Transcript

Mesa Fama · Where I'm From

0:06
Speaker 1: I'm Allison. This is the Where I'm From podcast where guests join me to share their version of George L. Lyon's iconic poem, Where I'm From, and to chat a bit about their experience writing and reflecting on memory and childhood. It's a space for everyone and engages with my total belief that each of us has a unique and powerful story to tell. Up next, where I'm from number one with Mesa.
0:37
Speaker 2: Hello. Hi. Tilt that down. I'm like, wow, you can't see me.
0:42
Speaker 3: Yeah, the frame
0:43
Speaker 2: is a
0:43
Speaker 3: little strange on these.
0:44
Speaker 2: Yeah.
0:46
Speaker 1: But we're here.
0:47
Speaker 2: Thank you so much
0:48
Speaker 3: for Thank you. For volunteering to be the first one. I, I have already had the pleasure of reading it to myself, but I'm, I'm very excited to hear you read it. So Oh,
0:58
Speaker 1: thank you. Unless you have any questions, let's go for it.
1:01
Speaker 2: Nope. I'm ready to to jump right in. So alright. Let me make sure it's lined up. Okay.
1:09
So where I'm from. I am from ink and paper from Folgers Coffee and Coffee Mate Vanilla Creamer. I am from the clover patch next to the concrete driveway, dewy earth dewy, earthy, a soft spot in the hard grass. I am from the oak trees whose surety in trunk and steadfastness in roots lined the road and guided me to my mother when my aunt was lost and couldn't remember the way. I'm from Sunday dinners and addiction, from Doreen and Diana Kaye.
1:43
I'm from the needing to be rights and never wrongs, from use your inside voice and always make good choices. I'm from question everything and Mormons who never did. I'm from dirty Vegas and the Wilkersons, dry roast beef with mashed potatoes and gravy and fresh baked chocolate chip cookies. From the addiction riddled father and mother who lost their lives to separate suicides twenty three years apart, my father on Christmas Eve, 1995, and my mother three months before my thirtieth birthday in 02/2008. In multiple cardboard boxes, live pictures in bags, albums and frames of a family history that was often a facade filled with secrets that would be revealed upon the deaths of my grandmother and mother.
2:36
The lost loves, deafening silences and soul crushing judgments behind the carefully curated smiles. I am from the spaces between the judgments and contagious silence, the product of ties that bind but I'm somehow always left behind. I foraged through the boxes to find myself and looking for a place there. Instead, I found my voice within and made a space for myself in a life that's all my own, no longer seeking approval that will never come from the faces and the frames. Thank you.
3:15
Thank you. Thanks. Thanks.
3:17
Speaker 3: That was beautiful. I choked up when you choked up
3:21
Speaker 2: I told myself I wouldn't get emotional, but okay. So I lied to myself.
3:27
Speaker 3: It's a little hard to read our own words, I think, sometimes without getting choked up, at least Yeah. For me.
3:34
Speaker 2: Yeah. For sure.
3:36
Speaker 3: For sure. And the ties that bind and leave us behind or always leave us behind and that that resonates with me that that's so well expressed.
3:47
Speaker 2: Thank you.
3:48
Speaker 3: It really hit me. So what was the experience like writing it?
3:55
Speaker 2: At first, it was daunting when I was reading through, like, all the different prompts. I was like, oh my gosh. What am I even gonna talk about? And then slowly, like, these little ideas started percolate in my brain, and I started to think about, well, since I'm writing my memoir, are there things that I can pull from what I've already written or what I wanted to write? And so this was everything that I've been wanting to write and hadn't been able to.
4:22
So it was like, I feel like I went through and did all these factual things previously, and this gave me a chance to be creative. And I kind of went backwards in time in my mind to what it was like as a little kid. You know? Like, that's where I talked about it. In my original version, I talked about the chital this is why I didn't use chitalpa tree because I knew I would stumble over it.
4:48
But that was the tree in my grandmother's front yard that I would swing from. So I decided to go with oak trees because that's what is a very vivid memory for me with my mother. She got stuck at work one day. I was about four years old, and my aunt needed to go pick her up, and she couldn't remember the way. But I did from the trees.
5:06
And so that I that's why I changed that this morning. But it it led me down this path of like, okay, how much more creative can I be? And this this opened that for me. So thank you. You lit a fire under me.
5:21
Right.
5:21
Speaker 3: You're so welcome. I I feel like that's the joy of a writing prompt. Right? Is if we can use it excavate something that we're already trying to uncover. So, I'm glad it worked that way for you.
5:33
I, it did for me as well. That's awesome. And it's, it's difficult sometimes to tell people where we're from. I always feel it's so reductive.
5:42
Speaker 2: I agree. Yeah. This this makes it much more you know, I could say, oh, I'm just from Las Vegas. And I, you know, I I say that often and people always are like, oh, what's that like? You know?
5:52
Mhmm. But this gives a fuller, richer picture, I think, to where we actually come from and what our roots are. It's a beautiful, beautiful way to express ourselves, I think.
6:04
Speaker 3: It's such a gift, the prompt. I I love having a container to just put my thoughts and ideas into. So this one is one of the best ones I've come across. So I just, it's such a joy because for anyone watching this, you know, Mason and I are social media friends, but I've never actually spoke to her. So this is the
6:24
Speaker 2: This first is our first meeting. This This is little deep, but that's all right.
6:29
Speaker 3: Well, that's great. Now we we don't need to talk all that small talk. So, does anyone on the call have a question? I appreciate your support. I didn't know if it would just be Mason and Right.
6:42
Speaker 2: Hooray to everybody that showed up. Thank you. Appreciate you. Glad you were here. Oh, my daughter came in too.
6:48
She's the 50 shades of beauty. Aw. That's right. I'll scroll through and see if there's any questions. I don't see anything.
6:56
Speaker 3: So alright. Anything else you wanna say, Misha?
6:59
Speaker 2: No. Just a huge thank you to you for, you know, having me and for allowing me to share this. You know, I don't know. I hope you keep doing this and that it grows, you know, you get more people to do it. It's such a freeing, you know, experience.
7:16
Speaker 3: I think people have anxiety about not being writerly enough. I think that it's the opposite. Everyone's writer. Everyone has a story. And what I like about this prompt is it takes the onus off of us to come up with creative ways to express ourselves.
7:32
Speaker 2: Yeah.
7:33
Speaker 3: They're all there. We just have to fill in the blanks and
7:37
Speaker 2: For sure.
7:38
Speaker 3: And that's I thought it was fun. I could do I don't know if you had a similar experience, but I could do more. Like I could do different iterations of myself, you
7:46
Speaker 2: know, if I was just thinking that this morning, I was like, there's so many I could do. There's like different things I wanna add in, different ways to do it. Yeah, for sure.
7:55
Speaker 3: Or looking back at yourself at different times, like this is me at ten ish. Know, what about me at eighteen or thirty? Yeah. You know? So Appreciate it.
8:05
Well, thank you so much for being such an enthusiastic and willing participant when you I were so was like,
8:11
Speaker 2: this is amazing. This was really You got it.
8:13
Speaker 3: So thank you so much, and thanks to those of you who joined us and are joining us afterwards. Have a wonderful day.
8:19
Speaker 2: Thanks. You too. Bye. Okay. Bye.
8:37
Speaker 1: Thank you for taking the time to be with us. If you like what you heard, please share, review, and subscribe. You can learn more about the project and see a list of participants on my website, alisonshelton.com. We know you have so many ways to spend your time. Thank you for spending some with us.
8:55
And finally, a huge thank you to producers, Ria Kerrigan and Paul Wieggen for their artistic and technical know how, generosity, enthusiasm, and for being wonderful people who I'm grateful to call for.