There’s a bug on the window, lying in wait beneath the porch light. When I get up to turn off the light, it’ll disappear from sight and mind. She said to me, as though it were simple like rainwater, ‘Maybe you shouldn’t think so much.’ That night, when I turned off my own light and crawled beneath my musical repose and the surrounding darkness, I cried. Such abrupt reasoning. Such flawless character. Such devious charm. Never mind that it tore me apart. There’s a chance she’s right. And it was in those exact moments that I too wished to disappear from sight and mind.

I won’t shiver in the cold. I won’t let the shadows take their toll. I won’t cover my head in the dark. And I won’t forget you when we part.

Rock n’ roll is everywhere. Sometimes we just have to look a little harder for it, open our eyes, mind, and heart to the possibility that it takes many forms, and be willing to accept those forms, no matter how strange, erotic, or beautiful. Jillian Ann, with all her elegance and gentility, is one such example of unrequited rock n’ roll. And while she’s more than a toe line away from the usual cavalcade of filthy demons and sultry starlets we’ve come to know on a regular basis, the model/musician/actress embodies the same acid squalor and bloody passion of rock’s greatest creatures, even those who grace these very pages, but spins it with a pearl handle and caresses its idyllic fragility just so, ready to catch the drops of truth that spill from its fresh wounds. There’s no rule that says rock n’ roll can’t be about love, sadness, dreams, humanity, or spirituality, and if you think so, then you’ve never understood what rock n’ roll is really all about.
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But that’s not to say, however, that Jillian Ann lacks sleaze appeal. She’s a fetish queen, mostly, all latex and fishnet, living in vain, manipulating glam and punk tendencies to suit her chameleon charm. She’s desirably innocent looking with sharp eyes and a porcelain cheek, like some stolen runaway from the Valley of the Dolls, and runs the gamut from classical mistress to modern jezebel. When she’s not behind the lens, she spends her sun-filled days creating spooky goth pop, ambient cries of infected harmony, and tortured trip hop beats, which can be heard on her debut album, Neverland. But, like everything else in life, sleaze lies in the eye of the beholder.

“To be honest, I don’t know if I am sleazy,” says Jillian. “It all depends on your idea of it. I happen to like worn-out jeans and tank tops that are all cut up. I also love loud music and fast cars. So, if all that means I’m sleazy, then that works and it’s all good.”

And in this pseudo world of sultry sleaze we’ve stumbled upon, there exists a delicate underbelly. Jillian runs in fashionable circles that transcend the globe, from New York to Milan, and surrounds herself with some of life’s more homely, artistic, and personal pleasures, such as museums, gardens, intellectual conversation, spirituality, piano playing, poetry readings, yoga, and friendship.

Jillian’s place in the world, among the viably sane, is a fairy tale masquerade where she makes her own way among the hidden and ashamed. She doesn’t try to make sense of the world or understand its catatonic reality. She accepts things as they are and hopes for a better tomorrow.

“I believe we could all be at peace, be free, and love each other. We all make the choice to love or hate, give or take, lie or be honest. I wish I could say I think it’s going to get better, but I think we may end up with a one world government and veri-chips in our bodies, and we’ll lose our sense of self to a mass over saturation of material and technological soul-vaporizing culture. I feel sorry for the sleepers. I don’t think they’ll even know it’s messed up until they’re half dead, unless there is some kind of bizarre intervention. I believe we all have a choice to make and those choices are what changes things. I do believe people can make the choices that will lead to more love, truth, and peace.”

It’s as Adam Bomb said: ‘I’m gonna live in rock n’ roll land and I don’t care about the shape of the world anymore.’ Oh how deeply we discover the relationship between rock n’ roll and love to run. Jillian’s built her rock n’ roll land and become comfortable in its environment. And the lights that burn brightest down her myriad boulevards, the shining beacons that show her the way, are fuelled by love.

I won’t heal given time. I won’t try to change your mind. I won’t feel better in the cold light of day. But I wouldn’t stop you if you wanted to stay.

Jillian dreams of love, people, the end of the world, and strange, deep, and insane things.

“My dreams are weird, prophetic acid trips,” she says.

The mind, like a good drug, is a terrible thing to waste. Jillian morphs and teases her weird prophetic acid trips into musical hybrids of estrogens and apocalyptic landscape. You’re sucked in immediately, your mind scouring to find the brainspeak.

“I don't think I hide subliminal messages in my songs,” she admits. “I just don't think most people get them. But if I did, and I told you, then there wouldn’t be any mystery.”

And that’s Jillian’s appeal: her mystery. She’s innocently addicted to cut off mittens and Myspace. Her deepest desire is for people to know they're loved and that it's ok to be real and real isn’t perfect. Her ideal breakfast includes a very large fruit salad and Awake tea with honey and soymilk, on a beach, barefoot and naked, with nothing to do for a week. And she fiendishly immerses herself in to the rich evocation and depraved pleasures of the fetish culture, which to her is nothing more than part and parcel.

“Well, I’m kind of dating myself at the moment, but when I’m in a relationship I’m pretty much into anything that alters my state of being, so long as it doesn’t include cutting, bruising, or nasty tasting bodily fluids.”

“I’ve never been afraid,” she says. “There is nothing to fear. We live. We die. Everything in between can teach us if we stop making it out to be the end of the world.”

When it comes time to take inventory of your time, will you be satisfied with your accomplishments, with the way you fed your soul? Or will you break down in a puddle of agony and regret because you know you spent every moment, awake and in dream, afraid to open your eyes, mind, and heart. If Jillian teaches us anything, it’s that sex and sleaze are counter cultures that thrive on the lifeblood of energy and exploration and rock n’ roll is nothing more than a fired-up, rattling sugar bomb of love, pure and simple.

Yet despite all her accomplishments, despite the strides she’s made in defining who and what she is, Jillian will remain a mystery until the end. And when it comes time to look back on her own life, she’ll settle down, perhaps on that beach somewhere, barefoot and naked, and trace the many footprints she’s left behind. But the one’s she’ll be most proud of are the one’s she doesn’t see.

I awoke the next morning and came to my own conclusions. To fall from sight and mind is to fail miserably at life. I wiped the tears clean and went to the window. The bug was still there. ‘Maybe you should think more.’