A lesson in aging gracefully and a reminder of the power of song in a dark time
Woke up, it was a Monday morning and the first thing that I thought was: what do I write about today? Another column about the dark clouds hanging over our heads and the challenges we face with our climate, our democracy, and the disconnect between our leaders and the public?
Not today.
Today I’m celebrating a gift from a living legend, a parcel of poetry and song so powerful it can release and erase, or at least ease, the pain of the moment. I have no way of knowing for sure, but I’m betting that right now mystic chords of memory are ringing across the continent and beyond as the generations that grew up with Joni Mitchell discover that she has returned, delivering a full set of her classics last night at the close of the Newport Folk Festival.
To hear Joni, who is now 78 years old and hasn’t sung in public in 20 years, reprise songs like A Case of You, Both Sides Now and The Circle Game in the rich baritone that her voice has ripened into, to listen as she parried harmonies with Brandi Carlile and a circle of adoring musical partners, many of whom were opening crying as they performed with her, is for me to be reminded not just of the continued resonance of the dreams of my youth.
As another one of my favorite poets has written, we all need a “good companion for this part of the ride.” Longtime rock critic Ann Powers explained on NPR this morning, “Carlile has diligently worked to ensure Mitchell’s place at the center of popular music history for the past five years, performing tribute concerts, writing liner notes for the elder singer’s archival series and becoming a steadfast friend to Mitchell, who has spent years recovering from a 2015 brain aneurysm….’This scene shall be forever known henceforth as the Joni jam!’ Carlile declared, referring to the much-discussed informal evenings she and other top-shelf musicians have shared at Mitchell’s Los Angeles home as the elder singer found her way back to performance.”
It is not easy to age gracefully in America. Decades ago, the creation of Social Security and Medicare gave seniors a real safety net, but the holes in it are many and the work of elder care is badly under-resourced and left mostly to families and, more often than not, the younger women in families, to carry to burden alongside everything else. When Joni sang, “I could drink a case of you and I’ll still be on my feet,” the young musicians beside her cheered, rejoicing that this musical genius had found her way back to the stage so late in life. It took a circle of care to make that happen, and belief that hers was still a voice worth cherishing.
Every day, many of us quietly perform the care work that keeps our aging parents or other relatives going, offering them as much dignity as we can. The last few years have been especially hard on them, not just because of the threat of dying from COVID but also the isolation the pandemic has imposed. Last year, an effort to put hundreds of billions into supporting the caregivers who now do much of this work for poverty-level wages foundered in Congress; it is part of America’s unfinished agenda.
Joni, to her everlasting credit, is still connected to this unfinished work. In January, she joined her fellow legend Neil Young in pulling her catalog from Spotify to protest its support for podcaster Joe Rogan and his spreading of misinformation about the pandemic and vaccines. I appreciated that gesture, but today I’m even more thankful. Her brave decision to return to the stage to perform, comfortably seated most of the time but rocking out on this guitar solo to her song Just Like This Train, is an unexpected gift.
For one day to start not with news of another mass shooting or a cop gone bad or another turd from the mouth of the Orange Cheeto in Mar-a-Lago, but with the golden chords of Joni signing her songs again, I am grateful. As Carlile said a few years ago while performing the entire Blue album live, “We didn’t live in the time of Shakespeare, Rembrandt or Beethoven. But we live in the time of Joni Mitchell.”
Micah Sifry is a Medium columnist and the author of several books on tech and politics, including The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet) and WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency. He also writes a weekly newsletter called The Connector, where he focuses on movements, organizing and democracy. You can also follow him on Twitter at @mlsif.
Support this writing directly by signing up for a Medium subscription through this link. Get access not just to my writing, but to everyone’s!