Mitski and me

By the time my friend and I arrived at the Fox for the Mitski concert on March 5, the formidable line was already snaking down the block, terminating on the far side of the adjacent parking lot. With Mitski’s huge fanbase in the Bay Area having only grown in the two years since she last left the stage, I had come expecting the worst. We marched sheepishly to the back, as if doing a walk of shame. Every sideways glance seemed to say “I’m a bigger fan than you,” but we paid these intrusive thoughts no mind and sat down on the curb to wait the remaining two hours before doors. When we finally filed into the theater and took our place in the crowd, we were in for a show.

Mitski fluttered onto the stage in a billowing white dress as the band started playing “Love Me More,” a track from her newest album Laurel Hell (2022). Her mournful, haunting voice held the audience in a trance—awe-stricken faces surrounded me in the general admission section, as people stood silent, sang along, exchanged astonished whispers. “Wow,” my friend said by my side. “It’s really her.” 

The general sentiment among the audience at Mitski’s shows was that we had never seen someone do anything quite like this before. But this was not my first time seeing her—lucky bastard that I am, I managed to catch the end of her 2018-2019 Be the Cowboy tour, before her hiatus when she retreated into the shadows, and before the pandemic swept through our lives. Now, reflecting back on that first show, I am able to see growth in both me and my indie idol. Whereas I see my own growth in the new ways I perceive her music and engage in my mixed-race identity, hers is apparent in her performance style that now depicts her as a stronger, more confident, self-reliant artist emerging from the ashes of her past. 

The summer before my junior year of high school, Mitski was invited to play at the Stern Grove Festival, a series of free concerts every Sunday from June through August that took place in a park ten blocks away from my house. Having discovered Mitski the previous November and fallen in love, I was ecstatic that she would be performing on my stomping grounds free of charge. I arrived promptly at 8:30 AM the day of the show, determined to grab a spot in the front row, and chatted it up with strangers from the comfort of my picnic blanket until she came on at 3. She started the show in a black zip-up hoodie and leggings, blaming the chilly SF weather, but eventually shucked off her outer layer to reveal the iconic white crop top and belt that she wore to almost every show. I watched her flex her arms, flutter her hands, clench them into a collar around her neck. It was a spectacle that had me quaking in my Doc Marten boots. That tour, Mitski toted a table and chair to every show, and used them as the main props around which performance revolved: she languished in the chair, stood on the table top, laid on its rectangular surface while tilting her head back and singing upside down. At one point during “A Pearl,” she turned it on its side, using it as a shield while she sang about emotional war. The table—a locus of interaction, a proponent of the nuclear family—represented Mitski’s desperation for admittance and belonging in a Western world that would not have her. This is what I love about Mitski’s music. At the same time that it captures complex, genuine, real emotions, it incorporates themes that ring true for mixed-race individuals and other POC who walk the contradiction between assimilation and preserved identity. At the time of the show, I didn’t have the words to explain that feeling, but I recognized her music as a mirror in which I could begin to see the vague outline of myself. I mostly just let it soothe my angsty adolescent heart, hung up on the failed friendships and loneliness of high school. No matter what meaning I was able to glean from her lyrics at the time as a fifteen-year-old, I knew that seeing someone who looked like me onstage was special, and that shining memory would carry me through the next two years of dashed dreams and writer’s block, striving for that idea of what I could one day become. Now, in the humid darkness of the Fox, I had the chance for the first time to reflect on my progress since that day. 

The second time around, Mitski was a different presence altogether. Gone were the frantic motions of the body and the hands—her movements were smooth, clean, deliberate. The table and chair were notably absent, as she was released from her yearning for acceptance and free from the tethers that had once claimed her. Replacing them was a mysterious white door, which I, along with the rest of the audience, would wonder about for the duration of the night. In lieu of these former props, Mitski used her own body as the sole focus of the show. She feigned itching and scrubbing at her skin in “Love Me More,” begging for an epic romance that would curb these nervous habits and distract her from the anxieties of the world. She embraced herself in “I Will,” singing instead about radical self-fulfillment and self-love. She stomped and danced, advanced across the stage with arms outstretched like an infantryman. It was apparent that Mitski had come into her power, found an inner solace that relieved her of some of the insecurities of her past. As I watched the show and found I had assigned new meanings to the same timeless lyrics, I realized how much I had changed, too. I spent much of my youth feeling incomplete, never knowing much about my Chinese identity. I had to phone my extended family to inquire about my own name, given to me by my Nai Nai, after foolishly discarding the red envelopes she sent me every year in February inscribed with those three characters: 沈佳菁. I had resigned myself to perpetually circumventing the Asian-American sphere, too intimidated by the world that I thought would greet me if I opened the door. But over the pandemic and my first semester as a college freshman I have begun to nurture and foster that essential part of myself. I’ve read books by Asian authors, taken Asian studies classes, and created new traditions for long neglected celebrations. I am also learning Mandarin, that long-lost family tongue, and for the first time I can grasp the possibility of singing in my grandmother’s language. I’ve begun to incorporate Chinese into my thoughts, my writing, and my own original songs. So when Mitski performed “First Love//Late Spring” once again, breaking into Japanese for one line of every chorus, I felt tears spill from my eyes as I realized how far I’ve come. The same track that had once served to stoke the flames of my bleeding heart was now a call to action, and an inspiration. Speaking to me in that new language of those who learn to love themselves.

Over the nine years of her career, Mitski has gone from heartbroken to “The Only Heartbreaker.” She has gone from singing to the birds to “Working for the Knife,” experiencing much tumult and exploitation that comes along with fame. And recently she has expressed a need for a much-deserved break. She may be back on tour after two years of pause, but there are rumors that a much longer break is on the horizon. This theory is unconfirmed, but Mitski’s performance seemed to hint that such a shift may be coming. When the show finally came to a close with “Two Slow Dancers,” she left the stage by stepping through that white door, symbolically passing on to the next stage of her life that was unknown to the rest of us, belonging to her alone. Taking all the wisdom she has gained, she is moving on.

Like Mitski, I am embracing this next chapter of my life. I realized that I have the rest of my adulthood to continue exploring what it means to love and grieve, to discover but also forge my own identity. I will continue my journey with language and watch where it takes me. I will make music and work and study. And wherever she is, whether or not she is living in secret, Mitski will always be an inspiration to me, charting my progress as we reach new heights together.

Article by Sophia Shen.

Feature image design by Kat Smith.