by sophiewolfe

Ya’ll ever wish you had a river? You know, to skate away on? Yeah. That’s what I thought. You’re weeping just thinking about Joni Mitchell’s legendary monochromatic album Blue, which was removed, along with most of her catalog, from the unscrupulous barnyard disaster that is Spotify on January 29, 2022. Joni made the decision to remove her music from the platform this year because she simply doesn’t give a fuck about shit that is stupid, which is fair, but her resolution has left a hole the size of Saskatchewan in my heart. And I don’t know what to do about it. 

You’re a sucker and you don’t fucking know me like that, but if you did, you would know that January 29, 2022, was one of the more devastating days of my life. Including Christmas Day 2008, when I had lice. For me, Joni was like a far-out Canadian Jesus. Her word was gospel. When she said, “We all come and go unknown, each so deep and superficial, between the forceps and the stone”, I was like, Soooooo true. When she said, “I’m so hard to handle, I’m selfish, and I’m sad”, I was like, Damn, how’d you know?? The only way I could really figure out anything was if Joni explained it to me. 

And for a long time, that special sort of anachronistic parasocial relationship with a nearly 80 year old woman was just fine. Permissible, at least. There was no issue of withdrawal. I could lie on my bed and wistfully listen to For The Roses as if I were the sixth Virgin Suicides girl all I wanted. It was there for me whenever I needed it, which was often, through the ridiculously convenient and expansive mechanism that is Spotify. I’m just like the rest of you greedy rats. I pay 4 bucks a month or whatever it is for my student account. I actively contribute to the death of analog media on a daily basis, I admit it. Whatever. The world is eating itself; I can do whatever I want. The Spotify app offered me all the Joni I could want, and I became more pretentious and melancholic by the day. It was the best. 

But all of this came to nothing in January. Suddenly I was without direction. Spotify’s endless catalog became useless to me once Joni was expunged from it. I was sucked mercilessly back into the real world, disgusting and modern as it is. I could no longer pretend that I was living out on the road with Joni and her revolving harem of rockstars with the chest hair and the drug habits, or hanging out in a big field in California somewhere talking about giving peace a chance. Now it’s been almost 90 days without her and I’ve lost all sense of self. I have no invisible woman to convince me that it’s okay and in fact actually very cool to be irritable and kinda mean all the time. So what am I supposed to do now, become nice? It’s all a wash, at this point. Please don’t contact me if you have advice concerning signing up for Apple Music. Yes, I have experienced a significant loss and have never been more distraught in my life, but I would still never think of sinking that low.  

Categories: April 26, sophie wolfe, tunes