Postcards from the edge Issue #31

As a teen in the ’80s, Jolene Siana’s letters to her music idol saved her life. Now, as a collected memoir, it’s saving others

By Sara Grace McCandless
Published: March 1st, 2007 | 12:00am

“When I got caught cutting in my dorm in college, they addressed it as a suicidal act,” says Jolene Siana. Now older and wiser, and an author and part-time waitress in Brooklyn, she knows better. “I’ve done a lot of research on it, and a lot of cutters aren’t suicidal. They just want to feel.”

Siana’s full-blown exposé of her teen years during the ’80s in Toledo, Ohio, can be found in her book, Go Ask Ogre: Letters from a Deathrock Cutter (Process). The visually stunning collection of memorabilia includes the usual debris from a frustrated teendom — original artwork, photos, and deeply personal journal entries — but also something unusual. It features a compilation of Siana’s letter correspondence with Ogre, lead singer of the highly influential industrial band Skinny Puppy. No subject was left untouched when it came to confiding to her idol-turned-confidant — depression, abuse, sex, and even cutting, which at the time was nowhere near as openly discussed as it is today.

How Siana got her hands on the original notes Ogre received is a story within itself. She’d met the singer several times through her teen and early adult years while he was on tour. During one stop, Ogre revealed that not only had he saved all of her letters, but would one day return them to her so she could see where she’d been and how far she’d come.

True to his word, a few years ago, Siana received two boxes full of her correspondence — some of which, surprisingly enough, had never been opened. “I was actually grateful,” she says about the discovery. “Even years later, I knew I had crossed some boundaries. There’s a lot of heavy stuff I threw on him, but I think he saw the bigger picture. I think he knew — and he’s told me this — that I would
be OK.”

So what does it feel like to take such private correspondence and put it into a public arena? “I’m thankful that I did it,” she says. Since the book’s publication, she has become an Ogre of sorts for readers who reach out to her. Of course, that doesn’t come without its own hardships. “There’s been some really scary things, like people writing to me and identifying, and I don’t know these people. I’ve had situations where I’ve been really terrified — like what do I do, who do I call — when somebody’s writing to me telling me that they don’t want to live. I take it really seriously,” she says, adding, “That’s why we put resources in the back of the book.”

Siana is now working with an agent in New York to shop the book around to a larger publisher so she can reach a wider audience and release a fuller version. “There’s a lot of artwork and envelopes that didn’t make it in, because it’s really expensive to produce a full-color book. So I’m excited about the possibility of it being an expanded edition.” She’s also creating a musical version of the book with her good friend, Jon Crosby of VAST.

Of her current relationship with Ogre, Siana says, “I have nothing but praise for him.” Though she stopped writing to him regularly in 1989, she notes, “When I got back in touch with him, I sort of felt this obligation to send him as many positive, happy, silly Jolene e-mails [as possible]. Like, ‘I am really happy and healthy and I want you to know.’ I guess I felt like I had something to prove to him.”

Whatever there was to prove seems to have been accomplished. “The day he got the book, he sent me the most wonderful e-mail and told me that he thought the book was wonderful and that he was really proud of me,” Siana recalls. “Just more encouraging words ... really lovely, genuine. I can never say enough good things about him, I’m still so thankful for everything he’s done for me. He doesn’t really think of it as much. We’ve had conversations and he’s like, ‘You’d be fine either way, you’re a hopeful spirit,’ but I feel like I need to give him some credit because he allowed me to be kind of messed-up, and to reach out.”