Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 341: Isidra Mencos
296 Plays2 years ago
Isidra Menco (@isidramencos) is the author of Promenade of Desire. It is published by She Writes Press.
Support: Patreon.com/cnfpod
Social: @CNFPod
Show notes: brendanomeara.com
Recommended
Transcript
Introductions and Promotions
00:00:02
Speaker
Oh, hey, CNFers. Many of you know I like to crack open a beer on this podcast. Sometimes it contains alcohol. Let's be honest, it often does, but sometimes it does not. I'm a brand ambassador for athletic brewing, a brewery that makes my favorite non-alcoholic beer. And if you use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout and get 20% off your first order, head to athleticbrewing.com and order yourself the best non-alcoholic beer
00:00:32
Speaker
I think he'll ever drink. Also, I don't get any money. I get points towards flair and beer, but no money. Check him out.
00:00:40
Speaker
Also, do you need help with an essay or a book? There often comes a point where you need someone to see things you can no longer see. Someone to help shape the work and bring out the best in you and the writing. If you're ready to level up, hit me up at Brendan at BrendanOmera.com and we'll start a dialogue. Either I was going to be honest or I was not going to write this book. That was the only way I could do it.
Meet Isidra Mencos
00:01:14
Speaker
Oh hey there, it's CNF Pod, the creative non-fiction podcast, a show where I speak to badass people about the art and craft of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Mara, how's it going? Who's on the roster today, Hank?
00:01:29
Speaker
Oh, it's Azidra Menkos, author of the memoir Promenade of Desire, published by She Writes Press. It's a story of political and personal liberation, a Barcelona memoir that shakes loose the chains of sexual repression, and a story in search of intimacy.
00:01:49
Speaker
Isidra is at Isidra Menkos on Twitter and Instagram. Hey, shownos to this episode and a billion others are at BrendanOmera.com. There you can also sign up to the up to 11 rage against the algorithm newsletter. This is where it's at, CNFers. I'm not one to hang out on social media very much.
00:02:09
Speaker
but I am one to put a lot of effort and care into a kick-ass newsletter that entertains gives you value invites you to a monthly 40-minute happy hour and sticks it to the algorithm right up the algorithms keister if that's your thing sign up first of the month no spam so far as I can tell you can't beat it and it's here I'll kindly remind you that leaving
00:02:34
Speaker
kind. Reviews on Apple Podcasts helps validate the enterprise for the wayward CNFer. At one point, you likely were a wayward CNFer and think how much seeing a bunch of reviews helped you make an informed download and possible subscription to your regular podcast routine, to your podcast roster, and your podcast player or app of your choice.
Memoir Structure and Themes
00:03:01
Speaker
And, you know, while I've got your attention here at the top of the show, you can always visit patreon.com slash cnfpod. Helps keep the lights on here at CNF Pod HQ. Show is free, but it sure as hell ain't cheap. Okay, listen, enough beating around the bush. Okay, Isidra is here to talk about thematic echoes that led to her braiding certain elements of this narrative versus linearly telling it.
00:03:30
Speaker
writing about sex which is always kind of weird and Working through our demons and just a lot more a lot more good stuff great conversation Got a short parting shot at the end of the show that I hope you'll stick around for in the meantime Let's go here. What does he drives to say about the promenade of desire?
00:04:00
Speaker
Exactly. And it's just kind of like, for me, an important topic because just because it's so relevant in the US is the fact that I don't think people realize here how deep it reaches an authoritarian regime, how it influences every aspect of your life. It's not just politics. You know, wanted or not, your life is going to be completely determined by such a regime. And I think that
00:04:28
Speaker
I don't think people realize that and they take democracy and the threats to democracy way too lightly.
00:04:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Yeah, 100 percent. And it's because I guess maybe on a on an individual level, at least at the early goings as the maybe the the levers of fascism are starting to move. It's it doesn't seem like it's particularly influencing us on a day to day basis.
Political Impact on Personal Life
00:04:51
Speaker
Like, it's all right. I can still go to the supermarket. I can still kind of go about my life. And then all of a sudden it's like, oh, Roe v. Wade just gets sort of overturned in the Supreme Court like, oh, OK.
00:05:03
Speaker
Well, that's been kind of in the works for years, but no one paid much attention to all these various judges being appointed at more state levels or lower federal level courts. Before you know it, it's like all these things have been, we're starting to feel the effects of those tectonic shifts going underneath us and then it hits you in the face and you're like, oh my God, it's too late. Exactly, exactly. That's the thing is that this is just the beginning.
00:05:33
Speaker
If we continue going in that direction politically, it's just going to be the beginning of a very long shadow that is going to be cast on all of us in terms of repression of our rights and so on. I grew in that ambience, so I'm very, very aware of what's going on here. I'm very, very scared, too.
00:05:54
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And I think, you know, what I wanted to dig into also among those things that we've been touching on is this just kind of an overarching just topic on like voice and style and how
00:06:10
Speaker
how you arrived at your own voice and style as Memoir is a very voicey genre and that's part of the appeal and a lot of people might say the appeal of Memoir. So maybe who were some really big influences in terms of voice and style for you as you developed as a writer? Well, you know, my influences have changed a lot through the years.
00:06:33
Speaker
I have a big background in Spanish and Latin American literature, and I love the writers of the boom, you know, Garcia Marquez and Borges and all of those people. And then once I moved here to the US, even though I did a PhD in Spanish and Latin American literature, I started really to explore current contemporary American literature and so on. And I have to say, I love books, I love fiction, even though I've written a memoir, I absolutely love fiction.
00:07:03
Speaker
And I love those stories that are kind of, quote unquote, smallest stories, you know, like writers like Ann Tyler, Elizabeth Stroud, that maybe take just a family where nothing dramatic happened, but everything is dramatic in a family. You know, as Flannery O'Connor said, if you survive childhood, you're going to have a topic to write all your life because there's always a lot that happens in childhood. You know, so I love those writers that take
00:07:29
Speaker
and not like the three-layered type of thing, but more like the examination of family ties and that type of thing, and really go deep and very subtle on examining those aspects. But I also love memoirs. I've read tons of memoirs, and I am very eclectic in my tastes in memoir. In the one hand, I love classic memoirs like, you know, Mary Cars, Leith, or The Liars Club, or, you know, even Angela Sachets, you know, from McCormick,
00:08:00
Speaker
But then I also love very experimental memoirs like Carmen Maria Machado, Gina Frangelo. And I have to say, for me, it was important just to finally, I didn't dare to go too experimental on this. I'll just say that. I felt like I needed to first be able to tell a story well, and then I'll be more comfortable experimenting more.
00:08:25
Speaker
But I do read a lot of experimental literature as well, and it's just – I find it fascinating. What's cool is that you're – with your book too, you do tell a very formative coming-of-age story, but there are elements where it isn't just – it's not wholly linear.
Non-linear Narrative Benefits
00:08:46
Speaker
Seesaw back and forth between like your early childhood and then your adolescence and young adulthood So, you know that that in and of itself is a choice So what was the you know, the thinking behind kind of you know braiding those things versus say going wholly linear? That's a good question because my first drafts I have done many drafts of this memoir, but my first ones were linear. They were chronological and I was kind of on the fence. Should I do it this way? Should I do it the other way?
00:09:17
Speaker
And I work with a developmental editor, Cassie Cooper Parker, and she read the memoir. She loved it. She offered some suggestions, but her biggest suggestion was, why don't you try to do this asynchronous instead of chronological? I think it would be more interesting. And that was a very hard revision for me. It took me a long, long time to get through the whole thing. You cannot imagine how my studio looked like. I mean, I had
00:09:44
Speaker
Post-its all over the place. Every chapter was a posted that I could move around. I had charts in Excel. I had tons of notebooks where I wrote my thoughts on how I could achieve that. It wasn't an easy rewrite, it wasn't, but I realized it was actually a very good idea because first of all, it allowed me to play a lot more with thematic echoes in the book.
Cultural and Family Influences
00:10:11
Speaker
I would be talking about something in childhood and then I would
00:10:14
Speaker
I don't know, just to give you an example, I would talk about a demonstration for democracy that I attended. And then the next chapter, which was a childhood chapter, was Mom, I don't know the exact sentence, but it was something along the lines that Mom ran the house like a sergeant runs his army. Everything was done on time and with precision and so on and so forth. So that kind of play became really interesting to me just to figure out
00:10:42
Speaker
Because that's what you do when you're writing memoir, you're kind of trying to understand what formed you, not just what happened, but what it meant and how it influenced you and how it changed your life, right? And when I was jumping from the past to the later years, from childhood to my 20s, for example, it made those connections a lot more visible and a lot more understandable for me. And I'm hoping for the reader as well.
00:11:12
Speaker
Yeah, when I think back to how to do flashbacks well is I always go back to the television show Lost. And so much of that story, there would be the thread going through the present moment. And then that whooshing sound would come through and they would flashback to something. And it was just like you said, beautifully put, it would be a thematic echo.
00:11:38
Speaker
between this event in the past and what's happening in the present day. And so you don't feel like there's any narrative slack in the rope. It is a germane flashback and not just one that we all often do in nonfiction to fill in holes, but sometimes they weigh the story down. But as long as they are thematically echoing and tethered in that sense, it really makes sense and it can be really playful and inject a lot of electricity into the reading experience.
00:12:06
Speaker
Right. And that's exactly what I was trying to do. And yeah, I'm pretty happy with how it came out. And the other aspect that was, I think, convinced me of doing it this way as well was that it allowed me to bring the political context sooner into the book. You know, the book starts with me being a child in a family that had been conservative, and then it immediately shows me
00:12:32
Speaker
you know, demonstrating for democracy and pushing against the dictatorship. So it creates this tension right away. It's like, how did this girl that came from this family end up in the other extreme or in the other side, so to speak? And it also brings to the fore right away in chapter two, I believe it is something that is perhaps one of the most known aspects of Spain's history.
00:12:57
Speaker
which is precisely the Francoist dictatorship and the transition to democracy, so that immediately comes towards the beginning of the book. And I think for people who are interested in Spain, who are interested in history, that's right away another layer that keeps them hooked to the book because they know, oh, okay, so this is not just a story of one person, this is also what's happening in the country. And I think that adds a layer of interest.
00:13:25
Speaker
Oh, for sure. It gives, I think it gives the reader, you know, this, you know, it's kind of like climbing, rock climbing or something where you have like a toehold or a hole that you can kind of latch onto. It's something really concrete through which that you're able to, you know, tell your story and to even beat that point home of the thematic echo. It's like that it was thematically echoing like the country and just your own
00:13:54
Speaker
familial relationships and how you were looking to kind of break free of what was a conservative family. So yeah, it was like there was that echo going on as well, which I thought was a really, really well done. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. You know, ever since the beginning, when I started to plan on writing this memoir, I always thought that it wasn't my story only. It was really the story of my generation.
00:14:19
Speaker
because we went through such a unique period in the history of Spain. I mean, we were raised under a repressive dictatorship and all of a sudden the dictator dies and we are thrust into this transition to democracy, which lasted about three years until we had the first election. But the cultural and the sexual revolution really happened overnight. I mean, we had been repressed for so long and it was like they took the lead off of a pot of boiling water
00:14:49
Speaker
water just went out, exploded all over the place. That's what happened with my generation. That explosion of freedom, of pleasure, of political activism, of hedonism was amazing and exhilarating, but it was also a little bit confusing because you didn't have role models. As you see in the book,
00:15:12
Speaker
You came from a culture where even French kissing in public could land you in a police office, you know, in jail because it was indecent behavior. And then all of a sudden overnight, you are in a country where wherever you go, in all the magazine covers is tits and butts and all the programs are full of half naked hostesses and the movies are full of nudity and all the youth get into like,
00:15:40
Speaker
the hippie era overnight, free love and experimentation. It was just such a sudden change that I think some people got lost in that shuffle because they were kind of drunk on freedom and got a little bit confused. I had a lot of friends who got hooked to heroin. Some of them died of AIDS.
00:16:03
Speaker
Some of them killed themselves. I think like just experimented maybe with going into a commune. And then over time when that didn't work out, they kind of felt like, well, the way I grew up didn't work out. The way I intended to live didn't work out. Now what? So there were a lot of casualties along the way, but it was also a completely exhilarating period that affected us all, and especially the youth. You know, I was 17 when
00:16:31
Speaker
the dictator died and first year at university. So it was very, I don't know, it was just a great upheaval and a moment of incredible change and revolutionary in many ways. And that's what I was trying to reflect. It was trying to reflect that it wasn't just me, it was a whole generation that went through this transition.
00:16:51
Speaker
Now, I know that the generation that I essentially came up in, I guess I would be like a younger Gen X, young Gen X, maybe old millennial. I have more Gen X tendencies, so I just kind of identify that way. But just even in the decade and a half or so where I like, quote, came of age,
00:17:10
Speaker
Like, while it was happening, it wasn't aware much of what that era even signified. Me, even to this day, I'm not even sure. Which makes me wonder, like, for you, just in your generation, how aware of it were you that things were, things were far different than before and didn't necessarily take a lot of time to reflect back and be like, oh, that,
00:17:37
Speaker
That's what happened. So I wonder if you were very cognizant of the change and what was happening with your generation in the moment. Oh, yes, absolutely. It was impossible to miss. I mean, first of all, the students were a big revolutionary force in Spain in the last years of the dictatorship and then the first years of the transition to democracy. We were in the street demonstrating constantly.
00:18:05
Speaker
So that part was a very, very relevant part in our lives, our daily lives. At university, we had tons of strikes asking for more demands and more changes, more quickness in the democracy transition and so on. So the political change was part of our daily life. It wasn't something that was happening up there, you know, in Congress or whatever. It was something that was making our life, our daily life. So that's one thing.
00:18:33
Speaker
Then the other thing, as I explained in the book, is that once democracy was underway, which was in 1978, we already had a new constitution. Actually before that, in June 1977, almost two years after the death of the dictator, we had the first elections in 41 years in Spain, right? So once that happened, and once the democracy was kind of on its way with a new constitution and et cetera,
00:19:03
Speaker
That's when the youth kind of disconnected a little bit from the political realm because it was what it was called the disenchantment. And what that means is that, in a way, first we were burnt out because we had to spend two years, three years, four years, five years, depending on the person and their age and how they got involved. You know, being activists and it takes over your life and you kind of get a little burnt out, but more importantly,
00:19:31
Speaker
even though the transition to democracy in Spain was heralded as peaceful, it wasn't that easy or that peaceful as it seems. Because one of the things that happened is that as the constitution was passed and new laws were enacted, one of the laws that was enacted was the law of political amnesty. And that law part on all the political prisoners that were still in jail
00:19:59
Speaker
that were prisoners of the Francoist regime, but it also pardon everybody in government that had been part of the Franco regime or everybody in the police, in the civil guards, anybody in authority during the Franco regime that had committed crimes that have actually tortured, executed, imprisoned people that were sympathizers of the leftist sides
00:20:28
Speaker
the illegal political parties and so on and so forth. So a lot of the youth became very disenchanted with the democracy that came about because they felt like, well, they say it's gonna be democratic, but the people in Congress are still people that were part of the Franco regime and all the criminals that did so much harm to the people who oppose the regime are now pardoned. So they disconnected and they kind of
00:20:55
Speaker
dedicated all their energy and enthusiasm to the other side of the change, which was the side of hedonism, experimenting with the new freedoms, free sex, drugs, et cetera. So there was even a movement in Madrid that was called La Movida, which would be translated roughly as the Madrid scene, which was all about that type of thing, going out until the wee hours to have drinks, punk music became very popular,
00:21:23
Speaker
Almodovar launched his first movies that were very outrageous. It was all about expression. It was all about, how do you say, like going beyond the norm, being unconventional, being outrageous, because you couldn't be that for 40 years before the change of the regime. So it was a big shift in the way we lift the changes from very activist politically
00:21:50
Speaker
to kind of being disenchanted and just dedicating ourselves to enjoying the freedoms because there was already a democracy. So we felt like, okay, that's done. Now let's just have fun. At what point did you start to feel like an outsider within your own family, which is a very, very big family, lots of brothers and sisters?
Family Dynamics and Personal Growth
00:22:11
Speaker
Yes. Yes, we are 10 siblings. Well, you know, I think when I was a child,
00:22:18
Speaker
I was a very happy child for the first five or so years. Of course, when you have a big family like that, you don't get a lot of attention as an individual because there's simply no time for that. I also had six brothers and four sisters. So my older siblings, five of them were boys. So I always felt a little bit different because I was a girl and I was a girly girl. But I think the biggest breach that happened at the beginning
00:22:48
Speaker
which is in the book, at the beginning of the book, was that I felt rejected by my mother. I felt rejected by my mother because, you know, she was Catholic. She came from this very conservative Catholic background. And she caught me touching myself when I was five years old. And she let me know that I was disgusting, that that was dirty, that I shouldn't do it. And it made me feel incredibly guilty.
00:23:16
Speaker
And more than that, I kind of felt for the first time I realized, oh my God, it turns out my mother doesn't love me unconditionally. If I'm not a good girl, I'm not worthy of love. This is awful. So I could have just retreated and accepted that, but I don't know if there was some part of me that was always had that rebel streak. And instead of accepting that, I decided, well, you know what? I'm just going to do it in private. I'm just going to do it in secret. She doesn't need to know, right?
00:23:46
Speaker
So from the beginning, I had like this dissociation where to the outside world of my family, I was a good girl always, but I had this private rebellion. And then as we started growing up, my parents were very, very reserved. My brothers and sisters, most of them very reserved. So even though it was such a very large family,
00:24:11
Speaker
you would come to the house and nobody was talking to each other. Once we passed the age where we would be playing board games together, for example, everybody was reading a book and nobody was talking to each other. We were all voracious readers. And in fact, I didn't have any friends among my siblings. They didn't know anything about me. I didn't know anything about them. I mean, it would happen that I would run into one of my brothers at a club when I was a little older, you know, a teen, and we wouldn't say hi to each other.
00:24:41
Speaker
I mean, it's difficult to convey how extreme this level of isolation within the family was for us to the point where we didn't feel comfortable talking about anything personal with each other. My mom was the big authority figure in the house and everybody was kind of, we love her and respected her tremendously, but we also were a little scared of her because she could be pretty harsh in her comments.
00:25:10
Speaker
And she didn't take lightly if you didn't have the same opinion as she did. So for all of those reasons, I started kind of isolating even more and more and looking for my family outside. And that's what I did from very young, you know, from the time I was a teen. But I wasn't rebellious really until I was about 19 years old. That's when I kind of had my terrible teenage years. It was actually in my 20s.
00:25:37
Speaker
And I was like the black sheep of the family. In the dedication as well, you do dedicate half of it to your mother and you say like how I wish I had given you the tight long hug I so longed to receive from you. So why do you suppose that there was that degree of resistance or maybe even standoffishness between you and your mom? I think we were quite similar. We were both very strong women and stubborn.
00:26:08
Speaker
And mom didn't take it lightly when her authority was challenged. And there was always some conflict and tension. And I think I was resentful of her. I was very resentful because what happened when I was a child really impacted me very deeply. And there were a few other things that happened that are in the book as well, like this kind of shame about the body and about nudity and about that type of anything related to sex, et cetera.
00:26:38
Speaker
And I think I was deeply resentful because between what happened with her and then what happened, I also had molestation from a family member. I was very confused, but I also was very traumatized sexually. And I think I felt like I disconnected with my sensuality. I didn't know I was doing that, but I was actually doing that. And I mean, there's a scene towards the end of the book
00:27:06
Speaker
where I have a big fight with my mother because I dare to have a different opinion about subtitled movies versus dub movies. It was to that point, you know? And I was a pariah because I dare to confront her and I dare to tell her in her face, nobody can have a different opinion than you. And that's why you cannot accept this, right? So there was always some tension and conflict. And I think for me,
00:27:33
Speaker
I was, that doesn't mean I didn't love my mom. I still kept visiting her in Spain every couple of years, every year, every couple of years, I would go and visit my family and so on. But I always came back hurt and disappointed because I would go there, you know, really wishing to connect and et cetera. And mom would be so reserved and she would like not hug me or, you know, she wouldn't express affection, which is also very common in that generation, right?
00:28:03
Speaker
the older generation that didn't really have a very affectionate relationship with the kids. But for me, it was very hurtful. And I think I kind of realized that maybe I should have been less hurt and be more upfront about giving love instead of only expecting to receive love. And that might have broken that bridge that we had. That might have overcome it. And maybe I wasn't, you know,
00:28:33
Speaker
be enough to do that, I don't know. Yeah, I think sometimes we get into trouble when we, and you use the term expectations really, it's like when we go and confront these people that we were looking to get love or validation from and we hope that they'll come around to see the world on our terms because that's what we've been cultivating our whole lives and then when they just
00:29:01
Speaker
constantly sort of refuse to understand like a different worldview, it just leads to a sour experience. And I've experienced that before, and it sounds like you have to, like you would go there with that expectation, like maybe this is the time that that will be on common ground. We'll be able to have that, you know, that nice conversation or that hug I've always wanted. And then when it doesn't happen, it's just like, oh, why'd I even travel while like nothing's going to change? And it just makes you feel sad.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, that's very well put, Brendan. And I know you both are also working on a memoir about baseball and your relationship with your dad has always been easy and so on. So I totally get where you're coming from. And you put it really well. It's true. You know, we work hard on becoming who we are and we want to be accepted as we are. But sometimes you just have to accept them as they are instead of expecting them to come to your terms, you know, just
00:29:59
Speaker
just accept what they can give you and be okay with that. And I think even though I always demonstrated that I love her and so on, but I wasn't also affectionate. I wasn't affectionate with her either because we were raised in such nobody touch each other, nobody hugged each other, nobody confided in each other. It was just very isolationist. And that's something that I think is a big topic in the memoir because
00:30:27
Speaker
Even though I talk about this memoir as a sexual coming of age story from Catholic Virgin maiden to seductive Mata Hari as to spend transitions from dictatorship to democracy, even though that's the biggest plot theme, there's also a big theme about intimacy and how important it is to conquer intimacy in your life, and I think
00:30:54
Speaker
Having grown up with this absolute lack of intimacy in my house, and when I'm talking about intimacy, I don't mean sexual intimacy, I just mean being vulnerable, trusting each other, confiding in each other, that type of thing. I didn't have any of that. So this is something that has really marked me in my own relationships with my different lovers, boyfriends, even husband, that I'm so used to being isolated in
00:31:24
Speaker
in a group, in a family group that I have to fight it. I have to fight it because it's comfortable for me. It's comfortable for me to just be in the same house with the people I love and never communicate with each other. So I'm very aware of that and where it comes from. And I have to just fight to overcome it and keep really trying to welcome intimacy in my daily life.
00:31:50
Speaker
Yeah, it really stems from that moment when you're five or six years old, when you got your first injection of shame. Exactly.
00:32:05
Speaker
deeply rooted that stuff is and then you really have to wrestle with it for the rest of your life and be it be it with you know the you know physical shame sexual shame or relationships to to food and embody dysmorphia and stuff of that nature that takes root at such a young age and it just it's really tragic that especially in our culture that it
00:32:27
Speaker
It just ends up being so, so prevalent and it'll stay with you the whole time. And so it's like, even as you've matured and you can recognize and identify that shortcoming that you need to metabolize and fully process, that it still has to be a conversation you have to have with yourself probably until the day you die. It just sucks that it comes to that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think being branded with shame
00:32:54
Speaker
from very young in any respect, it doesn't matter if it's physical, emotional, whatever it is, it is so hard to shake and it's a constant path of evolution, of growth. But on the other hand, you get there. I think you get there. If you keep trying, you get there as you mature, as you grow up, as you learn, as you
00:33:22
Speaker
as you become more aware of who you are and how do you wanna be, you get to overcome those traumas. You can, you can get to overcome those traumas, absolutely.
00:33:33
Speaker
Yeah, and it's so important to try to identify that too, because of what I'm witnessing with my mother, who is in the sort of early stages, mid to early stages of dementia. And at her facility, she has no short-term memory, but when she gets into a bad place,
Trauma and Reconnection
00:33:55
Speaker
She walks into this very fearful place of her early adulthood or early childhood and she can't get out of there. Part of her dementia is very fear-based. It's one of those things where if we don't
00:34:13
Speaker
adequately process that, that if our mind starts to go, it becomes like those moments of trauma, you know, whatever that might be ends up being this like prison and I'm just like seeing it manifest and it makes me and anyone near me I'm like, whatever demons we have, we need to like, really process them that way in the event that our minds start to go, at least we meet, we might default to a better place. Exactly. And you know, the ways to process that can be very,
00:34:43
Speaker
very different. It's just not one precise path. Of course, there's therapy. But for example, for me, one of the things that really helped me reconnect with my sensuality, as you know, because it's a big part of the book, is dancing salsa. When I discovered salsa, it wasn't popular in Barcelona at that time. There was only one club in the city that played salsa.
00:35:10
Speaker
It was in the red light district. It was a dump of a club, a little thing, not fancy at all with the very curious characters populating it. And it was very appropriately called taboo, right? And I was at taboo dancing salsa five nights a week. I just became obsessed and it has been a huge part of my life. And it was dancing salsa where I finally felt my body become free.
00:35:37
Speaker
I finally could be that sensual being again and just feel that joy of my body without any shame and in a public way as well, right? And even created kind of a different persona for me from that very repressed, fearful, shy Maria Isidra, I became this seductive Isadora, you know, in reference to the dancer Isadora Dunca, that nickname that my friends gave me. And it was a huge boom in my life.
00:36:05
Speaker
just discovering the type of music that liberated my body. Aside from that, of course, I did therapy and many other things, meditation, etc. But don't discount. If anybody here in the audience is battling with a part of themselves that they have repressed or hidden due to shame, trauma, whatever that is, don't discount finding that spark.
00:36:33
Speaker
that maybe just something physical like a dance or a type of exercise that makes you feel free. Something that is going to allow you to embody joy. I embody the full feelings and the full range of feelings in your own self. I think that's really important to keep in mind that it doesn't need to be only an intellectual pursuit, this growth and this evolution. It's important to
00:37:01
Speaker
you know, give honor your body. What is it that is going to move you? What is it that is going to literally move you, not just emotionally, but literally move you and change the way you live in your body? I think that's important.
00:37:16
Speaker
And give us a sense of what it was like, of course, growing up relatively invisible in your big family. And then when you were able to, you know, you discover salsa and suddenly you're inhabiting your body in a new way, but you're also, you know, you're also becoming visible to friends and to potential suitors and so forth. Like, what was that like for you to suddenly be noticed?
00:37:45
Speaker
Well, that's a very good question, Brendan. It was exhilarating. All of a sudden, I had always felt invisible and powerless, and all of a sudden, I felt like I had power, a huge amount of power. But that was a double-edged sword, because on the one hand, I realized that my body was a flag, that every man were kind of a little nuts. There was this sensual new
00:38:16
Speaker
a person, Isadora, that was clearly enjoying herself. I had a beautiful body and so on and so forth. And that made me visible. And that was exhilarating to me. And it became, you know, this urge that I had to seduce men, because not just because of the seduction. On the one hand, I was really looking for love and intimacy, which I was sorely lacking in my family life. But on the other hand,
00:38:44
Speaker
It was just the rush of the conquest. And the double-edged sword comes that, in fact, a lot of those liaisons, especially the one-night stands, were very unsatisfactory, and I felt used. And I felt used and thrown away. Like, I think happens to a lot of women. And that has a lot to do with what Melissa Phibos talks about in Girlhood, one of my favorite memoirs.
00:39:11
Speaker
which is really a collection of offices, and she talks about the concept of empty consent, right? When you say yes to sex, but you really don't want sex, it's just that you have become used, and that's what happens to you, because you've been used. You know, I was molested as a child, so I kind of got used to, oh, if I want attention, I need to let men use me.
00:39:38
Speaker
And so, you know, you kind of fall into this thing where you're looking for love and you're using as a bargain and cheap your body. And then in the end, you don't get neither love nor sexual satisfaction. You end up feeling used. So it is something that it took me a while until I realized, wait a minute, what am I doing here? I'm not even having as much fun as I think I am. I'm having fun when I'm seducing, but I'm not having fun after the seduction.
00:40:07
Speaker
So when I'm really with this person who doesn't care for me in the list, you know, so it just, again, it took me a long time. I mean, really took me all the twenties to overcome these impulse to seduce just for the thrill of being seen and having power and just realizing that, wait, wait, that's not really what I want. What I want is find the power inside myself. I don't need to find the power in a male gaze.
00:40:35
Speaker
I have it in me. I just need to find it." It was a double-edged sword, but it did make from some pretty sexy moments. I see that.
00:40:49
Speaker
One of my favorite characters or encounters in the book that you have is with your friend, Maria, and that's her own nickname. As you were Isadora, that was her nickname. Just give us a sense of what she was like. Like I said, I connected with that
00:41:10
Speaker
section in the book just as a reader. I just enjoyed it. And I really liked her and your friendship at that time. So I don't know, just like give us a sense of what that was like. Sure. She was the opposite of me. I mean, Maria was outrageous. She was powerful. She didn't have any shyness in her. She didn't have any prudishness in her. She was controversial. She didn't mind upsetting people, making a scandal.
00:41:39
Speaker
I was the opposite. I was a good girl. I was a shy, good girl. Through her, I learned that it's okay to raise your voice. It's okay to be scandalous if you want to. It's okay to just be passionate and enjoy your pleasures and do whatever the hell you want to do. It was an amazing friendship for me because he had the two sides. On the one side,
00:42:05
Speaker
She was as passionate about literature as I was. So we had a great love for books and we spent hours and hours talking about books, reinventing book plots, sending letters to characters in a book. We lived in a world of continuous literary engagement that it wasn't just reading, but it was talking about it, living through it, even drinking like the characters in the books that we loved, you know?
00:42:34
Speaker
And on the other side, it had this whole learning experience of seeing a fearless woman and learning to be fearless myself. So it was a great adventure, my friendship with her. Unfortunately, it ended that friendship, but I am very grateful to have had it. And I think it really cracked me open and allowed me to become more brave or braver.
00:42:59
Speaker
There's a moment in the book too, you know, a little bit later, I'd say maybe in the final quarter or so. Actually, next one, next one. Never mind, it's more about halfway. When you're starting to, you know, starting to write a bit more and then you write a story, it's more or less like the...
Writing Journey and Sacrifices
00:43:16
Speaker
uh wishing for the family like you would that you wish you had yeah and then you like i'd written a story about the way i wanted our family to be not the way it was perhaps all writers are liars and i just like highlighted that because i thought that was like you know that was uh you know that's true sometimes we want to conjure what we conjure what we want in our fiction um even our non-fiction too yes absolutely that was my first inkling that um
00:43:45
Speaker
literature was going to be a refuge for me. When I wrote that story, I was 12 years old, and I invented a dad that wasn't really the dad that I had, which was very reserved and quiet. And in the story, he was this affectionate guy that would caress my hair and tell stories, and we would all see it around him, around the fire. It was just absolutely not true, but it was a fiction story that I was writing for school, and I love writing it.
00:44:13
Speaker
And when the teacher said to me, why don't you show it to your dad? He's going to love it. I was like, no way if I show it to my dad. He's going to know I was lying. I was so ashamed. I couldn't show that to my family. And I think that we do that as writers, especially fiction writers, obviously, that we recreate things not the way we want them to be all the time, but at least even in the most dire plot
00:44:43
Speaker
you can recreate it in a language that is engaging, you know, and it allows you to create your own world. And I think that's the power we have as writers. And that's why we love it so much and we cannot stop doing it.
00:44:59
Speaker
Yeah, and there's another moment too that I marked up that you had written. I drafted a few stories here and there but couldn't gather steam or commit to a serious schedule. I wanted the success but I didn't have the perseverance and determination to do the work.
00:45:15
Speaker
And that speaks to, I think, a lot of people, you know, fill in your artistic discipline. We can just use writer, since that's germane to our conversation, that, like, people want to be a writer without doing the writing. You know, they want the laurels without sitting at your computer at 5am.
00:45:32
Speaker
while you're alone and everything coming out just feels like garbage so over the years how have you cultivated your own. Endurance your own muscle musculature to stick out those non glorious moment so you can then sit here years later with you know a book in your hand. Yes well you know brennan i'll say that really my commitment to being a writer is true commitment by true commitment is i
00:46:01
Speaker
I'm risking a lot of things. I'm willing to sacrifice a lot of things in order to continue with this craft. It's fairly recent. I mean, I did double on writing on and off through the years. I published a couple of books. One was an academic book. The other was a book of short stories in Spanish. But that was 20 years ago, and it was just kind of like serendipity. A friend of mine who knew my writing invited me to read in a conference, and I read.
00:46:30
Speaker
in the audience, there happened to be a couple of women who had just launched an independent publishing house in Texas, but it was in Spanish. And so they loved the story and they asked me, do you have a collection? I didn't really have a collection. I had just a bunch of stories I had written over a decade, but I said, yes, I do. So I just reviewed the stories and added a couple and send them that. They loved it and they published it, but it was like a tiny publication.
00:46:59
Speaker
And they didn't have any distribution or anything. So the book didn't even like lounge, so to speak. That was 20 years ago. But I hadn't really committed fully to being a writer. I was the main breadwinner in my family. I had a very demanding corporate job. I was raising a child. I had a very long commute every day. It was just really hard to find the time and the energy.
00:47:24
Speaker
And then, but I was always kind of depressed, you know, and there everything, all the external accomplishments, you know, my great job and et cetera. I was kind of in a low grade depression that sometimes dipped into darker territory. And I knew it was because I wasn't writing because I had always been my dream. So finally in 2016, I decided that's it. So I quit my job. I went immediately from making a lot of money to making very little money.
00:47:54
Speaker
I told my husband and my son, we may have to make a lot of sacrifices. We may have to sell the house, but this is my lifelong dream and I have to do it. And they supported me, you know, to their credit. They supported me. So I quit my job. I started working part-time in my own business as a developmental editor, writing coach, which is something that I had been working as a leader for 20 years before for all the magazines and things. And I started writing.
00:48:22
Speaker
And that's when I really, truly committed to the writing. And that's when I started writing this memoir. That was 2016. Actually, it started 2015 when I was stealing the job while I was gathering my courage to quit the job. And then I did that in 2016.
00:48:39
Speaker
Now when you did that, I imagine as what happens with a lot of us is that initially it's like, this is the best idea in the world. I'm jumping in, whole hog, I'm so excited. And then eventually reality kind of sets in, you're like, oh gosh, this is gonna be a whole lot harder than I thought. And then you start to maybe get down on yourself and maybe you start questioning, maybe, okay, maybe I need to go back and get that corporate job again and not,
00:49:06
Speaker
You know, and not keep pursuing this dream 100%. So how did you battle, if you battled, with those voices as it started to get hard after that honeymoon period? Well, I can tell you that I did battle a lot with that. I shed a lot of tears because I felt like I had to jeopardize my family's well-being for this dream. And that was really hard. That was very, very hard to
00:49:33
Speaker
live with, because as I said, I was the main breadwinner and I went from having a super plush salary to having very, very little income. Not very little, but little income. Luckily, I had planned ahead, so I had some savings. I had some things that could kind of tide me through the first years. We just, you know, nos a pretamos el cinturón, we just tighten our belts.
00:49:59
Speaker
We started downsizing a few things and eventually we decided to downsize even more and we sold our house and right now we're renters and we're going to downsize and buy something much smaller if we buy. It's worth every inch of that sacrifice. I have to say that it really has been the support of my husband and my son that has pulled me through the darkest moments because I would sometimes really get down on myself, how could I do that to you?
00:50:29
Speaker
How could I jeopardize your future? How could I, you know, I should have stayed working. And they were always, no, this is your dream. You have to do it. We're here for you. We support you. You know, it's like. That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah. So that was really a huge help.
00:50:46
Speaker
I read a quote recently from, of all people, Trent Reznor, the lead singer of Nine Inch Nails, kind of this grunge band from the 90s.
Handling Criticism and Honesty in Writing
00:50:54
Speaker
You know, they're still touring and doing their thing. But I pulled this quote out because I think it's kind of germane to a lot of the things that I talk about on this show. And he said, I don't even know why I'm saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I'm not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn't the case, but left to my own devices, that boy starts speaking up.
00:51:13
Speaker
And I think we all have that voice. And when that voice starts knocking on the door, I call it a 3 a.m. voice because I hear it at 3 a.m. when I wake up and it's hard to get back to sleep. How do you what's the conversation you're having with that voice to try to shut it up or not to shut it up to dance with it and move past it? I have to say this voice comes a lot less often right now. I don't feel like I'm the best, but I feel like I'm good enough. And I feel like I don't know, I just
00:51:44
Speaker
How can I say, I mean, first of all, I'm older. So when you're older, you start focusing less on what people expect from you and more on what you expect from yourself. And you care less about what people think of you. And even though I have my moments, I do have a tendency to get depressed sometimes, but I have learned to just let myself wallow one day and then the next day get up and just keep about life, keep doing what I need to do.
00:52:14
Speaker
But I think that that was a big thing in writing this book as well. You know, one of the topics in the book is precisely imperfection, you know, how we are all so full of imperfection, how we all make mistakes, how people hurt us and how I hurt people. And I think that when you look at life that way and you really believe it, that that's the way it is and that's the way that and that is okay.
00:52:39
Speaker
you get a lot more compassion for others and compassion for yourself. In my case, I think I've reached a point where I don't need to be liked by everybody. I let things slide. Something happened recently, Brenda, and I'm going to tell you because it was kind of hilarious. I belong to a writer's club here in California. It's called the California Writers Club, and they do an open mic meetup.
00:53:05
Speaker
So I participated in one of these meetups and I read a little essay that is unpublished that had a very controversial first line. And there was two young men in that meeting that came up because it's a meeting open to anybody who also read and they read like very salacious poems. And then they left and we thought, well, these guys really were trolling us. And we left it at that. Well, then
00:53:35
Speaker
Like three months later, I get a text from a friend who says, Isidra, have you seen this? And then they send me a link to a YouTube video where they were making fun of this meeting. These guys are trolls that troll meetings. And then they use it in their YouTube channel to make people laugh, right? And make some money with that at the same time. So they totally troll me. And it was just, I had to say,
00:54:03
Speaker
I don't condone what they do because they really bother a lot of meetings and people and they are making fun of them to make money. However, it was hilarious. It was so well done. It was so hilarious. And my friend was so upset and he was like, oh, I'm so sorry this happened. I said, no, this is just fun. So I actually put it in Instagram everywhere. I was like, they told me and I found it hilarious.
00:54:29
Speaker
And so I would have been completely unable to do that 10 years ago. It's just I would have been completely horrified. I would have felt so self-conscious. Oh my God, I look like an ass. How could they do that to me? Because I look like an ass. The way they manipulated the whole thing, it was just very funny. Very funny.
00:54:52
Speaker
But now I could have a big laugh about it and say, well, you know, they have a laugh with me, whatever. Who cares? You know, it's like, I just have a laugh too. And I think that comes with age, with maturity, with acceptance that you're never going to be perfect and not everybody's going to like you or your book. And that's okay. You know, if they don't like you and they are not your people, you'll find your people.
00:55:20
Speaker
and that's the people that you'll surround yourself with. What was the opening line to this that they trolled you with? I lost my virginity to a horse. Which is true. I mean, not literally, obviously, but riding horses. Yeah, it was kind of the awakening, if you will. Yes. And they had a ball with that, you can imagine.
00:55:49
Speaker
Well, that leads into something I wanted to ask you to, that is very hard to pull off in writing, is writing about sex. And especially if it's nonfiction and it's happened to you and then you have your fellow people that you know and people you love and people you would rather not.
00:56:10
Speaker
You would have them not want to know what you've done and it can be really hard and that can actually keep you from having to express the things you deeply want to express on the page. So how did you work through that as it's a big challenge? It was difficult while I was writing it. I mean, funny enough, something that helped was that I was writing in English instead of Spanish because it gave me a little bit of distance and allowed me to be more raw in my expression.
00:56:40
Speaker
And also, you know, most of my family doesn't read English, so it kind of made me feel more protected. They wouldn't read it. But also, you know, that was a long time ago. You know, the book ends in 1992 when I migrate to the United States and also kind of a Spain's transition to becoming a modern country also finally ends, you know, in a culminating point. So it was a long time ago. And when I look at it,
00:57:09
Speaker
Am I proud of everything I did? No, I'm not proud of everything I did, obviously, especially if I hurt somebody, I regret it. But that's what happened. And I think that I wanted to be very honest because I think a lot of people go through that, those crazy wild 20s, and especially a lot of women go through that period of having a wild period where
00:57:37
Speaker
they are kind of working out their own issues. It's not always about sex, even though it looks like it's about sex. It's about everything that's led them to have that type of relationships and so on, right? Not to say that I'm against people having sex with whomever they want, however they want it. I'm all for that. That's totally fine. What I'm just saying is a lot of young women
00:58:04
Speaker
feel kind of forced into sex for what I was saying before. They want to be seen. They want to be accepted. There's peer pressure. There's the empty consent. There's all of that. I really wanted to show that confusion that I went through, those aspects of self-destruction that I went through. I look at myself with distance and compassion
00:58:30
Speaker
And I have a lot of people now writing to me that are reading the book and say, I love it, but you are so brave. And in a way, it's like either I was going to be honest or I was not going to write this book. That was the only way I could do it.
00:58:46
Speaker
Now, as I like to bring these conversations down for a landing, you know, as a listener of this show, I did forget to prime the pump, but I'm hoping that maybe you'll know that I like to ask for a recommendation of some kind for listeners and that can be anything. So what might you recommend for the listeners out there that you're excited about these days?
Practical Tips and Recommendations
00:59:05
Speaker
I'm going to recommend two things, very different ones. The first one is having a whiteboard in your studio. If you're a writer, I mean, I cannot tell you.
00:59:15
Speaker
how much I use that whiteboard to plan plots, to put the things that I'm going to do. I use it a lot for planning so that I will have like a list of my goals for the month and then a list of the goals for the week and then my list per day, for example. And that is so visual. It's right there on the wall of my studio. I see it every day. I can be putting check marks. It is just a constant reminder. It helps me a lot.
00:59:43
Speaker
I also use it for plotting stories, especially shorter essays, like doing a brain dump and then starting to figure out the arc and so on. The other thing I'm going to recommend has nothing to do with writing, but it's something that I actually love, which is an egg cooker. It's those little things that you buy that you can put
01:00:08
Speaker
up to seven or eight eggs, and then you can cook them either a soft-boiled egg or hard-boiled egg. Ever since I bought those, I like to have egg in the morning for breakfast. It just never comes out wrong. Every single time comes out perfect, so I just love it.
01:00:25
Speaker
Well, that's great. It is one of those things too where it takes some decision fatigue and other things out of the way. Like you can kind of set it and forget it and then use whatever other brain cycles that you need for something else that could be more productive. I love it. Exactly. Yes, yes.
01:00:43
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Zidra, this was so fun to get the, like, we've had conversations in the past, but this is so wonderful to get you on the mic and to talk about your wonderful memoir and about writing and everything. So I'm so glad we were able to do this and I wish you continued success with the book. Thank you so much, Brendan. You know that I've been listening to your program for years, so it's a great honor to be here. I'm really thrilled. Thank you for the opportunity.
01:01:12
Speaker
Oh boy, thanks CNFers. Thanks to Azidra. Awesome. She's been a long time listener of this podcast and she's a Patreon member at cnfpod slash CNF pod slash no at patreon.com slash CNF pod. So it's wonderful that she's got this really cool book out and it was awesome to have her on the show and to celebrate it.
01:01:37
Speaker
Right? That's what we do. Name of the book, again, is Promenade of Desire, published by She Writes Press. Consider visiting that, patreon.com slash cnfpod website. Shop around. And if you care to support the show, in addition to your time and downloads, a few bucks here and there really go a long, long way towards hosting gear upgrades. And yeah, good stuff, I think.
01:02:05
Speaker
I don't know. I think so. But I'm biased. I don't have much of a parting shot this week. Well, I guess a little one. By the time this hits your feet, I'll be back in my cross-track driving from New Jersey back to Oregon. Got to see my mom for a bit and settle some affairs regarding her house and other things. The Titanic bummer.
01:02:28
Speaker
of it all is that there's no coming back. There's no recovery. It's really just the start of the dying process. But in one of mom's more lucid moments when I was sitting beside her in the hospital,
01:02:46
Speaker
I was telling her about the book I'm writing and how I'm not so sure I can pull it off in the time that I have to pull it off. I just don't know if I have the time to reach the depths that I must get to to make sure I'm treading new ground, giving readers
01:03:02
Speaker
delivering on the expectation that there's more to be told about this particular story. I don't have David Marinus or Robert Caro time here. I have a little less than Jeff Perlman time, but the Jeff Perlman conversation from a couple episodes ago gave me hope that I can pull this biography off in two years. If you can write what he did on Bo Jackson in two years, I think I can do with my guy in a little less than two years.
01:03:30
Speaker
Granted, I'm not Roman, but I can try.
01:03:34
Speaker
Anyway, point being, I have this voice that starts talking to me between 1.30 and 3.30 in the morning. It's usually when I wake up and it just is like waiting there for me. And there's no hitting the snooze bar on this voice. And this voice says, I can't do it. Can't pull it off. Can't pull off the freelancing I'm supposed to do. Basically in life, there's always going to be winners and losers. And who in the world do you think you are to think that you could be a winner?
01:04:05
Speaker
I told mom that this voice chirps at me, chirps at me for hours and I can't sleep. It's the worst. Then she said, you have to un-chirp it. You got to un-chirp that voice. And I so loved her for saying that. And maybe when slash if this book is done, all dedicated to mom for helping me un-chirp the 3 a.m. voice in my head.
01:04:32
Speaker
I hope she's alive for me to read that to her. I mean, jeez. She's plummeted a lot since just July, so four months ago.
01:04:42
Speaker
Two years from now is a big ask. Nevertheless, I think I just drew up my dedication, regardless of what happens, regardless if she's still gonna be here in come 2025. I can hope, and if she is, I just hope she's comfortable and somewhat lucid and not in any pain. So in any case, I'd extend that to you.
01:05:08
Speaker
Unchirp that shit. So stay wild. See you in Evers. And if you can't do, interview. See ya!