GAELYNN LEA: It Wasn't Meant To Be Perfect (Algonquin Books)
It Wasn't Meant To Be Perfect is a book with other books within. A coming-of-age saga where a girl meets a shy boy, a folk 'n' roll road-travelogue, a tract of passionate resolve, a tale of a creative soul and her journey into unexpected limelight. It reads like a well-structured novel, at times joyous, occasionally steeped in pathos, yet always effortlessly funny and engaging.
Gaelynn Lea was born in 1984 with osteogenesis imperfecta. The genetic condition commonly known as brittle bones. Her limbs had fractured many times in the womb, and by the time she had arrived, they'd set in their broken fashion. Another aspect of her condition is being of small stature. Not the start one would necessarily anticipate, but her family, creative souls, worked within their slender financial means, whilst providing immense love and diligent care. Their daughter showed an aptitude for music, and an enterprising music teacher turned her initial limitations around by allowing Gaelynn Lea, perched in her wheelchair, to play a violin like a cello, which had been her pupil's initial instrument of choice, but the economies of scale had other ideas.
The book offers wonderful insights into a soul's fascination with and desire to make music, and this daughter of the town of Duluth, which also spawned Bob Dylan, never allowed the barriers placed before her because of her disability to impede her creative desires. Initially, she simply wished to learn her instrument, then to play, but her passion was fully ignited by her first experience of a live orchestra. Her innate ability initially drew the attention of Alan Sparhawk from the band Low, who gifted her a loop pedal and another small creative piece slotted into place. Then one day, like a bolt from nowhere, she wrote her first song, entering a new phase without quite realizing that she had.
The book has moments of utter amusement, wisdom, and callous despair. The scene of Gaelynn's tiny frame being carefully decanted into a rucksack whilst her older siblings planned a sweetshop trip illicitly is comedy gold. Her callous treatment by arrogant doctors, which almost cost her life, or a benefits officer's advice, intent on rescinding all of her Medicaid support after her change of circumstances since getting married, "Get divorced!" brings into sharp relief the casual cruelty meted out by the able-bodied world on those with disabilities.
Happy in her status as a violin tutor, things changed drastically for her when, on the advice of a friend, she reluctantly entered and then won NPR's Tiny Desk competition in 2016. Her tales of life on the road as a wheelchair user are grim, and her gradual sense of advocacy for herself and others in her position becomes an inevitable development. She is disarmingly guileless. When approached to sing with Michael Stipe, she had no idea who he was, though she knew of REM. The same applied to Daniel Craig when she was asked to write the music for the 2024 Broadway production of Macbeth in which he played the lead. She simply took the job and completed the project to much-deserved acclaim.
Gaelynn Lea has pulled off the same feat Quentin Crisp did sixty years previously with his autobiography The Naked Civil Servant. Whereas Crisp exposed a gay world that few had any knowledge of, she allows her readers to experience up close and personal, hers as a creative, disabled woman. It is candid and completely lacking in self-pity, but illuminates aspects the able-bodied are privy to ignore, be that getting into a building or onto a stage, using a restroom, or being treated as an equal.
It Wasn't Meant To Be Perfect is an eloquent introduction to Gaelynn Lea's inner world. A funny, witty, and moving read, beautifully written and effortlessly engaging, I defy anyone who encounters it not to come away with a feeling of immense affection and a change in their assumptions about those classed as the disabled.
It will also, hopefully, widen the coterie of listeners for her exquisite music, her lilting voice, and her hauntingly beautiful songs.