Latest / My Favorite Things / My Favorite Things Episode 19: Journalist and Author Heather Hansman

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My Favorite Things Episode 19: Journalist and Author Heather Hansman · My Favorite Things

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Heather Hansman, thanks for being here.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really excited to be here.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and your current iteration?
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: My current iteration?
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_01: Where do you even start with that question?
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I guess professionally, maybe that's like the most concrete way to explain who you are.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a writer.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a journalist and I write about...
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_01: Being outside in a lot of different ways, I guess.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_01: I tend to write about sort of like the overlap between recreation and kind
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: of like what we do outside,
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: how we get outside,
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: and then how that tentacles into social issues and economics and land use and all
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of thing.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of sneakily try and write about,
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: use adventure to write about what's actually going on in the world.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's like my way to stick it to the man, I guess.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: um maybe I'm not sticking it that much but yeah
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: so um I write magazine articles I started out as a journalist for ski magazines um
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm now doing a bunch uh or not a bunch I'm a lot of my time goes to books um
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: and I've got a book coming out in July that's about three women
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: who I think were pretty pivotal in how we think about all those things
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: whose stories never got told so I'm
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Moonlighting as a historian these days is trying to tease all that stuff apart.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Can you tell us the name of this book?
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you the name of the book.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_01: The book is called Fierce Country.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's on July 14th.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: This will be out before then, I think.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Great book.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've already read it because I got early access.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You're a big deal.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as you know,
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: this podcast is called My Favorite Things,
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: and you have sent me a list of five
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: of your favorite creative works throughout your life, so we can just get into it.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: This is so fun to come up with.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's all the emotional labor is on the guest, I say.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Number one is The Score by the Fugees.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_00: Can you talk about when,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: if you remember,
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: when you discovered this and how it came into your life and how old were you?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: I know exactly when it came into my life because this was the first or one of
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_01: the first two tapes that I ever bought.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_01: I bought this and Alanis Morissette's Jagged Little Pill on the same day.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, wow.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think is like,
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if this was like a brag or dating myself,
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: but I think it's like a pretty good haul for, I think, 12-year-old me.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was in seventh grade.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was in seventh grade because we moved when I was in seventh grade and we were like
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: in the new house.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so I guess like this was like the first...
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: time you know my parents have like pretty good taste in music for parents like it's
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: a lot of like lady folk singers but this was sort of like the first me going out
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: and like buying my own music and kind of like picking my own taste and I think that
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: that and I think you know whatever Jagged Little Pill holds up in its own way too
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: but that the Fugees album is such a good album end to end like I feel like I don't
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe it's just how we get music information has like changed,
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: but I don't listen to an album start to finish all that much anymore.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I had like fallen out of that in a lot of ways and that I still will listen
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: to all the way through.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: And we got a record player
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know a couple years ago which I think is sort of like
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: an elder millennial thing to be doing these days um but and we got it and I was kind
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: of thinking like okay that's gonna be like we put an album on
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: when we're making dinner hanging out it's like that's like we're listening to music
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: at like sort of a slower pace and my husband went out
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: and automatically just like right off the bat bought like
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rage Against the Machine and Black Flag,
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: the angry music of his youth, which I was like, this is not quite what I envisioned.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: But he got that Fuji's album,
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: and we have it as a record,
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: and then we listen to that record as much as we listen to anything else
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: that we have.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: So it's one of those things that's held up through my musical life in a lot of ways.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, Rage,
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: fantastic, but maybe less dinner music than some other things I could think of.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: What's the use case?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Is this like Sunday morning drinking coffee?
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I feel like they were,
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: and now I'm trying to think of what medium would be best for them when you put it
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: on, but,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: because I feel like dropping the needle on,
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm always like, oh, it's like a quiet jazz, you know, or whatever.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, killing in the name of everything.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yeah, which is phenomenal.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: So you're 12.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: How do you know about this album?
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_00: You're not just flipping through the rack and being like, oh, the cover's cool.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: I'll just buy this.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: No, I must have known.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because I feel like a lot of those, I mean, that was also in the time when we were like,
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was listening to a lot of radio and like you know like did you ever do the thing
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: where you were taping off the radio where you had the tape and you had to wait
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_01: for it to I don't even know if I could do that anymore but where you had
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: to like wait for it to hit the right time yeah yeah and then it's like you tried not
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: to get any of the DJ talking
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: so I think I had like I must have heard No Woman No Cry like one of those songs
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: that was on the radio and I also feel like Lauryn Hill's voice is like a
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: generational force in a lot of ways like I bet like a lot
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_01: of women my age would be like this album or Miss Education of Lauryn Hill is like
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: a big deal for them so I think that is like her on her own but then like
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: the whole way that their voices mixed together and the storytelling like I think
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: that must have just grabbed me I don't know it's hard to get back
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: into my like you know pre-teen headspace of what
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: What was appealing to me, but.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, so you're picking up radio stations.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: You're in, you're in Massachusetts.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're picking up radio stations from Boston then, or?
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up like right outside of Boston.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Cambridge.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So that's, I think that's like a pretty fertile ground for a lot of different types of music.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_00: So you must, maybe you did hear it somewhere.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: It would be nice to,
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: so what are your,
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: what are your,
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: what's your entry point for somebody who's never heard this album before
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: when you say, okay, we'll start it on this track.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, man.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I feel like people probably have heard a lot of it.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, do you think?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: There's a whole YouTube, like,
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: genre of people hearing songs for the first time,
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: and it's like young kids, and I'm like, you've never heard this song?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really fun to watch them get their minds blown by something like,
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: you know, the, like, drums in Phil Collins in the air tonight, you know?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: But you're kind of like, really, you haven't?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's just never come across your...
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: My best friend has an 11-year-old and she said recently that he was playing music
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_01: and she was like, I know this.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, how do you know Eminem?
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, oh, kid.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, buddy.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, buddy.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: So, same question, though.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think?
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think...
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: I want to say Killing Me Softly, but I feel like that is different than...
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the rest of the album.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, this is your call here.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: But if I'm, like, trying to introduce somebody.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Or the score.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a hard question.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it is.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's a lot going on in that album, too.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_00: Are there two covers?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: No Woman, No Cry, and Killing Me Softly?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: Are those only covers?
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think so.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think the rest of it's original.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then there is those sort of interlude-y things that sometimes annoy me.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: When I'm listening to something now, I'm like, skip, skip, skip.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: But somehow it works in that and pulls it together.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: yeah this is the curse of like 90s hip-hop too where there's so many skits
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: and like okay I've listened to this I've listened to this Wu-Tang skit like probably
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: a thousand times
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: at this point I'm just like okay can we just get not funny anymore yeah it was
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: interesting at the time but yeah but also like fun to think
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: about how maybe they weren't
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, who knows?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't really understand the music business,
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: but like they weren't necessarily like, oh, we're trying to make this.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the single.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, this is the thing that comes next.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's like we're trying to make a experience that people can kind of be in.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: yeah for the album and then and then they would record they would just like chop off
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: the skit and do
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: the single version uh later yeah um okay number two Alex Katz's main paintings um
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: how old are you these are fascinating paintings also but how old are you
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: when you are getting into getting to Alex Katz or just the main paintings
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: of Alex yeah so I am in college um
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: I went to college in Maine,
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: Colby College,
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: which is like a small liberal arts kind of in the middle of nowhere in Maine.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: But they have this really, really good art museum.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure it's like, you know, there were donors or funders.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: But for some reason, Alex Katz, who was this sort of, he's still alive.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: He's like in his late 90s now.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: But in the 50s and 60s was this kind of
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_01: not quite pop art.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: He did these enormous, very kind of like color-blocked graphic paintings of people.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of them were people or kind of people in a scene.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: And he did a lot of, he has a, probably the majority of his work is New York.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And it's sort of these like,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: high contrast city scenes,
• 10:32
  SPEAKER_01: people, taxi cabs, you know, like glamorous people at the theater.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_01: but he also spent summers in Maine so he has this whole other chunk
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: of work that's like these very color saturated like nature folk they just like feel
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: like summer in Maine like there's like you know a 30 foot long picture painting of
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: a canoe or like and so in Colby College where I went to college somehow got
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: a bunch of his main paintings so in the art museum you like go downstairs you go
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: through a hallway you go back into this wing
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: and it's all these enormous Alex Katz paintings it's like you're
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: in like another space and there's one that's I think it's called Tracy on
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: the Dock it's like this huge thing
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: of this woman it's just like very simple like kind of like color blocked almost like
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: person on a dock with the lake behind it and you're like you're like in
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: that painting and so I would go and like going to college
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_01: in northern Maine it is like gray and crummy most of the year
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: and like I was not necessarily like at my happiest in college
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: and I would like go there and like you felt like you were in a different world
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that was also like the first time I was
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_01: I grew up in a museum-y family.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_01: We would go to art museums and look at the Monet's or whatever.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think this was the first time that I was looking at stuff and deciding
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: whether I liked it or not on my own.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no interpretation from anybody else.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody trying to explain it to you.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, you make a 30-foot long painting.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: You're like, that's a pretty limited...
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane, yeah.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: It's either going in a museum or somebody's house with a big wall with no windows on it.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure he didn't start with a 30-foot long painting.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like this whole room and there's probably like two paintings on the whole wall.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: So you're...
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're like a freshman, sophomore in college.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: Not having maybe the greatest time.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think those paintings sort of informed where you went, where future you went?
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think there was that like,
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_01: and maybe this was already in me, but the like being outside that kind of like
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: I thought about this a lot.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: This is like part of the new book that I'm working on.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, why are we drawn to being outside and drawn to being in nature?
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that's like a question I have not figured out for myself at all,
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: even though I know it's important and I've been like trying to scratch
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: at other people's ideas to figure that out.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I think like that sense of like,
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: this is a place that feels calm and good was probably came through
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: in those paintings.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm sure that was part of his intention too like it seemed like he this was kind
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: of like his break from the city from the like intensity he could kind of come
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm sure you know he was commissioned to paint things and stuff
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: but maybe there was some sense of like this is what I care about
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: and this is what I like and I can paint this and be a little looser
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: and like you know more into what I'm into so yeah and I think there's like
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Going over these five things made me think a lot about like taste and style
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: and like what what do I think that is for myself and like how where does that come
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: from and I think that like sort of like simple
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: but really clear like you know what these paintings are from a mile away like
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of like what's the word that I want to use here I don't know like
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: the clarity or like the way that that is like
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: Very clean is like a thing that I like in a lot of different spaces.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was going to say, I mean,
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: it's like they look,
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: they look simple,
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: but it's that thing where,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: you know,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: this person,
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: this person has painted like five million things and it's like,
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: this is exactly where this is going to go, you know?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like,
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: there's just like a little shadow on the face and like that to get
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: that exactly right.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably so hard to do.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: In very few strokes, it looks like, too.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, okay, yeah.
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I... As a... Well, do you think, as a writer and a journalist, you...
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_00: I guess my question would be,
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: are you able to write things or create things that are like more abstract?
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_00: Are you always finding yourself like going towards clarity?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because I feel like that's what I try to do.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, I just don't have that part of my brain.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, well, what's it going to say?
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and then that's like, oh man, I've never thought about that before.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's real.
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm only getting into it with like having a kid and like sitting down to like draw
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: and be like,
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: let's draw and just like, let's just whatever, you know, um, or having an objective.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah,
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_01: I've been trying to like paint more too because that's like a different creative in
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: a different way.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there's like a in writing I think yeah,
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: there is a piece that like clarity and simplicity is maybe not like the end goal
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: but like an end goal in it.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it's also there's also a piece where you want it to feel
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I'm somebody who's like writing
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: And I think this is maybe hard to do in nonfiction, too.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: But it's like writing something where you have to,
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: like, work to solve the puzzle of what's happening as the reader.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I think I always want to,
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: like, assume my readers are smart and, like, will follow me into complicated places.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't want to, like, make it harder for them than it needs to be.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm, like, thinking out loud on this.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Plus, it's actually kind of a tough question.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But it's an interesting one.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And it's like how much of that abstraction is helpful to the work and how much
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: of it is maybe just like trying to show something.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think maybe in visual art, there's more space for that.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, man.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: How far do we have to turn it so it's different from the robots?
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's like, boop, yeah, like six degrees, three degrees, we're good.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right, or it's like you have to, like, stay ahead of the robots and then bringing things in.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to think about the robot chase.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's just nip that in the bud right now.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_00: Number three is Raven's Exile by Ellen Malloy.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: I have not read this book.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_00: I've read her Desert Essays book.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: I actually used it a little bit in my writing workshop a couple weeks ago.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_00: Which one did you use?
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: Seasons.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just look because it's sitting over there on the shelf.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I know.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's really hard nowadays to find examples of writing to show people
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: that are pretty short.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not just like, hey, let's all read this 3,500-word essay and pick it apart.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, here's how you turn a scene into saying something.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And she had to do it for...
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: It was Utah Public Radio, right?
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there were like radio shows.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: So they're pretty short and they were great little sketches.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this is what you do, you know?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's the one where she's like nailing her hair to the roof.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's the first, is that the opening of the book?
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: So tell me about Raven's Exile.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So Raven's Exile, I think, so Ellen Malloy was a Utah writer.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: She lived in Bluff.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: and she and her husband was the river ranger on I think he was on
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: the San Juan River eventually but he was the river ranger on Desolation Canyon
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: which is on the Green River which I wrote a book about so
• 19:45
  SPEAKER_01: that river is really important to me and I have tried to kind
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: of like find everything I could about that river and I had like I don't know
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: if I'd read any of her stuff before doing that trip and like digging into it
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: but I was
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_01: Do you ever have books that like come to you at exactly the right time?
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like all of them do, don't they?
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: Well, this was,
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was working on this book and I was,
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: the way the book is about,
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: a trip I took down the river and I... Do you want to say the name of that book too?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: The book's called Down the River, thank you for...
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: The jacket right here.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_01: Down the River into the Future of Water in the West.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it looks like that.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when I did the trip for that,
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_01: The reporting trip was also a big long river trip down the whole green
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_01: and I would be on the river for a little while and then I'd be off for
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: a little bit reporting and kind of,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: trying to figure out the story of what was happening with the water and the river.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I was off the river in Moab and I went to the bookstore there back at Beyond,
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: which is a totally amazing bookstore.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And they have new owners now,
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: so I'm not sure if they do it anymore,
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: but they used to have a really good used book section too.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: And the used books would be kind of like interspersed in their
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: with the new books and this book was on the shelf kind of in with
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: the new Ellen Molloy newer Ellen Molloy books and she was nominated for a Pulitzer
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: for her book Anthropology of Turquoise but this was her first book and it's
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: about you can't it's out of print now you can't find it anymore so like the fact
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: that I like got it while I was on that rubber trip and it just like dropped
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: into my lap was like totally a gift from somewhere and so the book is about
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: her being out and she would go live in Desolation Canyon on the green all summer.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_01: And so the book is about that and kind of her life there,
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: but it's also about what's going on with the river.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, she did a better job of that story before I started.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then it's about the archaeology and kind of where the water goes and
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: who takes care of the land.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_01: And she weaves together.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: This is like what I'm always, I think, kind of trying to do in my work is like,
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_01: a narrative that's also interwoven with like the context of what's happening on
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: the ground with history and she does that so it's like the art we were talking about
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: before like you know it's so hard and so much has gone into it but it seems
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: so effortless and natural and like it just happens on the page and it's also
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_01: so funny and so weird and I feel like so much like
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: nature writing or narrative nonfiction that's about
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_01: the natural world can be really self-serious and really earnest in a lot of ways
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: that kind of turns me off as a reader.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Or I think it can start to feel a little bit overbearing or too much.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she manages to pack all that stuff in there and still be so hilarious and
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: Both in her storytelling and in her, like, her word choice is really funny and offbeat.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like, it's all just, like, exactly what...
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: For me, it's, like, totally perfect.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, no, it's... We talk about in my workshop, like, the just...
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily the goal to make the reader have a belly laugh or just fall
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_00: over laughing, but maybe just to bring some levity to it.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's kind of what you're saying.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: It just feels a little lighter when somebody's not...
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard to be funny in writing.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's easier than doing stand-up comedy, I think is what I tell people.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: You don't know if the joke falls flat.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're not standing in front of a crowd of people bombing.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also like, it's got to like...
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: If you do your Santa bombs, you can do it again tomorrow.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think the book's got to like pull down.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you're right.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's a good point.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: So that was how do you think that how do you think that influenced the
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: that book besides the fact that you found it on the river and like.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I think like that.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always trying to like crib from things that I think are good or trying to kind
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: of like pick up those pieces and I think just that like that balance of like here's
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: the narrative here the here's the like crunchy context I'm trying to put in here's
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: the I think there's sort of like a structural piece that is really helpful and
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_01: a voicey piece that's
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: sort of aspirational and like I'm not you know I'm not trying to be her but to kind
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: of like have that in the back of your brain when you're thinking I think that
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: that is I don't know I think that like I don't know how you feel about this but as
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: a writer I think you're often kind of like filtering through all
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: that stuff you have you're taking it in ways that you like don't even know
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_01: and I think there is a I feel like this is part of that Ira Glass like be
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: a beginner thing it's like when you're
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: You're always kind of trying to work towards your influences, even if you don't realize it.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: The taste gap, yeah.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so that, like, having that as the input, I think, is helpful.
• 25:17
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Or, like, in ways that it's hard to pin down.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, when I'm stuck,
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: I usually pick up Ross Gay's Book of Delights or the Book of More Delights to just,
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: like...
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: reorient myself um there's a there's a story I don't know how true it is
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: about Hunter Thompson would be you know weeks past his deadline and like on
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: the verge of getting fired or like not getting paid for a piece if he didn't turn it
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: in and he would find himself in a hotel room with his typewriter and like no books
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: to read and he would read the bible to get not for like the religious sense but just
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: to like procrastinate for the rhythm and the like oh interesting just the the um
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing a good job of describing it,
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: but like the heaviness of the writing and the voice of the writing and some of
• 26:05
  SPEAKER_00: the parts of the Bible and like that's what sort of informed some of his work.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I wonder how that like does actually filter through like the ways
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: that you don't actually know.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean,
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: to me it's like if you're running and you're listening to a song with
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: a very fast beat, maybe you run faster.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if I do that,
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: if I can read a little Ross Gay,
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: it's going to make my story,
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: not that I'm going to ever be Ross Gay,
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_00: but it might make it a little bit more positive and just orient me in
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: a different direction.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's like he's so good at details and his scene is really good.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: So maybe there's some of that in this book for you.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it also is one of those things where you're like, almost like mad it's so good.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, how did you do that?
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, I know.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: Which I think is sort of like a problem with being a writer is that
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: then you can't just read,
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: or for me at least,
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_01: it's like really hard to like read and not be like, well, how did they do that?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_00: Would you ever read bad books?
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Like a book where you're like, this stuff.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, and I'm so judgy.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_00: But you're like, okay, if this person got this published, I can do something.
• 27:18
  SPEAKER_01: I've been reading a lot of trashy fiction lately,
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: just as brain candy, and sometimes you're like, this is so bad.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Could I do this?
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, could I do it?
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_00: Do they make more money than me?
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: But it's also like, okay, is there something?
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is it plot?
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: Is there something here?
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: yeah they're doing that is clearly working for yeah and like maybe I don't need
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_01: to be so precious about my word choice or whatever it is oh yeah maybe yeah
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: who knows you know we talked to a romance author on other podcasts I do
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_00: and uh she's also a runner and I wish I was saying I'm not sure if I read
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: a romance book and I forget what I actually said oh I was talking
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: about Colleen Hoover the like self-published um
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: you know just a miraculous career out of nowhere and she said
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: that Colleen Hoover doesn't sort not by her judgment but like a lot
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: of people don't think that's romance because there's so many heavy heavier topics
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: at play in the books that she writes and
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: that romance is only like it should be light it should be fun it should be
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: interesting but not like super heavy and there's a lot of heavy stuff in
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_00: the Colleen Hoover stuff so it was like
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, wow, that's interesting.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, yeah,
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: so I can't,
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not doing, when I write romance books, I'm not doing any of that heavy stuff.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Which is great.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have not read any Colleen Hoover, but I thought it was all about like generational trauma.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I haven't either, but that's my understanding too.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_00: So, but some romance, but yeah.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: But I've heard she's really good at plot.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: Like she's really good at like, it must be working in some capacity.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just love her story as a writer who came out of nowhere.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: I think she's working as a social worker and living in a double-wide trailer
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: and making $10 an hour or something.
• 29:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just going to write this book because my mom bought a Kindle and
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_00: then she can read my book on her Kindle and then it just went from there.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it totally works.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking of books,
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: number four,
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_00: you have The Elements of Style,
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Strunk and White, particularly the illustrated version.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sorry, this is like where it gets nerged on all this stuff.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know, this one's like not a,
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_00: it's not a narrative,
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: you know, you're like, well, it's a, but hey, it's a creative work for sure.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I have an illustrated one and it's like,
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: the illustration,
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: I have a couple of these,
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: like my,
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: this is really,
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: I have an aunt who was a copywriter and I got a bunch of her books and
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: like over time and then when she passed away so I have like a bunch and she had
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: a bunch of these so I feel like it's been like percolated in oh wow
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: and I think this is pretty much the same as the illustrated one I think is
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_01: the newest version but yeah the Elements of Style is a it's a book
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_01: about like it's like a guide to sort of the most important rules of grammar
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: and writing and then it's also about
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_01: style and kind of how to develop your voice as a writer and it's William Strunk
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: who was a English professor who I don't really know much about but then E.B.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: White who is one of my favorite writers of all time famous for famous
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: for things like Charlotte's Web
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: um but he also wrote columns for the New Yorker and he was living in Maine
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: and he would like this is like my dream as
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: a writer like every week he would like send in a column about like something
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_01: about his life in Maine and it would be like the cows got out of the pasture
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_01: or like here's what the gossip in the local town is
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: and it's like it's these very sort of like simple clear slices of light
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: and like sometimes they would like reflect politics or like what was going on
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: But they're just,
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: they're,
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_01: yeah, it's like this, they're like sort of like simple and funny and detailed.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that's like,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, like,
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: if I was like,
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: if I could live in the 60s and just like write,
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: write a one-off,
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: like live on my farm and write a one-off essay every week,
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think I'd be pretty psyched.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you could.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't, like you're probably the New Yorker, might not publish it every week.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: I guess I was like, I should get a substitute.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: more like Substack and then maybe people will pay for it which is likely I would say
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: but I think part of the dream is like then it goes to New Yorker and his wife was
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: a New Yorker editor and there's this sort of like infrastructure
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: that you're operating in but anyway so E.B.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: White was a student of Strunk and then helped revise it had been sort of like
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: a grammar book that he sent around campus and then it became I think it's sort
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_01: of like it's something that I think shows up for
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_01: you know people use it everywhere and I we were talking about this
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: before we were recording like I went to like kind of
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_01: a big crappy public school I never like learned how to write
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: or learned like I think I learned the rules of grammar
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: from like Mad Libs like oh wow that's like how I know what a noun that's huge yeah
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: so I think and I think I got you know I was probably in college grad school
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: when I stumbled across this and it sort of felt like
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_01: getting a cheat code to, like, what the rules actually were.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I kind of,
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: I had a professor in grad school be like,
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: and this was, you know, like, I was an English major.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'd been, like, learning about writing for a long time.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, you don't know how to use a comma, do you?
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: You're just, like, throwing them in where you think you're in.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, you're correct.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, that's fantastic.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I thought it was just like where you wanted to breathe.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: And she was like, no, there are rules.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh man, I wish we could see the sentence that she was saying.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do not wish that on anybody.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but so this is like, there is a chunk that's like, okay, this is where the commas go.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: These are sort of like the rules of the road that you need to understand.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: and then from there it's sort of like okay now you know the rules now you can kind
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: of develop your own way of doing it and I think that and I know you
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: and I both like teach writing a little bit like I think that's so interesting
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: and thinking about writing like or like what I try and kind of like bring up
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: to students or think about it's like if you and I both wrote like write a sentence
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: about being on a
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: podcast recording like we would write it totally differently because even
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: though we know the rules because like style is so individual and I think figuring
• 33:51
  SPEAKER_01: that out and figuring out like the voice part of writing is like that's like what
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: the robots can't do you know like that's like the fun part
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that's like why I love the Ellen Malloy stuff so much just
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: because that's her voice is so strong and her style
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: and I think that's like I could probably read
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: Something you wrote without knowing who wrote it and was like,
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: would be like, oh, that's probably that's a Brendan Leonard sentence.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I think like style.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Style kind of comes through.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it's hard to it's like kind of ephemeral, like it's hard to explain what that is.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the pornography definition.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, you know what it is when you see it.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: I was actually, I ran into a friend who's also a writer and a teacher.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: When I was running this morning,
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: we were together for a couple of miles and he
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_00: and I are completely different writers.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I always tell him he uses words like a paintbrush and I use them like a screwdriver.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to get you there.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get this thing fastened on here.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: And he just has, he has some, such a bigger vocabulary, you know, that he's pulling from.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just like, I don't know that many big words, man.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Strunk in white says don't use big words if you don't have to.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And like,
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if that's,
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: um, if that validated that for me where I was like, okay, I'm not dumb.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um, do you remember, um,
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_00: at a certain point or maybe
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: while reading this book being like what is my voice gonna be or how is like what is
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: or have you had a moment since
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: then being like what is my what is my writing voice yeah I don't know
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_01: if it was like necessarily in that book but that is something I think
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: about like I have a way that I want to sound on the page
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: and I don't think I always I often do not get there like I think that's another one
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: of those
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_01: like the taste gap or whatever it is where it's like in your head you can kind
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: of hear it and then when it comes out when you get it down
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: on paper you're like that's not as good as I it was in my brain
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: but I think there's like I have I have like a yeah
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_01: in my ear I can like hear what my voice is even if it doesn't always 100% execute
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the smartest, most interesting version of you is your writing voice movie.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes my brain can't actually put it down.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe a better question.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it is- Oh, go ahead.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, just, yeah.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, I don't, I am not a $10 word writer.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_01: You know, like, I'm like, there are things that I'm like, that's not, that's not what I do.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like, you know, yeah, you're like, I'm the screwdriver guy.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like, there's-
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: You have that sense of what feels in tune or what isn't, I think.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that comes from doing it a bunch, too.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_00: Have you,
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_00: I guess,
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_00: in doing events for your books,
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_00: have you,
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: when you're picking sections to read,
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_00: have you been like, I don't know if I can read that one out loud.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's like, that doesn't feel like it's going to flow that well.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: Or how do you go about that, I guess?
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think what, like,
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: picking for book events,
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_01: it's more like,
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: can I find a chunk that tells a story that's, like, can hang on its own?
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think the... Oh, it's interesting.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: I have a friend who I know,
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: and maybe you do this, too, like,
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_01: reads everything she writes out loud, like,
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_01: does it and then reads it,
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: and I've never done that,
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_01: and it's been interesting now reading stuff out loud,
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: and I'm like, oh, there are little pieces that don't quite flow...
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_01: the way they did on paper but I think a lot of I feel like I read somewhere recently
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: that like some people don't have internal dialogue and some people do
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: and like I definitely have internal dialogue so I think maybe it's like that's part
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: of the writing voice is like I can hear it in my head as it goes down yeah
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_01: So then I think when I go to read it out loud, it's usually like fairly close.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I would agree with that.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's like, yeah, that's kind of same deal.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Also, I don't know.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's like who knows what the inside of anybody else's brain is like.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like maybe some people just don't have that at all.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: We know some of it, I guess.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: I know.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: yeah that's interesting okay we got through the elements of style
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_00: and it sounded like that sounds it sounds interesting I think yeah no
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_01: and it's really it's like funny and like it's kind of bitchy
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: in some places like they're like don't do like there's
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: a whole section that's like don't use these words or like people do this wrong
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_01: so it's actually like super it's like a fun I mean whatever I'm like I'm nerdy
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: in this way but like it's a fun read for if you're like if you're thinking
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: about this stuff
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean, it should almost be called the elements of clarity and the elements of style.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because there's like the style piece and then there's the, you know, rules piece.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah,
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think anybody who's like thinking about writing or like,
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think it could probably give you food for thought or like kind of clarify things
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: or maybe just like make some things easier too.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: For sure.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: And it sort of is this like, you know,
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: cranky uncle don't do this yeah a little bit
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: a little bit yeah um okay number five Lisa Grossman's River Paintings and you put
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: in this this is new but I'm obsessed
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: so how new is this it's like oh like last week no like probably in
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: the past couple months um like we talked about a little earlier I'm like trying
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: to do more watercolor painting to do something that's like
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Creative, but doesn't feel like it feels like the outcome doesn't matter.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes writing,
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: like when writing is your job,
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: it also feels like work or you have to produce in a certain way.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So when I think I was getting sort of like creatively burned out and was like,
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_01: I need to do, I need to like have something that is not my job that I can do.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a friend who's actually a really talented artist who
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: a couple years ago was like, I'm going to do a painting every day in June.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: and I was like okay I'll do that and did that
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: and was like oh I actually really I'm bad at this but I like it and it's like nice
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: to be able to like it's really portable it's easy to do but um I like and this is
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: where the algorithm gets good in some ways I think I'll like go on Pinterest
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_01: or whatever to be like where get some ideas of like things that I could paint
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: when I'm just like sitting you know sitting in my house and want to mess around
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_01: and these paintings showed up
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think it must be on Pinterest and this woman Lisa Grossman paints rivers
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_01: and paints light on rivers in this like super simple again it's like
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_01: that maybe I'm obsessed with like effortless things for people
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: who like make things like easy but it's like you can tell it's just like not
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: that many brush strokes it's not overworked
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_01: But she captures light on water.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of the paintings are sort of like sunset-y light in a way that's like
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: so perfect and so simple and so,
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: so like I'm always trying to paint water and like,
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: you know,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: here's the lake and the mountains,
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_01: here's the river and it's so hard and light is so hard too.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_01: And she just like nails it in this really cool,
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: really like in a way that's like, I've never seen anything like it before.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: The effortlessness piece is like such an interesting thing.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, do you think maybe people see you ski and they think that?
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not me, no.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: She's working pretty hard out there.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I think that probably is.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Me neither.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think it is like, yeah,
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_01: maybe it's almost like muscle memory or like you've done it so much
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: that you can do it so, you know, so simply.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, like playing the guitar is like black magic to me.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, that's so cool that people can do that.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_00: But then when they play the guitar and sing at the same time, I'm like, what?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_01: How does your brain work like that?
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: These people are geniuses, you know, and then like the harmonica.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: thing that's like you know that holds the harmonica in front of your face
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: so you can just like while you're strumming away in
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: between verses you play some harmonica bits like yeah what
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: but yeah I don't know I see if it's just all relentless practice yeah it's like
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: where is there an element of style for that stuff yeah cheat code so are you are you
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: at this point like going to the river and trying to do this
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_01: and like I have tried yeah and it does not execute but I think that's sort of part
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: of the
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'm kind of glad that I can't in a way that it's it's the same
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: where I'm like it's like one of my life's great sadnesses
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_01: that I don't sing very well but like I'm like really glad when other people can
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: and like that feels really like I was in Bluff,
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Utah this weekend we went did a little river trip and Friday night we like popped
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_01: into this coffee shop and there happened to be music playing and it was just like
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: a couple local guys and the guy's voice was so good
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_01: like and they were playing you know like covers of 90 songs
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_01: which like you know whatever I'm into but like it wasn't anything the music was sort
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_01: of familiar but the guy's voice was so good and you're like this is such a gift
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_01: to like stumble into this like not knowing it was happening and like I don't know
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_01: when people are really good at things and you get to experience
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: that I don't know this is another place where the robots aren't winning you know
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, for sure, right?
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I think this kind of, like, nobody would algorithm this, her paintings, you know?
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's not, or I hope not, but... Oh, you mean, like, create, like, ChatGPT versions of them?
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's like,
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: this is coming out of, like,
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_01: something that is, like,
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think why I like them so much is you look at it and you're like,
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_01: ooh, that feels like something...
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen but I could never I would never think to create like that
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_01: so there's something kind of like resonant about it even though it's sort
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_01: of it's like an app I think maybe that's like what we were talking about earlier
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_01: about the like abstraction yeah like that's an abstraction that's also very gets
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: to like the heart of what you're trying
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_00: to show really clearly right right yeah is it um
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we're like later in life into your list now,
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: but do you think it's hard for people in general,
• 45:01
  SPEAKER_00: or was it hard for you to pick up something you were not very good at and try it?
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: I hate being bad at me.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_00: So did you start like one out of ten skill level, or three, and where are you now?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_01: I would say closer to, yeah,
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like the kid who in elementary school they had to take out a class
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: to do handwriting practice.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have like no fine motor skills.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is like not natural for me.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can you eat pasta with a fork?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Is that like... Yeah, I'm like, I'm a functioning 42-year-old adult, sort of.
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_00: There's fine motor skills.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but I had to work on it.
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so this is like not something that...
• 45:45
  SPEAKER_01: Like my sister-in-law kind of around the same time was like,
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_01: oh, I'm going to try watercoloring too.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: And like was automatically really, really good at it.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And she's like the kind of person who's just good at everything.
• 45:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm still like, I've probably started at like one out of 10.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_01: And now sometimes I'm like a four out of 10.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:03
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's like because I've like figured out some of the cheat codes
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: of like mixing colors and that kind of like how the things actually work.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, like this is not, I'm not innately diligent in this in any way.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_01: But that's kind of,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know,
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_01: sometimes in the moment it's like frustrating because you're like,
• 46:21
  SPEAKER_01: why isn't this, this should be better?
• 46:23
  SPEAKER_01: Like, why is this not easy for me?
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: But like, it's also like, okay, I'm just like sitting here with my little pad and my paintbrush.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just doing the thing.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that was nice about starting out with the like,
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_01: do one every day because you're like, okay, if it sucks,
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_01: I'll do it again tomorrow.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter, you know, it's like...
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, there's an artist, I think his name's Louis Rossignol, I follow.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: I think he lives in Maine now, but people...
• 46:53
  SPEAKER_00: He shares probably once every week or two of someone telling him he sucks at art,
• 46:58
  SPEAKER_00: even though he's like... Because his stuff is very...
• 47:01
  SPEAKER_00: I handed a friend this book I bought of this guy's work,
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: and he's like, oh yeah, anti-style is a style too.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: But it's like very...
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: You would almost say like scribbly is how his drawings look.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I love him.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just love the aesthetic.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to look him up after.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'll send it to you.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: But it's fun because it's not like trying to be our like aesthetically
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_00: or typically what we understand is aesthetically beautiful.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like, this is just how I see the world and what I'm capable of creating.
• 47:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I mean, he ended up doing an album cover for like, I want to say Frank Ocean or somebody.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it's distinct, I guess.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's a whole argument for that, so.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and I feel like that's like that voice thing, too,
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: and he probably had to be clear with himself that that was the thing
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: because he probably could have gotten talked out of it pretty easily.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe, maybe you should just sell insurance or something.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_00: This is not your job.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the thing.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, awesome.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: This has been super fun.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, thank you for,
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_00: thank you for deciding to,
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_00: thank you for taking the time to actually do this and put together the list.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: So fun.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: And like, it's fun to think about.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: Have you had like,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: have you,
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: you've been introduced to new things through this or like,
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: do you have any new obsessions?
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_01: Totally.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_00: every week or every time I do an episode it's really fantastic
• 48:27
  SPEAKER_00: because I'm like yeah I think I'm going to listen to that album after I talk
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_00: to this person about it which I think is like the whole point is
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: to get these recommendations from people outside of
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: the algorithm yeah totally like I wish like I wish we had like more venues
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_00: to do this yeah yeah well maybe this will blow up yeah okay
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was here early.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: When are you big?
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: I will.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_00: I'll remember.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'll remember you.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:53
  SPEAKER_01: Remember the little people.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, who knows?
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: Your watercolor career could have taken off at that point.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_00: You won't even remember me.
• 48:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's a style.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks so much, Heather.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: This was so fun.