I Am a Noise: A Visual Memoir

By Anastasia Stanmeyer

THE MAKING OF THE JOAN BAEZ DOCUMENTARY FILM 

IT BEGAN WITH FILMING be Joan Baez’s final concert tour—and then they “took a left,” as she puts it, when the directors opened the door to her storage unit filled with her family’s archives and parts of her life that had never before been seen or long been forgotten. Weaving a style of filmmaking known as cinéma vérité with Joan’s personal archives, this legendary folk singer’s inner and outer worlds are explored in the movie I Am a Noise.

There will be a special screening of the documentary film on March 2 at the Triplex Cinema in Great Barrington. The movie premiered a year ago at the Berlin Film Festival, had its theatrical release at the Film Forum in October 2023, and is now available on various streaming platforms. But what is exciting about this showing is not only that the movie will be on the big screen, but there will also be a talkback—with Joan herself and directors Karen O’Connor and Miri Navasky. It is a special fundraiser for the Triplex, which is owned by a community-formed nonprofit.

“My family has a house in the area, so I’ve been coming to Great Barrington all my life and have seen many movies at the Triplex,” says Miri. “I’m thrilled to be able to support this important cultural institution.”

The name “Joan Baez” conjures up many images and sounds: her part in the Civil Rights Movement, her relationship with Bob Dylan, her soprano voice with a three-octave range, her hippie persona, her beauty and grace. She has inspired generations of women and human rights activists, sang "We Shall Overcome" at the March on Washington alongside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and even danced on stage with Taylor Swift and Julia Roberts in the middle of “Style” during Swift’s 1989 tour. Joan became a star at age 18 at the Newport Folk Festival, and in 1962, at 21, she appeared on the cover of TIME.

Joan’s legacy film holds its fair share of surprises. On April 30, she is releasing her first book of poetry, When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance. Joan has been writing poetry all her life, but this is the first time she has shared her works publicly. (One of her poems, “Goodbye to the Black and White Ball,” is included here.)

A quote by Gabriel García Márquez begins I Am a Noise: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.” In the course of the film, Joan battles what she describes as inner demons that began early on in her life. In the movie, Joan moves from a constant struggle to a place of acceptance, while always striving for a larger purpose in the world. It is a duality that she has always grappled with—this public persona, while at times internally paralyzed with anxiety, fear, and darkness. Still, that hasn’t stopped her from all she has accomplished.

Joan continues to be fiercely creative and committed, finding ways to stay involved and purposeful. That’s extraordinary at any age, let alone at 83. We are moved by this movie to love Joan even more and hold hands with her, knowing that she is not alone in the secrets that she has held. We are thankful for the trio of directors—Miri, Karen, and Maeve O’Boyle—who sifted through thousands of archival material, hours of concert footage and interviews, to create a seamless and layered movie, the kind you want to share with your child so they can see what a legend looks like in human form.

“Who is she? Yes, there’s the iconic, well-known Joan, but this is a different film made with a different history and all of her complexities,” says Karen. “We wanted to be inside her mind; we were always trying to represent the interior Joan, light and dark.”

From top, stills from I Am a Noise, Joan Baez, ©Albert Baez; James Baldwin, Joan Baez, and James Forman at the Selma March, © Matt Heron; Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in Crossed Lights, New Haven, Connecticut, 1965, ©Daniel Kramer. Opening night of I Am a Noise, October 6, 2023, at Film Forum, from left, director/producer Karen O'Connor, Joan Baez, director/producer Miri Navasky,  and director/editor Maeve O’Boyle. 

The movie isn’t narrated except for the voiceover of Joan’s younger self-reading from her diary. It’s a visual memoir, with the past informing the present, the present informing the past, in a sort of dreamscape. Joan’s on-camera candor—on aging, motherhood, sibling rivalry, the breakup with Dylan, the family trauma, the career— is both moving and inspiring.

“The power of the film is her honesty about things large and small in her life, which is rare within that entertainment industry,” says Karen. “She's still gorgeous at her age, but she's unfiltered—no work, no makeup. Other people would never have allowed us to film some of the scenes. I joked somewhere along the way on the festival route that yes, she was threatened by the Ku Klux Klan. Yes, she was in the bomb shelter of Hanoi. Yes, she was gassed in Latin America. But maybe the bravest thing she's ever done is doing a vérité film with only natural light.”

The film’s title is lifted from a piece of writing that Joan did when she was 13. “We wanted a title that was a little surprising, that had a little bit of an edge,” reflects Karen, who first met Joan when she did a PBS interview with her in 1986. (Some of that interview appears in the movie.) The two hit it off, and Karen became close, personal friends with Joan and her family.

Because of the relationship between Karen and Joan, it was important to include the two other directors to ensure that a wider audience would understand the film. Karen and Miri formed their own production company, Mead Street Films, more than 20 years ago and have worked closely together, making social issue films for the PBS documentary series FRONTLINE. “Editorial control was important from the beginning,” says Karen. “We had final cut; Joan didn’t. So many of these celebrity docs can be vanity pieces.”

Miri and Karen first started working on the film back in 2013, when Karen went to California to do some filming with Joan’s mom on her 100th birthday. They put the footage aside while they worked on another film for FRONTLINE, Growing Up Trans, which Maeve edited. It wasn’t until 2017, when Joan started grappling with the decision of whether to do a final tour, that they fully committed to the film. They decided early on to use natural light to give the interviews a raw, intimate feel. The visual perspective during the concerts was of Joan looking out to the audience, rather than the other way around.

What interested Miri and Karen from the start was following a woman who was coming to the end of a six-decade career. The vérité was crucial in terms of the contemporary story, because they would be following Joan over a pivotal time in her life and they wanted to be able to capture it in real time. Whether or not she would retire really didn’t matter. There were instances when Joan was resistant to filming—like on the tour bus or during a voice lesson—and it took Karen’s close friendship to open her up.

It wasn’t the concert footage, the interviews, or the travel that was most challenging. It was Joan’s vast archives. Miri did the heavy lifting when it came to going through the archives; the amount of material was a blessing and a curse. Joan kept journals from the time she was young. Her father had an audio archive—letters they sent back and forth on quarter-inch audiotapes. And Joan’s mother was this amazing letter writer and had her own archive of journals. There were the home movies, therapy tapes, photos, hundreds of letters back and forth to David Harris when he was in prison.

“In terms of her personal archives, she just gave us the keys to this vast storage unit,” says Miri. “We saw things that she hadn't seen in 30 years, 40 years, 50 years. She didn't hold back anything.

“The film came alive the most for me when I was listening to her audiotaped letters that she wrote, letters where she's envisioning herself as a leader and hundreds of thousands of people are following her. There were tons of audiotapes like that, where she is basically fantasizing about who she ends up becoming. She's so young and idealistic and full of herself and full of excitement to be the next Gandhi and whatever it is. I loved that stuff. I had so much trouble cutting it down, and it moved me more than the particular political protests. She's been this way since she was a little girl, and she's still this way in her 80s. It was just incredible to me.”

What Miri also found inspiring is how this woman constantly recreated herself, getting better and better as she did, and exuded such confidence. “You’d hear her saying, ‘Mumsy and Popsy, I’m going to the March on Washington. They expect 30,000.’ Those kinds of things excited me the most, to have Joan as she was, this 21-year-old,” says Miri.

Karen, Miri, and Maeve did most of the film work themselves. Maeve also wanted to learn more about directing. Maeve lives in Dublin, which worked out well because Joan was touring in Europe. “It really required the three of us to be knee-deep in everything,” says Miri. And there was a clear division of labor. Maeve is an editor by trade, ruthless in terms of cutting. Karen had this vast personal relationship with Joan, which they relied on for everything and created the necessary trust; and Miri, a researcher at heart, just loved the extensive archives. Although they had their difference of opinions, they all had very similar aesthetic and intellectual ambitions for the film.

“Documenting the life of Joan came with its own challenges, such as the scale of the life and what to leave out, what to include,” says Karen. “Why didn’t we do Latin America or Vietnam? Her political history, her ups and downs with her career, her comeback with her manager, there were so many things that we had to shorthand or leave out. Also, her artwork and the personal archives just changed everything. How do you use that in the film so that it informs and propels the film forward? How does each element have a dramatic arc?”

Over the course of the filming, Joan’s mother and also her sister, Pauline Marden, died. Joan’s other sister, Mimi Farina, and her father had passed away much earlier. Their deaths opened the door to go back and look at the letters that her mother had written, and audiotapes between her, Mimi, and Pauline. “It's painful, and it fills her at the same time,” says Karen. While they did not want to do talking head interviews, they managed to find old footage of David Harris—so he is also in the film, which was hugely important to Joan, as well as the early archives with Bob Dylan.

Each screening was a shift for Joan. Seeing her sister, hearing her parents and her father’s “I love you, Joanie” tape, her relationship with her son, her regrets and joys and sorrows—all of it was emotional for her. Karen was surprised by the public’s reaction when the movie first came out. People responded to Joan’s honesty, particularly about her psychiatric issues. “There's a brokenness in almost everyone, and it didn't have to be identical to Joan’s, which is pretty extreme in some ways,” says Karen. “But people related to her and were moved by her honesty.”

When the film was shown in Nashville, Taylor Swift's movie was playing in one theater; in the other was the Joan Baez film. The trailer of I Am a Noise came up in the Swift theater, and Miri said she could hear the Swifties singing and clapping to an anthem of Joan’s, “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn me Around.” That brought a smile to the directors’ faces.

AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH THE QUEEN OF FOLK MUSIC 

Joan Baez talks with editor-in-chief Anastasia Stanmeyer about her new film and debut poetry book

I was so taken by the young woman in the film I Am a Noise and how she moved through her life with all that attention thrust upon her. What would you tell your younger self? Ease up. Ease up on yourself. I was really hard on myself. I wanted to do things fairly and do things right, but it was exhausting. I didn't know how to do otherwise, so I did what I could. It would be nice to have been able to take a break. Because of the psychological state I was in, I really couldn't take a break yet.

When you were 13, you wrote the words, “I am a noise.” Does that statement still describe you today? I didn't choose it. I think it's right for the movie, but I thought, Oh, that's interesting that I wrote that when I was so young. It probably saved me because it gave me a foundation. Being that noise continues today. Hopefully, a lot of it is fun, a lot of it is silly, a lot of it is not as deadly serious as I was back then. But, I am still a noise, there’s no question about that.

The last scene in the movie, I Am a Noise, you dance in the roadway with your beautiful dog. Can you express what that scene felt like? It's hard to express the extent to which I felt, as though I'd been through the tunnel and come out the other side. That dance and that little thing where I'm just sitting in the grass, I saw the expression on my face and I thought, ah, yes, that's what it was like. It was a real internal peace that I suppose you have periodically in your life, but not on a fairly permanent basis. A real peace. I’m just glad that face is in the film. That field was one of my places I would just rejuvenate. I would often dance in the full moon for ages.

Where is that field located? It’s right across the street from where I live. It's been a real blessing.

You mentioned in the film that your social consciousness was developed before your voice. And you acknowledged that you were the right voice at the right time. Can you expand upon that? Folk music had just begun to unfurl itself across the land. And then around the world. It was a counter-cultural thing. The curious thing about it is that it became cultural. All of a sudden, your grandfather could turn on the radio, or your brother could turn on the radio, and it was no longer a counterculture. It was part of our daily listening and part of the TV. So that was an interesting little jump from being a bunch of hippies with guitars to being taken seriously for our music. Because of the nature of the times and of us, we became political.

So it became mainstream? It did, in a way; some of it did, yes. Which is both good and bad, but for the most part good, because I think it was worthy music. It was being honest, as honest as it can be in that field. As you saw in the film, my big battle was trying to stay clean in an industry that was not known for honesty and forthright behavior. We tried to just remain honest and true to ourselves. Because we had the Woody Guthries and Pete Seegers before us, you could see that it could be done.

Yes, and we have Arlo Guthrie right here in the Berkshires! You also said that you weren't so great with one-on-one relationships, but with one-on-2,000 relationships. Those are fine for me. (Laughs) You don’t have to risk anything, except missing a note or two. I say I live alone, but I don't really live alone. I have a lot of people around; I just don't have a partner. That's a choice. That's what I was really not able to do. Then, when the time came that maybe I could, I just thought, you know, I've done enough work. I'm comfortable where I am, and I'll just be as creative from here as I can be. Because I didn't have a desire to try and add that to my life—another person, a partner. I'm still comfortable with my one-on-2,000.

How did you come to terms (and become comfortable) with the fame? For a while, I had decided I wasn't going to take limousines anymore, because that was too privileged. And so I said, “Okay, no more limousines.” And then somebody came to pick me up in a Volkswagen bus. And it was really old and funky and didn't smell good. I said, “You know, forget this shit. I want my limousines back.” So it came over time, different things happened. Believing that you've earned a red carpet was hard for me. I don't know what I believe anymore, but I enjoy the hell out of it. That took a while to reach that stage.

In 1963, Bob Dylan was a surprise guest at your performance at the Pittsfield Boys Club. Two weeks after that, you performed with Dylan at the March on Washington. I understand you are still emotional when you talk about it. I wish they played more than that one speech, because Martin Luther King, Jr.’s speeches were magnificent. This brings up too much for me. I’m just overwhelmingly moved by what that man went through and what he did, and what he accomplished, and the fact that I got to be there for so much of it.

Can you tell me what the feeling was, looking out at that ocean of people? I'd rather pick another scene. King asked me to go to Grenada, Mississippi. I don't know if it was a weekend or something. He couldn't get there in time, and they had planned to have him there to walk those kids to school in Grenada. So he asked me to come, the reason that if I was there, the press would intimidate people from throwing stuff at these kids. I had a chance to see him in a modest little home in Grenada, and what he was like after he was exhausted and got off a plane. He was usually joking, but he was completely wiped out. Then they gave him the master bedroom of this lovely little tiny house, and he was in there, asleep. I was thinking that he reminded me of a chocolate drop on that pillow. He was so dark and so beautiful. And Andy Young said nobody wanted to wake him up, because he was supposed to be preaching shortly thereafter. But he was wiped out. And they said, “Joan, you go wake him up.” I remember my palms were sweating, I was so nervous. I went in, and I sang, “Swing Low,” and he didn't wake up. He just rolled over and he said, “Mmmm. I believe I hear the sound of an angel. Let's have another one, Joan.”

What a beautiful story. Isn’t that lovely?

You performed in the Berkshires with the Indigo Girls in 2013 at Tanglewood. It was one of the best concerts I attended. Tell me more about your emotions during your farewell tour, five years later. One of the interesting things is that when we decided to make the film, we decided to make it whether or not we knew for sure that it was my last tour. Because people say this is my last tour, and then they stop, then they go back. So I thought, well, I don't think I'm going to be going back, but I can't predict what I'll feel like in four years or something. I was going from one concert to the next, one public to the next, knowing somewhere in there that it was going to end. I was kind of relishing the shows, because audiences, as you know, are all lovely. It was low-key. My concerts had been low-key anyway.

Do you miss it? No. I don't miss it. I sang the other night at Jack Elliott’s 90th birthday party at The Masonic in San Francisco. That’s the second time I've appeared in public in the last four years. It was an interesting test, because I had 48 hours to see whether I could play a guitar. (Laughs) My guitar hangs on the wall, literally. When they say, “She went home and hung up the guitar,” I did. And it looks really pretty up there. And I don't have any inkling of interest to play it. But then I'll say “yes” to something, because I love Jack Elliott and those cowboys. I said, “okay,” and then there’s this bizarre challenge. What notes do I have? I don't have time to rehearse. I have no interest in rehearsing. What notes do I have that are secure that I like? And what can I manage to get my fingers to do? And so I discovered everything was enough in shape to go out and sing a couple of songs. And that was fun.

What did you end up playing or singing? I sang “Don't Think Twice,” which has changed a lot. And then, because it was Jack and because he is nuts, I sang a song I wrote called “Coconuts.”

I’ve got to look that one up. I don't know where you’d find it, but you’ll find it somewhere. “Coconuts sitting in my hand, remindin’ me of my island man, and my island man sitting in his hut, dreamin’ about my coconuts.” (Laughs) It’s off-color, and it was wonderful. The band all played, and we all got crazy. I really enjoyed that. I would not say, “Okay, let's get on the bus and go do this again.” That's not gonna happen.

You're part of the folklore here in the Berkshires. You passed through again in 1975 and went to Mama Maria Frasca’s Dream Away Lodge in Becket during the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. Oh, my God. Yeah.

I recently met with Arlo Guthrie. He talked about that time. And he also hung up his guitar. That time period is still brought up in conversations here in the Berkshires— the musicians and the Dream Away, Alice Brock and Alice’s Restaurant. People just love those stories. Yeah, of course they do.

Your artwork reminds me of Alice's artwork. How did your artistry start? When I was five, literally. I just started drawing. I loved my plain sheets of paper and pencils, and I was happy. I could copy stuff. I could make somebody look like themselves by the time I was 13. I was a copy artist. That's what I had the most fun doing. And then 15 years ago, I wanted to do some quasi-disciplined approach. I didn't take lessons, but I had some friends show me stuff, to do the acrylic, to do the portraits. I got into that for 10 years. For the moment, I haven't been back in the studio for a year and a half. I did the upside-down drawing book, and I have a poetry book being released in April.

Oh, wonderful. We can let our readers know. Please do. And just today, they said they wanted me to read it for Audible, which I would love to do, but I don't know if I can do that particularly well. I'll see how it goes. I'm gonna give myself a couple of days to see whether that works. I hope I can do it with enough ease so it’s not a chore. So, my week's work is in front of me to see whether I can come up with anything I like, of my own reading of it. And then I'll be doing some live poetry readings, which, same thing. I don't know how well I’ll do at it, but it seems like a fun idea.

What do you hope audiences will take away from I Am a Noise? The nice thing is we didn't set out to do a film that would help people through one thing or another, but what's happened is that my willingness to confront a trauma publicly and be honest about it and not try to prove anything, I think is part of the recipe for what's moved people so deeply, especially women. Everybody has something we've either hidden or been ashamed of, or has shadowed our lives. We don't want to think about it or believe it. But this seems to have given a lot of women permission to feel those feelings and talk about them. I couldn't really ask for much more than that.

The documentary uses a wealth of personal artifacts—your home movies, the diaries, the therapy tapes. How did revisiting those items affect you? It's sometimes emotionally challenging. There are maybe certain things that I wish were different. I wish they'd put in more silliness. It has me looking always so exhausted and grumbling about the bus, and the fact is that we had parties, and we danced night after night after night and got crazy. So there are some things they didn't have time to get in there. There's occasionally a facet of me which I think has been missed. On the other hand, who knows what would have happened, trying to change anything? Because this film has been so powerful as it is. I think it’s extraordinary.

The film delves into some of the challenges and emotional struggles that you went through. How did you navigate yourself through all that? I just sort of went from one bump on the road to the next with my guitar in hand. People around me had spiritual training in nonviolence and meditation, and a lot of those things have held me together and still do.

Many artists cite you as an inspiration. How do you hope your journey and activism influence future musicians and activists? I just hope that gives them the strength to act on their better instincts and mix that with the music.

An excerpt from Joan Baez's new book of poems

“Goodbye to the Black and White Ball” from When You See My Mother, Ask Her to Dance. Copyright © 2024 by Joan Baez. Reprinted by permission of Godine.

GOODBYE TO THE BLACK AND WHITE BALL
Joan Baez

I used to think the alternative to black and white
must be gray. To avoid living a dull life,
I dressed in black and white,
I thought in black and white—
not just good or bad, mind you,
but perfect or damned
gifted or worthless
ethereal or demonic
emblazoned or cast out.

I scoffed at anything average
and avoided middle ground—
you know, The Gray Area.
As a result, I let slip most of my life.

I was chronically anxious, insomniac,
promiscuous, multiphobic, depressed,
hypervigilant, and, luckily, immensely talented.

I had antennae that could turn corners ahead of me,
protect me from the mortal danger of, say,
eating dinner in a restaurant
or making a new friend—
you know, The Gray Area.

When I was half a century old, I tore off the antennae
and turned my life over
to a power greater than myself—
which by that point could have been
a toothpick.

I pitched myself into a sea of memories
and headed blindly like a hoodwinked shark
for the marrow of the inner core me;
I pictured pustules of venom but
my therapist suggested it might be diamonds.

For months, I thrashed about, recording dreams, grasping for clues,
fighting for my life and the life of my son.
When I came up for air from my flailing,
I began to see shards of color.

Slowly, I began to see my life was sanctified, matchless,
and I would trade it for no other.
I should not have been shocked to find that
a diamond was in fact the core of me.

I continued to scrape off tenacious parasites.
I discovered that sorrow is an ocean,
fury is blue, pain is my companion,
but love had not been smashed to bits
so badly as to not be mendable,
like a gypsy violin
crushed beneath a Nazi boot.

I needed patience and an artisan.
My therapists became my artisans.

People around me
unearthed the gems I had been promised and held my heart
in their cradling hands
as I split up into a hundred pieces, a hundred bright souls
sorting out their places in a dazzling necklace taking in and reflecting sunlight,
working to mend me,
to help me survive my deliverance
and transcend my survival.