Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story (13 page)

Otherwise, I found myself stimulated by academics and all the classes I took. No longer a big fish in a small pond, I thrived in swimming with these kids who were so skilled and educated. They had all been practicing their craft as long as I had, or longer, and they were powerfully talented. There were music majors, all specializing in classical music or musical theater. There were writing majors, vocal majors, visual arts and theater majors. I was in heaven.

My voice lessons were a foreign concept for me. I had never been trained before, and I was behind all the other kids who had already been studying for years. Two of my suitemates were die-hard vocal majors, complete with the water bottle attached to their hip and a near-religious devotion to vocal warm-ups and drills throughout the day. I was the only student who did not read music. My teacher liked me, though, and helped
me. I learned a lot about my range and how to unlock different registers. I learned to sight-read music and also how to sight-read terminology in German, Italian, and Latin. I had no idea what the words meant, but I knew that in Italian two
c
’s made a “ch” sound and that one
c
made a “k” sound. My teacher Nicole was very nice, though, and she seemed to genuinely enjoy my voice and was even a bit protective of me and my talent. While she taught me a lot about how to use my higher registers, she seemed to enjoy that I didn’t fit a traditional mold and she didn’t try to change that. I remember feeling very insecure about how I’d been trained mostly by bar singing, while all the other kids knew everything there was to know about composers and theory and technique. I was shocked when she said that when she heard my audition tape, she felt that my voice was very special and that she couldn’t believe I was going to be her student. I didn’t know how to absorb that, but it felt good and gave me the courage to keep going. I will always appreciate that she listened to who I was and supported that, rather than teaching me to be generic vocally. A lot of parents want their talented kids to take voice lessons as early as possible, but I often caution them against it. Unless a child is bent on going into opera or classical, too much training at a formative age can make you a correct singer, but not a very interesting one. It can also make you mental—formal training gets you into your head, and you become worried about technique and little more. Audiences don’t care if you sing correctly. They care if they feel something. If they don’t, they forget you. Emotional honesty creates loyalty and a lifelong connection above all else. And for that, there is no substitute for old-fashioned practice and self-discovery. The thousands of hours I spent listening to Ella, Sarah Vaughan, and Maria Callas while riding my horse, doing chores, and walking to school taught me to swoop, swell, brighten, narrow, and warm my tone. And now Nicole was teaching me to sing in my higher registers,
but was thoughtful enough to go about it in a way that supported who I was, rather than making me overthink the rules.

Many parents want to support their kids’ talents and dreams, but it is up to the kids to have the drive and curiosity to discover their own way. They have to have the impetus and courage within themselves to develop their own creative voice. The best advice I can give any young artist is to never assume someone knows more than you do about your talent, desire, and creativity. Go inward, into your heart, and engage in the darkness and the unknown. Grope and feel around for what you respond to. An artist’s most valuable asset is individuality. You can’t learn it from a teacher. It has to be sussed out and nurtured. Wrestled out of the silence within you. It has to be fed—our best teachers do not always live in schools but inside ourselves, in the books the masters wrote and the music they recorded. You must cultivate a large appetite for the things that move you. Let them wash over you as you begin to build yourself as an artist and as a person. Seek out good teachers and go to school, but protect your own process of discovery and know it is sacred. We must wrestle with ourselves to get to the good stuff. I am so thankful that some of the teachers in my life were wiser than I was in this regard, that they recognized an artist in me and had the respect to guide me and also leave me be. I did not understand this at the time, but, as artists themselves, they recognized it, whereas I was years away from thinking of myself as the same.

I enjoyed classical music, but all the other vocal majors had dreams of musical theater and Broadway or opera. I did not have those ambitions. I didn’t have any real dreams or goals. Those were for other people. I loved learning to sing in this style but found the rigidness of classical music stifling. Visual art, on the other hand, was a wide-open frontier for expression, and I became absolutely enamored. Modeling for the sculpture
class turned out to be tremendously stimulating both intellectually and artistically. The teacher, Gene, would instruct her class using my body as an example. “See, the plane changes here,” she would say, putting her hand on the curve of my arm, where it receded into the distance. She spoke of perspective, form, function. I was smitten. I asked lots of questions and tried to ingest everything she was saying. She was often kind enough to stay with me after class and elaborate about a point that she had made that day. Finally I asked her whether I could stop modeling and join the sculpture class.

So after settling into school for a while—I forget how long—I decided to take on two majors, in voice and visual art, and two minors, in dance and theater. Back to the dean’s office I was sent. He explained that it was just not done. They encouraged kids to focus and hone a particular craft. I knew it was a big workload, but explained that my academics were solid, and that if I skipped lunch hour and ate in the art room, I could pull it off. I wanted to maximize my time there and take advantage of everything I could, partly because I had no idea if I would get to come back the next year. The dean squinted at me when I said that, and after a heavy sigh, said he would let me see how it went, but reminded me that I had to keep my academics up.

I had a tightly packed day, and went about it with a starving man’s mentality, devouring everything in sight. Figuratively and literally. I had put on at least ten pounds since I had been there. I blamed it on the fact that I had so much food available to me, and that none of it was fresh or homegrown, and I wasn’t out hiking, running, and riding horses. Fitting into my leotard for my general dance class was embarrassing, but I did it anyway, and just tried not to look in the mirror. Still not a great dancer. Joe’s wife taught the general dance class. She was patient and kind with all of us non-dance majors. The bright spot of the class for me was the live piano player, Ray. He was a disheveled, odd guy, who only half
successfully covered the smell of the previous night’s booze. He played waltzes or little simple rhythms the teacher required for whatever steps we were learning, but I often heard him warming up before class, and I could tell jazz and blues were in his wheelhouse. I struck up a conversation with him and eventually we got together and jammed.

Ray was soft-spoken and reminded me of characters from old movies, a half-drunk who lost himself in learning piano but never got his act together other than to scrape by. He was a pool shark, narrow of frame, with greasy hair under a fedora, rumpled jacket, and pocked skin, but was every inch kind. And talented, with a real old-school sense of honor when it came to the classics. His playing was tasteful and understated, and he knew his music history. Since I’d quit modeling to be in the sculpture class myself, I needed cash, so Ray and I decided to audition for a regular gig at a piano bar in Traverse City. I had never auditioned for a gig before, so it was kind of new to me, but I followed Ray’s lead and sang the material he had given me to learn. We got the gig, and started that Saturday night. At first Ray tried to teach me to play bass so we would have a fuller sound, but I had no real talent for it. He would shake his head and show me a bass line again, but soon he gave up and in his soft-spoken tone said we’d be better off if I just sang and he played. I wore a black dress, and Ray a sharp fedora and a crumpled sports coat. Some people sitting at the bar paid attention. Some didn’t.

Ray turned me on to a lot of old blues songs I had never heard. “St. Louis Blues” (which one day I got to sing with B. B. King himself on the Jools Holland show in England), “Gimme a Pig Foot and a Bottle of Beer,” “Peepin’ and Hidin’.” All the good ol’ stuff that any writer or singer should have as a foundation. I had listened to a lot of standards, but these were more obscure, raw, sexual in a bawdy underground way, not the clever highbrow sounds of Cole Porter or the coy lyrics of many classics—these were full of speakeasy grit, sass, and swagger. Ray would
cringe when I would introduce a song as being by Harry Connick Jr., rather than invoking the original artist or composer. I had to learn that these songs were heirlooms passed on from generation to generation, and they deserved to be treated like treasures, and most important was where they’d started rather than who had drawn attention to them in the moment.

It never dawned on me that singing in a bar with a faculty member would be frowned upon, but soon I was summoned to the dean’s office. Again. He scratched his head as I sat across from him yet again. “Jewel, I’ve heard you’re singing in town. At a bar. With a faculty member.” “Yes,” I said. “With Ray.” “Jewel, we can’t have a student in a bar with a faculty member.” This got me in a panic. I told him I’d grown up bar singing, and that I needed the money. He was worried it would look inappropriate, a sixteen-year-old and a faculty member in a bar. I assured him Ray was nothing but professional, and invited him to come see us. I don’t recall whether he ever came, but we got to keep the gig. I invited my vocal teacher Nicole one night and got her up onstage. She sang “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” in full operatic tone. She had been singing opera so long that she had no street voice left. When I turned to look at Ray, he was shaking his head and rolling his eyes while he played backup, pained to hear such a beloved song sung so stiffly and operatically. I appreciated that he was so protective of songs, but still I loved Nicole’s version. It’s not always about the song. It’s about the singer’s heart and the courage to step beyond their comfort zone. Nicole saw me step outside my comfort zone every day, and she was always proud and supportive, and I damn sure wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to get her up to sing. I was flattered she came out to support me and had fun.

twelve

who will save your soul

A
t Christmas break all the faculty left campus, the school shut down, and so it made sense that students could not stay. This didn’t seem to be a problem for any of them but me. In the weeks leading up to the break, everyone talked excitedly about the friends they were going to see back home. They spoke of favorite meals and family, who a mere few months earlier they’d been eager to escape from. I didn’t have the money to get back to Alaska, and did not advertise the fact that I had no place to stay. This would be a problem at every break and holiday, and each time I would have to come up with a solution. As Christmas neared, I felt like my best bet was the modern dance teacher I’d made friends with early on in the school year. He was a tall and imposing figure, hard to miss on the campus street. American Indian, with long black hair, a classic profile, high cheekbones, and wearing a bright red leather jacket with fringe. He reminded me of my Indian uncles, the two men who had adopted me a year earlier, and we became good friends and often took trips to the sand dunes and talked about the importance of ceremony in life and how to
imbue deeper meaning into art. I knew he was leaving to visit his partner in Seattle and asked him if I could stay in his house while he was gone.

I really had nowhere else to go. He thought about it a few days and decided to let me stay, but he made it clear it was against the rules and I had to keep it quiet and lay low. Luckily, it was a small two-bedroom house situated by itself on a lake. When all the other kids went off, I packed my bags and was intentionally vague with counselors and dorm leaders when they asked in passing where I was headed.

I arrived and found the key where he’d left it for me. His place was modest but nice. I set my bags down in the guest room and stood in the living room, looking out at the frozen lake covered in a thick blanket of snow. There is something so peaceful and quiet about land covered in snow. It muffles all sound in a quietness so unlike the hum of summer. No birds in the trees, no rippling of live water. The isolation reminded me of Alaska, and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity to go into silence myself. Winter is a time for going inward. For tending to the unseen. I had brought my drawing pad and my pastels and my notebook for writing. I had taken the school’s shuttle bus into Traverse City the weekend before for groceries. I think I ate butternut squash with honey and salt, canned black beans, and rice cakes with almond butter the entire time. It was a prolific couple of weeks, as there was little else to do. I had begun drawing that year with pastels and made several self-portraits, and tried to capture the folds of fabric for the first time. I sat in the living room, where there was good light, with a small mirror I found. I talked to no one and read a lot. It was complete isolation.

As Christmas drew near, I became a bit blue. It was sad to be alone and have no presents. I was sad that I had no one to take care of me. Before I could become sorrier for myself, I made my way to town to see if I could bring some cheer to the little house and for myself after all. I stuck my thumb out and caught a ride easily. Hitchhiking on holidays always
brings generosity to people’s hearts. It felt good to hear the bright noise of cheerful conversations and holiday music in the stores. I had a little money for fresh rosemary twigs. Rosemary is a quick way to make any meal taste like Christmas. If you can’t afford the turkey, the herbs are a good substitution. I also bought two pretty metallic silver and gold drawing pastels that were so creamy and luxurious they looked like candy. I saw a pretty fuchsia empire-waist dress with a scoop neck and fell in love with it. I knew instantly that it would be my present to myself and didn’t bat an eye before stealing it. I looked at it as spoiling myself a little.