Origin Stories, Part I

I have always been a person fascinated by my own process. Sometimes this devolves into navel-gazing or directionless ennui, but usually I think it’s just one characteristic of being a writer. Asking yourself, what is being a person, anyway? And then trying to answer it, failing, trying anyway.

Part of this is probably from being an adoptee in a closed adoption - when you grow up not having a full origin story, you tend to fill in the blanks. Maybe as simple as wondering whose nose you have or why you love Celtic music. Other times a complicated backstory about two kids on the run from the law who can’t stop to take care of a baby (What? Gotta keep it interesting.) There’s a background hum of who am I, who am I, who am I…?

In some ways, this lack of an origin story is also an opportunity and responsibility. Without generational legacy or a strong tie to a familial personality, there’s a sense that you need to just create yourself from scratch. No pressure.

One of my earliest journal entries (from when I was 8 or 9) is just one page containing only this: Why am I like this? I want to love people better and help. I’m certain this came after a conflict with my brother and an accompanying conflict with my parents, probably a meltdown over chores. I didn’t understand why I had such intense emotions and no way to gently process them. (I wouldn’t be diagnosed with ADHD for another twenty years.)

In middle school, on a bus driving into the North Georgia mountains, a boy I had a crush on sat next to me, interrupting my wistful gaze out the window and said, “Oh, you’ve gone into Field Trip Mode.” When I asked him what he meant he said I always got really quiet and kind of sad-looking when we went on field trips. I was mortified but he wasn’t wrong. I know now that nature helps me feel more peaceful and to turn inward a bit. Those field trips to camps and hiking trails were helping me release pressure and quiet inner noise so I could hear my own thoughts. I wasn’t exactly sad, but I can see how it might have looked that way to a classmate who was used to me joining him in “class clown-ery”. To this day I catch myself on trails, growing a little wistful looking at the river and think, “oh…Field Trip Mode.”

All of this to say that I’ve wondered about my own human condition and the broader human condition since I could form complex thought. And specifically, I’ve wondered about purpose and where I can be of service.

I think it can be really helpful, if you’re experiencing a lack of direction or wondering who am I, to look back at who you were and what you valued as a child. Through every iteration of my career(s) and every big life shift, I can see how the second-grader who wrote that in a diary - a green diary, with a tiny gold lock and key - was reaching for the same things that I continue to reach for.

I want to love people better and help.

Lately, I’ve been experiencing shifts in what I want for my life and my career. I want sustainability, I want ease and slowness. I look at my fellow artists and my heart hurts when I see them struggle to scrap together a living when the work they create is so inherently valuable. Not as “content”, not as a “product”, but as life-affirming work that connects us to our humanity.

I love performing, but not because I love the attention. I’m not begrudging folks who love attention! We need folks who have that absolute star power and can command a room - it takes an amount of enjoying attention to be great at that part. But what I love about performing is the connection: Connection with the audience, connection to the songs, the collective experience we create together during a show. That never gets old, and I never want to stop having that feeling. But trying to “make it” hasn’t ever really been my priority. Folks who started around the same time as I did have gone on to play 200 dates a year, be signed to labels, tour internationally - in short, they have worked their asses off for many years to be able to do the work every day and every single one of them is so tired. I think I knew early on it wasn’t for me. My drive wasn’t pointed in that direction…but I also wasn’t sure where it was pointed because there weren’t a lot of models for doing it another way.

So, I’ve been thinking about whether I want to be good or do good. Which is to say - how much effort do I want to place on pursuing a sustainable career in the music industry as it stands (trying to book festivals, getting agents, getting in front of the “right” people to get the “right” publicity etc. etc. etc.) vs. focusing on what I can do to help the artists I care about, the community I care about, and possibly trying to effect change in an industry that daily strips the humanity from its most crucial contributors?

What do I want more?

To be good at it - at being a musician and a songwriter

or to do good - to be of service to the artform I care so deeply about?

I think the little girl I was (am) knew (knows) the answer.

I want to love people better and help.

More on where this thought has been moving me lately next time…

Until then, be well, and send a hug back to your 8-year-old self for me,

Juliana

P.S. I have a show in Raleigh on Friday with my friends The Big Lonesome - come say hey.