There I was, in a group of about 12 people that I barely knew, having a late night snack at about 1AM at one of the best places in Appleton, Wi. to gather round a table and converse til early morning light. We loaded up on caffeine, smoked far too many cigarettes and continued to talk to one another, this ‘strange’ group of people.  I began to talk about an old friend that seemed to have disappear off the face of the earth, and a young man named ‘Bob’ who was sitting across from me, said “I know Greg!…I know where he’s living now as well!”  It turned out that Greg had decided to become ‘unavailable’ to the human population, by moving across the country with no known address, he wanted it this way.  He was an odd one, but then again, we all were, in some crazy way.  Bob and I continued to talk and he had mentioned he was heading back to Minneapolis in the morning.

FLASHBACK to 1988 when an uncontrollable urge had hit me, that I needed to move to Minneapolis. I truly had no idea why, I just knew, if the opportunity presented itself, and of course, when it’s in the cards, it will Always present itself. I recall telling my parents, “I HAVE to move to Minneapolis, I have to start something with my life, I have to play my music.  I remember being reminded of the typical things parents say “you need a job to go there! where will you stay?’…I didn’t know, I just knew I would do it.

Bob said “If you want to stay on my couch until you get a job and settled, we have the room!”  I went home, packed up a duffel bag of clothes, grabbed my guitar and wrote a note to my family, that I would be leaving in the morning to go to Minneapolis.  Of course they woke up EARLY and we had our goodbyes, tears in my eyes, my mother worried sick…my dad came up to me, as I was throwing my few belongings in the back of Bobs little tiny red car, and he put a 100$ in the palm of my hand. That was all I had. That was it. So on that beautiful Sept day, in 1989, I got into the car, and off we drove, a 6 hour drive to Minneapolis, MN.  I saw the buildings, my heart skipped, my whole body was filled with a roaming wonder, like thousands of ants inside me, crawling through my veins, it was as if I was vibrating with this connection, this chance, this opportunity to do something, I knew…I had to do, but I didn’t quite know why.

Everything that happened in the next few months, years and decades, was off pure gut instinct. I didn’t have to know why I was doing something…as long as I knew, I had to do it.  I quickly made numerous friends, and  had numerous jobs. It was near impossible to keep one, the roaming of my spirit took precedence over logic.  My guitar was my sanity. My instinct was my whole life. I began to play, quietly, at various cafe’s and coffee houses, slowly gathering a dedicated audience, and building off that over the next decade, gaining more and more recognition as a songwriter. Making music to sell, creating songs, writing constantly.  I wandered around Minneapolis for the next 10 years, with a guitar on my back and a notebook in my bag, writing and performing my way from one place to the next. That was my income. The 100$ my dad lovingly handed me was the most I would see in my hand at once, for a long time.  I didn’t often pay rent, and quickly went from sofa to sofa, cheap apartment to cheap apartment, paying rent as I could, and rarely ever making it on time.  My friends were generous with my passion and often offered a sandwich, maybe a pack of cigarettes, which seemed to last me a week back then. I didn’t own a car, and eventually didn’t own a guitar either….I had to sell it, because I needed to eat, I needed to contribute.  I would use a friends guitar, or some venue’s I played at, had one provided….and that’s how I lived, for as long as I could.  TALK ABOUT BEING IN TOP SHAPE, no car and at least 6 miles a day of constant movement.

Featured above…Jewel is the title of a song I wrote, when my grandpa JULE passed away of Alzheimers.  The “Erik” sketch, is one of my best friends I met when I moved to Minneapolis and his daughter Shay, when I had known him. He took his life at that time. He was a musician, artist and writer with a great spirit, and is missed dearly.  The photo that is colored, is one that was taken for the Without My Wings CD, and was taped to  the  cover of the songbook that I carried with me everywhere at that time. And the black and white photo is one after doing a little show in the backyard where I once lived…

I was fortunate to have a place to live most of the time, but not so fortunate with the people I would stay with.  I once lived in an attic, with floorboards missing and all the windows were broken. I paid 50.00 a month for this, I had visitors every night, 2 winged visitors that ate the mosquito’s and other insects that found there way into the attic. Bats literally brushed up against my face, I could feel a small wisp of a wing from time to time. Eventually this became soothing…it wasn’t me they wanted, thankfully!  It wasn’t my first encounter with these amazing creatures, since most of the places I stayed, weren’t what you would call “expensive and well kept.” I had left the man I lived with, after 2 years of a perfectly unstable relationship and fought every urge to go back no matter how ‘bad off’ i might have been.  He often came to my shows, standing in the door ways of the venues, watching me, begging me with his eyes.  It was all I could do to run back into that comfort zone of pure chaos. Nope. Done. Over.

After several months, many ghost stories and incredibly hot or cold nights in that attic, 11 room mates, 2 deaths and suicides later of dear friends I had lost, to their own world of drug overdoses, and suicides…We all got kicked out of the Large house that sheltered all 11 of us. The house was torn down…the guy that owned it had to give it up, because they were going to build a school there. He later died of a drug overdose…sadly…he wasn’t the only one.  I lived with these musicians and led a life of nothing but more chaos and instability just in order to survive.

To make a long story short. I’m still here…of course much has changed, but the one thing that hasn’t changed is the drive that I feel to do music, or create things that scream out at me, in the back of my head, to do.  I can’t avoid that, it would only bring misery…as I have ignored it once, and it’s a place I never want to go again…to push down the urge to write, will make a writer sick. To push down the urge to paint or create music, will make an artist sick. To push away your true passions in life…will make a person ill, in one way or another.  To not listen to your ‘calling in life’ will make you miserable, and you’ll always hear that voice in your soul, going WHY DIDN’T I DO______?  I can’t ignore that voice. I won’t regret living on couches and being poor, I won’t regret the calling of the Others in this world saying “YOU have to do THIS or THAT”…because I would be miserable to live the life of most, or what the world thinks…should be for everyone. NO thanks.  I won’t regret lost love….but I will regret, not doing what the Gut of my Spirit, tells me to do.  If it says GO, I Go, if it says stay, I stay. I would rather live a life in solitude doing what I love, than live a life of doing what the general population does and having a steady career in something I hate and have no love for what I do.  Don’t get me wrong, I’m crazy in love with my family, my husband and those that surround my soul, but people come and go, our love for what we do, will never leave us, we have this CRAZY CHOICE in our lives, to do this….or that….and we try to balance the world inside of us, we try to make sense of it.

During those many years of wandering from venue to coffee house  to sofa and even being homeless for a time, I gotta thank my friends, and you Know who you are, for the love, the clean sheets, the warm dinners, the many hugs, for getting me through such a Wonderful Era of my life. I was happy…because I did what I wanted to do.  Thank you.   During that time I recorded quite a few albums, but..back then, most were on ‘DAT’ files or Cassette.  When I created the first CD, thanks to Ben Youngdahl and those that contributed to “Without My Wings” it is now…..15 plus years after it’s release, is available on iTunes.  The second CD on iTunes, thanks to Ian Schwartz at Studio Zero Seven and iTRadio.com, it’s also available “Certain Kind of Mad”…on iTunes, and thanks to LOTS of patience and time, I’m recording this 3rd cd, on my own, and to be honest, I rather like it!

This takes me to the last topic, before I write a freakin NOVEL on here. The CD, I have 13 recorded songs on it so far. Those of you who bought the Limited Edition, have 5 of those songs.  I have the intention of making this 3rd CD to be released, a compilation of Years of songs…the ones that stood out, from when this story began, to know. That’s about 17 years into the vault, since 1992….there may even be a few from the 80′s…acoustic things I wrote when I was Soooooo Young. We’ll see about that part.   I’ve asked some of you for your input on this and realized that I should make a place, for those postings, if you are so inclined…..I would love your suggestions of what you would like to hear on this next release. Since I finally decided on a “Theme’ of old and new, revived, revamped, re done, re recorded, and the New Material as well’….Songs you may have heard me do over the years, that you have grown to love…what are they?

After speaking on the phone with my great friend Mary Ellen, we were discussing our stories, our similarities and this all came flooding to my mind, quickly. I said “I think that will be my Blog of the day..the Story”.  I’m not the best ‘story writer’ andn I sometimes forget so much only to remember it half way through and not knowing quite where to place it in the story.  What brought me to Minneapolis in the first place, what made my Gut scream? Well, I’ve seen Minneapolis before, but that’s a story for another time. And how did I meet these people that took my soul to Minneapolis? Another story for another time.  And all those details in between….well, to me that’s not just a short story anymore, that’s something on the backburner of mind…the place where I store the ‘other parts of my life’….cuz the pages add up, and it wouldn’t be a blog anymore, it would be an E Book.  There are many lives to one life, eh?

Thank you, for reading and allowing me to share, a few things.  I look forward, to hearing your suggestions wherever we may meet, in the Grid, on facebook, on twitter, through email….Thanks in advance, I am taking it all to heart and working on the final tracks of the CD as we speak.   Peace to all of you and much gratitude!

- Suzen JueL

Every day Gloria woke up and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, taking notice of anything new that might have occurred while she slept, or at least she would try to sleep.  She took notice of the new feathers in her wings, and the ones that had fallen to the floor, and the lovely dances of the crows as they fluttered their wings against the edges of her eyes.  Every day Gloria awoke with a new sense of the day, new goals in her world, new things to work at achieving. Every day Gloria fell down, skinned her knees, tried to fly, stumbled and jogged through the world, kicking over the earth as she did, leaving small swirls of dust behind her.

Today Gloria woke up, going directly for the coffee cup, instead of the mirror. This wasn’t the kind of morning Gloria wanted to take notice of. Every detail would show, every cross would be turned, every line would be burned and etched into her surface and the blackbirds wouldn’t even notice, their wings would be distant, their sound would be haunting.  Etched across the hardwood floor there would be words in the grain of the wood, stained under her bare feet, deeply cut into the wood of what once, was a tree, what once grew in the earth, the way nothing else could, tall and steady, no matter how hard the wind blew.  Gloria’s wings were ruffled and messed, some were missing, the light had burned all hopes of ever getting close to it. The brilliance attracted her like white fluffy moths to a flame, only to find out, the light that lit the darkness was the same one that burned the ability to have the full freedom of flight…falling hard to the dirt on the floor…she had more strength than that, more strength then to give up and lie hopeless. She would just have to walk. It would just take longer….that’s all.  She sipped her coffee and watched the rain fall against the thin window pane, the noise was mesmerizing to her spirit and she fell into a featherless whirlwind.

From now on, this would not be how things would become. From now on, this would be an allowed sickness, only to invade when she had the time to welcome it, and often she did not.  From now on, this isn’t what would take her, but instead what would make her stronger. Gloria had no time to sit and wait for someone to pull her feathers, or hand her a replacement, she could do that herself. Gloria had no time to wait for others to pick up her missing pieces when they fell to the floor, for she could do it so much quicker…if she just put one foot in front of the other, eventually she would jump and eventually she wouldn’t come back down….

A Season Later

As I was walking today, I decided it was time to take a stop again, to take a picture of my favorite post….this morning the ground was covered in white frost and my dog blended into the scenery…leaves shuffled under my feet and the sun was rising with those Long November Shadows that happen this time of year.  Minus the Snow, we usually have a bit more of, this time of year.  Grass shortly turned green when the sun thawed it out, and the Geese flew overhead, like they do every morning and every evening.  I thought I’d post this, since I just recently posted the one I took a few months ago, in the blue sky of summer.   Even the Barbed Wire is beautiful to me, even though it seems to no longer serve it’s purpose.

i love love love my backyard. This isn’t quite in my back yard, but it’s a beautiful walk. Every time I walk this way, I have to take a picture of it…..there’s just something beautiful about this POST in the Ground.  And the color astounds me. My dog hasn’t peed on it yet, haaaaaaaaa.     STILL working on new cd….DAMN am I ever having a time with the ‘theme’ as you all know, been struggling with this for awhile. Something in the air perhaps? Might be time to let the wind carry and push and pull me where it will. … .