A Search for Truth About Jewel

Part Two: She Likes Nabokov

The next day we head up-town to Tom’s diner, near Columbia University, because she craves oatmeal with brown sugar and raisins. They don’t have brown sugar or raisins, or even honey. So, over oatmeal and Domino sugar, we talk about death, specifically one that inspired a song on Spirit, “Fat Boy,” a sequel of sorts to her anti-prejudice lullaby “Pieces of You.” “Fat Boy” concerns a cute, pudgy neighbor she grew up with named Edward, who used to hang out in her family’s backyard sauna and frolic naked on their swing. After going through puberty and getting teased about his weight by other children, Edward became depressed and insecure. After his eighteenth birthday, on Jewel’s family’s property, he shot himself in the face.

“There was a note that said some thing along the lines of, ‘Nobody will love me,'” she says. “And to know that you’re not sexually attractive in our society at age thirteen or to feel that you won’t ever be loved at age eighteen is just devastating.”

The self-awareness that follows the onset of puberty has always been a major theme in Jewel’s music and poetry. With Jewel, for example, that self-awareness was compounded by watching the effect she had on others. According to friends from Homer, older women in town used to tell her she was like a dog — well-behaved when she was around them but humping everything in sight when their backs were turned (which she wasn’t) — while local fishermen used to take bets on who would be the first to fuck her.

“When you reach puberty is the first time you start realizing you’re separate from your parents, and you start feeling your own power and sexuality in a whole new way,” she says after two brace-faced kids ask for her autograph. “I think that’s your first real impression of yourself. And if you’re not comfortable with your body, which is usually true at that age, then that’s your image of you forever. I still think of myself as an awkward tomboy. It’s something I’ll never get over, no matter how many magazines I’m in.”

Jewel generously pays the eight-dollar bill, and we walk to a nearby bookstore and spend an hour combing the shelves. She recommends The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot, and The Stories of Vladimir Nabokov for me. I suggest another Russian book, The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov, for her. (When I see her again two weeks later, she has finished the Bulgakov book and jumps into a lengthy discussion, bringing up themes I hadn’t noticed.)

Later that afternoon, we return to her hotel room. She is about to see the video for her new single, “Hands,” for the first time. It’s a very optimistic song except for one cryptically defiant line: “My hands are small, I know/But they’re not yours, they are my own.”

“I think a lot about my hands,” Jewel explains. “For me it’s an image that’s very specific. We used to cut the hay-fields. There was a lot of hay, and we’d be on the tractor for weeks in a row every day, running around in circles. And I would just stare at my hands. I used to write a lot of poetry about hands. Since I was pretty young, I wondered, ‘What will my hands be doing? Will they hold kids?” I had no idea they’d play guitar. I started to believe that if I watch what my hands do, I’d have a better idea of what I was thinking, consciously or subconsciously.”

She has been waiting impatiently for this new album, for the day when people could hear music she recorded in her post-teen years. Because for the last several years, she has been relentlessly touring and promoting a record she doesn’t even like, opening up for every-one from goth rocker Peter Murphy and one-hit wonders Deep Blue Something to Neil Young and Bob Dylan.

“Pieces of You is not a good record,” Jewel insists, pointing out missed chords and substandard singing. “It’s an embarrassing record, ultimately. It’s like having your dirty laundry aired out. I didn’t think people would hear it. But it made me realize that all people want is to be touched. They don’t care if it’s Celine Dion or Meat Loaf or me.”

Two years ago, Jewel went into the studio and recorded half a dozen songs for a new album with producer Peter Collins but scrapped the project when “You Were Meant for Me” became a hit and promotional duties called. Earlier this year, she thought of doing a record of original Christmas songs, but instead decided to make Spirit with Madonna producer Patrick Leonard, who added a very subtle, lush undercurrent of percussion and keyboards to nudge Jewel’s folk musings further into the pop arena.

The “Hands” video shows Jewel moving through a disaster scene, an angel of compassion rescuing children from the flames. (Calling people “fragile flames” is a recurrent theme on the album.) “I hate how I look,” she says. “That doesn’t look like me at all. That’s not my nose.” When the video ends, the television flips back to MTV. I stand up to switch it off. “Wait,” she screams. “Don’t turn it off. I want to see that Alanis Morissette video.”