Held on the High Wire
Created and performed by Jenny Q and Myshkin Warbler
Based on Jenny's book Held Together
+ Myshkin's album Trust and the High Wire
A candid, spellbinding multimedia performance that tells the story of Jenny's near death experience, sepsis survival, and new life on metal legs. Balancing urgency, reflection, humour and wonder, the show merges Jenny's raw, vulnerable memoir with Myshkin's haunting Folk/Jazz music. It explores sudden disability, queer family, resilience, love and transformation.
Made with the support of An Tobar and Mull Theatre, the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival, and the Dumfries and Galloway Arts Festival.
The Story
In January of 2014, Joshua Tree’s local herbalist, owner of the village apothecary, and music devotee, Jenny Q, fell into septic shock. During her six days in a coma and six months in the ICU, her fiancee Myshkin, having just arrived in the desert and still a stranger to Jenny’s life, wrote spells for songs, and helped channel the community’s potent energies toward her healing.
Four years later Jenny had re-learned to walk—and dance—on prosthetic legs, and completed Held Together, a raw and revealing book about her experience. The close-knit, bohemian desert community takes center stage in this experimental work, as Jenny collages her own words around accounts, poems and letters from friends and family. Jenny’s fearless writings provide a fascinating, intimate window into a range of rare experiences.
Myshkin wrote the songs on Trust and the High Wire from her own vantage on the same journey, from the couple’s first meeting, through the treacherous high wire days, and back to dry land, forever changed. The eclectic, migratory artist found a warm welcome and a deep well of musical talent in the Mojave. With local luminaries Danny Frankel, Damian Lester, Bobby Furgo, Lucio Menegon, Kelly Corbin, Scott "Drago" Kisinger, Gar Robertson, Chris Unck, and Jenny Q. herself, and long time collaborator Sailor Banks, she created a lush record colored by soul, jazz, folk and rock, and defined by her heady poems and one of a kind voice.
Myshkin brought further dimension to the record by creating a piece of visual art for each song, combined with the song lyrics and a narrative poem in a 36 page 8x8 art book which includes audio download.
Trust and the High Wire and Held Together were released by DoubleSalt on June 1, 2018. Trust.Together, a live show that pulled the two works together on stage into one performance, debuted at the Harrison House in Joshua Tree on June 9, with an eight piece band and thirteen readers, and a potent stripped down version toured the US West Coast that summer.
After moving to Scotland in 2023, Myshkin and Jenny decided to re-approach the material from a new perspective, deepened by time, distance, and a decade full of wild world events,and the multimedia performance piece Held on the High Wire was born.
Trust and the High Wire
Eight compositions form a narrative of a remarkable true story, of finding and growing love though extraordinary hardship. A rich, spooky collection colored by soul/jazz and folk/rock, balancing on the fine thread between longing and trust. Potent, approachable songs, pristine production, and stellar performances by a crew of Joshua Tree legends combine to create a record that feels like an instant classic.