Jessica Boston Tells The Story of This Feeling is You

Jessica, how did “This feeling is you” happen?

Since training in cognitive hypnotherapy and long before that, come to think of it, I had been fascinated with how voice and words can shape your reality. Making an album was always on my mind, but it needed to be both beautiful and functional. In 2017 I was going through situations that left me feeling everything, I was a sponge, and it was painful. One morning, at 6 am, I was walking in the street; I had this dark, heavy void in my chest. I was sobbing. This voice from within said, “this feeling is going to kill you”, and another voice appeared from underneath and said, “This Feeling IS you.” Those words left me breathless, it was clear what I was feeling had little to do with the situation but was about the lessons around loss I hadn’t internalized that was making this difficult. It was going to take deepening that knowledge and the other lessons I had to learn to get me out the other side, but at that moment I committed to making this album and knew it had to be with Cristina and Eloi.

In which way is music important for your career?

Meditation and music together create a powerful perceptual illusion. It can slow down and equalize brain waves, unify your mind and can result in altered states of consciousness. It helps you hold onto information. You remember when the beat kicks in in songs you haven’t heard for years? When I was little, I memorized the timetables and won an award using a learning/music tape I was obsessed with; I can still hear it if I close my eyes. I think that moment in time had a great impact on me and is part of the reason This Feeling is You exists. I am fascinated by anchoring; you hear “badababaaaa” … and your brain finishes the sentence “I’m loving it”, it’s used to sell you all sorts of unnecessary nonsense that don’t help your life. Music isn’t a part of being a hypnotherapist, most plonk a bit of Whaley, and panpipes in the background but I think you are missing a trick if you don’t use it as part of your work.

What is the contribution both in an emotional and professional level of your working experience with Desert?

Everything, emotionally, without sounding trite, they saved me, I was in a very dark place when I came to them, this project stopped me crying and gave me hope. When I would write the scripts, I felt alive, connected, transported, tuned in and a part of something bigger. Professionally, it’s made me better at what I do, but it has also been an exercise in communication, so many micro conversations and endless back and forth go into making something like this happen. There have been moments of frustration, but that’s required in learning, especially with so many personal firsts. I don’t think any of us realized what a huge undertaking it would be. But Desert are pros, and fun to work with and inspiring. It’s helped with my ability to trust the genius in people.

What do your hypnosis therapies consist of, and specifically, what are the benefits for the patient?

I work helping people explore their unconscious mind and in doing so helping them understand how it either got stuck in a moment in time or how throughout the course of their life focusing on the dripping tap effect of something that made them feel negative created a greater issue. Essentially you are dehypnotizing them out of the moment that trust was broken with their ability to trust their reality and themselves as a result of that. By helping the conscious and unconscious work together you can help the unconscious belief in its ability to feel safe and trust again and in doing so relax the behaviour it adopted as a way of coping. Then it can integrate new behaviours and patterns, and the results are life-changing.

Is music a good cure for depression and stress?

Music can regulate stress-related hormones and a study with anesthesiologists reported that the level of stress hormones in the blood declines significantly in those listening to relaxing, ambient music. Listening to music for many reasons results in dopamine, as the brain tries to decipher patterns, expectation builds anticipation, which when met results in a reward. You can completely change your state through music. It also depends on what you are listening to and how the brain has wired it, we know major chords are happy and minor chords are sad but if a traumatic event happened at the moment of listening to spice up your life, it may always hold an unhappy that association for you.

Can music reconnect you to the present and tune you in with harmony?

We played with the trance of time and the notion of presence in the album. Certain things remind me I am alive. When I see fire or hear my heart beating. Music affects the heartbeat, pulse rate and blood pressure. The human heartbeat is particularly attuned to sound and music. It responds to frequency, tempo, and volume and adapts to the rhythm of a sound. The faster the music, the faster it beats; the same if the music is slow. It is the same with the rate of breathing, a steadier rate of breath and slower heart rate releases physical tension and stress, calms your mind, and helps your body heal.

Don’t you think we are living in a particularly nostalgic time? What do you think is the reason for that? It means if we are involved in a nostalgic time, so people, for example, is listening to music rediscovered by labels such as Trunk Records, for example.

I think if we live in a nostalgic time, there are a few reasons, all of which come down to our misinterpretation of an illusion of certainty, but there is always uncertainty, life is uncertain. I think in previous decades, politicians worked the public through creating an illusion of stability, now they work the other way round, it’s like being in a relationship with a narcissist; they create chaos and confusion, light fires then put them out with kerosene, and give their followers breadcrumbs in the shape of what they want to hear without ever delivering. The Brexit campaign was developed by Paul Mckenna a famous hypnotist, don’t believe me, google it. The slogan “TAKE BACK CONTROL”. Is entirely hypnotic; it’s a presupposition that brings a sense of comfort to those that feel they are losing control, possibly in many areas of their life. It also implies that at one point, there was control and that this control exists, and they can take autonomous action towards it. For those members of the public that respond to this hypnotic sentence, the imagery and the context are taken back in their mind’s eye to a time where their outdated values are ok. It isn’t real. It never was. I also think in post-2010, technology has given us access to so much information, so we no longer have defined decade aesthetics, trends or an illusion of a unified sense of values like the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s did. Those that rely on that need to feel a sense of control feel lost. It’s easy to hypnotize the public with a sense of nostalgia in challenging times. An afraid mind struggles to imagine its future because it’s hard for it to construct, it’s easier for it to look back and fantasize. This is because our unconscious craves certainty; there’s safety in certainty even if it’s miserable, it’s easy, and change is effort. Throughout the album an important message I come back to is to let go; loss is scary, but embrace the new, release your fear based on the tight hold of your illusion of control and what once was, instead allow yourself to be something greater. In positive plus more, I use a similar hypnotic sentence to Mckenna’s, but it’s not racist nor divisive, it’s to tune you into your greatest self. “You are taking control of all that you no longer need, you can start to see it behind you, this very moment is all that matters.” It’s not about taking control at all, it’s about believing you are til it no longer matters whether you do or don’t.

In the album, you speak in a way that very much resembles a mantra. They are speeches that look like echoes of a remote past. I don’t know if the term hauntology, that in music comprises the precepts of Jacques Derrida is familiar to you. Your voice, combined with music, reminds me of a distant echo, those echoes of a past that will never come back but that we long for. It is like opening a dialogue with those who passed away. What is your opinion about this idea?

It is an interesting idea; I love it. I wrote the scripts at a time I felt I was losing everything; I had “lost” a romantic relationship of 10 years, I was losing my father, it was a year of loss after loss. When you are losing or grieving, the greatest healers are connection, action and creation. Those were the principles I lived that year by, spending time in nature with concepts bigger than myself. The album directs the listener back to all of these ideas. The Awakening is an opportunity to connect, be it with loved ones, a past, a future or the stars out in the universe; it’s up to you who you believe those stars need to be.

How was the album production process?

It was very magical and exciting. We were supposed to record my voice by June 2017, but my father took a turn for the worst; he died in November, I left Barcelona, which had been my home for thirteen years in December, settled into my new place in London and flew back to record my voice. At first, each track was thirty minutes long. I spent Easter week 2018 in bed with Garageband, editing each track down to ten minutes. Then Desert made the music; I flew back later in 2018 for us to make minor changes. We got it to a place we loved. My boyfriend Dre mixed the album, he did an incredible job, and I am so proud of him because mixing a long-spoken word ambient album is a huge task, especially with it belonging to your girlfriend who wants it to be excellent. Plus, he was slipping in and out of the trance as he did the work, but I trusted him too, I gave him freedom, and I love what he brought to it.

Had any part of the Project its own function or could you contribute in any kind at a musical level? This means if both you and Desert contribute in the sound of the record, or sound is made by Desert with any contribution by your side.

When we started, I had my ideas and references of what I wanted it to achieve musically and psychologically, but I don’t speak music, so I tried to communicate why I had chosen certain things rather than it needing it to sound like anything that existed. I gave them this information in the form of a Spotify playlist. But the most wonderful thing was, they didn’t need it or use it at all, they understood what it had to be, and they had their own ideas and references. They had total freedom and what they came up with was better than I had ever imagined. For me, there were no correcting or changes, I was always astounded and being sent each track felt like I was unwrapping birthday presents.

On your website, you claim that 90% of our behaviour is programmed, and we must connect with our neuronal, irrational and creative sides.

The unconscious makes habits to save energy. That includes your thoughts. If every time you got out of bed you had to spend an hour figuring out if the floor was solid, it would take hours to get anywhere. If you walked on a floor and fell through a floorboard, this was a challenge that your unconscious believed to be true and for some time at least it would change its responses to how you walked on that floor. Responses are challenged by change, but they don’t just update automatically without there being a guarantee of safety because that might put you at risk. You need to engage with the power that controls those responses to make a change; the problem is most try to engage the unconscious like they are talking to the conscious; the conscious already knows. You need to speak to the person in charge. I know how to do that, and I can teach you how.

Do you think that it could be possible in a society in which our bodies are more and more monitored by devices that predict the path we must take?

In the track “The Beginning”, I talk about us being influenced from the outside in, not inside out. Environmental influences always nudge the unconscious in directions, but as long as you are aware you have a conscious choice, you can influence your own outcome. We are always governed by outside forces, but you can equally be governed by an overprotective unconscious; both can take control over you but you can always take back control; you just have to be open to believing it is so.