I know, I know, right.
I can’t believe I went from pretty much barely knowing who a girl is, to apparently doing a whole blog series inspired by her. Insane how life works.
But all I wanted to say on this is that Jax has a number of “narratives” she could be leaning into right now – former American Idol 3rd placer making a comeback. Cancer survivor tackling the world.
But she doesn’t lean into either of those two giant narratives. And it’s amazing to me!
First off, I’m almost surprised she’s “allowed.” I feel like the world often tries to pigeonhole you – media, managers, etc.
But she’s just writing song after song.
Now, maybe there’s a big machine behind her that is indeed leaning into THIS narrative – isolated songwriter when Covid begins wants to share music somewhere, does TikTok, writes parody songs, shows real songs, becomes a star.
That is indeed its own narrative.
But I prefer to believe that Jax doesn’t care to be painted as a survivor of these things, but that she just wants to be known as a songwriter.
It kind of reminded me of a guy who spoke at my grad school graduation who talked about having open-heart surgery. Now, this is someone *I* went to undergrad with. And he taught at my grad school. I had a class with him!
He has been around. I had known him… His whole life went off track when he found out he had a heart problem. That was THE thing that ultimately changed his life from being about sports to being about music.
And I had literally no idea until his speech. Granted, in his speech he made it his narrative. But knowing him, you would’ve never known.
I feel like so often we need a “story.” Humans love stories.
But there’s something so refreshing and freeing and nice to the idea of people just want to share their talent, period, end of story, no special narrative bells and whistles. Gives me things to ponder, for sure!