The Get Inspired Project

http://www.getinspiredproject.com/2010/03/26/day-177-jamie-oreilly/

www.getinspiredproject.com
Online BLOG
Day 177: Jamie O’Reilly
March 26, 2010 at 12:01 am
Category: Inspiration

“I thought emotions were supposed to lead the day. Like ‘Go with how you feel,’ which
is part of our generation. And what I discovered was that practical things, thinking,
intellectualizing things, trying things out, the nonlinear part of the experience was also
going to guide me.” (Jamie O’Reilly)

INTERVIEW TEXT;
Toni Reece: Thank you so much, Jamie, for agreeing to be with us toda,y and before we
begin, can you please introduce yourself?

Jamie O’Reilly: I’m Jamie O’Reilly from Chicago, Illinois, and I’m a singer, and a
producer, and a writer, and an activist who has developed a process for helping my fellow
artists to make a life in the arts.

Toni: Well thank you, Jamie, and thanks for being here. When you think of that word
inspiration, who do you think you inspire, and how does that happen?

Jamie: Well, I like to think that I inspire people that are looking for a purpose for their
lives and to help them to find that it’s within them and that, in my case, I’ve narrowed it
down to focusing on women and artists, fellow artists. And by artists I mean performing
artists, writers, and visual artists. So I work with people that consider themselves unrealized, which means that they need to develop that part of themselves, people that are unaffiliated with groups, people that are out of school, people that have experienced big life changes and are looking for new directions, late life artists, people that feel that they have been silenced, and older folks who are looking back on their lives. So it’s a full range of people and also people that tend to feel very fearful about life or shy or are dealing with depression or mental illness and are looking for kind of a routine way to have a process in place to develop their creativity and their business smarts in the arts.
Toni: So the process is where the inspiration comes from.

Jamie: I believe it is; well, for them, but it’s also that I model it, and that’s something I
feel very strongly about. In other words, I have learned the ups and downs of making a
life in the arts, and I’ve also looked at how fellow people in the world of business and
other places tend to look down on the artist lifestyle as a viable way to get through life.
And so I’ve helped folks to contend with the myths that are attached to that, and also to
kind of stand behind their passion, and to identify that it’s an actually very good way to
look at life, because you are fueled by something that means something to you, and you
can’t ignore that. And so if they can’t ignore it, they also need a way to help them to be
practical, and we work on the practical parts of it, too.

Toni: How do you believe that by inspiring people this way, or just with what you do,
how does it help people to explore their potential?

Jamie: Well, some of the ways is it gives “for instances.” So if I am counseling
somebody or showing them something, I help them to come up with kind of a game plan
and to work with specific tools to look at what opportunities there are out there to
network, to take risks, but to take educated risks and to look at … looking at … for
something … try something new, and I think that it helps them to get the specifics and to
try them out, and then to have somebody to talk to about how that process is working for
them.

Toni: Can you define “educated risk?”

Jamie: Well, my definition of that is that I think that, you know, there are chapters to the
artistic experience, and that the young person — similar to activism in general or life in
general — is that the young person, say in their twenties, often has a willingness to try a
lot of things that are big, and they make … sometimes they make big, bumbling mistakes,
and that in a way is in order to get out in the world and to try things out. But after you do
that for a while, you can no longer say that it’s based on being naïve. What you need to
do is take the lessons from a bad experience. Say that I sang in Irish bars, which I did in the 1980s, you know. Ten, years after that I no longer wanted to do that, so then I would look at a situation where I was going to sing again, and I would say “Here’s a situation where I can have a sense of control and look at where I could … who I could bring in, how much I could get paid, etc., etc.,” and then I would say “But there’s a few places I’m willing to risk it,” and I would or will choose a scenario where I might learn a lesson outside of an economic one that makes it worth entering. And I think that’s partly because if people “get burned” in this field, they often go running from it, and my experience is it’s best to just look at it again and the next time you go you can say “Well, I’m making a choice to do this” as opposed to “It’s choosing me, or it’s taking me over.”

Toni: That’s a great definition of that, and I think that’s going to be very helpful to those
who are thinking of taking certain risks, but to make sure that they are educated risks, and that’s why I really appreciate you defining that for us.

Jamie: Oh good.

Toni: When you think about inspiration for yourself, what do you need to be inspired?

Jamie: Well, again I think, Toni, that that changes as we get older as well. And at the
same time, it’s funny, because if you look back at what you needed as a little kid – in my
case in a big family – they’re very similar things. Oftentimes I think about Dorothy in
“The Wizard of Oz” and, you know, you need the smarts, you need a heart, you need
courage. But for me, I think the first thing that I learned is that I need space. And what
space means to me is it’s a place and it’s also a clearness in my head. I tend to not do really well with a lot of chaos, and so I make a space for my life, and some of the exercises I do with my clients is we talk about an optimal space. “So where’s a good place where you really can feel creative and inspired,” and they get to design that for themselves. So that’s what I’ve done with my home, which is a live/work space, and it’s a place of great beauty for me, and calmness. Also, I think I need time. I need time to try something, and then I need time to step away from it and then critique it later. If I’m rushed through something, if I … you know, if I’m at the eleventh hour with a deadline, I don’t get a chance for analysis. So I need time. I need beauty, and beauty is very important to me and it defines itself in a variety of ways. Beauty can be that some person has something that they say, you know, in a television commercial, that is just the right thing at that moment, but it’s also nature, and colors, and things of art. And then I’ve noticed in the toughest times of my life that I’m seeking peace, but what I get, what I really look for, is a sense of hope. And I think if you’re in a situation that feels relentless or unresolved, or that it’s taking you over, a glimmer … just like you hear, you know, when you hear the stories of people that go through the toughest adversity, if they have a sense of hope it can create a beautiful experience, or it can at least motivate you to slog through the mire. You know, there’s a fair amount of practical things, like I need to feel a sense of progress and accomplishment. I need music, I need good writing and clear messages from people. And I would say one of the most inspirational things is acts of kindness; people that do things that model things for me that say they did that purely out of the kindness of their heart, and that’s something that I could try to do as well.

Toni: And then how do you explore your own potential?

Jamie: Well, I guess I told myself several years ago … I had been working with guiding
fellow artists for about 17 years. I decided to be really frank, and the frankness is my
passion and my peace of mind are the priority of my life, and if I have those things going
on, all of the other things, including taking care of my loved ones, follow.
So the way I explore it is I say “Will this fuel you? Will this make you want to wake up
tomorrow and do this?” I think some people are so terrified of procrastination that they
avoid even getting started. I’ve learned that I don’t tend to procrastinate when something
is really important to me, and I happen to have a tremendous sense of compassion for my
fellow human beings, so I say to people I have two great gifts that I was given.
One is a beautiful voice – I can’t deny that that is there, and even if I judge it, it is
something that moves people. The other is that I wake up in the morning fueled with
ideas. And the way that I explore my potential is I take my ideas … and I have a proven
track record of having taken ideas and flush them out in big ways through production,
through recordings, through projects, through grants that I have received, through awards that I’ve gotten, through the people that have been moved by the work that I’ve done, but also that I’ve learned from them. And one of the ways of exploring your potential is to work with people that have the same sense of purpose and integrity that you do, and so you kind of walk in it together. I think it’s important for us to know that we’re not alone and to look at others or for others to surprise us and guide us and not to use just our own ego to get through. Toni: It’s interesting when you speak about exploring your own potential that you realize that passion and peace of mind are your number one priority, and that is really what your model is for yourself, your mantra for yourself. And I’m wondering, Jamie, was that something that you’ve always carried with you, that you’ve always known that, or was there a moment in time or a process that you’ve gone through where you went “You know what, I need to get back to what I’m passionate about and peace of mind that’s important to me.” Was there a turning point for you?

Jamie: That’s a great question. When I went through a terrible heartache 17 years ago, I
did find some old journals and I said “Well, what do you need from this experience?”
And I said “I need to see who I was before, you know, I fell in love and got married and
did all these things. Where was I before it was about “us” – when it was about “me?”
And being raised Catholic, that’s a tough thing, because you’re not necessarily taught to
have the kind of ego that is needed. It’s always often about the group. So I found that I had outlined these things way back when, and I remembered that I had said when I was in seventh grade and the president of my class “I’m going to be a singer and a writer.” And then, you know, fast forward those years later, and I realize that I have done that.
But here’s where it shifted – it shifted because I thought emotions were supposed to lead
the day. Like “Go with how you feel,” which is part of our generation. And what I
discovered was that practical things, thinking, intellectualizing things, trying things out,
the nonlinear part of the experience was also going to guide me. So the big changes came from … I literally made a decision while I was in a woman’s book club to get smarter and stopped reading self-help books and started reading biographies and history. And I just made a decision that I could do this, and even teaching computer to myself, as all of us have learned that we’ve developed skills we didn’t think we needed to have. And as a result, many of us have become much more well-rounded people.

Toni: So it really was a total flip for you, wasn’t it? It was almost a shift of a mindset.

Jamie: It was. I had a very different mindset, I would say, 20 years ago – and that’s why,
you know, when you find your way, you really want to tell others about it.

Toni: Absolutely, and honestly that has been the unintended outcome of interviewing
people like yourself through the Get Inspired! Project, because asking you who you
inspire and how with such passion that you describe — also with what you need to be
inspired and how your explore your own potential — becomes so very, very important.
And being able to share with others who are listening to this all over the world that you
didn’t come to the table knowing that passion and peace of mind was number one, but
what you went through and the thought process to get there – that’s pretty incredible, and that’s going to provide a great deal of value.

Jamie: Oh, I’m glad to hear that. I think as I’ve said to people before, to know the pain
that comes from an artist’s life unrealized, and the sadness that people have because they want to do something but they don’t even know how, is something I want to alleviate,
because I’ve learned how to do it. And I think people trust you when you can say “When that happened to me, here’s what I did,” and you know, you can live by what it is that you did and you can model that. That comes from a real true place, especially for those of us who have become skeptical of people and their pitches, that it really is a matter of you can change it. But you kind of do need help in learning how, and I had a lot of guides with that.

Toni: Fantastic. Jamie, thank you so much for agreeing to be part of this Project, and we
wish you the best success. We will showcase your availability, your links at the bottom
of the interview, and best of luck to you, and thank you so much.

Jamie: Thank you very much.
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For more information about Jamie O’Reilly: www.myspace.com/jamieoreillymusic,
www.jamieoreilly.com, www.wmgchicago.com