A few days back, I got a bit of a fright when I sat out on the back patio to chat with some friends back home on the phone. I noticed a freaking enormous bug just chilling on one of the support columns. My first assumption was a massive dreaded horsefly, which I am (rightfully) terrified of. But he wasn’t moving, so I eyeballed him a bit closer to figure out what he was.
He was a cicada! Or rather, his shell. The real little dude had long since moved on and left part of himself behind.
I left it there in the moment, not thinking much of it, but something later on prompted me to revisit it. I kept thinking about the shell sitting out there on the patio all day.
Going out to retrieve the shells that night, I felt an odd kinship to Satoshi Tajiri, a certain Japanese little boy with autism whose passion for bug collecting would, in adulthood, lead to his masterwork, the Pokémon universe. Who woulda thunk my lifelong obsession with collecting little digital critters would come in handy someday? When I finally reached the patio, I noticed a second one on the other side of the column. Bonus! I snagged both and placed them in a little bowl, careful not to damage the delicate exoskeletons.
When I brought the two shells inside, my girlfriend disclosed to me that as a child, she was petrified of the enormous insects. To quell her anxiety around them, her mother made up a silly song about them: “I’m gonna get some brand new skin/And I’m gonna fly away.”
And it hit me. I’m in my cicada era. Because this is the part of my life where I need to shed my skin and begin anew.
I consider my religious views deeply rooted in the Christian tradition I grew up in, but I also dabble in witchcraft and related spiritual arts. The two are surprisingly compatible. I had this crazy realization that the Abrahamic faiths’ blanket ban on all things witchy is more or less rooted in the fact that the big dudes who’ve always run those faiths get real squirrelly about a woman taking spirituality into her own hands. Don’t you need a pope or a priest or a pastor or a husband to tell you what to believe? I’ve discovered the answer is a huge “hell no,” and that’s the difference between orthodox Christianity and my personal belief system. God didn’t stop moving after the events of the Bible. I believe He is still speaking. And when He wants to tell you something, who’s to say He can’t speak through tarot or meditation or signs from nature?
Like finding two cicada shells.
Speaking of tarot, when my best friend/frequent collaborator, Luke, and I decided to be roomies, I did a reading for us using a deck I’d gifted him forever ago. I’m not superstitious, but I am a little “-stitious.” I had a feeling if we did a reading, something important would jump out at us. Well…
When Luke first got the deck, he pulled exactly one card — the Eight of Wands. It’s funny because before doing this reading, I shuffled the everloving fuck out of the deck and had both of us split it. And wouldn’t you know, the very first card was the Eight of Wands again. It feels significant, and it is. It’s the card of rapid change and new adventures. When I do my favorite reading, the first card is usually something to embrace. The second is something to release, though. The Ten of Cups was sobering. The happy family card. I’ve always wanted to be a mother, but as I’ve begun to realize, perhaps by letting go of my dream of having literal children, I can step into my role as the mother of a great new movement of some sort, even if that’s just starting a creative collective with my friends and helping them find their voices. The third card, a message from God or the universe or whatever higher power you choose to believe in, was the Five of Pentacles. Things will be difficult for a while, especially financially, but we’ll get by with a little help from our friends. The message of that card is to remember that folks are there to pick you up when you fall.
The left two cards were incredibly interesting. I like to flip the very next card in the deck is to see “what’s next” in life. The High Priestess. The only major arcana card I pulled. Divine feminine energy. She’s considered something of a “femme pope,” to the point where some decks call her the “Popess.” She’s a guru of spiritual wisdom and intuition. I don’t know what that means for us, but it feels right. My immediate thought was of Hildegard von Bingen, the medieval nun who also happened to be the first named composer in the canon of Western music. I feel a deep kinship to her, both spiritually and creatively. She is proof to me that these things are not incompatible, especially after having grown up in the evangelical church, where your sense of creativity tends to get stifled. While modern American Christianity has devolved into Skillet and Forrest Frank, Hildy was busy laying the architecture for music as we know it. And she was, like me, a deeply spiritual person with strong convictions.
Then, I usually check the bottom card as a way to see what’s behind me, what problems I no longer need to contend with. Seven of Cups. Illusion, distraction, wishful thinking. Those things are in the past. The time has come to take action. If we can dream it, we can make it happen. Being roommates, getting this podcast off the ground, making a difference in our community and in the world — that’s what we need to be doing. This tarot reading was all the confirmation I needed. Me, Luke, and all our friends here in Kalamazoo are the creative dream team I’ve longed for since I was a kid, when I just wanted to be in some kind of band or similar collective. I was never the child who played team sports, but I longed for connection and for a group to lean on. I finally found that here.
But I digress! This post is about cicadas, right? After I collected the shells, I did my due diligence reading about what they symbolized. I couldn’t believe the things I was seeing on my screen. Cicadas represented everything I needed to embrace in order to move on from all of the things that have been weighing me down. They are a beacon of change and transformation, and perhaps most appropriately, they are the patron insect of musicians and singers, as their song is the soundtrack to late summer. They reminded me that, as I’ve said before, if I can scream, I still have a voice. The cicada is a sign that I need to use that voice and be loud, even though it’s scary at times. I have important things to say to this dark world, and I will be heard. We will be heard.
I gathered a few special objects to make an apartment-warming gift for Luke and I. I found a cheap wooden picture frame and hot-glued a few dried catalpa leaves and Luke’s amethyst to it. The catalpa leaves, aside from being my favorite tree, are a symbol of uniqueness and creativity. The amethyst is for spiritual strength and wisdom. In the frame, I put a print-out of our tarot reading from the day we decided to become roommates. And as a finishing touch, I affixed the two shells I found to the frame. It felt serendipitous, finding a second shell. I wasn’t meant to go it alone. I have an ally in Luke. He and I are just two little bugs trying to transform ourselves and the world by screaming into the void.
Maybe we’ll change the world for the better someday. Maybe we’ll crash and burn. But we have to try, while we still have a voice. That’s what cicadas do best.
If you enjoyed what you read, please consider donating to my GoFundMe! I’m trying to restart my life with my kitty, Krubby, but we still need so much to get back on our feet. Even a little helps!
Once again, I was given a surprisingly relevant prompt for what I already had planned to write about. It’s funny how this thing knows me.
If your future self could send you one sentence, what do you hope it would say?
I guess the sentence I’d most want to hear from Future Jessa right now would be “It all turns out okay,” but that doesn’t narrow things down, as there are a lot of potential “its” in my situation. There’s my uncertain living situation, which I’ve written about a bit already. There’s that matter of me still not knowing what I want to do with my life as a now thirtysomething, since music therapy didn’t pan out. And of course, there’s that nagging feeling that I’m trapped in the burning house that is America, and as the walls are crumbling, who the hell knows what rights I’ll have left as a queer woman. I would love a future version of me to tell me I get some semblance of a happy ending out of all of this. I’d love a crumb of reassurance that the story I’m living through every day still has many pages of bliss left to write, and relatively little hardship. I want to know that the worst is behind me now. And when all is said and done, I want to leave behind something — or someone — to carry on my legacy.
I always thought my mark on this world would come in two forms — through the things I create, and through the people I will eventually create. I wanted to be an artist, but I also wanted to be a mother. Well, maybe not always. The idea of making a baby with most of the guys I went to school with was absolutely nauseating, even if lizard-brain still wanted to get laid. I would eventually get married and have sex (in that order, I believed, because I was a good girl), but not a damn soul was coming outta this uterus. That thing was closed for business.
Then I met and dated this guy in college who already had a daughter. I loved this dude, whom I still speak with now and then to this day, but I freaking adored this little girl. I fell into the role of stepmom-lite with a surprising amount of ease for a girl who’d previously believed she had the maternal instincts of a football. I remember going to Burger King to fetch her some nuggets and eating them together on the stairs, with her cuddled up next to me. It was the weirdest feeling, this twinge of motherly love toward a tiny person. And wouldn’t you know it, my ovaries started tingling real bad.
But I couldn’t have kids of my own. Not then. I wasn’t stable enough. We’d both end up on the streets.
Time went by, I got married twice, and still, over the course of both relationships, we could never quite achieve the amount of stability required to safely bring a child into this world. I’ve worked with children many times throughout my life, but I’ve never had the chance to raise one myself, and it breaks my heart. I’m approaching my mid-thirties, and while I know women have given birth well into their thirties and even forties, a part of me wonders if it’ll ever be my turn.
Always a caregiver, never a mom.
Maybe its just a side-effect of the barrage of pro-natalist propaganda coming to us from the government, but part of me feels like I’ve failed as a freaking biological lifeform if I can’t even reproduce. Even dumb seagulls are better at spreading their genetic material. And it’s a damn shame because I’d like to think I have some freaking good genes to pass on. Thanks, Mom.
Lately, though, I’ve been re-evaluating what motherhood even means to me. Is it really so important that I be a mother in order to matter? Stevie Nicks, Joan Jett, and Debbie Harry are all famously childfree, and yet their names will still go down in history. Another classic rock queen, singer and guitarist Bonnie Raitt, once said, “I feel that my job is to mother the causes that I’m involved in.” And then it kind of hit me. I’m already the mother of something, in a way.
I studied Arabic a little in college. I’ve always been fascinated by the language, having grown up near Dearborn (which is not the scary place conservatives think it is, unless you think swanky-ass hookah bars are scary). I remember a really interesting concept where, after someone has a child, their name changes to reflect their status as a parent of that child. This name is called a kunya. In a way, its the reverse of how we in the West approach names. Theoretically, if a guy named Gray had a son, his son’s name would be Grayson, as in “Gray’s son.” (I am using a real life example, as I truly used to know a friendly uke-wielding hippie dude named Gray and his aptly named son, Grayson.) That’s basically how many of our last names evolved. But Arabic is entirely different. Let’s say, for example, I finally had my little girl and I named her Cadence. If I spoke Arabic, my new name would essentially be “Cadence’s Mother.”
But what if you never actually have children? Can you still get the lofty title of “umm.” In Arabic, that answer is a resounding yes! The word is also used metaphorically to reflect distinctive traits people may have. One may be the “mother of the cats” if they’re a cat mom, or even the “mother of the chubby face” if they’ve just got cute pinchable cheeks.
Maybe I need to look at motherhood more like that. Maybe we’re all mothering something in a strange way, even if we don’t immediately realize it.
In my last post, I mentioned the joke rap comedy group I started with my two favorite men on this planet and whoever else is unfortunate enough to be in the room with us at the time. What I didn’t mention was the massive multiplayer 12-minute monster of a megasong we were all working on. It started life as a stupid TikTok video that up until recently was my most viewed ’Tok. I was messing around with the synths and drum machines in my DAW and trying to make a Thriller/Ghostbusters-type beat from memory, with disastrous results. Then, I showed Luke and David, and they ran with it. Soon, the number of rappers on the song somehow doubled as more and more folks wanted in on the project. Before we knew it, the song had ballooned to an absolute behemoth, comprising well over 100 individual tracks as of writing. Pray for my MacBook, please.
But the subject matter of the song was what really surprised me. At first, we started making this entirely unserious song about how, because I’m the shadowy figure who makes all the beats in the background, I am the BEAT MOTHER, this benevolent but fierce goddess of sick beats, bro. It was going to be entirely unserious…until I started realizing how serious my friends were about their love for me. I started tearing up a little as a few of my collaborators recorded their parts because I started to realize just how much my friends care about and respect me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted in life. Music has always been my conduit to the outside world, ever since I was a selectively mute autistic child who could barely utter a world to her peers. I was so lonely, but I couldn’t make friends. Somehow, twenty years later, that little girl still gets overwhelmed when she truly grasps how loved she really is. I’m so lucky to have the chosen family I’ve found through music.
That’s what the whole BEAT MOTHER title came to represent, as absolutely bonkers and silly it was at first. I end the song with a much more introspective and somber tone than it opens with, having intentionally changed the ending to reflect my new realizations. In the final few lines, I say:
“I did it all, and man, I did it loud. To think I did it all to make little Jessie proud.”
Circling back to the question at the very beginning of this post, sometimes I like to imagine the opposite. Sometimes I imagine myself speaking to that scared little kid who couldn’t fit in anywhere if she tried. I’d like to tell her that it will be okay in the end, and that things will be hard, but we are stronger than anything that will come our way. We’re resilient. In a way, I feel like I’m stepping into a motherhood role with my own inner child. As Whitney sang, children are the future, and the greatest love of all is learning to love yourself. I think she was onto something with that song.
Maybe I won’t be the mother of anything more than a couple of decent songs. But I’m learning to be okay with that. Nurturing my friends’ creativities and passions and helping them make music they can be proud of is something to celebrate too.
Help me relocate with my kitty, Krubby! We’re close to our goal, which will be enough to cover a Uhaul and a nice bed for us! Even just spreading the word is appreciated!
I have a great poker face when I’m going through hardship, but I have to be honest when I say things haven’t been great. Like, worse than they’ve been since me and my ex-husband split nearly ten years ago. So bad, I had to resort to starting a GoFundMe to stay afloat. Due to a series of unfortunate circumstances, I’ve been essentially homeless these past few weeks, surviving only due to the kindness of some very sweet folks. Still, this is the first time I’ve truly felt alone in this world, and it’s scary.
But I’m realizing I’m not truly alone. Like Ringo once famously sang, I get by with a little help from my friends.
The living situation with my girlfriend, Olivia, in South Bend wasn’t able to be made permanent after all (all landlords are bastards), so my dear friend Luke offered to take me in while I figure out my next moves. And while I’m disappointed I have to leave my girl and the city I was reluctantly excited to call my new home, part of me was actually a little relieved to be returning to Kalamazoo. After all, I have plenty of unfinished business here. For one, I started a rapgroup and a podcast, both under the Kalamazooligans brand.
Which is now the official name for a resident of Kalamazoo. You’re welcome.
I’m excited to revive these projects and hopefully finally get them out into this world. It’s been a long time coming. Both the podcast and the rap group evolved out of my need to collaborate with friends. The idea for the podcast came shortly after meeting a fellow writer named Luke, who came to be one of my most truest friends in the city. We wanted a vehicle with which we could spread joy and whimsy (sound familiar?). The podcast realm is overrun with bigoted fuckheads and terrible takes, so why not do our part to turn the tides in the other direction, you know? The rap group was started by myself with one of my closest male partners, David, as well as Luke and whoever else was in the room with us at time of recording. That project grew when I realized I work better with other people around me instead of in isolation, so when I wanted to work on music, I schlepped my equipment over to David’s or Luke’s. They’d inevitably get curious about how it all worked, and I’d end up creating little beats for them to rap over. From there, it snowballed into something even bigger.
I might be the brains behind the Kalamazooligans, and David is the obviously the voice. But Luke has always been the heart of the project. He’s been there since the genesis of the group, which is basically me, him, David, and, like I said, whoever is in the room with us. Now that I’ll be living in the area again and literally rooming with my main collaborator, the podcast and the musical endeavors are going to be back in full swing.
But there was one small problem. The apartment I’ll be sharing with Luke was a freaking biohazard as it stood. Which, I can’t blame him for. When you live alone and need to spend every waking hour working to afford rent, it’s easy to let shit slip. I can’t fault anyone for neglecting such duties in the current economy. Still though, the place was far from the veritable (wo)man cave it deserved to be. This was to become the Kzoo HQ, and we deserved better.
The problem is I’m not naturally much of a cleaner either. My ADHD makes executive dysfunction nearly insurmountable and I can’t even get started. But something happens when you put another person in the room with me. Suddenly, I feel this weird inclination to clean and tidy things up. It’s a phenomenon called body doubling, and a lot of neurodivergent folks swear by it as a tactic for overcoming that strange paralysis that keeps us from work. And it works! In fact, remember how I said the Kalamazooligans rap project started because I couldn’t work alone? There’s another example right there.
So Olivia and I drove up to my soon-to-be apartment, cleaning supplies in hand. Together, me, her, and Luke tackled the entire place, our shared ADHD be damned. We made quick work of ridding the place of trash, sweeping and mopping the floors, and scrubbing the toilet to perfection. We made it fun. Luke and Olivia showed each other chiptune songs they like, I named the dustpan Dustin, and we sang “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” to the trash as it gradually disappeared from the domicile. Suddenly, the place began to transform before our eyes.
A lot has already been said in our culture about the power of friendship. Lauren Faust developed a whole show/thirty minute toy advertisement featuring colorful ponies about how friendship is literally magic. Look at any children’s film and the climax usually comes when the protagonist’s besties come back to rescue his dumb ass. In fact, my favorite book of emo poetry the Bible, Ecclesiastes, talks about strength in numbers as well. (Am I actually a Christian, or do I just really like the book of Ecclesiastes?) In Ecclesiastes 4:9-12, King Solomon is said to have written these words:
Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their labor: If either of them falls down, one can help the other up. But pity anyone who falls and has no one to help them up. Also, if two lie down together, they will keep warm. But how can one keep warm alone? Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.
This isn’t the only time the Bible discusses teamwork. Even in the New Testament, in Matthew 18:20, Jesus says:
For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.
The orthodox Christian reading of this scripture usually points to church gatherings and prayer groups, but I’m nothing if not unorthodox in much of my beliefs, including religious ones. I think the Good Book is trying to tell us something even bigger than just “Go to church and pray in a group.” Remember that Jesus is considered part of God, and somehow also is God, and that God is love. If those things are true, then anywhere people are gathered in the name of love are gathered in the name of Christ, even if they’re entirely unaware of it. I see more of Jesus at Pride festivals and in the wildly supportive and friendly karaoke group I frequent than I ever did at my old evangelical megachurch, where I never quite fit in (wonder why?).
The truth of the matter is that as human beings, we need each other. I swear I’m going to make it my life’s work to make people realize that we’re all in this together. And I’m not just talking about the Christians. I’m talking everyone of every faith and creed and background. It’s not a secret that nearly every major faith system in the world has a version of the Golden Rule: just be a good person and love people. We try to add all these stipulations and conditions, but it’s really that simple. The answer is love. The answer has always been love. That love may look like scrubbing your best friend’s toilet to perfection and cheering him on as he throws out old socks.
I’ll end with one final note. As I mentioned, I started a GoFundMe to help alleviate some of the financial stress of having to relocate once again. It was a last ditch effort to keep my life from spiraling out of control. I needed yet another Uhaul to get my stuff that I’d taken to South Bend back to Kalamazoo, and I needed a bed, and I still hadn’t even paid my car and credit card payments for the month. I felt absolutely hopeless, and the fundraiser was basically me screaming into the void for help. I was no longer “too proud.” I knew I wasn’t getting by on my own.
I expected crickets.
But I was absolutely blown away by the cascade of support I got from my loved ones. And while the fundraiser stands at $420 (heh) as of writing, I’ve received an even more valuable gift in reconnecting with people I’d long lost touch with. Folks I haven’t heard from in a decade or more reached out to assist in any way they could. An old flame offered me a spare room at his parents’ home if Kalamazoo fell through, and a sweet fellow from a band I adored back in college said he was willing to lend me his truck for the move. People from every corner of my life, from my old piano teacher to my high school besties, checked in to make sure I was okay. Even my uncle, whom I hadn’t seen since early childhood, told my mom he reads my writing and is rooting for me. I hadn’t felt this cared for in a long time, and it made me realize things would maybe be alright in the end. My village is there for me.
From a stale fortune cookie I found at Luke’s.
Nobody is meant to go it alone. Together, we’re unbreakable.
Please consider helping with my fresh start by clicking this link! For every donation, I’ll draw a Krubby!
Sometimes I seriously wonder why I subject myself to the internet.
If I’m honest, my fears regarding technology are nothing new. In fact, in college, my tech aversion got so bad, I’d have to ask my mom to check my email for me at times, and this was when I ran a freaking newspaper. I was never as bad as my dear late father, who died without ever having an email address. Don’t assume I’m a total troglodyte — I have fond memories of painstakingly editing my MySpace profile to reflect my perfect mix of prep and scene, with a touch of emo.
WHO IS THAT?!
These days, I still loathe the World Wide Web of Lies and Secrets, but it’s a slightly more manageable loathing. I guess I’ve come to accept that most of the planet is only accessible through it, and by shutting myself off from it, I’m limiting my opportunities. That being said, it feels like a very necessary evil. There’s a lot of dark and shit that happens online, and much like the Grinch, I would not like to touch any of it with a 39-and-a-half-foot pole. People feel tempted to drop their masks on here, and it gets ugly. Take, for example, this exchange of pleasantries on the slightly better X Twitter, Threads.
I was tempted to leave the dude’s name uncensored, since he clearly wanted attention.
I’m not upset at the guy, but like, bro, why? It was just unnecessarily mean for no reason. This was not on any of my numerous political or religious posts, mind you, which left me extra confused. I give right-wingers a lot of material to work with, being a mentally ill polyamorous pansexual, so you’d assume I’d be getting a lot more hate for that. Nope, just a stupid video of me fucking up on mandolin.
Such a controversial instrument!
I initially brushed off his dumbassery. Trolls are gonna troll, and feeding them only screws you over in the end. After a while, though, part of me wondered why I still subject myself to this. Why do I open myself up to be hated on a platform that is openly hostile to women, queer people, and — let’s be honest — anyone who wouldn’t look out of place in His Orange Highness’s golf buddy group? Was I just doing this all for “content,” whatever the hell that even means? Why do I make anything I make? Why do I even write this stupid blog? (I already answered that question, but bear with me.)
Sometimes I feel like I am screaming into a void. But then I remember that if I’m screaming, it means I still have a voice. And much like how Anne Frank immortalized and humanized herself through her work, I hope the things I’m putting into the world do the same for me and my loved ones. It’s not a secret that the world is a very twisted and dangerous place right now, and the future looks bleak at times. Sometimes I feel like posting little whimsical whatnots like making up dumb songs or silly attempts at playing the mandolin aren’t consequential at all in a world that wants to crush all whimsy and creativity. I’ve realized this world is full of joy terrorists, and terrorists are called terrorists for a reason: they want you to live in terror. But in a way, spreading joy and whimsy and art and fun is a quiet act of rebellion. They want us to live in fear. They want us to be quiet. Don’t let them win.
Back in January, I had the incredible opportunity to go on an emo cruise (which I will never financially recover from). There was adventure. There was romance. There was music. There was me meeting the frontman of Dance Gavin Dance and not realizing who the fuck he was. (In my defense, I am faceblind.) I will never forget the amazing experiences I had and the friends I made along the way.
And meanwhile, back home in the Midwest, another white queer woman just like me was murdered by the government.
The entire time, I couldn’t get the thought out of my head. I felt so guilty, this horrible, grating sense of survivors guilt, of “it should have been me, not her,” of “what if it is me next?” I was experiencing this strange cognitive dissonance of everything being amazing immediately around me, but on fire everywhere else. And there was a part of me that just wanted to refuse the fun that was being served to me out of principle. How could I,Jessa, have fun, when people are dying? It felt wildly insensitive.
But joy has a way of finding you even in the midst of darkness. Funnily enough, the ship’s freakin’ name was Joy. And it hit me that I don’t need to take on all of the pain of the earth at once. I can lighten up and enjoy the good things I have while I still have them, because tomorrow isn’t promised. Renee didn’t know it was her last day when she dropped her child off at school that morning. Everything I have can be taken from me at any moment, so I’m going to live it up while I can. Even my favorite book of emo poetry, Ecclesiastes, has this to say:
“So I say a man should enjoy himself. For there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and drink and be happy.”
Life is hard, but life is good. Two things can be true, and I’m learning every day to wrestle with that. I don’t know how much longer I will have on this little planet, but while still have a voice, I will use it to spread joy, and I will revel in that joy myself. That’s what it means to be alive. That’s what it means to be human.
When I moved to Fort Wayne, IN, AKA the City Where Dreams Go to Die, I began attending karaoke nights at the legendary gay bar After Dark with my wife, and I remember being captivated by the queens I saw at the shows we caught there. Their self-expression and whimsy gave me so much hope at a time when I wanted to drive my car into the motherfucking river after every awful day at my music therapy internship.
I wanted to be them, I thought to myself. I wished I could be. I knew logically that cis women could be drag queens, but something always kept me from trying my hand at it. I did do a brief stint as a king, since I’m technically genderfluid (surprise!), but it never really occurred to me that I could be queen. Something always stopped me.
Spoiler alert, it was fear the entire time. The thing that had kept me from doing damn near anything whimsical and self-expressive my whole life. I should have been a rock star. I should have been an author. I should have been SO MANY FUCKING THINGS.
But then, something recently happened. I lost everything, almost including my wife. But something bizarre happened after my big girl job let me go. I felt a chain was lifted. And it hit me.
I need to take a risk for once in my life. It’s time for me to take the crown for myself, one way or another.
There’s no stupid degree or entrance fee into the world of drag. All you gotta do is be queer or queer-adjacent (check!), be absolutely fabulous and extravagant at everything (check!), have a fun stage name (check!), lip synch to sassy songs and be funny and dance around like a silly goose (check!!), and dress like Gaga (monster since high school haha). Honestly, the only thing stopping me from being a queen is…just calling myself a queen.
I’ve always separated myself into Jess and Jessa Joyce when it comes to my music shit. Jess is what friends call me, but like how Stefani Germanotta became Lady Gaga when she slapped on a meat dress and stepped into the spotlight, Jessa Joyce became my “rock star”-sona, so to speak.
But after a sobering talk with a good friend who’s close to the music industry, pursuing steady work in music is a lost cause at this point in time. I love music. I love making people happy. I love bringing whimsy into this dumb dark fucked-up world. But it was clear I needed to pivot.
I drove my wife to Indiana to stay with a good friend for a month while we figure out our housing situation (mold poisoning is a bitch), and I went back to the gay bar that was the genesis of both my experiences with drag and karaoke, another field that’s close to my heart as a KJ by trade. And something about being back in that place again made me realize, the only thing stopping me is me. Like, I can do this stuff too!
So before I was called up to sing the song I put in (Bon Jovi, natch), I ran to the bathroom (where I do my best thinking, and also because ya girl got the poopoo parasite and also Hot Girls Have IBS ™), and typed up this manifesto. This…drag-ifesto, if you will. It’s funny, back when I was with my old band, Wake Up Jamie, I wrote a song called “Queen.” My wife had bullied me into writing something fierce, so I wrote this bad bitch anthem where the entire chorus is just “I wanna be Queen!” It’s poetic in a way, I guess
So, there you have it. The woman who was “supposed” to be Jess J. Salisbury, MT-BC, is long gone. Meet Jessa Joyce, Queen of Whimsy.
The fierce-ass pic I took in the mirror after having the revelation that spurred this drag-ifesto.
It’s not exactly a secret that for a majority of my adult life, music therapy was my life.
My initial plan was premed, as I felt a calling to heal folks in some form or another, but I had to be born to the only parents in the history of human civilization to convince their child to drop out in favor of music. They knew where my true passion lies, and it was not in slinging pills or performing open heart surgery. But my parents weren’t stupid — they also knew I needed college if I ever wanted to escape the dull working class existence I’d been born into. Higher education was very much still in the cards for me, and so they brought up an alternative, something I could study that involved both music and healing.
Music therapy.
And from then on, everything in my world revolved around this one thing. I immersed myself in the literature and journals. My fingertips seldom left the fretboard of my guitar as I practiced all the pop standards every client loves. (Wanna hear “Stand By Me”?) I became close with my professors and cohorts and did everything I could to learn from them. There were a lot of uncertainties in the world for me, but I knew in my heart of hearts that I would one day become Jess J. Salisbury, MT-BC.
It was more than a major or a career path to me. Music therapy was my entire identity for upwards of twelve years. Even when I wasn’t in school actively pursuing it, I had designs on getting back into the program when whatever thing I was actively going through was over. It was my Plan A, B, and C. And I got so close to the finish line too. I remember the look of pride on my now-deceased father’s face at the graduation ceremony when I’d completed the necessary coursework. I’d never been more proud of myself. And I was fresh on the heels of winning one of the most prestigious awards at the university I was attending, so everyone was watching in anticipation of what I was going to do next.
I had no idea it was about to come to a crashing halt in the godforsaken city of Fort Wayne, Indiana, where dreams go to die.
When it was time for me to select an internship, it came down between a hospice in the northern suburbs of Detroit (where I was living at the time) with a woman I’d worked with before and admired, or a small clinic in Fort Wayne that specialized in, among many other diagnoses, autism. The idea of leaving the safety of my home state (but, you know, staying in the relative familiarity of the Midwest) was very enticing, and I was giddy at the thought of finally getting to work with my preferred population after going years in the program without the opportunity. Besides, hospice sounded dreadfully depressing to be immersed in for six long months. So the decision was clear. My wife and I packed everything we could into my tiny ass Chevy, managed to stuff Krubby into a crate that was large enough to accommodate his heft, and headed down to Indiana for what was sure to be a better life.
Was I in for a rude fucking awakening.
The internship was not my dazzling launch into the music therapy world, but an exercise in how many ways I could fail spectacularly in only four months. It seemed like I couldn’t do a damn thing right no matter how much I dedicated myself to the job. Every day, there was a fresh new ugly critique, a new way I was fucking up. The criticism far outweighed the praise I received from my directors, who were some of the most caustic people I’ve ever had the misfortune of working for. I remember how they eventually got frustrated with my futile attempts to keep up with the increasing workload and implemented a truly awful spreadsheet system where I had to document every single activity I did all day down to the five minute increment. It was hell on earth. I remember bawling my goddamn eyes out in the car to my poor therapist nearly every day. I was starting to even experience chronic stress-related health issues, and get this — I got my first freaking gray hair from this ordeal.
The breaking point finally came one session when I was working with a preteen girl whose absolute favorite song in the world was “What Makes You Beautiful” by One Direction. It made her happier than anything when she got to sing it with me. One particularly rough session, we were about to wrap up with only a few minutes left on the clock. I had time to play one last song with her, and one goal I hadn’t touched on yet — her emotional goal. I was to play an angry song for her and get her to talk about it.
But she was already escalated.
And she asked me, word for word, with the little verbal language skills she had, to play her favorite song.
I couldn’t not do it.
After that client left, my directors sat me down and told me point blank that I was doing more harm than good with my music. And that fucking stung more than anything else I’d ever been told. Getting rejected from American Idol didn’t hurt that bad. Getting told I sucked as a guitarist by my awful old pastor and temporarily barred from their perfect little worship team wasn’t even that brutal (spoiler alert: it was nepotism the whole time). The implication that my music was hurting people broke me in a way that I’d never experienced before.
All I wanted was to heal the world through music. Now, I began to rue the day I first picked up a guitar.
Metaphorical tail between my legs, I put in my two weeks. It was the most painful decision I’ve ever had to make, essentially pulling the plug on a dream that was languishing on life support. We checked out of the mediocre converted garage of an AirBNB we were living out of and checked into a slightly homier one in Niles, Michigan to regroup. We had no direction anymore. Music therapy was to be my lifelong career path and passion. I was going to continue on and earn my masters and eventually a doctorate, and while it wouldn’t make me rich, it would let my wife and I live comfortably with our potential kids. Those dreams faded into oblivion, and I didn’t even know who I was anymore. Who was the future me if not a celebrated academic and practitioner in the music therapy world? Those days in Niles were spent moping along the river, silently mourning the “Dr.” I would never affix to my name.
On a whim, my wife and I decided to take a day trip up to Kalamazoo to see if any apartment complexes would take pity on us. We’d never been evicted, but we had spent nearly half a year living in AirBNBs, which is not a great look to potential landlords. But, to our utter shock, a relatively nice little neighborhood of townhouses took us in, and the rest is history. I left my music therapy dreams far behind me in Fort Wayne, the cursed city I’d once had such high hopes for. Here, in Kalamazoo, I was going to forge my own path forward.
Am I bitter about my years wasted spent in music therapy school? Maybe a little. I hold no ill will toward my sweet professors in the field, who did absolutely everything to bend over backwards to push me through the program. In fact, I feel a little guilty for the way I have dragged their lives’ profession through the mud after leaving the field myself. But the field itself is fundamentally flawed, and the abject cruelty of my internship forced me to remove the rose-tinted glasses I’d kept on the entire time. Like many fields, music therapy is gatekept behind an exorbitant amount of red tape, particularly in the way the schooling is almost prohibitively expensive for the working class student. My wife had to drain her life’s savings to keep us afloat during the internship, and I’m probably going to be making $600 monthly payments on the credit card bill I racked up for the rest of my life. That’s on top of the terrifying hole of student debt I’m in. As I mentioned earlier, I literally won that prestigious scholarship I mentioned earlier, and it barely even mattered. And I’m one of the lucky ones. I happened to marry someone who came from a fairly well-off background, so she was able to foot the bill for a while, under the assumption that I’d become the full-time breadwinner after earning that degree. But what if you’re not that fortunate? Unless you win a full ride somewhere, you are going to be swimming in debt for the rest of your life. And the internship? Have fun finding one that pays more than a pathetic one-time stipend. You better have a rich sugar daddy or a rich actual daddy to help you keep a roof over your head, because you are not going to want to balance work and the internship.
I’m lucky I got this far. I guess I should be thankful I got such a good shot at being a music therapist in the first place, even if it ultimately didn’t pan out. But honestly, that thought makes me feel even more guilty. I can’t shake the feeling that I squandered my one chance to enter the field proper, especially when I consider all the less-fortunate folks who maybe want to pursue music therapy professionally but simply don’t have the resources to. And that part infuriates me. How many potentially brilliant music therapists are trapped in poverty?
I appreciate music therapy as an art and a science, but I can’t get behind the ways the field itself is currently locked behind the paywall that is our elitist and exclusionary higher education system. There has to be a way to regulate the field and proliferate its key components without the use of an institution that essentially preys on vulnerable young people and their wallets. Don’t get me wrong — I think college is unbelievably valuable for the experience and knowledge it yields. But in this economy? It’s far more fiscally responsible to hit up the library and take out the “…For Dummies” book on your subject of interest.
It’s crazy to me that more folks from the music therapy world — a world that prides itself on inclusivity and progressive values — have not called out this socioeconomic disparity or tried to rectify it. The closest I’ve ever come to getting in a bar fight happened a few weeks back at my favorite karaoke spot in town, and it was not over politics. It just so happened that this region’s branch of the nationwide music therapy organization was having its annual convention in Kalamazoo of all places that same weekend. I met a friendly group of attendees accompanied by one not-so-friendly attendee. He was a little drunk, and to be fair, I probably did an awful job of hiding my bitterness when I relayed my sob story to him. He wasn’t having it and got offended at my suggestion that maybe requiring a four-year degree and an essentially unpaid internship is classist as hell. This man even agreed with me on many points, but ultimately, he fell into the camp of “If I had to deal with this broken system, so does everyone else.” And that mentality is not helpful at all. I saw the same mentality from other musicians when I called out the sad state of the music industry. We all know it’s seedy and shady and lined with red tape, but we are slaves to the status quo, and sadly, a lot of folks don’t even realize it and actively support the people pushing them (well, us) down. At the end of the day, I see Music Therapy the Field as a business, and it’s to the detriment of the art and science of the subject. Which is a damn shame, but like I said, nobody in the field currently seems to care.
So that leaves us here.
A lot of days, I am still unsure of what my direction in life is without music therapy at its forefront. But as I keep having to remind myself, the best things in life are still free. I remember how my initial goal as a future music therapist was to eventually cultivate a safe space for people of all ages and abilities to create music they can be proud of. And honestly, I’m doing the damn thing my own way now. In my day job, I work with autistic kids, and my bosses have been formulating a way to have me come in and perform for the students sometime. I also work as a music bingo host, bringing music and good clean fun to local bars and restaurants. I see the entire families set aside one night a week to come hang out with me and forget about the stresses of the world for a few hours. I’ve been producing music for some of my friends, many of whom have never tried their hands at songwriting before, and I’m blown away on the regular by all the untapped talent in this little town. And on Saturdays, I’ve been hosting karaoke, which gives everyday folks the chance to step into the shoes of their rock star idols. People truly come alive when they step up to the mic, and even as just the KJ standing in the background manning the equipment, I get a strange sense of fulfillment. This is the life I always dreamed of, and it was waiting for me the entire time — no stupid degree needed.
I’ll leave you with a story from the karaoke night I hosted last week. A little girl I’d never seen at the establishment before signed up to sing an Ed Sheeran song I hadn’t heard of called “Old Phone.” It was a somber tune all about the ephemeral nature of relationships and special moments, and in a strange, surreal way, I almost felt like my own inner child was singing to me through her somehow. I felt myself begin to tear up, and so I turned away from the girl for most of the performance. I certainly didn’t want to be rude, but I also didn’t want this poor child to know she’d just inadvertently made the karaoke host sob. She finished the song and went back to her seat.
But she noticed.
She came up to me a bit later and said she’d seen that I’d been crying, and she asked if I was okay. I smiled and told her that her song had just moved me to tears, and she should take it as a high compliment that her performance carried that kind of power.
After all, I said to her, that’s what music is all about.
I’ve chronicled my musictherapyjourney on this blog quite a bit in recent years. It was a huge part of my life’s story, having been the focus of my studies for more than a decade on and off. Even when I wasn’t actively pursuing music therapy at my university, I still had every intention of obtaining that sweet degree at some point and slapping a fun little “MT-BC” after my name. Heck, if I was feeling really feisty, I could even go back to school again and throw a Dr. in front of my name as well.
Obviously, as I’ve detailed in painstaking detail on this blog, that dream died a hilariously brutal death in the godforsaken city of Fort Wayne, Indiana.
But that wasn’t my first — or only — dream.
When I was a little girl, I wanted nothing more than to be a rock star.
Now why does that sound so familiar?
After my tragic and abrupt exit from the music therapy world, I decided to refocus my energy on making it as a professional recording artist. LORE was intended to be my “Hello!” to the music world. I crafted the eight-song album to be a proper debut, with a smattering of songs from an array of genres demonstrating my abilities as a performer, songwriter, and producer. I redid my socials, pestered my besties with the demos, and even dragged my poor wife into a frozen-over forest for the promo shots. I had every intention of this album becoming a breakthrough of sorts.
Then, release day came. Friday the 13th. It felt poetic, but the moment came and went, and I found myself absolutely paralyzed at the thought of doing any self-promotion. I remembered the tragedy that was me trying to promote my ill-fated Chappell Roan cover, which was inundated with (at least charmingly creative) insults. Putting my original material out there, which I emptied my entire heart and soul into, felt even more vulnerable. Ultimately, I chickened out.
The album languished.
But here’s the weird part.
I actually wasn’t as disappointed as I should have been.
Because the older I get, the more I realize I don’t want to be the next Taylor Swift. In fact, the idea is becoming increasingly terrifying.
It’s not a secret that the music industry sucks. I literally just posted an entire piece about that yesterday. And truthfully, the more I learn about its seedy underbelly, I’m not entirely sure that’s the future I want for myself.
Maybe this is the dream I need to let die.
Last night, I had the most incredible opportunity. I got to meet my lifelong hero, Ann Wilson, the legendary frontwoman of the classic rock band Heart. And I had the chance to ask her exactly one question. Now when the time finally came, I definitely panicked. My initial thought was to ask her about her childhood and being bullied, and what kinds of things she told herself to stay strong throughout those struggles, but I didn’t want to get too dark, especially since I was one of the first in line. I ended up trying to ask her if any neat happy accidents had ever ended up in a Heart song, but I forgot how to articulate the phrase “happy accidents” and flubbed the question so bad that she had to ask me to reword it (not my proudest moment).
What I’m really glad I didn’t ask, however, was the question that was my other first instinct — what is your advice to up-and-coming musicians?
Her answer boiled down to “quit your day job and go all in.”
Which, sure, might have been decent, if a little reckless, advice back in the seventies when she was getting her start. But following that advice as a working class artist in the year of our Lord 2026 is a near definite death sentence. The chances are very slim that you will actually make it. The chances are much higher that you will wind up with this as your sick rock and roll castle:
“Hello MTV and welcome to my Crib!”
Perhaps her disappointingly out-of-touch response was the final wake-up call that I needed to stop pursuing music on such a grandiose scale.
After all, being a rock star was the dream of a child, and at some point, you have to put away childish things.
There’s a verse (1 Corinthians 13:11, to be precise) about this very concept in the Good Book, and I always hated it whenever I heard it in church. I’m a kid at heart and never wanted to grow up (and when I did inevitably grow up, I wanted to skip to the part where I got to be a lazy grandma). I thought the whole idea of having to act serious and proper and “adult” was a silly and unnecessary social convention. Who cares if someone still loves cartoons and toys and goofy jokes after some arbitrary cut-off?
What I’m learning recently, however, is that the verse in question isn’t referring to watching SpongeBob as a grown-up at all.
My wife has been without a job for a good amount of time for a number of good reasons. Because of the circumstances, our roommate and I are not pestering them to be employed at the moment. Still, bills need to be paid, and so my wife has begun to sell off their prized possession — their beloved Pokemon cards.
For years, that was all my wife asked for. Forget chocolates and Hallmark cards, if I didn’t come home with Pokemon cards on Valentines, I was in the metaphorical doghouse. I seriously gave this woman (well, nonbinary woman-shaped cryptid) a bouquet with multiple booster packs taped to shish kabob skewers tucked within it. Pokemon cards were their one obsession.
A few days ago, I was talking with my wife about the sudden change of heart. As it turns out, like many things we cherish, capitalism has soiled the card collecting hobby as well, with scalping running rampant. And more than that, they admitted making sure my roommate and I, their two favorite people on the planet, were fed and cared for was more important than some dumb flimsy cardboard.
Now that is maturity. Now that is growing up.
“Alexa, play Blink-182 ‘Dammit.’”
Maybe the childish things in our lives aren’t crayons and kids’ books. Maybe they’re the things that keep us from what’s actually important in life. No, I don’t want to be a rock star anymore. I want to be a loyal partner to my favorite people. I want to be a good mother someday. I want to build a home and a career I can take pride in. And I want to change the world through music on my own terms.
Let’s first set the stage by meeting the star of the show. Behold, Teenage Jessa:
My hair is as straight as I was pretending to be.
Teenage Jessa was very different from the Adult Jessa y’all know and love. For one, Teenage Jessa was the goodiest two-shoes that ever existed, long before Adult Jessa learned the hard way that following the rules doesn’t land you the world on a platter. Teenage Jessa would have never cussed or had sex or smoked the devil’s cabbage, that’s for sure. She spent most of her free nights at church events, for fun! She still loved music, but her dreams were a lot bigger back then. Teenage Jessa wanted to be the next Taylor Swift; Adult Jessa would crumble under that kind of pressure. And perhaps the starkest contrast is my state of mental health, because Teenage Jessa had to contend with some of the worst of my OCD and anxiety, while I’ve learned to control a lot of it these days.
It’s funny that I got this prompt today because I often think about what I’d say to a younger version of myself if I ever got to meet her. I consider myself to be very in-touch with my inner child — she’s running the show half the time — but my inner teenager is another story. Maybe it’s because I look back at that stage of my life and cringe a little. It’s easy to give Child Jessa some grace as an undiagnosed autistic little girl who just really loved parakeets, but in retrospect, Teenage Jessa seemed absolutely insufferable. Good little church girl who gets straight As and served as senior class president? I’m surprised I wasn’t voted “most punchable face.” (In reality, I was voted “most gullible,” which is…not much better.)
So what would I do different if I could relive my teen years? Well, this is the advice I’d give Teenage Jessa if I ever got to speak to her:
Be Bolder
Sometimes I think of all the lost opportunities I left unpursued. I could have moved to Nashville or LA or New York and made it big in the music industry. I could have posted more diligently on YouTube or promoted myself better on social media. I could have asked Chase Johnson to prom with me. Looking back through my life, I very seldom regret things I have done. Rather, I tend to regret those things I haven’t done. If I could go back, I’d take so many more risks. As the saying goes, shoot for the moon — even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars. In a lot of ways, I feel like I never even left Earth.
Be Gayer
It took me a long time to come to terms with my bisexuality. Compulsive heteronormativity is one hell of a drug, okay? I definitely flirted with the idea of liking girls as a teenager, and I remember some complicated feelings arising around some of my close female friends, which I confided to my mother and absolutely no one else. Unfortunately, I was very steeped in an evangelical church that frowned upon all things queer, and so I convinced myself I was as straight as my artificially flattened scene kid hair at the time. I wish I’d given ladies a chance sooner, as I probably would have avoided quite a few less-than-stellar hetero relationships.
Be More Open-Minded
I’ll admit I parroted a lot of the bullshit my adolescent friends preached. All that “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” crap. I didn’t really mean any of it, and a part of me knew it was wrong to believe that stuff, but I wanted my friends to like me, and most importantly, I wanted God to like me. I thought I had to check a bunch of boxes to call myself a Christian. I thought I had to be conservative and marry a man and pop out some kids and live the white picket fence life to make Jesus happy, when that’s not the truth at all. There’s no “wrong” way to be a Christian, unless you’re flying in the face of what Christ stood for (like a good amount of prominent evangelicals).
Develop Your Talents
I’ve always said that if I’d had even fraction of a crumb of an attention span as a youngin’, I’d probably be a virtuoso guitarist by now. Sadly, my ADHD remained undiagnosed for nearly three decades, so I feel like I wasted a lot of time I could have used on productive things, like practicing my instrument or learning another language. It sucks to think of all the potential I could have had. As much as I embrace my neurodivergences, there are aspects of my brain I really don’t like, and this is definitely one of them. If I could talk to my younger self, I’d tell her to pester literally every adult in her life until they get her a damn ADHD assessment. I was literally treading water with a disability I wasn’t even aware of.
Get a Car
This one might be on Mom and Dad, since I was the youngest by a lot and I always got the feeling that they were hesitant to let me “adult” on my own. That being said, it took until well into my twenties before I finally learned to drive, and so I didn’t really gain that sense of independence you should feel as a teenager. I didn’t get my Hilary Duff “Sweet Sixteen” experience of driving around with my blonde hair everywhere, and that’s sad. I wish I’d annoyed my parents about getting a car more than I did, and while I know some of it wasn’t their fault — we were a working class family without a lot of extra cash — I could have totally like, saved up for it, ya know?
Advocate For Yourself
I think this is a running theme. I needed to advocate for so many things for myself. Honestly, I’m a pretty assertive person nowadays. Like, I told off a whole man in the karaoke bar once. Teenage Jessa would have never. But I wish she would have had that energy. There were so many things she needed in order to be successful, and yet she was too afraid to speak up and make her needs and preferences known. It’s why I never got a car, never got ADHD meds, and was basically strong-armed into the uglier side of Christianity despite my gut not aligning with it. It took me a long time to find my voice, and even longer to learn how to use it.
Stop Straightening Your Hair
Seriously, you’re frying the fuck out of it. Someday you’ll appreciate your natural mermaid waves.
So unless you haven’t spoken to me in the past half-year or so, you probably know I’ve been hard at work making my first real full-length album happen. And soon, these songs will see a proper release on all music platforms, which is absolutely bananas to me. As a kid, I always assumed in order to record a song, you had to be famous, which is why I assumed from the old tape of my brother singing “Wild Thing” at karaoke that my brother was, in fact, Tone Loc. (He is very much not Tone Loc.) It never really occurred to me that I could learn to record and produce my own stuff until well into adulthood, but once I discovered the power of my college newspaper’s office’s computer’s GarageBand, it was over, man. I knew what I had to do. In fact, for my first EP, Oceanography, I holed myself up in that office the entirety of spring break, including my own birthday, and did nothing but record songs. That was an experience I’ll never forget, and over a decade later, my love of music production and songwriting has endured.
Which leads me to Lore.
Lore is a collection of songs that I feel both demonstrate my abilities as a producer and musician as well as my range as a lyricist. The songs are all very different, but reflect various aspects of myself and my life. There is nothing on this album that isn’t autobiographical in some way. I consider myself a follower of the Swiftian school of songwriting, where any and every relationship, good or bad, is potential song fodder, and each song written is deeply confessional. I drew a lot of inspiration from my interpersonal relationships, which in this context means everyone from my mom to my cute cruise fling to my cat and the asshat who threatened my girlfriend (more on that later). Relationships are what make us who we are — we are defined by our relationships to each other. I’m a musician, but I’m also a wife, girlfriend, daughter, sister, and cat mom. My relationship to myself was also an important factor. I’m Christian, queer, neurodivergent, and mentally ill. I’m learning to accept the various parts of myself, and all of these things contributed to what eventually became Lore.
Sonically, there’s a pretty wild mix of styles. I consider myself “genrefluid” and this album certainly reflects that reality. My music has always drawn a lot of influence from the classic rock, emo, bubblegum pop, and 80s synth-heavy pop I listened to a lot growing up, but I really wear my muses on my sleeve on this project. And every instrument, with one exception I’ll mention, was hand-played or programmed by me. Everything on this album was my own design. And none of the tracks utilize AI in the production or songwriting, a point I was sure to make after the Almost Icarus debacle that I wrote about as a cautionary tale. Everything on this album is raw, real, and most importantly, human. (Full disclosure: I did use an AI app to master the songs for the final release, but I made sure not to outsource any of my creativity. I’ll learn how to properly master by hand when I actually make it back into audio engineering school. Tuition’s brutal, y’all.)
I wanted to do a track-by-track breakdown of the track listing to explain some of the lyrics and give a bit of backstory on each of them. Like I mentioned, they’re all very different from one another, and no two songs are about the same situation or person. Let’s start with the title track!
1. Lore
I love stories. I’ve always been a storyteller, from the day I could hold a pencil and form words. I was the kid who breezed through lessons so I could ignore the teacher for the rest of the day and just write stories. And that was the initial inspiration for this song — my own story. I even snuck a literary reference in the chorus for good measure. (Shoutout Shel Silverstein!)
In the first verse, I talk about my childhood and hometown, “a blue-collar Midwest town with a river running through.” That would be Flat Rock, Michigan, and the river I’m referring to is the Huron River. I also mention my father, who passed away last year and whose memory I dedicated the song to. On his deathbed, I told him about the song, and while I’m sad he never got to hear it, I’m happy his legacy will live on through this tune. The second verse is about my love life, past and present. In the second half, I introduce “the first girl I kissed” in college, who later became my wife. My brother was initially not thrilled that I married a woman, but as of my father’s death, he’d started coming around to the idea of having a bisexual little sister. The original line was “My brother found out and man, was he pissed,” but I changed it to “for a while he was pissed” to reflect the character development. Sometimes people change for the better!
Recording this song, I started with the acoustic guitar, which felt like coming back to my roots after playing almost exclusively electric for some time. I wanted a “pop-punk meets heartland rock” vibe, a la The Gaslight Anthem, one of my favorite bands. The lead guitars harmonize in the main lick I play throughout the song, which was really fun to record and definitely made me feel a bit like Iron Maiden. There’s also a Truck Driver’s Gear Change at the final two choruses, because 1. I feel like it adds to the triumphant feeling of the song and 2. I just really like key changes. I had to modulate it down from the original key I wrote it in so I could sing those last choruses in my chest voice, though.
2. Vinyl
This is probably the oldest song of the batch, as I initially started writing it years ago and only finished it when I was living in Fort Wayne a few years back. The melody came to me out of nowhere, and the lyrics were inspired by a handsome French-Canadian man who resembled the title character of Howl’s Moving Castle, with whom I had a very short-lived flirtationship. Sadly, he was quite a bit younger than me and I was starting to feel a little Anthony Kiedis, which made me uncomfy, so I amicably called it off. (He was legal at least, but man, I had all 150 Pokémon memorized by the time this dude was born.) At least I got a total banger out of it.
I was always really fascinated by vintage media since childhood, so it’s a wonder how I never used records as a metaphor before. There’s something so sexy and intimate about sharing your favorite music with a partner. Needless to say, this song is one of the hornier ones on the album, rivaling “Rain Check.” It’s not as explicit, but it toes the line at times. It’s cheeky if nothing else.
Did I gank the chord progression from The Maine’s “Right Girl”? I plead the fifth. In my defense, Taylor Swift has like twelve songs that utilize that exact progression, so maybe popular music is just derivative as hell. There’s a whole slew of harmonies, since I was going for a kind of Queen sound. I wanted a glam rock feel — this is the spiritual successor to “Sweet Honey,” the single I released with Wake Up Jamie, after all. I consider it her weirdly hetero brother. Oddly enough, I don’t have a single sapphic song this time around, as all my muses were men. I guess I need to write another batch of love songs for my femme partners for the sequel to The Librarian’s Daughter.
3. My Cat & Me
Anyone who knows me knows Ann Wilson of Heart is my queen, and I was autistically obsessed with Bon Jovi as a child, but Freddie Mercury was the rock star who finally gave me the confidence to start pursuing music for me. He never played by the rules. He was living proof that one could write a catchy song about damn near anything, and a perfect (purr-fect) example of that is one of his final songs, “Delilah,” dedicated to one of his beloved cats. When I first heard that song, I knew I had a mission. But I never had an animal “get me” the way Krubby does, and that’s what finally prompted me to compose this little baroque pop piece. Krubby is my feline soulmate, my “best friend on four legs,” so to speak.
The song starts out pretty cheery, and it maintains a sense of whimsy the whole way through. But I did want to mention the emphemeral nature of pet friendships in the final verse, since I had to slam y’all with the feels somewhere. “Someday I know you won’t be there/So I’ll treasure every day we share” hits me so hard every time, and I wrote the damn lyric! Even though he can’t catch a mouse, I love that cat anyways, and I’ll miss him when he someday crosses the Rainbow Bridge. It’s a shame we tend to outlive our animal friends.
I may have ganked this chord progression from an country/Americana artist named John Hiatt, whose song “My Dog & Me” served as the other main inspiration behind this track. I was struck by how heartfelt the song was and wanted to create my own take on the topic of beloved pets. This track is one of two that are entirely MIDI, containing no “real” instruments at all. But trust me, I agonized over this one just the same. Have you ever programmed MIDI without a MIDI controller?! Also, the rhythm was tricky because there’s an extra measure of 3/8 right before the title drop, which gives it a bit of a disorienting feel. Overall though, it’s a very sweet, whimsical song.
4. False Prophet
Now we’re getting to the first of the angry ones, and I did not pull any punches on this album. I won’t get into too much detail about who specifically this one’s about, but we’ll just say it’s about certain religious leaders who I truly expected better from. I grew up in an evangelical megachurch because many of the friends I had in my youth went there, and I found myself looking up to so many of the folks involved there. After the advent of Trump in the US, I found myself confused how these people who once taught me to “love my neighbor” and “fight for the oppressed” were now siding with the oppressor. So that was the initial inspiration behind this one.
I loaded the lyrics up with Biblical references. As I always say, the only people who can fight Christian nationalism are progressive Christians who actually paid attention to the words of Jesus. We speak their language. And that’s why when I release the lyric video for this one, I plan to color the text that directly references specific Bible verses in red (itself a reference to how Christ’s words are often colored in red in certain Bibles). I’m particularly fond of “You’re so lost in the white Jesus sauce and I don’t have a doubt/That if the brown Jesus came back tomorrow, you’d be the first to ICE him out.” I never get political in my music, but there’s a time and a place for speaking up when injustice is happening.
This one, alone with “My Cat & Me,” is entirely MIDI-programmed, but like I said, don’t let that fool you — I put just as much blood, sweat, and/or tears into those two as I did the more guitar-driven tracks. The bassline that carries the song is reminiscent of “Stand By Me,” something I did not realize until nearly everyone I showed it to pointed it out to me. I have to laugh because it really does sound like a minor-key “Stand By Me” (“Stand Back From Me”?). I really love the harmonies toward the end as well.
5. Every Emo Song Was Written About You
This is the most recently written and recorded song of the batch, composed whilst on the emocruise. As fate would have it, I was able to weasel my acoustic gitfiddle onto the boat, which was very serendipitous as I found plenty of inspiration on the journey. My cruise fling was a cute lil emo guy from California who stole my heart and had me feeling as giddy as a high school girl again. I stole away to my cabin to write this little ditty as an ode to both my sweet paramour and the genre that I adored as a teenager and college kid. True to emo tradition, the title is a full sentence.
I hid a ton of references to various emo-adjacent artists in the lyrics. The second verse “I could be your punk rock princess, your heroine” refers to “Punk Rock Princess” by Something Corporate, “Your Call” by Secondhand Serenade is referenced at the end of the second pre-chorus, and “Hands Down” gets a mention in the bridge. Those are just the less-obvious ones. I wanted the lyrics to reflect that hopeful, wistful feeling of wanting someone badly and not knowing what to do with that. I really did want to capture that teenage longing.
Originally, I’d planned to have a fellow musician I’d met on the cruise play drums for this track, but due to scheduling conflicts, he wasn’t able to be on the final version. I’m still pretty pleased with how my programmed drums turned out, though. I tried to ape the some of the stylistic hallmarks of emo with this track, but sadly my voice isn’t exactly the whiny male tenor that’s typically associated with the genre, so I’m scared at times it falls flat. But perhaps that’s just my insecurities talking, because if I’m honest, this song goes hard. I’m not exactly Hayley Williams, but I feel like I did alright in spite of that.
6. Jeremiah
The heaviest and angriest song of the batch, this one comes with a disclaimer. This song is not about Jeremiah Mack, whose sweet, sweet sax saxohoning you will hear momentarily. I have never once wanted to chop that wonderful man’s dick off, so lest there be any confusion, let’s clear that up immediately. This is one hundred percent about a fucko who DMed my lovely girlfriend Olivia to send her all kinds of threats and other transphobic bullshit. To Jeremiah Mack, you are a fantastic human being and I love you. To a certain Jeremiah of South Bend, Indiana — watch your step.
The lyrics are truly some of the most rage-filled I have ever penned. I took a lot of inspiration from Ann Wilson, who invented feminine rage when she wrote “Barracuda” back in the 70s. I wanted them to be kind of sing-songy and almost nursery rhyme-esque, like I’m making fun of this asshat, which I definitely am. “You’re not a real man,” is me flipping the transphobic “You’re not a real woman” battle cry on its head, and the allusion of cutting this dickwad’s manhood off is poetic in a way. Oh, so removing your penis won’t make you a “real woman”? Wanna test that theory on yourself, big guy?
I put so many guitars on this track and turned the distortion up to the max. The main riff almost sounds like a much more overdriven “Bebe le Strange,” another Heart song from the 70s, which was again not my intention, but my music is nothing if not derivative. And I love, love, love the dissonant guitars in the instrumental section. At first I wasn’t sure I could pull off as heavy as I wanted to go for this tune, but I’m pleased to report I achieved the intended effect I think.
At least we’ve reached the song I plan to release as a single, the 80s-inspired “Rain Check.” This one is so unlike anything else I’ve ever recorded or released and it was honestly a really fun experiment. That being said, this one is definitely the horniest track on the album. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. It is highly sexual (and saxual). I wrote it as a challenge to myself to pen something that would make Sabrina Carpenter herself blush. The lyrics were inspired by a cancelled date with a lawyer who had to bail due to an important case the following morning, which I totally understood, but man, I was bummed. He’s also the lawyer I mention earlier in “Lore,” for what it’s worth. Because he has such an important job, he couldn’t be featured on the album cover, so that’s my Detroit partner whose lap I’m sitting in.
The lyrics are somewhat cringily blunt at times, and I still can’t say the especially awkward line in the second verse with a straight face (you will know which line I’m referring to). I do a silly rhyme dodge in the first verse (“…cause ya girl needs some…fun”), which isn’t the first time I’ve done something like that in a song. In “Taco Bell” off The Librarian’s Daughter, I say “I know that it might be quite crass, but I can’t help but stare at her big fat…grin.” I borrowed that idea from The Maine and their signature song “Into Your Arms” — “I’ll state something rash/She had the most amazing…smile.”
This is another very MIDI-heavy song, although there is some real guitar. There’s also a very real saxophone! I didn’t trust myself to program a realistic sax, so I brought on my old drummer, the aforementioned Jeremiah Mack, to play a little solo. The rapid fire sixteenth note synth is reminiscent of “Dancing On My Own,” the quintessential club hit from Robyn, but that wasn’t my inspo initially, weirdly enough. My “blueprint,” so to speak, was actually “So Emotional” by Whitney Houston. I wanted this song to be giving 80s Whitney. I utilized Linn Drums for the drum machine, which really gives it that throwback vibe.
8. Grandma
Finally, we end the album on a wholesome note. “Grandma” was my own personal manifesto that despite the odds being stacked against me as a queer, mentally ill Millennial, I will live into my geriatric years and I will become a grandma someday. I refuse to be a statistic. The inspiration came to me when I was working at my old job as a caregiver for old people, and I actually wrote the chord progression on the organ at the facility. I had this realization that the folks I worked with were quite literally living the dream. They’d lived long lives and were now spending the rest of their years in peace. The photo was fun to shoot because I ordered an old lady kit and used an instant aging filter to get the desired effect. Eventually I’d like to get a big group together and film a music video where we’re all just wreaking havoc around town dressed as grandmas.
Lyrically, I drew some inspo from my own grandmother, Joyce, who I derive my name from. She was the kind of lady who enjoyed the simple things, like watching game shows from her La-Z-Boy all day. (Though she would actually drink cornbread soaked in buttermilk, which was truly atrocious, so I took some artistic liberties.) The “My Way” reference is a double barreled reference, since I’m not just referring to Frank Sinatra, the original artist. I also wanted to pay homage to Bon Jovi, whose song “It’s My Life” makes the same reference.
This was another acoustic-driven one, and I really only used electric guitar for the lead parts. The ending is cool because I did what my old bandmate called a “terraced ending,” where each of the instruments drop out until all that’s left are the guitars. Aside from that, this one is pretty standard fare for me. This is probably the most quintessentially “Jessa” track on the album, which is also why I felt like it was the best song to end the project on. Writing it really took me back to my roots, and that’s what Lore is all about.
Which of these songs are you most looking forward to hearing? I’d love to hear your feedback!
Mind you, I have never been on a cruise, and I kind of always assumed I’d never even have the chance. I vaguely remember my much-older sister saying she’d take me on a cruise when I got my high school diploma, but after graduation, it changed to after I got my bachelor’s, and after that, it was my master’s. So I just assumed that was a nice thing she told me so I’d stay in school and not run away to join a rock band or the circus.
Both options are very within the realm of possibility, for what it’s worth.
But last year, I was playing in a band with a truly cool frontperson who, despite us not being close anymore, is still someone I respect greatly. They told me about the cruise and how it’s great for networking because you’re basically trapped on a boat with music industry folks and fans who care enough about music to drop a cool few grand to see their favorite bands. That was enough to convince me to exercise my poor credit card and join the excitement. I bought my ticket and a flight down to Miami, where we’ll be sailing off to Mexico, a place I have not ever been to and, again, was never expecting to actually see.
But if playground rhymes taught me anything, it’s that there are REALLY HOT GUYS AT THE DOOR DOOR DOOR.
I’ll be honest, I came close to attempting to recoup what money I could and bailing on the trip many times. My friend who inspired me to buy the ticket and I had a falling out, which made me question why I was even going. Then, rising political tensions made me wonder if it was even safe to travel outside of the country, and I kept getting nightmares that I’d be detained trying to re-enter the country or something. I got as far as posting an ad stating that I’d sell my tickets in the main Facebook group for the cruise, and I almost had a buyer.
Then my dad died. Suddenly, I was standing face-to-face with my own mortality as I watched the single closest person to me fall away into the afterlife. It hit me that I may never have the opportunity to do this kind of thing ever again, and I could hear my dad whispering to just jump in. I remembered his last words of advice to me: be yourself, take care of yourself, and enjoy yourself. He wouldn’t want me to cower and hide away. He’d want me to live in the light. He’d want me to enjoy myself any way I can in this hellhole.
And so that’s why I have my big purple suitcase packed to the brim with all my outfits for the trip and I’m panicking making sure all my reservations are in place. This is certainly the most I will have ever travelled on my own, and while I have some trauma regarding travelling alone (major trigger warning for that link, by the way), I feel much more confident now. Last year, my bosses sent me multiple times to St. Louis, Missouri, to train up some new trivia hosts, and I ended up getting very familiar with the TSA and travel etiquette. So I feel a lot less nervous with that experience under my belt.
Still, it is nerve-wracking, especially since I don’t have any of my partners or friends with me this time, and it’s my first time out of the country in a really meaningful way. I took a train through the mountains of Canada in high school with my family, but that was just a day trip, and I had my parents there the entire time. I’ll know my former bandmate on the cruise, and I’ve been in communication with my cabin-mate, a cute emo dude from California who likes Pokémon too, so there’s that. But I’m trying to view the journey as an opportunity to make new friends. It’s poetic that most of the Warped Tours I attended in my younger years were attended alone, because now I’m very familiar with now to navigate shows and music festivals as a solo audience member. I plan to use my extrovert powers to make a few connections on this trip at least.
I met one of my closest friends for coffee this evening, and I showed him the meat and potatoes of this post before I shared it with anyone else. We agreed to meet because we were both world-weary and desperate for the ear of someone who “got it.” After one read-through, he goes back to the part I wrote about what my dad would have said if he were here, his last words of advice to me. He found it reassuring, in a strange way. And I think I get it now. I think that’s the best way I can honor my dad — by living so vivaciously and so fully that the darkness of the world cannot extinguish my light. That’s how he wanted me to live, and that’s how I want to inspire others to live as well.
And if that involves setting sail on a fuck ass boat with a cute emo guy, so be it.
JESSA JOYCE 
