulnerability are expressed through truth telling and storytelling - is borne out of the hours I spent listening to and studying Joni’s music.
I was 11 when I first discovered her. A guitar-playing counselor at camp taught me to play her songs, including the tunings. I’ll never forget how I felt when I first heard her music: ear expanding and it made my heart race.
More than fifty years later at the storied Bowl with the Hollywood sign in view, standing next to my husband, daughter, son-in-law, my brother and his beau, mopping water from my eyes, feeling the force of this woman’s lifelong impact on me - her music was still making my heart race.
So many thoughts and feelings came and went that night. Among them:
· The immensity of an impression made by an artist you encounter at an absorbent age.
· How challenging life stories can be turned into beauty and healing for both artist and listener.
· The power of paint, lyric and note as artistic activism.
· That a voice can change over time but how one can still innovate in one’s 80s.
· The delight in what doesn’t change, like Joni’s nervous giggle.
Unlike so many musicians from the sixties and seventies still on tour, Joni didn’t phone it in. A good many of the songs were her less popular ones, but with a mature spin to them. To her credit, I heard these tunes differently that night.
The three-hour concert, made possible by Brandi Carlile, was well worth the travel and ticket price but after the intermission, a parade of megastars filled the stage including, among others, Elton John (who sat in the back row behind Joni!) Annie Lennox, Meryl Streep, Marcus Mumford, Jon Batiste, Rita Wilson, Allison Russell, Lucious, Wendy and Lisa from Prince’s band and Celisse!
On a personal note, the concert offered two other profound experiences:
It was my first time seeing her live without interruption. The Alpine Valley concert in Wisconsin I attended in 1979 was cut short for high winds, thunder and lightning and I never thought I’d see her live again.
I expected that the music might not resonate with my 30-something daughter and son-in-law, but when I saw their faces light up, it was everything. The show that nobody thought could happen because of Joni’s stroke a few years ago, had become more than a miracle. A musical baton had been passed.
A sure sign that Joni’s work will live on for generations.
Photo above by Nicola Dill. Photos below by EBB.
Coming Up Tomorrow!
“The Dig: Memoir as Personal Archeology,” CG Jung Center, single session (online). November 2, 2024. 10 am to noon.
Joni Mitchell, Sunday, October 20, 2024 at the Hollywood Bowl
The view from our seats.