SONG SO WILD AND BLUE

A memoir about a recording star’s influence on an author’s life and work.

When Lisicky’s fourth grade music teacher—a woman who “made music feel like it was meant for everyone, not just those with special talents”—introduced the class to Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now,” the result for him was transformative. Thus began a lifelong love of Mitchell’s considerable output. As Lisicky puts it, “Joni’s songs saved my life.” In this exceptional, warmhearted memoir, each chapter bearing the title of one of Mitchell’s songs, Lisicky draws parallels between the singer-songwriter’s artistry and life struggles—from her bout of polio when she was 9 to a late-life brain aneurysm that “left her for days on the floor”—and his own difficulties and cites how her work inspired him. An aspiring songwriter himself—he composed liturgical songs, in part because he couldn’t write love songs about the men he was attracted to—Lisicky was moved by the structure of the tunes in Mitchell’s album For the Roses and by her voice, which, in one of many poetic phrases, “sounded like honey had been poured onto it—or perhaps California had been.” Hers was “the music of loneliness” yet “layered with happiness and hope,” a particularly resonant message for a young man coming to terms with his homosexuality. Even after he turned to fiction and received recognition for his writing, Lisicky found inspiration in Mitchell’s work. He wanted, he writes, “to give to others what Joni had given to me…a chart as to how one lives a life.” Along with moving passages about his relationships and their challenges, Lisicky writes beautifully on mortality and death, including his parents’ health struggles, and on the highs and lows of being an artist. “To follow Joni’s lead,” Lisicky writes, “was to find out what was inside me.”

A beautiful tribute to a legendary musician and the act of creation.