Our Inner Janis

 

The anguish. The yearning plea. The bluesy voice. The wildness. The raw truth that, not only commanded you see and hear her, but also that you tap into your own heartache, using her voice as the driving vehicle.

Janis Joplin. Most of us have seen and heard her in the pop culture landscape. She is a staple figure of the “27 Club,” amongst those musicians, like Jim Morrison, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, and Jimi Hendrix, who all died at the young age of twenty-seven. They succumbed much too soon, due to personal struggles with drugs, alcohol, depression, and mental illness. She is in that roster.

And her music. A white girl screeching the blues, yanking at the agony of love, unhealthy relationships, and despair-filled longing.

You know, part of the human experience.

I love Janis. Despite my vocal shortcomings, I have belted out her stuff, a coping strategy to deal with exorcising the demons of this thing called life. I try not to make dogs and wolves, alike, howl in neighboring states. But, yes, Janis is a necessity in tapping into and releasing pain for me. I identify with her. For good reason. I don’t have anything really in common with her, at first glance, except our shared middle name.

Janis Lyn Joplin.

And, initially, I thought that was the end of the similarities. That was, until I learned more about her. And I could, again, identify with her, beyond just a shared middle name.

I suspect you can also tap into your Inner Janis as well.

Invisible Beginnings:

Clichés are clichés for a reason.

We are familiar with the common trope. A famous person starts out with humble beginnings. Poverty, abuse, a lack of love, and neglect are all a part of that story.

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

Yep, we, your community, do not see you.

Janis was born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas. And, not surprisingly, she did not fit in. Appearance, popularity, and talent were not appreciated as she grew into a teenager. She did not look like or express herself, “like everyone else.”

Just like you and me, perhaps?

The Invisible Prophet:

Maybe part of why we adore celebrities, like rock stars, is because we see, in them, us, as the misfit. We’ve encountered enough stories, fact and fiction, which have featured the loner outcast, the individual who just didn’t fit in.

Was that you? And, if so, how was that you?

I think, for a lot of us out there, a part of that answer can be found in the Narcissistically abusive systems we live in. Culprits include the family of origin, public or private school experiences, and houses of worship are all heavy hitters. How much more so if we are dwelling in a small and/or rural town, like I did?

Regardless, things like physical appearance, self-expression, sexuality, and financial status are just a few “reasons” that seem to make us targets of rejection.

There seems to be an “us versus other” mentality which asserts that anyone who appears to be different from the rest of the herd is to be ostracized.

And, let’s face it, if you are reading these words, you probably see yourself in the “other” category.

Just like Janis.

Rebellion and/Persecution:

Hello, to all the black sheep and scapegoats out there! Let’s all bleat together!

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

As a youth, Janis Joplin was ostracized and bullied. Because of, and despite this, she explored her musical abilities and interests. She went to blues clubs, just across the state line.

After graduating high school, she attended art school in Austin, Texas and began performing her music in small clubs. Eventually, Janis moved to San Francisco during the 1960s Haight Asbury hippie movement. Janis flourished with that move.

This was a form of rebellion on her part, while simultaneously tapping into her voice in the process. Janis Joplin was not viewed as a beautiful girl, a Southern belle, or a debutante. She did not “fit.” She was, perhaps, too loud, too aggressive, too sexual, too weird. She wasn’t traditional, conservative, or quiet. She was a screaming banshee. She challenged authority.

In time, the world would celebrate that. But not in this time and place. Each step of the way, she was met with criticism, judgment, and scorn. She may have projected a scrappy “tough girl” attitude, but it hurt her in a way that it hurts any of us when we are told we don’t measure up.

The Rebellious/Persecuted Prophet:

Indeed, if, day after day, the message we receive is “you don’t fit; you are wrong,” we are being persecuted. And it’s now gone global, with cyber bullying and stalking ratcheting a threat level beyond name calling.

So, within that hostile environment, we, like Janis, are presented with a choice to fight back, to rebel, or not. Most of us, on some level, choose to fight back and rebel. It can be with belligerence and fist fights. It can also be with our deliberate decision to create and express. Enter: art.

Like Janis Joplin, many of us have found solace, identity, purpose, and meaning via this avenue. We create, therefore, we are.

We can resemble Janis Joplin, even if we cannot carry a tune in a bucket. We can express ourselves, and we should not feel stifled for doing so.

Rejection:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

Janis Joplin was not accepted in her hometown. Blame it on the Southern mentality, the Bible Belt, a lack of diversity in her community, or any other possible explanation under the sun, it still didn’t change her reality. Janis was rejected.

Attending art school in Austin, Texas would, unfortunately repeat that experience for her.

According to one documentary I caught on the rock icon, while attending that Austin art school, each year, the fraternities would sponsor a festival on campus. And one of the activities was the “Ugly Man” award. People could nominate anyone who they believed should get that distinction.

(You know what happened next).

Someone nominated Janis… and she won.

This devastated her; she cried upon hearing the news.

The Rejected Prophet:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

I know we don’t want to hear this but getting bullied and persecuted in our hometowns does not inoculate us from repeating that experience later on, in different settings. As much as we may want the happily ever after swan transformation, unfortunately, reality plays more of a harsh game.

We can take our rejected experiences and even our internalized rejected states of being with us, wherever we go. No, we are not to blame for being bullied. But nothing about life makes a point of checking in with our past life experiences, asking our permission to do or not do something. And it certainly doesn’t honor any kind of mistreatment quota.

“But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.”

Matthew 5:44-45

Yeah, I know. That is just a mistreated bridge too far.

And if the Bible is too much for us to handle, let’s reduce it down to this: life happens to everyone.

It would be great if we could get some free passes from pain, all while we’re growing, discovering, and becoming who we are. But we don’t get that immunity. Janis may have left her stifling hometown, but she did not leave the rejection spirit some people possessed and decided to exert on others. We encounter similar situations. It may be personal; it may be random. It could have evil intent, or it could simply be something someone does because they are bored. We don’t know why people choose to reject us. We only know we have been rejected, mistreated, and hurt.

I am inclined to believe the evidence of greatness resides in the presence of persecution, not in its absence.

Therefore, my persecuted friend, you are, indeed, having a brush with Janis Joplin in this regard.

And more to the point, you, indeed, are having a brush with greatness in your own right.

Love Search:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

It should come as no surprise Janis Joplin was seeking love.

After feeling like a misfit, unappreciated by both her family and her hometown, of course, it would be a given that Janis would be in search of love.

As I watched documentaries on her, one of her close personal friends made a heartbreaking statement about the singer…

“She would be with second rate people if they would love her.”

Ouch.

Janis was not lucky in love, as they say. She was involved, reportedly, with both men and women, including Country Joe McDonald, Kris Kristofferson, and Jae Whitaker. Supposedly, she was even engaged, at the time of her death in 1970, to Seth Morgan.

Listen to “Ball and Chain,” “Piece of My Heart,” and “Me and Bobby McGee.” You hear the struggle, don’t you?

Adding still more heartbreaking struggle to Joplin’s life, was her search to be loved by, yet again, her family and her hometown.

In a 1970 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show, Janis enthusiastically spoke of her plans to attend her upcoming tenth high school reunion. Cavett asked her if she had been popular in school. She responded that her peers "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state"^[

So, naturally, she, the misfit and the loner, was relishing this reunion as an opportunity to come back the triumphant heroine and probably strut her stuff and rub her persecutors’ noses in it. This was her revenge/justice moment.

Dick Cavett: “Do you think you’ll have a lot to say to your classmates?”

Janis cackled, “I’m gonna laugh a lot, man.”

Unfortunately, that apparently did not happen. Those close to her reported that, while Joplin did return home for that milestone event, again, she was treated as the outsider. The reality did not match her revenge fantasy. She was further rejected, by both her community, and by her own family members. They were upset at her for speaking so ill of the hometown.

Janis Joplin was, once again, heartbroken, disappointed, and in need of love.

The Love-Starved Prophet:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

“She would be with second rate people if they would love her.”

Which statement rings truer for you?

When we have been rejected on a macro or a micro level, we can tend to make it our mission to obtain love: to prove them all wrong, to get revenge, and simply, to be loved because that has been the gaping unmet need screaming to be realized. Human beings need to love and be loved. When that does not happen, we try to self-soothe, cope, and seek, if not love directly, then, at least, some love substitute.

And here’s where many of us can turn to alcohol, drugs, food, spending, sex, as well as to a full range of desperate and toxic relationships and behaviors. We just want to get this love need met, any way we can.

Rejection has created the hole. We just want it filled.

Stardom:

“‘Truly I tell you,’ he continued, ‘no prophet is accepted in his hometown.’”

Luke 4:24

Despite rejection from her humble upbringing, Janis Joplin has left a legacy. Her music endures to this day. Artists like Melissa Ethridge, Stevie Nicks, Pink, and Florence Welch have all been influenced and inspired by the singer. And you can see it in their performances. Tough, strong rebellious women, who were also vulnerable, affected by love, and had powerful things to say.

I don’t know to what extent Janis truly sought and desired fame. I suspect she, like most of us out there, wanted to be loved, valued, seen, and unheard, as the individual she was. Janis was a “prophet,” in that she signaled what was yet to come in music and in feminism.

Did she know she was doing all of that at the time? Probably not.

The Star Prophet:

So, let’s turn it around onto you.

Are you a star? What does that definition look like?

Before you disqualify yourself, listing things like not enough fame, achievement, money, or status to back it up, imagine you already are a star. Right now. As is. Can you do that?

If you’ve been rejected in your family, your hometown, your country, or your religion, just to name a few outlets of acceptance-seeking, you are part of an elite club. The fighters. The survivors. The artists. The changemakers. The people who move the needle, however so slightly, or seemingly, insignificantly. Nevertheless, the needle is moved. The change is made.

That is you. With or without Janis Joplin and her example.

But may her example encourage you, right now, to accept your value and worth. It’s not about resembling and connecting with your “inner Janis.” It’s about connecting with and discovering your own spin on that kindred spirit.

I suspect, in your own unique, flawed, beautiful, rejected, fragile, strong, hurt, individualistic way, you are already there. You are greater than what “they” put you through.

Go be a prophet now!

Copyright © 2021 by Sheryle Cruse