You couldn’t make it up, the singer says. There she was gearing up for her new album launch in eight years, blissfully happy with her current love, and finally the mom to a little one after struggling to conceive for ten years, feeling invincible. Suddenly in spring she was found to have breast cancer.
The singer-songwriter, birth name J. Cornish, is known for being brutally honest. The LP, her latest release, was intended as an transparent story, dealing with every ounce of devastation she’d experienced since she last made an album (endometriosis, miscarriage, unsuccessful partnerships, psychological manipulation, suicide) with typical candour. The first single, No Secrets, was released in April. But by then there existed a huge secret. The cancer. Later second single, Living My Best Life, debuted in May and Cornish was giving interviews about how she was living her best life, while at the same time living with breast cancer. A month later she went public, and in the start of summer she underwent breast removal surgery.
She shoots me her best “Seriously?” glance. “I put out with a song called the track No Secrets. I’m doing every interview, and they ask, ‘So what’s new with you?’ and I answer, ‘Erm, yeah, nothing …’” she has just had to cancel tour dates because she’s yet to undergo reconstructive surgery.
Our interview takes place at a studio in the capital. She is wearing a tan faux-leather coat, denim trousers with detailed white appliqués, off-white boots and large glasses. Imagine motorcycle style meets vintage look. “I feel like I’m in the seventies and I should have a partner with a mustache.” A biker reference, I say, referencing the picture. “They used to call me that!” She smiles. Jessie is sharp-witted, bold and blunt. She says she has always wanted to try comedy and is hoping to make her first comedy performance soon. “I like entertaining. When performing I often tease the audience.”
Medical Challenges and Discovery
She was preparing for an performance at the awards show when she discovered a mass. “I promptly visited to get it looked at, had an test, and they were, like, ‘It appears fine; your breasts are normal.’ And I was, like, ‘Yet I sense it. I have arm pain and tingling in my hands whenever I get up.’ And they suggested, ‘We should biopsy it?’ That was 28 March, the following my birthday.” It was a weekend eve. The doctor told her if it was bad news she’d contact on the start of the week. By then Cornish had persuaded herself it was fine. The way she explains it, it was just bad timing to face illness when she had a busy schedule.
“It was a fortnight prior from debuting the project after a long hiatus and no new music. And the doctor messaged and said, ‘Can you talk at six?’ And I assumed, ‘Oh, it’s a Zoom, it won’t be anything.’ So I jump on the Zoom believing it’s all going to be fine, and she goes, ‘You might want to sit.’ The solemn tone? And she reveals, ‘Unfortunately but your biopsy results have shown high-grade cancer cells.’” What did you say? “I said, ‘That’s unfortunate. What awful timing.’ My initial thought was, ‘My child depends on me.’”
I’ve been labeled difficult for knowing myself
She considered the operation frightening and surreal. “I dislike anesthesia. They walk you down. During crises you are wheeled, but this time I just walked with a hospital gown and my rear exposed. It felt surreal.” But, she adds, she’s been fortunate. No chemotherapy or radiation, just the op. “It’s terrible, but yet Thank fuck I found it early. I had the mastectomy a few months back and my one side now looks like a fruit under fabric.” She smiles again. “The nipple was preserved.”
The follow-up procedure is for health and appearance. Her breasts, she notes, are now “uneven. The size doesn’t match. That’s impolite! I thought, don’t add insult to injury, I’m already having a difficult experience. How offensive! Amusingly I said I’d not undergo augmentation because I’ve got obsessive tendencies, and I know they’d never be perfect. Cancer ruined that plan.”
Past Medical Issues
Cornish is no stranger to illness. She thinks her outlook on her diagnosis has been so optimistic because she’s experienced in physical challenges. They have often coincided with peak moments, serving as a tap on the shoulder, or shock, to make her recall not to be complacent. “Honestly, I feel fate says, ‘Things going well? Sit down.’ Ever since I was a child, it has always gone alongside high points for me; something severe or obscure has happened to my health.”
She takes me back to her youth, already starting her career featuring in the stage in a musical (she was cast at the age of 9). That’s when she was found to have the medical problem a syndrome, which can cause a fast heartbeat as well as lightheadedness and irregular beats. “I was going in and out of rehearsals on an drip, and returning to the hospital at night.” She jumps ahead half a dozen years, and teenage Jess has joined the trio Soul Deep while enrolled in the academy. “I signed my initial contract, and I had a stroke. Then when I was planning to release songs in the year 2020 I had a collision and my voice box shifted and I lost my voice for a twelve months.”
Hey, I say, wait, I can’t keep up. A stroke so young? She nods|agrees
