The universe won’t read my book

Toward the end of April 2020 as I was trying to scrape together a little book that reconciled me to the universe, I read through what I had written so far and suddenly realized it was done.

“I don’t know how to explain it, I don’t know why, I don’t know how or when it happened, but this is the book I wanted to produce. It’s finished,” I said to myself.

I published it that weekend.

It has a ridiculous name: How to Play a Blue Guitar. I have never been able to put into words why I think it hangs together as a work of art and expression. It is just plainly obvious to me that it does.

The marketplace has told me I was being foolish. No one wants to read it. Was I wrong about this thing?

Every so often I page through it. It’s eccentric and eclectic. It has short essays, poems, fiction, and maybe it doesn’t work, because I seem to be the only person who thinks it does. How to Play a Blue Guitar is exactly the book I wanted it to be.

What does it mean that almost no one in the universe will read or buy what, to date, feels to me like my most real book?

It means a simple, liberating truth: that, as a wise man once wrote, the universe doesn’t give a flying f*ck about me.

You know? When I think about that carefully, it’s downright exhilarating.

Hardcover

Softcover

Ebook

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This is the end of my second full year of blogging every day. Thanks for dropping by.

Lists pros and cons

I had an interesting exchange Friday after I posted yesterday’s post (“Joni’s foreground music”) to Facebook.

One of my closest we-should-be-friend-friends-not-just-Facebook-friends friends, Sam Kujava, responded, “I would say she is my favorite female musician but that is considered sexist now, right?” And added, “I cried happy and sad tears watching her perform here,” talking about the “Joni Jam” at Newport Folk Festival on Sunday.

On the subject of “female musicians,” I said, “I’d been thinking whether Bob Dylan was still our greatest songwriter or if Springsteen had passed him, and then I thought of Joni and thought, ‘Wait just a minute …’”

Then Sam said it all: “They’re all up there near the top spot. Maybe we shouldn’t focus on ‘top spot’ and just enjoy them all.”

I am a sucker for lists. In my digging around after the Joni Jam, I dove into Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Albums of All Time” (Blue was No. 3), and I’m always wanting to rank stuff like that. But Sam’s right: Maybe we should just enjoy them all. Why try to parse whether “Jungleland” or “River” is the more moving song when they both strike the soul to the core? It’s a fun little exercise, but the bottom line is that both songs tell us something unique about what it means to be human.

I locked in my favorite four movies of all time years ago, and the only change in decades has been what’s No. 5 — It’s a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz, Casablanca, and E.T. — but do I really choke up marginally more at “ZuZu’s petals — THERE THEY ARE!” than at “There’s no place like home”? Does “You always had the power, my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself” really move me slightly more than that last “Here’s looking at you, kid”? Does “Louis, I think this could be the start of a beautiful friendship” really leave me speechless a tad more than E.T. telling Elliot, “I’ll be right here”?

Maybe I shouldn’t focus on “top spot” and just enjoy them all.

As I type this, I’m listening to “The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey,” from Joni Mitchell’s album Mingus, which I thought I had never enjoyed but now I wonder if I ever bothered to listen to it. She is certainly one of our most adventurous songwriters. She could have been content to produce lovely songs like “Both Sides Now” and “The Circle Game” but instead she went out on a limb and explored “The Jungle Line” and “Shadows and Light,” and I dare say that’s why she is immortal.

We are blessed to have multiple works of art that take our breath away, that touch us in ways that random words and melodies can’t. “Best ever” is a totally subjective statement, and if we’re honest, it changes from moment to moment.

And here I am, days later, still thinking about that priceless hour at Newport where love of Joni Mitchell focused like a laser in thousands of hearts. Wherever if lands on some list, that experience goes on the “Best Ever” pile.

P.S. What was I thinking? Mingus is amazing!

Joni’s foreground music

Newport Folk © Steven Rivieccio | Dreamstime.com

I stayed up past my bedtime the other night watching videos from the “Joni Jam’ at Newport Folk Festival, where friends surrounded Joni Mitchell and helped her perform some of her most memorable songs. Everyone was crying with happiness to see this 78-year-old woman doing her best to do her best. It was a struggle, but she made the effort and, because it was Joni Fricking Mitchell, everyone was overcome. It was sad because time has taken its toll and it was inspiring because of her determination and the love for the woman and her brilliant music.

There is such a thing as foreground music — music so compelling that it refuses to be in the background, music that forces you to pay attention.

Joni Mitchell recorded such music. It was not just perfect words in combination but the sounds and the tunes all coming together. Her first four, mostly acoustic/folk albums are priceless, but when she ventured further into electronics and new sounds and jazz — at the time she lost me after a while, or I lost her but found her again on further listens.

Of the singer-songwriters of that era, I think she has aged best. Generations sang “A Case of You” and “Both Sides Now” together Sunday on the Newport stage. The words of “Both Sides Now” are so much more poignant sung by a 78-year-old wise woman than by a twentysomething who was just figuring it out.

Joni Mitchell made foreground music for the ages.; tuck it into the background at your peril.