In the wake of Joan Didion’s death last year, I wrote this essay as I struggled to process the immense amount of sadness I felt for the loss of someone I never knew. She’s long been one of my favorite writers, but as I took my first steps into adulthood these past few years, I, like so many, also found a sort of stylistic and artistic role model in her taste and timeless ways. This week marks the one-year anniversary of her passing, still her art and legacy feel as alive and in the world to me as ever. I’m grateful to join the chorus of voices celebrating and mourning the great Joan.
“We tell ourselves stories in order to live.… We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the ‘ideas’ with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.” — Joan Didion, The White Album
She was the way I found my way in California. Makes me want to cry when I think about that time. The world spun out in endless potential and the long light of winter in Los Angeles. I was in love, and he loved Keats and fly-fishing and New Hampshire, and so easily I could picture our vagabond life with babies in the Berkshires and two writing desks with small watercolors. I’d wear a wool sweater and play arenas on the weekends. Some old American fantasy like the Kennedys, with dirtier hair and better pottery. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
I read her essays. About the water in Los Angeles, which I picture still as I’m naked and watching the suds gather round my feet. About the cowboy she had a crush on and about Joan Baez’s peace school. I thought, Maybe one day I’ll do something like that.
Maggie Rogers.Courtesy of Maggie Rogers.
I went to the studio. I came home. I smoked cigarettes on the porch in a silk robe I bought on tour in Japan and pictured the living room that I’d have one day. Just like Joan. All the brightest brains and a fireplace and a bottle of bourbon I’d pretend I’d borrowed from her suitcase. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
She came with me in my backpack. A paperback good luck charm. How many countries? Twenty, maybe? On the bus. In the airport. In the coffee shop in Minneapolis while I waited for sound check and in the bathroom where I hid from 20-somethings in jean jackets who asked for oat milk. She was a pair of glasses I could wear when things got too bright or too messy or too hollow. Take a big breath. See the way she sees. Be the way she was. I asked for a mohair throw for Christmas. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
She was the way I learned to love New York when it was a city that was no longer mine. When I started to wear out my old places just to touch that sharp-toothed spark. Back to The Ludlow again. Watery coffee near Needle Park because that’s what Joan called it in her movie, the one you can’t find anywhere online and that I’d kill to see still. Past an NYU freshman from ripe cornfields in her “going-out shirt” taking shots of well liquor at a spot on St. Mark’s Place that might not ask for your ID if you get there early. I was her once. Joan helped me forgive her grandiosity. She’s got a friend who makes films. A friend who sells drugs. A friend who writes songs. Write it all down. Document everything. We’re going to be the greatest artists of our generation. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
I never met her, but I saw Joan once. At Bethesda Fountain of all places. Storied and dramatic and grand. A holy land I’d run to when I was lost and needed fire. It was like I’d dreamt it. Or she’d written it. It felt like an omen. Perfect fall foliage and the kind of afternoon light that tastes like butterscotch. She was in a wheelchair with a mohair throw. I could see her ankles. Small and brittle and without socks. The artists who turn us into artists are like family. Joan Didion is my family. We tell ourselves stories in order to live.
I feel the way I did when Bowie died. That strange seeping sob when the world loses a light. And the creeping pressure like a call to fill the podium. My heroes of dying.
I reek of self-importance when I’m on Joan. I’m the main character in a movie with a tight plot and clean hems. Maybe one day I’ll make a record like The White Album. But maybe all that matters is I make a record that makes someone write an essay like The White Album.
We tell ourselves stories in order to live…
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