by Jewel
When spring break rolled around, again I didn’t have the money to go back to Alaska. This is when I concocted the brilliant idea that I would hobo by train across the country and then hitchhike through Mexico, like all parents hope their children do one day . . .
I took a Greyhound bus from school to Detroit and stayed the night in the bus station. Note I did not say “sleep” in the bus station. A chilling experience. I decided to learn guitar so I could street sing along the way and earn train fare as I went. I never played guitar as a child—my dad was the musician in our act—so before I left campus I learned four chords: A, C, G, and D. In that order. I could not play them out of order because I did not know how. I could not learn cover songs because I didn’t know any other chords and couldn’t read tab, and so I decided to just improvise songs about what I was seeing around me. I figured as long as I sang well, no one would care what I was singing about. Before I left, I saved enough money from tips at the piano bar to buy an Amtrak ticket from Detroit to Chicago, got off, and made my way to Michigan Avenue. It was my first time seeing a big city like this, or America, for that matter. Alaskan culture, especially where and how I was raised, was about as opposite from pop culture as one could get without being part of a Pygmy tribe in the rainforest. I began to make up lyrics about what I observed. Televisions could be seen in every restaurant and bar. Celebrity worship. Words began to flow off my tongue. All the poetry and prose I had written for all those years, all the books I’d read, from Plato to Bukowski to Neruda, all the bars I had sung in, the thousands of cover songs I had sung since I was five—it was like I’d been in life’s music school for a decade and for the first time I was able to combine music and words. And it felt like magic happened as I wrote my first song: I found my voice. Not my singing voice, but my voice as an artist. People living their lives for you on TV, they say they are better for you, and you agree. She says hold my calls from behind those cold brick walls, says come here boy, there ain’t nothin’ for free.
I took the money I made busking to the ticket counter at the train station. I counted out crumpled dollar bills and random change and asked how far it would get me. Sometimes it was enough to get a ways down the road. Sometimes it was just enough for a sandwich. I eventually made my way to San Diego, my first time there, and crossed the border into Tijuana. A girl, a backpack, and a guitar. And her skinning knife. I hitchhiked to Cabo, using the “large trucks only” policy I devised after hearing horror stories on the train about small cars being run off the dirt roads by larger trucks in Mexico. I made it to Cabo, where I sang on the dock to earn a ferry ride to the mainland side of Mexico. To supplement my income, I made a little sign that said, “Reflexology,” and gave foot rubs to blue hairs. Once I had ferry money and made it to the mainland, I hopped trains (the Chihuahua al Pacífico railroad) and went all throughout the Barrancas del Cobre, a beautiful and rugged time capsule where traditional Mexican natives lived in the mountains still, wearing handwoven clothes and eating corn and simple foods, tucked into the cliffs and canyons.
I met up with my mom and her roommate and we rode trains, sitting with chickens and goats in boxcars. We stayed in hostels and I sang in restaurants in exchange for food. I talked a boy into letting me ride a horse he was feeding dry corncobs to and, without a saddle, rode the animal, which was more goat than equine, through the dry, rocky mountaintops. The roommate and I took a ferry back to Cabo, stayed in La Paz, and hung out with some locals I met at the beach who were windsurfing. And finally, we made a sign that said “Norte Por Favor” (the extent of my Spanish) and stuck our thumbs out. In the name of safety we passed on anyone we didn’t feel good about (a practice I had honed in Alaska) and only accepted a ride that was going all the way to the border, so we would not be stranded in some small town in the middle of the desert. After several hours we got lucky and two nice young men said in broken English that they were going to Tijuana, and so we hopped in the cab. Between our lack of Spanish and their lack of English, we all smiled a lot and communicated the way souls do who find their lives suddenly thrust together. They were warmhearted and generous of spirit, sharing their food and water. The drive was too long for one day, and so they pulled to the side of a dirt road at dark to sleep. They offered to let us sleep in the cab, but we opted for the empty tractor-trailer. They had hauled pinto beans, and a thin layer covered the floor. I got out my sleeping bag and was quite comfortable—like sleeping on a beanbag, with all those pintos beneath me. I left the doors to the trailer open, wrote more verses to my one song until it was too dark to see, and stared at the estrellas until I fell asleep. So we pray to as many different gods as there are flowers, but we call religion our friend, we’re so worried about saving our souls, afraid that God will take his toll, that we forget to begin, but who will save your soul if you won’t save your own . . .
The next day our new friends dropped us off at the border. I crossed back into the States, all without being murdered or raped. So that was good. I busked back to Michigan, editing and refining the song I had been writing. I kept playing those same chords over and over, simply changing the melody to denote the chorus. As the pink desert of Arizona, the mountain majesty of Colorado, and the fertile goodness of the midlands dreamily floated by my train window, I sifted through thirty or so verses until I had what I felt were the best ones.
We try to hussle ’em try to bussle ’em try to cuss ’em the cops want someone to bust down on Orleans Avenue . . . some are walking some are talkin’ some are stalkin’ their kill got social security but that don’t pay your bills . . . there are addictions to feed and there are mouths to pay so we bargain with the devil say we are ok for today say but who will save your soul if you won’t save your own . . .
A less welcome gift of my trip was a bladder infection I contracted while busking my way back across the States. Too ashamed to open up to a stranger about what the heck was happening to me, I sucked it up and toughed it out for three painful days instead of asking for help. I had a fever and curled up in my train seat, shivering and sweating it out. By the time I hit Illinois, it had passed, and I returned to the Greyhound station in Detroit feeling so grown-up and independent in one way, yet so devastatingly alone and helpless in another. I dragged myself, my sixty-pound backpack, and my guitar off the bus and hitchhiked with no success the few miles to my school, just in time to be hospitalized for the first of what would be chronic kidney infections. But I had my song. I titled it “Who Will Save Your Soul.”
I returned to school with a world of experience and a song of my own. I was hooked. Songs began to pour out of me. Emotions and anxieties finally had an even more focused outlet.
I began writing myself lullabies at night, when terrors came over me as I lay down to sleep. I wrote “Raven” when I was about sixteen, to soothe myself. Writing music carried the freight for me. It relieved the pressure and let me see my own inner workings plainly. Writing songs offered different tools like melody and tone to convey and release emotion, unlike journal writing. It takes seeing a thing first to be able to change it. Our unexamined feelings swim like restless schools of fish inside us; they stir up and muddy the waters. Self-examination organizes our moodiness, and helps us identify the stimulus that caused those feelings, and calms the water. Had I never become a professional writer, I would still write every day for the same reasons I began to: as Socrates suggested, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I knew that because I had come from living it.
There were, however, unhealthy ways I coped as well. My compulsive eating was becoming more difficult to ignore. Control is a central theme for anyone who steals or has an eating disorder. I felt helpless and out of control, and I cracked under the pressure in heartbreakingly human ways. I tried to comfort myself with food and tried to take control by stealing. They both gave me a sense of power, the illusion of providing for myself. I tried not to turn a blind eye on my actions. I kept writing. On paper, I saw myself commit crimes, binge ea
t, and run to my dorm room midday to break down and cry. I also saw myself write songs, go to work, sing and make money, I saw myself thrive in art. I tried to be honest about it all, if only on paper. Good and bad. I knew it was imperative to be honest with myself, even about my tremendous flaws, so I wouldn’t lose track of myself entirely. I couldn’t be perfect, and the only shot I had at ever getting better was being realistic about where I really was. In many ways I was in trouble, and in many ways I was doing well. Both were true and I had to accept that until I could grow differently. I continued to work hard at school, and prepared to graduate a year early because I didn’t think I could get the funds together for another year at Interlochen and going back to regular school didn’t sound fun. With all my academics out of the way, I was going to wrap up and head back to Homer with no real plan for the future, when I was informed that the school was prepared to offer me a full scholarship to return. I couldn’t believe it. I explained that I was done with my academics, though, and that if I came back, I wanted to study only art—and they said that would be fine. I was instantly energized with a sense of excitement that propelled me into a happy and productive summer back in Homer.
thirteen
internal permission
I returned to my hometown and drifted between my aunt Mossy’s place and my dad’s cabin-in-process. All I remember is writing a lot. And gardening and hauling water up and down the hill on the homestead. I slept in the unfinished basement while Dad and Atz Lee stayed in the small outdoor shed. I helped my aunt with horse pack trips in the mountains and I stayed by myself a lot at her remote cabin at the head of the bay and wrote and read. I hung with Lee and his friends, who read and traveled and were trying to figure things out, like I was. I was glad to be away from the drama of high school girls and boys. I could relax a little around my Alaskan friends, who were self-sufficient and engaged in the adventure of life. I wrote “Little Sister,” “Can’t Take My Soul,” “Billy,” “Money,” and many songs that summer and played them for the group that hung at Aunt Mossy’s farm.
Mairiis (Mossy) was my dad’s eldest sister. She was part surrogate mother, part boss, part pixie. I’d worked at her bed-and-breakfast and taken tourists on pack trips from about fifth grade onward. Being her helper was pretty fun. She was chipper and upbeat, always a song on her lips, a spry woman of infinite energy that was at odds with her years. She is to this day the embodiment of the Alaskan can-do pioneer woman. Every bit my grandmother’s daughter. She built her own houses and shod her own horses. There were always campers in tents in the fields (at five bucks a night), tourists in the B&B, and long-term renters in tiny cabins along the long dirt road. I changed sheets, saddled horses, and packed saddlebags. Her farm was called Seaside Farm and it was closer to town than the homestead, though still pristine and lovely. The barnyard was a happy place teeming with baby colts and fillies, calves, goslings, and one bunny named Caramel. There were no other bunnies, so Caramel was raised with the chickens. The chickens loved that bunny, and Caramel grew up as one of them. She would sit on their nests and hatch eggs for them. She would line nests with her soft fur, and hop around herding up baby chicks as they wandered this way and that. She even ate like a chicken, stabbing her head forward and sort of pecking at feed and grass. This delighted me to no end as a child—an orphan bunny who found love with a different tribe. It also made me think—what if I were a bunny being raised by chickens? How would I ever know my true nature?
I began to look at everyone around me, at other girls at school, at other parents and families, and what I noticed was there were other ways of doing things. Other systems, other ways of interacting. I knew I was an unhappy child. I knew I was scared and hurt and at risk of never finding peace or happiness. I realized that happiness was not some bird that landed on your shoulder by accident, but was a skill that was taught, or not taught, in certain houses and families.
After summer drew to an end, back at Interlochen, I took art classes all day long. I majored in visual arts and voice, with minors in dance and theater. I began carving marble and doing head busts about a year after I began writing songs, and credit sculpture for teaching me more about melody than any other thing. I had grown up listening to great melodies by Gershwin and Porter and other Tin Pan Alley writers but had never sat down to study what makes a memorable melody. I had been turned on to Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. I loved listening to them, but never studied their songs’ structure or form. I was more of a storyteller and I knew what a chorus was and a verse was, but knew little else about writing a song. To get around my ignorance with the guitar, I began to experiment with tunings. I would work the pegs and drop strings to lower tones, or sometimes higher ones, until I found a harmonic combination that was pleasing to me. When I discovered my own open tunings, it freed my head musically and lyrically. Open tunings allowed me to find melodies and voice more complicated chords with much less work, and it was more aligned to my way of thinking, because down the fret board were lower chords, and up the fret board were higher chords, much the way a piano is laid out, I imagined. I told stories and wrote songs and fell in love with music without ever really thinking about the strength of melody, or breaking down intellectually what a great melody needs. We don’t always know why abstract shapes and patterns and colors affect us, but we know when they do. Melody has its own shape. The shape has to have focus, have movement, and evoke a feeling. Form is everything. It has to be clean, clear, recognizable. It has to have purpose. It has to have variance and contrasts to be interesting. I immediately recognized the similarity in melody and abstract sculpture. Simple geometric patterns always emerged from beneath the complexity and interpretation that was unique to the artist. It is melody slowed down to the point it is frozen in time. It communicates without language and affects the viewer with the emotion the artist experienced while creating it. Modigliani’s long necks. The exaggerated bend of Klimt’s necks. Brancusi, Noguchi, Lipchitz, even the painters who used geometric design within their paintings to create their compositions. As I studied the songs that became beloved and popular for generations, I could see a spiraling melody. A melody that climbed to an apex, then back down to create a pyramid shape. Square shapes that went up, over, down, and back to the root like a square. The Beatles’ songs are great examples of this type of melody—deceivingly complicated ideas and forms wrapped in simple singsong-patterned melodies. And Joni Mitchell, while more complicated tonally and structurally, still adhered to the basic principles of a pattern—hers more like the mathematics of a bumblebee or hummingbird. Delicate, intricate, gravity-defying. I was fascinated by how much could be communicated with pure sound—by creating a strong shape with it that in and of itself communicated emotion before words were ever added. Then the layering of elements over one another. Juxtaposing a provocative lyric with a sweet melody, changing timbre from pure and crystalline to a growl and a snarl to portray irony, or anger laced with humor or a wry wink. Lay this on a bed of minor chords that might ascend to a major and yet more is communicated about longing and a hope of where you wish to end up. Nuance could be achieved in song the way visual artists use light, focal point, value, and color.
I made some very good friends my second and last year at school, and had a new roommate named Madella, who was from Mexico and a wonderful music enthusiast. I wrote “Don’t” this year, and I remember she loved it and encouraged me to keep writing songs. She was a very funny, larger-than-life character who I have such fond memories of. I began singing my songs and yodeling at open-mic night on campus. There were lots of guitar players, drummers, and pianists at Interlochen, but it was hard at first to find fellow musicians to jam with, because so many of them were trained in reading music but not in improv.
I had the same bifurcated sense that I was doing really well while also not doing well at all. I gained fifteen to twenty pounds from stress eating and was horribly upset that I could not control my diet. I had heard about twelve-step programs from my mom. She t
old me she had gotten into a twelve-step program and was learning to make amends. I asked her if she was an alcoholic and she said no. I’m not sure why she was in the program. I forgave her, of course, just as I had forgiven my dad when he came to school with the bagged lunches. It seemed so vulnerable and honest to come to your child like this. I went to the library at Interlochen and found a book there on twelve-step programs, and saw that there was a group specifically for eating disorders called Overeaters Anonymous. I read the book at night when I was done with my schoolwork. It was like reading my diaries, the uncontrollable binge eating, the comfort eating, the euphoria followed by the intense shame and self-loathing. And I knew I didn’t have the worst case—not yet—but that something was wrong with me. I didn’t want to wait until I was a hundred pounds overweight, rather than twenty, to do something about it. When I couldn’t find an OA chapter to join, I decided to start one at school, with the help of a school counselor. There was a running joke on campus that after lunch you could hear every toilet in the dancers’ dorm flush from so many girls purging. Our first meeting was quite small, and it never really grew much. I remember one very nice young girl in the group—there were only three or four of us. She was anorexic and said she wore black to the meeting so she would look thin. There was a sixteen-year-old boy, a dancer, who was bulimic, and he felt so much shame that he had a “girls’” disorder. Brené Brown, the author of Daring Greatly, describes the issue beautifully as the web women are trapped in: “Be pretty, but not threateningly pretty. Be a go-getter but don’t threaten anyone or be a bitch. Caught in this web of contradictions, we have to be everything for everyone and we lose the ability to explore who we really are.” She goes on to describe the trap society sets for men as a box, where they must be strong and brave but unemotional and shutdown. For the first time in this support group, I saw that these dynamics play out over and over in everyone, as girls and boys, men and women, try to break free from unnatural confines and live as whole humans—to give ourselves the internal permission to be as emotionally conflicted and confused, and as strong and confident, as we are at any given time. We had all been judged by the outside world, and all of us had learned to internalize that critic and use it against ourselves. We all indulged in acts of self-hatred to gain feelings of control in our efforts to build self-worth.