TENDING THE WELL

We can't control everything, but we can show up

I’ve known songs that are time machines. Whenever I hear “Here Comes The Hotstepper” by Ini Kamoze, I am 17 again, riding up the hill on a chairlift with my friend Mae the morning after we snuck out and drove 45 minutes in my parent’s car to go dance at an all-ages club the night before. I’ve been healed by a song, like Patty Griffin’s “Forgiveness,” stitching up my broken heart and holding it together while I had my head against the speaker and my finger on the repeat button. I’ve heard songs that changed the entire direction of my life- like Bob Dylan’s “Not Dark Yet, but It’s Gettin’ There” that I sat and listened to in silence while I fell in love with a painter that I would move across the country with. I wouldn’t stay with the painter, but I would spend the next 16 years on the West Coast, and I will always love that song.

Of all the things I try to make, songs are my favorite, and I genuinely believe they hold the most power I have as an artist.

For those who don’t know, I toured full-time as a singer-songwriter in an Americana string band for 10 years. I released several albums of my songs, and I know that I was at least somewhat effective at writing them because I have had the great delight of showing up in a town I have never been to and meeting a small crowd of people who can sing along. That will bring on the big feelings. The first time this happened, I was so overwhelmed that I cried onstage.

Which is all to say, it has been a little strange and disorienting to write so few songs the last few years. My practice hasn’t been gone completely, and I have had other creative outlets. I’ve done some satisfying songwriting with groups and young people, I’ve still performed; I’m a working musician. I’m not absent from music, but my songwriting went underground for a while.

In Sharon Blackie’s “If Women Rose Rooted” she writes about how wells in the old stories are ancient sources of wisdom, healing, and poetic inspiration from the Otherworld. But… they have to be tended, or else they will get overgrown and clogged.

In the last couple of months, I noticed that the ground around my feet was always wet. I heard a trickling and smelled dampness. I started playing with words again. I started hearing things people say as if they are singing to me. I recognized the signs of the well, but I hadn’t found it yet.

So I asked myself what I really wanted to make right now. I spent some time with my heart, free-writing because that is the easiest way for me to discover what I actually think. And the answer that bubbled up without hesitation was: songs.

As soon as I let my heart say it out loud, the well was simply there. Clogged and grown over, but it was there.

You can’t make the mystic part of “art” happen. It won’t be forced. All you can do is build the space for magic to nest in. All you can do is tend the well. That’s the practice.

Not all songs are poetry, but the ones I want to make are. They both get their rhythmic form and structure from the words. They both try to illuminate something true with distilled imagery and language, which is great because it means writing is a forgiving creative practice. Even if you haven’t been working on it, you don’t really lose what you had. It comes back. It’s more emotional and intellectual memory, not muscle, so in fact, not only does it come back, you meet it with more to draw from just by being human and getting a little older. Clear the well, start paying attention, and it flows up from underground. Rusty as I might be, I wrote a new song this week. I don’t love it yet, but it’s honest, and the poetic moment is there. That well has been stopped up and boggy for a while. It makes sense that it’s going to come out a little dirty and sputtering when I first turn it on. I just need to show up and keep the ferns cut back. I just need to let the water run

clearly I got a new grain brush, and it’s fun to play with… I’m still not sure how I will print that…

WILDER PRACTICE

BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE OF A WILDER WONDER! I want to start trying to give you a more concrete way to deepen your practice. These are intended to be 10 minute exercises. I know for a fact that 10 minutes of practice daily does more than an hour sporadically. I’m watching my son learn to play the piano 10 minutes a day. He’s getting the muscle memory. But more important, he’s building the devotion. I want to help us all get there together.

FINDING THE WELL.

I told you in January about a MORE/LESS list exercise that was created by Julia Rothman, and that I got from Wendy Mac.

The exercise they do is a drawing one- make a list of things you want more of and a list of things you want less of, and illustrate it. I did that, and have it near my desk. This week I used it as my songwriting prompt, and it was really powerful. I simply looked at my list of more and less, and chose one of those things and tried to go deep and explore why I wanted that, what it looked like, and how I could write a song about that feeling.

I think it was a helpful jumping-off point because the list was honest, and that means that everything I have on there, I do actually care about. And there is no point in writing a song or a poem or making a drawing about something that you don’t deeply care about.

I guess I’m saying, the well is where your heart is. That’s all the map you need.

All right folks. Be good to yourself. Be good to each other. Love, Jes