When I was 34 years old I went to London to begin a three-month solo music tour of Europe. My favorite city was Copenhagen. In between shows, I spent hours wandering the city streets by bicycle. Most of my escapades took place late at night, between the hours of 10pm and 2am. I remember one crisp October night in particular. I was high on the hash I had just smoked with new friends in Christiania and was bicycling back to the room I was staying in across town. As per usual, I opted to travel on unfamiliar streets heading in the vague, general direction of my destination.
It was not long before I realized I was lost. I mean, I was really lost. I stopped my bike and stood on the cobble stone and looked around. Nothing was familiar. Everything I was looking at, I was looking at for the first time in my life. The streets were empty. It was 2006. I had no smart phone to consult. I stood alone with my bike under the moon, surrounded by very tall, very old buildings of stone.
I thought to myself “not a single person on the entire planet knows where I am right now.” I did not even know where I was, or even when I was. My initial sense of confusion soon gave way to something grander, something truly awesome. In that moment I became completely aware of the truth of my situation. The situation we are all in.
At a radio interview during that same tour, the host asked me a hefty question: “what is the job of the artist?”
I responded: “All I have to do is get up on stage, open my mouth, and tell the truth.”
Easy enough, right?
Sometimes the truth is a little beyond us, like magic. There were times when I got up on stage that I did not tell the truth. I always thought I was I was telling the truth, but the truth is slippery. It’s not something the intellect can fully comprehend or articulate. And that is of course why we have art.
I recently heard an interview with Tucker Carlson on Tom Cridland’s Greatest Music of All Time Podcast where he says:
“Are they telling the truth? I don’t know. I can’t check your facts, but I can hear it in the tone, I can tell in the way you move, I can smell it because I’m an animal as we all are. I know if you’re lying to me. I don’t know how, but I know who the honest people are, and I know them instantly. And I know who the artists are. We all do.”
Audiences in venues are usually polite. They sit quietly during songs and they clap at the end. The outward behavior of an audience therefore is not a reliable indicator of success. The real indicators: Are the hairs on the back of my neck standing up? Are the hairs on the back of their necks standing up? Do I feel connected to these strangers in some way that cannot be explained? Is this a place I have never been to before?
If I can manage to do that, to get us all to a place where we are hovering around the truth of our situation, then I have fulfilled my job as an artist.
I always preferred performing on the subway platforms where people do not stop to listen unless they are inclined. If they are further inclined, they make an offering: a dollar, a pretty stone, a hand rolled cigarette, a drawing, a joke, a poem. And sometimes, tears.
People of all skin tones, languages, religions, ages, sizes, political persuasions, incomes, abilities, ethnicities, etc. etc. etc. The kind of diversity that college administrators and DEI trainers talk about but (I suspect) are not remotely close to actually comprehending. Performing on the subway platform enabled me meaningful connection with people I would not normally otherwise come into contact with, let alone enjoy a deeply intimate, expansive interpersonal experience with.
My assumptions (some might call them “unconscious biases”) were routinely exploded down there on that dirty, noisy subway platform. All because I opened my mouth and told the truth, not because I went along with a lie.
Shortly before my tour in Europe, I was sitting on a bench on an outdoor subway platform in Queens. It was early in the morning (or late, depending), and it had just begun to snow. I was waiting for the train to take me home. I was feeling cold and alone and sorry for myself. Suddenly, a little black bird landed on the concrete two feet in front of me.
It was a starling.
In winter, starlings congregate in flocks that can number in the thousands. The most famous of these is The Black Sun, or Sort Sol, which takes place in Denmark every year. This is what a healthy flock of starlings looks like.
It must have been January or February, but my starling was alone. In that moment a complete song materialized, music and lyrics, inside my mind. Below is a young me, performing the love song I wrote that day.
It could well be that my life as an artist, my constant struggle to hit that peak, the sublime feeling of telling/embodying the truth and feeling the inevitable human connection that results, made me into the kind of person who cannot (for long) abide by something so patently, obviously fake as what Smith College was feeding me. That is, attempting to control what I believe, in the name of justice, as a continued condition of my employment.
I could see with my own eyes that this kind of thing was not bringing us together, was not empowering us, was not nurturing empathy or creating connection with each other. It was achieving the exact opposite.
Still, it wasn’t easy for me to speak out.
Before my tour in Europe, I had been living a marginal, insecure existence as a songwriter and performer. Shortly after, I suffered an interpersonal trauma. The trauma I endured left me feeling fearful, and a life in which I did not always know what would happen next became intolerable to me. My concomitant urge to become a mother –an urge I soon fulfilled– was likely born of an effort to forge a stronger physical connection to the material plane.
My decision to have children was accompanied by the need to obtain an actual job. The kind that comes with day time hours and a steady paycheck. So I became a librarian. [Why a librarian? Because I like to read.]
By the time I took up my position as a librarian Smith College, I was fully rooted (and wholly indebted) to the material world. When I realized my work environment was psychologically abusive, I could not simply tell everyone to f*** off and make a righteous exit through the Grecourt Gate. Instead I attempted in good faith –for over a year– to reason with my higher-ups. I did not want to take The Nuclear Option (a.k.a. a YouTube video). I just wanted them to stop doing the hurtful things they were doing to me (and others like me at the college) and let me do my job in peace.
We all know how that ended up.
Oscar Wilde said:
“Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.”
Healthy communities arise naturally when people are allowed the psychic space to develop into fully fledged individuals. To quell individualism is to stifle our ability to connect. It is no coincidence that the first task of a totalitarian regime is to snuff out individualism and it is no surprise that this is accomplished in part by turning all art into a thinly disguised political vehicle.
Because Smith would not allow me to do my job without harassing me based on something as petty and shallow as my skin color, I am left once again to my own devices. I am trying to be a healthy individual who can contribute to my community in a positive manner. Because of the incredibly generous support of people all over this country and beyond, I have been given the gift of a second chance.
This week’s playlist: Birds and the truth.
I recently saw this film, The Sound of Metal. It was moving. While writing this newsletter it won an Oscar for Best Audio.
I’m sorry this installment was so late, it was a triple decker!
May the force be with you.
Jodi
Top photo, Sort Sol, Denmark.