Three women and epiphanies
On Joni, Zadie, and Joan
As a writing teacher, I try my best to rotate my readings so that they’re always fresh and relevant, but I also can’t help but continue teaching a specific set of essays that in my mind will remain relevant no matter what. These core essays include James Baldwin’s “Notes of a Native Son,” Richard Rodriguez’s “Late Victorians,” Joan Didion’s “Sentimental Journeys,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “In History,” and last but not least, Zadie Smith’s “Some Notes on Attunement.”
Most people will recognize Zadie Smith as the award-winning novelist of White Teeth and Swing Time, but I’m personally a much bigger fan of Smith’s essays, many of which have appeared in Harper’s or The New Yorker. She’s so well-read that her references sometimes go right over my head, but I think one of her talents is in treating everything, especially pop culture, through an earnestly deep intellectual lens. It’s hard not to fall in love with an essay where the writer is clearly having the time of her life nerding out on every detail, every question.
Out of all of her essays, my favorite is the one that revolves around Joni Mitchell’s Christmas Song, “River.”
On the surface, this essay is about Zadie Smith’s experience going from hating Joni Mitchell to loving Joni Mitchell. It’s about changing one’s mind about something. It’s also about her insecurity in not knowing why this happened, not having the musical knowledge to understand it on that level, and having to rely on literature (her main passion and framework for understanding the world) to process the profound effect Joni’s music now has on her. Towards the end, the essay takes a turn: in researching Joni, she comes to realize that Joni herself is no longer a musician but a painter. The 1971 version of Joni, who Smith has fallen in love with, is no longer there. “We want our artists to remain as they were when we first loved them. But our artists want to move… The worst possible thing for an artist is to exist as a feature of somebody else’s epiphany.”
As writers, we work hard to put our stories out into the world. And we work hard to make sure that our readers really get what we’re trying to tell them. If we’re lucky, we get to be their epiphanies. But, as Smith reminds us, artists are also people. We’re always changing. We’re messy and inconsistent. Another way to put this is: we’re also human.
What I love about this essay is that it’s not meant to teach readers about Joni Mitchell. It’s meant to show us how writing the essay helped Smith understand (or at least come close to understanding) something that felt impossible to understand. The essay, on a meta-level, demonstrates what writing an essay can do.
Joan Didion, who I learned just passed away at age 87, famously said that “we tell ourselves stories in order to live.” My interpretation of that line, especially the part “to live,” has changed after the events of the last few years. Over five million have died from the virus worldwide. “To live”? To get by? Survive? Endure? When some people read that line, they might be adding in their heads: to live honestly. Or happily. When people see the word “stories,” they might see “truth” or “fabrication.”
Didion was a master storyteller, as are all the writers I re-read from my list. I still carry hope that writing stories are leading towards something other than a pile of word documents that will never see the light of day. Even if I never “make it” in the traditional sense, the act of writing might lead me to an epiphany, at least my own.
So I continue to write, albeit in a time of disappointments and sadness. Our much-anticipated trip to Tokyo has been indefinitely postponed due to Omicron. The one-year anniversary of my mother’s passing is coming up next week. My writing keeps getting rejected from publications…
In her sadness my mother would listen to Bach fugues played on old organs (like this one). (Lean in to the sad, she’d say.) I wonder if Zadie still listens to Joni in her times of sadness, or if that phase from 2012 has long passed. (She is allowed to change, after all.) Didion said in an interview that she loved rivers, especially the ones in California. In my current uncertainty and muddled feelings, I might just follow these signs and give Joni’s “River” a chance after the kids go to bed tonight.
It’s coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh, I wish I had a river
I could skate away on…