JEANROBERTA Guided by Joni SONG SO WILD AND BLUE A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell by Paul Lisicky HarperOne. 272 pages, $28. WRITERS HAVE a long tradition of seeking inspiration from “muses”; in ancient Greek culture, the muses were minor deities. The relationships of modern gay male artists with the divas they admire seem like part of a spiritual tradition of communion with a mysterious source outside the self, yet closely connected. In a brief introduction to Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, author Paul Lisicky comments: “Sometimes, as I was writing, the line between Joni and me felt so thin that it nearly dissolved—whose mind was whose?” The author traces his admiration for the legendary singersongwriter to his solitary childhood in New Jersey. Imagining Mitchell learning to retune her guitar to counteract the longterm effects of polio on her left hand, young Paul is inspired to take parallel risks with his own music, played on the family piano. Recreating his childhood emotions, he connects them to what he has learned about Mitchell’s early life: her interest in drawing, her experience of long Canadian winters, the terrible disease that confined her to a hospital bed for months. A certain synesthesia makes Lisicky’s descriptions of different art forms especially vivid. Mitchell’s visual imagination appears to have led her to music, which young Paul visualizes as an intricate palette of colors, and he eventually transfers his love of sound and rhythm to creative writing. Lisicky advises all student writers to explore other art forms to enrich their means of expression. Individual songs by Mitchell are introduced to mark the phases of young Paul’s life. Her song “Both Sides, Now” is described as both straightforward and bittersweet. Lisicky describes his first reaction to the cover of Clouds, the 1969 album named for that song. He notes Mitchell’s calm, clear-eyed selfportrait with a “Bavarian castle” in the painting’s background. Later, he discovers that this is the Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, one of several hotels built by the Canadian National Railway that serve as temporary residences for visiting members of the British royal family. Lisicky mentions that the landmark hotel was Mitchell’s favorite place to stay in her hometown at the time and describes the red prairie lily in Mitchell’s hand, but he doesn’t acknowledge that it’s the official flower of Saskatchewan, which also appears on the provincial flag. The visual image of young Mitchell seems to be clearly located in a particular place and time, when the Canadian nationalism of “Centennial Year” (1967) was still strong. However, young Paul seems to understand that all identities are subject to change. Mitchell’s escape from conservative parents who apparently didn’t think the life of a popular musician was suitable for their many. Hayward centers her analysis on The Infant Offering, a piece she interprets as symbolic of the process by which young children are assigned their “correct” gender. The Infant Offering, like the rest of The Human Comedy, depicts a motley crew. One figure, presumably male, offers a gender-ambiguous baby to a small crowd of animal-human hybrids. I could recommend Erica Rutherford based solely for the book’s wealth of vibrant photos. However, it’s the story of Rutherford’s life and the analysis of her works that make the book so worthwhile. I suspect this will hold true for anyone interested in the intersections between queer experience and art. An unusual feature of the book is that it is written in both French and English, making it a fascinating meta-textual experience for bilingual readers. The essays tread a treacherous line, exploring the plurality of meanings that transformation held during Rutherford’s life and career. Through a diverse collection spanning interviews, biography, art criticism, film history, and gender theory, the contributors offer a holistic view of Rutherford, not only as a multidisciplinary artist but as a transgender woman searching for herself in a hostile world. David Kirby on his deathbed, Ohio, 1990, which shocked the worldwhenLifemagazine published it in 1990. Martineau chose this photo as the only image in the exhibition of a patient dying from AIDS-related illness. It stands at the center of a gallery as an altar, unavoidable to all visitors. David Wojnarowicz’Untitled (Buffalo) (1988–1989) depicts bison tumbling head-first off a cliff. The photo gives the viewer goosebumps when they find the photographer’s face reflected in this image, integrating himself into his iconic visual metaphor of a generation of gay men lost to AIDS. The gallery “Friends of Dorothy” refers to the coded expression that enabled gay men to safely identify themselves in public and features more than 100 portraits of queer luminaries. The section becomes a deeply moving cathedral for LGBT visitors, who are made aware that they come from a powerful lineage of trailblazers. The final two sections, “Things Are Queer (1996–2014)” and “The Future Is Queer,” span from the 1990s, when the activist group Queer Nation led the effort to reclaim the word “queer” from its use as a slur to a term of empowerment, to our present time. Catherine Opie’s Self-Portrait/Cutting (1993) shows a childlike vision of stick-figure lesbian domestic bliss carved into the artist’s back, externalizing her pain at a time when LGBT people were not thought capable of lasting relationships or raising children. Opie’s 2004 image of herself nursing her baby is a reminder of the resilience and evolution of our community. One of the last images is Matias Sauter’s exquisite Cristian en el “Amor de Calle,”showing a young man on the brink of adulthood. The only A.I.-generated image in the show, it raises the question of how a follow-up exhibition might look in just a few years. The digital and social media revolutions inevitably will upend how the queer community sees and expresses itself, but photography will continue to shape and affirm queer existence. Queer Lens Continued from page 50 November–December 2025 43
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