REID #96

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SHORT:

I’ve logged hundreds of hours this week watching videos of Joni Mitchell’s great return at The Newport Folk Festival.

No matter what time it is, or how I’m feeling, I’m moved to tears.

Thanks to testosterone, my 26-year-old voice currently sits in a similar register to Joni Mitchell’s at 78 — so, for the first time in a long time, I’ve been able to sing along. 

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MEDIUM:

I was familiar with Joni Mitchell’s music as a child.

My mom had a cassette with “Circle Game” that she’d put on during long car rides.

Somebody at camp would always whip out a guitar and sing “Both Sides Now” during a way-too-emotional-campfire-that-felt-like-we-were-all-going-to-die-the-next-day.

California grocery stores love to play “Big Yellow Taxi”.

But it wasn’t until two or three years ago, that I re-discovered Joni Mitchell in a deeper way.

This re-discovery was spurred via a (sick?) obsession with Brandi Carlile that I developed in the year 2019.

According to about 55555 YouTube videos I watched, Brandi Carlile also knew of Joni’s music as a young person, but was never quite sold on it. Apparently, she heard the line “I want to shampoo you” in “All I Want” and was like “that’s dumb” and turned it off.

When she told her hot-British-wife-then-girlfriend Catherine about this, Catherine freaked out and said, *in a British accent*: “I don’t think this can continue if you don’t learn to understand Joni Mitchell. You don’t get to critique Joni”. So Brandi re-listened (to the whole album this time), and it changed her life. 

When Joni Mitchell turned 75, Brandi asked to sing at her birthday party and was rejected. Then somebody got sick. So Brandi filled in and performed. She didn’t nail the performance (and Joni told her that lol), but the moment lit a fire under her ass. She decided to work harder and try again, performing the entire Blue album in Los Angeles. She was so nervous that she had to be hypnotized in the weeks leading up to the event, but she did it. And knocked it out of the park. And then she did it again at Carnegie Hall for a sold out crowd. 

Brandi has since spent a lot of time with Joni, attending “Joni Jams” in Joni’s living room, as Joni learned to talk, sing, and play guitar again after suffering from a brain bleed.

If you ask Brandi, she will tell you that the 3 best songs ever written are: “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen, “I Will Always Love You” by Dolly Parton, and “Case Of You” by Joni Mitchell.

ANYWAY. Why am I talking about all of this? Get to the point, Reid. OKAY. 

I watched Brandi perform Joni’s music via livestream during quarantine, alone in my sad little Bushwick bedroom. At the time, I was mostly moved by Brandi’s voice (and the sexy hot bald twins in her band who I think should go head-to-head with the bald Selling Sunset twins), but I also fell in love with Joni’s lyrics. And started listening to her songs. I re-watched this video over and over again. 

Then I started testosterone and stopped listening to most music altogether. Especially Brandi Carlile and Joni Mitchell.

As my voice deepened, I grew increasingly frustrated that I couldn’t hit high notes and sing along to songs I liked. If I went down the octave, I sounded terrible. If I tried the regular key, my throat would start burning. 

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LONG:

I’ve discussed my relationship to singing in this newsletter before.

I’ve joked that a good harmony is tantamount to 75mg of Zoloft. I’ve talked about a cappella and musical theater and voice lessons. How my senior vocal recital program had the words “If I cannot fly, let me sing” printed across the front.

I am humiliated that I care so much about my voice. I’m humiliated that I like to sing– period. It’s embarrassing that I take it seriously. But unfortunately, it’s my reality. 

I also get extremely stressed out writing about medical transition in any not-completely-positive way. What if some TERF finds this (or someone who doesn’t know they have little TERF fragments in them) and is like, “WELL THIS IS WHAT YOU WANTED? RIGHT BITCH? 

Yes and no. And I think, for most people, this is the case. I made the decision to medically transition because I felt that it, as a whole, would make living in the world and in my body (ew) a bit easier for me.

I also like my voice. I like that it’s getting deeper, I like that it’s changing.

Anddddddddd I wept on the subway after I went to my friend Ryan’s house and he tested my range and I could barely sing anything. 

I stared snot-nosed at the train ads, as my body genuinely ached with grief. “The world’s on fire. People are dying. War is raging. And I’m crying because I am no longer a mezzo soprano”, I thought.

How mortifying. 

How ridiculous.

And it is, but whatever.

Singing kept me going throughout high school and college. It was a way that I could feel connected to myself as the rest of my brain and body struggled to make fundamental identity links.

It was a tool that helped me feel good about myself; proud (ew), in a way that I didn’t usually feel. 

I worked so hard to learn how to use my voice – to place and sustain notes. Tonally and pitch-wise, it may’ve been incongruous to my eventual self-perception, but it was mine — a product of a lot of labor, a lot of time, and a lot of care.

Something I could own.

Something I liked about myself. 

And now it’s gone (or, at least, very different). Which is, from a scientific standpoint: textbook “loss”. 

“Textbook ‘loss’” is the only way I’ve been able to feel okay about the true ridiculous sobbing I break into when I realize I can’t hit a certain note anymore. The little pangs of regret and “what if” I feel when thinking about going back in time. 

Last week I listened to a TED podcast with Greta Morgan, a musician whose projects include Vampire Weekend, Springtime Carnivore, and Gold Motel. In 2020, she got COVID. And a high fever. Which triggered a disorder in her brain that no longer allows her to sing in the same way she used to. She spoke about re-building and re-contextualizing her relationship to music and her voice. 

I texted my friend who works on the podcast and said, “loved today’s episode, needed it”, feeling insane and guilty that I was even remotely likening my elective medical transition to a horror of a involuntary medical issue. My friend replied, “didn’t even have your number saved on my work laptop, but knew who this was”. The response was surprisingly comforting and affirming.

My voice-loss-grief had been emanating in a more apparent way than I thought.

And somebody had seen it. And didn’t think it was stupid. 

Then I watched Joni Mitchell sing at Newport for the first time since her brain bleed… dancing in her seat, hands fluttering… her expert phrasing and now-richer voice floating out into the warm, blubbering crowd. And it walloped me. 

-First off, point blank. It’s Joni Mitchell. 

-Then, right next to her: Brandi Carlile. 

-Then there’s the fact that Joni taught herself how to walk, sing, and play guitar again, a miracle.

-Then there’s the fact that I know Brandi Carlile always wanted to be a pastor/ religious leader, but couldn’t do it because her sexuality and the church, and there she was, in a flowery robe, holding Joni’s hand and leading everyone through this cathartic, incredibly moving experience. 

-And then there’s the fact that Joni’s voice and mine, at the moment, sit in the same register. And I was able to sing along. 

Just last week, I wrote about how I wished things could motivate me, instead of making me want to jump into the sea. How the line between the two is often so thin. Well, pathetically and incredibly enough, these shaky YouTube videos and TikTok clips have done just that— bolstered me. 

As my body continues to change in ways I both can and can’t control, in ways I both do and do not want, in ways I hate because I’ve been taught to hate them, and in ways I hate because I just do, I’ll think of Joni Mitchell, in her throne-like chair and navy-blue beret, pigtails and beads, at age 78 belting: “well something's lost, but something's gained, in living every day”…

New and old and better than ever. 

The product of extreme talent, will, work, and acceptance.

…

Sorry this was incredibly gay and earnest. 

Like I always say, this newsletter’s a lot like when people slip on ice. Sometimes it’s funny. Sometimes it’s not. 

I've looked at this newsletter from both sides now, etc. etc.

If you haven’t watched the clips and news interview with her and Brandi. Go do it. It doesn’t matter if you’re the biggest Joni fan in the world, or you’ve never heard of her. It’ll make you sit in a certain shade of awe that, at least I haven’t felt in a long time. 

C U Next Tuesday

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Thank you for subscribing. If this is your first time reading the newsletter, read the archives.

Sincerely,

Reid

@rpopegram

@rpopetweets

Venmo: @rpope-venmo-26

Donate to The Audre Lorde Project

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Bonus Jonas Zone:

Next week I will be in Scotland living in an RV with no bathroom or shower (#Steinbeck Travels With Charley vibes!).

I am planning to use a 24/hr gym’s wifi to release a dispatch from ye auld Caledonia, but in the case that an email does not land in ur inbox, do not panic.

I am not dead.

I was most likely just too shy to ask one of the gym laddies for the internet password.

Either that, or one of the highland cows got me.

Can you tell I’m pulling directly from a listicle I googled called “Scottish Things”?

Cool.

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