Transcription of 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.
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Dr. Lisa: We are speaking with the Reverend Jacob Watson of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. In one of our earlier shows, we spoke with Angie Arndt, also of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine. This show is a little bit different. I thank you for being here Reverend Watson.
Jacob: Thank you. I’d like to dedicated our time together to the alleviation of suffering everywhere, to the healing of everyone everywhere.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you for that. Angie Arndt did a nice job representing the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine but for those who haven’t heard about the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine or ChIME, could you tell us a little bit more about that?
Jacob: ChIME is an interfaith chaplaincy school with a two-year program to train individuals who want to deepen their own spiritual practice but also who want to be interfaith ministers and serve the world. An interfaith minister is someone who’s trained to be fully present with no agenda and be accepting of anyone’s spiritual or religious path. I add to people with no spiritual or religious path because there are those individuals out there today. This context of companion is someone who is again, I’ll use those words again, fully present, someone who is able to be with you and not interrupt you what’s going on.
It could be a friend. It could be a professional. It could be spontaneously someone you meet on the street but someone who is very attuned to not only what you’re saying but what’s in your heart, that kind of deep spiritual companion.
Dr. Lisa: Why is the idea of the spiritual companion important to you?
Jacob: It’s important to me because I think it’s important to the world. Many of the students that walk through our door say that they’re lonely, that they’ve been on a spiritual path or a spiritual quest for quite a long time but they haven’t been able to tell anybody about it. They’ve been afraid of judgments perhaps or they might have come from a religion that didn’t accept how they evolved as a spiritual being in their teens and later years. They’re wanting that deep companionship that involves deep acceptance, a lack of judgment but also an encouragement I think, an encouragement to be truly who you are at both the emotional and the spiritual level.
Dr. Lisa: Why are people so lonely?
Jacob: Take a look at our culture. Our culture doesn’t like emotion. Our culture likes to cover things up and distract people from what’s really going on. To go back to the word healing, the only way that we can heal is to be truthful about who we are, to say the truth about what happened to us, the experience the trauma and express the natural emotions about that trauma, what that was, the pain, the sadness, the suffering, the loss, the anger, the fear and one of the natural emotions is also love because tragedy brings that feeling up as well.
The way to move through these experiences is to offer the companionship that involves expressing your natural emotions. That’s a phrase that goes back to Kübler-Ross, Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the natural emotions, we’re human therefore we feel or maybe it’s we feel therefore we’re human.
Dr. Lisa: That sounds very intimate.
Jacob: It is. That’s a good descriptive word. It’s very intimate and that I think that’s what the conversation is about. It is a very intimate conversation whether it’s you’re with your friend or you’re with your counselor or you’re with Sand Dunes at Crescent Beach State Park or in the woods at Sebago.
Dr. Lisa: In my practice, I’ve noticed that there is trauma and different levels of pain associate with that trauma but many people don’t want to talk about it for fear of seeming if they are complaining. How does the spiritual or a feeling companion help people lock that line between expressing their pain and seeming as though they’re complaining?
Jacob: It’s a continuum. You have a right to complain. Life does victimize us but you don’t have to stay there. I think the important thing is to provide a sacred opportunity, a sacred conversation. By sacred I mean, when there’s two of you talking, both of you know that you’re not the only one in the room. That there is something, somebody, something larger than the two of you there and present. It gives at a sacred tone. Then it provides the safety I think for the feelings to come out, the natural emotions but you don’t stay there. That’s the critical part, I think.
For me, expressing natural emotions opens up pathways to the spirit. It’s as if it cleans out and clears out pathways to the spirit.
Dr. Lisa: I found that intimacy can be a very intimidating thing for some people and that people are afraid of it. How can healing or spiritual companion help individuals move pass that fear?
Jacob: The best word is invitation, provide the invitation and the setting I suppose. Privacy helps at first but the invitation to be who you really are to say, “This hurts and this is what happened.” Never mind what other people thought happened. This is my experience of what happened. A personal example, for years I was a grief counselor. I had helped my friend Bill Hammond start the Center for Grieving Children. I had a full meaningful practice and yet there was still small voice inside. I didn’t know what it was saying. It was saying something about God, something about the divine but I really couldn’t figure it out.
Then my counseling office caught fire, I mean literally caught fire and burned. I was sitting on the sidewalk outside looking at smoke coming out of my counseling office, on my records and my books and the things that people had given me from workshops and so forth going up in smoke and flames. That woke up within a year I was back in school and I finally understood that people were bringing me as a counselor. They were bringing me their broken hearts and their wounded spirit. When I got that, I said, “All right, back to school.” I was studying for Doctor of Ministry and Chaplaincy Ordination.
Dr. Lisa: It’s very interesting that your office burned down because it was no longer a still small voice. It was instead an enormous burning bush.
Jacob: Yeah.
Dr. Lisa: Why were you ignoring this still small voice?
Jacob: Because I was so involved in the trappings of the world. I practiced. I was busy with my family. I was involved in the community. It’s the distraction of everyday life, I think. I needed something like that. Most of us do. Many of the individuals whether back when I was a counselor or now as a minister providing spiritual companionship, people bring their tragedy into those sacred conversations. Those losses, those really tough events in a person’s life wake people up and it’s not pretty. It’s very, very hard. I mean, somebody in deep grief needs to go through that and it’s painful.
There is a lot of deep, authentic emotion and that’s the bottomline, I think, their deep feeling, their sadness, their anger. People are pissed off about what happened to them and rightfully saw but they don’t need to stay there. They can express that in a sacred environment, a sacred companionship.
Dr. Lisa: You mentioned Elizabeth Kübler-Ross and her seminal work was on death and dying which outlined the stages of grief. Could you give our listeners an idea of what these stages of grief are?
Jacob: I think the best thing was that the culture was ready to hear that, that there were stages. What was not so good is that you hear those stages and you think, “Well, okay. What’s next?” As if there were a prescription for that or if I’m not into the anger, am I into the bargaining phase or the depression stage? Her great gift to us was to open up the conversation. As usual, the culture takes it too literally and doesn’t see the metaphor behind it. I’ll say a word about the depression because I think that’s quite prevalent in our culture. We take pills to deal with it.
The idea of depression is that it dense down all your feelings. You don’t feel anything. You don’t feel like getting out of bed in the morning. Yet if you can allow one feeling, the culture would like a formula. It doesn’t matter what feeling it is. If you can allow one feeling to come up, that moves away from depression because you’re beginning to express your natural emotions. That’s the key. Letting one feeling come up and be externalized. It was Elizabeth’s thing that is putting outside into the world into the conversation, the companionship conversation, what’s inside, putting that out into the world.
It takes courage to do that and it takes safety to do that and it takes a safe person to listen to that but that’s the point, to let that come up and come out. There’s movement. Something is happening. You express one feeling and the need to express that feeling drops away a little bit. Therefore leaving room for the next feeling, whatever it is. The key is it doesn’t matter what it is but it’s another feeling. It’s another authentic, another natural emotion to come up. That movement, that continuous movement sometimes on your own, sometimes at Crescent Beach, Sebago but sometimes with a counselor, with an individual, with another faith minister.
That movement is what’s healthy. The notion of being stuck, I mean, that’s common. We use that in our language. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know to take this job or this relationship. I feel stuck about that.” That’s the key that that cycle is indeed impeded. It’s gotten stuck. Anything you do to move that, anything you do is helpful.
Dr. Lisa: Is that a place where our listener might seek healing or spiritual companionship? Perhaps where their feelings stuck, if they have suffered a job loss or undergone grieving through a death or other types of trauma?
Jacob: Yeah, that would be a clue. That would be a fine post pointing in the direction of working with someone. I have to say too that no one can do this work for you. We would like that. People come in to my office or they come in to the chaplaincy program sometimes and or they come in to a therapist office, grief counselor’s office. They would like the other person to do the work but no one can do this work but the individual who is going through it and again moving through it. That’s the key phrase, moving through it.
I’m reminded of a quote I like from Andrew Harvey who’s been a ChIME workshop leader and a wonderful translator and I think modern day mystique. Andrew says, “You will be graced by the necessary catastrophes.” That’s only the first half. “You will be graced by the necessary catastrophes. They will take away your hiding places and reveal unbelievable beauty. They will take away your hiding places and reveal unbelievable beauty.”
Dr. Lisa: Why is it that in our culture we are so afraid of going to those dark places?
Jacob: We’re afraid of losing our interior status or composure and yet that’s precisely what’s required. What people discover I think is that they may have a lot of anger, they may have a lot of grief, they may have a lot of sadness but they are not that anger. It’s a feeling that comes and eventually as they externalize it, it goes. Underneath that that which doesn’t change is their spirit, who they really are at the bottom level, the deepest level. Their spirit doesn’t change. It’s natural to be afraid of the unknown and many people don’t have a sense of who they are as a spiritual being because these all is overlay that the culture requires us or we think it requires us to have a role, a particular kind of ego, a particular kind of image in the world.
Those things come and go. Some of those are voluntary. We choose to have a certain career or job. We choose to be apparent. We choose how to apparent. Some are involuntary, a car accident or a sudden death but those common goal was underneath that that doesn’t change is your spirit, who you are as a spiritual being.
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Dr. Lisa: From what I remember of Angie Arndt’s conversation, the first year at the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine is about dissembling. It’s about taking a part from really held ideas. What if people are not willing to let go of some of their ideas and dissemble what they have previously known? They went there thinking that they were going to be chaplains.
Jacob: I don’t think it’s difficult to get people to go there because it doesn’t work that way anyway. People come to ChIME and they have heard us in the summer when they’re circling around and they’re deciding whether to apply or not. They hear us that the first year is a way of contemplation and the second year is a way of action. Then they get there and they find themselves in an environment which is encouraging them to go deeper and look at themselves. The program is designed that way because the foundation of being an effective interfaith minister and I think a healthy human being is to know yourself, to know thyself and to know what your triggers are, to know what your history is and not get stuck. There’s that word again in your history certainly but to keep that circle going and be more and more aware of who you are so that you can be fully present for other people.
When you’re a minister and you’re with another person, it’s critical that you leave your agenda at the door. People say, “I don’t have any agenda.” Everybody has an agenda. I have an agenda. The important thing is to leave it at the door so that you’re fully present and available for that person in the sacred conversation, in the healing companionship conversation.
Jacob: I love the word contemplation. It’s reminiscent of sunrises and Crescent Beach but when you think about contemplation and what it truly means, sometimes it’s not pretty. It means really struggling with your mind and your own thoughts. Is this something you’ve had to do in your life?
Dr. Lisa: You mean like last night? I appreciate your honesty in the sense that it’s not pretty your words and I think what you’re saying is that it hurts or it’s not who we want to be in that moment. The gift that’s giving you is that it’s who you are at that moment. It’s the truth. We can put different labels on it. We can call it not pretty or it’s inconvenient, I have to get to work, et cetera but it’s truth and that underlies an authentic life. As I think back to being a hostess chaplain and spending a lot time with families when a family member is dying. There was a scene about wanting to live a life as the person that you are and not pretending to be someone else that is a wish to let go over time of the roles that sometimes we play ourselves.
Sometimes the roles that society or our family members or other people put on us but to let go of the roles over time and allow to emerge the authentic self. We’re human. Life continues until we die. Then that’s another program after that. I think it’s ongoing. It’s ongoing the challenge to be authentic and who you are both as an emotional being and a spiritual being. I think the divine or God, whatever name we have for the larger self, behind everything or above all of us. That quality, that divinity wants realness, wants authenticity. I don’t know any other way to say it. God doesn’t abide fools or people that play roles that have extraordinary egos, that have needs. It’s about being who you are.
A lot of times people come in to chaplaincy or if they have a conversation with me, where I’m providing spiritual companionship, sometimes they did sometimes unstated wish is that, “Oh well, if I become more spiritual, I’m not going to hurt so much,” or “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to be pissed off and angry,” or “I won’t wake up at 3 AM really raging about something. The opposite is probably true that the more that you uncover the roles and ask yourself of the roles. You’re going to feel more but there will be I think a confidence and an understanding A, that you’re not alone, that God is with you and encouraging you and B, you will feel that depths of authenticity and it doesn’t matter what other people say or do because you are living your life, your own life with no one else can do for you.
Dr. Lisa: Talk to us about the important of space.
Jacob: Space means lots of things. It means physical space. A great quality of the Hindu religion is that there is in most Hindu homes, there’s spaces, there’s spiritual sacred space everywhere you look. There’s a flower, there’s an icon talking about including closets and bedrooms and bathrooms; it’s everywhere. There’s the notion of creating sacred space wherever you are. There’s a notion too I think of being. I don’t think you have to be a minister to do this at all but someone who carries sacred space with them so that when … I mean, I have some friends like that. If I know that when I’m with them, there is a sacred quality about our conversation. We’re not going to talk about trivia. We’re going to get right to it. There’s that kind of space, the emotional and spiritual space of a conversation.
I don’t know what else to say about space except that there’s a 3 AM kind of space where I wake up and sometimes the moon has found its way in the window and it’s shining on my face and wants me to get up. Sometimes my heart is racing because I have a feeling that needs to be expressed somehow. Sometimes my mind is going. There’s an intellectual list I have to put down on paper. That kind of space keeps you alive and I think if you can be aware of that and again, going back to that circle, keeping it moving, keeping it moving, keeping it expressed. It’s why the ChIME program has a very strong component of art, using the word art in a very broad way so that the expression of whatever it is that’s inside has a form to come out into the world.
Dr. Lisa: Is there also space in silence?
Jacob: Of course, yeah. It can be a revolutionary act to walk into your job and say, “Let’s have a moment of silence before the staff meeting.” Somebody says, “Well, we’ve got a whole list of things we have to do” “No, let’s have a moment of silence.” That can be, I suppose evolutionary but revolutionary as well. We start everything at ChIME whether it’s our classes or our workshops and particularly our board of trustees meetings with a moment of silence. Yes, I’m going to ring that bell once over to drop and do some silence and then I’ll ring the bell again at the conclusion.
Room that you may know is the bestselling poet in this country and has been for 10 years. It is no accident that he lived and worked in Afghanistan. He walked the streets of Baghdad and brings to us I think much encouragement to be authentic to let go of the roles, a helper of hearts. “Don’t look down on the heart even if it’s not behaving well. Even in that shape, the heart is more precious than the teachings of the exalted saints. The broken heart is where God looks. How lucky is the soul that mends the heart. For God consoling the heart that is broken into hundreds of pieces is better than going on pilgrimage.
God’s treasures are buried in ruined hearts. If you put on the belt of service and serve hearts like a slave or servant, the roads to all the secrets will open before your eyes. If you want peace and glory, forget about your earthly honors and try to please the hearts. If you become a helper of hearts, springs of wisdom will flow from your heart. The water of life will run from your mouth like a torrent. Your breath will become medicine like the breath of Jesus. Be silent. Even if you have 200 tongues in each hair on your head, you won’t be able to explain the heart.” I’m glad to share that with you.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you for that, Reverend Watson. How do people find out more about your organization?
Jacob: ChIME has a website, chimeofmaine.org. It’s a good website, up to date. We have various events that are open to the public during the summer and also during the school year. Those are listed on the website, chimeofmaine.org.
Dr. Lisa: If some of our listeners would like to speak with you directly?
Jacob: I’m reminded of what we’re saying earlier that sometimes groups or organizations are not what people are seeking, so sometimes individuals are looking for somebody in a more intimate and private setting. I work with people in that way as well. My number is 207-761-2522 and I have a website, revjacobwatson.com and I’m in the phonebook as well. It’s been a privilege to talk with you. I appreciate it, I really do.
Dr. Lisa: John McCain, our audio guru has been trying to get you on the show for the past year and apparently the time is now right.
Jacob: Apparently.
Dr. Lisa: Thank you for joining us today and enlightening us with your conversation about spiritual and healing companionship.
Jacob: Really it’s been a privilege. Thank you.
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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.
Dr. Lisa: As a special gift to you, our listener, we offer a brief piece from Jon Patrick Walker’s upcoming album. We hope you enjoy.
We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s show on Healing Companionship featuring the Reverend Jacob Watson, founder of the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine and actor, musician and songwriter, Jon Patrick Walker. For more information on our guests, visit doctorlisa.org. Please also like us on Facebook and take a moment to let us know what you think of our shows. Thank you to our sponsors who make possible the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast every week. We appreciate their being part of our world.
This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. Thank you for being part of our world. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine, Mike LePage and Beth Franklin at Re/Max Heritage, Robin Hodgkin at Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists, Marci Booth of Booth Financial Services, UNE The University of New England, Tom Shepard of Shepard Financial and The Body Architect.
The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded in downtown Portland at the offices of Maine Magazine on 75 Market Street. It is produced by Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle. Editorial content produced by Genevieve Morgan. Audio production and original music by John C. McCain. For more information on our hosts, production team, Maine Magazine or any of the guests featured here today, visit us at doctorlisa.org. Download and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle through iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.