My Morning Jacket’s Jim James Talks Roger Waters, David Lynch, Meditation
Jim James has a busy fall planned with My Morning Jacket, as the band supports latest album The Waterfall with a string of dates leading up to four late-November shows at New York’s Beacon Theatre. But on November 4th, James will make a quick detour to take the stage solo at Carnegie Hall alongside stars such as Katy Perry, Jerry Seinfeld and Sting for the Change Begins Within benefit concert for the David Lynch Foundation.
The David Lynch Foundation’s Meditate New York initiative has brought Transcendental Meditation into the lives of at-risk people, working with PTSD-afflicted veterans, domestic-violence survivors and inmates by teaching them the practice. James has found TM to be particularly beneficial in his own life, making the cause even closer to his heart. The musician recently spoke with Rolling Stone about the practice and the upcoming benefit show’s stacked lineup.
Is this the first time you’ve split a bill with Katy Perry and Jerry Seinfeld?
[Laughs] It is! I think? At least to my knowledge.
Are you a big fan of the two?
I’m a fan of life. I’m a big fan of everything.
Was Transcendental Meditation a part of your life before meeting David Lynch? Or did it come after?
I was invited to be a part of another benefit that took place about five or six years ago at Radio City Music Hall that the [David Lynch Foundation] put on with Paul McCartney and Donovan and a lot of other people. I performed at that, and just through being there that night and talking with everybody, I learned more about it. I always wanted to learn Transcendental Meditation, so after I did that benefit is kind of how I got turned on to that style of meditation in particular. Everything about it just seemed interesting to me. I had always been interested in different religions of the world, different spiritual practices. I’m into investigating as much as I can.
What’s your relationship with it today? How does it affect your life?
I meditate every day. I think meditation is one of the most wonderful things a person can do because it gives you a chance to just quiet things down, quiet the world, turn off your phone, turn off your computer, turn off your conversations and just sit with yourself and try to feel what it’s like to be alive. One of the most beautiful things that they kind of explain when you learn how to meditate is the idea of when you transcend, you’re giving back the same level of consciousness that all living beings share when you’re living at the same level of consciousness that a deer in the woods has or a tree has or a drop of water. Everything at the center is the same and has the same consciousness and same life-force. When you meditate and get to that level of consciousness, it really does make you feel like it’s all connected. Like everything really is the same.