{"id":1418,"date":"2008-05-23T00:09:00","date_gmt":"2008-05-23T00:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/janaremy.com\/?p=1418"},"modified":"2008-05-23T00:09:00","modified_gmt":"2008-05-23T00:09:00","slug":"half-jack-and-half-jill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.janaremy.com\/pilgrimsteps\/2008\/05\/23\/half-jack-and-half-jill\/","title":{"rendered":"half-jack and half-jill"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/__UOnyOrkWqs\/SDYMU6vj7wI\/AAAAAAAAASc\/tW96T-hFxOU\/s1600-h\/2513962704_b132a97984_m.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<style type=\"text\/css\">.flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; }.flickr-yourcomment { }.flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; }.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }<\/style>\n<div class=\"flickr-frame\"> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/51799074@N00\/2513138121\/\" title=\"photo sharing\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2080\/2513138121_e48725647e.jpg\" class=\"flickr-photo\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"flickr-caption\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/51799074@N00\/2513138121\/\">Dresden Dolls<\/a>, originally uploaded by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/51799074@N00\/\">mind on fire<\/a>.<\/span><\/div>\n<p class=\"flickr-yourcomment\"> I don\u2019t get out much.<br \/>I\u2019ve only been to like three concerts in my entire life<br \/>And when I see the price of tickets I usually convince myself that CDs are far cheaper<\/p>\n<p>We sat closer than I\u2019d expected.<br \/>So close that the fog machine gave me asthma<br \/>So I didn\u2019t sing much, rarely yelled, whistled, or cheered<br \/>Just let the music work its way through me<br \/>And when my heart dropped right out of my chest<br \/>onto the floor between my feet<br \/>pulsing and beating with the entire theater<br \/>breathing together and open<br \/>I thought:<br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">I want to play the drums, I want to play the piano, I want to be like her and like him and never leave this place.<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">I want a rock n roll life (their rock n roll life)<\/span><br \/><span style=\"font-style: italic;\">And nothing else seems this real<\/span><br \/>At the beginning of the show they said that when Amanda sings<br \/>you feel like you are a part of her<br \/>I get that now<\/p>\n<p>A few random observations:<br \/>I expected a bit more of a theatrical \u201cshow\u201d and a bit less music given the vids and clips of the DDs that I\u2019d seen online.  Other than a brief bit of theatrics at the beginning (masks and trenchcoats) it was just the music.  Occasionally Amanda would pick a few flowers from the bouquet under her keyboard and walk around with them in hand, but that was it.<\/p>\n<p>She was taller than I expected.  More down-to-earth.  Incredibly unselfconscious on stage.  Brian was more of a showman with his wild drumstick manouvres.<\/p>\n<p>The final song was <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=-MZRLxYtoDY\">\u201cHalf-Jack<\/a>.\u201d  Though I\u2019ve grooved to this tune many times, I really hadn\u2019t wondered what it meant until singing along last night.  I went online and found out that its about being half-father, half-mother.  Word is that Amanda had a troubled relationship with her father (perhaps he abandoned her and her mother at a young age?).  And that she\u2019s always resented the part of her that\u2019s \u201cHalf-Jack\u201d or half of him.<\/p>\n<p>So as I was singing along this morning I reflected on how my new understanding of the lyrics now affected my experience the song.  And I thought about my own divided self, wondering which half of me was \u201chalf-Jack\u201d and which part was \u201chalf-Jill.\u201d  But what struck me was not so much the genetic duality of myself.  What struck me was the tension that I\u2019ve so long felt in my psyche between myself my carnal self and my altruistic self.  I used to see this duality as my godliness vs. my sinfulness.  I no longer see it that way, but I still feel the definite pull of my \u201ctwo-ness.\u201d  It reminds me of the quotation from black writer W.E.B. DuBois who spoke of the split consciousness of his identity:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cAfter the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,&#8211;a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one&#8217;s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one&#8217;s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,&#8211;an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.<br \/>The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,&#8211;this longing\u2026to merge his double self into a better and truer self.\u201d (excerpt from the Souls of Black Folk).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I feel that struggle daily, those \u201cwarring souls\u201d and \u201cunreconciled strivings.\u201d  I am both madonna and whore, lover and hater, parent and child, generous and cruel, male and female, mystic and atheist, ambitious and lazy, closed and exposed, rebel and conformist, peace-loving and war-mongering, patient and dismissive, intelligent and ignorant, mature and na\u00efve, loving the light and craving the dark.  Every day I am growing and every day I am dying.  I am strength and I am weakness.  I am human and I am a machine.  I am half-you and I am half-me.<\/p>\n<p>The lyrics of the song read, in part:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>two halves are equal<br \/>a cross between two evils<br \/>it&#8217;s not an enviable lot<br \/>but if you listen<br \/>you&#8217;ll learn to hear the difference<br \/>between the halfs and the half nots<br \/>[&#8230;.]<br \/>i&#8217;m halfway home now<br \/>half hoping<br \/>for a showdown<br \/>cause i&#8217;m not big enough to house this crowd<br \/>it might destroy me<br \/>but i&#8217;d sacrifice my body<br \/>if it meant i&#8217;d get the jack part OUT<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Those last few lines illustrate the tension, the desire to rid oneself of the duality.  Yes, I wish that I wasn&#8217;t part good and part bad, sometimes selfish more than self-less,  full of hubris often more than humility.  I&#8217;ve tried to sever the halves, to embrace only one side of the dicot, but this only seems to result in a withering of self, a descent into self-destruction, depression, torpor.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, perhaps, I can embrace, with some confidence, my identity as a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jack_Mormon\">Jack-Mormon<\/a>.  Or maybe that&#8217;s a Jill Mormon for those of us radical feminist types.<\/p>\n<p><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/__UOnyOrkWqs\/SDYMU6vj7wI\/AAAAAAAAASc\/tW96T-hFxOU\/s1600-h\/2513962704_b132a97984_m.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/__UOnyOrkWqs\/SDYMU6vj7wI\/AAAAAAAAASc\/tW96T-hFxOU\/s320\/2513962704_b132a97984_m.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203359972978847490\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a onblur=\"try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}\" href=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/__UOnyOrkWqs\/SDYM5NsySnI\/AAAAAAAAASk\/Ut1HVGo7DVY\/s1600-h\/2513138327_69e1c2d8b4.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/__UOnyOrkWqs\/SDYM5NsySnI\/AAAAAAAAASk\/Ut1HVGo7DVY\/s320\/2513138327_69e1c2d8b4.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5203360596542769778\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>(<i>photos by my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mindonfire.com\/\">other half<\/a><\/i>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dresden Dolls, originally uploaded by mind on fire. I don\u2019t get out much.I\u2019ve only been to like three concerts in my entire lifeAnd when I see the price of tickets I usually convince myself that CDs are far cheaper We sat closer than I\u2019d expected.So close that the fog machine gave me asthmaSo I didn\u2019t [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5386,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1418","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-john","category-songspoetry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>half-jack and half-jill - PilgrimSteps<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.janaremy.com\/pilgrimsteps\/2008\/05\/23\/half-jack-and-half-jill\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"half-jack and half-jill - PilgrimSteps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Dresden Dolls, originally uploaded by mind on fire. I don\u2019t get out much.I\u2019ve only been to like three concerts in my entire lifeAnd when I see the price of tickets I usually convince myself that CDs are far cheaper We sat closer than I\u2019d expected.So close that the fog machine gave me asthmaSo I didn\u2019t [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.janaremy.com\/pilgrimsteps\/2008\/05\/23\/half-jack-and-half-jill\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"PilgrimSteps\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-05-23T00:09:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"janaremy@gmail.com\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"janaremy@gmail.com\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"janaremy@gmail.com\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/48edf1696489416085bd652eed4f53c9\"},\"headline\":\"half-jack and half-jill\",\"datePublished\":\"2008-05-23T00:09:00+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":903,\"commentCount\":3,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"\",\"articleSection\":[\"John\",\"songs\\\/poetry\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/www.janaremy.com\\\/pilgrimsteps\\\/2008\\\/05\\\/23\\\/half-jack-and-half-jill\\\/\",\"name\":\"half-jack and half-jill - 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