Transcription of Jon Patrick Walker for the show Healing Companionship #50
Dr. Lisa: Hello. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 50, Healing Companionship. Airing for the first time on August 26th 2012 on WLOB and WPEI Radio Portland, Maine. Today’s guests include the Reverent Jacob Watson, founder of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine and also Jon Patrick Walker, actor, musician, songwriter and now member of JP Walker and the guilty party.
We think that Healing Companionship is a good topic to talk about because it’s something that I see in my practice all the time, the need for a healing companion. When times get rough or even just attempting to slug through the daily life, it means a lot to have someone by your side, someone who can reflect with you, someone who can offer perspective and someone who can see how things have been for you over the long term. Many of my patients have been with me for many years beginning when I was a family practice doctor and have followed me into my Chinese medicine, integrated medicine and acupuncture practice.
I’ve been able to offer them again, perspective on the issues they’ve been facing whether it’s dealing with grief or weight loss or pain management. It’s easy for me to look back over the course of my time with them and find things that can be helpful and hopeful which is very important. This is specific to my medical practice of course, but the same holds true in the areas of spirituality. This is why we’ve asked the Reverend Jacob Watson to come talk with us today because this is his specialty.
A former grief counselor, he founded the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine more than a decade ago and now also has a private practice where he offers spiritual companionship to individuals. Jon Patrick Walker found himself in the presence of a very interesting spiritual and healing companion, one that he never even really met over the course of his time spent dealing with his mother’s illness and eventual death. He turned to music as a type of companion to help him through this grieving process.
Thank you for joining us on our Healing Companionship Show. I will be speaking with the Reverend Jacob Watson and my co-host Genevieve Morgan will be joining us in our conversation with Jon Patrick Walker. We hope you enjoy this.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is pleased to be sponsored by the University of New England. As part of our collaboration, we offer weekly a segment we call Wellness Innovations. This week’s wellness innovation comes directly out of the University of New England which was recently awarded a 10 million dollar national institutes of health grant to conduct research and establish a center on the neurobiology of pain. The five-year award will be used to establish the UNE Center of Biomedical Research Excellence for the study of pain and sensory function.
This center aims to significantly contribute to a scientific understanding of the neurobiology of chronic pain and sensory function facilitating the discovery and development of new therapies. For more information on this wellness innovation, visit doctorlisa.org. For more information on this very innovative school, the University of New England, visit une.edu.
Dr. Lisa: Today on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, our topic is Healing Companionship and with us to speak about this topic is Jon Patrick Walker of JP Walker and the Guilty Party. Jon Patrick is an actor and a musician and a good friend of our co-host Genevieve Morgan.
Genevieve: Hi, Jon.
Jon: Hi, Genevieve. Hi, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: Hi. Good to see you and also in the studio we have Jane, your manager.
Jon: That’s right, my manager and my dog, actually.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, so she won’t be speaking to us but she is here. She’s your companion.
Jon: Yes, she’ll make sure everything is on the up and up. If we have any concerns, we can talk to Jenny.
Dr. Lisa: Yeah, she seems very zen right now.
Jon: She is.
Dr. Lisa: That’s good.
Jon: Right in the moment, at all times.
Dr. Lisa: Good, mellow energy. I know there was a very good reason that Genevieve wanted you to come in today and it’s not just because you’re friends. You’ve have some significant things happen in your life recently.
Jon: I have. I’m 44 years old and so there’s that, just sort of midlife.
Dr. Lisa: Just being 44.
Jon: It’s this kind of feeling amazing and miraculous. This past fall, I lost my mom to ovarian cancer. She and I we’re very close because I’m an only child. My parents divorced when I was four but they had shared custody. It was an amicable divorce. My childhood experience growing with my mom and my dad, I was very close to both of them, sort of a missed individual one-on-one dynamic. Let’s say April of 2010, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. At the time, she was living here in Portland and had moved up here a couple of years prior to start up a new life. She had a boyfriend that lives in Brunswick. She decided to move up here and see what life was like up here, to be closer with him and so forth.
She was diagnosed in 2010 and it was pretty serious. It was very clear that she would need some real help and there was no way she could come back to Portland. She wanted to get treatment either in New Haven that’s where I grew up and where actually that’s where she was diagnosed, coincidentally or in New York for treatment. My wife and I ended up taking her in and she was with us for the rest of her life which was a little more than two years or less than two years, I should say about a year and a half.
It was a really challenging as you can imagine to take a really sick person into your home but also I felt very blessed in a funny way. Obviously, never would have wanted her to get sick but the fact that she was sick gave us this chance to really care for her and it afforded us a lot of time to say all the things we wanted to say, to really connect in a deep way through caring for her through this illness.
Dr. Lisa: That must have been interesting because do I understand you have children as well?
Jon: Yeah, we have two girls. My eldest is about to turn 10 and I have a seven and a half year old as well. For them too, I feel like, they’ll never forget her. If she had never lived with us for those months, they’re young enough that it might be like, “Oh yeah, grandma, I don’t remember her that well”. But she was with us day in and day out for those months and they were very close with her and got to spend a lot of time with her. That was another blessing that came out of the illness.
Dr. Lisa: One of the things we were speaking about with Reverend Jacob Watson before this interview was about the idea of being a companion to somebody in stress and grief. You were dealing with your own grief but you were also needing to be a companion to your mother.
Jon: That’s right.
Dr. Lisa: That must have been very difficult for you.
Jon: It was. The grieving process started before she actually passed away because she was so sick and it was so clear that she wasn’t going to ultimately get better. We might buy her some time with treatments and so forth and we did buy her some time. As an only child, as the only son, I felt this deep sense of, “Gosh, I wish I could make her better.” I feel like I somehow should be able to make her better. Knowing rationally that of course, I’m not superhuman but I couldn’t help but have this feeling, “Gosh, is there anything I could do to make her better?”
What I could do was love her and care for her and be there for her. I feel like I did as much as I could do and I felt blessed that we have the room in our home, that we had the time as my wife and I are both actors, musicians and so forth. There’s a lot of free time. We’re sort of a freelance lives that we lead. It’d be harder if I was a doctor or a lawyer or something to take care of my mother in the intense way that I was able to.
It was definitely an intense and challenging but deeply spiritual and moving experience to go through. I usher her into the next life or whatever, whatever is on the other side.
Dr. Lisa: Do you have a spiritual practice or a religion that you subscribe to?
Jon: My mom and I moved into a Buddhist zen center when I was about eight and we lived there for a couple of years and moved away, then moved back for a couple of years. We did a lot of moving in my childhood. Although we stayed in and around the New Haven area where I grew up. I do have Buddhist leanings but I wouldn’t call myself a Buddhist. I do consider myself to be very spiritual person but I’m more drawn to the mystical side of things where you can just connect directly to the higher power, whatever that is, the universe, God. I don’t subscribe to any particular religion, no.
Dr. Lisa: Talk to us about what happened after your mother died because you were clearly brief. You are breathing but then something started to happen for you.
Jon: Yeah, it was really interesting sort of out of the ashes of literally and figuratively of her passing emerged this chapter of my life that I really didn’t see coming. She passed away in October of this past year of 2011 but in the summer before she died, she was very ill at that point. She was in the hospital and wasn’t going to be coming out of the hospital. I was up doing a play in Williamstown, Massachusetts. She was down in New York.
This one day, I received an e-mail. I have a Facebook account and I received an e-mail as people do that said, “So and so wants to be friends with you on Facebook.” This so and so had a very distinct and unusual name that just put a big smile on my face. The person’s name is and was Foday Bojang. “Foday Bojang wants to be friends to you.” Normally, if someone randomly friended me, I had no idea who they were. I’d probably really just delete the e-mail but because this man has such an unusual name, I was curious. So I went to his page and he had a very friendly face but there was very little information on the page. He had seven other friends, so he’s clearly new to Facebook.
It had his date of birth. We were about the same age. He was born in 1968. It said he lived on a farm. It said that he had a secondary education. That was it. There was no marital status. There was no where he’s from, where he lives. I was just really taken in by this mystery man that wanted to be my friend. One day, I was hanging out with my kids and I had my guitar and I had told them about this name. We were all saying, “Foday Bojang, Foday Bojang,” because we just thought it was so fun to say.
This one day I started strumming the guitar and I actually started playing the song Louie Louie by the Kingsmen but I was singing “Foday Bojang,” instead of Louie Louie. Out of that came an actual original song that just sort of like I said, “Hey, well if I change this chord and I do that, that’s kind of cool, a song about Foday Bojang.” It sounds good to sing it. It feels good to sing it. There was an alliteration that was very pleasing, “I got friended by Foday Bojang on Facebook.” This was kind of too good to pass up. I wrote a song and as soon as I had it written, it took a few days to get the bridge put in and the right verses and all that but when it was done, I got goose bumps and I thought to myself, “I’ve got to go into the studio and record this song.”
I had been in bands in high school and in college. In my 20s I was making demos and playing guitar and did a couple little solo gigs but for the last 12, 13 years, the guitar had pretty much been collecting dusts as it so often happen with people you get married, have a family, career who really wasn’t playing. Occasionally, I would of course always be drawn back to it and I did write a couple of songs in my 30s but they sat in a drawer somewhere.
At any rate, I write this song. I decided I got to go record it. A week later on in Maine and a friends of mine lives in Nashville, Tennessee and he’s a musician, so I just tell him what’s going on. He says, “Well, yehey. Come to Nashville. I have friends. My best friend has a studio. I have always great musician friends. We could do it. It wouldn’t have to cost you very much. Take a couple of days, you have a song.” In September, late September, we’d gone back to New York at the end of the summer, spend a lot of time with my mom. We took those couple of days, went down and recorded the song. It was just a dream. It was just a magical, wonderful experience. I thought it was the greatest thing I could do. It was just so much fun.
I got back to New York. I was able to play that song for my mom. She was kind of getting near the end but I played her the song. She was thrilled by it and really loved it. Within two weeks, I had a band which again was just completely unexpected but I had a friend who had recently opened a bar and I said, “Can I come play some songs at your bar?” He said, “Yeah but it’s too bad you don’t have a band.” I sort of scratched my head and tell him, “Yeah, that would be cool to have a band but how am I going to get a band together?” It sounds impossible. I do know a few people. Made three phone calls, got three yeses immediately, so then I have a band.
Two weeks after getting back from Nashville, I’m in practice with my band. Two weeks later or about a week later, my mom goes into hospice and about a week after that, she passed away. I get to be with her at the very end and holding her hand as she took her last breath. That was the very moving and deep experience. Now, though out of this place of incredible grief, I suddenly got this new creative outlet that I didn’t have. As an actor, I’ve been an actor for 20 years, very at the mercy of other people’s opinions, other people’s project. You are waiting for the phone to ring, you have an audition, you get a callback, “Oh, you were so great but we’re going to go another way.” I’ve gotten a lot of work. I’ve supported myself as an actor but it can be a very frustrating career.
With the music, I suddenly had this very empowering, self-empowering realization that, “Hey, I can make music. That doesn’t have to be just a hobby that I don’t have any time for. I can start to make time for my music.” Out of the grief, I had this band and I decided I’m going back to Nashville. I have songs in this drawer, let me go look at these songs. Some of them were pretty great. They needed some work. They needed some shaping but I started working on this older songs, kept writing, that’s a new song and ended up going back to Nashville three other times. Here I am a year after getting this e-mail from Foday Bojang, I have an album and I’m very, very proud of it and really excited. I think it’s got a lot of potential, I really do.
It’s just eerie because what if Foday Bojang hadn’t friended me? Honestly, would I have made this record? It was not in my consciousness. I was not thinking about it. It’s just one of those turns in your life that comes from a very unexpected place.
Dr. Lisa: We’ll return to our interview after acknowledging the following generous sponsors: Robin Hodgkin, senior vice president and financial adviser at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney in Portland, Maine. For all your investment needs, call Robin Hodgkin at 207-771-0888. Investments and services are offered through Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC, member SIPC and by Booth. Accounting and business management services, payroll and bookkeeping. Business is done better with Booth. Go to boothmaine.com for more information.
Dr. Lisa: Maybe if you hadn’t been going through what you were going through, you might not have been open it.
Jon: Exactly, exactly. I think just the year I’ve spent caring for my mom it’s like my nerve endings were exposed which is difficult but it also does open you up to the creative impulse in a different kind of way because you just suddenly feel like, “Man, life is so fragile. Life is so precious.” Again, being in my mid40s and you start to go, “Well, what do I really want to do? Do I want to just keep waiting for the phone to ring or do I want to find something that gives me incredible joy that I can do right now and share with people?”
Dr. Lisa: Can you do that for us right now? Share it with us your song Foday Bojang?
Jon: Sure, I’ll play Foday Bojang.
Dr. Lisa: Is this the first time that people at Maine are going to hear this song?
Jon: Actually, I was at Lompoc Café in Bar Harbor last week, it was an open mic night and I went and played this. A select few Mainers have heard this song before but this will be the first time playing for you all. This is the song that started. I’ll just play a little bit for you, just to give you a taste.
Thanks for listening.
Dr. Lisa: In a weird way, do you think that Foday Bojang became your spiritual, your healing companion?
Jon: In a funny way, he did. It’s kind of eerie. It’s kind of uncanny but you’re not the first person to say, “Is Foday Bojang god?” That’s what someone said to me a few weeks ago. “Maybe, maybe. I don’t know.”
Dr. Lisa: All of the above.
Jon: Yeah, exactly. Who knows but it was pretty cool how it all happened.
Dr. Lisa: What about your bandmates? The interesting thing for me is that you had just gone through this almost two-year period of really having to kind of hunker down and be with your mom and your family and really have to do a lot of intensive one-on-one stuff. Did these bandmates of yours provide spiritual companionship at a time where you really needed to get out into the world again?
Jon: Like I said, the band actually was formed literally about two weeks before she passed away. Absolutely, it was a huge support that I just never would have again expected or thought to ask for but it just kind of happened and really It’s hard to imagine how difficult this year would have been if I hadn’t have the music, if I hadn’t been giving myself permission to go into that place and explore in that creative way. If I hadn’t had the band, if I hadn’t made the album, I don’t know. It was a hard year anyway but there was a lot of joy out of all the music.
The thing is my mom was a huge lover of music. Half the reason that I’m as musical as I am probably more than half frankly is growing up with my mom, listening to Joni Mitchell endlessly, Stevie Wonder, Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon. These albums are the soundtrack of my childhood, Crosby, Stills and Nash and Paul Simon, There Goes Rhymin’ Simon and Harry Nilsson, all these singer, songwriters and rock and roll bands. It was a huge part of my childhood. I always just love music deeply. I have to thank her for and this really feels like giving gift back to her in some spiritual way.
There’s a song on the album which may be there’ll be time for you to hear recording that was written for my mom after she passed that’s on the record called Miss You Mama. The title sort of says it all. The whole thing is really … I dedicate the record to the women in my life, to my wife and children and to my mom. Then I also dedicate it to my dad because I kind of leave my dad out of it.
Dr. Lisa: Do you think that part of what going back and bringing your mom into your life enabled you to do was in some interesting way returned to some piece of your childhood that maybe needed healing, that maybe needed bring back around. Similarly, the guitar, what you said had been gathering dusts but music was really joyful for you and it was something you did in your childhood. Was there a sort of returning back to this youthful element that brought you back to life in some way?
Jon: Absolute. One of the most amazing things of all these is the fact that my dad who I know I mentioned earlier, they divorced in 1972 or 1973. My dad was a huge presence at the end for her. Last summer when I was up in Williamstown and wrote the song doing this play. I was going down at every day off driving down to the city and being with my mom. My dad ended up being there day in and day out for my mom. He told me and her that summer that he realized that she was the love of his life. He’s single. He was married the second time and then divorced. He’s been a bachelor for the last 29 years.
He said, “She’s the love of my life.” My mom referred to him near the end as her rocks. She’s like, “Bruce was my rock.” As a child divorce, it was incredibly healing to see them coming back together in a certain way. It wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t anything of that nature but they reconnected in a very deep way. That was an unbelievably healing thing for the child within me that I think has always felt just confused and hurt by the divorce in some way. Even though again it was amicable divorce and they had shared custody of me. It was about as painless as you could ask of a divorce but it was still a divorce. That was a very unexpected and wonderful thing that happened.
Dr. Lisa: It’s appropriate that you’re in here talking with us today. We really appreciate your music.
Genevieve: Tell us when the album is coming out and where people can find it.
Jon: The album should be out hopefully I would say by October, Safe Cast, they’ll be buying all. I’m going to go make records in all these CDs. I’m sure the album will be available on iTunes and probably available for free listening on Spotify. People can look for it. It will be called Jon Patrick Walker. The Guilty Party will be the name of the album.
Dr. Lisa: Facebook page?
Jon: Yes, there’s a Facebook page.
Dr. Lisa: Website?
Jon: There’ll be a website. There isn’t one yet. I have to get some help with that.
Dr. Lisa: It sounds like you have no problem attracting the right help into your life.
Jon: Simply if you just ask for it, the universal give you what you need.
Dr. Lisa: Very good. Thanks so much for joining us.
Jon: Thank you. Pleasure.