Jerry Fjerkenstad
I was born a pig farmer’s son in Lac Qui Parle County in Western Minnesota (the same county as Robert Bly, Minnesota’s Poet Laureate) – in a village called Boyd, known for the longest continuous celebration in the United States – Boyd Good Time Days – and, as the birthplace of Tippi Hedren’s mother (Melanie Griffith’s grandmother). I learned how to wield a machete at an early age – going up and down bean rows, chopping out corn and weeds, swatting at deer flies and fending off the hot sun. Eventually I headed off to college as a music major – keyboards and strings – but that didn’t last long. I couldn’t stand the regimented approach of Counterpoint, Composition, etc., so I switched to Psychology and discovered Carl Jung & Hermann Hesse. The world of mythology, dreams and mental illness beckoned and I was off in passionate pursuit. Degrees in Religious Studies, Human Services and Human Development followed – 8 years of college, punctuated by independent studies that allowed me to spend time with the writers and thinkers I admired most – James Hillman, Joseph Campbell, John Weir Perry, Mary Watkins, Robbie Bosnack. In the meantime I played in Rock and Country Rock bands as a drummer, wandering Minnesota, the Dakotas & Canada, making a couple records (one of which made it to #1 somewhere in New York State) and sleeping in lots of cheap motels. Along the way I functioned as Assistant Manager of the Great Plains Supply Lumber Co. in Stanley, North Dakota, as #2 man on a 3,000-acre wheat & cattle ranch south of Minot, and as a grunt making bean bag chairs in a mattress factory near the Monte Carlo Bar in the warehouse district of Minneapolis, as a Nursing Assistant for the eldery, a farmhand and a seller of hotdogs in the basement of Coffman Union at the U of MInnesota. I also studied voice at the Roy Hart Theatre in Southern France. I studied dance and theatre in Minneapolis and Madrid – ballet, modern, jazz, tango, flamenco. Along the way four children entered the world – Stacey (history major, mother of 2), Angelica (summa cum laude grad in Philosophy from Carleton), Josiah (college junior, pre-Med, good wrestler, tall and handsome) and Amelia (graduating from high school and heading to DePaul as a Theater Major and to study script-writing. In my private life I partnered with Ranae, writer and teacher and mother of Josiah and Mia, and later married Susana di Palma, flamenco dance theatre choreographer and director extraordinaire. Now I live alone with my piano and toys, consulting for the Department of Corrections and carrying a private practice focusing on sex addiction and abuse issues.
In my pursuit of psychology Ranae and I and a group of friends started a psycho-dynamically-based 24-bed treatment facility for young adult mentally ill (Janus Treatment Residence). Later I worked my way from volunteer in an outpatient sex offender/domestic abuse treatment program to Clinical Director in the corner office – a stint that lasted 16 years. After that, for five years, up until I retired in December 2006, I spent most of my daylight hours working as a psychologist in a maximum security prison, sometimes making rounds in SEG – the hole – working with a lot of murderers and lifers – trying to make some difference, however slight, and trying not to get eaten alive by the toxicity that is rife among those ranks.
My theatre, The Dream Guild, started in my third floor studio on Portland Avenue – a space that packed in 130 people for the shows held at halftime of legendary parties. The theatre finally went official at the Pillsbury House – a company-in-residence. I ended up producing and acting in more than two dozen plays, writing all but 2 or 3 of them. From that sprang characters like the Toad and other creatures that became the base of yet another venture – Hermes’ Web, Ltd. (hermesweb.com) – a geometrically-based teaching tool I cooked up that, combined with Todd McFarlane’s dark action figures, brings the underworld of the soul into therapy, developing a language of change that has helped transform therapy in sex offender treatment and some maximum security prisons and works well in violence prevention programs in schools and in addiction treatment.
My survival is aided by my lifelines, people who have supported ,me along the way: my parents, my piano teacher, Helen, now deceased, my best friend Joan, my farmer brother Randy, Bobby Hickman and Levi Eagle Feather. To keep my chops up, I sometimes play cajon (Peruvian wood drum) with the local Flamenco troupes. Mostly, I wait and long for the days when I can travel more, maybe even give concerts and record more regularly, teach about the toys, and write some books – give birth to all the imaginal children I’ve been gestating these many years.