JULIE SUSANNE CLARK

After the Violence

By Corey S. Frey

‘Abundance’ means that the edges of things are connected by whatever it is that there is plenty of.  The boundaries are brought together by what it contains, the lack has been filled in.  In that way there is a wholeness, an integrity to the idea of Abundant Life; that life is so full, it brings together the boundaries.  Art is one of the best representations of this because of its ability to work its way into every crevice of what it means to be a human.  One piece of Art can bridge the range of human experience, so a painting can simultaneously be joyful and sorrowful, the abundance brings together these edges.  Here’s why I’m saying all of this.  I’ve had the great pleasure of watching the current form of After the Violence takes shape, and it is clear in every sonic inch of the album that wholeness and abundance have been given the permission of priority, and because of that, and the honesty of the work, we are given a glimpse of how redemption transcends time and temperament, transcends and melds emotion, bends the past toward the future.  Julie gives the listener the gift of her being a witness to the power of allowing abundant life to imbue even the darkest crevices of the heart.  And one of the testaments of the songs is their retention of difficulty, not a replacement of it.  Difficulty isn’t redeemed to an ease, no, it is redeemed with the recognition of presence, that God is attending to, giving attention (attention means stretching toward) to all of human life; that in the present God can fill the seeming absence of the past.

What has had me so excited about Julie’s process with the album is her desire for an accurate sound that could match the complexity of experience, and her simultaneous willingness to let that be a collaborative effort.  Jacob Early’s production is nothing short of cradling a heart and giving it a home of continuity.  Working with Julie on the design and shape of the house of the songs, accommodating the loveliness and messiness of being a person.  The work of the musicians and singers is tender but robust and feels–there’s no other word for it–correct to the celebration and the dirge, the grit, and incandescence of the album and of life.

At the very first keys-bass-kick of You’ll Never Meet All The Boys, we enter into a poetic landscape that both shares Julie’s tender experiences and an openness to the language and sound that accommodates all our own associational references.  Julie’s pain and delight are not just hers but ours.  Over and over again, while listening,  I find myself picturing Julie’s life, connecting with her cares, to then find the images she is giving me meld into my own, her characters shift to mine, a bucket is lowered into the well of my own emotions and circumstances.  But it’s not just this, there is also a sense of feeling cared for in the middle of this reciprocity.  Maybe my tendency to superimpose my personal narratives onto the narrative that I’m exposed to is a sign of self-centeredness, but with this album, it seems to me more a sign that Julie is offering hospitality.  The album doesn’t just offer us a world to enter into, but it offers us her past, her present, and her hopes toward the future, and in that way, the way vulnerability risks being seen also opens the possibility of your own real seeing,  I now see Julie more clearly but also, I feel seen.   

As Julie began the recording process she sent me some of the rough demo tracks, and so, to a certain extent, I’ve had the gift of hearing After the Violence unfold but every time I listen to it continues unfolding.  I’ve seen the smallest snippet of the process, but contained within the album, somehow included in it, is so much of the complexities of the past and possibilities for the future.  What I mean is Julie’s creative courage and commitment to artistic discovery allow the finished product to contain her own furrowed brow with pen in hand trying to figure out the right word, and Jacob Early’s “what if we try…”, and the singers warming up their voice, and photographer Sarah DeShields opening the shutter, and her husband KC’s “you’ve got this”, and the tears and laughter of her children.  All the way through to the candid at-home audio clip and fade out of the strings at the end of Love Is What We Hold we experience all of these gifts, but its drive, the thing that makes it possible is a commitment to the heart.  Julie is right “The heart is not smart…” but I’m so glad she “listens to it”.