Hejira

The first time I heard Hejira I was in my boyfriend’s third-floor apartment, an old brick building with scuffed wooden floors and used furniture. The sun streamed in through the dusty air as the record began to play.

It was 1976, and I was fifteen, in high school, and he was the first “boyfriend” I’d ever had — a college student studying music in Boston. I had met him at the subway stop near my house; we had stared at each other through eight different stations and then got off at the same place. My parents had no idea about my secret life.

He took himself very seriously and spoke in an erudite way, though he was from Virginia (until I met him, I’d assumed all people from the South were hillbillies). He had a scholarship to a well-regarded music school; never mind he was very thin (student starvation) or had professorial wire-rimmed glasses and wore mothball-eaten sweaters. He met my criteria: he had soulful brown eyes, and was the type of Rimbaud-quoting romantic I sought rather than the jocks at my school. He was terribly nervous about my age; I told him I was sixteen. He revealed that when he was eighteen he’d spent a few days in jail in Richmond for possession of marijuana, which added to his credibility. He enjoyed his weed like a glass of fine wine, accompanied by a good record, which in this case was Joni Mitchell’s latest.

I had not been a huge Joni follower; my tastes ran more toward the spaced-out and psychedelic, Todd Rundgren and Yes, or crush-worthy balladeers such as Jackson Browne and Dan Fogelberg. I was so myopic I hadn’t even picked up on David Bowie, a huge regret now; I was mostly into “longhairs” as my best friend and I called them, guys with flowing locks of any kind. Thus I had wound up with this musician, who indeed had thick black hair tied back in a ponytail. He in turn said I had “potential” (I could make up songs on the piano), and he tried to teach me music theory and guitar (I failed on both counts).

He had purchased the brand-new release Hejira from the big record store downtown, Strawberries, and carried it home like a carton of eggs; it was precious cargo on the rush-hour subway. Everyone who was a Joni fan had been awaiting Hejira’s release; the jazz-influenced coolness coupled with the brilliant lyrics was a topic of conversation among the music aficionados, music reviewers and DJs alike. Truthfully, I was a bit jealous of Joni’s sway over all the longhair musicians, Neil Young and my sophisticated beau included.

We sat in that rent-controlled apartment, just the two of us, with the Joni Mitchell record and a ceremoniously prepared joint. I myself didn’t care for pot. I had tried it a few times, in order to keep company with the cooler types, but found myself inside circles of anxiety and paranoia, which was highly unpleasant. Being a teenager, I preferred the sugary cocktails of piña coladas and White Russians (if I could sneak into a bar), accompanied by the occasional Vantage cigarette. Of course, I never displayed these tendencies around him as I knew they would appear incredibly gauche. I made efforts to appear as if I were inhaling; I would hold the joint gingerly to my lips for effect.

I also knew not to chatter in my stream of consciousness and vapid teenage way while any of the music he played for me flowed, either from his own guitar or the turntable. It would be as if I jumped up at a poetry reading, shouting I had to go to the bathroom; it would annoy him greatly. I was desperately trying to appear older than my fifteen years. Thus I remained quiet, trying to take on the same reverential pose that he did, sitting cross-legged on the couch, as the first exhale unfurled from his mouth into a smoke ring toward the ceiling.

He dropped the needle on the virginal vinyl. The spare and haunting electric guitar, the claret voice washed over us — we both remained motionless, in awe. The perplexing (yet spellbinding) lyrics. She was swallowed by the sky or by the sea, like me she had a dream to fly like Icarus, ascending on beautiful, foolish arms. Oh, Amelia, it was just a false alarm. Everything fell away into another world; I didn’t understand, but I knew it was extraordinary.

When I think back on the months (the college girlfriend then returned from the South) I spent in his company, I don’t remember much, but “Amelia” is the song that plays and replays. I don’t know where he went, or even if he is dead or alive, but perhaps he became a composer and has had an interesting life, maybe released music of his own. The ponytail is probably long gone, replaced by the weight and graying that makes many of us indistinguishable.

And now, forty years later, I hear “Amelia” again, with the nuances of experience and life gone by, regrets and aspirations, and the longing to escape from all that holds me back. I realize it is absolutely a map for me, a map of what I left behind and the beautiful uncertainty of the terrain ahead.

© Margaret Kramer 2022