Jack
and Jill Hit Bottom
As our nostalgic journey
comes to an end, Mother Goose tells us what happened after Jack and
Jill had their famous stumble down the hill.
Not to ruffle my own feathers, but Jack and Jill seems to be one of my
most well-known nursery rhymes, at least the first stanza that is. Here
it is in its entirety:
Jack and Jill went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down, and broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.
When up Jack got and off did trot,
As fast as he could caper,
To old Dame Dob, who patched his nob
With vinegar and brown paper.
Jack and Jill were twin brother and sister from the town of Sarestad,
Sweden. The nursery rhyme tells of their seemingly harmless fall down a
hill, but there was certainly more to the story. Not only twins, but
also the best of friends, they did their daily chores together, like
fetching water from the well at the top of the hill behind their farm.
On this fateful day, they made it up the hill just fine, but on their
way down, Jack tripped over a rock, and went tumbling down the hill.
Jill reached out to save him, but wound up getting pulled down with
him. Forming a human bowling ball, the twins continued to pick up speed
as they raced down the steep hill towards their farmhouse. There was a
loud crash that echoed through the valley, followed only by dead
silence. Jack and Jill lay motionless for what would have seemed liked
hours, only to wake up after a few moments with an overwhelming itch to
make music. They weren't interested, however, in making music like they
had already heard in Sweden. Instead, they wanted to produce a sound
that people had never heard before. The twins had never been especially
drawn to the musical arts, but now they were consumed by a need to
synthesize and mix. Little did we know that Jack and Jill would go on
to introduce the world to the phenomenon of electro-pop, and in turn
pave the way for rave drug culture.
They were called Hink. Their unsettling yet playful music was a direct
reflection of their own haunting personalities. Jack was on the
synthesizer, and Jill did the lead vocals. They swept through Europe,
and then invaded America, much like the Beatles did, but for a more
underground music scene. Hink was never known as Jack and Jill, until
now I suppose. Neither of them liked to leave their farm in Sarestad,
let alone Sweden, so they rarely appeared in public, and they certainly
never toured. The few times they were seen in public, it was usually
part of a demonstration against the ad-driven mainstream media and what
it was doing to the western culture. They lived a very secretive life
in Sarestad, and wore masks to conceal their identity the few times
they went public, so to avoid being a part of the celebrity hungry
popular culture. You might be wondering why I'm revealing all their
secrets now. Well, it's because they passed away not long after Hink's
rise to fame in the music industry. Their musician lifestyle introduced
them to a world of drugs, which first served as a means of exploring
the depths of their unconscious, but later turned into a full-blown
addiction to heroin. They had been so careful not to get tangled in the
celebrity culture that they didn't pay any attention to the role drugs
had taken in their life. As Hink rose in the music charts, Jack and
Jill declined in their health and financially. Jack and Jill's cute
nursery rhyme fall seemed to have triggered a very real change in who
they were to become. Now I hope that their story will serve as a
warning to the young men and women who read Jack and Jill's nursery
rhyme as children, to steer clear of the drugs they may encounter on
life's journey. Jack and Jill were gifted with musical innovation, but
they no doubt squandered their talent with harmful drugs.
Author's note: I don't know about you, but the picture at the top of
the page is pretty much how I have always pictured Jack and Jill from
the nursery rhyme. In my mind they were blond, blue-eyed, and some sort
of Scandinavian. For the purpose of my story, I thought it was fun to
make them twin brother and sister from a little farm town in Sweden. As
always, I included the original Mother Goose nursery rhyme to remind
people about where the characters come from. Mother Goose recounts the
day of their tumble down the hill, with a few additional details that I
included to paint a more vivid picture for the story. I then tell about
the aftermath of their fateful fall, and how it led them on a path
towards becoming the most famous electro-pop brother and sister duo
group in the world, called Hink. The name actually means pail in
Swedish, as in the water pail from the original nursery rhyme. I
thought it would be neat to include some Swedish in the story. As a
band, they are against the commercial side of the music business, so
they protest by never revealing their true identities and by staging
demonstrations against A-list media events. As is common in the
fast-paced entertainment industry, they get caught up in drugs, under
the misguided belief that it is part of a creative process. Mother
Goose then reveals that they have since passed away due to their drug
use, and that it should send a strong message against drug use.