Over the last few days I have been spending some time with Jenn Brooks and Todd Ogren, talking about music in ways that I haven’t had the opportunity to do at length for quite some time. These cats are established songwriters and producers, and are responsible for a few of the songs for Desire amongst other interesting things.  Last night Jenn and I got together and started pulling some of my songwriting ideas apart, and even taking a shot at re-arranging a song I have had for quite some time called “Dynamite”.

The Cindy Sherman exhibition is in town so I am pretty excited to go and see that. I’ve been a fan of her work for a while and I am looking for new inspiration.

The other night I spent a few hours at the Rock and Rose Kareoke bar which was a lot of fun. I sang some Pat Benatar and stood around looking cool in my new leather jacket… I’ve kind of been practicing being Chrissie on my days off.

Just to let you know- desire is still accepting contributions from the public so that it can be as awesome as humanly possible. If you’re interested please head to www.desirethetvshow.com – I know for a fact you will receive a copy of the DVD as a thank you for any contribution. And you will probably feel pretty good about yourself too.

Love love love to you all… and a here’s a little song to tell you how I’m feeling…. Give Love – Jess McAvoy

I haven’t been sleeping very well in the last three nights.  Last night I was tossing and turning for about six hours, which left me with about two hours of sleep. So now I am being barreled about on the top floor of the double decker megabus on my way to New York City. My eyes are sore. It’s apparent that I’m stressed about this new adventure. My perfectionist nature is giving me anxiety. And it wouldn’t be the first time.

I have to say I am pretty impressed with my amazing packing skills. I managed to get everything into one small carry on style bag- which makes taking a guitar a lot less stressful. There’s a woman on the bottom floor near the toilets snoring in such a robotic manner that I couldn’t bring myself to stop analyzing her perfectly regimented breaths in and out while I was waiting for the washroom. I do love to travel.

The border crossing is always a bit of a challenge. An Australian with a Canadian Visa crossing into the USA quite often. They ask me if I have a boyfriend there. I reply truthfully- “No.”

So here I sit with a megabusload of people and I am pointed at New York City. I spent a total of seven hours last week putting studs in my leather jacket. I gathered clothes and accessories from my dearest Toronto friends to build this character. I’ve spent the entire bus ride speaking in my new dialect, and there are some holes, but for the most part people can’t really fault it. I guess they’re not looking for the holes. The two dudes sitting in front of me think they’re really funny. I kinda agree.

What a life I lead. I just finished writing three interviews for Curve Magazine. One of which was with Joan Wasser of Joan as Police Woman.

Day One - Cinco de Mayo  - Supermoon.

So I got to New York City last night. I don’t think I’ve been this excited to get to the City before. This is such a specific purpose and I know this place pretty well now, so when the bus finally drew near I saw the Chrystler (My favorite building, my favorite kind of Art Deco) poking out of the mess and smiled at my welcome. Start spreading the news. 

Today I am learning my lines over breakfast and this afternoon I get to meet some of the cast, including Cathy Richardson who plays Hunter, and Jenn Brooks who plays Luca. We’re floating around town taking some candid shots for use on the set, and we have to look like we’re getting along famously while being ten years younger. A great introduction, if you ask me.

Right now I am going to pull out all of my outfits for the shoot and see exactly what I have got. Not really my strong point, choosing clothes. So this, too, is a good exercise.

Day Two

This city is so new to me all of the sudden.

There is nothing that helps you love a place more than being a part of it.  We did the first read through as a full cast today.  I did it in dialect and in Australian. Australian was much easier, and there happened to be more swearing. Ultimately, I’ll be in dialect. But it was nice to flesh out the feeling in my native tongue. The cast is amazing. Beautiful people.  I’m really fortunate to be working on this project. Everyone is supportive and so generous of spirit.

I have to make out with a fella on the show. He’s handsome and we had an awkward exchange today trying to make light of the fact. I don’t know how we’re going to be convincingly passionate about each other. We both have girlfriends.  It makes me wonder if that kind of thing is ever easy with someone you don’t know. Having said that, Two of the other characters have to do semi naked scenes together. I forsee a lot of giggling.

Jenn, Cath and I hung out for a couple of hours today after the read through to get to know each other better. We’re the core characters of the show and on Jenn’s suggestion we wandered around the lower east side and did a bit of shopping. We talked about all kinds of stuff and have concluded that we have a lot in common.  We’ve each had our own struggles holding on to our music careers in different ways. Such a lovely thing to share stories with these women. We have a good thing going and I reckon I’ve got two new good friends. What a gift. Together we get to work hard to make a good show so it’ll be sold to a network. That way we get to do this more often.

So I found myself sitting in familiar apartment in Chelsea tonight. Revising my script in dialect while watching and critiquing Lady Gaga videos. She was “discovered” at the Bitter End, you know. I’ll be playing there next Tuesday. And the cast are all coming to see.

Till tomorrow!

-Jess

He said he’d be interested in hearing about it. I have two thinkings about that. One is that I’m worried about being too open, but I guess while I have a website that looks like a blog, I’ll start doing what I was doing years ago when I was still living in my home town. What Clare Bowditch calls “Open Letters”. It’s been so long that I can’t even remember what I called them. I guess it’s just the day to day.

Sooo…. what’s been happening. I left Melbourne, Australia, just over ten months ago. Since that wonderful Farewell show at the Corner Hotel, I’ve been away.

Just under nine months ago I landed in Toronto. It was a sweaty night and I slept on a couch after a futile hunt for Poutine. I stayed on that couch for a month until I found a different location with a blowup mattress to stay at until I found a room in a loft apartment in the Downtown core, and a job as a waitress (they call them “servers” over here).  One thing is for sure, the pay system for hospitality workers completely SUCKS in North America. Working for minimum wage (works out to about $8 an hour) plus tips creates a kill or be killed environment to an extent. If you’re lucky you can make a decent living, but I just wasn’t passionate enough about selling people shit they didn’t want in order to drive the bill up and get a larger percentage tip. I just didn’t feel comfortable.

But now that feels like ages ago. In that time it has snowed a bunch of times, though the winter months truly felt like a rip- off after multiple warnings that I was going to freeze my Aussie Bum off in the -30 temperatures. No such thing. I didn’t bother telling them that my bum happens to be half Dutch, and the cold doesn’t bother me much, having said that, our one “Feels like -25″ day was a whole new experience.

The lack of sarcasm and dry wit in the Canadian ethos has been jarring, as has been the near eradication of my sailor’s vocabulary. The tangible disapproval and shock that crosses a canadian’s face when one casually utters the C- Bomb is a little unsettling. Needless to say that I am a changed woman. A skype date with my good Aussie mate Drew Goddard the other day left me realising just how infrequently I swear these days. We used to be on par.

I have spent a lot of time in New York city, at the center of the western world, exploring and falling in love. I mean- it’s just down the road!  For all of the criticisms that Australians (and people in general) have about American culture, the blatant lack of the Tall Poppy Syndrome is SO refreshing. This speaks for itself.

I have since secured a job as the events co-ordinator at Loft404, a multi- faceted creative events space downtown in the Entertaiment district of Toronto. We do all kinds of stuff, and it’s giving me the opportunity to link up with many Torontonian arts professionals and start to understand the community in this hemisphere.

I haven’t been playing many shows in the interim. A small residency at Not My Dog was meant to get me feeling like a musician again, but kind of resulted in a bunch of heavy drinking and late nights on a Monday. A highlight on a Toronto stage was singing with Gotye at WrongBar before he became stratospherically famous, which made me a little less homesick at the time.

It took me a long time to feel safe in this new country. I never expected to feel so foreign in Toronto. I certainly didn’t expect Canadians to have trouble understanding my Aussie Dialect. Truthfully, working in the service industry here has taught me to talk very, very slowly, and use words like “Celantro, Flashlight, Arugala, and Lox” As well as cutting my sense of humor out of the interaction so as to not offend. Aside from the water going down the drain in the opposite direction, the light switches switching on up-side-down and the cars being all on the wrong side of the road, people leave the taps running as if it’s opening a window to let a breeze in. We’re not in Australia any more, folks.

I had to remind myself that I left Australia for a very specific reason.

I had gotten to the point where I had lost sight of the balance between the music and the business. As a self managed artist on and off since I was 16 years old, I got very good at running my business, and became rather successful as a result of that. The music was good too, but I had been taking it for granted. I had completely stressed myself out,  and I couldn’t work out when I had hit the glass ceiling that I had created for myself, and how it happened. I had a breakdown.

It became apparent to me in  early 2010 that I would have to  quit music, or leave the country.

The choice became obvious.  And now, the hardest thing I have ever done has instigated the recovery I was hoping for.

So yes. I’m here.

I’ve driven on the wrong side of the road, eaten poutine (more than once), ice skated in a park, waited for the street car in the snow, and just like in Melbourne I ride my bike everywhere- especially since the weather has crept into a more acceptable range. Just this past Good Friday I got on my bike and in my drunken state I got my wheels caught in the street car tracks. As a brand new experience I was found unconscious, surrounded with blood lying under the back of a parked car.

Now, I have always had great faith in everything happening for a reason, and besides the obvious lesson that the idiocy of riding one’s bike while drunk without a helmet is not ideal, it helped me remember how short this particular life is. How fragile my body is. How lucky I am, and how I have a lot to do.  I have new music to write ( and there is a bunch in the works ). I have art to create. Touring to do. People to meet. And this time, I am going to take my time.

Oh- and I just got cast in a pilot that starts filming in New York in May.

So I guess that’s what’s been happening.  In case you wanted to know.