This weeks track is Maybe from Annie. As a young child, due to family circumstances I was home alone in a very rural location most weekends. I was often frightened and lonely, and in 1982 I watched Annie one hundred and thirty seven times. (Yes, I counted.) I wish I could go back and give tiny Jessica a huge hug. Annie’s optimism and perseverance were vital lifelines for me, and her longing for a family that simply couldn’t imagine anything more joyful than being with her made me feel like less of a freak for fervently desiring that too. Music walks with us in our darkest hours - it’s one of the most profound and fundamental purposes of creativity, and little Annie generously accompanied me. She also began my lifelong love affair with musicals, so will forever have my gratitude.
When everything went wrong in 2020, I couldn’t listen to any music. I can’t express how this feels for someone whose very lifeblood has always been rhythm, pulse and melody. Music was always my joy and my solace. Then one day I heard Dan play a Nick Cave record that I didn’t know. Ghosteen was written after the devastating death of Nick and Susie Cave’s son, Arthur, and to date it’s the only music I’ve heard that accurately expresses what awful, howling grief feels like. “And it isn’t any fun, no it isn’t any fun, to be standing here alone with nowhere to be” perfectly described the hole I’d fallen down. But the fact that I was able to be touched by music again began a slow thread of healing. A fellow artist had reached out their hand to me across the divide and pulled me up.
As well as the expression of the madness and pain of grief, there is also mesmeric beauty in Ghosteen. There are no superficial, easily won homilies, but instead the direct expression of a human who has fallen into the abyss and is slowly searching for acceptance and grace there. His music gradually opened me up again and I am so grateful to Nick Cave for that precious gift. Music had been another loss and he returned it to me. As the Pandemic continued, many people wrote to me to say that my music had done the same for them. Their intimate stories of grief, births, loss, loneliness, marriages, all accompanied by my music made me feel slowly connected again – it was a lifeline and my thanks goes to them for bravely reaching out across their divide.
Five years pass and without thinking about it I have start playing (and belting out) my beloved show tunes again. At the time I didn’t think of it as progress, but later I see it for what it is; a through line in the gradual re-gathering of the totems and talismans that are valuable to me. Through music, art and poetry I am re-finding a sense of self, building tentatively from the ground up. Listening to musicals again bodes well for the psychic renovation because more than anything they teach one to determinedly high kick ones way through the very worst of times.
Up until this point I have not felt strong enough to hear this message- played at the wrong time they would just have kicked me further down the hole. Now I giddily reacquaint myself with my old friends- the gutsy women who show us that persistence, strength, resilience, pluck and grit will pay off in the end. Carousel, Annie Get Your Gun, Gypsy, Sunset Boulevard, Funny Girl, Waitress, Hello, Dolly!, Matilda, Evita, Mary Poppins, Sally, Thoroughly Modern Millie, Chicago, Sweet Charity, Wicked, The Sound of Music, Matilda, Annie, Calamity Jane- so many incredible women.
It makes me wonder- how did musicals manage so successfully to circumnavigate the patriarchy? Why were women allowed to unapologetically headline when films, TV and books were often so far behind? These musicals would pass the Bechdel test with flying colours. Did they manage to sneak under the radar because they were deemed to be silly and inconsequential? It’s strange to me if that’s the case, because their themes are often dark and complex. Abortions, loss, dictatorships, theft, pogroms, female ambition, fascism, domestic violence, fear, orphanhood, poverty, murder, loneliness, parenting, heartbreak, patriarchy, religion- so many meaty themes reside in these supposedly fluffy tales.
And I am here for all of it. Now, finally, I am once again ready to sing with my favourite broads. They are kind enough to behave as though they’ve been waiting for me. ‘When I go, I’m going like Elsie’ the heartbroken, bleeding Sally Bowles roars out in Cabaret and I roar with her. ‘The sun’ll come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there’ll be sun’ my orphan pal Annie bravely sings. I am particularly moved by the dogged hope in A Chorus Line: ‘kiss today goodbye, and point me toward tomorrow.’ When I sing that line, I too want to feel that forward movement is possible- that the past can be just that, something that has marked me but that I can move away from. If it can be done with Julie Andrews style gumption then all the better.
Thanks for reading, chums. If you’d like a really good hoot, then do listen to me on Crushed, with the incredible Margaret Cabourn Smith. I talk about my huge, lifelong crush on Albert Finney as Daddy Warbucks. As ever, likes and restacks buy my gratitude and good favour forever!
(And I had to sneak this in right at the end, because it’s just so good.) xx