I debated putting this in the Interviews subforum or even News, but it's the local paper, so...
http://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/music/2015/09/18/jewel-interview-picking-pieces-never-broken/72411880/Jewel interview: Picking up the pieces with ‘Never Broken’Ed Masley, The Republic | azcentral.com 12:22 p.m. MST September 18, 2015
Jewel dedicates her newly published memoir, “Never Broken: Songs Are Only Half the Story,” to anyone “struggling in darkness, seeking to know their light.”
And for nearly 400 pages, she proceeds to walk the reader through her struggles with that darkness, from a family life dysfunctional enough to make her leave home at 15 for fear, as she writes, “that I would lose myself entirely” to her recent divorce from Ty Murray, the rodeo star she married in 2008.
If there is an underlying message to her memoir, though, it’s that in dealing with our pain instead of hiding from it, we can ta ke responsibility for finding our own path to inner peace and happiness. As she writes in the opening poem, “My New Shape,” “I am as new as I ever have been / the best is not behind me / damnit / it’s ahead of me / for the first time.”
It’s not that Jewel’s back pages are devoid of triumph. Released in 1995, when she was 20, her first album, “Pieces of You,” is among the biggest-selling debuts ever, going 12-times-platinum on the strength of three big singles — “Who Will Save Your Soul,” “You Were Meant For Me” and “Foolish Games.” She’s earned four Grammy nominations, played the Vatican for Pope John Paul II, published several books and given birth to Kase, the 4-year-old who rarely interrupts her as she answers the reporter’s questions.
Now she’s headed to the Valley on a book tour in support of “Never Broken,” a memoir she published last week within days of an album titled “Picking Up the Pieces.” We caught up with Jewel to talk about the memoir, the album and more.
Q: There’s a hopeful quality to “Never Broken,” the suggestion that it’s possible to rise above the obstacles to happiness and maybe even be a better person for the pain you go through in the process. Is that something you were hoping to convey?A: Yeah. This is a survivor’s story. But it’s also, really, a story of hope. And healing. As the title suggests, I really don’t believe that we are broken. We can suffer incredible indignities, abandonment and many of the things that people suffer, and it can define us only in the ways that we want. It doesn’t have to make us brittle or damaged. It can actually make us exceptional people. It depends on how you handle that pain.
Q: Your new album is titled “Picking up the Pieces.” I assume there’s a connection.
A: Yeah. As well as the fact that the record was hearkening back to our first album. When I wrote the book and record, it was sort of looking at this idea of peeling back veneers and looking at parts of myself that had been domesticated. I don’t mean by marriage or children as much as I put parts of myself to sleep over time. And I was looking at waking those and examining what parts of us are our essential self.
Q: I really like in the opening poem when you write, “I am as new as I have ever been.”
A: It’s hard. You know, when you go through divorce and you’re 40, it’s not easy to feel that way. But as I say on the front of my album, “Reality is your perception of it.” It really is. I am a blank page. I’m free and I’m OK. And I don’t feel like the best is behind me.
Q: What inspired you to write a memoir?
A: I had been asked so often, “How did you go from moving out at 15 and not just becoming a statistic?” I very consciously knew the odds were that I would repeat what I was raised around, that I would end up addicted to drugs and in an abusive relationship. And if you look at nature vs. nurture, I tried at 15 to say, “Can I re-nurture myself?” And I sort of conducted a science experiment. I took notes the entire time and worked myself out of all sorts of things, like agoraphobia and shoplifting.
And it was something I wanted people to know, that you can overcome these things, and you don’t have to wait for happiness because you don’t have the right therapist or the right family, the right money, the right job. I want anybody reading this from any socioeconomic group to know that happiness is yours to have. It just depends on how badly you want it and what you’re willing to do for it.
When you have unexamined wounds, you’re not aware that your subconscious is sort of dictating your behavior and who you’re attracted to. Like, with my mom for instance. My need for my mom’s love made me very vulnerable to a lot of things that happened. And when I could see those things for what they were, I was able to get out.
Q: Was it hard to relive those memories?
A: It was. There were several times when I cried. The example of when my dad was really abusive with my brother and I before school one day was a tough one to write. And a lot of the stuff with my mom was really difficult. It’s a very complex psychological relationship, so getting it into black and white and telling that story was difficult, just because I had never talked about it before.
Q:Were there aspects of your life that felt too personal to share?
A: There are things I didn’t share. This isn’t a tell-all. The tone of the book isn’t salacious. But I shared a lot because I had to really show how much pain I had to endure and how you heal from those things for the point of the book to even be relevant. It isn’t actually avoiding pain or pitfalls that makes a person safe. It’s how we handle pain that makes it safe.
Q: Were there people you felt the urge to protect at all as you were writing?
A: I didn’t put anything in that I wasn’t comfortable with. I stayed in my lane. I don’t think there’s anything about the book that would read as bitter or vindictive. I had to talk about some other people because your life doesn’t happen in a vacuum, but I tried to talk about it from my perspective. There were some things I was careful about because I knew Kase would be reading it. I didn’t go into the divorce in a lot of detail, things like that.
Q: Was there a difference for you between sharing as openly as you have in your music and poems and sharing that openly in something like a memoir?
A: Talking about my mom was new. So that was tricky. I think it took a memoir for me to get at that relationship. I never would have talked about my relationship with my mom unless I had enough room to actually set the whole thing up. But I think the exercise of being transparent is something I’m used to. As I say in the book, the more transparent I am, the more people seem to not only accept me but see themselves, so it seems mutually beneficial.
Q: You haven’t spoken to your mom in years. Are you hoping she reads the book?
I don’t really care one way or another. I don’t have any ill will toward my mother. I didn’t really write it as a message to her at all. I simply shared it because without that piece, what it took for me to heal doesn’t make any sense.
Q: I would assume the writing was cathartic.
A: It was. I think it was a great thing to do while I was going through a divorce. My whole life is about trying not to repeat patterns if I can help it.
Q: You talked about re-nurturing yourself. Do you feel like that is an ongoing process?
A: Absolutely. Socrates says, “An unexamined life is not a life worth living.” Or something like that. It’s definitely a process — a rewarding, enriching process. Even at 40, you find new layers as you peel things back.
Q: What would you say was the best part of writing the book?
A: It helped to make sense of a crazy life. I haven’t been able to catch my breath for 40 years. And this is the first time I’m safe. There’s no trauma. No tragedy. The divorce is done, and I’m able to look back and reflect and process a lot of feelings and make it all make sense. So it was very helpful to write the book. I’m proud of myself in a way. It’s a lot that I’ve been through. And I’m proud of how I navigated it.
Q: You talked about the connection between the title of your latest album and “Pieces of You.” To what extent do you make a connection between those two releases?
A: They’re similar in spirit, like “Harvest” and “Harvest Moon.” You knew from the titles that they had a similar spirit. You kind of knew what you were getting and it was probably Neil Young with the Stray Gators vs. Crazy Horse. I wanted people to know that this is going to be an emotional, raw record and it will be uncategorically me.
Q: There’s a style that connects those two album, but Neil Young was obviously a very different person by the time he got to “Harvest Moon.” And you’re a different person from when you were writing that first album.
A: To me, it’s a willingness to be raw and open and to have an honest snapshot. I tried, when I was 18, to make that record and say “This is just a snapshot of an 18-year-old. This is exactly who I am.” And that’s what this record is, a very raw, unfiltered, un-Photoshopped portrait of who I am.
Q: What do you think of that snapshot of the 18-year-old you when you look back on it now?
A: I learned a lot from her. It’s interesting because I have a lot of songs on this record that I wrote when I was 18 and 17, so it was sort of like getting to time travel and have a conversation with myself. And I learned a lot from my 18-year-old self that knew no better. She was just pure grit and pure bravado, I guess. You learn with time to just be a little more tame. And there was some wildness that I wanted to reinfuse into who I am now. So I learned a lot from my 18-year-old self, and I feel like my 18-year-old self got to learn a lot from the patience, the tenacity and maturity of who I am now.
