Speaker 1: Hello Sunshine, Hey fam Today on the bright Side, Grammy
Speaker 1: nominated singer songwriter Jewel is here. She's got a brand
Speaker 1: new art exhibit and a new summer tour. She's talking
Speaker 1: about why making the human choice is always the right choice,
Speaker 1: and why in the end, only kindness matters. It's Tuesday,
Speaker 1: May twenty eighth. I'm Simone Voice, I'm.
Speaker 2: Danielle Robe and this is the bright Side from Hello
Speaker 2: Sunshine Simon. Jewel burst onto the scene in the nineties,
Speaker 2: and she changed the game.
Speaker 3: She was really an outlier.
Speaker 2: There was this cookie cutter box that people had to
Speaker 2: fit in with musicianship and artistry, and kind of like
Speaker 2: Adele did about a decade ago, she changed things for people.
Speaker 1: I think the common thread between Jewel and Adele is heartbreak, pain,
Speaker 1: life experience. Like they both brought that grown woman vibe.
Speaker 1: I mean, I remember when Yes Well grit, when Jewel
Speaker 1: broke out. I mean, she brought this emotionality and texture
Speaker 1: to her voice that felt just more mature in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways than the bubblegum pop of that day.
Speaker 1: I mean, songs like you Were Meant for Me? Who
Speaker 1: Will Save Your Soul? Standing Still? Even the yodling like
Speaker 1: she brought a whole new technique to the game.
Speaker 2: Yes, and she had been yodling in bars since she
Speaker 2: was eight years old, but she became a household name
Speaker 2: with her twelve time platinum album Pieces of You. I
Speaker 2: remember listening to that in my mom's car as a
Speaker 2: little girl. I was aware that Jewel grew up in
Speaker 2: Alaska on a homestead, but the heartbreak of her childhood
Speaker 2: was something I didn't know.
Speaker 1: The depths of Yeah, I mean, she experienced the unimaginable
Speaker 1: parental abuse, homelessness, poverty. She left her home at the
Speaker 1: age of fifteen and eventually got a scholarship to Interlock
Speaker 1: and Center for the Arts. It's this prestigious boarding school
Speaker 1: in Michigan for artists in high.
Speaker 3: School, That's exactly it.
Speaker 2: And she couldn't afford to go home during breaks, so
Speaker 2: she hitchhiked around the country and to Mexico, and it
Speaker 2: was around that time that she wrote her first hit,
Speaker 2: who Will Save Your Soul?
Speaker 1: Her resilience, to me is just mind blowing, and I
Speaker 1: think that a lot of people probably aren't aware of
Speaker 1: how committed she's been to providing mental health resources for others,
Speaker 1: which I mean, she's done that for nearly two decades
Speaker 1: through her Children's Foundation, she was part of.
Speaker 2: The mental health conversation even before it was a conversation.
Speaker 2: So while you were away on your retreat, I had
Speaker 2: the opportunity to sit down with Jewel. She's debuting The Portal,
Speaker 2: which is an immersive art exhibit centered on wellness and
Speaker 2: it's just in time for Mental Health Awareness Month. It's
Speaker 2: on display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
Speaker 2: in Bentonville, Arkansas, right now through July twenty eighth, and
Speaker 2: it includes companion music and EP titled The Portal, which
Speaker 2: will be out this July. Simon, I'm excited to share
Speaker 2: this conversation with you.
Speaker 1: I cannot wait to listen along with all of our
Speaker 1: bright Side best. After the Break, Danielle's interview with the
Speaker 1: One and Only Jewel.
Speaker 2: We're back and we're here with Grammy nominated singer songwriter
Speaker 2: Jewel Jewel.
Speaker 4: Welcome to the bright Side. Hi, thanks for having me, Jewel.
Speaker 2: My mom had a cherry red jeep Grand Cherokee when
Speaker 2: I was growing up, and pieces of you would play
Speaker 2: on repeat in the car. I knew every single one
Speaker 2: of your songs before I even knew what the words meant.
Speaker 2: I could really feel you. I could feel your music
Speaker 2: even at such a young age, And I think many
Speaker 2: people could say the same thing.
Speaker 3: What was the soundtrack of your youth?
Speaker 4: The wind and the leaves, the sound of seals in
Speaker 4: the bay?
Speaker 5: Music.
Speaker 4: My dad was a songwriter. My whole family sang, so
Speaker 4: there was definitely a lot of music around. We didn't
Speaker 4: have a tough division, and so it was quiet. It
Speaker 4: was quiet compared to other people's lives, but in that
Speaker 4: quiet was a symphony of life that made me feel
Speaker 4: incredibly comforted.
Speaker 2: When I was young, I was blown away when I
Speaker 2: learned about everything that you had to overcome to become
Speaker 2: one of the most successful artists of your generation, from
Speaker 2: living in your car to selling millions of records. Your
Speaker 2: path was paved with one challenge after another, and one
Speaker 2: way you found your way through it all was music.
Speaker 2: But how else were you able to find stability?
Speaker 4: I moved out at fifteen, and I knew before I
Speaker 4: decided to do it, I was contemplating if I should
Speaker 4: do it, and I knew it was quite dangerous to
Speaker 4: move out. Statistically that doesn't work out well, and I
Speaker 4: wanted to be very clear eyed about the type of
Speaker 4: danger that I was stepping into and was that risk
Speaker 4: worth leaving a home that I didn't really enjoy living in.
Speaker 4: And I felt like that meant I had to have
Speaker 4: a plan. I'd been reading a lot of philosophy at
Speaker 4: the time, and maybe that's what made me sort of
Speaker 4: very logical maybe or tactical about it. And so I
Speaker 4: realized what I had to do was learn a new vocabulary,
Speaker 4: a new emotional way of relating to the world. It
Speaker 4: got me so curious, like how do you learn a
Speaker 4: new emotional language? It felt ambitious and it felt kind
Speaker 4: of exciting, and it also felt clear, like I had
Speaker 4: a clear mission now, and that meant I had to
Speaker 4: study and be observant and be curious. And I started
Speaker 4: by watching other people's interactions and I looked at those
Speaker 4: as if that was grammar. The way that parent how
Speaker 4: to that child, the way that person didn't get angry
Speaker 4: at that person. Those were all lexicons, pieces to put
Speaker 4: together in a way of speaking, if you will. And
Speaker 4: so I set off sort of at that time in
Speaker 4: my life with that being my mission. Was happiness a
Speaker 4: learnable skill? Was it a teachable skill? Could I get
Speaker 4: to know my nature? If my nurture was really bad.
Speaker 2: You were talking about sphere virtual emptiness in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 2: way before this was part of the zeitgeist. How did
Speaker 2: music and writing save you?
Speaker 4: My dad grew up in a really abusive household, and
Speaker 4: he wrote a beautiful book called Sun of a Midnight Land,
Speaker 4: and one of the things he said in it is
Speaker 4: I was given the sickness, but I was also given
Speaker 4: the cure. And I think that's true for a lot
Speaker 4: of us. All of our lives, all of our hearts
Speaker 4: are destined to be broken. It doesn't matter for poor
Speaker 4: or rich, we're famous or we're homeless. All of our
Speaker 4: hearts are destined to be broken at some point. It's
Speaker 4: what we do with the pieces that make us extraordinary.
Speaker 4: And so it's each of our jobs to learn to
Speaker 4: become alchemists, to turn the poison into medicine. And we
Speaker 4: all have some kind of resource available to us. And
Speaker 4: so for me, writing really was that I had been
Speaker 4: writing a long time before I started writing songs and
Speaker 4: singing my whole life. And so when I couldn't afford
Speaker 4: to go back home during the winter breaks at this
Speaker 4: boarding school, I was at my idea of lemonade was
Speaker 4: hitchhiking across the country. I couldn't learn other people's songs
Speaker 4: because I didn't know enough chords, and it was just
Speaker 4: a lot easier to improvise and make up lyrics. And
Speaker 4: it was my first time seeing pop culture in America,
Speaker 4: and you know, reality TV wasn't a thing yet. And
Speaker 4: I do find that really interesting that my very first
Speaker 4: line was people living their lives for you on TV.
Speaker 4: They say they're better than you, and you agree. I
Speaker 4: was raised without a television, and suddenly I was in America,
Speaker 4: where there was worship, There was a hero worship, there
Speaker 4: was worship of.
Speaker 5: People on television.
Speaker 4: And I know America was found out on getting away
Speaker 4: from a royal system, from kings and queens, but celebrities
Speaker 4: in America became the new kings and queens. And I
Speaker 4: could see the writing on the wall. I could see
Speaker 4: it happening already. And this in myself, lack of accountability,
Speaker 4: of nobody's coming for me, Am, I coming for me, AM,
Speaker 4: I really showing up for my am, I copping out.
Speaker 4: I wanted to learn how to be more accountable, and
Speaker 4: it took me longer than that moment.
Speaker 3: What do you mean copping out.
Speaker 4: I was shoplifting a lot, and granted it did help
Speaker 4: me survive. There were definitely things about it that helped
Speaker 4: food and things like that, but a lot of the
Speaker 4: shoplifting was just to medicate my anxiety. It's also a
Speaker 4: really entitled thing to do, to steal, but I had
Speaker 4: a chip on my shoulder. I felt like the world
Speaker 4: owed me. I felt like I was cheated and not
Speaker 4: that those things aren't true. What I started to realize
Speaker 4: and realize with more time, is that a lot of
Speaker 4: us have many good reasons not to be happy, But
Speaker 4: will you let those be excuses?
Speaker 5: That's where the rubber meets the road.
Speaker 4: That's where no matter how bad your life is, no
Speaker 4: matter how betrayed and hurt you've been, it's still up
Speaker 4: to you to learn how to be happy because nobody
Speaker 4: cares but you. You have the most investment in it,
Speaker 4: and me sitting around and saying poor me doesn't help it.
Speaker 4: All it does is hurt me. What am I willing
Speaker 4: to do about it? And so writing whole Savior Soul
Speaker 4: was about watching where I thought maybe culture was heading disconnection,
Speaker 4: asking and expecting other people to help us when we
Speaker 4: are absolutely unwilling to be fully accountable to our own
Speaker 4: If you want to say salvation, it's a strong word,
Speaker 4: but in a way that.
Speaker 2: Self reliance is just such a huge through line in
Speaker 2: your story. You got a million dollar record deal and
Speaker 2: you turned it down and you were still living in
Speaker 2: your car.
Speaker 3: Why did you turn it down?
Speaker 4: I ended a homeless because I wouldn't have sex with
Speaker 4: a boss. He wouldn't give me my paycheck, so I
Speaker 4: couldn't pay my rent, so got kicked out sort of
Speaker 4: living in my car. I was having really bad panic attacks.
Speaker 4: I was getting agoraphobic, which is a fear of leaving
Speaker 4: your home, so I didn't want to leave my car
Speaker 4: or sometimes wouldn't get out to go eat at a
Speaker 4: panic attacks if I left my car or the street
Speaker 4: corner that I was on. And my shoplifting hit a
Speaker 4: whole new level, and I realized I would end up
Speaker 4: in jailer dead if I didn't turn my life around.
Speaker 4: But when I ultimately got discovered, it was accidental. I
Speaker 4: wasn't trying to get discovered. I just I wanted to
Speaker 4: stop feeling alone. The only place I told truth was
Speaker 4: in this journal. I never read that journal to anybody
Speaker 4: nobody knew the real me. I never was allowing myself
Speaker 4: to be vulnerable enough to let myself be seen for
Speaker 4: how much pain I was in or how bad some
Speaker 4: of my coping skills were. And so I decided to
Speaker 4: write songs very honestly and to sing them in these
Speaker 4: coffee shops. My first show was for two surfers. I
Speaker 4: think it was a five hour show, because that's what
Speaker 4: we did growing up in bars.
Speaker 5: You do five hour shows.
Speaker 4: So I wrote five hours worth of material and these
Speaker 4: two surfer guys just cried during the show. I cried
Speaker 4: during the show, and I was rewarded for being deeply,
Speaker 4: deeply authentic. And that felt like it'll bring tears to
Speaker 4: my eyes, Like what a gift that was in my life,
Speaker 4: that changed my life. And then that audio and screw
Speaker 4: and I got discovered. But yes, my first album, I
Speaker 4: realized also for some other reason, like I'll get to
Speaker 4: the million dollars.
Speaker 5: Nobody gives you anything for free.
Speaker 3: That is true.
Speaker 4: I grew up on a ranch, I grew up with
Speaker 4: horse trading. I grew up with very smart people trading
Speaker 4: and bartering. Nobody gives you something for free. There's always
Speaker 4: a price, So nobody was giving me a million dollars
Speaker 4: like I did know enough to know that. So it's
Speaker 4: the catch. Nobody's telling me what the catches. And so
Speaker 4: I did go to the public library and asked for
Speaker 4: a book on the music business. It's a really famous book.
Speaker 4: It's still being published today and updated, but it was
Speaker 4: basically called Everything You Need to Know about the Music Business.
Speaker 4: And so I learned about contracts. I learned about back
Speaker 4: ends and royalties. I learned that the advance was alone,
Speaker 4: and I learned that I'd pay it back through record sales.
Speaker 4: And I learned that the money I make per record
Speaker 4: sale is actually incredibly small pennies, if not fractions of
Speaker 4: pennies per record. So I also learned it would take
Speaker 4: maybe another couple of million dollars for my label to
Speaker 4: invest in me.
Speaker 5: To see if I would ever be successful. So let's
Speaker 5: call that a.
Speaker 4: Three million dollar investment in me. And how many records
Speaker 4: would I have to sell to earn that back for
Speaker 4: the label? It was going to be millions and millions
Speaker 4: of albums. And because I liked my authenticity, I knew
Speaker 4: I was going to make a full album At the
Speaker 4: Heights of Grunge. I knew the odds of that being
Speaker 4: successful were incredibly low. I also knew that the hype
Speaker 4: and the bidding war over me was a tiny bit
Speaker 4: to do with me, But it's mostly to do with
Speaker 4: the other labels competing with the other labels, and I
Speaker 4: should never confuse that with my worth or my value.
Speaker 4: You knew that at such a young age. Well, it
Speaker 4: was everybody pulling me. If I may be a bit crude,
Speaker 4: it was like a bunch of labels pulling their dicks out,
Speaker 4: seeing who's the biggest and who was going to win.
Speaker 3: Like that was very obvious.
Speaker 4: That wasn't like a difficult thing to like be like
Speaker 4: like what's happening here?
Speaker 5: No, it was really obvious what was happening.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm trying to put myself in your situation,
Speaker 2: and I'm thinking, like, you never had anybody look at
Speaker 2: you and say you're special, Like you didn't have that
Speaker 2: growing up, and that's what parents are usually for. And
Speaker 2: then you have all of these people all of a
Speaker 2: sudden saying you're special, in fighting over you, and you
Speaker 2: still choose your authenticity. You just had this deep knowing.
Speaker 4: It was an odd dichotomy. I wasn't secure, I was
Speaker 4: so flawed. I was so desperate for love and attention.
Speaker 4: I just, for some reason, new fame would never be
Speaker 4: what healed that for me. And when I looked at
Speaker 4: fame and I looked at what fame seemed to do
Speaker 4: to people, I don't think fame changes you. I think
Speaker 4: it exaggerates you. And if you need power to feel
Speaker 4: good about yourself, you're gonna need more of it. You
Speaker 4: need applause to feel worthy, You're gonna need more of it.
Speaker 4: It'll never be enough. It is an addiction. And again,
Speaker 4: I just knew that that was a very dangerous proposition
Speaker 4: for me.
Speaker 3: Decision kind of saved your career. Yeah, because I didn't
Speaker 3: know this.
Speaker 2: Your first album went to radio, it debuted, and it
Speaker 2: did not do well.
Speaker 3: It ended up being a massive hit.
Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, for a person who didn't care about fame,
Speaker 2: you got pretty darn famous.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: What was the hardest part of fame for you?
Speaker 4: I found it very traumatizing. You know, people don't like
Speaker 4: to hear hear that. You know, famous people aren't easy
Speaker 4: to have sympathy for, And I get.
Speaker 3: Why, but you're easy to have sympathy for.
Speaker 4: H Famous traumatizing And I don't care if you've had
Speaker 4: a great childhood, becoming that famous, often at young ages,
Speaker 4: is a level of scrutiny and attention that.
Speaker 5: It's hard to describe, but.
Speaker 4: You know how you can walk down the street and
Speaker 4: check out and you're just in your mind and your imagination,
Speaker 4: or you can eat dinner and you're just just with
Speaker 4: the person that you're eating when you suddenly realize like
Speaker 4: every single moment is being scrutinized, and you're being watched,
Speaker 4: and you're being followed, and that people change how they
Speaker 4: act around you, and you don't get to see people
Speaker 4: be their unaltered selves, their aversion of themselves that's through
Speaker 4: the lens of how they perceive you. It's like living
Speaker 4: in a circus full of funhouse mirrors. I also noticed
Speaker 4: great fame and great power is like when planets have
Speaker 4: a dense mass, right, it's been space and time around it.
Speaker 4: Mass fame and mass power warps warps things around you.
Speaker 4: It warps perceptions, and for me, especially with my traumatic background,
Speaker 4: being touched people grabbing me, if I didn't act nice enough,
Speaker 4: they'd say, ef you, you're not that great anyway, And
Speaker 4: it felt just as lonely to be worshiped by strangers
Speaker 4: that didn't know me as it did by having people
Speaker 4: hate me that didn't know me. They feel the same.
Speaker 4: It's isolating and very lonely because it's so impersonal, and
Speaker 4: so you feel trapped and buried beneath perceptions you're the
Speaker 4: great and terrible Oz. And so the only way I
Speaker 4: knew how to handle that was a move the curtain
Speaker 4: back and make sure I was always leading with like, hey,
Speaker 4: I'm just a little guy behind a curtain, deeply flawed,
Speaker 4: and leading with those flaws. But the other way I
Speaker 4: learned to deal with it was that I didn't have
Speaker 4: to do it. I didn't have to be that famous.
Speaker 4: I could step off like it got much bigger than
Speaker 4: I thought, incredibly grateful, But after the second album, I realized,
Speaker 4: this actually just doesn't make me happy, and I'm either
Speaker 4: going to be honest about it or I'm going to
Speaker 4: have to go live a life of a lie.
Speaker 5: And so I quit for two years. You know, I didn't.
Speaker 4: I couldn't handle it psychologically what had happened, how famous
Speaker 4: I got that you needed bodyguards everywhere. I had death
Speaker 4: threats every day. I had people saying they'd shoot me
Speaker 4: in the head. During you were meant for me. During
Speaker 4: a show somewhere on tour, I had stalkers unlike anything
Speaker 4: the FBI had ever seen. It wasn't fun. I wasn't
Speaker 4: having fun, and so I gave myself permission to quit.
Speaker 4: I quit for two years, and I just explored, like
Speaker 4: what I like to be a photographer? Would I like
Speaker 4: to be a novelist? Would I like to be a chef?
Speaker 4: Like what else do I like to do? I realized
Speaker 4: at the end of two years, I actually really loved music.
Speaker 4: I wanted to do it. I actually just didn't like
Speaker 4: being that famous. And in two years my fame came
Speaker 4: down so much that I could go grocery shopping. Really,
Speaker 4: oh my god, it was so fast.
Speaker 3: So you unlinked the.
Speaker 4: Two, but I just done linked them. Yeah, And seeing
Speaker 4: that was very powerful, like how quickly once you're out
Speaker 4: of the public eye, how quickly you fade away. And
Speaker 4: so for me that actually felt really hopeful, And so
Speaker 4: I got in touch in those two years with the
Speaker 4: things that really drove me. You know, I knew I
Speaker 4: wanted to be an artist more than I wanted to
Speaker 4: be famous. I always know I wanted to have a
Speaker 4: career more than I wanted to have a moment. I
Speaker 4: wanted to be a songwriter. And I liked learning. I
Speaker 4: like experimenting, I like growing, I like doing things I've
Speaker 4: never done before. And so I realized, like, because of
Speaker 4: the way I'd structured my deal, I never had to
Speaker 4: have another hit, I never had to have the pressure
Speaker 4: of like I didn't care about the success. I didn't
Speaker 4: care about that type of success. At least, I didn't
Speaker 4: care that everybody knew my name, and so that bought
Speaker 4: me a lot of freedom. And so I created a
Speaker 4: career path for myself that's really unconventional. But I would
Speaker 4: kill my momentum between every album. I would kill my fame.
Speaker 4: Between every album. I would switch genres, which is sacrilege
Speaker 4: and everybody hated. But it kept me so alive and
Speaker 4: so engaged and so curious because I had a new
Speaker 4: puzzle to figure out every time.
Speaker 3: Like your label must have been so mad at you. Oh,
Speaker 3: oh my god.
Speaker 5: I was always just that kid. We were like, great,
Speaker 5: here we go, what's she going to do this time?
Speaker 2: We have to take a quick break from our conversation,
Speaker 2: but we'll be right back with more from singer songwriter Jewel,
Speaker 2: And we're back with Jewel, You've said that your biggest
Speaker 2: accomplishment is your well being. And it's sort of a
Speaker 2: funny thing to say about a person who's sold thirty
Speaker 2: million albums globally, but you said from the start that
Speaker 2: your one true goal in life is to be happy.
Speaker 2: I think some people chase freedom, some people chase fulfillment.
Speaker 2: You are clearly chasing happiness. Why happiness?
Speaker 4: I've always had this thing I call my deathbed decision,
Speaker 4: where I pretend I'm on my deathbed and i look
Speaker 4: at this moment in my life and I'll ask, does
Speaker 4: this moment matter? Is this the moment that when I'm
Speaker 4: on my deathbed I'll remember? And getting to live and
Speaker 4: have a career doing something you're built to do deeply satisfying.
Speaker 4: Definitely know in my deathbed that that would be a
Speaker 4: very satisfying feeling. What I care if I had another
Speaker 4: thirty million albums sold, wouldn't I just wouldn't care on
Speaker 4: my deathbed.
Speaker 5: What I care?
Speaker 4: If my family loved me, I would care about that.
Speaker 4: And so I just started to navigate my life. And
Speaker 4: I remember writing in my journal very young that I
Speaker 4: wanted my life to be my best work of art.
Speaker 4: I'm ambitious. I am an ambitious person. It's just that
Speaker 4: my ambition was to create a different shape. It wasn't
Speaker 4: just to create a song. I want my life to
Speaker 4: be artful, and that means my creativity and my my
Speaker 4: Whatever I have for intelligence, whatever I have for my
Speaker 4: emotionality has to apply itself artfully to my life. And
Speaker 4: that meant I had to give myself time to say,
Speaker 4: what else do I want to grow in my life?
Speaker 4: What is the shape of my life? If my life
Speaker 4: was a mandala at the end of it, was it
Speaker 4: a beautiful shape? Was it thirsty? Did I ever have enough?
Speaker 4: Was it ever enough? And then life just kept also
Speaker 4: dealing me blows where I just had to kept also
Speaker 4: healing and putting my healing as a priority. But if
Speaker 4: my life was a painting or a sculpture, my mothering
Speaker 4: factors into that, my relationship to my health and my
Speaker 4: healing factors into that. I've tried to do that artfully,
Speaker 4: and I'm only the judge of it. Only I know
Speaker 4: what I think is artful, you know, just like the
Speaker 4: only same with me writing a song. Only I know
Speaker 4: and I think that's a neat song. It doesn't mean
Speaker 4: everybody else will agree, but it meant I had a
Speaker 4: commitment to myself that way.
Speaker 2: You've described your new exhibit, The Portal as an immersive
Speaker 2: experience that explores the intersection of so many of your
Speaker 2: passions music, mental health, technology and art. For someone who
Speaker 2: can't attend in person, what does this look like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, this was such a dream come true project for me.
Speaker 4: But to walk people through the experience, you come into
Speaker 4: the museum and you're met by a hologram of me,
Speaker 4: and it's a two minute spoken word poem that encourages
Speaker 4: us to listen. It talks about a first personal philosophy
Speaker 4: of mine.
Speaker 5: I call it the three spheres.
Speaker 4: It's the idea that each of us travel through three
Speaker 4: realms of reality every single day, often without realizing it.
Speaker 4: There's our inner life, which is our thought and feelings.
Speaker 4: There's our scene physical life, which is our jobs and
Speaker 4: our families and finances and just the physical world. And
Speaker 4: then there's the unseen. Whatever that means to you, It
Speaker 4: might be a really clearly defined spiritual path. It might
Speaker 4: just be that you get chills when you see a
Speaker 4: James Webb telescope image, and when you read physics you
Speaker 4: just feel so inspired and in awe. So it's whatever
Speaker 4: gives you a sense of awe and inspiration. The idea
Speaker 4: for me is that mental health is a side effect
Speaker 4: of these three spheres working in harmony. Mental anguish is
Speaker 4: a side effect of them being in conflict, and so
Speaker 4: the entire experience is designed to help people define and
Speaker 4: understand what these three realms mean to them. After the hologram,
Speaker 4: they walk through the contemporary wing of the museum, where
Speaker 4: I curated ten pieces of their art. There's a video
Speaker 4: of me next to these pieces that says, what does
Speaker 4: your inner life feel like? And people are given a
Speaker 4: journal and they write the answers down to these prompts,
Speaker 4: and they're each relevant to the three spheres. Three about
Speaker 4: your inner realm, three about what you think about your
Speaker 4: physical realm, and three about the unseen. The last piece
Speaker 4: combines all of them, and I ask people to identify
Speaker 4: one thing that causes their three realms to be in
Speaker 4: conflict and one thing that helps their three realms come
Speaker 4: in harmony. And then they fill in the blank of
Speaker 4: a very magical sentence. I think the sentence is like
Speaker 4: a magical formula. It has changed my life. The sentence
Speaker 4: is I sacrifice my attachment to X, and I dedicate
Speaker 4: it to why. Every morning I work with a sentence
Speaker 4: I fill in the blanks for myself, will share mine.
Speaker 4: I sacrifice my attachment to perfectionism, and I dedicate it
Speaker 4: to actively noticing what's going right. I say that sentence
Speaker 4: every morning in my meditation fifty times a day. Perfectionism
Speaker 4: just has my number. It's just really hard for me
Speaker 4: to get out of it, and it ruins my day
Speaker 4: because nothing's perfect, by the way, So it just means
Speaker 4: I'm pretty much annoyed all day.
Speaker 5: It's not a fun way to navigate. Oh, it's the worst.
Speaker 4: And so I'm able to redirect in every moment. And
Speaker 4: this is a behavioral health tool because our brains are
Speaker 4: pattern matchers, and once you tell your brain to be aware,
Speaker 4: to be on the lookout for perfectionism, and to replace
Speaker 4: it with another tool, your brain will do its job.
Speaker 3: It will tell you the fifty.
Speaker 4: Billion times a day you engage, and it's this mindfulness
Speaker 4: practice that then begins to help you build a new
Speaker 4: pattern in a new way of being.
Speaker 3: So that's the last part of the art walk.
Speaker 4: It takes about an hour up to this point, and
Speaker 4: then people walk outside and they see a drone show
Speaker 4: with an original piece of music that I created that
Speaker 4: puts all of these fears together. It goes from spoken
Speaker 4: word into soundscaping into song andto spoken word. It's like
Speaker 4: me meets Pink Floyd. Is the best way I can
Speaker 4: just describe this music because it's unlike anything else I've
Speaker 4: ever done. But it's the favorite piece of music I've
Speaker 4: made in my whole career.
Speaker 3: I hope you tour this. This sounds so spectacular.
Speaker 2: In April of this year, you took the stage with
Speaker 2: Olivia Rodrigo at Madison Square Garden and I loved your
Speaker 2: TikTok explaining why you wanted to go do it and
Speaker 2: meet her and meet her parents. You loved that she
Speaker 2: was a writer, not just a singer, and that she
Speaker 2: was a good person. Amiss the monster of fame? Can
Speaker 2: you see your influence in artists today? And I'm going
Speaker 2: to lead the question because I see so much jewel
Speaker 2: in Taylor Swift.
Speaker 3: Do you see it?
Speaker 4: Oh gosh, there's a really neat demo of Taylor writing
Speaker 4: a song that is you were meant for me. It's
Speaker 4: the melody. It's like when we learn to write songs
Speaker 4: that's how we learn. We learn by trying to figure
Speaker 4: out how somebody else wrote that song, and so it
Speaker 4: was her own lyrics, but it was definitely you were
Speaker 4: meant for me, And clearly she couldn't release it, but
Speaker 4: it was obviously so flattering to see that she was
Speaker 4: learning how to put her songs together by listening to
Speaker 4: that song and her mother mam at her really early
Speaker 4: in her career. And you know, I was told what
Speaker 4: an influence I was on her, which is, you know,
Speaker 4: that's our job. You know, Ricky Lee Jones influenced me,
Speaker 4: Joni Mitchell influenced me, Josephine Baker influenced me. We need
Speaker 4: these influences. We need people that inspire us to do
Speaker 4: what we do, and we should be proud of those influences.
Speaker 2: You said, I want to be one of the best
Speaker 2: singer songwriters of my time, hold my own with my heroes.
Speaker 2: That's a sixty year goal. When you're thinking in that
Speaker 2: sixty year cycle, which I think is so rare, what's
Speaker 2: the mark you're wanting to make?
Speaker 4: Now, how do I describe it? You're not entitled to
Speaker 4: being a good writer. You just have to work at
Speaker 4: it every day. One of the reasons I stepped back
Speaker 4: from like the NonStop album cycle, taking steps back away
Speaker 4: from fame was because to write, you have to learn
Speaker 4: a lot. You have to be deeply engaged with life
Speaker 4: so that something can inspire you and you don't know
Speaker 4: how that's going to come out of you. I think
Speaker 4: that for me, it meant that I had to keep
Speaker 4: finding a freshness and an aliveness in my body, and
Speaker 4: that you never know if that's going to be received.
Speaker 4: I don't know if anybody will hear this ten minute
Speaker 4: piece of music called the Portal. It's strange, there's no
Speaker 4: format for it, there's nowhere to put that out. They
Speaker 4: were just asking on streaming platforms like what category. I'm like, hmmm,
Speaker 4: you tell me, ah.
Speaker 3: What are you calling? Mental health?
Speaker 1: Or yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4: It's strange, but it's just so authentically me. And that's
Speaker 4: all you can do is do the work, do the
Speaker 4: work that you believe in. No idea how I'll be remembered.
Speaker 4: I just know that for me, it's very important that
Speaker 4: I push myself as a writer, and for me, that
Speaker 4: means something has to be alive and fresh and awaken you.
Speaker 4: That isn't trying to be liked it's just trying to
Speaker 4: be evolving in your own humanity.
Speaker 2: Juell, thank you for sharing your time with us on
Speaker 2: the bright Side.
Speaker 4: Thanks, it's an honor, and thanks for helping people realize
Speaker 4: just how much beauty and the sunny days are ahead
Speaker 4: of all of us.
Speaker 2: Jewel is a singer, songwriter and a mental health advocate.
Speaker 2: Her immersive art exhibit, The Portal, an Art Experience by Jewel,
Speaker 2: is on display at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American
Speaker 2: Art in Bentonville, Arkansas, until July twenty eighth.
Speaker 3: That's it for today's show.
Speaker 2: Tomorrow, journalist, television host, and author Brooke Baldwin joins us
Speaker 2: to share how she found her voice and how she's
Speaker 2: loving her bad Girl era.
Speaker 1: This one is so good and so spicy, y'all, you
Speaker 1: don't want to miss it. Okay, listen and follow the
Speaker 1: bright Side on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. I'm Simone Voice. You can find
Speaker 1: me at simone Voice on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2: I'm Danielle Robe on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 3: That's ro Ba. Y see you tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Keep looking on the bright side.