An emotional mentor of mine, Joni Mitchell, 75 years old today. Back in the winter of 1983, as I experienced a brutal break up with a woman who was 2000 miles away, a friend of mine was astonished to hear that I wasn't very familiar with Mitchell's perfect masterpiece, Blue, released when Mitchell was 28. Of course it hit me like a tidal wave and has stayed with me ever since, although there are times I can't even get close to it, because of what it still does to me. My sister used to listen to it up in her garret of a room in our childhood home, and my father would roll his eyes and be exasperated and say "why does she listen to that gloomy stuff?"
Particularly amusing to me every year is that River is included in shopping mall and restaurant muzak rotations. The song sometimes sends me to the darkest forest, where a lot of the medium sturdy branches come equipped with rope. But then, so does Christmas, a lot of the time, for reasons I continue to try to sort out.
Also amusing and aggravating is that people have had the gall to cover many of these songs. I have only heard one person get close to a suitable cover, and that's Prince's truncated version of A Case of You. The measure of the total lack of original talent or vision, combined with what must be blinding narcissism that makes accurate self-appraisal impossible, is revealed when lesser lights have the temerity to not only attempt covers of songs like these but also publicly release them.
ANYway, Mitchell's 75th birthday today has me reflecting a little bit on a range of topics: sentiment, sentimentality, memory, grief, catharsis, self pity, wallowing, romantic love, heartbreak, bitterness, cynicism, armor, "healthy" relationship, codependency versus legit attachment, unskillful avoidance versus skillful avoidance, etc. Just a few things. haha, etc.
"All romantics meet the same fate someday, cynical and drunk and boring someone in some dark café." I know I certainly did. I think one of the stabbing daggers of late stage alcoholism for me was romantic disillusionment and cynicism. It may be true that the most acidulous cynics are originally the fiercest idealists. But the dark kernel inside idealism is narcissism that has nothing to do with love of an actual other human being. That I could have been reduced to snarky ash by not getting what I wanted when I wanted it from women I supposedly loved is very revealing. The passage, which became even more stark in sobriety, was from a two dimensional selfish narcissistic romantic love to the realization that love in action actually means something. It's not sentiment alone but is also generosity of spirit, unconditionality to whatever degree is possible, and an open mind. As people often say in Alcoholics Anonymous, "I didn't have partners, I took hostages."
Having grown in some of those ways, I am still a romantic and still highly sentimental. An object like a hair tie sets off Proust-level cascades of romantic memory. The loml seems amused by this sometimes. We both know I'm EXTRA. Like, extra af. A friend of mine asked recently, why are you Beyoncé always? haha. It helps defuse the intensity of my waves of sentiment to have a bit of a sense of humor about it and to have advisors and friends who remind me I have other places I can put my feet.
I don't regret being sentimental though. Joni Mitchell wrote the songs on Blue as a way of not dying from the legit pain she was in. I honestly believe this. Those of us who are romantics after all of this know the feeling that romantic loss will kill us. We may be tougher, have more inner resources for safe grieving and self care, but the hatchet to the heart is always a possibility. It could be one of the more profound differences between me and the loml, this fundamental romanticism. Or it may be that I don't always understand the kind of romantic values and attachments the loml experiences. It's funny from the standpoint of astrology that we are both earth, but that her earth sign is the one famous for emotional zero. Or at least, incredible emotional reserve. Is it always this way or almost always in partnerships? One person carries structure, the other person carries sentiment? Probably not always, but often, and I imagine the roles shift as well. I know the loml experiences emotional intensity around our experience, but I don't always get it, because her style is quite different from mine. I think.
At any rate, when all is said and done, I am egoistically proud to have fallen in love again. After all of this. After the immolation that was the total catastrophe of the breakup with A. (haha, te dramas!). After Joni's Blue having been the soundtrack so many times, either legitimately or wallowingly, yes, I turned wallowing into an adverb, tyvm.
However, I feel like the great insight that love is real in action and that the call is to be loving without regard to whether one gets what one wants or not, is a true turning point. The bitterness of the disillusionment of romanticism is a logical consequence of being a narcissistic idealist "in love with" an impossible fantasy. The object of that kind of love inevitably proves to be human and disappointing. The plunge into the general snark that one hears these days about romantic love is natural and understandable. But the way out, if one continues through, follows the red thread, and pays attention to one's true nature as a lover, is unconditionality. Growing up and loving a real actual other person, and remembering that, while the sentiment of love is grand, the action of love is the best of all. This is the way the phoenix of the romantic rises from the bitter ash of heartbreak. If the romantic is to arise at all. Not cynical, not drunk. Maybe still boring someone, over a San Pelligrino, in some dark café.
But the gorgeous wings grow from not staying in the dark. Risking, and risking again, the real experience. The great sad love song singers know this. The daggers bleed us out but not to death.
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