Archive: November 29, 2010
First things first: I have the Christmas e.p. “He’s The One I Need The Most” on sale again at http://theekatjones.etsy.com – Go and get yourself a copy if you want one. 🙂
Also – I am playing a Christmas show at The Family Wash in Nashville, TN with a full band on Wednesday, December 8th. The Amazing Bill Davis will be opening up the show and The Magnificent Others will be closing the evening with their crazy awesomeness. 8:30 pm sharp! Make reservations now. It’s going to be a busy night.
I had a whole other blog prepared to write tonight but the project behind it – which hopefully you will hear about tomorrow is too involved for me to finish tonight. So I thought I’d write about something more pressing and also on my mind this evening.
I have spoken often about the meaning of a song I wrote almost 10 years ago, almost to the day, called The Great Scottish Hurricane. It’s weird that it’s been so long since I’ve been overseas and it’s even stranger to think that a song that has meant so much to me and is still making transformations and taking on changes live has been around for so long.
I wrote this song after what I believed at the time to be the most difficult 3 months of my life. The lyrics were a mishmash of images I’d picked up from my whole life. Images from Edinburgh, the thrift store I’d worked at before moving to Scotland, and most importantly, one fateful day when I was 5 years old:
This was a spring day. I can remember walking around my front yard in Tulsa, OK and seeing a cluster of beautiful pink flowers sitting under the bush that hid my bedroom window from the view of the world. I innocently got down on my knees and reached my hand into the cluster of flowers so that I could have a bouquet to hold. I don’t remember if I was planning on pulling all the petals off the stem (this was likely to be their fate), or to just hold them and inspect the pedals, to bring them to my mother and present them to her as a gift? I don’t think I’d thought that far in advance.
I thrust my hand into the bunch of flowers growing at the base of the bush and immediately began screaming. I don’t think I was successful in getting any flowers at all. But upon bringing my hand out of the bush and opening it there were hundreds of little thorns that had filled the palm of my left hand from the flower stems. I ran to my mom and I remember being able to feel how hurt she was on my behalf as I cried and she pulled each thorn out one by one by one… a very long process involving lots of tears. I still feel a little sympathetic for that 5 year old girl just thinking about it. My mom must have been so sad for me. But she was there with her great love and the patience to make it all better even though her eyes were not the greatest and I’m sure I was screaming.
This image came to my mind this evening as I thought of some bad choices I’d made in my life. I’ve been trying to figure out how to give the 5 year old me a stronger voice. I think perhaps I have spent the year doing so much reflection and healing that the person who has been the loudest is the adult me. The me that freaks out under the stress of paying bills on time. The me that has to be responsible and the me who isn’t a very good artist at all. Adult me offers a great deal of criticism and not a lot of help in art. 5 year old me offers almost all the artistic thoughts and knows that there is evil in the world but that it can be overcome.
I saw myself today as a little girl and a woman with my Father. The little girl was happy and jovial, the adult was weighed down and concerned about everything ALL THE TIME. The little girl was awed by people in general and saw The Name for all it was and the amazing weight it carried and the adult was too busy thinking about bills. The little girl was getting distracted chasing butterflies and the adult was wishing she could get distracted chasing butterflies. And I realized that the adult has some thorns in her hands left from a bit of artistic and personal self sabotage I’ve been processing through for the last 2 years and that they are patiently being pulled out one by one by one, gently, and with great care and love.
I also saw that the source of this self-sabotage was really very innocent. That it was the little girl who made the decision to go for something she really liked, not realizing there were thorns waiting on the stems, and not realizing that if the thorns weren’t pulled out it would turn into infection. And then I realized that nearly all the thorns were gone. The shock of being stuck by something so beautiful was given permission to leave, and I surrendered myself to having the rest of the thorns pulled so that I could return to play time as soon as possible.
And that is why I am so excited about California. I am going to go out and play and play and play. I am going to drive around the state and hug and kiss friends, and love and be loved, and maybe have a couple minor tiffs with safe friends who love me very much and resolve them quickly because they are safe and healthy people, and I am going to laugh a lot and read and write a lot and write really long run-on sentences because they are fun and because not ending a sentence has that amazing and wonderful sense of excitement that accompanies it, and I am going to go on a house tour and play for friends and strangers and drive around the southwest part of the country in my dad’s car and sing along to cds and pick up nicknacks here and there to share with the whole of who I am and when I get home I will hug my doggie and thank Raleigh for dog sitting and sleep in my bed with my doggie after such a long trip and smile and sleep for a long time and not feel guilty for doing so.
If you’re interested in picking up a date on the tour, even if it’s a house show I have some available.
January 3rd – Albequerqui, NM – Available
January 4th – Dallas, TX – Available
January 5th – OKC or Tulsa, OK – Available
January 6th – Little Rock, AK or Memphis, TN – Available
Also – if you want to pick up any extra dates in California between Christmas and New Years (esp Southern California) let me know… I may have a slot available for you. I will give you a better idea of when these shows are as soon as I have addresses and age restrictions etc.
email greenhillpromotions@gmail.com to get on that business. 🙂
For now I am most looking forward to this one:
Fresno, CA – Thursday, December 23rd – Audie’s Olympic Tavern
w/ Pinkeye – (I will also be playing with a full band: Benji McEntee, Paul Chesterton, and Eli Reyes) and I will see you all there and it will be bad ass. I am looking forward to this day with everything I have 🙂