Irreplaceable

Yesterday I wrote: “The poet Miguel De Unamuno wrote, ‘Our greatest endeavor must be to make ourselves irreplaceable.’ The extraordinary amongst us do, find a voice so unique, so singular and yet so universal that no one else can duplicate it.” And then last night, I watched the PBS Joni Mitchell Gershwin Prize concert. No doubt about it— Ms. Mitchell is wholly unique and irreplaceable.

The concert gathered various artists paying tribute to her memorable music by performing songs from various stages of her long, illustrious career. Behind them were her paintings and various photos of her youngers selves and peppered between numbers were some biographical snippets. At the end, Joni herself, 79 years old and recovered from a life-threatening aneurism, came up and sang “Summertime” — and masterfully so. Not in that high soprano voice, but with great musicality and soul. The evening ended with all the performers gathering with her to sing “The Circle Game.”

When the camera panned out to the enormous audience, one could feel the palpable nostalgia as so many lip-sang along with the lyrics and were transported to an earlier time in their lives, brought back to that moment of their young selves filled with hope and innocence and romance and possibility. I felt it too and more than once, my cheeks were wet with remembrance. These albums were my companions through the thick and thin of those turbulent times, both collectively and personally and Joni gave voice to the full range of it— the sorrow and the pity, the joy and the hurt, gave language to the hope and the promise and the complexity of life viewed from “both sides now.”

The only discordant note was the presence onstage (when the award was given) of people like Kevin McCarthy and Susan Collins, part of the club that refuses to see “both sides now” and in fact, is trying to shut down any conversation, be it in schools or political discourse, that acknowledges there are multiple sides to issues and life and we would do well to consider them all, with intelligence and heart-felt feeling. As has Joni Mitchell. 

Oh well. They were just a blip in a magnificent tribute to a truly irreplaceable artist, forever a part of our sound-scaped memory. Thank you, Joni Mitchell.