June 2011:
The dog days of summer had arrived early that year. Only June, and my thighs were stuck to the hard candy blue plastic chairs of the laundromat. My palms, a year-round promise of perspiration, attempted to dry themselves on my legs. No one was watching, yet still, my fingertips coyly transformed a scratch to a wipe. But sweat on sweat was just more sweat. If I wanted to, I bet I could have wrung my hair leaving it parched. Rendered enough water, salted like the ocean, to fill a pool. My head, with ears that had yet to grow in, would hang over a chlorinated pool, pH level somewhere between 7 and 7.6, sitting behind someone’s perfect colonial house in suburban central Massachusetts. One with a basketball hoop at the end of an uncracked asphalt driveway ushering towards the American Dream. I could have made something useful of all this waste, I thought. I could have, but there was no pool that needed me. The colonial homes remained locked. And I was sitting in a hard candy blue plastic chair of the laundromat.
A Top 40s symphony was squashed to dust under the drum of tumble in commercial sized washers. In cascading cycles, the consistent monotony hummed to me as the dryers pumped hot air through flexible aluminum vents out of the building. But the air remained just air – it returned to me as an occasional breeze. So I sat in the makeshift waiting room of the laundromat, at home in my own puddle.
I was comfortable enough. Reprieve was fleeting but welcome. Merciful as it came through the glass front door propped open with a folded sliver of cardboard. One man’s trash, this girl’s savior. Days away from turning fourteen, the age where high school begins, my middle school love had softly faded in the rear view. I only looked forward.
Outdated and dog-eared, the magazines that didn’t find their way to our mailbox in Worcester were mine for the taking here. But I settled for borrowing. Browsing. There was a quintessential New England arts and culture magazine that I flipped through, Newport something. Quickly, I realized there was a world of museums and music that was not mine. I combed through, flipping pages, paying special attention to the bookmarked corners. Someone who, at the very least, I shared a laundromat with felt there was something worthwhile to come back to. Surely, there would be one thing in this foreign publication that would ring familiar.
An ad came into view: Newport Folk Festival. I was at the age where concerts had come into view as a possibility, somewhere Appa would drive me and my friends to. Wait hours in a parking lot or a neighboring Dunkins until it was time to collect a group of girls. My friends and I would be dizzy with yet another “greatest night of my life”. I was living the American Dream.
But this wasn’t just a concert. This was a festival. It was big. Its size and duration were far more impressive than a single concert. That must have added a unique level of importance. While the idea of a concert, the big, important one, was familiar enough, I still felt lost in the list of musicians slated to perform. Until I came across one name – Brandi Carlile.
Before the age of music streaming, I consumed all my music on YouTube. At 13 years old, I was in a daily deep dive, unmonitored exploration. I was too nervous to stray into anything risqué, but the thrill of finding new music did the trick for me.
Brandi Carlile’s “Fall Apart Again” was a fast favorite. Even at a young age, I was reeled in by any semblance of nostalgia carried through a vessel of vulnerability. It always cut through me. While I am not sure there was a particular person I could tie it to, the song had me believing I could place their face on the tip of my tongue. It was only a matter of time. I gave myself a moment to revel in the dream – Brandi looking right at me as she’d sing, “You fall apart again, and you can’t find a friend”. A sea breeze, actually salted from the ocean, would grab hold of my hand, speaking to the loneliness I had felt at 13 years old, the loneliness I did not know how to spend time with. She would be that friend. And I could be her friend. I loved concerts. I loved something bigger than my life that was anything but my life. But I was just almost 14. I had no job. We were in a recession. And my parents’ were in the middle of a divorce. I was perceptive enough to know this was an ask I could not afford.
January 2022:
Joni Mitchell’s entire discography was removed from Spotify in January 2022 to protest the streaming service platforming the Joe Rogan Experience, which she described as a podcast with “baseless conspiracy theories and a concerning history of broadcasting misinformation, particularly regarding the COVID-19 pandemic”. Standing in solidarity with Neil Young as well as the global scientific and medical communities, I understood the gravity of this protest. But still, her album Blue with the timeless “A Case of You” was a staple in my life. The immense loss was felt.
July 2022:
Eleven years later, the dog days of summer took their sweet time this time around. I welcomed a pace, languid but still tumbling head over heels in excitement during the summer of 2022. Everything that got caught the under light shined brand new. I was blinded. In refusal to sit in the dormancy of post-grad meets a break-up meets a lay-off meets a global pandemic, I crawled out of my corner, unsatisfied with silence I’d settled in for far too long. There, I trusted the sun. Even as it left a deafening burn, I knew aloe was in arms reach. I was content in savoring fruit for lunch, leaning my head back, ears finally grown in, over the wooden railing of my parents’ deck. I had let its sweetness drip down my palm, a confident current parting its scent past my wrist, down my forearm til it kissed a goodbye to my elbow and caught air, settling to the soft of the dirt below.
Brandi Carlile had just performed at Newport Folk Festival in July 2022. Appa was in the early weeks of recovery after his knee replacement surgery. I, his caretaker and daughter, was tending to him. I, his caretaker and daughter, was overwhelmed and fell short so my brother flew in from Dallas to help at the last minute. Unable to discern an extended hand from a slap, I quietly punished myself. Simultaneously, I had one foot cemented in guilt, one foot firmly kicking my parents’ front door open. In September, I’d be moving to Chicago. Living in a new state for the first time in my life. A flight away from home and a chance to listen to Blue on my own. To figure out what my purpose under this unforgiving sun was. A year of planning and saving up had passed – the limits of treats and pleasure were strict in my mind at all times. Once again, I was perceptive enough to know that a ticket to Newport Folk Festival to see Brandi, was an ask of myself I could not afford.
“Do not watch until you’re ready to cry.” Twist my arm. He sent me a video of Joni singing “Both Sides of Now” along with Brandi, her friend. It was Joni’s first time back to the festival in 53 years. He told me about how he was a puddle when he was at the show bearing witness to what I could only imagine was a euphoric experience. I was sitting in my parked car across from the tennis courts at the bottom of my parents’ street. I don’t remember where I was coming from, but I imagine I’d needed a moment before opening the front door. Joni, as the world knows, is nothing short of a miracle. I sat smiling at my phone. The next video prompted by YouTube is “A Case of You At Newport”. Yet again, a new life with this song had been born.
In music lineages, when artists speak to each other in their work, a transcendent magic is added into the world. It is holy. Writers thank each other in their acknowledgements. Poets, especially, have pages of chosen family listed, known and unknown in their worlds, to thank for raising them, loving them, guiding them. Their romantics are never ending, I would know. With music, these peeks into lineages are sometimes quieter. A more subtle hum that still rings obvious in its gratitude and existence. “Bags” by Clairo never fails to enchant me with “pour your glass of wine/ Mitchell told me I should be just fine / cases under the bed / spill to open, let rush to my head”. This cheeky nod to Joni always makes me grin. I’m in on it. The secret, the mystery, the key.
During the summer of 2022, I was not sure what it meant to date casually, and, in hindsight, it was very clear he had no idea of it either. Much later, the sunkissed butterflies unfurled themselves as anxiety when I reflected on his lack of consistency. Desire can only stay warm for so long before it leaves a burn. I had not yet realized that it was not a large ask for someone to be sure of you. Nor was it too much to want. But in those moments, we’d talk about music the way we did when we were 13, the age we had met each other. When I’d wait in earnest for his screen name to flash to life on AIM instant messenger. When Lady A, formerly Lady Antebellum, had just come out with “Need You Now”, and he was dating my best friend. I’m sure neither of them knew what it was to date then. So little changes in thirteen years.
I told him about the Mistki show I was just at. How I quietly cried next to Caitlin feeling otherworldly. I didn’t tell him about how someone in the crowd was passing around a communal tallboy of Bud Light – I was too high to remember why I shouldn’t drink a communal tallboy of Bud Light. I didn’t tell him about the short stack of pancakes me and Caitlin got at the IHop in Allston, an esteemed establishment that is no longer with us. I didn’t tell him that I had missed him. That the intensity of what I’d felt for him was both exhilarating and devastating, and how, though I knew deep down I was settling for far less than what I wanted or deserved, I was willing to come back for more and more of less and less. I didn’t have to tell him this, of course. He knew. And anyways, he had fallen asleep on his phone while we were texting. The first time I recognized he had left me hanging.
June 2023:
On my 27th birthday in the summer of 2023, I saw Clairo perform at a festival in Chicago. My bills were the highest they’ve ever been, but I knew this festival ticket was an ask of myself I could afford. Or at the very least, I would allow myself to afford. “Bags” is Clairo’s “Case of You”. The most popular song in her discography. The one that people will know whether or not they know her name. It holds its weight and carries a similar nostalgia that makes me want to scream out of sheer glee. Hundreds of us, stuck together in the humidity of late June air, were in on this massive, feral conversation with Joni. Clairo was kind enough to share Joni's reassurance. And somehow, there was enough room and time for us all to echo it back just in case there was a need for affirmation that, indeed, we all would be just fine.
I got home from the show and wanted to let him in on Clairo’s secret. I wanted to tell him that I missed him. Or the version of him I once knew. Or the version of myself I once was. But it was my birthday. And it felt too honest of a share, too romantic, for someone who had barely kept in touch with me. Nevertheless, I still felt romantic, as a poet does. I let my conversation with Joni, Clairo, and a few hundred people stay private and did not hand him the keys.
January 2023:
Six months prior to seeing Clairo on my birthday, I wrote a poem about the summer of 2022, wrapped up in a new pace, old face. “Summer of ‘22 Bangers” was comprised of four stanzas that end in a line from my four most listened to songs. In my lines, I spoke with those musicians. Gathered them for a debrief on a summer full of miracles that left a burn. They sat with me and one of them, I can’t recall who, nudged a cool bottle of aloe towards me.
January 2024:
YouTube user, willt, will certainly see whatever form of the pearly gates of heaven that exists in their beliefs. Their channel contains hundreds of playlists that compile YouTube videos of songs into full albums. It isn’t clear to me why they have taken the time to do this, but, nevertheless, the arms of YouTube held me just as I had needed. Joni Mitchell’s Blue Full Album playlist brought to us by willt has been a corner of the internet I had warmly come back to in moments of nostalgia and necessity. In the years her music was not available to stream. It was here, I found myself at home as a child. It was here I existed in the corner of my family’s living room in Worcester. Where the slightly lopsided desktop monitor put its faith in a folded sliver of cardboard attempting to hold it all together. If I listened close enough, I could even hear Amma’s stern warnings as I leaned my body backwards, testing my luck by balancing on the hind legs of the wooden kitchen chair. It is a miracle I had never fallen.
Two years later at 27 years old, this bookmarked playlist followed me knowing to linger at my new home’s door frame. I’ve never known how to let go of something I’ve loved. I’ve never had the heart to watch it leave. So I’d coax it back in. Put some water on the kettle. We’d settle into the secondhand armchairs tucked in the corner of my living room in Chicago. The seats – deep enough, generous enough to draw my legs up and under me. A tangled mess I had no interest in unfurling to the world. Again, I would be back home in Worcester. I would still be home in Chicago. I would always at home with Joni.
March 2024:
It is without hesitation that I say “A Case of You” is a perfect song. There is no unique analysis or outpouring of my heart I can offer you. I am sure someone has already put it perfectly on some corner of the internet. I only ask for your trust in understanding that this song has found me in my life time and time again and touched me in a, simultaneously, familiar and all together new way. In the seizing intensity of heartache, fresh or a festering wound. In the dull ache of existential crisis prompting me to make sense of a clouded sense of purpose. In the forgiving days of late winter, where tulips shoot through softened soil and insist that I hold onto hope for a moment longer, something warmer is around the corner. “A Case of You” is a song that keeps giving, as it returns to me with newfound clarity on what it means to be alive. It is a haunting I hope never tires of seeking me out.
On a Friday in late March in Chicago, the city groans at yet another snowfall postponing the promise of spring, but I am encased in its magic. I have no qualms. Joni Mitchell’s entire discography has returned onto Spotify just that morning. I afford myself a moment to remember him. I know parts of him will pour out of me into my lines from time to time. So I allow them to. But then, I let him pass like a thought. I consider taking the bus back to my apartment, but I don’t dare to pass this miracle up. I walk the three mile trek under fresh flakes and quietly cry. The warm yellow light of the record store gently asks me to come in. I accept, aware of the cliche I am happy to live out. My eyes beeline to the Ms – nestled against Blue is Joni Mitchell at Newport. I am still on my feet.
you’ve given me songs to go sit with;
Brandi Carlile’s “Fall Apart Again”
“A Case of You” - Joni Mitchell
Both Sides of Now- Brandi Carlile
beautiful writing ♥️