Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 266: The Expansive Nothing You Have to Fill with Kristen Radtke
192 Plays3 years ago
Kristen Radtke (@kristenradtke on Twitter, @kristenradtke_ on IG) is the author of Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness.
Social media: @CNFPod on Twitter.
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Thanks to sponsors West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in Creative Writing and HippoCamp 2021.
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Loneliness Discussion
00:00:00
Speaker
Being lonely is very bad. I mean, it will kill you. You're more likely to have all kinds of diseases. You die sooner.
00:00:13
Speaker
That's Kristen Radke, this week's guest for episode 266, if I'm counting right, of the Creative Nonfiction Podcast, now in its ninth year. It's the show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. Kristen is the art director for the Believer magazine in her new book, Seek You, a journey through American loneliness, combines her beautiful drawings,
00:00:39
Speaker
with meditations on what loneliness is, the epidemic of loneliness we might call it.
Exploring Loneliness in 'Seek You'
00:00:46
Speaker
It spoke to me, and I've heard several instances of my chronic battles with loneliness with her, but I deleted most of them so...
00:00:55
Speaker
Support for the Creative Nonfiction Pocket is brought to you by West Virginia Wesleyan Colleges, Low Residency, MFA, and Creative Writing. Now in its 10th year, this affordable program boasts a low student-to-faculty ratio and a strong sense of community. Recent CNF faculty include Randin Billings, Noble,
00:01:14
Speaker
Jeremy Jones and CNF pot alum Sarah Einstein. There's also fiction and poetry tracks with recent faculty including Ashley Bryant Phillips and Jacinda Townsend as well as Diane Gilliam and Savannah Sipple. No matter your discipline, if you're looking to up your craft or learn a new one, consider West Virginia Wesleyan right in the heart of Appalachia. Visit mfa.wvwc.edu for more information and dates of enrollment.
00:01:42
Speaker
And support for the podcast is also brought to you by Hippo Camp 2021. It's about a month from now. It's back in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Registration's open. It's a conference for creative nonfiction writers. Marion Wenwick will be this year's keynote speaker.
00:01:57
Speaker
We've got a debut CNF author panel featuring Lily Danciger, Greg Mania, Carol Smith, and Janine Willett. It's August 13th through the 15th. Dig it, man. Use the promo code CNFPOD21 to get $50 off your registration fee.
00:02:15
Speaker
So Kristin Radke, R-A-D-T-K-E, don't forget that T, is the author of the graphic nonfiction book, Imagine Wanting Only This, from 2017, and of course her new one, CQ, and she received the 2019 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant for it, a very prestigious grant. And she got a forthcoming book, I don't know when the pub date
Social Media and Podcast Details
00:02:42
Speaker
is, but it's called Terrible Men,
00:02:45
Speaker
should strike a chord. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper's, Mary Claire, Marie Claire, The Atlantic, The Guardian, Elle, Vogue, NPR.org, and many other places. You can find her at Kristin Radke on Twitter and on Instagram at Kristin Radke underscore.
00:03:04
Speaker
So, we talk about loneliness, the writing and drawing tools at her disposal, and social media, among lots of other things. You might hear a vacuum come into play partway through this. I used my tools to the best of my ability to tamp it out. I had to cut quite a bit from this interview because it was too loud to bear in some areas. But you're still left with a nice little conversation. Me hopes.
00:03:26
Speaker
show notes and other ways to support the podcast are at BrendanOmero.com. So you ready to get after it? You digging the lean opening? Better or worse? Any case, here we go.
00:03:50
Speaker
What am I reading these
Balancing Work and Creativity
00:03:51
Speaker
days? I am, right now I, so we go through these cycles at my day job at the Believer Magazine where they're twice in every magazine cycle where I'm just like glued to my computer and only looking at the Believer Magazine and one is when we, the issue goes live online and the other is when the issue goes suppressed. And we're doing both of those simultaneously right now. So right now the only thing I'm reading is the Believer Magazine.
00:04:17
Speaker
Yeah, and I love that. I love talking day job stuff with people who come on the show. It's, I think it puts a lot of other people's minds at ease too, because when we see celebrity type writers or people we really admire, sometimes we think that when they have that book come out or they have a book that's getting some attention that like, that is the only thing. That's it. Yeah, they can quit their job and it'll make them rich or something.
00:04:41
Speaker
Exactly right. And you've got prominent bylines. You're an art director for Believer as your day job. And then you've got these beautiful books that you turn out. So it's good to see that. And I love getting people to talk about that. So in what ways are you able to sort of thread the creative work that you want to do, like seek you, around your day job?
00:05:10
Speaker
It's hard. I mean, I think that one of the great benefits of my day job is, well, one, it's a creative job. I work with artists who kind of understand that we all have these creative projects going on in addition to our day jobs, but also I live on the East coast and my job is on the West coast. So my time can be a little bit flexible. You know, I have a couple of hours in the morning to work before everybody else that I work with wakes up. And so it means I don't have a ton of time in the evenings because I'm often working late.
00:05:40
Speaker
But I've never been one of those people who can put in a full day at work and then come home and write at 8 p.m. By that point, I can only watch Netflix and eat junk food. I feel like actually that's been the saving grace of my job is that I have that morning time.
Managing Stress and Burnout
00:06:00
Speaker
And given that you have a creative day job and you're creative outside of work, what's your relationship to, you know, burning out or making sure you don't burn out given that both things are, you know, creatively a creative foundation, if you will? I have no advice about avoiding burnout because I don't know how to do it. I mean, I think that. Yeah, I don't know. I think I always I go through phases where I'm like deeply overwhelmed and then, you know, a couple of
00:06:30
Speaker
days or weeks later after the things that I was really trying to focus on are a little bit behind me. It's like, Oh, okay. And, and so I'm trying to remember, I try to remember when I'm inside of those cycles, like, you know, the issues going to press and I'm on deadline for some freelance projects and whatever.
00:06:45
Speaker
that they do pass. But in general, I think as I've gotten older, I've also felt more comfortable with stepping away from work in a way that when I was just starting out, like before my first book came out, I felt like I had a lot to prove, which is not to say I feel like confident in where I am in my career and that I don't have anything to prove, but I feel like I can take a breath.
00:07:06
Speaker
It's like, okay, I made a book, I can breathe for a second and look at this guy or at plants or eat junk food and watch Netflix and that's okay. What's your junk food of choice? I mean, I cannot discriminate. I mean, probably like gummy bears, but really I have a very broad palette for junk food. What is the nature of being the art director for Believer magazine?
00:07:34
Speaker
So my favorite part of the job is that I edit our comics section. And so I get to work on narrative nonfiction comics and work with new artists, emerging artists, established artists. And that's a very collaborative process, particularly now we're doing a lot of interactive comics or animated comics online. And the process of translating something from print to digital in that way is very exciting and fun for me. And then I also, you know,
00:08:01
Speaker
commission editorial art, cover art, feature art, stuff like that. Who are some of the illustrators out there who inspire you and kind of put fuel in your tank? I'll say that the people I can keep talking about the believer, Lisa Hook, is an illustrator. I worked with a cartoonist I worked with on an animated comic called The Fine and the Fish about the xenophobic naming of invasive species. It is nominated for a national magazine award in digital storytelling, which is really exciting.
00:08:30
Speaker
Wow. I love the work that she does. Her book is called Names and Faces. It's coming out from both in a couple of years, and she will definitely be a cartoonist to pay attention to in life. I love Brian Ray too, who does a lot of the work for a modern love, and he also has a lot of books too. His sensibility is so crude and paired now, but just hilarious too.
00:08:57
Speaker
which is like one of the things that commies can do so well is that sort of pared down quality. You know, you can reduce something to its most essential parts.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, I remember hearing him on an interview because when his book Death Winds of Goldfish came out, there's a drawing in there where he does do something that's very photo-realistic with, I believe it's like a Monet painting. And so he said something like, I like that I was able to pull that off because a lot of my other drawing just looks like basically a 10-year-old did it. But he's just like, I have the skill to do this. And Linda Barry's the same way.
00:09:34
Speaker
They have the skill to do something that's really fine and technical, but they kind of just elect to take their foot off the gas and do something that's a little more crude. Yeah, it is really interesting to see artists work in different styles. Someone like Art Spiegelman too, if you look through his stuff, sometimes he'll enter this different mode and it's like, whoa. I didn't know that was also a part of your arsenal. Yeah.
00:09:56
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I love that. Like kind of part of your arsenal. There are different modes of creativity and writing and everything. And it's just like, this is what I want to do. This is the best mode to tell the story. And I'm going to sort of, you know, it's like a pitcher having four or five different pitches. It's like depending on the situation and the count that the batter is under, it's like, all right, I'm going to change speeds or I'm going to just throw a fastball by him. So it's just, I like that term of having like an artistic, different arrows in your quiver.
00:10:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I don't understand sports metaphors at all, but I trust you that that's what it's like. But it's true. I mean, it is true that, you know, writing and drawing are both about voice. And just like you might switch into a different tone or a different voice in prose, you can also do that in illustration.
00:10:45
Speaker
voice. That's something I love unpacking on this show and the development and the cultivation of voice. How did you arrive at your particular style, writing voice and even your visual voice, if you will?
Creative Process and Inspirations
00:11:00
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I think that my writing voice is just kind of what naturally came out, which isn't to say that I haven't worked hard and it hasn't been refined over time, but I don't feel like I've intentionally tried to push it towards a specific
00:11:14
Speaker
mode. Certainly you enter a more ruminative mode or a more serious tone. I'm not sure if that's really the same as voice. I always get confused about ultimately what voice is in the end. But I feel like in drawing, my first book was kind of
00:11:30
Speaker
just how I drew naturally. It's like, that's just what came out. And for this book and for other projects and for future projects, I do try to think a little bit more about how can I best tell this story through a visual tone or a visual voice? Does that mean pairing back? Does that mean incorporating limited palettes or more extreme palettes, more varied palettes, things like that?
00:11:55
Speaker
Well, something that struck me about CQ was the use of just color as a storytelling element. And is that something that's always on your forefront about how color is going to elucidate a certain kind of timber or mood? I would say it's not at the forefront. Color is secondary. I often will draw a lot of a project before I go back and color it just because
00:12:23
Speaker
I might change the direction or something might get cut and I'm trying to just produce the work before I kind of go back and add a palette to it just as a matter of like basic self-protection in terms of my time. But I will say the color is very difficult for me. I've read a lot about color theory and looked at a ton of models for this project because color is also its own language. It can communicate a lot of emotion
00:12:50
Speaker
And when you put two different colors next to each other, it's like each color changes dramatically. So it is like a complicated formula. And it did take me a really, really long time to get it to where it is now.
00:13:03
Speaker
Yeah, when I've had conversations with a political cartoonist too, where the writing has to be super lean and the drawing has to do its own heavy lifting, sometimes they go hand in hand, sometimes the writing comes first and then it's like, how am I going to illustrate it? Sometimes the illustration speaks for itself and you're like, all right, I'm going to write to the picture. For you, what's the calculus? What kind of, if you can put a finger on it or something, what tends to come first, the writing or the drawing?
00:13:33
Speaker
usually the writing, almost always the writing. I mean, I might have a sort of abstract idea in my mind of something I would
Impact of Childhood on Creativity
00:13:38
Speaker
like to draw, you know, like, Oh, I'd really love to draw like a panoramic, you know, spread about whatever this street or, you know, whatever, you know, I might have an idea in my head for an image, but it's, it's usually always like the text comes first, although I do work back and forth, like I generally wouldn't storyboard or script an entire project, like a book length project before I would
00:14:02
Speaker
start to draw because the drawing, you know, I might do that in sections and chunks and then draw as I go. But one, that's just so arduous. Like the drawing is almost like a mental break from the writing in a certain way. So I feel like I can be more productive when I move back and forth. And two, I think they're more interesting when they're in conversation like that, where like the art isn't a response to the writing, but the art is really talking to and informing the writing early. And as I draw,
00:14:29
Speaker
It also changes my relationship to the text, and I realize maybe the text needs to be saying something different, or the text needs to be saying less or more, something like that. And so you grew up in Wisconsin, is that right? I did. You know, what kind of a kid were you? Were you that kind of solitary kid drawing and writing and all that, or were you kind of a social butterfly?
00:14:48
Speaker
I was definitely the solitary kid drawing and writing, which isn't to say I didn't want to be more of a social butterfly, but I lived in a very rural place and I had quite strict parents. So I was, you know, I was very much like, you know, I had very limited time with my friends or with people my own age. And so I spent a lot of time, I think, like brooding in my room with drawing or writing. So it actually turned out to be a gift, although my social skills were probably delayed as a result.
00:15:17
Speaker
In what way were your parents strict? I mean, they were just, you know, I was their first kid. I was the only girl in my family. They're very Catholic, like, you know, nothing. Nothing ultimately that original. You know, it's pretty, you know. A very trite form of strictness. I like they're like, guys, I don't care that you're strict, but you're so cliche about it. Yeah, exactly.
00:15:44
Speaker
There's a moment early in your book where you say, during my own childhood, my dad had the demeanor of the fathers I'd read about in the historical novels I hoarded in my room, stoic, religious, extraordinarily strict. Yeah, that's him. He's read a copy of it. Sometimes he argues with me about things that I write, and he'll be like, that's not how it was, but he had no comment for that one, so I felt like I got it right.
00:16:09
Speaker
When a book that I've still trying to get published, it's a memoir largely about my father in baseball. And when I'd given him a copy of the draft, because he was very uncooperative when I was doing sort of my reporting for it. And I'm like, well, this is kind of how I remember things. And I let him read it. And he was just writing bullshit, bullshit, bullshit, bullshit throughout the whole thing. And I'm just like, well, you could have offered input when I asked for it. And so, yeah.
00:16:37
Speaker
They tend to remember things a lot differently. Is that important to you, like someone else's recollection of events? It is, because I'm sort of a journalist at heart. So it's important to me to get all sides of the story. And even if their recollection of it is in conflict with mine, I kind of like the idea of playing those off each other. You're interested in sort of that space, in that space between two people's recollections.
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. But then again, there are other times where I'll think, oh, well, you know, whatever. This is how I remember it through the research I've done into my own life. This was my truth, if you will. If you have a problem with it, go write your own.
00:17:23
Speaker
So there's that element of it. What kind of things maybe have your father or your mother taken issue with? No one in my family has ever taken issue with anything I've written, which I feel very lucky about. It's more that they are like, that's not how it was. And sometimes I'll realize they're right. I'm not one of those people that's wildly interested in the notion of verifiable truth.
00:17:49
Speaker
I mean, it's not necessarily why I'm not writing necessarily as a journalist. If I'm writing about someone else's life in a journalistic way, of course, I really do want to get that right. I remember after my last book, there was this scene that happened in Colorado and my dad was like, funny that you wrote it, that's how it happened. And only when he said that, that I realized that I actually completely constructed what had happened.
00:18:14
Speaker
narrative effect or whatever. And I was like, Oh, yeah, you were that was completely incorrect. And it, you know, it's not it's never been anything that's like dramatically changed the meaning of anything. But I think it is interesting, you know, writing, just like the way it's like, I mean, writing a storytelling, and I'm sure we've all experienced telling a story so many times that we barely remember what it was like in the first place anymore.
00:18:36
Speaker
So at what point do you start thinking, okay, yeah, I kind of want to be an illustrator and a writer.
Comics and Storytelling
00:18:44
Speaker
When does that take root? I was always writing. I was always drawing. I didn't know you could do them at the same time. I didn't really grow up in comics. If there was a comic shop in my hometown, I was not cool enough to know about it.
00:19:00
Speaker
Towards the end of grad school, I started experimenting with video essays and with kinds of illustrated essays. And my last semester of grad school, I thought, why don't I just try a comic and see how that goes? And I thought, well, that turned out better than I thought it would, but there's no way I'm ever doing that again, because it was a horrible process. It's grueling. And the first time you do something, you're also just groping around in the dark. I mean, in a certain way, you always are groping around in the dark as an artist.
00:19:30
Speaker
you never like learn how to do something concretely because it's different every time you approach it. But it took me then a couple of years after that to kind of come around to the fact that my first book would be entirely illustrated.
00:19:42
Speaker
How did you start to find your path through illustration and writing? It seems very targeted and I don't see the path myself, just primarily as a writer, but how did you start going down the more well trodden path or take a machete out and hack your own way through the jungle? How did you go about it?
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think actually I had this, I was actually quite lucky. I mean, anyone who has any level of success is lucky, but I would say that I, or I should say even anyone who publishes anything ever, you know, for the first time is lucky because it is such a, you know, it's just such a gamble.
00:20:23
Speaker
I don't know. I think I was lucky in particular because I came from the literary world. I had relationships in the literary world. And then I started drawing. And so my literary contacts were like, oh, this is something different than the stuff I normally see. And so sometimes it felt like there was an opportunity to place things in venues. Maybe I wouldn't have been able to at that stage in my career publish prose because it was just different.
00:20:50
Speaker
And so I think that was something that I was really lucky to do. I started doing these graphic book reviews, illustrated book reviews, and I think those were some of the first publications I ever got was I did book reviews basically in comics form.
00:21:05
Speaker
Oh, that's cool. I've recently, and I think it was just because I was reading, you know, in reading your your latest book, too, how it would be, I don't know, kind of like a fun project to do, like to basically have like a monthly, you know, an online magazine, an online magazine where you're covering like the local community. And it's basically a graphic novel of that month. And it's like a city council meeting or like a big one or something.
00:21:33
Speaker
And it's just like an illustrated city council meeting. And there's actual quotes from the people. And the prose is sort of the illustration itself. And there's the dialogue in the back and forth. And it's like, oh, this is kind of a different way to sort of actually digest the news. And it's colored in a certain way. I don't know. It's sort of an exciting medium for me as someone who's not. I just enjoy it a lot. Really. It sinks into my brain better.
00:22:00
Speaker
Yeah, that's nice to hear. I think that comics journalism is a very interesting space. It's a very limited space because there aren't that many people that do it and because it takes so much time. Some cartoonists certainly draw much faster than I do, but it would be difficult, I think, to do a seriously reported piece.
00:22:23
Speaker
you know, on like a breaking news thing and also draw it, you know, in two days or something like that. But I think there are, you know, it's like another way to tell stories and it can be a more, it can be, I shouldn't say a more empathetic form or genre. It's not that it's more empathetic, but I think it has a lot of opportunity for empathy and for humanizing large issues that are sometimes hard to grasp.
00:22:47
Speaker
Where would you say you're most alive and most engaged in the process of generating drawings or even the writing? When it's finished and I get to close my computer. Every part that works feels like a miracle because it happens so rarely. At the beginning, maybe you have an idea and that feels really exciting.
Creative Breakthroughs
00:23:11
Speaker
It also can feel horrible and terrifying because you're looking at this sort of expanse of nothing that you have to fill.
00:23:17
Speaker
But there are these moments where you have these sort of like aha moments and it feels like an epiphany and things start to click into place. And for me, for a book length project, that feeling has to happen hundreds of times before I actually get where I need it to go. But those moments are really exciting. I had this problem. I didn't know how to solve it. I'm kind of figuring it out.
00:23:38
Speaker
And then looking back at something like if I don't know if you've ever experienced or I think a lot of writers can relate to seeing like a very early draft of something they finished and are proud of and seeing the space between those two things and how like terrible that first version was can be really exciting because it gives you also hope for the terrible thing you're working on now that it can be it can become something a little bit better.
00:24:03
Speaker
How have you gotten comfortable doing enough bad work to get to good work? Great question. I think that I have reminded myself that the bad parts with some exceptions can be mostly just for me. It's kind of like being embarrassed or feeling shame or something like that. Like that is a feeling you don't have to share with anybody. It can just be like this like private thing that you deal with. And because part of the part of feeling
00:24:31
Speaker
For me, I mean, writing is just deeply embarrassing. Making work is deeply embarrassing because it's narcissistic and totally pointless. In the apocalypse, these books will seem absurd and we will use them all for fuel and heat. But there is this... I try to remind myself, I guess, when I'm in the muck of it, that this is just the thing you have to wade through and it doesn't have to be a part of your
00:24:59
Speaker
your identity or your overall consciousness. But I think a lot of writers, I mean, I have friends who are wildly talented who stop themselves when they're in that spot because they're so perfectionistic. And you just have to keep working through it. I mean, the most important thing you can possibly do is just produce work. And then because the more you have, the easier it is to win or down. And the more you have, the easier it becomes to work and the smarter you become.
00:25:23
Speaker
Absolutely. I love hearing you say the muck of it. I call it sometimes the ugly middle, just the muddy middles of these things. You're far enough away from the honeymoon phase of a project where you're like, this is great. And then you're like, this fucking sucks. Yeah, totally. And for you, is it just a matter of putting your head down to get to see the lighthouse in the distance and keep going? The only way through it is through it.
00:25:49
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I mean, you know, like my, my husband or my friends will sometimes say like, just to put it away for a while, like if you're stuck. And I've always kind of resisted that. I don't think that by walking away from something, you're getting it done. Like that just to me, that's just antithetical. But I, I do think, you know, that, which isn't to say that sometimes you're not forced to take steps away from a project. Like when you're waiting for your editor to give you notes and you have to take, or you're, you know, something like that and you take a month off or something like that. I've definitely done that for the project I'm working on now.
00:26:18
Speaker
But I think in general, the longer, you just kind of have to sit and sit and sit until you realize that you have this thing inside of you. There is just like a, it is. It's like the cliche of there's no way, there's nowhere, whatever. What is it saying? There's nowhere to go. There's no way out through or something like that. Yeah, something like that. I'm blanking on it too, but that sounds good.
00:26:41
Speaker
Let's go with that. What does your workspace look like? What are the tools at your disposal when you're writing and when you're drawing? I have my computer, my tablet, a Wacom Cintiq tablet, and I draw on that. And I'll often have photo references like on my iPad sitting in between my computer and my tablet. And then I'll have a lot of books and the internet.
00:27:12
Speaker
Do you have any rituals that start your creative day in a way that primes the pump for you to get your work done?
00:27:23
Speaker
Not really, but I have found that when I've been at residencies, the act of walking from the place where I sleep into a different building into a studio or an office is absolutely transformative. That completely changes the way I feel. It's like something clicks inside my body and I can start to work in a way that
00:27:44
Speaker
I mean, I'm lucky enough to have home office, which in New York is like an unbelievable luxury, but it's still my house. And it's also the place that I do my day job because I work remotely certainly this year, but a lot of the time I'm non-pandemic years. So that space gets muddy. It's like, you know, they say you're not supposed to like read or like work in bed because your brain doesn't know when to go to sleep. It feels a little bit like that. One of the other things that I found when I've been at residency and I had room to move around is that
00:28:13
Speaker
like basic stuff like stretching is like makes a huge difference I think in how you feel.
00:28:18
Speaker
Nice. And where was the window? My notes here. Oh, I love the piece that you just recently had in the New York Times, you know, you were, you know, writing about, you know, loneliness and tethering that to your book. And I love that you said something like, you know, you put every ounce of your heart into this. So in what way was this topic like so really close to the bone for you?
Universality of Loneliness
00:28:44
Speaker
I think that it's just like,
00:28:46
Speaker
being lonely is just being a human person. And so I felt like I was writing about, like, you know, I mean, it sounds cheesy, but like the human condition in a way that I haven't before, because to me, I think it's like, you know, it's this extremely universal feeling. It's this thing in a way that kind of connects us, like our isolation is also like,
00:29:07
Speaker
you know, what we all have in common. And so I just, I also think that I, you know, loneliness is such a broad and complicated thing that it just took me down these avenues I didn't expect. And so it was, it was more, it was both like less personal and more personal than I would have thought when I first started the project. So I don't know, like, I think all in all, it did, it did really surprise me how intensely I felt about the subject that I was writing it.
00:29:38
Speaker
Yeah, there was, speaking of loneliness, it's something I contend with and have contended with forever and ever. And one particular moment struck me, and I always go back to it. When I was a sports writer for this newspaper in upstate New York, and I would get back late at one in the morning, and I was just like me and my dog, and I would
00:30:02
Speaker
I would watch, you know, Simpsons DVDs, but I would watch them with the commentary on. So it felt like I had like a group of like five friends watching an episode of The Simpsons. And it was like this thing to appease my loneliness at the time. Yeah, I totally relate to that.
00:30:18
Speaker
But I guess my point being, I like that you solicited some commentary from a lot of other people about their most lonely moment in their lives. How important was that for you to include that into your exploration of loneliness? I don't know that it was important as much as it was just moving to me to hear a collective voice. I think I've become more and more interested in that over time.
00:30:43
Speaker
particularly when we're talking about like giant issues like loneliness. I mean, it surprised me when I first started talking about loneliness, like just with my friends when I was working on it, how much people wanted to talk about it, because we don't really talk about loneliness. And people had such, you know, I think just like
00:31:00
Speaker
feelings of pain or sadness or joy. It's such an extreme emotion or state that people were just able to recall such specific moments and memories in a way that did really surprise me and I found them just to be very beautiful. What do you think it is about loneliness that is so
00:31:24
Speaker
It has a very deep taproot in us. A lot of people can remember the moment I was most lonely and it can come to the forefront very fast. What do you think that is about it? It's biological. It's like being hungry. It's something that we need. We need human connection in order to survive in terms of all through evolution and
00:31:49
Speaker
pretty much today. I mean, like being lonely is really dangerous. I mean, that's one of the things I didn't expect to learn or I didn't anticipate discovering, I guess, or that it was even true when I started working on the book is that being lonely is very bad. I mean, it will kill you. Like you're more likely to have all kinds of diseases. You die sooner. So it's, you know, we remember it and it feels so extreme to us because it is an extreme state and it's something we have to fix.
00:32:18
Speaker
Yeah, and talk a little bit about the, you talked about loneliness being, that it can kill you. Talk a little bit about these horrible rhesus monkey experiments from the, I'm blanking on the scientists, but you'll know. Harry Harlow, yeah. Yeah, like those really just cruel experiments. Say, you know, talk a little bit about that. So Harry Harlow, very famous scientist who my, my neighbor has started vacuuming. I hope that that will not be too loud. Yeah, it'll be fine.
00:32:47
Speaker
Apologies if you hear it. Harry Harlow very famously studied rhesus monkeys. It's called the surrogate mother study where he separated baby monkeys from the mothers at birth and put them with two fake mothers. One was made of wire and one was made of cloth and the wire mother dispensed milk and that was meant to dispel
00:33:10
Speaker
He was hoping to dispel the belief at the time that babies only really loved their mothers because they kept them alive and fed them. And that turned out to be the opposite experience that the monkeys had. They really wanted the soft, more loving, seeming mother than the other inanimate, wired monkey. But what kind of happened to Harry over time was that he lost his mind. His studies became more and more kind of depraved, and he really began
00:33:40
Speaker
I mean, certainly like isolating a monkey and separating it from his mother is already torture, but he started torturing them in pretty extreme ways and created extreme situations for isolation. And I became really fascinated by him. I think like in any kind of science or these important historical figures, we sort of think through them about the contributions that they make to science, but we don't think through
00:34:06
Speaker
the impulses there that led them to those discoveries or to that mode of inquiry. And Harry was a very depressed, very lonely person. And it was like he was enacting his sort of pain, confusion, suffering into these monkeys.
00:34:24
Speaker
Yeah, especially horrifying was what was like the solitary pit, like the triangle. Oh yeah, the pit of despair. The pit of despair where, yeah, it's just like, you know, they would fight to try to claw to get out and eventually they just curled up and a bomb gave up. Yeah. And those monkeys like never recovered. If a monkey had been in isolation for more than a year like that, there was no way for them to regain or rejoin a colony.
00:34:50
Speaker
They just, it was like something was obliterate, like something in their brain were just obliterated than they were. It was impossible. Equally interesting is that a lot of times when an isolated monkey was put in a cage or a habitat with monkeys that had been normally socialized, the monkeys that had been normally socialized just tried to kill the outsider.
00:35:10
Speaker
Yeah, and then there was the part of the study as well where they took an isolated monkey and it had grown up and then they're like, oh, let's breed them and see if they become well-adjusted mothers. And they rejected in some outright and committed infanticide because they just weren't adjusted properly. Yeah, like they didn't have any idea of how to care for another living thing.
00:35:38
Speaker
experience being around other living things. Certainly we have biological impulses, but we also learned about calling them by modeling behavior and by observing other people. And the same thing is true for monkeys and for a lot of animals, but particularly monkeys because they're really just so similar to humans. I mean, they're so close to us.
00:35:59
Speaker
You also write and talk about how, in popular culture especially, that sometimes this loneliness or the solitary genius is very much celebrated, like a Don Draper or Walter White, if you will, like these kind of lone geniuses and wallowing in that kind of isolation. In what ways is that myth incredibly toxic to the culture?
00:36:27
Speaker
I would say in every way that makes it incredibly toxic. I mean, first of all, it's a very masculine trope. Like, it's rare that there are women that operate in that mode. Like, you, of course, have, like, the, you know, like, mirrored Easttown right now. I'm watching that along with everybody else. Like, you know, Kate Winslet is kind of that male anti, you know, that male sort of isolated figure there. Like, she's definitely stepping into that.
00:36:50
Speaker
She sort of is skewing gender roles in that mode, but not really, not quite in the same way. The argument I make in the book is that those kind of lonely heroes on TV now, the Don Drapers or whoever else, they're sort of just like renditions of the American cowboy. And I think that's also rooted in Americans love the underdog, Americans love outsiders, Americans love American individualism, American exceptionalism. So I think
00:37:19
Speaker
I think those things are undeniably tied. But also, there is this lonely men characterized in that way, handsome outsiders or something like that. It's very different. They're not seen as pathetic because they're still desired. Don Draper never has trouble finding someone to sleep with him. He's just annoyed by everyone and superior to them.
00:37:43
Speaker
Yeah. In what way has social media exacerbated the whole problem with loneliness, the epidemic of loneliness, if you will? I don't know if it has. I think that, I mean, certainly, like, if you look at the science of it, or like, what psychologists say, they say, like, people who post forced bodily mental health media are more likely to be depressed or whatever, or like, stuff like that.
00:38:09
Speaker
But I think that social media, I don't know. I don't think I have quite worked out causality there. I don't know if we're sort of enacting.
Social Media's Role in Loneliness
00:38:22
Speaker
I don't know if social media is a new platform to experience the same problem we've always had or if it has exacerbated it. I mean, I think it's probably likely that it's exacerbated it.
00:38:34
Speaker
I do feel like, I don't know, I think we've always been very lonely as a people, certainly maybe less so when we were all living in villages and really depended on one another to survive. But in general, I think that social media is just sort of like a magnifying glass, maybe more than it is an amplifier. In this particular case, certainly I don't feel that way about politics or something like that, because there's no denying that social media has completely obliterated our ideas of truth.
00:39:04
Speaker
et cetera, et cetera. I really struggle with social media because I feel like it has a more insidious effect on people's psyche. I think it just makes, at least with me, I'll just speak for myself, it just tends to make me feel lousy most of the time because it's that old adage is nothing unique or nothing, no new insight here. But it's always comparing everyone else's highlight reel to how crappy you feel on an everyday basis. Well, it's like, you know, it's like, you know, as anyone who's ever
00:39:33
Speaker
You know, I have a friend who's in recovery and one of the mantras of the AA is don't judge your insights by somebody else's outsides. And like, certainly social media is a way to just see what someone has very carefully put into the world and compare that like when you're in your house looking like shit, feeling depressed, like, you know, it's those juxtapositions. But I think, I don't know, I totally understand what you mean about that part of social media. And I think I've related to that a lot. But I also feel like there are ways in which we can use it
00:40:02
Speaker
powerfully and valuably as a connecting tool. You know, say people who are sort of geographically isolated from one another or something like that. Like I definitely feel like I've been able to, for example, if I have a friend who has a child on the other side of the country and only see each other once or twice a year, I do feel more connected to them throughout the year than I would have previously if they, because they're posting videos and stuff like that or photos and stuff like that. Like I feel like it actually, in a certain way it like,
00:40:31
Speaker
It helps me develop feelings of love for people who I don't see every day because I feel like they're still kind of present with me in a way that certainly communicating the attacks and stuff like that. But I don't know, I think that there are opportunities for us to use it to our benefit. Although I do agree there are a lot of risks associated with it. And I tend to not enjoy, I don't follow people who I think are constantly posting like artful selfies
00:41:01
Speaker
the sort of Instagram influencer, you know, sphere is a horrible, horrible space that I just don't interact with at all. I only follow people that I really like in real life. And so rarely do I really feel that kind of annoyance. But I think I've also tried, I've worked, I've been very careful to not, you know, allow, if I, if I, if I see my, like, if there's someone that I know, even maybe someone that I like, who I'm like, man, they posted 700 pictures of their,
00:41:29
Speaker
upstate house restoration or whatever. And it's just like driving me nuts. I'll just meet them. There is that. God, I hope that's not a real example of it.
00:41:39
Speaker
someone doesn't listen to this, and he's like, I don't know, why are you not commenting on my posts anymore? But it's like, I've been trying to be more careful about it. It's like, if this is giving you negative feelings, just stop engaging with it, which is, of course, easier on social media than it is in your job or your family or something. Yeah. I love the Maggie Nelson quote you cite in the piece you wrote, that loneliness is solitude with a problem. What about that really struck a chord with you?
00:42:06
Speaker
I mean, it's so simple, like it's such a clear, incredible description. I mean, it's probably the, it's probably the best or one of the best descriptions of loneliness I've ever read because it is just sort of perfectly, that's just perfectly what it is. I mean, there are of course other variations of loneliness. Like you can be very lonely and not be solitary and you cannot be in solitude. You can be, you can have a very active social life and still be experiencing loneliness. You can live in a house full of people and still be lonely.
00:42:34
Speaker
But I think that there is a difference between solitude and loneliness because you can also be in solitude for long periods of time and not feel lonely. So I think it is kind of like the germ of that. It's just absolutely true. And then there are, of course, all different offshoots to explore. But I think it's just a beautiful distillation.
00:42:53
Speaker
And you also write that our job as writers is both to see the world for what it is and to imagine a better one into being. I don't think there is any greater loneliness than looking directly at the untameable fury of our world. But it's also the only hope we have of finding our way to one another again. I love that. Thank you.
Therapeutic Writing
00:43:13
Speaker
I mean, I think that writing a book about loneliness did genuinely make me less lonely. Like I felt I understood loneliness. Like for me, the root of
00:43:24
Speaker
getting out or something needs to understand it and to make sense of it. And I felt closer to humanity, I guess, or like being a human person by writing about loneliness. Like it didn't felt, someone asked me in an interview the other day, like if it made me feel, if it made me more lonely or if it made me feel the press to write about these like big problems and actually not, like confronting it, confronting it really helped, I think.
00:43:50
Speaker
Yeah. And this book stemmed from, you know, a certain sort of loneliness you were feeling right up right around the 2016 election, right? Definitely. Yeah. And I don't know, I assume the things were probably related, you know, it was a very lonely time for a lot of people. Yeah. I just, you know, I started to draw people in publics in isolated settings for this series that I worked on.
00:44:16
Speaker
And from there, I just started thinking about what actually is loneliness and how does it work. So yeah, it definitely came out of a period of loneliness for me. It was kind of a transitionary time for me too. And I think it just kind of stuck with me and interested me in a pretty significant way.
00:44:38
Speaker
And how would you go about cultivating a sense of solitude, which is, I think, important on some level to be one with your thoughts, to be alone with your thoughts, but not to devolve into loneliness? How would you navigate that?
00:44:56
Speaker
I mean, it's very different for everyone. Everyone has different thresholds for how much time they can spend alone, for how much time they want to feel alone. I have a friend who told me when she's never felt lonely in her entire life since she was a young kid, which is amazing. And I have friends who are lonely every day and friends who still have great relationships or kids or
00:45:18
Speaker
great communities of friends and family. Like everyone is just so different in that way. So I think it's about, we do have to protect our time alone, particularly as artists, because it's, you know, unless you're a collaborative worker or someone with extraordinary focus, you have to spend a lot of time by yourself in order to work. So I think that is important, but it's kind of like that, you know, like the Don Draper sensibility we were talking about. It's like Don Draper can, anytime he wants to be around someone who can access that person.
00:45:45
Speaker
like without question because he's like handsome and rich and, you know, suave and whatever. But with writing, it's, you know, what you have, the goal is to have someone within reach or people that you value within reach when you're ready to reemerge. And I think that's the challenge is that you can, you know, like there's a lot of, there's some studies that have kind of demonstrated that loneliness is contagious, that you're, the longer you're lonely or isolated,
00:46:15
Speaker
the more likely you are to make other people feel like that because you're not reaching out to them, so they're not gonna reach out to you kind of a thing. So I think sometimes spending a lot of time in solitude can be valuable but risky because you need to, you know, our human relationships require work and maintenance, just like anything else.
00:46:31
Speaker
One more thing I want to ask you, Kristen, is I love to get a sense of, get a recommendation from a guest for the listeners out there. You know, something that you would want to, it could be TV, it could be coffee, it could be a cool pair of socks. So what would you recommend for the listeners out there? I would recommend having something other than writing.
00:47:00
Speaker
or you will go, you will lose your mind. Like I think that there has to, you have to have like an activity that matters to you and that can fuel you. That's not your work. And so for me, I would say that's probably, and beyond like your friends and family, you know, you kind of need something that's like a, you know, I guess a hobby is the word I'm looking for. I'm like, I recommend hobbies. But I think, you know, for me, that's, for me, that's, that's plants. Like I, I grow plants. I, and I tend to them and that makes me feel like it is very,
00:47:30
Speaker
and meditative, but it's also a way to track progress in time that isn't about producing work or something like that. I mean, I guess it kind of is about producing work because it is work and I am producing things and they're proliferating throughout my garden, but it's not tied to capitalism or art or something like that. I feel different pressures and it's something that's just purely for pleasure.
00:47:57
Speaker
I love it, yeah. Creating a green space inside is really important. It's invigorating. It really is. Yeah, it totally. Fantastic. Well, Kristin, for people who are not already familiar with your work, where can they find you online and get more familiar with you and, of course, try to go and buy the book? I guess they can find me on social media. That terrible place. That's where I am.
00:48:31
Speaker
Thanks to Kristen, the book is Seek You, A Journey Through American Loneliness. I felt seen. I also felt deeply sad, but I'm a sad clown.
00:48:42
Speaker
Thanks for listening, seeing efforts. Thanks for the support and thanks to West Virginia Wesleyan College's MFA in creative writing, as well as Hippo Camp 2021 for the support. Thanks for being along on this joy ride of a podcast. And just remember one thing, if you can do interviews, see ya.