Deena Lynch aka Jaguar Jonze on her creativity & #MeToo in the music industry
I meet up with Deena Lynch virtually, while she’s mid-tour. She’s just returned to Brisbane and I can see a suitcase standing in the background. She wanders in and out of the camera, making tea and fixing her earbuds while we chat and settle in.
A multitasking extraordinaire, Deena is a storyteller and an advocate, a creative ‘with her fingers in many pies’ as she says. She’s known by the moniker Jaguar Jonze – given to her during her early gigs, when people first saw her transform into her alter ego. She offers me an earl grey and we laugh at this new long-distance world we’re living in. But it’s no laughing matter. Deena was hospitalised last year with COVID-19 and spent weeks in hospital. The silver lining is that during that time in hospital care she created and recorded the vocals for her second EP, ANTIHERO – launched in April 2021. The album is just like her – ethereal, vibrant, raw and vulnerable.
photo: georgina wallace
kindling & sage: Tell us about yourself and your creativity.
Deena: Creativity was repressed when I was growing up, so I didn’t see myself as a creative person, but looking back, it's quite obvious that I was. It was just really repressed and locked away and discouraged. If I ever did a drawing it would be thrown out, burnt, like, no, this is not allowed to be explored. So, I considered myself to be a maths and science person. I left school and started studying engineering. And a year and a half into the degree I had a traumatic event happen and that was kind of a turning point where all of this repressed trauma came out of my body and needed to go somewhere, and I couldn't ignore it anymore.
I was walking home from uni and passed a garage sale. I saw a guitar and thought I'm going to buy that guitar and I'm going to learn how to play that guitar. Except I didn't learn and I still haven't learned. I just ended up writing songs and these songs were to park my trauma somewhere because I couldn't hold it in my body anymore. I was in survival mode for so long and I had hit a breaking point.
And so I went down this path of writing songs and they were horrible! It’s not like a magical story! I still had to go through the thick of it to learn how to be an artist, but it was like a little door-opening into exploring my creativity. I decided, as a bucket-list-thing, I would perform one gig and move on. But that one gig unlocked passion and I didn't realise that I had been living life without passion. And once you find passion, it's really hard to go back to something else.
I just fell in love with performing. The rawness, the connection, the intimacy, the realness, the expression, the vulnerability and I couldn't have enough of it. I just went and did gig after gig after gig after gig… I was like, I love this and I need to make this my every day.
By that time, Deena was working as a business analyst in a software development firm. Faced with self-doubt about her chances of succeeding in a tough industry and comparing herself to artists who have been raised in music and creativity, she decided she would just have to work harder to make it happen for herself. She continued doing gigs, went to networking sessions, began working as an intern at a music company and worked her way up to artist management to learn how things worked behind the scenes.
Deena: I just had this incredible drive and stubbornness. I continued pushing and I'm still pushing. But slowly, I opened this door and I ended up having a better relationship with myself.
To survive for so long, I had put a wall between myself, my body, and my emotions. They didn't have a relationship at all. I was high functioning and charging through life, completely dissociated and detached just so I could get through. As I developed this relationship with myself, I realised that I had gone through really traumatic things and didn't give myself the acknowledgement for it, didn't have the support and nurturing around me to have healthy boundaries or healthy relationships, even understanding what human rights were. So I had to do not just a big creative journey, but also a slow rebuild. [Asking] what healthy means for my life, what kind of life I wanted to deserve, taking back the power of my own life so that I can give myself the quality of life that I want and should have had and do deserve.
It has taken a lot of work though, because I'm [resolving] so many foundational things that come from childhood and it’s really difficult. But it’s just changed me dramatically as a person. Giving myself permission to express freely has allowed the creativity that already existed to come out more fluidly.
“I just fell in love with performing. The rawness, the connection, the intimacy, the realness, the expression, the vulnerability and I couldn’t have enough of it.”
Deena recognises that the challenges she’s overcome have built up her resilience. It’s that same resilience and drive for passion that support her where she is today. Likening it to a mountain range, Deena says it feels like when she started this journey, she was at the bottom and beginning of a huge range of mountains and it felt impossible to tackle the climb. Slowly but surely, she’s made progress – up and down, through highs and lows – but she can look back now and see how far she’s come. She confesses she wouldn’t have been able to have a conversation like this 3 years ago.
Her openness and willingness to have difficult conversations have led her to raise awareness about mental health and PTSD, and more recently to call for significant reform in the music industry.
Deena: The Lisa Wilkinson interview [aired in May through The Project’s special investigation into the music industry’s Me Too moment] was a hard step for me. I'm a very open person, but there are levels of openness. I still have to protect myself.
I used to not even feel like I had a voice, and I didn't even think I could speak up. That was something I've really had to change. I was just always so reserved and compliant.
It's slow progress and a lot of hard work, but holy crap, my quality of life has improved dramatically. I found a really great therapist who was able to help me process things and help me understand where my healthy boundaries should lie, what was missing from my childhood that I can give to myself now. It’s never too late. And there are still so many things I'm tackling.
I feel like it's two journeys. It gets easier, but throughout that journey there’s still an up and down of difficulty. The last few weeks have been a huge low for me, to be honest, and that's because - I'm so visual now - it’s kind of like loose sand at the bottom of the seabed. It was all settled and fine, and the interview and the whole movement, me being at the front of it, has been very taxing.
kindling & sage: In the aftermath of the interview and the Me Too moment in the music industry, how are you feeling? How is this all impacting you: speaking out about your personal experience as well as taking part in the music industry’s working group?
Deena: It's hard to know what the answer is and I think people are very quick to be cynical and critical. It's already hard to be a victim speaking out. It's really hard to expose yourself in that way. But then [there’s] also another level of difficulty when you're a victim trying to do something in a space that hasn't changed for a really long time.
Along with sympathy, you get cynicism and criticism thrown at you because no one knows what the right solution is and it's easy to break it down. But it's so hard to actually make a change. And all I'm trying to do is make a change. It doesn't mean I'm right and it doesn't mean it's perfect because there is never going to be a perfect process. But we need to just start chipping away at it together.
Emotionally, it’s been a lot because not only am I going through the actual incident and having to work with police on that side of things, so in my personal life I’m already emotionally exhausted. And then I'm taking on a lot outside of that, but I have felt extremely supported.
I’ve also become a safe space for people. Last year, there was a Me Too wave as well and hundreds of stories came into my inbox. I want everyone to feel like they have a safe space and that they are heard, but it's really difficult to give everyone the space they deserve because I need to protect myself first and that's something I'm still learning.
And there are even other factors. All this advocacy work has meant that I haven't been able to work as much, and so I haven't been able to bring in income to put food on my plate or those kinds of things. Practical things that people might not realize as well. But I've had a lot of great support around me. And a lot of people recognising that it's important work and they help. They're helping out where they can, which has been really generous.
“It’s a social kind of industry and so that leaves a lot of dark corners for a lot of dark things to occur, but there’s no protection in place. On top of that, there’s no accountability and responsibility at all.”
kindling & sage: What sort of changes would you like to see in the industry?
Deena: I wrote down a framework because I knew what the industry would be like. I just knew that it had to be broken down into a step-by-step framework so that we weren't overwhelmed. I don't want it to be another [situation where] we're all waving flags of “we care!” and then we just paper-push around for a while, the dust settles and we're back to our normal thing again.
There needs to be listening and discussion so that we understand what the problem is. From my perspective, [the problem] is there's no protection system in place. There's no feedback system in place, there's nowhere to report to, there's no third party that can mediate. We're in an industry where there's a lot of freelancers and contractors and small businesses and there's no overarching HR body.
The industry itself - it's entertainment and it's all at night and it's surrounded by partying and intoxication. It's a social kind of industry and so that leaves a lot of dark corners for a lot of dark things to occur, but there's no protection in place.
On top of that, there's no accountability and responsibility at all. So these predators are taught that they can get away with it and continue doing it and that they are invincible. And so, even though we rely on the justice system, there's so many subtle factors of abuse of power [where] the industry itself can add consequences outside of the justice system. If they've done something, there should be penalties or probations or suspensions or something that shows accountability, not only for the perpetrators but also for the companies that enabled them. Or for the people around them that enabled them. If we don't enforce [accountability and responsibility], these things will continue to happen. The reason why the industry is so fucked is because there's problems all across it. We're all guilty somewhere, and we just need to work together. Put that aside and have the bigger [picture] in mind, which is how do we change this space?
From everything she’s said and lived through, it sounds like a massive amount of work and reform need to take place. Deena agrees and adds that she’s not the solution to the problem – she’s just trying her best to make change. Her willingness to open herself up to the working group, to place her trust in a process and framework is significant.
As I write this piece, there are already changes taking place in the Me Too space – both positive and negative. How do we keep the momentum? I ask her. Little fires everywhere, Deena says. And the ability to stay focused on the big picture while working through this step by step. Not relying on a single person, not putting the onus on the victims but really everyone in the industry taking ownership in making change in their circles.
After a deep breath, the conversation flows back to our earlier discussion on creativity. Deena currently funnels her creative energy into 3 projects: Jaguar Jonze, her music; Spectator Jonze, her artwork; and Dusky Jonze, her photography.
kindling & sage: Tell us about your different creative projects and the personas you take on.
Deena: Music is a conversation between me and my subconscious, and so I guess it's in the most intimate and vulnerable and darkest of places. I create because I need to feel connection and to feel connection, I need genuineness and authenticity and rawness.
With my art, though, it's about taking that relationship with myself and creating relationships with others and learning from others as well. It's about having conversations outside of my subconscious and so the structure behind Spectator Jonze is that I interview each person that I draw. They'll share with me their mental health stories, or their triumphs or vices, or demons or anxieties. We can talk about our journeys with PTSD together, or how we manage our depression. Or they might have a story that I have no experience of. I've had some really great conversations with people with schizophrenia and bipolar [disorder] and psychosis, and I've learned so much.
The point of Spectator is for them to feel like they're not alone. There's a community around them of openness and transparency and vulnerability, but also to give back to each other too and destigmatize mental health in our communities. I've even realized, as I advocate for mental health awareness, that I still had my own [prejudices]. And I'm still learning every single day.
The beauty of separating [each of these creative projects] is that individually, [they are] their own worlds, [co-existing] in the same universe. To collide all the worlds together, I feel wouldn't make sense and there's a few things that went through my head when I decided this. For me, Jaguar Jonze is my music and it's mine. But my art - I [don’t] consider it to be mine. I consider it to be a collaboration. And I feel like the collaboration in Spectator is really different to the collaboration in Dusky. It's a different process and it's a different give and take. And it feels like it would be wrong to smoosh them together, because then it would almost seem like they're mine.
The names of each project are really unique – we already spoke about how Jaguar Jonze was a stage name that was given to her. When choosing names for her other projects, Deena tells me that she liked the idea of them being connected in some way – part of a little family. Spectator’s name comes from the visual art process: being a spectator to other people’s stories. Dusky comes from the monochrome style of her photography.
Deena: Jaguar’s my subconscious and Spectator is my relationship with others. But then Dusky is my relationship with the body.
I actually think photography was my first love. Even when I was a child, I always loved composing And I used to do things for Myspace, like plaster my entire bedroom in newspaper and then take a photo of myself in it and that would be my profile picture. I would put in so much production effort as a 13 year old for these epic Myspace profile pictures! So, photography I think is my first love.
My relationship with my body was the last thing I had to conquer. I did Dusky because I wanted us to all have freedom with our bodies and it's still something I'm working on as well. My rule with Dusky is that there's no retouching at all unless it disappears in a few weeks. So, if you have a pimple on your face and it's gonna go away in a few weeks then I will happily remove it, but otherwise everything stays as is.
I wanted to show that we're all beautiful, in every shape and size. Initially, the project started with me shooting photographers -male photographers- and flipping it on its head. Male photographers who shoot nude, I would challenge them in shooting nude for me. And it was an amazing process for them as well, to understand how to facilitate as a photographer when they're behind the lens.
Most of my Dusky subjects have never been in front of a camera and they went to that deep-sea level. I did a group shoot a few weeks ago [where there were] 10 strangers in a room, who’ve never been in front of a camera in that way, and they all stripped down, felt safety, and [were] able to create art together. For a while, I put Dusky on hold because of the Me Too stuff last year and this year, and just myself being in toxic environments with kind of abusive relationships. I didn't feel like I could navigate that space, but then I realised it's the complete opposite. I have to navigate this space because it's so important to show that you can create art with our bodies, with respect and safety and sensuality rather than sexuality. You can have intimacy and beauty without it being warped and skewed and over-fabricated and over-photoshopped.
I reflect back on my journey with my body. The first time I did close to a nude shoot, I was still wearing a jacket and a bra and pants and freaked out. It took me literally about three years to get comfortable and strip down for the first time and I literally ran around in a room for 30 minutes screaming and the photographer was so patient with me, never pushed me. He's one of my first Dusky subjects as well. He was so patient over the three years. And he really facilitated repairing my relationship with my body.
I’ve also found that it's a powerful way to reclaim your body and I've done a few shoots with victims who have found that power of reclaiming their body again. There's this [feeling of] beauty when you've done a shoot in your way, with your body and nothing else. You realise “I'm beautiful and this body is mine and I decide what to do with it.”
[Creating a safe space] is about perception, intuition, being hyper-aware and reading energy. I think it does take a lot of skill to create a safe space in this way. I think I have to give credit to myself, for what I've been through in my life, to be almost hypervigilant - about other people, comfort levels and safety.
Deena tells me about a shoot she did a little while back with her partner – it was just a test shoot to ease herself back in after she’d taken a long break from Dusky. Her partner volunteered to be her subject and even though there’s pre-existing trust between them and they live together and see each other every day, he broke down as soon as they arrived in the studio. Deena gave him time and space and never pushed or pressured. She let him figure things out and take everything at his own pace, while she was always near and present.
Deena: He said to me, “I learned so much about myself and I wouldn't have been able to achieve it if it wasn't for you creating a safe space for me. Now I understand what a safe space is and that I haven't been in it before, which is why I've never been in front of a camera.” Watching someone take the courage to push their comfort zones safely is my favourite thing to witness and for them to develop a relationship with themselves and an awareness with themselves and go “ok, I see what I need to overcome, and I'm going to try and overcome a little bit of it today”. That's literally the underlying thing with all my projects. It’s that process.
I recognise the significance of her lived experience, her sensitivity and vulnerability when creating – particularly in regards to Dusky.
Deena: There’s a willingness to know that you're not perfect, too, and to put the ego aside. So, if I make a mistake, I make it. I hopefully make it an environment where people are willing to tell me. I welcome that, if I get something wrong. Just tell me and I'll adapt to you, straight away. A lot of people hold onto their egos quite tightly, and that's the obstacle, sometimes, in allowing for a fluid and free and safe interaction in space.🔥
