Marquee Musician Jessie Reyez Dreams Of Oxymorons And Masks

Jessie Reyez’s music is an inspiration, a comfort, and a social phenomenon. Her versatility is sharpened by her authenticity. Her stories are sharpened by her honied as peach pie, wholly feeling audience; and her success is sharpened by her savvy, further underlined by her spirit.

You can listen to “Mutual Friend” from her latest kindly and truly self-titled album Yessie here.

Jessie is a Grammy nominated, multiplatinum, multi-Juno award winning artist in her lifetime. There is no telling how her stories will echo in eternity and impact the unseen dimensions of life everlasting. Her tender voice lights a path to rhythmic empathy, the dreamy ballad of better living.

Her collaborators include Kehlani, Dua Lipa, Eminem, Halsey, Billie Eilish, 6lack, and Sam Smith.

Mexico City plays her songs more than anywhere else in the world followed by London, Santiago, Los Angeles, and Sydney in that order on Spotify.

After the last show of her most recent American tour, Jessie was nearing 48 hours without sleep or proper calories. On the flight home she was already inclined to slip into dreaming in her last waking moments, so when she closed her eyes, the dreaming taking over was unusual, torrential, though sane, as if a riverbed fed by spring months of syrup rain.

She heard someone telling a story and a chorus of children engaged in joyous response. “A great pause in which humankind revaluated its contributions – starting at the pain points: the sick rivers, the ozone, disparity, despair,” went the voice telling the story.

She was nowhere, and the only thing she could see was a door. Behind the door, a singular voice lilted like a songbird. She turned the knob, opened the door, and there was only – facing away from her – a sculptor and his work, telling no story.

“It’s drippling out in little pieces of gold and silver and bronze, and I’m caring for them into something important,” said the artist, hard at work at a sculpture not made of precious metals but instead a carnival assortment of acrylic colors of various textures and density – denim, brick, bubblewrap, and more. It was in the shape of man.

Small phrases were etched into the body of the sculpture at various points – sayings like “where one’s wonder wanders has personal hope for peace everlasting” and “a penny saved is not worth how pennies will make you misbehave.”

The painter looked stuck on a section of the cross-knit of colors. The veritable Geppetto asked Yessie a question and etched her answering words into his Pinocchio’s flesh, with a deliberate sense to his movements like a father.

“What does spirituality mean to you, your music?” he asked.

“It means peace,” she said. “It means being grounded. It means a better quality of life. It means being connected to the oneness. It means home.”

“It’s interesting you say oneness,” said the sculptor. “As I’ve grown older, I’ve discovered consciousness growing in curious places, and I don’t believe it’s because I’m, at moment, in your head.” As he finished speaking, he showed his face in just a flash of present’s passing, and Yessie would later thank the heavens for time’s lapsing. The man looked like the worst of men, so twisted and strange and wrong it was maddening. When the sculptor was back at task, peace settled on the feelings of the room sans clues to inner gasps.

“Consciousness is still something that can’t even be explained or described tangibly. I think that that’s magic,” said Yessie. “And I think that music is one and the same because wherever inspiration comes from or wherever the energy of that force comes from is also part of that unexplained greatness, you know? It’s pretty. It’s f***ing beautiful. It’s cool. I feel like it’s ever-changing and all-encompassing because it’s true.”

“If I decide to make my knee conscious,” she said, “now my knee feels. And now my consciousness is within my knee. And it’s true because it’s wherever you want it to live, that’s where there’s living.”

“Breathing experience,” cocked a chorus of crows and ravens and a single albatross. They appeared standing in open windows in the studio that hadn’t been there at all before. Behind them, Yessie could see the open sea. And she heard boulders wailing at a single note, failing to be unpleasant on the beach beneath.

“I don’t think an instrument is intelligent,” said the sculptor, who gave no reaction to the birds big or small. “I think it is conscious. I believe it is feeling.”

“I think it’s just a different iteration of the same,” said Yessie. “It’s like an avatar ‘cause you can give a guitar to one person. And they’re going to make it do a few chords. And then you can give it to Heather. And Heather – it’s the same guitar but the connection and the consciousness – makes the resonance and the movements and the choices song.”

Heather is Yessie’s guitar player, and through the window, over the yellowing head of the albatross, Yessie saw Heather’s smile outlined in the clouds of her dreaming.

“Everything is just so different,” said Yessie. “I’ve thought that that’s fu****g crazy. And it’s a conduit. It’s just a conduit for where the consciousness can go to its full expression. The right catalyst needs to be in union.”

The floor was covered, then, with fuzz with life, a million colors deep, softer than the sculpture’s tones. Some, the smallest, came in purple and picked guitars with strings of sterling, starlight-like floss for strings. The gossamer rang beneath the string-fingers of a few fuzz-children as high truth.

“How does the industry affect your craft?” asked the sculptor.

“I think it’s fu***d. I think ‘music industry’ is an oxymoron like saying ‘holy money.’ It’s just kind of fu***d. But I also understand that it’s a necessary evil, and it’s also a blessing to be a working musician. And I understand I have the choice to walk into my life and decide to be a purist or decide to build a legacy. And I’ve made my choice.”

“I want to build a legacy,” said Yessie. “So, I have to work in tandem with the necessary evil that is the industry. What works in my favor is being able to compartmentalize. What I want to make sure is – I want to keep ‘holy’ within that oxymoron.”

“And for me, the two holy parts of what I do are creation and a connection to consciousness or spirit or that inspiration in the room, wherever the songs come from,” said Yessie. “That always stays holy because performing is something that requires you to be so in the moment that you know by default it’s potent.”

Mostly the fuzz just squeaked like rubber in a hound’s mouth. Occasionally, though, the oldest before falling over dead would say something sweet in plain English like, “one of the greatest gifts God gave us is that everyone begins with a mom.” And then the color would leave its body. Their last shade was always grey. In the instance mentioned, the surrounding fuzz kneeled and prayed for the motherless – in the squalor of their hairy grief.

“There’s been times where I’m quiet, and then spirit speaks. And all of a sudden there’s a song, and I was just a fu***ng channel ‘cause I didn’t even work,” said Yessie. “And then, that’s a whole other mountain to value it correctly because sometimes we’re taught is that if something’s not a struggle, then it’s of no value.”

Pink fuzz handed grey sand and dust from one to another, string-hand to string-hand, beneath Yessie’s feet. The chorus of squeaking went on without noise. And forest-colored and bubblegum-looking fuzz fell on fuzz the shades of hydrangeas and sunflowers such that their appendages braided themselves in small battles, silent strangulation. And the fuzz that stood up in victory swayed in place with more fervor in the passing of her speech.

“I keep that holy, which is nice. It helps me. I think it’s whack that we live in a capitalistic a** society period,” said Yessie. “I think it’s whack that you have to pay to live. I think it’s a** backwards, but I’m also aware that I’m on the great end of it because I get to make money off what I love.”

And the fuzz lined up in single file for what stretched for what seemed like forever. And they grabbed dust and handed it to the next in line, each trying to leave its neighbor with as much as it could carry. And the meekest fuzz were encouraged to cover themselves in the dust for warmth by their larger neighbors.

“How do drugs affect your creativity?” asked the sculptor, his hands pushed deep into the flesh of lifeless progeny.

“They definitely helped and hindered, like all things,” said Yessie. “There’s nothing that’s going to, I don’t think, be inherently bad or inherently good. It’s just a matter of how you use it and how you engage with it. I used to drink a lot.”

“I used to drink a lot,” said Yessie, “and I used to drink at every session. And I used to drink at every show. And in 2019, I had my first sober show.”

“And it was so sick because I didn’t think I was capable of it. I just didn’t think I was capable of it. And doing it was great, and it’s been nice to find things to lean on in this human experience. It’s been nice to find things to lean on that are healthier,” said Yessie. “So, I still drink coffee. Caffeine helps my mornings, but I don’t do as much alcohol as I used to.”

“But I’ve found other supplements. I do a lot of hot yoga, man,” said Yessie. “And, it might be an addiction, but I love it. And it’s good for me.”

The fuzz took up their best impression of downward dog.

“Where’s the line?” said the sculptor, and as his face turned. Yessie realized it was a question for her and not a sculptor with a project full of various lines asking himself a question. To save herself from seeing his crazed, discomforting face again, she spoke. His head paused in mid-action such that she could see the corner of his bruised lips pulled into terrible smile, and nothing else of his countenance.

Looking to her left, Yesie saw herself in a loft, poised like the sculptor. She saw herself arranging a skeleton, and she recognized it as the skeleton of a song. Looking to her right, she saw 8 billion sparks colliding for larger and smaller, better overall. From where she stood, singularity was both a myth and as impactful as a missile with your home address.

“If you are completely dependent on something and it’s not helping you grow or helping your physical health or helping your mental health, I think that it’s a red flag. Even honestly, even the way that I was doing hot yoga before, it was a bit of a red flag,” said Yessie. “’Cause I was doing it every day, and my body was like, hey b**ch; you’re not superhuman. You can’t grow forever.”

“The economic system asks for constant growth,” said the sculptor. “The bills coming due– because of impending population decline, ecological withdrawal, or whatever.”

“The natural, the world,” she said, “the fu***ng summer and spring and December – it’s all cycles. You grow. You expand. It’s hypertrophy. You need to stop, and then you start again. And then you stop.”

“It’s inhaling and exhaling,” said Yessie. “You can’t expect endless expansion to be sustainable. It’s not; you die, or you melt, or you fu***ng wither away.”

The fuzz gathered at her feet and started squeaking. “They’re asking you your favorite color,” said the sculptor. “They want to show off.”

“It changes every day. It could be black, pink. It could be yellow, orange,” said Yessie. As she spoke, the fuzz changed with little spins and ta dahs into black, pink, yellow, and orange.

“What is it today?” asked the sculptor. “It might be hot pink,” said Yessie. And when she did, every fuzzy spun and ta dah-ed turning hot pink. And the sculpture itself stood up, performed a pirouette, and fell to the floor, dead again. The fuzz rushed over, covering it. It looked like a Barbie-brand rug covering over a small horse. And it became clear the fuzz was feasting on the sculpture as the rug’s baby bump receded reaching the floor.

“As soon as something is given life, it is subject to death,” said the sculptor, “and consumption.”

He laughed saying, “I wish I could say it was a pain, but then I would have to say it was a joy too!”

The sculptor turned around showing his mad, twisted face, and then he took that face off as if it were a mask. And underneath was the late English writer, Alan Watts.

“I fu***ng love y0u, Alan Watts,” said Yessie.

Watt’s philosophy can in part be explained by this paragraph from the author – “God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself…He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up, they will disappear.”

Alan showed Yessie they’d been speaking in one tower of a castle that grew beneath their feet like grasses beneath the sun. Bedrooms, towers, dining rooms appeared before them as they walked through decorated halls, red and gold. Wherever they went the castle followed or vice versa. It was difficult to discern. Some of the castle’s amenities were anachronistic.

They walked past rooms full of memories. Yessie saw herself waking up after a jam, a family party, her cousins and tia sprawled on the couch and the carpet. Her mom and pops made coffee, listening to the stereo, eating, and dancing.

Alan and the songstress rode Yessie’s favorite rollercoaster, the Leviathan from Canada’s Wonderland. Alan asked her, as they rose, whether she’d read anything interesting recently.

“There’s this book called Conversations with God,” said Yessie. “And in it the author said the conversation was so great and so wonderful and so potent and so beautiful because it was that God couldn’t experience itself and in order to embrace and acknowledge and experience how beautiful it was, it needed to create, to have that relationship to experience.”

“And I think that’s so interesting,” said Yessie, “because it kind of lends to that relationship or mirror or outside experience, outside expression to be able to actually experience.”

“In a relationship, if you want to know if you’re being treated well, you ask yourself if you would recommend to your friend to stay,” said Yessie. “That’s fu***ng crazy that our idea of self and our relationship with self isn’t as nurtured as when it’s applied outwards.”

“I guess that’s that good echo forward, upward, and through the heart of it,” said Alan.

And the rollercoaster dropped. Alan had a funny scream on the way down, and a warm giggle in equilibrium. They walked again.

From one draped doorway, she heard people thanking others for seeing them, and it was the sweetest song ever made – for maybe just a moment. One door was locked, and Alan didn’t ask to go in.

“There’s been demons I’ve been trying to shake for years that I can’t – that still get songs out of me,” said Yessie. “And then there’s days that are just so full of joy and people that have brought joy to my life that have made me talk about that. Life isn’t linear; it’s so many ups and downs. Don’t expect life to be perfect. I don’t expect to be on this upstroke forever.”

Alan disagreed on his face.

“Cause that’s just not, it’s not real,” said Yessie.

“Life will always fly higher,” said Alan, “in the long run. It wouldn’t be very much fun otherwise.”

He traced a path with his fingers with frequent ups and downs like an electrocardiogram with his finger. But the path went upward as if it was a graph of the value of the S&P over its history, which is curiously as long as a long human life.

“I agree. I believe in elevation. But that is only that to someone standing 20 feet away,” said Yessie. “When you’re in the moment, that is still a drop. That little drop is still going to get sad songs out of me, even if we live in this utopian constant state of elevation and evolution and growth. Those little drops, they’re still part of the hard days of the human experience.”

“How was this last tour?” asked Alan.

“I could find something great to say about every single show,” said Yessie. “The first show is like tossing yourself back into the water, checking if you could still swim.”

“Why is that though?” said Alan. “I ask because you’ve performed at the highest level for some time.”

“Because life, it’s not getting tossed into a pool, it’s getting tossed into the ocean,” said Yessie. “‘Cause it’s the unknown. So, I might know how to swim, but getting tossed into the ocean’s still going to stir up some nerves ‘cause the people are different. And life, time moves forward.”

“How did your parents feel about you wanting to pursue a song?” asked Alan.

“They’ve always been very supportive, but fearful and with every right, concerned because of the stigma and the rumors within the industry that I was trying so hard to break into. And also, because I opted out of school, and I opted out of the beaten path,” said Yessie. “And I have a brother that’s a genius and works at a university and is a teacher and a scientist.

Yessie said, “and so, it was a stark difference. Despite their concern, when I was doing open mics where it was the bartender, a waitress, and maybe one civilian. My parents would come.”

“I understand the pressure the vision they mourned now because she dealt with people,” said Yessie. “People criticize moms all the time like, that’s what you’re letting your daughter wear? That’s what you’re letting your daughter do? And she always kept me free of the fu***ng shackles of taking those opinions in as something that mattered.”

“I could see why they were concerned,” said Yessie. “I could see why they were concerned.”

The feeling got fuzzy, and Alan warned that their dream was coming to an end. Yessie remarked on how unusually lucid the dream had been, and Alan asked her one last question, about her favorite dreams.

“One of my boys who passed away visited me in a dream years ago. It resonates. He popped in, and I asked him about the afterlife. And he said it was beautiful. You want for nothing. And I was confused,” said Yessie. “And he tried to explain it to me as I want a hotdog; I have a hotdog. I understand that now as the oneness. It’s not feeling in need of anything.”

“And then I asked him about hell,” said Yessie. “And he like, he laughed. And he told me, you don’t have to worry about it. Hell doesn’t exist. And everything you do on earth, you pay on earth.”

“And then I hugged him goodbye. I just love it. It’s one of my favorite dreams,” said Yessie. And she woke awoke.

You can watch Jessie’s music videos here. You can buy tickets to her upcoming European tour here. And you can follow her activities on Instagram here.