Song So Wild & Blue
PAUL LISICKY with RAHNE ALEXANDER about the music of Joni Mitchell … with special musical guest – KRISTIN PUTCHINSKI
5:30 pm – 6:30 pm
31st Street & Barclay Street
Waverly Neighborhood
A deepened connection to legendary musician and songwriter Joni Mitchell led PAUL LISICKY to the creation of Song So Wild and Blue: A Life With the Music of Joni Mitchell, as a guide to life and an artist manual in that recognition. Part memoir, part biography, part homage to Joni, Lisicky paints a tribute that is, too, “a stunning collage of nonfiction that pieces together the lives of writer and artist. This book will revolutionize how authors forever explore music in their work. It will change the way we remember ‘that album, that song’ that changed our life.” (The Rumpus) Baltimore icon, RAHNE ALEXANDER, author/musician, speaks with Lisicky about Song and how he navigated life’s challenges, including the health struggles of his parents and mortality and death, and the art in pursuit of a creative career, reminding us that love doesn’t come without tests. “Anything of worth demanded a test.” Sharing with the reader, “Sometimes writing about love doesn’t look like love.” Paul Lisicky is the author of seven books, including Later, The Narrow Door, and Unbuilt Projects. Rahne Alexander is an intermedia artist, writer, and musician. Multi-disciplinary artist, formerly ellen cherry, KRISTIN PUTCHINSKI joins us today in a special musical request to celebrate the legendary Joni Mitchell. Of Song, Melissa Febos assures us that it is, “An exquisite, subtle ode to the people we used to be, and their inextricable intertwinement with the artists who change us … it left me aglow with recognition and wonder.”
STAY INFORMED
Paul Lisicky is the author of seven books, including Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, and The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship. “The singer’s (Joni’s) fluid singularity, her refusal to apologize or conform, made (Lisicky) feel electric and understood. [Song So Wild and Blue] is an intimate, impressionistic Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man mode, interwoven with Mitchell myths and parallels.” (New York Times Book Review) He has published work in The Atlantic, Conjunctions, Fence, The New York Times, Ploughshares, and other venues. A recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, he has taught in the writing programs at Cornell, NYU, Sarah Lawrence, University of Texas at Austin, and Rutgers University-Camden, where he is a professor of English. He lives in Brooklyn.
paullisicky.net
Instagram: @Paul_Lisicky
Rahne Alexander is an intermedia artist, writer, and musician, pursuing transfeminist liberation by any art necessary. She has a spectacular art show called Back East opening at Current Space on September 26, in collaboration with painter Erin Stellmon.
rahne.com
BlueSky: rahnealexander.com
Instagram: @rahnealexander
Kristin Putchinski explores concepts of tension, transformation, and release through a series of actions, performances, and sculptures that utilize an upright piano as the primary object. Her process is trifold: unmaking, playing, and remaking. This body of work confronts her conventional training on the piano and articulates experiences on her journey of healing from profound encounters with violent trauma. Putchinski spent twenty-seven years touring as an award-winning songwriter, musician, and composer before completing an MFA in Intermedia and Digital Arts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2024.
www.kricket.me
Instagram: @kricket.me