Latest / The Other 22 Hours / Maggie Smith on self trust, moving beyond scarcity, and name-brand cereal.

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Maggie Smith on self trust, moving beyond scarcity, and name-brand cereal. · The Other 22 Hours

0:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Thinking too much about audience from a scarcity mindset, oh my god, this has to succeed.
0:06
[SPEAKER_02]: If that's front of mind, when you're making, it's like poisoning the well.
0:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I try to have his pure relationship with the making as I can so that when I'm done making it, I can just start making again.
0:25
[SPEAKER_00]: We often define artists by their output, their records, books, movies, and the times they're on stage.
0:31
[SPEAKER_01]: But the art is made in the quiet, the struggle, and the mundane, the hours that no one sees.
0:37
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm McKinna Ann.
0:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm Aaron Kray for Hayes.
0:40
[SPEAKER_00]: This is the other 22 hours.
0:42
[SPEAKER_00]: An exploration of the creative life, lived in the in-between.
0:59
[SPEAKER_00]: This week is the fifth installment of our re-issue series where we've gone back through our archive of three years of conversations and picked a handful that we wanted to share with you and new.
1:09
[SPEAKER_00]: In addition to these, we have 160 conversations for you to choose from all of which are inspiring their own way.
1:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're on a long drive or mowing your lawn, please take a second to scroll back through our feed and find some of your favorite artists, musicians, and non-musicians alike.
1:24
[SPEAKER_00]: You can also head to our YouTube channel where we've grouped every single conversation into curated playlists based on a topic so you can find something else that inspires you.
1:33
[SPEAKER_01]: And today's episode is resharing our conversation with Maggie Smith from March 19th, 2025.
1:40
[SPEAKER_01]: Maggie Smith is a New York Times bestselling and numerous award-winning poet and author, who has been considered one of the first viral poets after her 2016 poem, Good Bones, was read in the hit CBS Show Madam President, as well as by Merrill Streep at the Academy of American Poets Gala.
1:58
[SPEAKER_01]: Maggie was our first guest as our first foray into featuring conversations with non
2:04
[SPEAKER_01]: musician creatives and she's especially fitting because she is a massive music fan and at the time of this episode she also had just released her latest book, Dear Writer, Peptox and Practical Advice for the Creative Life.
2:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So after you enjoy this conversation that's a great book on process that you can go read and it translates so well to what we do as musicians with that.
2:27
[SPEAKER_00]: Please enjoy our conversation with Maggie Smith.
2:32
[SPEAKER_01]: We're so excited.
2:33
[SPEAKER_01]: You are a very first non-musician.
2:36
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, my publicist was like, did they know you're not a musician?
2:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, yeah, I'm reading album as book and I'm reading tour as book tour.
2:46
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm reading stage as stage because it's sort of the same.
2:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
2:50
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, yeah, it's not like crazy different.
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, exactly.
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's the seed of our inspiration for having you on and having to branch out beyond the music industry.
2:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that when it gets down to really creativity is creativity.
3:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And what we talk about is how do we all stay inspired and create of when all of a sudden our livelihood is based on that creativity?
3:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And there's that pressure there.
3:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And we're not able to just have open range to just do whatever.
3:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, yeah.
3:15
[SPEAKER_00]: asterisk to open-range, but to me, there's such a similarity between all art forms when you land on that.
3:21
[SPEAKER_00]: We all have to chase the same thing and deal with the same things, I think.
3:25
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, exactly.
3:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I know you and I have followed each other and Instagram.
3:29
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're familiar with each other's stories, but that time in my life of being a brand new mom, and my mom was, you know, in a really bad situation, recovering from a stroke, and then it was the same time that I became aware of your work.
3:41
[SPEAKER_01]: So I found so much solace in your beautiful work that felt so resonant with my life at the time.
3:47
[SPEAKER_01]: So I'm not going to cry.
3:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But,
3:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm crying already like five times this morning.
3:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, I feel like maybe that's part of what it means to make art.
3:56
[SPEAKER_02]: You kind of like are a door that is somewhere between a jar and fully standing open all the time.
4:02
[SPEAKER_02]: And a lot of the time that sucks.
4:04
[SPEAKER_02]: But the only way to make things is to not shut that door.
4:09
[SPEAKER_02]: And it means that you probably cry more than the average person.
4:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh yeah.
4:14
[SPEAKER_02]: and it's best to this.
4:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I cry a lot, I cried at our daughters like parent teacher conference.
4:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, just fully true dance.
4:22
[SPEAKER_02]: It doesn't really matter.
4:23
[SPEAKER_02]: A song, somebody says something nice to me in the grocery store.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
4:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like the door's open.
4:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Look, this is just the way I was made.
4:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to believe that was not a mistake.
4:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And here we go.
4:32
[SPEAKER_02]: That's why I'm not an interior decorator because you don't need to have a chest so that's gaping open all the time to choose paint colors and fabrics.
4:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, but that's also the beauty of creative work.
4:42
[SPEAKER_01]: Is it connects you to people that you do not know and you think, wow, they're communicating these things that I'm feeling and I'm alone in this room, consuming their work and I feel so comforted and less alone.
4:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Probably even more so sometimes than if I was like having a conversation with a friend, I've known for many years.
5:02
[SPEAKER_01]: 100%.
5:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the art that moves me the most, it's taking with your door analogy, which is so app is no matter what the medium, the artist is on the other side of that door, emotionally come this way.
5:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Come on in.
5:14
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, and it gives me permission to be like,
5:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay, I'll explore this.
5:17
[SPEAKER_00]: This is a little scary, but like, oh, wow.
5:20
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, we have so many questions that we want to jump in with, but one of the things just in this topic was songwriting students and the songwriting coach and I do, I often have students ask for some reason, it's such a common question of like, well, nobody wants to hear about my personal life.
5:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Or nobody wants to hear about my like wound from losing someone at the stage or is this too personal?
5:43
[SPEAKER_01]: And I'm always like, why do we think this?
5:46
[SPEAKER_01]: You pull so much from your personal life as a mother, your relationships, and I, that's what draws me to your work.
5:53
[SPEAKER_01]: So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about, have you ever had that question in your mind?
5:58
[SPEAKER_01]: And what that has been like for you as you've navigated a 20 plus year career making public art.
6:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I realized 2025 is the 20-year anniversary of my first book being published, which makes me feel ancient.
6:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I was 28 when that book was published, so I'm not ancient, but I will say when I first started writing, you know, my first three books were poetry, and when I first started writing, I was writing about myself and my personal life, but it was often very veiled.
6:30
[SPEAKER_02]: And poems are good for that, probably in some of the ways that songs can be good for that, because if you tuck something inside a metaphor, or if you tuck something inside a myth, or some sort of analogy, it's like you aren't standing naked in a room with people knowing you're talking about yourself, even if you're using eye, right?
6:50
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if you're claiming it in that persona,
6:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And then when I started writing prose, I realized I lost that cover.
6:59
[SPEAKER_02]: It just felt really different to write about my life in sentences that reached the right hand, margin of a page, instead of having the container of a poem that made me feel a little bit like I had some sort of artistic distance.
7:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And when I had my daughter, I remember thinking, okay, I don't know how to write anymore.
7:19
[SPEAKER_02]: As a poet, I took a year and didn't write anything.
7:23
[SPEAKER_02]: the first year of her life I wrote nothing, because I didn't know how to translate my life, which was like babies and tiny socks that I couldn't find a match to in burp clubs and like non-naps and just a lot of tough stuff really and also stuff that didn't feel very quote unquote poetic
7:44
[SPEAKER_02]: To me and I did think like who wants to read my mommy poems about what it's like to kind of gut it out with a very cranky newborn and have no idea what you're doing and it always felt to me like life
7:59
[SPEAKER_02]: and my work were kind of arm wrestling, or one was trying to take the other over and the other one was trying to shove the other out of the way.
8:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And what really changed for me is, I think I just sat down one day and realized, no, it's all the same stuff.
8:12
[SPEAKER_02]: The work is the life, this like attempt, I'm trying to do to sort of compartmentalize it and keep my art.
8:20
[SPEAKER_02]: three of all this messy life stuff is actually harming the work and it's also hurting the life.
8:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if I can just take down the dividing wall between these two things, it's terrifying and I actually don't know what it's going to look like or sounds like it might not sound like me anymore the way that I've conceived of my work.
8:39
[SPEAKER_02]: But honestly, I think
8:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I've enjoyed writing more on the other side of making that.
8:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know, tentative decisions, because I didn't feel like it was really a choice.
8:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I'm going to keep doing this.
8:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I have to do it as myself, and be a little bit more integrated as a human being.
8:55
[SPEAKER_02]: And everything I've written since then, I think has been better.
9:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And some of that is, yeah, you get better as you get a little older, and you don't fall into the same kind of patterns or cliches, and you're less scared.
9:07
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's all kinds of reasons why,
9:09
[SPEAKER_02]: the poems that you write in your 40s are probably superior to the poems you write in your 20s.
9:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I hope that gives someone listening some hope.
9:17
[SPEAKER_02]: It actually gets better, lots of things get better, and you get more confident in what you're doing, but part of it too is just getting more comfortable with yourself as a human being.
9:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, we've heard that a lot from the song right aside, it's a removing more of the mesh filter between your creativity and your output, and so there's just more flow.
9:35
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, like you're not like constantly second guessing yourself, like, oh, no one's going to want to know about that.
9:39
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so specific to me.
9:41
[SPEAKER_02]: How could that resonate with another human being?
9:44
[SPEAKER_02]: They're so often this impulse or belief that if you want to write something quote unquote universal, whether it's a song or a poem or a script or whatever it is, a novel, that you have to sort of address things in a really general way because then it's like a larger
10:04
[SPEAKER_02]: capital L love.
10:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Everybody has an experience of love.
10:07
[SPEAKER_02]: So if you just write really generically about love or grief or wonder, whatever, you'll catch more people.
10:14
[SPEAKER_02]: It's absolutely a lie.
10:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
10:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Things that I've written that could have only happened to me, like it's a snippet of conversation from one of my children when there were three years old or something really, really specific to my life, those things are the things that have hooks.
10:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the Velcro for other people and even if they haven't had that exact same situation, it somehow calls up something in them that is equally specific and resonant and that little hook then stays in them and attaches them to you in a way that the big sort of generic would never achieve.
10:48
[SPEAKER_01]: I tell students that all the time whenever I listen to generalized lyrics or read lyrics or poetry about an experience and there aren't identifying details, I'm like nothing's playing in my head, as soon as you start making specifics.
11:06
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if I've never experienced that, Lucinda Williams is my endless example of this.
11:11
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, yes.
11:12
[SPEAKER_01]: She writes so specifically about her life and her experiences.
11:16
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not grow up in the south.
11:18
[SPEAKER_01]: I did not spend time in Louisiana.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Like so many things that I have never experienced, but the specificity of her work plays a movie in my mind that then I automatically translate emotionally to my own feelings and experiences.
11:35
[SPEAKER_01]: It is perplexing because I'm like, we all love movies and TV shows.
11:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Those are portraying very specific images and experiences.
11:45
[SPEAKER_01]: But there's this weird thing that we've decided if we think it's made up, then that's okay.
11:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I could go on about this topic just forever, because I also think there's a gender component.
11:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, I was just gonna say, and it's gendered.
11:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It is.
11:59
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:00
[SPEAKER_01]: There's a documentary about Joan Didion.
12:03
[SPEAKER_01]: She talks about this as well.
12:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And she talks about writing about time when she and her has been we're facing like they were contemplating getting a divorce.
12:12
[SPEAKER_01]: I think it was her nephew who made the documentary and he asked her like, what happened?
12:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I can't remember Joan Didion's husband's name, but what did he think of you doing that and writing about it?
12:22
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember so specifically Joan saying, Joan, my friend,
12:27
[SPEAKER_02]: Um, I was saying like we're a first day basis.
12:29
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, he was a writer too, and he understood that the life is the work.
12:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And I remember sending it because we've been together 17 years.
12:38
[SPEAKER_01]: We've gone through all sorts of ups and downs and navigating our own identities as artists.
12:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you remember me sending that to you?
12:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And just being like, are we on the same page here?
12:47
[SPEAKER_01]: There it is.
12:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Here's the evidence.
12:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
12:50
[SPEAKER_01]: So we're good.
12:50
[SPEAKER_02]: We're good now.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: It was at a time.
12:52
[SPEAKER_00]: You also sent me on just stuff on Jane Goodall because her partner would go out and photograph her and double her and help her with her work and I was like, I get it.
13:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, okay.
13:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I see what you're doing here.
13:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if this resonates in your world, but the great thing for me about being married to a son, I always know where I stand and how things are going.
13:11
[SPEAKER_00]: got it.
13:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, cool.
13:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
13:12
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, it's my kids.
13:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I like I joke all the time.
13:15
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, well, if you're going to live rent free and expect the name brand serial, you need to be paying attention, giving me a, at a for every once in a while, like throwing me a good line of dialogue, you know, just like giving me something to kind of like bounce.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: off of.
13:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And they do.
13:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I joke that that's kind of our bargain.
13:32
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I love you.
13:34
[SPEAKER_01]: I always post both of your kids that say it's a beauty emergency.
13:38
[SPEAKER_01]: Love that.
13:39
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, our three year old when she was started talking, she would notice like the moon or a sunset out the window and she would always be like, Mama, Dad, look at the sky and I always think of your kids saying, yeah, it's important.
13:53
[SPEAKER_02]: Like we all just like run to the windows.
13:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Like where are we going?
13:56
[SPEAKER_02]: They're like, go to the back.
13:57
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it depends, so like some of the windows faced east, some face west, depending on the time of day, we're just like, we all run to the right side of the house.
14:05
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
14:06
[SPEAKER_01]: It's really nice.
14:08
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm curious when you talk about that experience of having to intentionally integrate your life with your work and choosing to incorporate owning your more personal identity being in it.
14:19
[SPEAKER_01]: What was your place with your audience?
14:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, the career component?
14:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you have an audience that you were aware of?
14:29
[SPEAKER_01]: And considering it all, like, what will my audience or my editors or, like, how will this impact my career to make this kind of shift?
14:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, it's fully no.
14:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I kind of made this decision.
14:40
[SPEAKER_02]: When I had my daughter, I had only published one book.
14:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I have eight.
14:44
[SPEAKER_02]: So I really didn't have an audience.
14:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I had a book.
14:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And when you're a poet, your audience is already small and discerning.
14:54
[SPEAKER_02]: There are a lot of reasons why I feel very lucky that I didn't have any success really until I was a little older and had already figured out some of these things for myself because I didn't have to negotiate with anyone.
15:10
[SPEAKER_02]: There were no, like,
15:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, is that really what people want because they're expecting X from you?
15:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Even later when my poem Good Bones went viral, I remember thinking, I don't really know how to write poems after that because now people are watching.
15:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So that was the first time I actually felt like there were people watching her weren't just poetry people.
15:31
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, like the audience just suddenly overnight got like immensely exponentially larger.
15:37
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have this moment of thinking, okay, so now is this when I have to start thinking about audience, like what people want.
15:45
[SPEAKER_02]: I've joked about this in the past and this will make sense to you, like it felt like a real blessing that was a poem and not a song.
15:53
[SPEAKER_02]: and that I was a poet with two small kids living in Columbus, Ohio with no agent, no manager, no team, no publicist, no one in my ear about anything at all.
16:06
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I was able to just mostly shrug it off.
16:10
[SPEAKER_02]: and then just keep just doing whatever I wanted to do because there was no person calling me saying, okay, now we have to strategize how to keep this going.
16:20
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the next single has to sound like this or the next thing we need to get out fast because it has to be on the heels of this thing.
16:28
[SPEAKER_02]: That's not how poetry works.
16:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Let's give it me anxiety just hearing you say that.
16:33
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it gave me anxiety because I remember thinking like all these people now think that if this is the only poem of mine they've read this is somehow emblematic of what I do and so how do I keep making things when really this isn't the favorite poem I've ever written and I don't think I'm going to do this again like there's not going to be good bones too right like better bones like like I just this is a one off everything I do is a complete one off.
16:59
[SPEAKER_02]: And like, what does it mean to be making a one-off at a time with an audience?
17:05
[SPEAKER_02]: That I have learned in the past 15 years, but before that, I was like, it doesn't matter.
17:09
[SPEAKER_02]: No one's listening.
17:11
[SPEAKER_02]: No one's watching.
17:12
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, I was free.
17:13
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I related to having like this other figure in your writing room or in your creative space that is over your shoulder all the time looking over and it's like I do a lot of writing and producing for music for TV, which is this weird thing talk about being yourself and using specifics.
17:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this weird frame of making art where it has to be broad enough that it can fit a lot of different scenes, but as soon as there's a visual component to it, it's, oh, this I was written specifically for this spot, but when things get picked up in place, TV shows it's like, oh, well, I have to do this, it just shuts the whole machine down very quickly.
17:50
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the risk, right?
17:51
[SPEAKER_02]: I honestly try, and this is something I tell my students to.
17:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know if it's great advice in any other medium, but I just say don't think about audience.
18:00
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
18:01
[SPEAKER_02]: There are a couple of quick ways to kill something you're trying to make.
18:04
[SPEAKER_02]: One of those ways is to think you know more about it than it does.
18:09
[SPEAKER_02]: to let your ego get in the way and think that you understand exactly what you're building as you're building it.
18:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And the other way is to think about who might receive it when it's done and what their wishes or gripes or pet peeves or expectations might be for it.
18:26
[SPEAKER_02]: So the best thing I can do is make things for myself and then kick them out of the nest and then just immediately
18:37
[SPEAKER_02]: Rather than spending time paying too much attention to how that first thing was received because that can be kind of paralyzing.
18:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
18:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I've thought about this and continue to think about it a lot because it's the challenge.
18:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I justify everything and I'm like, how do you not think about it when you also are meeting positive responses to make money to survive financially?
19:06
[SPEAKER_01]: to continue your creative work if you believe that you like have that kind of like scarcity mindset of like, well, I have to be making money at this to be able to continue to create because if I have to get another job, all of that stuff in the music world, there's so many like little ways to try to...
19:21
[SPEAKER_01]: evaluate what our audience is perceiving of us in my experience.
19:27
[SPEAKER_01]: You have the radio so you like get to know specific radio DJs and stations and journalists and there's all these tentacles out there and you make something and you notice oh all these people like it and they're doing this and they're supporting me in this.
19:40
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the next time you do it, you're like, well, I thought he really liked me.
19:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Why he doesn't like my song now?
19:45
[SPEAKER_01]: And then the metrics of, well, now I can check my back in on my Spotify number.
19:49
[SPEAKER_01]: Like, there's so much that can bombard you.
19:52
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm wondering in the writing world what that is like.
19:55
[SPEAKER_01]: What are your metrics?
19:57
[SPEAKER_01]: If you have any, and how do you steer clear of them?
19:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know that there are really arm metrics.
20:02
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, what would the back end be?
20:04
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't think like there's no streaming, there's no you make something and you get rid of it like you send it out into the world and it's not on the radio but I can see basically my agent can tell me how it's doing I usually don't want to know I usually say do not give me any numbers
20:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't even want to know good numbers.
20:26
[SPEAKER_02]: When my memoir made the New York Times bestsellers list, I was the only person who was surprised because everybody else was watching.
20:32
[SPEAKER_02]: The numbers leading up to that happen and I refused to be told.
20:38
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, don't send it.
20:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Send it to my agent and don't care.
20:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't want to know because honestly it just gives me anxiety.
20:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I suppose there are ways to know.
20:47
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, you could also go on something like good reads or Amazon and see how many.
20:51
[SPEAKER_02]: reviews and what they look like.
20:53
[SPEAKER_02]: If you wanted to, I don't want to do that.
20:57
[SPEAKER_02]: So no, honestly, I think, for me, I'm self-employed.
21:01
[SPEAKER_02]: I make a living as a writer.
21:03
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a constant source of stress and a constant source of joy.
21:08
[SPEAKER_02]: and I would have it no other way and I prefer to live with the lack of stability because it's worth it to me to keep doing what I love.
21:18
[SPEAKER_02]: And if someday that changes, I'll cross that bridge.
21:22
[SPEAKER_02]: When I come to it, I also believe that thinking too much about audience from a scarcity mindset, oh my god, this has to succeed.
21:30
[SPEAKER_02]: This has to succeed because my health insurance premium is
21:33
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it has to succeed because I don't have a teaching gig next semester.
21:38
[SPEAKER_02]: This has to succeed because XYZ whatever soccer is starting up and it's really expensive.
21:43
[SPEAKER_02]: Like all the practical stuff, I think if that's front of mind when you're making,
21:50
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like poisoning the well and that probably sounds very woo woo and I kind of am so there's that but I try to have as pure a relationship with the making as I can so that when I'm done making it I can just start making again and yes work means I have to go on the road and do events and worry how many people are going to show up and
22:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, I do have to think about numbers at some point because if I want to sell another book, the last one can't have tanked, right?
22:22
[SPEAKER_02]: So in order to have longevity in this business, it's weird to even call it a business, because I'd be doing it for free.
22:28
[SPEAKER_02]: Don't tell anyone.
22:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I would do this for free.
22:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Yep.
22:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I did do it for free for many years before I started making money at it.
22:36
[SPEAKER_02]: I think to have longevity in this business, you have to be able to keep doing it over and over and over again at a pretty high level and counterintuitively the only way to do that is to not worry about doing it over again at a really high level.
22:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Hey, just a quick pause from this conversation.
22:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The other 22 hours is an independent production built entirely on the idea that he's quiet honest conversations matter.
23:04
[SPEAKER_00]: The best way to support our work is simply to share it, so if you can think of one person who would appreciate this show, please pass it along.
23:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And if you haven't yet, please follow our show on your listening platform of choice, or subscribe to our channel and YouTube.
23:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a small action that makes a massive difference for us.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here.
23:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Let's get back to our conversation.
23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I like to, when I find myself hitting that point of anxiety and worrying about the level that it's at and all of that, I feel my energy being out there at the horizon.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to be really present and conscious about pulling my energy back and just focusing on one step at a time.
23:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
23:39
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm right here in this now.
23:41
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to put a guitar on this song.
23:42
[SPEAKER_00]: I need to make the choice of like what this chorus is going to feel like and what this needs just right here in the immediacy.
23:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Everything that we do in life has microscopic steps and has very macro steps.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I just try to get down to the smallest step possible and know that I intuitively know what those steps are.
23:59
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can actually
24:00
[SPEAKER_00]: And I can hear that and to just follow that because those are manageable.
24:03
[SPEAKER_00]: I can do those as soon as I start thinking in months or years or seasons even I get lost very quickly
24:11
[SPEAKER_02]: overwhelmed.
24:12
[SPEAKER_02]: I love the way you just described that thought feels like calling yourself home.
24:15
[SPEAKER_02]: If you do start thinking too much about that big picture scary, it's the more the sort of professionalization of the stuff and not the art.
24:25
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if you can stay grounded in the art making and sort of call yourself back to that, I also just believe the thing you'll make
24:35
[SPEAKER_02]: will run harder and farther and faster when you let it go.
24:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Then it would have if you would kind of hobble it by saddling it with a bunch of other worries.
24:47
[SPEAKER_00]: To me with that, Leitsa, my brain is what we were talking about earlier about being very specific with your experience and being treated your experience.
24:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It's this thing that for me,
24:56
[SPEAKER_00]: is the intangible across art forms of integrity and purity in that and purity of intent that maybe you can't describe specifically on a piece of paper what that is, but I think most people if not everybody can feel that.
25:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Listeners and readers are savvy.
25:11
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's the other thing.
25:12
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like you have to treat your audience as smarter than you, not just as smart as you.
25:18
[SPEAKER_02]: smarter than you.
25:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Like they don't want to be talked down to.
25:21
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't want to be spoon fed.
25:23
[SPEAKER_02]: They don't even probably know what they want, but they want what you're going to make.
25:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I read somewhere that confidence is self-trust.
25:29
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, I love that.
25:30
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the thing that we need when we're building these things from nothing.
25:35
[SPEAKER_02]: making something from scratch that you don't even know what it is when you're doing it and then you're supposed to just send it out into the world and somebody else is going to understand this thing that you've made and the amount of self trust that is required to keep doing that over and over and over again and sometimes falling flat on your face doing it.
25:55
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, not everything is a hit, but that doesn't mean that you stop.
25:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It just means, like, well, that didn't resonate with people in the same way.
26:02
[SPEAKER_02]: So, onward.
26:03
[SPEAKER_01]: One thing I remind myself, and talk to others about all the time is we also don't know everybody that we're impacting.
26:12
[SPEAKER_01]: everyone that our work is connecting with.
26:14
[SPEAKER_01]: Even if it looks like that was an epic failure and nobody bought my book or my record or streamed it or whatever, likely there are people out there that you don't know about who were incredibly moved by reading your poem or your book or your essay.
26:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I've spent a long time feeling very anxious about feeling like, will I get to keep doing this?
26:35
[SPEAKER_01]: Making music.
26:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And I don't know why, every record I've made have been like, is this the last one?
26:41
[SPEAKER_01]: Will I ever get in and I'm like, why do I think that?
26:44
[SPEAKER_00]: Why do I think that?
26:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm raising my hands.
26:46
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's like hard same, yeah.
26:48
[SPEAKER_01]: But it's like, wait, wait, wait.
26:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Is this the last time that I might have professional support or attention or something?
26:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, maybe.
26:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But is this the last time that I will put a pen to paper and feel moved to create something and then feel motivated to take it to the next step?
27:06
[SPEAKER_01]: To me, I don't know why there's this mindset of somebody, the world is gonna not let me do this thing that I love.
27:14
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, we're not at the mercy of other people, as much as we think we are.
27:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's the sort of like career part of it.
27:21
[SPEAKER_02]: For the career we are at the mercy of other people.
27:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes.
27:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And that is a really vulnerable thing.
27:26
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, I think sometimes I talk to my therapist about this.
27:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, sometimes I feel really jealous.
27:31
[SPEAKER_02]: of people who have nine to five jobs with health insurance and a place to go and like they know they have a paycheck like that comes every two weeks or four weeks.
27:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I haven't had that in so long.
27:44
[SPEAKER_02]: I stopped working in an office when my daughter was two years old and she's 16 now.
27:50
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's been a long time since I've had like a regular gig and I said, you know, sometimes I don't know, so jealous that people have spouses who have jobs and who like if they
28:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Right?
28:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, what's that about?
28:04
[SPEAKER_02]: How do all these people have all of this security when I'm just basically making things and hoping against hope that they succeed enough that I can keep doing it and supporting my family?
28:17
[SPEAKER_02]: By making things which the audacity that I'm doing this and she said something that I have thought about almost every day since and she said Well, you know better than everybody Pretty quickly that none of that is guaranteed the job you have you could lose the company could go under you can be furloughed You could be laid off you could become disabled
28:37
[SPEAKER_02]: If your spouse can lose their job, your spouse can become disabled.
28:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, all of that is at the mercy of other people.
28:44
[SPEAKER_02]: And she said, your life is scary because it's at the mercy of you.
28:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But do you trust yourself?
28:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, oh.
28:52
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have to trust a boss, I don't have to trust a company, I don't have to trust a spouse.
28:58
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a little scary that the trust all has to be on me, but do you trust yourself to keep it going and to make the right decisions for yourself about what you make and how often you make it and what it looks like and how you send it out into the world?
29:11
[SPEAKER_02]: And I just thought, yeah, so if I can trust myself,
29:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I can comment this from a more of an abundance mindset.
29:19
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's just going to keep being okay, which seems like wild to say, because it's a lot more natural for most of us to be like, I don't know, maybe this is going to come to an end at any time, but the opposite is equally, if not more true, which is, I don't know, I think probably I'll get to keep doing this.
29:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Two things that play in my head I won those same lines are Jim Carrey and he was talking at a graduation at I think it was some school in California And you're talking about his dad who were to nine to five and a job that he didn't like but he felt that he was obligated to do that To get the steady paycheck and all of that and he was laid off like a few years before he got his pension or something along those lines The way Jim Carrey says it is my dad failed at doing job that he didn't want to do why don't I just follow the job
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: do.
30:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And the second thing on a personal level for me was like realizing the paradox of this fear of what's next when yourself employed and all that.
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But then also there is stability in the agility of being self-employed.
30:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes.
30:22
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was 2022 or so.
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: So it was post-payment I make, but I remember the tech world was laying off a ton of people.
30:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Here are all these jobs
30:33
[SPEAKER_00]: have paid really well paid really well had all these people were getting laid off and they couldn't find jobs anywhere and i'm like oh i've lost gigs i've lost this and that and then i just do something i have the ability to create something else i have the ability to just like turn the car and go this way and
30:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, well, we're also very adept at making a really beautiful life out of very little.
30:54
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, oh my gosh, we're so resourceful.
30:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, that is real.
30:59
[SPEAKER_02]: Like I think about that sometimes I'm like, I wonder if my kids will want nine to five because they've seen what it means to have to kind of like make and hustle.
31:07
[SPEAKER_02]: Or if they have now become so spoiled at seeing me just like wave from the front door in my bathroom as maybe for school every day and to feel like so long suckers enjoy being in a scheduled environment with a bunch of people you don't like but the next eight hours because I'll be here with a dog just like dreaming and looking out the window but it's my job and maybe I've ruined them actually for having a regular job because
31:32
[SPEAKER_02]: I love it.
31:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But as scary as it is not having much of a net, I'm the net.
31:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You are your own net.
31:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you trust yourself to be able to be nimble and pivot and think, okay, well, this isn't really working out.
31:45
[SPEAKER_02]: So I can pick up a class here.
31:46
[SPEAKER_02]: I can...
31:47
[SPEAKER_02]: do this thing online here.
31:49
[SPEAKER_02]: I can take on mentees or whatever the thing is.
31:52
[SPEAKER_01]: You can look at it as OSHIT.
31:54
[SPEAKER_01]: I need to figure something out because I don't have guaranteed money coming in.
31:57
[SPEAKER_01]: But then you could also look at it as, okay, this is an opportunity.
32:01
[SPEAKER_01]: There's so many creative ways that I can try and
32:04
[SPEAKER_01]: generate some new opportunities and that can also be really fun if you're not stressed about it.
32:09
[SPEAKER_01]: And time back what you were saying about your therapist and time back to like our earlier conversation of sharing your personal life through your work.
32:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I've read your sub-stack where you shared that and I remember being like oh my god she has a great therapist and she sounds like my therapist
32:26
[SPEAKER_01]: I had a significant moment like last year where I told my therapist, I was at, you know, to begin over the years, like if someone could just tell me that it was all going to work out and be okay, I would apply to grad school to go back to school.
32:40
[SPEAKER_01]: I would get out of my record deal and own my own masters and start self-releasing to have my own music back.
32:47
[SPEAKER_01]: And I would have a second kid.
32:49
[SPEAKER_01]: I was like, I just want someone to tell me, yeah, you can do it.
32:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And she was like, but Michaela, give some psychic came along and told you, yep, those are the right decisions.
32:58
[SPEAKER_01]: It'll all work out.
32:59
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, what would that take for me?
33:00
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, oh, my own self-trust.
33:03
[SPEAKER_01]: She was like, exactly.
33:04
[SPEAKER_01]: And here we are, I'm eight months pregnant.
33:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I got into grad school but deferred for a year and I got my out of my record deal so I love this right because really what you needed was your own permission and your own blessing to do it because no one can really come along and annoying to you.
33:22
[SPEAKER_01]: What's to say that it's going to be okay like I thought about that a lot in the experience of.
33:27
[SPEAKER_01]: my mom having a stroke, my dad used to tell me all the time, like, it's going to be okay.
33:31
[SPEAKER_01]: It's going to be okay.
33:32
[SPEAKER_01]: And I was like, what is okay mean?
33:34
[SPEAKER_01]: Does that mean that mom will never walk again?
33:36
[SPEAKER_01]: And that's going to be okay.
33:37
[SPEAKER_01]: Like anything I guess is going to be okay because we will learn how to live with it.
33:43
[SPEAKER_01]: So in any decision we may, is it going to be okay?
33:47
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's up to us.
33:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Are we going to be able to adapt and find the joy and even the things that we didn't want?
33:55
[SPEAKER_01]: Which I think creative work really helps us do to make meaning out of all these different experiences.
34:02
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and live with ambiguity.
34:04
[SPEAKER_02]: Somebody asked me once, how did you get so comfortable with ambiguity?
34:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm like, don't be fooled.
34:08
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not comfortable with it at all, but I live with it on a daily basis.
34:13
[SPEAKER_02]: We're kind of like, you know, strange friends, you have to get used to it.
34:17
[SPEAKER_02]: And it will be okay.
34:19
[SPEAKER_02]: It might not be like what it was before.
34:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Having something be okay in the future doesn't mean it's going to be a carbon copy, like a copy paste of what you have right now, or even like,
34:30
[SPEAKER_02]: an improvement in the way that you dream about it being.
34:33
[SPEAKER_02]: But if you know that whatever happens, you'll survive it and probably even thrive through it because you've done that in the past, then it's like, oh, I can handle this.
34:45
[SPEAKER_02]: We can't be too risk-averse because that will kill what we do.
34:50
[SPEAKER_00]: for me and my experience it also kills my inspiration in a lot of ways.
34:54
[SPEAKER_00]: As uncomfortable as times of adversity are, in retrospect, I pretty much across the board find them very inspiring, whether it's for my art or for the way that I'm living, they definitely suck in the moment.
35:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, I can't do this, but looking back and I'm like, oh wow, that was a big growth period.
35:11
[SPEAKER_00]: I've really learned this.
35:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I learned that.
35:13
[SPEAKER_00]: If I'm getting all green lights, I don't necessarily
35:16
[SPEAKER_00]: It's very nice and it's, no, I do it.
35:18
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, please tell me yes all the time, although I learn nothing from a yes, that's the thing like critique even is more productive than praise and having to go through a period of challenge sucks.
35:34
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think it teaches you things that you couldn't have learned smooth sailing.
35:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
35:40
[SPEAKER_02]: It just makes you like a little bit more nimble and adaptable and flexible.
35:43
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the next time when something happens that you're kind of like, oh, no.
35:48
[SPEAKER_02]: You've like worked those muscles and you kind of know better how to spring into action and do what you need to do.
35:54
[SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely, that's something I've learned to tell myself, especially if it's a situation that I haven't experienced before, I've learned to tell myself like, it will never be like this again.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Even if for some reason this exact situation does happen again, it won't feel like this because I will have done it.
36:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, you'll be different.
36:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Right.
36:09
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, even at the same terrible situation could happen every six months for the rest of our lives, it won't.
36:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
36:15
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, please don't.
36:17
[SPEAKER_02]: Although I have to say like post-election it does feel like the worst brown dog day ever.
36:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
36:22
[SPEAKER_02]: Even so, like, we're different, right?
36:24
[SPEAKER_02]: We're smarter and more determined and more resourceful and better able to collaborate.
36:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
36:32
[SPEAKER_02]: Some of this stuff.
36:32
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's like that old definition of insanity, like doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results doesn't apply to art.
36:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
36:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Because you're not the same.
36:42
[SPEAKER_02]: Even if you tried to do something the same over and over again, you couldn't, you can't really repeat yourself.
36:47
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm a huge tarab rock fan, are you?
36:50
[SPEAKER_01]: I love her so much for people who don't know who she is.
36:53
[SPEAKER_01]: I think she's been mentioned many times on this podcast, but she's a western Buddhist mindfulness teacher, psychologist, and she had two talks I've listened to recently and one was about like how to have a heart that's open and ready for anything.
37:05
[SPEAKER_01]: So not trying to avoid, but really being open to anything that life,
37:10
[SPEAKER_01]: throws at us and then also about what comes from struggle and she quotes Pete that Han and he has a phrase where he says no mud, no lotus and that rings in my head all the time of like okay the mud is necessary.
37:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I am growing something.
37:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I would really prefer to have this be a beautiful poted or vase kind of situation but it's not I have to be in the mud for this thing
37:36
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and a lot of your creative work is coming from your personal life, but also in my interpretation, this relationship to others, of trying to help, you know, like your children's book, my thoughts have wings, keep moving your new book that's coming out, dear writer, and I know you teach as well, and I'm curious what that relationship of helping others,
38:02
[SPEAKER_01]: and sharing your experience in some way whether intentionally or not to provide some inspiration or knowledge or help to others and like how the experience of teaching and focusing on others work is well informed your own work.
38:18
[SPEAKER_02]: For me, writing is the way I feel most useful in the world.
38:24
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, in a way, writing is teaching because when I make something, and I let other people have it, like they get to have their own relationship with it, that is nothing to do with me.
38:36
[SPEAKER_02]: And I have no idea what that relationship might be, what it might bring up in them, what it might teach them about themselves or about writing or about anything, honestly.
38:44
[SPEAKER_02]: But teaching, like actually getting to mentor other writers, it feels like this natural extension of that work, which is how can I be of use?
38:57
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's something I think about a lot.
39:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't really know why.
39:01
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe it's like the very Midwestern idea, the like you have to be useful.
39:06
[SPEAKER_02]: Maybe I have a little bit of guilt about what I just sit around and write poems, but I need to give back in a way that is a little bit more tangible.
39:13
[SPEAKER_02]: I do want to be of use.
39:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's that idea of this life as far as I know is a complete one off.
39:19
[SPEAKER_02]: I have no evidence to the contrary.
39:21
[SPEAKER_02]: I have a very finite amount of hours to be on this planet.
39:26
[SPEAKER_02]: I will not meet everyone.
39:28
[SPEAKER_02]: How do I make a positive impact?
39:30
[SPEAKER_02]: How do I leave it a little bit better than I found it?
39:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And for me, writing and teaching and frankly parenting.
39:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I think.
39:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And having friendships like just being in community with other people, whether it's just socially or through my work, it just feels good.
39:48
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels like what I'm supposed to be doing.
39:50
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, that feeling you get when you're like, oh, this is what I'm supposed to be doing.
39:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:54
[SPEAKER_02]: and then not feeling you get when you're not doing that.
39:57
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
39:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
39:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
40:00
[SPEAKER_02]: I think part of that is like trust your nervous system.
40:03
[SPEAKER_02]: My friend Said Jones always says like if it's not a hell yes it's a hell no.
40:07
[SPEAKER_02]: If you're asked to do something and I think about that a lot because I call my life together in a lot of different ways.
40:13
[SPEAKER_02]: Like it's mostly writing books but I also teach and I do editorial work and I have my sub-stack and
40:19
[SPEAKER_02]: travel for speaking engagement.
40:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's trying to even as a self-employed person kind of diversify as much as I can.
40:25
[SPEAKER_02]: So it's not all coming from one place.
40:28
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the pandemic really taught me.
40:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I had to go on like gig unemployment during that year because I couldn't go out and do teach and do speaking engagement.
40:39
[SPEAKER_02]: So I was like, I feel like I'm in a band.
40:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Like,
40:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I can't tour, so they're going to pay me gig money for this.
40:45
[SPEAKER_02]: It feels important to have different avenues for being able to be in community with other people around these things as much as possible.
40:54
[SPEAKER_00]: One thing I realized is, and that diversification was really distilling down, like, what is my mission statement as a creative?
41:02
[SPEAKER_00]: as a human on this planet and then understanding that there's more than one road to get to that mission statement.
41:08
[SPEAKER_00]: So there are, you know, ways of teaching of stepping into producing more of support that I can lend and having community here in Nashville.
41:15
[SPEAKER_00]: It's just like you were saying, so it's all pointing to the same place.
41:19
[SPEAKER_00]: It keeps me inspired.
41:20
[SPEAKER_00]: It gives me feeling fresh because I noticed why I show up here in my studio every day and I'm kind of working on the same thing or shooting for the same thing.
41:27
[SPEAKER_00]: It's like eating Cheerios every day.
41:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually you want to
41:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, and I think it's helpful for younger people to hear this kind of conversation because I think there's this stigma around like if you're aspiring to do something that the attachment of financial gain from the one thing that you want to do that somehow it's a sign of failure if you have to diversify and I think it's really helpful to hear like taking care of yourself
42:00
[SPEAKER_01]: but also there's so many other factors in this world and the economy that make it necessary.
42:06
[SPEAKER_01]: And also it can be deeply fulfilling and not take away from the thing that you think you're supposed to be most successful at.
42:15
[SPEAKER_01]: I remember when I used to not really like advertise that I have been teaching music forever and I didn't really like, I kept it separate and I remember seeing like a review and some music blog about me that was like announcing that I got signed to a label and it was like maybe she moonlights as a piano teacher and maybe she'll finally get to stop doing that and I was like, I don't want to go.
42:35
[SPEAKER_01]: And I felt as kind of like shame response of like, wait, is it like embarrassing that I, well, this was years ago.
42:42
[SPEAKER_01]: So now I'm like, that's such a massive part of who I am.
42:45
[SPEAKER_01]: I will never stop teaching.
42:47
[SPEAKER_01]: It's so important to me and it helps ground me.
42:51
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I don't want to spend my days only thinking about myself.
42:55
[SPEAKER_01]: It's such a essential part of my relationship with my own ability to create.
43:01
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
43:01
[SPEAKER_01]: But I had to work through that outside idea of like, oh, if you're an artist and some endeavor, if you do other things, you're somehow not as successful.
43:10
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, isn't there, too, like, a sort of misconception, and I think this is for musicians and writers, where it's like either your top of the game, or your hobbyist, and really there are so many people like in the writing world, it's like, you're their Stephen King or you're doing it on a cocktail napkin while you work like 16 other jobs, right?
43:31
[SPEAKER_02]: And there's like no in between, like either your famous and rich, and you don't have to have any other gigs,
43:37
[SPEAKER_02]: or you're barely eaking by.
43:40
[SPEAKER_02]: And most of us are somewhere in the middle, right?
43:43
[SPEAKER_02]: There's so many ways to make a living and to make art.
43:47
[SPEAKER_02]: And it doesn't look the same for everyone.
43:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think we don't do ourselves any favors if we have in our minds, particularly when we're
44:00
[SPEAKER_02]: And that looks like a very specific path.
44:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And if you get signed and then get dropped, or if you have a book come out that doesn't do well, or you have a book come out and it does well, and then they drop you for whatever reason.
44:12
[SPEAKER_02]: That's somehow you get completely derailed.
44:16
[SPEAKER_02]: And second guess the whole thing, when really, the answer is always keep going.
44:22
[SPEAKER_02]: That's just the answer.
44:23
[SPEAKER_02]: Stop worrying and make something else.
44:25
[SPEAKER_01]: that kind of mentality like, is that what's inspired you to make dear writer your next book?
44:31
[SPEAKER_02]: It's funny.
44:31
[SPEAKER_02]: Actually, I started writing dear writer in 2020.
44:35
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote a first draft of dear writer before I wrote my memoir.
44:39
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'd always wanted to write a craft book.
44:42
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I grew up, I think someone gave me animat's bird by bird when I graduated from high school.
44:47
[SPEAKER_02]: because I was someone who just like wanted to listen to cure cassettes and write poems as a teenager.
44:53
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I've always read craft books, I've always taught from them.
44:57
[SPEAKER_02]: I've learned a lot from them and so it seemed like a natural step to sort of write my own book about writing and about creativity and process and kind of demystify it and make it feel a little bit more accessible to people.
45:10
[SPEAKER_02]: And then I hopped off of it to write my memoir and when I came back,
45:15
[SPEAKER_02]: last year and looked at the draft.
45:17
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, oh, I have a totally different idea of how I want to write this book.
45:21
[SPEAKER_02]: So I started over.
45:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I wrote the entire book.
45:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I completely reconceived it and started from scratch.
45:29
[SPEAKER_02]: I like to tell that story because I think it's also like sometimes we make something and it's not that it's bad.
45:35
[SPEAKER_02]: It's just that time does something to us that makes
45:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And we can.
45:42
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not actually stuck like we have the ability to then look back and be like, oh, I have a different vision for this now.
45:50
[SPEAKER_02]: And so then I spent the past year.
45:52
[SPEAKER_02]: So completely ramping this book to the point where I'm super happy with it.
45:59
[SPEAKER_00]: I feel that working on a record, that inertia of not being able to change it, because this is what it is.
46:05
[SPEAKER_00]: I can only imagine that that pole was very strong when you're talking about something like a novel or a book and that breath of work.
46:12
[SPEAKER_01]: It's also even more literal.
46:14
[SPEAKER_01]: You can go back and read your writing and be like, oh, I don't believe that anymore.
46:18
[SPEAKER_01]: Where, like, with a record, you go back and be like, well, maybe I would use a different tone there or like, I mean, with songwriting, of course, the lyrics, but again, there's so much more of a veil with songwriting that you can be like, that was just a moment and time, but I think that does apply to everything we make.
46:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, absolutely.
46:37
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not stuck.
46:38
[SPEAKER_02]: We're not wedded to it.
46:39
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, luckily, they allowed me the time.
46:41
[SPEAKER_02]: I was like, I want to rewrite this book.
46:44
[SPEAKER_02]: Is that cool?
46:45
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I have a completely different idea for how I want this to go.
46:49
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's actually going to work.
46:51
[SPEAKER_02]: And they were like, okay, if you say so.
46:54
[SPEAKER_02]: go for it and like I am so much happier with this version and I I do the same thing with poems to be honest like I write poems and publish them in journals and then when I later assemble them into a book sometimes it might be that six years has gone by you know since I wrote that initial draft and I look at it and and it's not the whole thing is wrong but I'm like I don't like the last line anymore or I wouldn't use that adjective or actually the stands as just don't feel right or there needs to be more white space
47:22
[SPEAKER_02]: or whatever, and I'm like, well, it's mine.
47:24
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm in charge.
47:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm the band.
47:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Did it change, yeah.
47:28
[SPEAKER_00]: We just did that with a song of Michaela's that she recorded 10 years ago.
47:32
[SPEAKER_00]: It's a song that so resonates with her, it's still resonates with her audience, and she felt like it needed to update.
47:37
[SPEAKER_00]: And so we kind of reimagined it, and completely re-recorded it, and approached it in a new light, and it feels great.
47:43
[SPEAKER_01]: Oh, I love that.
47:44
[SPEAKER_01]: This is where I do get really woo-woo about the work that we make for ourselves.
47:48
[SPEAKER_01]: Sometimes we have no idea the meaning that it's going to hold in our lives.
47:53
[SPEAKER_01]: And then 10 years, 20 years down the line, we revisit it.
47:56
[SPEAKER_01]: When I sing songs that I've written and like I sing them over and over and over again, I'm like, oh my god, this has like way different meaning now.
48:03
[SPEAKER_01]: Especially a song like what he's referencing is this what Mama meant that I wrote when I was like 25 and didn't really know anything compared to everything that has happened in my life in the last five eight years.
48:17
[SPEAKER_01]: I was taking like some sage advice.
48:19
[SPEAKER_01]: My mom gave me of weathering hard times and I was like yeah I'd fight with my boyfriend sometimes
48:26
[SPEAKER_02]: The idea of the hard times, the both and scale of the hard times has changed a little.
48:30
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes, yes, yes.
48:32
[SPEAKER_00]: The hard times that were present when you wrote that song, I don't even think would register on the radar.
48:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh my god.
48:36
[SPEAKER_02]: Now, yeah.
48:37
[SPEAKER_02]: You're like, oh, that's just like, that's nothing.
48:39
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:40
[SPEAKER_02]: Let's get over it.
48:41
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
48:43
[SPEAKER_00]: One question that we really like to end with.
48:46
[SPEAKER_00]: I wonder if you could share a nugget of wisdom or something that somebody told you that like really opened up your creativity or opened up your presence with yourself in your creativity, something over the years that like really just has stuck with you.
48:58
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, actually this, I put this in deerator and I won't be able to find the page, but a poet mentor of mine who's no longer with us years ago, Stan Plumley.
49:07
[SPEAKER_02]: I was having this sort of crisis of faith as I was working on my second book of poems.
49:14
[SPEAKER_02]: I think because I was like, these don't sound like my first book, what am I doing?
49:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I was having this sort of like sophomore slump thing happening where I just didn't
49:26
[SPEAKER_02]: And he actually just said stop thinking about the audience, stop thinking about what people want.
49:33
[SPEAKER_02]: And he said go deep inside yourself and stay alone there.
49:39
[SPEAKER_02]: That is where the poem's happened.
49:41
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think something you said air and it's like sort of calling yourself home, getting back into your body, not going out to that far horizon where you're thinking about what's next or next next next next next.
49:55
[SPEAKER_02]: getting into that weird sort of grasping headspace and just trying to stay centered in that really comfortable peaceful solitude where you're making a new thing and just trusting that what comes out of that state will be something that someone else wants or needs.
50:17
[SPEAKER_02]: even if you don't have any idea why or who that person is or what might happen.
50:22
[SPEAKER_02]: I think that's the best writing advice I've ever gotten.
50:26
[SPEAKER_02]: Go deep inside yourself and stay alone.
50:27
[SPEAKER_01]: Stay alone there.
50:29
[SPEAKER_01]: I love that.
50:30
[SPEAKER_01]: Beautiful.
50:31
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, the imagery that comes with that is another reason why words are so magical.
50:36
[SPEAKER_02]: They're not bad.
50:37
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, honestly, it's like, sometimes they're very frustrating, because I think I'm often speechless, which feels wrong, because I'm like, this is my medium.
50:46
[SPEAKER_02]: This is my business.
50:47
[SPEAKER_02]: How do I not have the right words?
50:48
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's the thing.
50:49
[SPEAKER_02]: Words are magic, and they're also completely inadequate.
50:52
[SPEAKER_02]: And frankly, that's what I love so much about music.
50:54
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I'm always working at a deficit, because you have tools available to you that move above language.
51:03
[SPEAKER_02]: And I don't have that.
51:04
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's probably why I listen to music more than I write, because it's my medium of choice, even though I don't make it.
51:11
[SPEAKER_01]: We didn't even get to talk about how they are such a deep music fan.
51:15
[SPEAKER_02]: It's the thing for me.
51:16
[SPEAKER_02]: Honestly, it's not even cool.
51:18
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like my editor would be like, you can't say that.
51:20
[SPEAKER_02]: But if someone said, you can either listen to music for the rest of your life or write.
51:25
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not kidding, I would say listen to music, like I can always write in my mind.
51:30
[SPEAKER_02]: I don't have access to music without listening to someone else's because it's not something I can do myself.
51:37
[SPEAKER_02]: So yeah, it's incredibly important.
51:39
[SPEAKER_01]: The elements I always tell students that too, who have like a challenge of like...
51:44
[SPEAKER_01]: overwriting in a song and like remember this isn't your only avenue to communicate.
51:49
[SPEAKER_01]: You have melody and harmony and rhythm.
51:51
[SPEAKER_01]: All of that stuff comes into play.
51:53
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't have to write a movie script in a three minute song.
51:57
[SPEAKER_01]: Cut the words because yes, other things to evoke the feelings and the images that we want to play in someone's head.
52:06
[SPEAKER_02]: You lucky ducks.
52:09
[SPEAKER_00]: We're lucky in many ways because you took the time to sit with us and have this conversation and share all your insights and your experiences with us.
52:15
[SPEAKER_00]: So thank you.
52:16
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, this was such a wonderful conversation.
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: My pleasure.
52:19
[SPEAKER_01]: I'll see you guys in a few months.
52:21
[SPEAKER_01]: That's great.
52:22
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, thank you.
52:23
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.
52:24
[SPEAKER_01]: Bye.
52:27
[SPEAKER_00]: We know your time is valuable and we're grateful you chose to spend this hour with us.
52:31
[SPEAKER_01]: If this conversation resonated with you, know that it is just one of many.
52:35
[SPEAKER_01]: We have an archive of over 140 conversations.
52:38
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52:47
[SPEAKER_01]: New York Times bestselling author Maggie Smith, Lucius, J.D.M.E.Ferson, and many others.
52:53
[SPEAKER_00]: This shows produced by me, Mary Shaveford-based, with help from the Kalaan.
52:56
[SPEAKER_00]: And all the music he hears written, performed and produced by me as well.
53:00
[SPEAKER_01]: Our show is edited and mixed by Leland Holden at Pod Punch, and we are proud members of the Bluegrass situation podcast network.
53:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for being here.
53:08
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see you next time.