Poetry

Sometimes something happens and it opens up a place deep within. A place I’ve learned to value, one i’ve learned not to ignore, to walk through rather then avoid.
As a kid there was a time when my emotions were so intense that some thought maybe I would be better numbed. I’ve always refused that, I’ve chosen to embrace them to work with them and cry if i need to. I don’t believe taking a pill actually changes anything and also feel a very small percentage actually need it, the rest use it in those difficult times often to get there and then it just never stops…

I feel in order to understand the sun I have to see the moon, in order to understand love I have to face fear, to understand truth, I can’t hide or lie or deny the inner or outer world… Ever since I was a kid I refused to play into the games, the games of pretending to like people when you didn’t or not to like them when you did, the game of not saying you loved someone when you did, or not telling someone how much you did. I didn’t want to wear a mask, I didn’t want to pretend to be someone I wasn’t. Whats the point then people don’t even like me for me if they like me. They would like me for me trying to be someone I wasn’t and eventually I couldn’t keep playing a role…

Sometimes I am weak, sometimes strong, sometimes happy, sometimes sad, sometimes afraid , sometimes hopefully, sometimes a mixture of all these things. But I am me, I still have my heart in place sometimes its hurts, sometimes it gets overwhelmed sometimes it goes sky diving into the blackness of the ocean. Sometimes I reflect on the things that were the most difficult, I allow myself to go to dark places, and for me dark places are places in which things happened, that at the time I didn’t understand and it may have hurt. Violence, rape, abuse, lies, abandonment, can hurt a heart, but not kill a soul. Yet grasping these things working with and through them can be challenging, for they challenge my capacity to trust and yet if I don’t have the courage or capacity to allow myself to trust and be open I will only shut myself off and slowly die a slow internal death.

Recently with my song writing I’ve been dealing with subject matters that not too long ago I couldn’t talk about without turning into a puddle … I can speak about them now, but it doesn’t mean something inside doesn’t open up and with that comes a intensity one which if I work with I believe I can turn into a beautiful metal flower but I have to bend it with my fingers and during the process it cuts through my skin sometimes and draws blood.

Yet I am very aware of the choices I have made and continue to make, I am also very aware that by choosing to live fully here and fully engaged and present with myself and others means sometimes, I am going to cry, feel overwhelmed, confused, sometimes I have to go back and visit places to understand things so that I can take remove the bullets melt the metal and then turn it into something beautiful…

I feel innocence is lost when we put on mask, when we hide what we feel, when we conform to others and lose ourselves, when we think its not ok to cry or be scared or to question why, I have always seen that mask and the games that come with it as a slow death to the soul, granted these things have also lead me to feel like an alien sometimes , in world with lots of people in mask. Granted I try to get others to take them off so we can have a real connection, and I try to make sure i haven’t managed to put one on.

I appreciate those who are wide open and bare boned, even if its not easy or always pretty. I appreciate those who don’t wear a mask, who are transparent, like children, present, able to bare their soul, thats my goal in life
is to keep what I had as a child, not lose it to just wearing a mask painted on through others or culture programming.

The program here will kill your soul if you let it, in the ” real world” … The program has no room for soul, spirit, for really human nature. We are expected to become perfect little robots, trained to sit still perform task run the race, get good grades the house the cars, the statues the perfect partner then stop repeat…

When the darkness deep within the soul says I hate this mask this life, rather then deal with it, many numb it or silence it, stunting both spiritual and emotional growth.
Suffering is a great teacher as wise as bliss, pain can carve a beautiful image into a soul which can transform it into something that shines bright as the sun. Yet to understand the sun I need the moon, the light I need the darkness to appreciate love and others I have seen the darkest acts of humanity, and been confronted with what happens to those who become so jaded lost or only on the hunt for power that others are nothing but things to be taken and eaten …

yet because of these things when I see feel love, innocence purity, it almost makes me cry in a good way, and I appreciate those who have that in a way that transcends time and space, and I wish we could all be like that, able to just be us,
and live in a world which was safe, granted I have learned that even the most intense things which were painful, didn’t take away my “safety” they just were a moment in the dark, a moment which pass, to return to light and with the knowledge gained only through the experience of being there i learned how to avoid going back …

Our education system doesn’t educate on the soul or spirit
we learn numbers and letters
Artist I feel are one of the last hopes for education on the soul
as well as hope for our world…
So I’ll do what I can to help them, the community, part of it is my mother instincts part of it is my personal mission to turn bullets into beautiful things to leave behind .. to try to help bring more light, more love, more truth, for really that is all there is… but all these things are not some happy superficial all is always good kinda path, rather sometimes it can be challenging and difficult..

I find anytime my soul is in a growth spurt, when things happen to make me see or feel things maybe I was missing, sometimes its challenging. Yet I have found if I just continue to work with it and not run from it, on the otherside of whatever I have to face within myself and or the world around me I find my heart deeper and wider and wisdom comes through experience, for really the only way I know anything is living and feeling it…

I am working with through some pretty deep things I suppose I always am, but I’ve found thats my dance, and I have just have to go with it, for it will transform, into something beautiful if I just flow with it, and not try to ignore or fight it…

Last night I found myself feeling pretty emo, then I looked at my calendar its amazing how much as a women I feel these constant changes in my body, I suppose it is the power to co create life, but yet with the intensity to create life I also feel things with an equal intensity. About half a month that intensity increases, which is half my life basically and over the years I have come to embrace it understand it and try to communicate to others about it for I have found that without communication and awareness not only within oneself but with those around us misunderstandings develop walls which keep us apart.

During these times I often find myself pulled deeper, out of the surface and through the layers. They remind me of whats important and why I do this, and its not for money if I wanted to make money I would have followed the path some advised me to follow and use the intelligence I had to do something in some other way with some security with some steady pay check with some kind of constant. But ever since I was old enough to remember I knew I had to be here doing this, for reasons I don’t really understand. It used to freak me out, for years I would find myself in situations that completely challenged my ego, usually the situation was I was running out, all my resources were running out, I only had this thing pulling on me inside out and yet on the outside when I looked around my world I didn’t see a way through or how.

This happened over and over, often forcing me into corners, sometimes these corners seemed really hopeless and dark. I would be stripped so to speak of whatever I was clinging to, and then I had a choice to make, I could try to hold on to what was, I could freak out because I didn’t see how I was going to finish music, fund music, eat, or survive, I could give up and run away, and usually I would push myself through, often in tears, facing fears, facing the reality that if I looked toward the world for my support if I looked to the typical system I found often that despite the fact I had people within it who believed in me, who supported me , doors would shut as often as they would open.

But somewhere through all the rejection, all the doors slammed, all the shit that happened to me, all the things I lost, everything that was ripped or stripped away. Be it in love, with friends, death, deals, partners, musical projects, I started to see a pattern emerge if I could see through the clouds. The more I focused on this ray of light invisible to the eye often during the storm the more I started to see everything happens exactly as it should, and no matter how painful, how much loss, how hopeless it got if I could just keep my heart attached to that small string linked back to the light and love that provides me all I need even if I can’t see it and it seems I have lost all and have nothing then I know eventually it will all work out. I just have to trust in something I can’t see.

Right now I have been in that state for sometime, Recently accepting and embracing the largest and most dramatic loss in ways yet, leaving me in a situation with a blank page very little resources and my community and friends. There has been moments where if I look at things from a perspective removing my ray of light from the clouds, it is enough to sink me and all my dreams into a pool of hopelessness, for the dreams I had, all I had poured every ounce of myself into were lost and I had to start over, and granted this is not the first time, in fact this is so many times of starting over that if I count it could look pretty hopeless, if i looked at all the loss over the last few years it would be enough to drowned me . I’ve had to let go of so much, and yet each time I let go and place faith in the unseen, and allow open up , the blank page is filled and often through the process I grow and find myself more at peace with loss and letting go.

It’s not easy, and where I am now is not easy, but I have never seen such support love and help brought in through people who weren’t even in my life before, and some who were in such a way that I see love in action in a way that gives me faith in humanity and inspires me to continue on, even though I have no idea often how it’s going to work out. I empty my bank account to create music, in world where its said people won’t buy it, but yet I can’t not do it, I am at the point where I will give all I am and all I have to finishing the work ahead and if it means letting go of some comforts I am used to, then so be it, if it means investing everything I have and working all the time around the clock to bring it together , I will , and at the end of the day if I died today I would be happy, for I feel that even though it makes no sense to some, and i leave nothing behind but these little creations I will die in peace .

For I feel as artist it is our calling so to speak to leave beauty behind, to burn holes in the darkness, to challenge the system, and to love through the act of creation and allow that love to counteract the greed, the violence, the darkness that is there and without the balance where it is dark if we don’t find a way to burn a channel into the world so that these creations can reach those on at the end of the rope, in the darkness of hopelessness then the balance will be lost…..

There is lots of shit going on in the world, lots of people suffering, starving, dying, hopeless, broken, and sometimes one song, one picture, one glance of beauty and love captured and transfered through the blackness is all someone needs to feel the connection to be inspired to feel peace.

When I see know find those who aware of it or not do that, create that and or provide that, I would cut off my left arm to support them, for I guess for me my motherly instincts being I have no children have become focused on trying to do whatever I can to nurture my community, other artist, through the internet, words, writings, and my actions, for I feel that through our creativity, through our connections, through our unity we may be able to do something, to counteract all the things others are doing that are not of love or truth, but deception, greed, use and abuse.

I also view it as we are all one body, and so if you are a finger and your hurt, I feel it, and if one falls I can’t walk I want to do whatever I can to help them get up. For I believe we are all in this together.

When I was a kid I dedicated my life to serve something, I had no idea what that was or where it would lead me, but it has lead me here, and whenever I feel its too much, or its hopeless or it doesn’t make sense or “I” have no idea how to make it work, I have to get the “I” out of the way, and remember the bigger picture, and the work at hand. Focus on what I have, what has been given, and accept whatever is lost happened for some reason I may not understand now, but I have faith it will all work out eventually and that even if all I can see are storms and clouds behind them is the sun which will come back and all the darkness shall fade into a beautiful light.

Transform the dark into light, pain into beauty, and loss into hope

I’ve realized the things I really hold dear all of those things cost nothing and only take me being there and being open…
These are the things which keep me alive, keep me moving, creating, dreaming,
Today I was having a conversation about artist and culture
Inspiration was once said to be the breath of God, granted God can be whatever you want, for to think I could actually define what that is would be to say I understand something I cannot possibly wrap my head around anymore then understanding how the stars shine …
I feel some carry that breath through into the culture and those who do then just pass it on,
I have often been inspired through art, writings, music, or even just the look from someones eyes or a touch.. If it wasnt for the gift of being able to see the divine through art there were times when I thought I was alone in some island where I was an alien.. Even though I may never meet the one who created what touched me it made me feel connected to something greater and that gave me hope…

I was speaking to another friend the night before and he was explaining how he has difficulties in relationships I can relate for often people cant understand the working around the clock writing into the night and not even caring about food much less much else. He told me he now tells people “it chose him” and I could relate to that. Sometimes I look at my life and I am in awe of the beauty of it and yet I really don’t have much of what some would say I need . I find though the less I have the more I can focus on just being open to creating and working with others to create with them the more I feel connected and through that connection I feel more alive …

I have no idea whats going to happen with everything thats being created, I only know I have to create it and then do my best to make sure it is then set free into the world…

I have a soft spot for artist, more so for artist who I feel are passing along that inspiration, I see them as some long lost family, and want to do whatever I can to help them, of course without losing myself, which has been a balance I have had to learn.. But its important for me because I dont want to lose anyone ….

bedtime

I am trying to catch up with the times, my manager went to Midem, and I need to bring my digital self up to speed, but my head hurts and trying to learn how to use this and everything else is challenging but.. I shall overcome the challenge, with the help of music and coffee..

Jillian Ann