narratives:

The Living Jarboe.

Let me introduce my friend Jarboe to you. To most of you, her work over the years will be well known. She was a dynamic influence on the growth of the Swans and has engaged in a host of various projects perhaps most explicitly culminating in a series of deeply personal works, such as the Anhedoniac release. Her art and indeed her life has been well documented. I would urge you to check out her lovingly tended website:

http://www.thelivingjarboe.com

I am not sure if I can remember how I first got to speak to Jarboe. I think I wrote to the Swans and she wrote back. Gradually, we began to communicate more. I have the dubious honour of twice, due to personal circumstances, turning down the offer to tour as support to the Swans. Decisions I obviously deeply regret! As time progressed, the Swans ended and when I was on tour with Pigface, Jarboe flew up from Atlanta to meet me in Philadelphia. Later, we met up in Atlanta when I was there with the Pink Dots. In between, I contributed some sounds that Jarboe incorporated into her Anhedoniac release. She interviewed me for her website and I often thought about reciprocating.

I’m doing this because I have been moved by Jarboe’s words over the years. She is eloquent, articulate and in keeping with her music, rigorously honest. We conducted this interview via a series of e-mails.

What follows is an unedited transcript. I have done this deliberately, because I believe that it is important to concentrate on her words, her thoughts and her ideas.

Many thanks are extended to Jarboe for her time, patience and support.

1. How has the subject of mortality or more specifically, the fragility of life been represented in your work?

I write about the fragility. I portray it with my voice. It is at the core of what I do. It has always been at the core whether in the context of Swans or World of Skin, Beautiful People Ltd, Blackmouth, or my various solo albums or even the album I just finished as lyricist / singer with the band, Neurosis. I was a lonely little girl who escaped through books and day dreaming. I would stare out my window as a child and create my own world in my imagination. I have always lived with an ever present sense of FEAR. And even as a child, teachers noticed I was “unhappy.” They wrote this to my parents on my report cards. I was a good student and at the top of my class in reading and English, yet I was alone and an outsider. My brother died when I was only 20 and that also changed me for the rest of my life. I was with him when he had the rope climbing accident and it is burned in my memory. Then after I had a major car crash a year later, and then an incident in Israel where I was in the midst of a racial riot/brawl, and then a fractured skull accident of 2001 which resulted in seizures and a complete change of consciousness.......I learned even more about fragility.

2. I’m curious to know if you feel the issue of fragility (or vulnerability) has been dealt with adequately by other artists, and if so, whose work influenced your journey?

Yes and that is probably a good reason why I became a singer. Music got me through an intense period of “awakening” in my adolescence and formative years through college. I was lonely as a child and songs and books were my only world. As for people whose work penetrated me , a few names : Janis Joplin, Marianne Faithfull, Maria Callas, Sarah Vaughan, Peter Gabriel, Muddy Waters, Glenn Gould performing anything Bach - especially the Goldberg Variations, even the passion and pomp of Led Zeppelin and Spooky Tooth (blues based psychedelic rock)..... Also with regard to the state of FRAGILE:
I have had my heart shattered . It is shattered as I speak to you now. I wonder these days quite seriously if you can die from a broken heart. Because if it is possible, this one will surely kill me. It is that severe and that relentless. My last lover was my best friend. When you lose your best friend, it feels like death. When his ears are deaf to all you feel and speak, life itself becomes unreal. In addition to doing as much physical exercise as I can endure - such as 5 mile runs and weight lifting, I have started meditation again , as well as joined a Community Outreach program volunteering in hospitals. I recently visited a little boy who was going to have major surgery and was frightened. He began to relax and smile as I sang songs to him and showed him Bartholomew. I am going to try to build a supportive network of people . I am trying to save my life. To save my sanity. To be a SOLDIER once again in my life. Once again . Once again. I bring all of this to my work. My opening song these days says : “I’m with you to forget my loneliness.” This is what I am saying to MUSIC and this is also what I am saying to the AUDIENCE who has come to hear me sing.

3. Do you feel compelled to reveal yourself to others? Is this such an intrinsic factor to your art that you are unafraid of suffering as a consequence?

Yes, I do feel driven to be vulnerable and “real” to anyone who cares to experience my work. It is not an agenda, per se. It is that I have no reason to do music or wrote songs or perform them if it is a lie. This is why I feel outside of the “Music Business” and am more inclined to aspects of the art world. I do not think that has always been the case. It is just that in today’s climate, music is for the most part sterile and I cannot find comfort or enlightenment in it.

4. On stage, you appear intensely focussed. I wonder to what extent you feel in control of yourself, of your actions and do you feel as if you have ever gone further than you would have liked?

Yes. And It is not only a focus. It is a complete transporting to some place else. I remain in control of the “character” or “face of Eve “ at all times. NO, I don’t ever feel that I have gone further than I would have liked. It is a discipline . I will add that the only time I have lost control and gone a LOT further than I would have liked has been in my failed personal life. I bring my intensity as well as my innocence as well as my at times theatrical and highly expressive communication skills to my personal elationships. I am very passionate and giving and I hold nothing back when I love. I am 100 % generous. Lately, in studying Buddhism, I have realized that my problem results when I place any expectations upon the person I love. To even be loved back is an expectation. And I cannot EXPECT anything at all from another person. Also I cannot be the woman needed to do the work that I do and then be a mouse / moth in my real life. It just doesn’t work that way.

5. Perfomers by definition, perform. I am fascinated by your account of the process of performing. You also clearly feel comfortable in talking about yourself. It is as though you describe two Jarboe’s, the performer and the personal you. I wonder if your art is a bridge between various polarities, such as:

FRAGILITY---------------------STRENGTH

CHAOTIC--------------------CONTROLLING

I have never analyzed it as a bridge, but i do see that as true. Somewhere in the midst of the performer and the daily “me” is Jarboe, the person. You cannot have one without the other. And as much as I do not sleep in a rusty chastity belt with hooks, it is a metaphor. And to know me, you need to understand my work and not see it as something I put on a shelf.

6. It is hard to not reflect on your work without referencing Swans and in particular, the dynamic between Michael and yourself. I think that you have both managed to graphically illustrate your individual and collective vulnerabilities. It is painful to listen to “You See Through Me,” from Michael’s solo album, Drainland. In a sense I feel quite honoured to be exposed or allowed into an experience that you and Michael shared. The fact that the conversation was recorded adds to this feeling for me. The obvious question is; why do you feel the need to share such feelings with others?

Michael looked at that song as a Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf type vignette. I must interject that I loved the film The Hours. We took something personal and real but we gave it new meaning by used it to create a piece of music. “Artists” have always done that. It is a powerful song because of that component. We both hear it now as a work of music .

7. How is the place of your birth and the area you lived in as a child reflected in your music?

It is reflected by the use of my numerous dialects and character portrayals. I lived in rural Mississippi , urban New Orleans , and Atlanta as a child.

8. Do you think the musical traditions of the deep south influenced your growth as a musician?

Well, Chris Griffin who runs a wonderful studio here in Atlanta and is a top musician and engineer and is from the North, told me only last week that it was a “blessing” to have been raised in the South and exposed to such deeply emotive and heartfelt music. I do know that the many street musicians in New Orleans - along with the Mardi Gras parades, made a big impression upon me as a child. The Holy Roller and snake handling revival tent experiences I witnessed in rural Mississippi must have done something , too!

9. You have included snatches of taped conversations with you as a child in your music. If you, as the Jarboe of today were able to have a direct conversation with yourself as a child, what would you like to say?

I would ask her to share with me what it is she wanted deep inside that was a great secret. I would tell her to not betray her own self by doing for other people over taking care of herself. I would explain that people resent those who do too much for them and I would explain that she will be used by predators who will hurt her terribly if she makes herself last in the equation.

10. What motivates you to keep making music?

It is something inside me that is no different from breathing air . It is an essential part of keeping me alive. Music is the very reason I am alive. I considered in my late twenties what was the purpose of me taking up space on this planet. I was without purpose then and I could not justify being alive at all. When I began doing music, I felt that everything made sense from my life up to that point. And I found the sense of purpose. It is a form of “being in love “for me. Love is THE most important thing in my opinion . I have loved very deeply in my life . I am looking for love now and waiting for it to also find me right now, in fact.

11. Are you able to feel detached from your music? I ask this from an emotional perspective. For example, Anhedoniac seemed, at least to me, as if it were a cathartic experience for you. Do you retain powerful feelings about your music? Can you isolate yourself from the feelings that you had at the time you made the music? Do feelings change over a period of time? Do you still feel as if you are having a dynamic relationship with Anhedoniac for example or are you able to distance yourself from the experience and the feelings?

No, Anhedoniac is still alive within me. The woman who composed Anhedoniac was in a lot of pain, yes. And even though the pain I feel right this moment has a different color and different type of intensity, it is still related. I am not afraid of the word “cathartic” because instead of looking at it as if I was self indulgent , I look at it as being 100 % honest and pure and real and naked. The reaction to that c.d. has shown me that my audience finds meaning in their OWN life from this attitude and so if it is cathartic, it is cathartic universally and not only for me. I used to think that people changed and feelings changed but the older I get, the more I feel that you are the way you are and that you do not really change. You can learn and develop TECHNIQUES to control yourself , yes, but it is always a learned behavioral technique that gradually becomes part of you - like a recipe.

12. Tell me about Batholomew. He seems an important part of your life!

He has been with me since I was 8 years old. He is fragile so he does not travel with me. Yet he sleeps in my bed every night. When I hug him to my heart, my heart swells with joy. Bartholomew is my one true dear one and I love hi m more than anything. He is very, very wise.