just hit rewind

just hit rewind

This weekend I'm back home in Manhattan. My sister's turned sixteen, which means I'm giving up my Honda Civic for a (comparatively) swanky Mazda M3. I mean, c'mon - it has a CD player.

But in a sense, I'm not quite ready to give up the Civic. It drives me crazy that the only music I can listen to is either NPR, Top 40, or my slightly melted Blue Oyster Cult and Psychedelic Furs cassette tapes from high school. Still, cars become such an attachment in Kansas; they're like third legs (and not in a dirty way). Plus, I can't help but think that my silver Honda's a little less tacky than a sporty bright blue Mazda.

I wasn't in the greatest mood driving back and I dug out one of my oldest friends that I've been neglecting for awhile: Joni Mitchell's Blue. I don't think that anyone can fully understand me unless they've carefully listened to this record, through on through. Call me girly, call me uninspired, but it's true.

I don't remember when exactly I purchased it for the first time on CD. I think we were on a family vacation somewhere, maybe San Francisco. At that time, I think I was a freshman in high school, give or take, and had been discovering all this great folk music that I liked to listen to alone in my room with the lights off. I'd seen the lovely Joni pop up on recommendation lists in magazines like Spin and Rolling Stone but I'd never heard anything besides "Both Sides Now" and "Big Yellow Taxi".

Blue was different from anything that I'd heard. The reason I'd been so into folksy sorts of music was because it seemed to express all the deeply melancholy emotions I'd been experiencing in a truer, more connective way than the mope rock like the Smiths, which up to then had been my favorite band. And that was especially true for Blue, which contained the voracious heights and the lowest lows to which a hormonal and precocious teenager could really grasp on. An immediate sense of connection, like the music was being pumped straight into my veins.

Since then, the love affair's only continued. One of the greatest and most thoughtful gifts I've ever received is from my fantastic friend Katie. We geeked out over our mutual adoration of the album in trigonometry class junior year and when she returned from winter break, she presented me with Blue on cassette tape. Because there really was nothing else to listen to in that Civic, it became the de facto music. That's when Joni and I really got to bond.

I have literally listened to that tape over and over again, countlessly, endlessly. There was a time when I knew exactly how long to fast-forward through sections of the tape to get to the song I wanted to hear. It was the tape that I would listen late nights in high school, when I would drive my car out into the country, lonely and depressed, and gaze at the stars while Joni sang softly in the background. It was the tape that was in my car every time I drove back home from Mizzou, feeling the unending urge to make a break for it all.

I guess I haven't really talked about the album or its songs specifically. In a way, that feels too personal (as if this post weren't embarrassingly already). Now I can see some of its flaws and there are definitely songs I love more than others: "California", "A Case of You", and "All I Want" come to mind. More than anything, that tape has demonstrated emotional dependability, in a way that not many things have in my life. I'm not always a very good person, but it's nice to know that Joni's always going to be there, feeling the same things that I'm feeling when no one else is around - I just have to pop her into my tape player.

So in a very tangential way, this is my tribute to Joni Mitchell and my ol' Civic. It feels kinda silly writing it now, but... Well, I don't know. Let me just leave you with my favorite song off of Blue. Don't just listen to it absentmindedly while perusing Wikipedia or anything. Save it for when you're feeling washing the dishes a little down or the weather outside is slushy and grey. Or you could be like me and just listen to it again and again... and again.