Howl (19 page)

Joni Mitchell Never Lies

[Marc Spitz]

H
OMELESS PEOPLE WOULDN’T
ask me for change. The campaigners on my corner assumed that I didn’t care about the environment or gay rights, or the Democratic Party. Unless a tourist was so lost that it was a question of “ask the sour-looking tall man in the leather coat” or “end up in the Pine Barrens sucking ketchup packets like they did in that famous
Sopranos
episode,” they’d find someone else to guide them toward the Marc Jacobs store. I was convinced that my instinctive mistrust of my neighbors had helped me survive half my entire adult life here in New York City. I’d never sign for packages for any neighbor who wasn’t home, despite urging from the UPS man. What if there were drugs or kiddie porn in there? “People ain’t no good,” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds once sang, and I was inclined to believe it. My resistance to mixing in, I was also quite certain, had helped me establish some kind of identity as a creative individual. I read
Against Nature,
and thought it was a self-help guide. This misanthropic disconnect probably has its roots in my adolescence. When my father, a self-described degenerate gambler, used to introduce me to his friends at the racetrack, he’d warn, “Keep your mouth shut. Mind your business, and stay out of trouble,” and pat me on the head firmly. It seemed like sound, paternal advice. By my thirties, I had my high walls and knew they were good ones.

I never thought I’d be a dog owner. I grew up among dogs. Whenever one of my grandmother’s white, high-strung, yipping Toy Poodles would pass away, she’d quickly replace it with a look-alike. All these look-alikes were named Pepe, just like the original dog (whose vintage my sister and I could never determine). Dog owners seemed strange to us. I did make an effort, when I was thirteen or fourteen (in the mid 1980s), to convince my father to buy me a dog of my own. We were in Lexington, Kentucky, where he was working as a salesman of equine products. I was visiting for the summer and according to him, I saw a mother with a litter of puppies at one of these horse farms and it triggered some kind of tantrum when I was told that both the dogs and I were too young. This must have been so painful that I’ve blocked it from my memory for twenty years. My father recently reminded me of this, and it made sense out of my subsequent pet-ownership: cats.

Emotionally distant. I could take or leave my cats, and they felt the same about me, and it worked. We liked it that way. We were cool. We were the cover of
Bringing It All Back Home
by Bob Dylan (if you don’t know what I’m talking about here, Google Image it and you’ll quickly see the scene and the attitude I was cultivating through the ’90s and well into the new century). I was allergic to cats, of course, but I was even more averse to opening up my heart to any companions who required a bit more accountability. This included, for a similar length of time, women. But then, in the spring of my thirty-second year, I met a woman who changed me a little. And together, we purchased a dog who changed me a lot. Didn’t alter her so much. She grew up in New Mexico and had horses and goats and dogs and cats and toads and turtles right there in her yard. When she moved to Manhattan after college, she went through some kind of nature-girl withdrawal.

We had each other but she yearned for animals. We started watching a lot of Animal Planet, but that only seemed to make things worse. Soon, I’d spy her downloading dog porn. In particular, a video of a Basset Hound stumbling across a lawn, its ears and cheeks flapping as it bounded. She’d watch this on a loop. We were living together in my former bachelor pad: a studio on Christopher Street. There wasn’t enough space for two people, much less two people and a Basset Hound. And what kind of messed-up-looking dog was that anyway? But I gave in, because I loved her. Not because I wanted a dog…at all. I was a cat guy. I wasn’t even a cat guy anymore. I was a cactus guy. I had one on the bathroom windowsill and that was enough nature for me. Even the name we gave our new Basset was somewhat noncommittal. I suggested that we name her Joni Mitchell. By the time I’d fallen completely in love with her crepe-like old-man belly and snowshoe-size paws she already knew her name. We couldn’t change it.

She was stuck with an ironic name. I could not have felt more sincere in my devotion to her.

Once Joni was fully vaccinated, I’d take her out into the city, but I soon realized that nothing could inoculate me from an unexpected invasion of fellow New Yorkers. At first, whenever people would approach us, I’d respond to queries like “Can I pet your dog?” or “How old is your dog?” or “Is that a Beagle dog?” or “Is that the Hush Puppy dog?” or “Is that the Sherlock Holmes dog?” or “How old is your
Beagle
?” with a cold glare. Sometimes I’d jerk little Joni away when someone would try to squeeze her without asking. Or I’d shrug, “I don’t know,” as if I’d just dognapped her, or was a particularly disgruntled professional walker. I knew exactly how old she was, to the day. And I also knew that she was the Hush Puppy dog but she was certainly not a Beagle-dog. Beagles are more slender and not nearly as grand as Bassets. They’re like economy cars. Once I said, “Mind your own business, man,” but in my defense, it was seven in the morning and West Fourth Street was covered with ice. I understood why they couldn’t help themselves, even at that hour. It’s like that scene in Cronenberg’s remake of
The Fly
where Geena Davis explains to Jeff Goldblum about why the computer wasn’t understanding how to transport the plate of steak; it’s like how old ladies want to squeeze babies’ cheeks. It’s the power of the flesh. And Bassets have a lot of loose and powerful flesh; even French ones like Joni Mitchell. Some English Bassets, I’ve since discovered, are so dangly that they have to undergo eye lifts in order to see properly.

What I didn’t get is why it was suddenly okay for strangers to talk to me. I knew people my age, single people, who got dogs for this very reason: to attract other single people and have sex with them. One female friend used to sit in the park and wait with her dog in her lap, and angle for eligible men. Most of those who approached her ended up being gay, but she had a Papillon, so what did she expect? I wasn’t on the make, however. I wasn’t single, and everything about my physical energy—my stance, my look, my black clothes—said: keep back or I will do something bad to you. Or did it? Had growing to love Joni Mitchell made me soft? And if so, how was I supposed to defend her against all these unknown people with their grabby hands and their crooked mouths that say things like “So cute!” and “Oh, puppy, puppy!” How was I supposed to defend myself against them? I loved Joni, but she was embarrassing me. I fantasized about constructing an indoor kennel with a mile of running track. We would go on “trots” in our bubble and never have to encounter anyone else. I could walk her, pick up her poop, and still be cool. Nobody would have to know that I “trotted.”

Nothing blows your cool worse than worrying about your loved ones. As I never really had loved ones, I found this out pretty late. Joni had kennel cough when we brought her home from the pet store, and has pretty much been in and out of the vet’s office ever since. Basset Hounds require constant and expensive care. They are prone to ear infections because they drag their long ears on the dirty ground as they walk. This, I’ve been told, and have told others who’ve asked, is how they’ve historically stirred up the scent on the trail. It’s also how they get cooties. I don’t know if Joni Mitchell the Canadian rock legend and respected painter has a sensitive stomach or not (if I had to guess, I’d say “not,” she looks like she’s pretty tough), but Joni Mitchell the Basset Hound cannot keep down a can of reasonably priced dog food like Alpo or even IAMS. She can only digest three-dollar holistic food with oatmeal, organic lamb, and sweet potato in it; a full can a day, every day. About a year ago, our vet advised us to feed her boiled chicken and rice when her runs were particularly explosive. Now, she refuses her food unless there’s hand-cooked chicken from the Whole Foods market and rice (cooked with no oil) mixed in as well; twice a day, every day. I’ve already boiled more chickens than my great-grandma Dora ever did, and she lived into her nineties.

Joni was never crated as many puppies are these days. She sleeps with us, and always has because she gets lonely or scared in the night. When she twitches and whimpers in her sleep, I tell myself that she’s chasing rabbits or squirrels in some dreamscape Union Square park. I secretly worry that she’s tormented by dark thoughts. I’ll do whatever I have to do, spend whatever I have to spend, and boil whatever pricey fowl I have to boil in order to
make
those dreams about rabbits and squirrels; and I guess it’s become something of a liability as far as my street smarts go. If she spits up, I shake and blubber and fret like a little girl. People on the street have apparently picked up on this shift toward the dangerously paternal as well. Once you’ve blubbered, even in private, you wear the mark forever. I’m just not tough anymore. Reminding myself that Mickey Rourke, with his Chihuahuas, is not nearly as tough as he used to be either is no great comfort.

New Yorkers adapt. We pride ourselves on our stubborn nature, but we are also quite fond of our ability to overcome troubling situations and events: economic crashes, the Knicks’ post-Ewing seasons, blackouts, gas leaks, and, of course, September 11. We are a gritty breed (unlike the Basset). I decided that I was going to make do with this new situation pretty quickly. I told myself that I would give people a chance. I should learn to like them. My dog likes people, and she is wise. All you need to do is look into her eyes when she’s awake and her sharp acumen is evident (when she’s asleep, her eyes roll back into her head and go pink and white and it’s creepy). My dog trusts human beings. She thinks we’re all right. Joni Mitchell, the singer, was a lonely painter who lived in a box of paints, or so she sang. Joni Mitchell the dog lives to jump on people and beg for a treat or a pat. She loves children, the elderly, and for some reason, people who pull carts best; but she doesn’t discriminate. She loves homeless people too. Homeless people have started asking me for handouts now that I’ve got her with me on the street. And I happily give to them, because people need second chances to figure out their place in the world. Although it’s not going to get anyone off the streets, sometimes a smile and a nod of “good luck getting through” is better than all of us rolling on cold and frantic like spilled ball bearings.

Even as I wrote those last words, part of me is ashamed of myself. “People need second chances?” “Like spilled ball bearings?” What have I become? Sunny observations beget horrible similes. Joni Mitchell hasn’t made me a bad writer (completely). I don’t believe that in order to write well, one needs to be alone and angry and drunk like Bukowski. In order to be a good writer, one needs to come up with better lines, that’s all.

I’m a rock journalist most of the time, and shortly after observing this change in myself, I started complaining about it to my interview subjects. I’d kvetch to the more misanthropic stars about how I’d lost my edge. This was, more often than not, preemptive, and all of them came after a truly awkward Nine Inch Nails interview I’d conducted in pre-Katrina New Orleans; early 2005. Trent Reznor related how he was enjoying his reintegration into accountable society now that he’d beaten his drug and alcohol demons. “Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said. “It’s like…not all about you anymore. Like you have a dog, and she needs to be walked whether you like it or not. If you’re not ready to engage with your neighbors at eight
A.M.
, tough shit, right?” Reznor nodded his head in agreement but I could see he was also trying to determine whether or not I was taking the piss from him. Howlin’ Pelle Almqvist from the Hives understood my amazement when I told him that for some reason Joni (or “Yoni” as he called her in his Swedish accent) would always pull Steve Miller Band’s
Book of Dreams
album from my vinyl pile, but he couldn’t seem to work up much interest otherwise. Maybe he was just being polite about
Book of Dreams
too. The Swedes are very polite. Even their porn is polite. Only Chan Marshall of Cat Power, who once had a Basset named Franklin (he apparently got bit by a snake and his jowls froze in a Nicholson-as-the-Joker face for a time), really seemed to feel me when I went on and on about Joni the non-icon: how she had pulled the stuffing out of every plush toy we’ve ever given her, and then kept the gutted skins like Buffalo Bill. How she had a dark side, but also a good soul. How I was trying for both but failing to get the balance right. Getting human-friendly had, ironically, made me a shitty rock star interviewer. It used to be so easy. I’d inhabit a Nick Kent or Lester Bangs-ian persona. Throw on some shades, put a cig in my mouth, and I could go head to head with any of them, even those with quicker wits than me, like Morrissey. When I interviewed Morrissey pre–Joni Mitchell (shortly after the release of his
You Are the Quarry
album) in L.A., I felt like a badass. When I interviewed him in Rome two years later, and post–Joni Mitchell, I talked about my dog, revealed my weakness, and was zinged. “You call your dog Joni Mitchell?” the great man asked. “And does she come?”