Reviewed by Sara Pisak

Paul Lisicky’s Tune So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell permits his life and the music, life, and writing of Joni Mitchell sing in concord. Equal components memoir and Mitchell biography, Lisicky makes use of the folks legend’s music writing and private struggles to assist himself and the reader higher perceive vital moments in his life.

One of the crucial noteworthy moments Lisicky discusses is his transition from songwriter to prose author. As a songwriter himself, he finds solace and readability in each his personal writings and in Mitchell’s. Collectively Lisicky and Mitchell forge a life engulfed in appreciation for the facility of language that aids in his newfound love of prose.

Relating to his transition from songwriting to fiction, Lisicky writes, “[…] Deep down underneath my pores and skin, I knew it wasn’t so far as it appeared. Novels and quick tales lived on the opposite aspect of the room, although some would say, Oh no, and supply their pronouncements.” Lisicky’s transition to fiction writing mirrors Micthell’s different creative pursuits like portray. To beat his doubts as a author, Lisicky makes use of this parallel of being songwriters who share different creative retailers to assist him discover the musicality, fluidity, and freedom in language’s many kinds.

Music as its personal language is a transparent thread all through Tune So Wild and Blue. Lisicky observes:

Music is water: I perceive it to be so in that it breaks down ranges; it equalizes. As soon as anybody is inside music, there isn’t a boss of it; the listener means as a lot because the gamers. And we aren’t ourselves anymore, not fairly, with our normal heaviness and dashed hopes. If something, it makes us lighter, buoyant. We float.

Music as an equalizer that ebbs and flows, forming a bond with the listener has as a lot to do with the melody and devices because it has to do with the written notes and phrases. The poetics and storytelling that raise listeners in music and kind metaphors, themes, and imagery equally maintain their weight and significance in different written kinds akin to prose. Floating on the musicality of songwriting begins as a approach for Lisicky to research, perceive, and admire Mitchell’s biggest hits and deep cuts, nevertheless it rapidly evolves right into a life raft, guiding his understanding of his personal writings and journey as a author, musician, educator, and editor.

With regards to music and language Lisicky continues, “Music supplied polarity. Music made certain the music wouldn’t be obtained in a single path however a number of.” The liberty music gives is freedom that reverberates in language. Music’s polarity is an echo of the novel’s select your individual journey; it’s an echo of the non-public expertise in reader response; it’s an echo of the creator’s lived expertise; it’s an echo within the stark distinction of a soliloquy; it’s an echo of the polarity of poetic kind and content material; and foremost it’s an echo of language’s contractions.

Music’s polarity reaffirms language’s polarity and contractions and vice versa. Lisicky discusses language’s polarity:

Language is unruly; language needs to imply ten issues directly. That’s precisely what I discovered compelling about it. By contending with the method that unnerved me, I used to be ensuring it didn’t dominate the individual I attempted to be. It was at all times steaming forward of me, and it was my job to catch up.

Like music, language is compelling due to its contradictions and juxtapositions. For a author of any style or kind, language’s rowdiness can both steamroll you or you need to use it to create and suppose innovatively.

Tune So Wild and Blue is revolutionary due to its means to see Mitchell’s distinctive and juxtaposing key adjustments and chord progressions, in addition to her distinctive imagery and diction in a few of her greatest hits like “The Circle Sport,” “A Case of You,” “Free Man in Paris,” and “Each Sides Now” as a mirrored image of the Lisicky’s personal distinctive relationship to the written phrase and his life.

After studying Tune So Wild and Blue, it confirms language is the primary device readers, writers, musicians, and listeners should create uniquely, private that means and understanding within the polarity of their lives. Maybe, Joni Mitchell sung it finest in “Each Sides Now,” “It’s life’s illusions that I recall. I actually don’t know life in any respect.” Language takes our illusions and creates concrete that means; language takes our concrete meanings and makes them illusions.