Jenn Lindsay: Dazed and confused, full of fear and loathing, rendered unoriginal by grief. Truthfully, I feel like I have a big turd in my heart. And I feel like it’s important that we give ourselves plenty of space to feel angry and disillusioned. The morning after the election, I didn’t want to get out of my bed and see the triumphant, smarmy headlines about Bush being legitimately coronated. But I did, and I survived, as did we all. I just pray that the Dems can come up with a strong and decisive candidate because the argument persists that our message “wasn’t clear enough.”

AE: Why did you leave NYC?
JL: In the short term, I felt that my most pressing goal in life was to miss the wintertime. I had an opportunity to go on a national tour and spend the winter in San Diego. So I jumped at it. Once out in the balmy west, I started thinking that I had hit a wall with my entrepreneurial prowess and, without money or connections, I didn’t know how much further I could get on my own with music and playwriting. So I applied to grad school, and now I’m at Yale School of Drama learning how to build a home for my work.

AE: When did you start playing guitar/singing/writing songs?
JL: I was always very ambitious about music, and I started playing and writing songs concurrently, when I was 16. I really did love it, but I also wanted to be really famous for it. It took many years to realize that loving it was what would sustain me through the most depraved conditions of being a singer/songwriter in New York.

AE: Your songs always sound more like poetry than most folk music. Ever think of doing poetry readings instead of music?
JL: I tried once, at a GLBT Community Center poetry reading, to read the lyrics to my song “Got My Baby” (from The Story of What Works). I was distracted by the sound of music in my head so I stopped reading and had to sing it a cappella. If I could get around the orchestra in my brain I would love to try it again. I tend to be very utilitarian about my work; if a phrase occurs to me that might be better-placed as a poem, I generally will wrest it into a more musical phrase so I can use it. Since I am not hooked up with the poetry circuit, I don’t have a forum for writing that is meant to stay on a page and not progress into other people’s brains and hearts as theater or music. I am very heavily influenced by poets; if it weren’t for Mary Oliver, Christian Wiman, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, ee cummings and Adrienne Rich I may not have cleaved so willfully to the life of a writer. Damn them!!

AE: One of your earlier albums Fired! was a theme album about unemployment. Are you currently employed? How do you find the dichotomy of what you do for survival as compared to what you do for love?
JL: Well, I’m currently a student, so I’m racking up the student loan debt. Sometimes I think about leaving school to try New York again, but I’m not ready to piece together my survival on depressing day jobs and frustrated dreams. I guess part of growing up is figuring out how to balance pragmatism and fulfillment. But when I was 22 and new to New York, I took anything that came to me as long as it helped me make rent. I don’t think I have that resilient, precocious expectation that I’ll be “discovered” anymore. There’s always a chance, but in the meantime I’m trying to go slow and divest myself of goals and listen hard to my heart to discover what kind of job will not strip me of my sanity and sense of personal evolution.

As much as a pain as grad school is, I’ve been grateful for a sabbatical from touring and promoting albums. That life can be so strenuous that it’s easy to lose track of why you love it, or to feel super-negative about how slow progress can be. I got to the point where, after a show, if someone would say to me, “That was totally incredible. Your work really affects me,” I would only take them seriously if they also forked out dough for an album. That’s a lame and ungenerous way to approach fans; and it helped me realize I needed a break.

Page 1 / 2 - Next