Meet Jozefius Aka Joe Waters | Composer

We had the good fortune of connecting with Jozefius Aka Joe Waters and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Jozefius, why did you pursue a creative career?
I’ve been creating things since I was a little boy, so it really kind of chose me. It’s always just been my impulse to create my own things and do things my own way. When I was about five, I remember taking apart my pedal tractor toy, because I wanted it to be a spaceship and try to rebuild it into that.. I was a spaceship designer when I was five: Using available materials. I was trying to figure out how I could be an astronaut. I had a design using doors, four doors put in a rectangle, a building some kind of a nose cone. It didn’t get off the ground, obviously.! My engine design also was imperfect: I had figured out how to combine baking soda and vinegar, and was trying to figure out if that could power my spacecraft. I made some small models, but I could never figure out how to get the two materials together properly at the right moment to provide some propulsion. I think there might’ve been some other problems as well. But I started writing Music, when I was six years old. At least creating tunes. I remember one night, laying in bed, and listening to the mental playback of the songs, I had heard earlier in that day on my moms Hi Fi. (it was the 1950s. – I think it was probably Gershwin, maybe Rhapsody In Blue). I remember thinking. “that’s cool, I wonder if I can do that myself? And then, like a light switch went off in my head. Something clicked, and my brain started creating its own symphony! I was amazed, and I thought. How can I get that out of my head! I’ve been trying to do that ever since..

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
I am currently up to my ears, getting my new musical-Opera ready for its world premiere in New York City. On May 31.

And I think maybe a good way to talk about all of these things is to talk about this production, which is very much about my life.

This will be a non-staged version, at a beautiful nightclub, called The Cutting Room, which is in Midtown in Manhattan. , a couple blocks from the Empire State building.

Here’s a link: https://www.healers.live/

El Sidd and the Healers’ is a reframing of Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha, set in 1969 (the summer of Woodstock), a couple years after 1967’s famous Summer of Love. By 1969 the whole counter culture experiment was getting overripe and starting to fall into decay, but people couldn’t see that from the inside.

I was one of those people. That’s my generation and I was on the young side. I took Timothy Leary‘s dictum to “Turn on Tune in and Drop out“ seriously. I needed to escape from my Catholic background and this was about addressing the deep questions that I needed answers to.

I started dropping LSD when I was 14 years old.

Like tens of thousands of other kids, I ran away with a pal from a comfortable middle class Midwestern home in Madison, Wisconsin, and hitchhiked to discover what it was all about out to southern California, on January 1, with 20° below zero temperature, $.37 in my pocket and only a sleeping bag and a pair of ice skates.

I didn’t worry about whether or not I would eat or find a place to sleep or freeze to death. At that time in the culture, there was a sense that everybody needed to take care of each other. People were living in communes, trying to reinvent the social fabric completely, and it was a very optimistic and yet incredibly naïve time that didn’t last too long.

The trip was life-changing for me, culminating in a rainy night in Big Sur, a huge, beautiful national park south of San Francisco with high cliffs that fall right into the ocean and deep forest. It’s where the Grateful Dead had their community. It is a historical religious place among indigenous people.

My friend and I had been dropped off in the middle of the night. It was raining, and we had no shelter and no place to go and we were in the middle of this giant park so we decided to take a hit of acid, which had been gifted to us by someone up in San Francisco. Turned out to be the strongest LSD I had ever taken, and the result was that instead of getting stuck in this net of fear as one starts to lose control, I was blasted straight through it and became part of the universe. This sounds like Babel and is impossible to describe to somebody who hasn’t experienced it, but it is what the mystics talk about when they talk about God consciousness.

One merges with everything, and realizes that everything is alive and conscious. It’s not an intellectual conclusion, but rather a gut level, overwhelmingly complex and complete experience.

I spent the night in the rain wandering in and out of the ocean, it’s amazing that I didn’t get swept out to sea, merging into the state of oneness, and then stepping back for a moment, able to observe what was going on and then dissolving again.

That night changed my life. I have spent the last 5 decades working to reconcile that precious gift of connection with the reality of being a person in the world, making a life, raising children, finding a community and a way to make a living.

At some point it occurred to me that this was not only my story, but a story shared by thousands at that period, and as an artist it is my privilege and responsibility to apply my craft as composer and storyteller to pull those experiences into a work that could contribute to our understanding of this pivotal time.

We tend to see the 60’s through rose colored glasses, but I was there, I know it in my bones. Like all times it was fraught with layers of contradictions, dreamers dreaming and grifters scheming.

Like the protagonist Sidd, I was and still am a dreamer, bruised and scarred and calloused and ready finally to tell this story. I had to wait until I was old enough (I’m 72) to have the gravitas. Nobody takes 17 year olds seriously – but they should!

I wrote many drafts of the opera, trying to recall that trip, and then I realized at a certain point that the individual events, all the individual places I stayed in, the people I met, though very compelling to me personally, were by themselves not the stuff from which an opera is made.

Then I remembered another vision quest, the story of Siddhartha, which I had read when I was about that age. So I went back and reread the book and realized that the way forward was to merge my story with that story of another young man, thousands of years ago, seeking enlightenment, and the saints and scoundrels of the hippie movement. The result is a work of fiction, weaving Siddhartha (a fictional recreation of a seeker in the time of The Buddha) – and what I realized while re-reading it, was a recounting of Hesse’s personal vision quest (he was raised in India) told through a fictional character contemporary with the Buddha, whose name was Siddhartha Gautama. The underlying story of “El Sidd & The healers” is true in a psychological and metaphorical sense. Someone said “Good fiction is more real than reality”. A good story can get to the bedrock of life.

And a lesson I have had to learn over and over again is this:
Listen to your inner voice. Don’t be pushed around by cultural bullies – they are always out there trying to make the world safer for themselves by telling everyone in a very loud voice that whatever they think or do is the correct way. It’s bullshit – you have to find your own way, as a composer and as a human.

And being humble. We are all part of something bigger than ourselves, and have no existence whatsoever, except as part of that fabric. I try to find that reality and live it every day.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
Well, this is the perspective of an artist: I love things that are done for the pure joy and love of creating something that’s beautiful, cool, fun, and imaginative, and without regards to how much it costs to implement.. I know we all have to eat and put a roof over our heads, but at the end of the day, that’s not the stuff that life is made of. It’s about having fun and being creative and sharing with each other. So the things that I love and the places I love in San Diego are the result of visionary people who think like that as well. Here’s a couple that I love.:

In no particular order:
Lou Lou’s jungle room at the Lafayette Hotel – it’s an over the top imaginative recreation of what a Hollywood hangout in the Golden age of the 1920s. Might’ve been like. It’s imaginative, and, beautifully wrought. And they put on great music there and they make it accessible for people. I would love to bring my new musical there, haven’t spoken to the owners yet, but one small step at a time, first New York City, and then San Diego.

The new Rady shell where the San Diego symphony performs their summer. Concerts and pop concerts. What a gorgeous place! State of the art sound and videos, the whole ring on the outside can be used for projections. It’s right on the ocean, and they’ve been so generous with their access. You don’t have to have any money. They have things set up, so that you can sit on benches and see the shows for nothing. It’s awesome!

The boardwalk at Pacific Beach, 3 miles of walking along this beautiful west Coast Coast line, and being able to see that there is something out there That is so much bigger than us. It pulls all of my cares away and connects me with the things that are important. I try to go there once a week for a walk. Walks at sunset are especially beautiful., but anytime is great.

A couple of restaurants. I’d like to shout out:
City Taco in downtown La Mesa – or any of its locations. They’ve got tacos that are gourmet, like the kind you might get in Mexico City, and always trying new things and a lot of vegetarian and fish options as well as traditional meat options. But nothing’s traditional about this place: great sauces, really tasty and imaginative and diverse tacos, and very inexpensive. Anybody can afford to eat at this place..

And a new Indian restaurant actually Aromas of India. Also in La Mesa. Great menu, not heavy, beautifully prepared and the place is gorgeous. They spent a tremendous amount of time and imagination putting together a beautiful place to eat, and the prices are very inexpensive.. another labor of love

Balboa Park, the organ pavilion.: a gem hidden in plain sight. It’s the biggest pipe organ in the world, and San Diego has an official organist! Free concerts every Sunday at two..

The San Diego zoo of course it’s deservedly world famous and it’s also a botanical garden as well as a zoological garden.. Can spend a day there and see only a portion of it.

And Mount helix Park. A beautiful little peak with a view all the way to Mexico and the ocean and a big amphitheater that faces east where they have had sunrise ceremonies every Easter since the 1920s. Another place I wanna do my musical..

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Totally! Overwhelmingly in my life, partner, Amy Hecht, a very modest and amazing person who I am so fortunate to have met on April fools day in 1982.

Website: Https://www.healers.love/

Instagram: @jozefius

Youtube: @JozefiuaDeLaAgua

Other: There is a ton of my music and videos online at all streaming platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, etc.

It can be found under my band, named Swarmius or Joseph Martin Waters (different tracks)

Spotify, YouTube Music etc: Swarmius (my band)
Spotify (Apple Music etc):

Image Credits
Daniel Castro
Christian Michaels
Amy Hechr