Exclusive cover reveal: “Song So Wild and Blue” by Paul Lisicky

Electric Literature is pleased to present the cover of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with Joni Mitchellthe new memoir from acclaimed writer Paul Lisicky, coming February 4, 2025 from HarperOne. You can pre-order your copy here.

From the moment Paul Lisicky heard Joni Mitchell during his childhood in New Jersey, he recognized that she was a rarity among musicians – a talent whose combination of introspection, liberation and deep musicality set her apart from any other artist of the time. As a young man, Paul was an aspiring songwriter who was inspired by Mitchell’s secrets and idiosyncrasies. But as he matured, he put down his guitar and lost himself in prose, a practice that eventually led him to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and the professional world of literature. Here are his thoughts on Mitchell, his memoir and its cover.

The title of my book comes from a line in Joni Mitchell’s song “Amelia,” which is about what it means to devote your life to art. It’s about the loneliness of that life, the uncertainty – how easy it is to disappear, which was the fate of pilot Amelia Earhart, who in 1937 attempted to become the first woman to fly solo around the world. The song is not just about her as a pilot, but about a woman torn between the twin poles of achievement and desire. The song never reconciles that struggle. Instead, it asks its listener to make their own connections through a chain of images, from six contrails in the sky to a soaring Icarus to a motel in the desert.

Song So Wild and Blue uses this song (and others) as a starting point. It is a book that seeks to explore my development as a musician and writer within the context of Joni’s music, but also raises questions. How is art-making intertwined with self-making? How is art-making a call to connect with others? What happens when you reach the limits of the self, and what lies on the other side of that? What is the cost of living with a drive you can’t resist? How is performance a vehicle that both brings a stranger closer and keeps it away? What does the body have to say about our brief time here? What does love, in all its variations, ask of us?

Here is the cover, designed by Stephen Brayda:

It’s well known that Joni sees herself as a painter first and foremost. Even her phrasing evokes imagery, so the cover art had to be just right. I didn’t want it to mimic one of her paintings or her self-designed album covers. Instead, I looked to the graphic novel as a reference point, a form I love because the panel magnifies what it surrounds. So many of Joni’s longer songs work as panel sequences – think “Refuge of the Roads” or “Song for Sharon.” My book wants to play with that structure too.

I love the inviting palette of this image, the variations of blue, the contrast between light and dark that suggests the opposites that fuel Joni’s lyrics and music. I also love the silhouette of Joni’s face in the sky, which recalls “the hexagram of heaven” in “Amelia.” Here, Joni’s face is neither bleak nor hopeful, neither older nor younger, half human, half bird. If this image references a specific period of Joni’s development, it is 1988. Chalk line in the rainstorm, when her previous reputation had faded for several years. With her eyes closed, she is attuned to her inner life, to her specific vision for her work. She doesn’t pay too much attention to her critics. She is an aspect of the landscape – all of Joni’s songs are a part of the place, so that place reads as an emotional state – and that landscape is the Columbia River Gorge in Washington state, where my friend Jude and I traveled to see Joni perform in June 2023 as part of Brandi Carlisle’s Joni Jam. The experience of that concert is central to the book, and that’s all I’ll say about it now.

I’ve always been drawn to the meticulousness of Joni’s songs, the sense that they were shaped over time, line by line. But they’re also documents of process, of searching, of exploration, of spontaneity, of the mutability of feelings. Little detours. You might think that a belief in capturing spontaneity is at odds with a commitment to technique, but Joni once again brings two contradictory perspectives into the same space. So I thought it would be important for the cover image to suggest movement, brokenness. It shouldn’t be too set, too heavy or familiar. It should leave room for inquiry. I love the sheets of paper rising up on the right, the curvature of their positioning, the handwriting on one, another folded into an origami bird, and yet another too high to be held by any edge.