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Episode 438: How It’s All Connected with Taiyon J. Coleman
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Taiyon J. Coleman a professor and the author of Traveling without Moving: Essays from a Black Woman Trying to Survive in America (Univ. of Minnesota Press).
Newsletter: Rage Against the Algorithm
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
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Transcript
Introduction & Patreon Shoutout
00:00:02
Speaker
Periodically, I like to give a shout out to the Patreon gang for their continued support, so um thank you for your continued support. There are several of you who haven't claimed your phone call, so make sure you go ahead and do that. And ah for those who aren't patrons, um and you want to shop around, support the show with a few bucks a month, want to talk some things out, visit patreon dot.com slash cnfpod.
The Power of Creation & Podcast Introduction
00:00:28
Speaker
I would argue is the most ultimate power that any human being has is to create and to talk about or create work that then talks about their existence.
00:00:44
Speaker
um hasing nepp Do you feel the burn of the riff? It's the Creative Nonfiction Podcast. Still going. Sure, I speak to badass people about telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara. Okay, but listen, I'm not gonna riff on the
Post-Election Views & Guest Introduction
00:01:02
Speaker
election. I'm nauseated by it, saddened by it, troubled that someone who is so racist, so fascistic, can be so supported.
00:01:12
Speaker
In the days and week plus since the election, it's like everyone needs to rush and have their take, shame each other, and be like, if you don't come out and say something, anything, there's an assumption that you're hiding something. Like maybe you thought you knew somebody and you wonder whether you can trust them any longer. It's safe to say most people who listen to this podcast skew left as do I. I don't care if you're a Republican or lean more conservative. I do care if you support that shit stain of a human.
00:01:40
Speaker
Not sure how to segue into introducing our lovely and brilliant and generous guest today, but here we are. Tyion J. Coleman is the author of the essay Collection Traveling Without Moving, essays from a black woman trying to survive in America. It's published by the University of Minnesota Press.
00:02:01
Speaker
It's described as a stunning lyrical commentary on the constructions of race, gender, and class in the fraught nexus of a black woman's personal experience and cultural history. Great chat about the writing and courage and oppression and wrestling with the negative self-talk. We spoke way back in August. so And last, getting through some of my backlog of recordings. I have one from June. Yeah. um So I'm happy to share this one with Ty on. As you know, show notes to this and more at BrendanOmero
The Role of Newsletters & Social Media
00:02:38
Speaker
.com. hey There you can sign up for my long-running Rage Against the Algorithm newsletter, or don't. I've been in the newsletter space for a dozen years or so, and so many people have come out of the woodworks with theirs of late, demanding more of your attention, your money even. Newsletters used to be more sacred, in my opinion, but it's like my inbox is starting to turn into this kind of social media feed, albeit not algorithmically jerked around.
00:03:06
Speaker
But some people are using their newsletters almost as a way to get up in my inbox seemingly every day, and it's not part of the contract I signed up for.
Body and Writing as a Single Entity
00:03:16
Speaker
And ah if that's the case, ah I'm gone, friend. Parting shot about reviewing copyedits of the front runner. Also, how this idea of the body being one piece applies to writing.
00:03:31
Speaker
It'll make sense. Trust me. Oh, yes.
Taion's Upbringing and Literary Influences
00:03:35
Speaker
Okay, so Taian is a writer, scholar, educator. She's got four degrees. including a PhD in English literature and culture. Her research focuses include US American and African American and African diaspora literatures and cultures, film, gender and women's studies, college composition and rhetoric, and DEI consulting. She's an amazing and generous person and an amazing and generous thinker. And I'm happy to share this conversation right now.
00:04:19
Speaker
You know, I'm a keep it real, and I write a little bit about this. You know, growing up on the South Side of Chicago, one of five kids raised by a single mom, the first person in my family to finish college.
00:04:32
Speaker
Yeah, I thought that's what I wanted. I thought I wanted to go for the golden glitter. And let me be clear, I'm not knocking that to each his own right. Everybody gets to choose. But I also realized that I chose based upon what was important to me. And I do think we get to choose. And I think for those of us who choose this, we understand the importance of what literature does, right? The sense that we leave something behind. and I just think of all the times and I'm sure you had this experience where you've read something and it moved you, it shifted you, it changed your life, right? And it made like living in that moment worth it. And I think at the end of the day, when all the things are tallied, I think that um what we do is the most important because it documents humanity, it documents that we were here, good or bad.
00:05:22
Speaker
And we leave um something behind for those people who come after us. So I mean, you're speaking to the choir here. I think um this is the most important thing. Right. And ah it it what you kind of what
Overcoming Writing Struggles
00:05:36
Speaker
you said echoes this ah this wonderful Zora Neale Hurston quote that you have in the acknowledgments of your book where where she says, you know, if you're silent about your pain, they'll kill you and say you enjoyed it.
00:05:48
Speaker
And it's such a and such a brilliant quote, and I think it it speaks to kind of a North Star of this collection you've written, but also I think maybe a North Star to how you approach your teaching and your work at hand. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that you kind of echoed that just a moment ago.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, but I'm not smart enough to say that I knew that's what was happening when I was in it. I mean, I can remember, I mean, I think you're spot on with Zurna Hurston, right? I can remember the first time I read, their eyes were watching God. And of course, you know, well-trained kid, two generations removed from Mississippi. By that time, all of my language had completely been eradicated for me, right? I knew not to use it. Shame to say I could read her and I didn't understand what was being said. I can remember going back and forth with my instructor between the pros and the dialogue, right? Because in her dialogue,
00:06:36
Speaker
She's using dialect, right? She's using the language that's specific to the geography and the place and the people, and I couldn't even recognize it. Then you can imagine 20 years later, and you're reading um Alice Walker in Search of Her Mother's Gardens, and she talks about Zorna Hurston. She talks about seeing her at the end of her life, right? And what dignity and grace that what she was found ah cleaning motel rooms and when someone was asked, what are you doing? She's like, I'm doing research. And imagine if Zerona Hurston would have been someone who valued just the glitter and gold, right? And not that she wasn't a character, right? Cause she was just extremely fabulous. But imagine if she wouldn't have stayed true to the word and to writing and to leaving that record, right? Telling her story, I wouldn't be here. Alice Walker wouldn't be here. So many of us wouldn't be here. So,
00:07:26
Speaker
Yeah, I think she's important and I want to be clear, I could never compare myself to someone like Zurna Hurston or Alice Walker, but my God, if they were not here, there's no way I would have been able to see, to write my book, right? Their words are like light in a dark cave. Oh, for sure. That's beautifully put. And what I love, too, about hearing you echo, you know, ah Hurston and Walker and even ah in the book itself here, ah you know, Toni Morrison, like there's a there's a lineage of writers that you draw inspiration from and kind of paved the way for you to see see what was possible with words and reading and in writing. And I'd love for you to just kind of pull on those threads of the mentors that you've chosen through the work through their work.
00:08:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, I think you're right. And for me, um you know, definitely it was intentional, ah but also some of it was trying to find a way to survive because I think sometimes the world tells you that your voice ah is not important, that you shouldn't contribute. Right. And I'm so honored, kind of like a drop of water in a bucket that in some way I i get to leave something behind. But also as the teacher,
00:08:38
Speaker
I also feel like it's my job to encourage other people too that your story is just as important and you too need to write what your story and leave your story behind. I think of Jacqueline Jones Royster who I started reading early in my graduate career and she wrote a lot about the teaching of writing and language acquisition and how as a teacher, um teaching students, it can be very violent if you don't hear your own voice, right? Not only what's being put in front of you as examples of what good writing might be, right? The pedagogy, how you might instruct somebody to write, but then of course not allowing people to use their own voices and to express their stories in the way that they need to. Because as you know, if you change the voice, if you change the dialect, you change the words, it changes the meaning.
00:09:22
Speaker
And I would have to say that Jacqueline Jones Royster was probably one of the first people that really made me think about what does that mean? And and in some way she better help me enjoy Hurston and Alice
The Fear of Publishing
00:09:34
Speaker
Walker and other writers that I enjoy. So yes, I do think there's a thread and in some way my hope to contribute, right? It it really is, um it's humbling. And so I appreciate the conversation with you because Yeah, I've published a few things and anthologies for which I'm very grateful and still feel extremely um honored to have had those wonderful opportunities.
00:09:57
Speaker
but this is my first book where it's just what me. and There was a lot of fear associated with that, right this notion of not only do you get to tell your stories, but you're also speaking and putting your non-fiction narrative out there for the world to see. and In many ways, it's very empowering, but also there's a lot of apprehension around it too. and so Not only do the writers that I adore, model away, right a light in the darkness, but they also, I think, demonstrate this grace and courage to be confident and resilient in their own stories because I can think of nothing more violent of in our human experience.
00:10:33
Speaker
than to tell another human being that they can't be who they are, and they can't express who they are. Yeah, and to you to your point of that fear and anxiety of really taking the stage with your own book and having your name right on the cover, and it's 180 pages of your
Storytelling & Cultural History
00:10:49
Speaker
voice and and europe your business how out on the street, that's what I used to say.
00:10:56
Speaker
and that Yeah, and it's your assertions, and it's a you know a lot of people. A lot of people listen to this show. Published writers are but are aspiring to be published writers, and ah you really feel like, oh, that's what I so desperately want. I so desperately want that. And you know people should be chasing that if that's what they want.
00:11:14
Speaker
But then when you when you get it, you do have to reckon with you know having to stand stand behind the work and have it be out there to be judged and criticized. And um so and you spoke about that just ah ah just a moment ago, that fear and anxiety. So maybe like kind of take us to that that moment, too, of when being able to fully be on stage here yeah you know and embodying those those those words. And then it's like, oh, la, la. This is ah this is kind of terrifying being out here.
00:11:43
Speaker
It is and you're going to make me cry because I do think the universe is in sync, right? I don't believe in, um, quintessences, right? I think everything happens, um, for a reason. I would have to say first as a a scholar of literature and a teacher of literature, right? There's this old saying that the literature doesn't belong to the writer. It belongs to the reader, right? The meaning resides in, in the reader. And so I think a long time of like holding firm.
00:12:12
Speaker
that you know we're not gonna change questions of facts in a text, but interpretations can be what, infinite. So I'm a big believer, what you see in the text, as long as it has meaning to you, that is just fine. So I had to let go of, yeah, I could be in my ego, right? And in my feelings, right? As my students used to say, I could be all of them in feelings and think, oh, I think this is what this is supposed to be about. But I really have to humble myself. And through years of practice, I have to understand that what I've When I put it out there, it doesn't belong to me, right? It belongs to whoever reads it. And then my hope, the only prayer that I have is that it has some utility for the reader. And I have to let that go. And like we were talking about earlier, right? We're going to look back. I think those of us who are artists, who are creators, who are communicators in whatever medium that we use, if that energy is flowing through us, if we're true to that art form, that thing that's bigger than ourselves that we connect to when we do this work,
00:13:09
Speaker
We have to trust that our work will have meaning no matter what. And in no way do we get to control what that meaning is. And in some way as the artist, then we're quite small, right? What is quite large is what the ability for that work to move on. I think of ah living just enough for the city.
00:13:25
Speaker
And I write about my so challenging experiences in graduate school. And that was really hard because I had a lot of shame around that. And when that essay first appeared in The Good Time for the Truth, my really good friend, Sun-Young Shin, she edited that work. She also has blurbed this book and very appreciative of her, just tremendous respect for her and the artist that she is. But we had a personal relationship. And she knew what the book was going to be um about. She had envisioned this book.
00:13:52
Speaker
And she was like, Ty, I want you to write this essay because it's going to be important. And I was like, no, I'm not writing the essay. And we went back and forth over it. And of course, in true spirit for the powerhouse that she is, not only did she get a book contract, we had to shut up talking, right? She's like, now, you know, put up, shut up, let's do the work. And we went back and forth. And she's like, it's not it, it's not it. And then finally, I wrote it. And I was sit sobbing at the computer. It was horrible in the middle of the night. And she's like, yeah, Ty, this is it. OK.
00:14:21
Speaker
And um once it was done, we went on down the road, right? And and it's published, um tremendous reception ah for that book. I'm very honored to be among those wonderful writers included in that book. And it never ceases to amaze me how many people comment on that essay, not just about me being a ah black woman, right? But how it might've affected them in other ways that I hadn't even imagined, right? My job was simply what? To try to
Challenges for Writers of Color
00:14:47
Speaker
tell the story.
00:14:48
Speaker
and be as true to the story as I could be. And literally just this week had a person email me and ah congratulate me on this book, but said that they had read this essay and they went to a similar school and that their experience was worse. And that just moved me so much. But then I was so honored, right? That I wrote that essay and I spoke up. So then maybe it makes it easier for that person to speak. And when I responded to that person, I was able to say, whatever you do, don't stop writing. Don't stop writing, right? and so I think when we think about not telling our stories, that's what I try to motivate my students to say, and I motivate myself um to say, or to write, or to do. I always say, if you don't tell your story, if you don't write what it is you're afraid to to write, there's someone who's going to need that story that's not going to get it. And the only person they're going to hear it from is you, right? And we don't get to control what that is. what that is Our job is just to show up in the moment.
00:15:45
Speaker
and do the best and be the best that we can do. So that's what I would say. And with that, I would say, is it still easy? No, but I think nothing worth doing, right? um That's the hard work of doing the the work that we do, but the reward is infinite and I think it's immeasurable.
00:16:03
Speaker
um what the reward is, if that makes sense. I hope that was kind of lucid, kind of seeing all those connections there. Oh, for sure. like what i What I gather from what you're saying is, you know, as writers as a whole, sometimes it can be, we we can really be on our own heads ah to our own detriment. But what you're saying, too, is is writing is an act of service, too, which I think gets us out of our heads. and it it is It seems to me that you know when you're being contribut when you're being a contributor, and as you say, like having a utility for the reader, you're you're really thinking about you know the end user, how that's going to fall. And it it could fall right away on them and inspire them. Or maybe like five years from now, someone's going to pick up that essay and and it's going to be there for someone who might need it. Absolutely. And I think we have to get out of ourselves, right? And our job is just to do the work and let go of then how that works.
00:16:56
Speaker
will impact others, just trust
Confronting Truths Through Storytelling
00:16:58
Speaker
that it will. We don't get to determine how and we might not even get to see how. Our job is just to do it. And that I know for sure. And that's moving to me. I know it's moving to you. I know it's moving to anybody who does this work. And I and i just have to assume that for those of us, you know, who are in this, this place, we've already drank the Kool-Aid. So this is um who we are. We can't change it. I mean, this is, at least for this lifetime, this is who we decided that we would be. And for me, I find that tremendously rewarding. And it also, I think, keeps the work going on because we're just one small person. We're like a grain of sand on the beach, right? I'm just one person. but
00:17:39
Speaker
We need to have more stories, different stories, newer stories. The stories always have to be coming. And you know um I admit to being a nerd, um I don't think it's a coincidence right that the oldest form of writing is verse and the oldest form of writing is what? Storytelling or communication. And there's something central, I think, to our humanity and our ability to tell to tell stories. I think if we stop telling stories, I think we cease to exist.
00:18:06
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And if you know if we stop telling stories, though certain other powers might come in and fill that fill that vacuum and propaganda, you name it. And they're trying to tell you what your story is, as if they know better than you. Right. right Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, yes, if you know yeah if you don't take up the mic, someone else will take it. And it's not there aren't like it's not a zero sum game. There are infinite microphones, but there are people out there who who just have ah that scarcity mindset that there is only one or two microphones and we're going to hold on to those. But it's like, no no, no, no, no, we just make more microphones, build more stages, and we're going to enrich the community.
00:18:50
Speaker
Or you also give the microphone away, right? Like sometimes you exit the stage and and give it to someone else. And I also think that's important too. for sure It's not always important for you to be in the front, to be the one with the mic, right? It's giving it to other people, pushing other people out there too. um And i yeah, I'm like you, it's enough room. um for everyone. There's no single story, right? We know that. um And as other great people um have said, and in some ways, you know, again, their literature major, I took great joy, like, for example, in reading Flannery O'Connor. And again, you know, people could say she was problematic, but reading her work and saying, Oh, I recognize that. Oh, that's interesting. Do you know what I mean? It's not that simple, right? It's much more complicated. And to when discover that literature could do that, or literature could have that impact
00:19:41
Speaker
I could read Othello, although I wasn't around during that time, but I could see myself or I could understand the dynamics of that play based upon how I grew up as a black girl in the Southside Chicago in the 70s and 80s. I was like, man, this literature thing is powerful. right And you just want everybody ah to participate because I think the more we make complex our humanity,
00:20:05
Speaker
the more we resist binaries, right? yeah um yeah And the more we're able to really, I think, engage with each other with compassionate empathy that allow us to heal, but at least I hope community and, you know, and at the risk of sounding ah like a hypocrite, even in myself, if I can't embody it in my own self, at least in the art, in the work, I can leave something behind as an attempt to
Excitement of the Blank Page
00:20:30
Speaker
do it, right? Because we're all imperfect vehicles. And in some ways, it is the literature, right, that I trust the most. It is the story that I trust sometimes more than the storyteller, o which is why I love Edgar Allan Poe so much and the Cascaby Montiado. Oh, it's such a great story. I love that you cited that as a as as an epigraph or one of one of your essays. That's such a chilling story. Isn't it, but it makes so much sense and in some ways, it's telling the truth about, um in some ways, the, the boundaries or that there are no boundaries in human behavior and that those things can occupy multiple spaces and that these contradictions and that people can do horrible things to people right like reading Faulkner or reading ah Hemingway.
00:21:15
Speaker
and um You go, oh, yeah, like I trust you because you've told the truth. Does it mean that you fixed it? No. But at least you're willing to admit that this thing exists. right And as a Black girl going up on the South Side of Chicago in poverty, sometimes people try to say that you didn't experience what you experienced. And to read writers like that that put it out there like Octavia Butler and Kendrick, it made me it it comforted me. And not that they offered a solution, but they were at least willing in the literature to tell the truth.
00:21:45
Speaker
I love early in the book where you write, yeah I still get excited when I encounter empty writing paper today. And so many people are intimidated by a blank page and it can be paralyzing. ah But I wonder for you the how you see the the bounty ah in it and how excited you get for it.
00:22:04
Speaker
Yeah, because growing up, paper was expensive, right? When I was little, you know, we didn't often have school supplies or if you did, you know, what could you do with them, right? And I see paper as an opportunity to create and I enjoy creating, but also a fresh new piece of paper as an opportunity to change, right, to make something new and different. And I think we always um have the opportunity to do something new and different. I write about that my experience to education was not a straight line.
00:22:33
Speaker
And I do believe kind of like critical thinking is recursive, so too is life.
Non-linear Education Journey
00:22:38
Speaker
But like we were saying earlier, when you have that danger of that single story, and if things don't happen chronologically, or the way that you think they're supposed to happen, people then self select themselves out of achieving their dreams, or doing what they want to do, or being what they want to become, because they think, Oh, I did this, I'm not worthy or deserving, or I didn't do this the right way.
00:22:59
Speaker
And in some ways, a clean sheet of paper is is, in some sense, is the reality, I think, of who we are. Because as long as you are alive, that sheet of paper is clean, right? It's another opportunity to do something new and different. And as an educator, I believe that. And I imagine, you know, it took me, you know, flunking out of school, I would say, fabulously.
00:23:21
Speaker
Fs are for fabulous semester. I got like five fabulous, fabulous things. And it took me like five years of stopping and starting and not understanding what was going on. And I didn't realize then that the universe was training me to be a teacher and it's something I would have never chosen. I'm sure.
00:23:41
Speaker
You know, kind of like in some epic tale, not that I'm some epic hero. Like, you know, the hero's journey has to go through this in order to transform. Cause I would have never chosen on my own cause I'm hard-headed. And I think in some ways I kept, if we want to use the metaphor of a sheet of paper, right?
Embracing Imperfections in Writing
00:23:57
Speaker
I kept thinking that that paper was dirty or I've already messed it up or I couldn't do anything or God forbid I've run out of paper and I don't have any more. I can't afford anymore.
00:24:06
Speaker
So to me, the the fresh sheet of paper, the empty place is that hope that we all have, because in some sense, right, this physical blank sheet of paper is a physical manifestation, but it's also, I think, an intellectual and spiritual representation of what we all have inside of us at any moment we can decide.
00:24:27
Speaker
that That's where we're where we are at and we can start again. And more importantly, all those other sheets of paper that you think you messed up, that you crumbled up, that you threw away, or that you've set on fire because you don't want anybody else to see, right? You have to trust that all of that prepared you for what you were going to write next and not to be ashamed of that, to embrace that, and then to use that to tell your story. Because I think that makes your story more powerful. It makes your story um more more human. So yeah, nothing excites me um like a paper. um And um I love it. And I give my kids paper, although they're kind of privileged to kind of think, you know, mama is um
00:25:07
Speaker
I just say I'm sparkly, right? I'm extra. But I especially love um those um sketch notebooks that don't have the lines and you can just write through them. I had a teacher, a writing teacher who introduced that to me my first year of graduate school and it was like a game
Sketchbook as a Writing Tool
00:25:27
Speaker
changer. And I'm sure everybody else probably thought it was no big deal. But for me, it was like Scooby Doo, like, and he showed us the book and he put everything in the book. So like when he was balancing his budget, when he's, you know, talking to his partner, when he's sketching a poem, everything went into that sketchbook. Right. And that was deep. I was like, wow.
00:25:48
Speaker
That means that you're like physically on a sheet of ah in a text on a sheet of paper, giving yourself permission to say that there's nothing separating you from your writing. So if I'm figuring out how I'm going to balance and pay my bills for the month.
00:26:01
Speaker
I can put that on one page. The next page, I might have notes from the doctor. The other page, I might have notes from my literature class, but the next page might be the first three lines of a new poem I'm going to write. It's like you're acknowledging that it's all what connected, that it's all together. And that to me was like super duper powerful, but also in the sense it's a physical kind of manifestation or or attitude that starts with a physical shift, then I think affects how you how you think, and then it affects how you create it.
00:26:31
Speaker
And from that moment on, yeah, it only solidified this notion of thinking about paper ah in in that way. So yeah,
Influence of Stephen King & Self-Belief
00:26:41
Speaker
I know that was kind of long winded, but that's you're what your great question makes me think about.
00:26:45
Speaker
Oh, I love that. And in the you also write that you know ah after a ah little passage about citing Stephen King's on writing, ah which is so such a brilliant book. Oh my God, I love it. he's Yeah, he's talking about an act of service, that book. A lot of people cite that book over and over again, because it it just really speaks to the I don't know. the I hesitate to use the word plight of the writer, but it really speaks to just the nuts and bolts of just, you know, there's really no substitute. They're reading a lot, writing a lot and in sitting with it and and getting through it. And like and then the stuff we let get in the way, right? And he says, throw all that crap away.
00:27:26
Speaker
Exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, and you even write, you know, turn off those negative self voices, those negative people and negative situations and do the positive you, which is believing in yourself and in your writing through direct action, reading, writing and loving yourself challenges and all. So that's ah I don't just I'd love to hear you just speak to that because I know for some someone like me, I have incredible negative self talk. I might be my own worst enemy. Actually, I am my own worst enemy in so many ways.
00:27:54
Speaker
ah Because of that because of those voices in my own head, but you know you speak to it really brilliantly here Well, thank you And I hope I just need to validate you just the fact that you and I are in this virtual space to together Having this wonderful conversation. um I'm glad you didn't turn those voices off I think you know I would have to say you know writing is something that I struggled with ah my entire life because the first time I took comp like I i got a fabulous fabulous, right and um And I didn't think that i I could write. And I was always looking for external validation. And I think it was much harder too, because also too, and again, I wasn't... um
00:28:36
Speaker
reading people who look like me, right? There was so much I didn't know, but also too, you know, I want to hold space. I don't think you can separate those negative self voices from what's happening to you internally in terms of your family, right? There might be generational things going on. You might be experiencing oppression, right? That's so much of that carries with us from who we are, how we were raised, how we were loved, what we experienced. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm blaming folks, but I'm saying, It's the reality of of what we're doing. So by the time you go to speak, those negative self voices could be like a culmination of so many things that have happened to you. And I always joke about Frederick Douglass and you know, and I'm not saying that slavery is funny, but you know, humor is my way. um You have to laugh in order not to cry. I think of ah in his narrative.
00:29:29
Speaker
when ah he's learning how to read. And you know at least, you know and please correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not historian, although you know I like it peripherally and I call myself a bootleg historian, descendants of African slaves ah in the United States of America were only the group, um so far only the only group of people in the United States for whom it was illegal to read and write. And I can remember in the narrative, there's a moment that when Frederick Douglass learns how to read and write,
00:29:59
Speaker
He says very clearly, I didn't fully understand what it meant to be a slave or to be enslaved, right? I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he says. yeah And that's deep. So, I mean, let's just keep that for a moment. He was a slave, right? He saw people be whipped and murdered and he picked cotton. He did all those horrible things. So he didn't even understand slavery himself, but he was a slave.
00:30:19
Speaker
But then once he became literate, he understood. And that's profound. So then if you make that link, then imagine how powerful it is then to say, not only am I going to read or write, but I'm going to have the audacity to what write my own stuff. I would argue it's the most ultimate power that any human being has is to create and to talk about or create work that then talks about their existence. And I would argue we live in a society that doesn't necessarily what perpetuate that. Because if I can't control what you're thinking or what you write, that might be what's dangerous. So I would argue that any person, no matter what your identity, if you decide that you are going to what create
00:31:02
Speaker
and write and you do that through writing, that is an extremely powerful gift and thing to have.
Linguistic Identity in Academia
00:31:09
Speaker
And I would argue in most of our experiences and most um of our experiences as individuals in this society, that is something I would argue is not um readily cultivated, that is is associated with privilege.
00:31:25
Speaker
And I don't know if I would have thought that, you know, over to ah two decades ago, but after 25 years of teaching, I realized even my own privilege, this notion of literacy, um and then jumping from literacy then to the ability to create your own text, to speak yourself and your identity. And then to define your experience, we're talking about some powerful stuff. ah So I think that that um has always been the tension that human beings have pushed upon in when we live in a societies of power. Does that make sense?
00:31:59
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And there's there's a moment and in in your book where, you know, you're you're having this, you know, argument with one of your instructors, you know, you're using like some, yeah, you're using like some, as you write, like black vernacular for one of your characters. And they were they were really pushing back, well essentially saying, well, you know, be that as it may, you won't get published.
00:32:23
Speaker
And it's like, well, to your point of ah of this ah writing and controlling of ah existence and taking up the the space that is rightfully yours, if you are censoring language to appease a certain gatekeeper, then you are effectively erasing a certain voice and a certain persona.
00:32:45
Speaker
And I think you're you're really kind of speaking to that in here, and it's just like, yeah, you were you are every bit in the right to push back against that, because who wants this inert voice on the page when there are so many other voices out there that can be represented in print ah in a certain vernacular. As Mitchell S. Jackson writes sometimes, he's like, I use high-low diction. you know Sometimes he goes high, and other times he goes like he goes low. And and and that juxtaposition is so brilliant.
00:33:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I thought that I had proven, right? Like, you know, I did my bachelor's degree in English. I did a master's in English before I started my MFA. I was like, okay, I got my street credit, right? Like. you know I can pontificate, but I'm not interested in doing that. right like I did that in a kind of naive way to say, okay, I shouldn't have to prove to you that I know how to do it. right like yeah So if I'm writing this way, it's because it's artistic and now here we come full circle back to Zora Neherston. You asked great questions. right So when you read, their eyes are watching God and prose, it is standard English. right ah But in dialects, she uses what?
00:33:48
Speaker
the When the people are talking to each other, right, when when they're speaking, when the characters are speaking in dialogue, she uses dialect. So Zurno Hurston, just by the structure of that novel, she's saying, yeah, I can use your language, right? I can use standard English, right? But I'm doing so because what I can. And when the characters speak,
00:34:05
Speaker
They're going to speak dialect. They're going to speak a language that's indigenous, that's unique to who they are. And what a powerful play to show the level of skill she has. But also she's thumbing her nose at standard English, right? And of course, um that book was panned by reviewers. But she has had the last laugh because I would argue that there is a watching God by Hurston is one of the most heavily, what, ah canonized texts, right?
00:34:31
Speaker
not only ah in academia across the United States, but I would say across the world, but she shows the tension with that. And I would say then I didn't, you know, I knew that I had to defend myself. It would be only later that I understood how violent that was because that was one microaggression upon many that happened over and over again. And the thing I would argue that's so sad about it is that the instructor is what defending a certain standard.
00:34:55
Speaker
is gatekeeping or policing, right? This industry that requires that if you enter into the arena, you must write and present yourself a certain way. Not understanding that when you do that, you are violently what? Keeping other people out. And it's a form of of gatekeeping. And then ask yourself if you think about on a very micro individual level, what are the stories that get restricted or will never get told because they don't, so to speak,
00:35:21
Speaker
go through the the laundering process of that strict gatekeeping.
Systemic Barriers in Education
00:35:25
Speaker
And that's where I was you know in the in the start of the 21st century, not fully understanding um what happened, but trying to ah write my way out of what Melissa Harris Perry calls the cricket room. right And that's why I love her theory so, so much. And my hope as an instructor is that I never recreate that um for my students, because I want to be clear, it was very violent. But if you ask me if I think that the instructor was intentionally malicious, no, I don't think they were intentionally malicious. I think they were doing what they thought was best, but it still makes it what no less violent. And maybe describing that on a very micro level, my hope is then the utility that that might have is that we can all look at ourselves no matter who we are and hope that we're not doing the same thing um when we interact with others or when
00:36:16
Speaker
we interact with our students or if we're gatekeepers of some kind thatter you know that make decisions that determine who gets in and who gets out. I think the thing that humbled me as I went on to teach, I found out that that experience was very common to to students and to writers, particularly writers of color or writers whose first language was not English, right? um So yeah um yeah, talk about being true as a storyteller telling the story, maybe being okay that you don't understand it all, but then maybe sitting back and seeing how it contributes what to this larger discussion that's happening. And I think a big discussion around white supremacy and language is really important that's happening now. I'm just excited that people are are looking at it. But then I was just, you know, ah my feelings was hurt and I didn't write for a long time because of that, a very long time.
00:37:11
Speaker
Yeah. Well, you know you you talk about your your very nonlinear path through education, higher education, and you know you you wrote late late in the book, and you've already alluded to it here, that I dropped out of college. It would take five years before I would develop the courage and opportunity to return, let alone retake first-year writing.
00:37:31
Speaker
And that and in and of itself would, I think, stop a lot of people. They would just they just would they they drop the baton and not pick it up again and just go about surviving and just going but go about life. what was you know How did you push through that and not get so discouraged that you that you stopped altogether?
00:37:53
Speaker
That's a good question. And that's a big gap that you notice in the book that I haven't, I don't know if I'm ready to write about it, but I will honor your question. I met a lot of people who had been former. that westerns a former um They were former activists right in the sixties and seventies, probably some of the smartest people I'd ever met in my entire life. None of them were formally educated, but all of them were serving their communities.
00:38:23
Speaker
doing very courageous things really helping to make life better for other people. But I saw how they were marginalized and they were excluded from other benefits in society because they didn't have that piece of paper. And I want to be clear, right? Education comes in many forms. um I'm a product of trio, very proud product of trio. I'm a Ronald McNair scholar. And my um trio advisor at Iowa State, who's no longer with us, but he rest in peace and power. Dr. George Jackson, he used to say school is where you get the piece of paper, life is where you get an education, right? So I want to say from my perspective, from where I was standing then, right? Because I want to own that. To me, that piece of paper was the only way for me as a black woman from the South Side of Chicago that I could ever find somewhat sense of justity or access for me. It was almost like it was a club that you couldn't get into. And seeing all these people who I had great respect for,
00:39:22
Speaker
who I admired, who educated me, who took care of me and seeing how they were totally excluded. I could see that being me in 10 or 20 years. Do you know what I mean? yeah And that's what I said. Let me go back and get my education. Also kept getting fired from jobs, right?
00:39:39
Speaker
um I would say stuff like, oh, I see myself being manager in the next couple of years, and then boom, fired, right, rinse and repeat, and just being taken advantage of. And so it's kind of a double edged sword, because in some ways, yes, I did go back, I did finish my education, but it didn't prevent me from experiencing discrimination, right? Yeah.
00:40:00
Speaker
Um, and so I still haven't worked to unpack those because those are still much harder stories to tell and always to try to, you know, keep a fine line of whose story to tell. Am I telling my story? and I'm telling somebody else's story, right? Subject position, but you know, having dropped out of school and did a lot of wonderful and creative things for which I'm very humbled and grateful for meeting a lot of people who I just looked at every day and I was like, wow, you're brilliant. You're amazing. Why aren't you in school? Oh, because of this, because of that.
00:40:29
Speaker
And I would say all the ways in which society blocks people from continuing their education, right? People with felonies, people with extreme debt, or your student loan goes into repayment, and then you default, right? All the ways in which structures set you up, and which we know now, right? The majority of students, if they do drop out, they don't come back. Not because they're not smart or capable, not because they don't um have the ability, it's because some structural thing has prevented them to have that access because of how the system is set up. And I met a lot of people like that, and I didn't want to be me. So in some ways, I literally was running and fighting for my life. That's how I felt. And if you look at the data and statistics around African-American women and how um we are educated, how we represent, a large number of of us have advanced degrees, all, I would argue, and I'm not gonna speak for myself, but in my interpretation, because we're trying to outrun
00:41:26
Speaker
that um damaging oppression of that intersection with race and gender. And so you know I would have to say to you, I was afraid I didn't want to end up like that. But of course, you know God protects babies and fools.
00:41:40
Speaker
I got through and went through, but also then I was exposed to a different kind right of racism that wears on you like a drop of water right dripping on your head you know constantly that you can't seem to get rid of. And that's something um that I'm working on now in my second collection of essays, if I can finish them. Yeah, you really asked a good question.
00:42:03
Speaker
all that yeah Well, thanks. Well, speaking of water made me kind of ah ah think back to it a very early and very symbolic passage that you wrote in the introduction about a friend of yours throwing you in the deep end of the pool and you couldn't swim. And you know you're frantically yeah thrashing in the water, trying to get to the the shallow and get to the edge of the pool. And to me, that that strikes me as very symbolic of those sort of systemic structures that are kind of in place to to ah make sure that yeah that that certain people can't swim and symbolically swim and you know and you're kind of you were kind of alluding to it just a moment ago those those structures that are in place to make sure that not everyone has an equal shot and yeah and how dare you try to get to the edge of the pool I mean yeah you know we could talk about structurally right the data around ah poor people and people of color particularly african-americans and swimming pools and segregation
00:43:00
Speaker
But then the de facto segregation that continues right as a result of the disparities. But going back to that image, that scene that you talked about when I'm in the ah room with the teacher and they say that about my writing, that was her throwing me right into the pool. yeah And here I am trying to survive and get to the edge of the pool. I think the sad thing, and I'm writing about this now, I was supposed to drown.
00:43:24
Speaker
I should have self selected. I should have let myself sink to the bottom of the pool and die. How dare you claw back and get to the edge of pool and pull yourself out of the pool and live and survive. yeah And I think we have a lot of people and identities.
00:43:39
Speaker
who have that experience in everyday life because the way sometimes structures and society is set up and maybe this is what I try to get at and what's understood don't mean to be explained, right? When I talk about the murder of George Floyd is that certain people are meant to accept their death, right? This is your path. You need to accept it.
00:43:58
Speaker
Because in order for society to run smoothly, certain bodies and people and experiences are expendable. We just want to concern ourselves with the dominant what narratives and stories, not anything different. And that to me is much more profound. And I think it's easier to desensitize ourselves to that experience when we see it kind of in a big way. I think what storytelling does, right?
00:44:21
Speaker
when individuals start to tell their story, right? Because if we use drowning as a metaphor, right, or learning how to swim as a metaphor, think of how many people have those experiences. And I think when when storytellers then tell the experience, it allows us what, to see it, right? As Kimberly Crenshaw from Intersectionality would say, it gives us a frame. So then once we have a frame, we can see it. And then my hope is we can stop what? Throwing people into the pool or at least giving them opportunities and classes to teach them how to swim So that when they are thrown in the pool or when they do fall in or, you know, God forbid, let them choose to be in the pool and have leisure. yeah They can survive um and live. And I think that is the power, if I could get back to your beautiful theme of when we tell stories and when we have multitude of stories and different stories and different ways of telling stories so that we can what better, better see.
Understanding Racism Through Literature
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, and you know also embedded in the the pool metaphor is you if you're it if you're wasting your time thrashing for the side of the pool, like all that energy could be better spent towards a more enriching an enriching life, an enriching narrative, but instead it's just like, just to stay afloat is its own burden and like that should be table stakes. The swimming should be table stakes. Filtration should be. Emboyancy should be table stakes so that you can actively contribute in the way that that you're meant to. And then if you're always thrashing, you're you're left with very little to contribute. And that's how that's another way of of of drowning and and silencing voices.
00:46:05
Speaker
Exactly. And think how many people, and again, I don't want to be insensitive because literally, right there are people who drown in order what to escape to freedom or to come to this country. right I want to hold and honor respect for that. yeah But there's this thing that um it also touches me because it's the tenacity of how powerful you know the human spirit is, that there are some of us and you say, you know what? I'm going to go for it anyway. I'm going to try. right And maybe if we recognize that, then we what can build those infrastructures or we can reach out and help so that people don't have to do that. Cause I think at the end of the day, people are still going to what go for it. People are still going to try in order to get what, to get what they need and to succeed. Um, and at least that's what I was taught. I remember my mother, you know, we didn't have a lot or we didn't have this or we would have holes in our shoes. And my mother was like, well, what, what can you do about it?
00:46:59
Speaker
And I was like, nothing. She said, well, we can't worry about it. But do I go? Yes, still go. Right. And still show up. So we were in there you know looking extra, but we were still there, right? Embarrassed and all, but still go. um And yeah, you're right. And that was that thrashing, right? I don't have everything I need, but I'm still going to show up. And my thing is that you know you don't want people um to have that experience. We have to continue to improve society so that you're right. People aren't thrashing. um I know people used to ask me, do you know how to swim? And I say i would say, I know how to survive. And that and that's not normal. It's not healthy, right? Everybody shouldn't be put in a position where they're just surviving.
00:47:41
Speaker
Yeah, to to to some of the the harder things you write about, you know, there's this moment towards the end of, um of let's see, it the name of the essay, here had disparate impacts. And I believe, you know, you're talking about ah flirting with going and to the South for grad school and, you know, you're seeing ah Confederate flags everywhere and you're like, wow, this is this is messed up, that it's just this transparently racist in in a lot of areas.
00:48:11
Speaker
ah But that as you go ah ah ah go up north, you just find that those flags are are more coded or more hidden, and that's even more insidious. And you write about it perfectly. that is just you know There are Confederate flags everywhere, even in places we can't see them. And I just like i had circled that, and I was just like, damn. It just kicked me in the gut. It's just that that that notion, that realization you come to.
00:48:33
Speaker
Yeah. And there's a way in a way, it's drawing the parallel to Frederick Douglass, right? He was enslaved, but didn't understand slavery until he could read and write himself. There was a way, you know, because we think blackness is a monolith right now. No, blackness is different. It has to be black in Chicago is not to send to be black in Mississippi. And I'm sure even with the Mississippi to be black somewhere else in the state is different than the other, right? Like, and there's a way that I, I assumed, and I think of my generation, right?
00:49:00
Speaker
that if you just got that piece of paper and you just got that education, right? And I write this, my mom said, education is something that they will never take away from you. I thought by getting that piece of paper, it would solve. You wouldn't be subject to racism, right? And I know that's naive to say.
00:49:14
Speaker
But that's what I thought. Let me just prove that I'm good enough. Let me get this and it would all go away. And there's a way in that essay, you see my ignorance, right? And I want to hold space. I'm still very ignorant, but I'm having to learn what racism is. Although race has shaped every single thing in my life, right? It has shaped everything from my parents, my grandparents, but still didn't understand it myself. And that's profound, right? Of how much we normalize and I want to hold space and I hope we can follow a thread through our metaphor.
00:49:44
Speaker
how much we have normalized and made acceptable for people to what drown and die so that when they drown, we can say, oh, it was an accident. Oh, they didn't swim hard enough or they didn't know as opposed to revealing the structure. And I think we as people are in dehumanizing and oppressive situations that we ourselves don't understand. But the irony is, at the same time, what? It's taking us out, and it's metaphorically or literally killing us, right? So it is like, is it Lucreshi in the Cascabi Montiato, right? Who's with the mantresser the whole time, right? Thinking that the mantresser is his, what, friend? And the whole time he's leading him to the catacombs. Even when he's, what, you know cementing him up in blocks. He hasn't yet realized.
00:50:30
Speaker
And I think so many of us who are generationally oppressed or have oppressed identities are in that experience. So you're absolutely right. Here I was, a black girl from Chicago, two generations removed from Mississippi, going to Minnesota and not even understanding what real racism was or is, but I also want to hold space, again, not excusing it. When we look right, I think starting what, 2015, when this you started to get national attention to these disparities, which are higher in states um ah above the Mason-Dixon line than lower, I would say even as a nation, right we weren't fully either what understanding or recognizing the depth of how ah intense and complex structural racism is.
00:51:13
Speaker
and then the impact that it has on people's daily lives. And what an irony, right? This is why we study the literature, right? People will dig us up a thousand years from now and say, what in the hell were these people doing? Actually doing these things, but not even what understanding it. And I think that was ah a moment for me. I think it made experiences more painful because I didn't understand what racism is. But the bad part about it is that the people who were pepper perpetuating it,
00:51:41
Speaker
also, I think, didn't understand it either, which doesn't excuse them. But I think, man, we're in something serious now, and we got to figure out what how to deal with it. And it can't be what impaling each other or pointing the fingers. It has to be some other way, because you don't want to look up and there's no one standing. There has to be a way to figure out this tragic mess um that we now have found ourselves in. And we're not going to escape it by ignoring it and saying that it doesn't exist. so And I want to say and in one facet, right, if we can say a pie could be a symbol for a solution, I would argue a sliver or a piece of that pie has to be having space for people to tell their stories.
Writing Process & Inspirations
00:52:22
Speaker
Because if they don't, we will never understand what it means. All we have is these words, but we have no clue, right, of what it means or how it is impacting people ah based upon their identities and how they walk through their lives. Yeah, it's beautifully put. And yeah and when you're you know when you're setting down to, you know you have some yeah ideas that you might have you know written down in a journal or your sketch pad, and you're looking to metabolize these and synthesize them into into an essay, you know what do you like to have in place for you know for you as you sit down to write and confront the that that ah that great energy of the blank page?
00:53:03
Speaker
I like humor. I think I have a secret desire to be a stand-up comedian. I just never worked out. I love to laugh. I love music um because standard English is not my first language. ah And I started playing flute, I think when I was in fourth or fifth grade. And music saved my life. I went on to be a band nerd. I was in a marching band. I was in orchestra. It really saved me.
00:53:31
Speaker
So i I hear essays and words as music. Um, it's, it's like a song. So I want there to be rhythm. Uh, and then sometimes I'm upset. Maybe I'm angry. Maybe there's something I want to unpack and and talk about. Um, and then I feel like I have to earn the essay, right? I think of, is it Hugo's triggering town, right?
00:53:55
Speaker
So once I figure out what the trigger is right, um then I have to put myself aside to know that well what more could it be about, and hopefully then I don't get in the way, because maybe for example, writing about, I'm thinking writing about George Floyd, you know, may he rest in peace.
00:54:13
Speaker
might've been the trigger, but it may be trying to tell the story about George Floyd. I ended up telling other stories, right? Particularly about what it means to be a black woman in academia, right? yeah So I think that's what I ah think about. And also saying what is okay. Like I tell my students, you don't have to have the answers, right? And you know that, right? Good writing is not always about having the answers, right? um It's like a short story where they call it denouncement, like it ends, right? The action stops, but it doesn't mean that we know, right? What's going to happen or is there?
00:54:43
Speaker
a resolution. I think essay writing is the same way. Sometimes it's beautiful enough just to someone to set the scene, to express something that happened and to express those emotions. And that's enough. And so for me, um I feel like I just have to earn it. And I feel like when that happens, I feel like it's a piece of music, you know,
00:55:04
Speaker
ah that you're playing that that comes to a-in, not the in. ah in um And so, yeah, those are the things um I think about. But um as a poet, right um I really had to humble myself because it wasn't until I wrote that essay for a good time for the truth with the encouragement from Sung Young. I don't think I saw myself as an essayist. It's only something that I discovered in order to make sense of something. So once SY showed me that, oh Ty, you can write this essay about what happened to you and not only can it be about this minor experience, but then you can pull out and bring in history and structural things, right? So you find the universal and the personal.
00:55:47
Speaker
Right. yeah I now know that I can use an essay maybe to unpack something that even myself, I can't understand and maybe other people can't understand. And I want to say that I have intentionally written about things that have impacted my life in negative ways, but also I feel like that negative experience by telling it might encourage other people to understand it and it might help other people ah not to be alone.
00:56:13
Speaker
um I'm very interested in politics and gender and race and motherhood, but also you know it it can be subject to change. And and I also feel like the writers where I get to be me unapologetically, and I just have to um learn that it's okay to be who I am. And I say this to myself, and I say this to any writers that are listening, that the way you see the world and the way you experience the world,
00:56:38
Speaker
is the way it should be because it's that gift for you in order then to express it. And maybe what we see in experience is because it represents that's the work we're supposed to do. And I spent a lot of time beating myself up for that and maybe feeling guilty. Oh, Ty, you're too negative. Oh, you shouldn't talk about this. Oh, you shouldn't talk about that. As opposed to one day I said, oh, maybe I see it because it's my work. So as writers, you see something, you're obsessed with something. As creators, that thing is significant to you honor that step to it and then be true to that because then you have to trust what that's your work and that's what you have to do so if you say to me why I write I write to survive I write not to be angry I write not to make sense of the world but more importantly you know in addition to creating I write to say that know what you experience and and you see and what you what you feel is true because so much I think um you know I talked about violence is when you don't hear your own voice
00:57:38
Speaker
but also another violence happens when people gaslight you and they say what you're experiencing is not what you've experienced. And I try to write in a way that says, no, not only did did I experience this, but let me show you evidence of that. And that's that's why I write.
00:57:53
Speaker
um at least today, if if you meet me tomorrow and I say something different, please don't lose respect for me.
Gratitude and Encouragement
00:58:03
Speaker
That's great. Well, this was such a ah ah wonderful conversation. I'm so glad ah you got to really un unpack some of the themes in this wonderful collection that you've written. And I'm just so glad that we got to meet over the phones here and talk a little shop. So I just want to say, like, thank you so much for the work and thanks for coming on to talk shop. This is wonderful.
00:58:21
Speaker
Well, thank you, too. And I just had i wouldn't be a teacher if I didn't circle back. So turn off that negative self voice and just continue to do your work. I'm so very honored to meet you um and to be in conversation with you. And I just want to say thank you and um to everyone for reading and supporting my work. It is a dream come true. Very honored and very humbled. So peace and blessings. Thank you.
Body Image & Societal Pressures
00:58:47
Speaker
Oh yes, thanks to Tion. Yes, awesome. so Made me feel good about myself for a second there. And thanks to you for listening. See you at Evers. You know, not too long ago I ate a second helping of oatmeal. And by not too long ago, I mean like half an hour ago.
00:59:05
Speaker
and my usual protein powder and peanut butter, and I wonder why I can't get leaner from my health and all, and the vanity that I think we all suffer from. I know I do to some extent. Like, I know I need to focus primarily on protein and veggies, and fat loss happens in the kitchen. You can't outrun a bad diet, as they say. But I can't shake my desperate craving for the salty goodness of crunchy peanut butter,
00:59:30
Speaker
And then, tomorrow in my journal, I'm gonna beat the shit out of myself again. Yeah, my issues with my body and food are legion. It's messed up. I wish I didn't feel this way, but after so many years of being conditioned about aesthetics and appearances, i'm being made fun of by my friends, calling me fat all my life, it really messes with you.
00:59:50
Speaker
All the women are like, welcome to the club, asshole. But it's it's true. i It's just shit i've I have dealt with my whole life. So I got my copy edits back for the front runner. Spoke with my editor. I think he's as sick of the book as I am. I think he's as sick of me as I am too. I was scared to open up the latest file of the book. I was expecting carnage. A bloodbath.
01:00:19
Speaker
And that signature voice of frustration you can feel vibrating off the page from a copy editor who is on on the whole a prickly brand of person. I know when I do proofreading and copy editing I just sometimes can't contain my frustration for some of the repeat offenses that you see in a text.
01:00:40
Speaker
I'm working on that, okay. um But I was surprised by the lack of issues raised by the copy editor up to this point. I requested to connect with her on LinkedIn. um She has not replied. It's mainly a boatload of comma, comma shit.
01:00:57
Speaker
and a few issues of where she couldn't confirm a person's name but thanks to my omnibus spreadsheet I could find the article that had a person or the person in question and i in the little comment bubble I was able to say well here's how it is I can confirm for you that it is spelt this way and here's the link to the story if you care to look it up into a Dropbox folder um I'm a couple chapters into part three which means I'm almost through since I began this task on Tuesday November 12th cruising along the final third of the book could be a total shit show but I Won't know and neither will you until later?
01:01:39
Speaker
The last phase is getting the last round of photo permissions secured by this one guy who is by all all accounts sweet but he's just ah he's just a giant pain in the ass. He is dragging his feet so slowly. I've offered to drive down to California with my scanner and just get this shit done.
01:02:00
Speaker
It's maddening. I'm like, I'll meet you at a Starbucks. I'll be out of your life in 30 minutes. Uh, but he has some incredible photos and I really want them for the book, but I only have maybe 10 more days before things have to largely be buttoned up for good. So deadlines make for good taskmasters. And maybe if I can impress upon him the deadline, it might happen. I'll message him again soon and say, dude, we got like five days.
Strength Training & Writing Philosophy
01:02:30
Speaker
All right, so there's this older personal trainer coach I like to listen to. His name's Dan John. I've shared his work, his easy strength books. I like his philosophy to strength training, especially as I crest into middle age and have become so depressingly brittle. It's just like everything. And you know, sometimes I'll just pick up the goddamn cast iron skillet and like my wrist will just,
01:02:58
Speaker
Pinch and it's fucked for five days. It's like I strain something in like a ligament and my wrist for just picking up a eight pound cast-iron skillet like What the fuck is up with that?
01:03:14
Speaker
And then it'll just be easily triggered by if I don't brace myself or pick something else ah pick something else ah pick something up correctly and suddenly like my back will be will just like tweak out.
01:03:30
Speaker
And I get it. It's very depressing for someone who's been somewhat athletic his whole life. A big thing this guy says is the the body is one piece, meaning like let's say you have a bum shoulder like I do right now. It's OK to say military press 40 pounds with my left arm, my good arm, and maybe just 10 to 15 with my right as long as it's not hurting. you know It's something, it's not, I'm not doing nothing, you know it's better to do something than nothing. And here's the here's the one part part. Just because I'm taxing one side more than the other doesn't mean that everything is localized. Like hormones, blood, other shit are pulsing through the entire body. Healing agents, they're not detouring the bad area.
01:04:19
Speaker
So there's a cascade effect that even if I do some big body movements and tack on some smaller stuff, if I'm squatting, all that hormonal shit that's released from the big move, you know, it's going, it's following my blood vessels to my arms and shoulders and back and brain. So the the body is one part, I like that. Likewise.
01:04:44
Speaker
And here's the crux of it. There's your context. Here's the crux. A writing life is one piece. yeah Work, grocery shopping, sleeping, exercise, fucking, eating, reading, tending readings, telling your friends about a cool book or a podcast, watching movies, staring into nothing.
01:05:05
Speaker
Just because you're not maxing out writing words in a manuscript doesn't mean you're atrophying. Sometimes you need to step away from the writing. Hustle culture will tell you that you must grind out every day, grind out writing. Yeah, I'll sleep when i'll sleep when I'm dead, that whole fucking mindset. yeah There might be some time for that where you really do have to grind out a bunch of words, but it's best to surrender to a seasonal approach to your work.
01:05:36
Speaker
It's all one piece. So if you're feasting over here, it doesn't mean you're starving over there. It's all circulating through the same body. I don't know why I felt a need to say this, but it felt right. It's easy to shame ourselves into thinking we're not writing enough or publishing enough or reading enough. you know Social media and capitalism have driven us to the brink of our collective and individual sanities.
01:06:00
Speaker
It's okay to consider the day a win for merely getting out of bed, getting your kids to school, or not dropping your phone in a puddle or a toilet. We're all tired, and none of us feel like we're doing enough, or successful enough, or rich enough, or thin enough, or young enough. I have no solutions except to remind myself, and you, that there's little point in putting any extra pressure on ourselves to achieve. The body is one piece. A writing body is one piece.
01:06:31
Speaker
Treat it well. Treat it with compassion, maybe. Above all else, you'll be okay. We'll be okay. I can only hope we will be okay. So stay wild, CNFers. And if you can't do interviews, see ya.