I ran into JJ Wigelsworth at Phuket’s Thai restaurant this morning, out by the Providence subdivision. He dashed off this poem on a napkin and said I could post it:
Evening
Evening was the time for dreams
Inviting lush ladies and lords
Swishing through electric gardens
Hijacking elevators to the glittering vault
Ransacking booze, raping hope
Improvising and denying madness
Colliding with fate, stirring destiny
Relenting to enjoin as gods
If you aren’t familiar with JJ, his full name is Jamar Jasper Wigelsworth. He’s an iconic English composer and singer of popular music, best known as the founding member of The JopDeBops in which he and Bryce Burris formed the massively successful Jasper-Burris songwriting partnership throughout the 1990s.
Wigelsworth’s songwriting was often full of pain and hope. His melodies were at times beautiful and at times dark. Wigelsworth’s lyrics reflected his personal and career demands, philosophical outlook, his unease with his fame and current events. He and Burris popularised the return of analog effects and melody in rock music.
Through television and in films, such as Two Coins (1999) and by press conferences and interviews, JJ revealed his rebellious, iconoclastic nature and quick, irreverent wit. Wigelsworth channeled his fame and penchant for controversy into his work as a peace activist, artist, and author. He currently resides in semi-seclusion on a twenty-acre goat farm he bought near Huntsville, Alabama.
