Episodes - Amanda Palmer

Susan Cain: Longing for The Beautiful World

Cat — Wed, 10 Aug 2022 23:28:39 +0000

Amanda sits down to discuss art, life, why goth matters, and the process behind star TED speaker and author Susan Cain’s new #1 Bestseller, “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole”.

She is the author of the NYT bestselling 2012 non-fiction book “Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking.” Her latest book is called “Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.”

Check out 32 Bittersweet Flavors: Amanda Palmer’s Most Bittersweet Playlist

Buy her books at https://SusanCain.net

And watch her TED Talks at https://www.ted.com/speakers/susan_cain

Follow Susan on Twitter @SusanCain

Listen to Susan’s latest TED Talk on TED Talks Daily with Elise Hu

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ted-talks-daily/id160904630

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Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

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Become a member.

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The post Susan Cain: Longing for The Beautiful World first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Susan Cain: Longing for The Beautiful World appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Highlights of The First Season or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Podcast

Kelly Welles — Wed, 21 Apr 2021 02:00:59 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/50218428/

Episode 23 of The Art of Asking Everything: Highlights of The First Season or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Podcast is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Show notes:

Description

A crowdfunded episode! You asked, we answered with this episode: A collage of the best moments so far.

From New Zealand to Portland, London to Austin, and Edinburgh to Melbourne; this podcast was recorded all over the world while I toured There Will Be No Intermission. The podcast premiered in 2020 at the height of the COVID-19 Pandemic. What a year it’s been.

With the help of my Patrons calling in and writing to me, I’ve assembled this episode of your favorite moments and reflections on how we’ve all managed to stay connected throughout a year of isolation.

We laughed, we cried, we sang songs. And I learned how to podcast. Hear my reflections on the first season, insights from listeners, and what’s coming up later this year.

Support my guests on Patreon:

Storm Large
https://www.patreon.com/stormlarge

Madison Young
https://www.patreon.com/MadisonYoung

Pussy Riot
https://www.patreon.com/pussyriot

KT Tunstall
https://www.patreon.com/KTTunstall

CREDITS:

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

No ads.
No sponsors.
No censorship.
We are the media.

Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

Go to Patreon.
Become a member.
Get extra stuff.

Join the community at patreon.com/amandapalmer

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

The post Highlights of The First Season or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Podcast first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Highlights of The First Season or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Podcast appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Sherry Turkle: Is Technology Killing Our Hearts?

Kelly Welles — Wed, 14 Apr 2021 02:00:46 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/49672289

Is technology killing our hearts? Sherry has been studying the impact of tech and social media (robots! AI! smartphones! facebook!) on THE HUMAN SOUL since she graduated Radcliffe and started working at MIT back in the seventies.

I have always wanted to understand how the internet is changing our hearts. So no big surprise I’ve been a big admirer of MIT professor Sherry Turkle since reading Alone Together (2011) and Reclaiming Conversation (2015). Sherry recently wrote a memoir about her childhood and her journey through the male-dominated world of tech and MIT, and it’s a game-changer. Wherever tech ideas and men dominate, there are so many important questions about empathy…and Sherry has unlocked some of the answers.

Episode 22 of The Art of Asking Everything: Sherry Turkle: Is Technology Killing Our Hearts? is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Show notes:

Description

Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Sherry Turkle, recorded March 3rd 2021 at Envy Studios, Auckland, New Zealand. The engineer was Morten Gamst.

Sherry Turkle is the Abby Rockefeller Mauzé Professor of the Social Studies of Science and Technology in the Program in Science, Technology, and Society at MIT, and the founding director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self.

Sherry studies psychoanalysis and human-technology interaction. In books such as, “The Second Self,” “Life on the Screen,” and “Alone Together,” she focuses on the psychology of human relationships with technology.

Sherry’s 2012 TED Talk is entitled, “Connected, but alone?”

Her latest book is an autobiography called, The Empathy Diaries. In it, Sherry reflects on growing up in Brooklyn and Rockaway, New York, navigating academia as a woman in the 1960’s and 70’s, and reconnecting with her estranged father as an adult.

We talked about being difficult women, how Marvin Minsky hates Bambi, defiance in thought, vulnerability in tech, how brilliant ideas launder bad behavior, and radical humility.

Buy The Empathy Diaries

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/585731/the-empathy-diaries-by-sherry-turkle/

Watch her TED Talk, “Connected, but alone?”

https://www.ted.com/talks/sherry_turkle_connected_but_alone

Follow Sherry on Twitter and IG @STurkle

sherryturkle.mit.edu

CREDITS:

This has been The Art of Asking Everything podcast, I am Amanda Fucking Palmer.

Thank you to Sherry Turkle, my amazing guest. You should absolutely check out and read her beautiful new book, the memoir, The Empathy Diaries. All of her other books, all of which I can recommend, The Second Self, Alone Together, Life On The Screen, Reclaiming Conversation, are easy to find on the internets. Make sure you buy from your local indie if you can, instead of the gigantic Amazon gorgon in the sky.

You can also check out the discussions that we’ve started about her books on the Shadowbox, which is our community internet forum.

For all of the music you heard in this podcast, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast

Thank you to Morten Gamst at Envy Studios in Auckland, New Zealand, for recording today’s interview.

In the 8 billion hats department, my assistant Michael McComiskey, who has had a really, really busy couple of months cleaning out our New York office and moving around, and grabbing archives from my Boston apartment, is back to being a full-time assistant, and that is great.

Our Merch Queen in the UK, out of London, Alex Knight, transcriber extraordinaire, he’s always pushing to make this podcast more accessible to all of you, and it’s been growing beautifully. And also, he’s behind all of the amazing merch that we put out. Our Merch Queen, Alex, thank you sweetie, you are wonderful.

Kelly Welles is new on Team AFP, also out of the UK, she is my editorial assistant and social media masterminder-helper-person-friend. You’re gonna be getting to know her more and more through the Patreon, through Twitter, you’ll see her around. She’s helping me craft bigger and better podcasts, and more importantly, she’s helping me to write more. She’s a great editor. So that is Kelly, and thank you Kelly for a lot of help on this Sherry episode.

Cat and Rose at Spellbound, for graphics, video-making, and all around marketing support. And last but not least, my wonderful manager out of Sydney, Australia, Jordan Verzar, who sees everything, connects the dots, supports me and my staff, and helps me to become a better, and hopefully less busy, artist.

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

And last but not least, I always have to remind you, this wouldn’t exist or be possible, not in this way, without my patrons. At current count we’ve got about 13 to 14,000 people firing up the engines of this office and this podcast, and everything I write and make and say. My patrons make all of this possible without branding, without advertising, without corporate deals, it’s just me, my music, my art, this writing, our guests, the videos, all of the stuff that you see is just me and my little team making it, there is no background money, background ghost, there is no invisible funding formation. It’s just my patrons paying for all of this shit. They pay my rent, they pay for my life, they pay my podcast staff.

If you want to join the Patreon, it would mean so much to me. It’s as little as a dollar a month, and it keeps all of the lights on.

Right now there are six super high-level patrons who go way above and beyond in the funding area, so I wanna give them a special thank you: Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Robert W. Perkins, and Leela Cosgrove, who’s from Australia and I chat to all the time, big hugs to all of you. You are making my life possible.

All of you listening, it’s really a hard moment in the world right now. I just wanna remind you that I love you.

Thank you so much for listening.

I will hopefully hear you, see you, and feel you again soon.

Signing off for now, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

No ads.
No sponsors.
No censorship.
We are the media.

Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

Go to Patreon.
Become a member.
Get extra stuff.

Join the community at patreon.com/amandapalmer

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

The Art of Asking Everything

Sherry Turkle

Amanda Palmer 00:32

This is The Art of Asking Everything, I’m Amanda Palmer.

Here is the clickbait title: when Sherry Turkle was a baby, less than a year old, her dad did experiments on her. You’ll never guess what happened next, when she became a tenured professor at MIT.

She’s written a book, it’s called The Empathy Diaries. I have to get this out of the way, and just out myself from the get go as a squeeing fangirl of Sherry Turkle. I am a true fan, and have been a true fan, and a reader, ever since I read the book she put out in 2012, called Alone Together, subtitled Why We Expect More From Technology And Less From Each Other.

I saw this book on sale in a little book store, I think in Cambridge, and the cover art was of all these people staring into their smartphones while walking down the street alone, and it spoke to me. And I was even a little scared to read it, but it was actually a relief reading it, because all of the things that I had been thinking subconsciously about smartphones, and devices, and the internet, and Twitter, and togetherness, and aloneness, was finally voiced in a book with scientific studies and proof about technology and loneliness, all written by this woman who had been at MIT for a long time, and boom. The stamp of approval. And the book made me feel a little less crazy, and poetically, less alone.

MUSIC BREAK – The Bed Song

Sherry Turkle is a powerhouse weirdo titan in academia, and by her own admission in this new memoir, she has always been kind of a freaky outsider. She has been a researcher and a professor at MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, since 1976. That is the year I was born, people. She is the founder and director of the MIT Initiative on Technology and Self. And she’s a licensed clinical psychologist. She’s basically an expert on the relationship between people and machines. The relationship between human souls and smartphones. And she sits around all day every day doing clinical experiments with kids, with teenagers, with grown ups, with Furbies, with iPads, with Siri, with everything, to see what is happening with people.

So the book that I read after Alone Together, which I also gobbled up, was called Reclaiming Conversation. This came out a few years ago. The subtitle of that is The Power Of Talk In A Digital Age. And it cemented my extreme Sherry fandom.

And she is sometimes, and she’ll say it in this podcast, she kind of gets branded a Negative Nancy, an anti-technology person, an anti-smartphone villain, but she’s not. She is not anti-technology, and she is not anti-smartphone. She just happens to be pro-humanity, and pro-connection. Pro-empathy. And she has also been branded a difficult woman for speaking her truth. So despite all of her many achievements, and being widely published, and being at MIT forever, she’s also off grid, which makes her incredibly relatable to yours truly here, and also for many of you out there, especially women who may be listening who have become experts in your areas, but still feel totally insecure because people around you are like, ‘Eh, you’re not quite really real, sorry.’ I can relate.

So I love Sherry Turkle. And in a world of technology going a million miles an hour, and misogyny being this insurmountable hump, she is asking all the right questions, doing all of the important research, and coming up with answers that are not easy to swallow. But goddammit, they are very important.

When I first read her books, I cold emailed and called her, this would have been back in around 2012, 2013. Neil and I were living in Cambridge, and I got to meet up with her, and we hung out in Cambridge, and forged an actual human being, not over screens, connection. And I had a list of fantasy interviews when I started this podcast, of people I was like, ‘If only…’ and one of them was Sherry. And then luckily, on March 2nd of this year, Sherry’s memoir The Empathy Diaries was released, and she decided to give some interviews. It got a glowing review in the New York Times a couple weeks ago, and it was not the book I was expecting to read, and you will see why. The whole second half of the book is just like bomb after truth bomb after truth bomb. Deep family secrets, hidden parents, hidden cancers, deception, MIT, and the men of science being sexist and gaslighty as fuck. It is a really great read.

And as we are finding out in this podcast again, we are all one. This academic MIT woman in her 70s, and this 44 year old rock star weirdo have way more in common than I ever would have imagined in a million years. Recording this podcast was such a pleasure, and you’re gonna love every minute of it. Get your wine, get your tea, run a bath, and let us welcome to The Art of Asking Everything, my hero, Sherry Turkle.

MUSIC BREAK – From St. Kilda To Fitzroy

Amanda 06:49

Hi Sherry!

Sherry Turkle 06:50

Hi.

Amanda 06:50

Thank you so much for doing this. I love your fucking book. It is so good.

Sherry 06:57

I’m so happy!

Amanda 06:58

It’s called The Empathy Diaries, it just came out a couple weeks ago. How are you doing?

Sherry 07:04

I’ve never written a memoir before, and it was scary. And I’m so happy that people are saying, me too! That happened to me too! I had that experience too! I’m so glad that you felt guilty about this thing you did to your mother, me too! I’m just so happy you felt alone at college…

Amanda 07:32

Oh, me too, me too, me too!

Sherry 07:33

And had the wrong underwear, me too!

Amanda 07:35

Me too! Me too!

Sherry 07:36

Kind of like, preacher! Preacher!

Amanda 07:39

So you’ve written, by the way, I will out myself as a Sherry Turkle fangirl. I’ve read your other books, your other books are very… They’re human, but they’re also very academic, and there’s studies, and science, and social science, and all of this stuff about technology. When you wrote this book, were you expecting… I mean, you know you were writing a memoir, you knew you were putting this personal thing out in the world. Did you expect a flood of ‘me too’, and personal responses from your readers, and from a different kind of audience out there that aren’t just used to reading your writing about technology?

Sherry 08:17

The question is would I find that other audience? Because people weren’t expecting that of me. So the question was how long would it take for this book to find that other audience? Because I knew that there were things in the book that would have a resonance with many people, not just women. It tells a story of many universal experiences, immigrant experiences, experiences of abuse, experiences of not knowing how to be in new situations, experiences of feeling like the other, of family secrets. I mean, there was so much. But I didn’t know if I could find this other audience, because I’m not known for memoir. So I think in that sense I was surprised that I’m so lucky that very quickly people found me, they found the book, and they were willing to listen, to accept me as a memoirist.

I was compelled to write this book. I didn’t write this book, this book wrote me. And I think it’s because I’d reached a point in my life where my relationship with my work had become my story. Because I had been looking all my life for books that talked about people’s intimate relationships with their work. I’m passionately involved with the story of intimacy and privacy and democracy online. I don’t just care like, oh, that’s my little academic topic. That is really compelling to me as a person, as a human. And I knew that the story of the assault on empathy in online life, that’s not just what I do when I go to work, that’s not just a good way to make a living. That is really compelling to me. And I knew that came from my personal history. And I knew that there weren’t too many books that came clean about that connection. There were a couple. Oliver Sacks wrote a book called Uncle Tungsten, where it’s clear that his science, and his desire to stay sane, really are bonded together. That the periodic table saved his life at a certain point, by putting order in the universe.

And I just thought, I have got to write this book about why empathy, and the search for empathy, and the need to tell people why empathy is a human quality, and not something that any machine can pretend to do, and that’ll just be okay, I just had to do that. And I just sat down, and I told my publisher this is what I wanted to do, and they said, okay. And I think they were surprised that it was so personal. I think they were kind of expecting maybe a little more intellectual history, so when they started getting family secrets, and naked fathers in the shower…

Amanda 11:42

My God, if I were your publisher, I’d be jumping up and down!

Sherry 11:45

I mean, I think they were like, oh… Well, that wasn’t exactly… Oh. I think they weren’t expecting exactly what they got, but I think they trusted me, that if I thought I had an important story to tell, it was because I did. And then it turned out that it is a pandemic story. Because it is a story of what I call dépaysement, stepping away, de-countrifying, stepping away in order to see better, which I think is what the quarantine has been about. We’ve had the privilege of stepping back in order to see our world anew. And that really is what so much of my life has been about, is being a stranger to my environment, being othered to my environment, and being able to see it because of that. And I think that’s my superpower. And I think that’s gonna be everybody’s superpower now.

Amanda 12:43

Will you, in your own words, just talk about when you reflect back on the family that you came from, which was sort of jagged, but especially those two formative men: your dad, and then the man that your mom remarried. Can you walk us through those two men, those two stories?

Sherry 13:03

My mother married and had me with a man who I think she thought she was marrying a glamorous fellow. He was a chemist. She saw him as a scientist, I think he had a MAster’s in chemistry. I think she saw this as a kind of step up for her. She was a graduate of Brooklyn College, she was one of those people who had graduated high school at 14, and college at 16, in the New York City public school system in those days, you kind of kept skipping smart people. She went to work very young, apparently her heart had been broken. She felt a pressure to be married right after World War 2.

The mystery is, and I knew nothing about why, after a year of this marriage, I was born very quickly, and when I was one year old, she left him, precipitously. She put a few pieces of diapers and maybe one of her dresses and some shoes into an A&P bag, and she had her sister pick her up, and we went back to live with my grandparents near the parade grounds in Brooklyn. And we lived, really, five adults in a one bedroom apartment in my growing up.

And this father, whose name was Charles Zimmerman, was completely denied to me. So when answering your question in the first instance, I’d have to say I’m talking about a total absence of a man. I wasn’t allowed to say his name, because she didn’t want anyone to know she had been divorced, which was kind of odd, because there I was, a child. But I was kind of part of the Bonowitz Clan. Her parents were Edith and Robert Bonowitz, my aunt, her sister, was Mildred Bonowitz. She went to calling herself Harriet Bonowitz, and I was there, and really I could have been a distant relative! I was just another Bonowitz.

I had a very close relationship with these loving adults, but this Charles Zimmerman would be denied to me, both when my mother lived with my grandparents and aunt, and then when she remarried a man named Milton Turkle, because I was asked to take Milton Turkle’s name, even though he didn’t adopt me until many years later, well into my teenage years. And my name wasn’t Sherry Turkle. My name was Sherry Zimmerman. So in school, I had to write Sherry Zimmerman on all my papers, then I had to come home and there was a special closet where I had to lock up all of my papers, so that my step-sister and brother wouldn’t see them, or know that I wasn’t a full Turkle.

I never knew why. There’s a psychoanalytic concept of foreclosed, when something is more than repressed. We are not talking about this. It didn’t happen. It’s not even like, well here’s your dad, and it was something so traumatic that I don’t even wanna talk about it, when you’re older you’ll understand. No. It is as though it didn’t happen.

So I had one father who couldn’t be discussed, and whose name I couldn’t carry. And then I had this other stepfather, ultimately, when he did adopt me later, who I think felt very ambivalently about me, because he had two children, biological children, with my mom, and then he had me. Our relationship was quite strained, because I really had been brought up until I was 5 by my grandfather Bonowitz, by my Aunt Mildred Bonowitz, and this really very embracing family. I wasn’t ready to accept yet another guy who had a fake name, and where I had to pretend, and yet another pretend situation. Living under this regime of pretend got very old.

And then there were kind of odd things. My mother wanted me to take a naked shower with this new Turkle, and they had kind of odd ideas. A lot of people said well, was it sexual abuse? It was more like sexual…

Amanda 17:21

It sounds a little like sexual cluelessness.

Sherry 17:23

Cluelessness!

Amanda 17:24

You describe this scene in the book with your mom smiling, and saying we’re gonna do this. With this idea that we’re gonna be progressive parents, and you’re gonna go into this shower with this guy you’ve never met, and you need to look at his dick because we’re progressive parents.

Sherry 17:42

Yeah! And it was so clueless, and I was so traumatised. I told my mom, no! It never happened again. But it was so typical of this new family. Yet another place I had to pretend. I just didn’t like it at all. So I just had nothing good to say about him.

He had very particular insecurities, because when my mother died he wanted to use me, and again this wasn’t sexual, he never made a move on me. He saw me as the designated adult in the family, the smart one, the one who knew about the world. He wanted me to drop out of college and come home and take care of my step-sister and brother. He was a force of keeping me away from progressing in my life. Whereas my mysterious biological father, in the book I describe the quest to find him, and the many surprises when I finally do find him. Because of course, all my life I went to the mailbox every Hanukkah, every birthday, every holiday. Would he remember me? Would he remember me? And of course he never did.

MUSIC BREAK – Grown Man Cry (Piano version)

Amanda 18:58

So you talk at the beginning of the book, and then you go into it later, about these experiments that your bio dad did on you.

Sherry 19:07

The book begins with my finding my biological father, as a woman of, I think I was 30-something. I’ve hired a detective, and he opens the door, he’s living in Queens, and he opens the door, and he says to me, of course there’s that shock, because he looks like me. And he opens the door, and he says, ‘Did you find me through the New York Times?’ And at that time the New York Times had all these ads, find your job through the New York Times, and I’m thinking, all these years that I’ve been looking through the Queens telephone directory, and the Bronx telephone directory for Charles Zimmermans, all I had to do was look in the personal columns and I would have found that he’s looking for me. But no.

He was a quack scientist who had disproved Einstein in his mind. Yay! And he had written, he had self-published a little book, and taken out an ad in the book review section, back of the book review, that said ‘E = mc2 is not correct, Queens substitute high school science teacher disproves Einstein. For more information…’ and gave his Post Office box. And he had just assumed that I had found him by seeing the name Charles Zimmerman, and this disproof of Einstein, which of course I had not.

I said no, I hired a detective to look for you. And right away, I was a trained clinical psychologist by that point, starting analysis. Right away I saw that this was not somebody who could connect with what was happening here, the father and a daughter were having a reunion. He really was quite… I wanna say like an engineer, but that’s giving away too much, that’s sort of unfair to all engineers, but he really had an algorithmic way of saying, no, your mother wouldn’t have liked that, I agreed to not see you, I agreed not to see you, that was it. And I said did you miss me? Not apparently.

He had a picture of me when I’d won some award, he knew I’d gotten into Radcliffe, he had a clipping which he gave me, which is the only way I knew that he had kept track of me in any way. When I got into Radcliffe from Brooklyn, this was a very, very big deal, that somebody from Brooklyn had gotten a scholarship to Radcliffe, and in the Brooklyn newspaper there was a little thing about it.

But he really was quite dissociated. How did my dancing, laughing, charming mother, how did this happen? But I didn’t understand why she left him until he told me that she had found him doing psychological experiments on me, ala Skinner, deprivation experiments, putting me in the dark, not talking to me, not responding to me. Today we would call them, they’re in the genre of still face experiments. Deprivation, of not giving a child any feedback. We know that’s very bad for children, and yet he was doing them, hoping to become famous, using me as his material. And my mother found him at one of these experiments. And when she found him, she’d left him. We had gone to court, and my judge made me see him once or twice, but essentially that relationship was over.

And that’s why, in that encounter with him, so much was accomplished. I reconciled with her, because I realised she had saved me. The best she could, she had saved me from what? Some kind of potentially psychosis. She was terrified by him. And I reconciled after her death, I was able to say mom, thank you. She was gone, but she was within me, and I was able to be in touch with that, and thank her for that.

And I was able to make my peace with my biological father, and say goodbye to the fantasy that I had had of him all these years, that he was gonna be some kind of Prince Charming. The absent father is always the father you can’t have. Who could he possibly have been?

Amanda 23:49

There’s a beautiful passage in the book, and you say ‘After he died I was there to bury my father, and according to his wishes have a Rabbi perform the traditional Orthodox service at his graveside. He didn’t know how to be a father. But while I was growing up, my connection to the idea of him, to a fantasy, that he had somehow been special, a scientist father, had given me courage. And that was worth a lot.’

And when you just make the obvious connection between what his fantasy was, the experiments with you, I’m gonna be a famous scientist, you managed to take that mangled quack fantasy and you became the real deal, Sherry.

Sherry 24:38

That’s why I feel it’s so important to explore your past. That I was compelled to tell this story because I think that it offers such comfort to feel like a whole person. To not feel, oh my God, I was determined by my background, yuck! No, it’s saying look, this was a part of my life that I always thought I needed to reject, this horrible guy who did experiments on me. And the more I thought about it, it was no, this was somebody who had his own dignity, who had his own ambition. He had found errors in the Michelson-Morley experiments, he thought Einstein was wrong, he was out there with his ideas, he wanted to engage. There’s something of that in me!

MUSIC BREAK – Trout Heart Replica (piano version)

Amanda 25:51

There was another huge family secret that you said you sort of always sensed, and you knew, until it was finally revealed. Your mom had cancer pretty much the entire time you were growing up.

Sherry 26:05

Yes.

Amanda 26:06

And hid it from you. And then she got really ill when you were in college, and it all just sort of exploded. And again, you get this sense that she was doing it out of some sort of warped protectiveness.

Sherry 26:19

She was definitely doing it out of protectiveness. My mom was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer and had a mastectomy of the left breast when I was in fifth grade. And she made a decision then that basically no one was to know, which meant that her sister, her mother, and her husband knew. And that was it. Now, I’m sure some of her friends figured it out, because some of her friends were wise in these ways, or had had this disease themselves, or figured it out. But basically, officially, that’s who she told.

And for me in particular, her desire was that I go away to college, because I’d figured out I wanted to go away to Radcliffe. I needed to go to Radcliffe, I just needed to go to Harvard, and when I was told that I couldn’t go to Harvard cos I was a girl, this was just my dream. And she wanted me to have my dream. It was really as simple as that.

And people said, well did she live through you? I don’t know if she lived through me. I just know that my mother was on the side of my having my dream. I think she wanted to participate a little, but I never felt that kind of clawing, ‘I’ve got to be there at every minute for you.’ She wanted me to have my dream. And she knew that I was so close to her, and so involved with her, that if I knew she was dying, I would stay in the city, and go to a school in the city, and I think I would have gone to Barnard, which was an excellent school. I would have done very well, and I probably would be here. I mean, I would have done very well. But she wanted me to have my dream, and so she didn’t tell me.

The mystery to me was how she kept this secret from me, really until I was 19 years old. That’s ten years of keeping this secret. Especially a daughter. We were hugging, we stayed int he same bed, when she would be ill I would go into her bed with her, we would watch movies, we would eat popcorn, I’d bring her soup, we were physically very close.

This memoir is not just a recitation of facts, but is really an investigation of deeper psychological connections. I think this is an exploration of what we know but don’t allow ourselves to accept that we know.

When I visit her in the hospital finally, when I’m called away from school, ten days before she’s gonna die, and I’m finally called out of school, you must come home, your mother’s in the hospital, it’ll be her last hospitalisation. Go to Brooklyn hospital immediately. And I say to the doctors, how long does she have? And he says, oh, about ten days. And I say, well she’s coming home in ten days? And he looks at me startled, and he realises that I don’t know, and was he supposed to be the one to tell me? And I realise I do know. I do know that he’s telling me she has ten days to live.

For people who don’t believe in the unconscious, I say come here. Talk to me. Let me explain to you how it works. Because I did know. I knew, and I didn’t know. And as soon as he said ten days, something snapped, and everything made sense, and all the times that I’d been given information and not used it, all the times when something wasn’t right and I’d looked away, so many things made sense to me that hadn’t made sense, and I realised she had given me this gift of freedom, so that I could pursue my dream.

Amanda 30:08

Will you read a bit of the book, about feeling alone?

Sherry 30:14

“I knew I could receive no comfort, because no one would admit that anything sad had happened. It was a very particular loneliness, knowing that people around you were also sad, but that you couldn’t be sad together.”

That particular quote comes from when I first suspect that my mother has been in the hospital, and that something bad has happened to her. My first suspicion, I’m 9 years old, and in fact she’s had her first mastectomy. She’s had her operation. And my grandparents are at our house. I sense that something is the matter, and I can tell that I’m being shut down when I try to find out. And yet, I’m sad, they’re sad, but for nine years no one could be sad about this. And I think that my mother’s refusal to be sad with me, sad with her family, really marked me.

MUSIC BREAK

Amanda 31:43

There’s a passage in your book that I want you to read, where Seymour, your partner, is talking to Marvin Minsky.

Sherry 31:51

Marvin and Seymour are not having a conversation actually in this paragraph. Because Seymour is late to dinner. And this was very common. He’s sort of there, and I have begged Marvin to comfort be about what’s with this, that Seymour comes and goes, and has all this bad behaviour, he’s sometimes there, he’s sometimes not there. And Marvin refuses to comfort me, he tells me I’m lucky to have Seymour whenever I can have him. And so now it’s just Marvin and me having a conversation. And clearly that’s not interesting enough in my view for Marvin. This is my inner dialogue, as I’m over my lobster, over my surf and turf, with Marvin Minsky. This is pondering the Marvin/Seymour conversations.

“Marvin and Seymour made a world where intellect was valued more highly than empathy; a good conversation, more highly than common courtesy. Seymour was being as rude to Marvin as he was to me. Marvin was sharing his code: to be interesting, Seymour did not have to be kind. He had to be brilliant. I knew that the two men saw each other as life-long friends, but that evening, as we ate in silence (that’s Marvin and me), their friendship seemed oddly transactional. And since the transaction was about computational ideas, it made sense that I seemed to have nothing to offer Marvin.

I had a moment during that dinner where I felt competitive, and I thought, ‘Well, I could try to say something brilliant about Freud, or Proust, or someone else on my Chicago Great Books list.’ But then I fell back. I wonder if I really believed that I could come up with something brilliant enough, something Marvin-level.

Also, I was angry. But at who? Because I was there not just for the privilege of conversation, but for love, and consideration. And I wanted to be Marvin’s friend, not just a brainy purveyor of conversation. I rejected the game.

The next morning, the two men were back at work. In this relationship, brilliant ideas laundered bad behaviour.”

Amanda 34:35

I have been at that table so many times. I have sat at that table of men laundering ideas at the expense of empathy and emotion, so many fucking times. And it was so validating to read that paragraph, so beautifully written, Sherry.

And up until really recently in my life, I’ve always gone through that spin cycle of clearly I’m not measuring up. Clearly I don’t have brilliant enough ideas about emotions. I don’t have brilliant enough ideas about empathy to keep up with these men who are holding court at this table, dismissing, and also allowing. This man is so brilliant that he’s literally allowed to just fuck the secretary, and ignore her feelings, and not call her back, because he’s brilliant! You must see this showing up all the time right now, given what is happening with Epstein, Weinstein, Cosby, all the -steins!

Sherry 36:03

All the steins, right!

Amanda 36:04

Can you talk, now you’re sitting at this particular moment in time, speaking of Me Too, not to say that Marvin Minsky is some kind of villain, or that Seymour was a villain, but there is this permissiveness around the currency of human life. What’s important? Are the ideas important, or are the human beings important? And where are you gonna place your bets?

Sherry 36:32

This story has such meaning to me, it’s so interesting that you pull it out, because I actually end the book on another Marvin Minsky story. Because I wanna just point out to anyone listening, any woman who has tried to win this argument, and felt she wasn’t smart enough to win, I just wanna comfort you a little by saying I’ve prepared an advance. I have turned my entire intellectual firepower on such arguments. And I lose. Because they come up with stuff that is effing unbelievable!

In preface to this story about Bambi, I’m at a screening of Tron with Marvin Minsky. I know him as a loving husband, a loving father, and certainly was a loving friend to Seymour. He had ideas, brilliant conversation, and certain kinds of ideas launder any kind of lack of empathy, and lack of empathic behaviour, and lack of a certain sensibility about attachment to people. So here’s my favourite Marvin Minsky story, which were it not for this interview you’d have to really get to the conclusion of the book to read, but I trust you’ll read it and find it at the end, it’s just such a great way to end the book.

So I end the book with my most dramatic story, which is I’m at a screening of Tron with Marvin Minsky. And Tron is a movie about how the inside of the brain, the inside of everything, there’s little computer programs, and Marvin Minsky loves it, cos it reminds him of his society of mind theory, yadda yadda yadda yadda.

He loves it, he loves it, the mind is a machine, we’re made up of programs. And he’s surrounded by acolytes, as he’s talking about how this is exactly what he’s trying to say theoretically, this is brilliant, this is wonderful. And he sees me, and he says, you know, this is the kind of movie every kid needs to see. No kid should ever see Bambi. This is the kind of movie they should see instead.

So I’m such a jerk, I jump to the bait. I’m wanting to have a child some day, I grew up with Bambi, I’m thinking about Bambi. ‘Marvin, why can’t children see Bambi?’ I ask, thinking of the mother, thinking of Bambi’s love for his mother. And he says, ‘Well, Bambi teaches that it’s important to love you mother and be attached to a parent, whereas we’re gonna be raised by robot minders and artificial intelligences, and no child should learn that that’s important, because in the future we’re gonna be raised by robots. So it’s completely out of the question, and bad for children, to get that kind of idea about human attachment.’ And all of these kids, and all these students, these impressionable MIT students around him, are going yes! Yes! Bad Bambi!

So I just say at the end of the book that when I had my daughter, the book is dedicated to my daughter, I stored up on Bambi, I made sure we had one at my summer house, my summer cottage, one at the winter palace, one at the summer palace!

Amanda 39:56

Your paraphrasing of Marvin Minsky here, “Bambi indoctrinates children to think that death matters. Some day we will conquer death by merging with computers. Such attachments, Bambi’s attachment to his mother for example, will be unimportant. People need to learn to give that stuff up.”

Sherry 40:19

It’s not that different from being around a table and trying to argue for empathy, or trying to argue why computers shouldn’t be psychotherapists, or trying to argue why computers shouldn’t be companions to children, ro trying to argue for all the things that I argue as a proponent of empathy. It’s not because I’m anti-technology, I’m just pro-people.

Amanda 40:43

Pro-empathy!

Sherry 40:44

I’m just pro-empathy. Empathy for me was the way I kept sane in this household of people who had their reasons for lying, and I needed to figure out what those reasons were, so I had to become empathetic with them. It was a way to stay sane, it was a way to stay connected.

MUSIC BREAK – Melody Dean (piano version)

Amanda 41:15

There’s a great passage in the book about your tenure at MIT.

Sherry 41:21

Well, to set the scene, at MIT I was fired before I was re-hired. And when I was fired, I didn’t think it was right, because I’d written two books, and lots of papers, and I was Ms Magazine’s woman of the year, and I was an Esquire person under 40 who was changing the nation, and they had made a rule just before I was fired, I would have had to be not only in my department, but another department to be hired, and I’d never heard about this rule until I was fired. I contested it. I didn’t sue, I just made a stink.

The set up for this paragraph is I got a letter saying that I could come back, and I could stay. And so this is my sum up.

“I was not admired for my defiance. Women who are dispensed with, and come back to make trouble, are not likeable, even when they win on the merits. Instead of feeling proud that I’d stood up for myself, I felt ashamed that I’d been forced to do so. I exiled myself. I attended departmental meetings, taught my courses, did my research, and immersed myself in my students’ writing. But I chose to stay off the larger MIT stage. We experience our lives as segmented, until in a moment of crisis or decision, things start to come together. So even when I got MIT’s imprimatur, I never had a sense of belonging. REal daughters don’t have to argue their case before a jury.

Real daughters don’t get legalistic letters that tell them to be gone, and that they need to reverse by power of their wits. Nor, it crossed my mind, do real daughters have to hire detectives to track down fathers who’ve disappeared for decades. This is not a good way to think about success at work, or about belonging to a community of peers. But it was how I felt.”

Amanda 43:36

That feels so much like my last 20 years in the music industry. Simultaneously fighting to be accepted and admired, but the fight itself invalidates the fucking fight. If I have to fight this hard to get you to say, yes your work matters, yes you are real, yes you are authentic, just like all these other big people… the fact that I’ve had to fight so hard makes me feel ridiculous.

I sort of did what you did, Sherry. I just was like, fuck all of this. I’m gonna go off grid, I’m gonna build some other house sort of away from the city, in the desert, where I can just try to pretend that that huge city of authenticity, MIT, the men, the awards, isn’t really what I am craving. And I’ve never reconciled it. I still, to this day, feel those deep desires to be truly authenticated. Like one day they’ll send me a letter saying ‘We were wrong the whole time, you really were real from the beginning, we just didn’t notice!’

Sherry 44:56

What I think is so important about my writing about MIT, and it’s interesting that you said at some point in this interview that I express anger at MIT, it was very important for me to admit that I’ve had a great career at MIT. That I’m not sorry I fought for my job, and took my job there. I’m not sorry that I didn’t say, you didn’t like me? Okay, I’m leaving, bye! You could say I snatched defeat out of the jaws of victory in a certain sense, because when I won my position in this kind of weird way, I basically said look, I’m not gonna sue, but I am gonna call the New York Times, and you’ll have a reporter who says why didn’t you give her tenure? So get ready for… What does it take for a woman to get a tenure around here?

And I think that since they had only this reason that I wasn’t a scientist, and I didn’t have two positions, this thing about I needed two positions not one, I didn’t think they thought it was gonna be a good look. I realised that I didn’t step up and say, well okay, now that I’m here, I’m just gonna start running committees, and I’m gonna wanna be the head of some stuff, and I’m gonna wanna run an institute.

They didn’t get the best of me. I didn’t insist that they get the best of me. I hid, and wrote my books, and did my work, but I did it sort of off grid, in a way.

Amanda 46:35

In this passage in the book, where you’re talking about your tenure, you describe yourself as a difficult woman. I don’t think you should say that. The university, and the man, and the system that you describe in this book, sound a hundred times more difficult than you go!

Sherry 46:53

I meant that I was seen as a difficult woman. But what made me difficult was simply that I complained about being fired instead of going quietly.

Amanda 47:03

What do you think about empathy and the human beings’ relationship, or maybe lack of relationship, to it right now?

Sherry 47:11

I don’t have a definition of empathy that’s sort of kumbaya, like it’s something easy, just share a little of your pain with me. It’s not just sharing your pain, or sharing your place, or putting myself in your place. It’s sharing your problem. It’s not just putting myself in your place, it’s putting myself in your problem.

It’s very hard, because for me, empathy begins in solitude. Empathy begins in the capacity for solitude. In the capacity for being able to know who you are, and therefore listen to another person. Because if you don’t know who you are, you just project onto another person who you want them to be, instead of being able to really listen to their story.

So in the response to the book, what I’ve really heard is people understanding that what we need is a kind of active listening that’s very hard, where we first have to know who we are, who you are, and then be able to say, not I know who you are, but I don’t know who you are. I’m listening to who you are.

Too often, empathy is ‘I’ve been divorced, I understand your thing.’ Not ‘Tell me how you’re feeling. I really don’t know.’ So it’s a radical humility. Tell me. And I try to give very powerful examples in the book, of people who said to me, ‘I’m listening to you, and I’m here for the duration. I’m listening, and I’m gonna stick it out with you.’

In particular there was a woman I met in college, I call her Lynn, who really taught me what empathy was. Because I was so at loose ends, I didn’t have a friend, I was just floating, I just didn’t know, I was so lost. She said, ‘Look, let’s talk. And you can count on me. I really wanna know what’s going on with you, but also I’ll be here for you.’ She didn’t say oh, I know how you feel, you must be lonely, you’re from Brooklyn, you’re lower class, I’ll tell you all about how you feel. She really said, what’s with you? And I’ll go to lunch with you. I’ll be with you. I’ll walk a little bit in your shoes with you.

That’s what we need to do now. This brings us to our country. We have a country to rebuild, but we also have relationships to rebuild. With each other, and with ourselves. And we have to be empathic with ourselves, we have to listen to ourselves, and we have to show that kind of self-compassion for ourselves. Cos there are so many points in this book where I’m so angry at myself. And I stopped the reader and I said look, look at this example where I’m so angry at myself, and I try to show how you also have to learn how to listen to yourself, and understand yourself, and show that kind of compassion to yourself.

So in terms of the reception of the book, I think that we are at a time where that kind of stepping back, seeing the country anew, seeing ourselves anew, and having that kind of empathy that’s an active, engaged empathy, is hitting a nerve, and it should be hit because it’s really what we most need now.

MUSIC BREAK – Grown Man Cry (piano version)

Amanda 51:48

I have been in New Zealand for a year now, while pretty much 99% of my social circle is in a completely different situation. We move through life being in different situations, surviving different situations. None of us are ever charting the same course. And one of the things that I have found myself saying, over and over, if not 20 then 60 times, on the telephone, just in the last two months, is I wanna know how you are, and I have to remind you, my frame of reference is so far away, I need you to tell me things that you won’t even think to mention, because your whole circle is locked down, and I haven’t been through what you’ve been through for the last nine months. And I want to understand, and I always say I know I can’t really. But tell me. And it’s been so strange, Sherry, talking to a friend in upstate New York, Brooklyn, Queens, LA, Chicago, Sarasota, Austin, and just saying to all of them, I don’t really get it. I haven’t been in lockdown for ten months. I don’t know what’s gonna come at me, but I’m here, I actually really wanna know.

Sherry 53:23

I think that radical humility, I think very few people are able to accept the anxiety of this radical humility. And I think that that is a big message of this book. And I think that’s why even though I didn’t write it to be a pandemic book, I think that’s why it is so relevant to this moment. Because it is preaching that empathy requires this kind of active engagement, and radical humility, and a kind of listening that is really about I don’t know. And a willingness to have someone say, you said something that I think was very profound, a willingness to have somebody say, ‘I just can’t even bear to start. It’s too much to even try to explain this to you.’

Because it’s a little bit like my students who said they just couldn’t even begin to talk to me about how they felt that this guy throwing himself and the desk out the window, for them it was just a waste because he was gonna fall at the same speed, which really is a very disturbing, symptomatic way of denying your connection to the emotion of somebody committing suicide. That’s where they could begin. Just my being able to say, well, if you can’t talk about it now, I’m in my office every afternoon. Come back, and together we’ll try it again.

I always say, together again. Together again. That’s how relationships of mentorship, and empathy, and connection, that’s how they’re made. You’re there for the duration with these people. And that’s very hard. It’s very hard to sit with that. And so that’s what I’m trying to communicate, that’s what empathy is.

Amanda 55:44

It requires time and attention.

I haven’t even asked you about where you’ve been locked down, I assume that you’ve been in Massachusetts, or nearby.

Sherry 55:53

Oddly enough, I’ve been locked down on the beach that Thoreau walked when he was contemplating not being alone, but when he was contemplating living life deliberately. He walked the beach from Sandwich to Provincetown. He didn’t wanna live alone. When he was living at Walden Pond, the joke was that he’d live close enough so he could hear Emerson’s dinner bell every night, and he would often have dinner with Emerson. So he wasn’t so big on aloneness. What he wanted was to live deliberately, by which he meant that he wouldn’t just be living thickly with people, without having made that choice. He wanted to live deliberately. And he took this walk, and he thought about what it was to live deliberately. What that meant.

So actually now, we are in a position to ask the questions, do I want to be not vulnerable when I talk to a friend about her last conversation with her mother, and how it was on a screen? Do I want to be protected by a screen when I’m having that conversation? Or do I want to show that I’m showing up fully present for that conversation?

I think we’re all thinking about this now in a new way. And I think that’s good. Because before, like you describe yourself in a bar, you have your iPad, or your pad, or your surface, whatever you have, your phone, and you just use the seven different programs you have, for being a little bit less vulnerable you just choose one of those, and you just choose that. So whether it’s a Slack, or a text, or an email, or whatever. You just do whatever feels emotionally right. But you’re not vulnerable in the same way as if you were present.

Many of us crave the full embrace of the human including that full embrace of the human vulnerability, because it was a horrible thing to say goodbye on a screen. And it hit us.

Amanda 58:29

You could look at this and see the upside, that perhaps we are seeing what we’re missing…

Sherry 58:35

Yes, I do, I see both.

Amanda 58:35

But do you see a dark side, where people are taking the opposite take-away, is I never needed to actually go to those meetings, we could have just had them on Zoom! We can be together without actually having to get together in meeting rooms, we can work in an office virtually, this is fantastic! What about that? What about the opposite takeaway?

Sherry 58:55

That’s why I’m trying to use this Thoreau term ‘deliberately.’ That you can make the decision deliberately, that some of the meetings that I had in person were skippable. Some of that schlepping across country to go to some thing with a lunch, and a brunch, and a munch, and a crunch, and a special evening… No. That could have been two Zoom meetings. I didn’t need all that. Or maybe once a year, let’s have a dinner, and the rest of the time we can get our work done. Once a year it’s good for the team to get together. But not every week, or not every twice a month, or not three times a month, no way.

We’re now in a better position to talk about this.

Amanda 59:49

Do you think people really are going to talk about it? Or do you think that the deliciousness of getting a little bit more compartmentalised, and having to be less vulnerable, and be that emotionally present because of the expensiveness of all of that vulnerability of doing all this in-person stuff is gonna maybe win the contest?

Sherry 60:11

I think we should stop thinking that there’s Team Turkle and Team Engineering side, and we should choose up. Because I’ve enjoyed not having to travel. I have migraines, and I take this medicine and that medicine and this medicine and that medicine, but basically, if I don’t travel, my migraines really, really drop. Now, I just don’t know enough to know if it’s the airplane, if it’s the pressure, if it’s the cabin fever, or just the getting up and changing timezones. I don’t care. I just know that a lot less business travel really is good for my headaches.

I am one of the people who is gonna be very deliberate about my business travel. I’m on Team Convince Me. I’m on Team ‘what is good for my human spirit?’, which should be everybody’s team. Is this good for people? Is this good for the human dimension of the project I’m on? And everybody now knows more about how to think about this.

But I think you’re absolutely right that there’s gonna be institutions that are pressing for remote, and there’s gonna be people who are pressing for remote, because you’re so much less vulnerable. I teach classes where I’ll have 30 smiling faces, and then all of a sudden we’ll get to some delicate part of the conversation, and all of a sudden I’ll see people’s still faces. When the going gets hard, people are taking a coffee break. I think it’s gonna be very complicated, but this is the conversation we need to have.

Amanda 62:07

And this brings me to the biggest question that I am most interested in. When I knew that I could get an interview with you, the first question that came to mind is kids and screens right now.

Sherry 62:24

I have very strong feelings. I think we’re in a good position, because a year ago I was in many meetings where some software company would come into a school, and would say something like, ‘We have an unbelievable program. It measures your child’s every keystroke, it personalises their learning, it goes across the curriculum, it tailors the work to their learning style, and their every interaction, and we’re gonna sell it to your school system, and it’s just gonna be completely revolutionised things, and we’ll give you a free iPad, or surface, and all the entire library will be on things, so no need for the library, and this is what we’re gonna sell to your school.’ And school systems were excited, and parents were excited. Often people who didn’t have much money and were sort of at a disadvantage cos they felt their kids were getting the very best of the best.

If you tried to sell that now, parents are more likely to say, ‘Hold up! My child needs a person. My child needs a mentor. I need a person talking to my child, loving my child.’ It is gonna be much harder to sell people on the idea that what’s really best is a computer-assisted, artificial intelligence, fancy-schmancy, your kid should be looking at a screen all day in school. Not to mention when he goes home.

And I think that we have gotten, and not just in the area of education and children and screens, I think we have gotten smarter about Facebook, privacy, data scraping, in a way, in my research, a year ago, I was still trying, I had to do so much work to get people to make this connection. When they’re taking your data, it’s not just that you’re getting something good because you’re seeing ads that you like better. Here’s what’s happening. And people would say ‘Oh, well, you know, I like getting ads for the ballet slippers, because I like them!’ And then I would go back in. But look, making the connection which I’ve always tried to make, between democracy, intimacy, and privacy. It’s a kind of sacred triangle.

Not so hard to do that any more. After this election, Cambridge Analytica wasn’t enough. 2016 wasn’t enough. You had to see all that COVID disinformation. This has been a giant learning experiment that we’ve lived through. It’s as though we’ve seen the country anew, we’ve seen the technology anew, we’ve seen ourselves using the technology anew. I think that we’re ready for a reset in which we distance ourselves from the country, and we say, you know, I didn’t see this. I knew this stuff existed, but I really didn’t see this white supremacy quite this way, or really didn’t see this Black Lives Matter thing, I really didn’t see this income inequality, millions of Americans lining up for food banks, I really didn’t see it quite this way. This neofascism thing, this QAnon thing.

People talk about liminal times, in my education, I learned to appreciate these times out of times, these moments of potential change. I think we’re in one of those. It can go dark. But I think we’re sort of at a point, both with technology and in the culture, where we can get that sort of shock, and maybe move forward, and say, you know, I’m kind of done. I’m out of my love affair with a screen for everything. I wanna try something different.

Amanda 66:42

A few weeks ago, I was walking around Auckland, and I went into a bookstore called Unity, and I saw a book on the table called The Smart Wife. And it was a little bit after I had booked my interview with you, and I bought it cos it looked fascinating. It was by two technology researchers from Melbourne named Yolande Strengers and Jenny Kennedy, and you are cited in the introduction. It’s a book about our love affair with digital assistants.

And the same way I wanted to stand up and cheer so many times while reading your book, because I really saw moments that I had never been able to really pinpoint and describe, you were committing to the page. And seeing an entire book about how fucking creepy it feels to listen to men bossing around lady-machines in their living rooms, and I was like, thank you! I cannot tell you how many arguments I have gotten into with Neil Gaiman about how I do not want that woman-box on my kitchen counter, and I can’t really explain to you why! Here’s a 350 page book explaining to you why this also is tied in with the entire history of the patriarchy, and why it makes me feel really fucking uncomfortable!

I hope you’re right. But so much of this, again, comes down to that moment at the table where you feel something, and you sense something, and you know something. But it’s like, even with stacks of evidence this big, it feels like it doesn’t stack up against the giant bank account of Mark Zuckerberg, or the giant plans of Elon Musk, or whatever they are, they dwarf your empathetic instinct.

And I hope you’re right. And I can’t actually wait to see the next book that you write, because I feel like now that you’ve gotten the memoir and plonked it on the table, and been like, yo motherfuckers, this is why this is so real and important, that whatever the next book you write is, I am gonna be on the edge of my seat to see more about the case for optimism, and the solutions.

Because I’m sure, just like with my work in the music industry, I can be seen as a real Negative Nancy, but I don’t feel that way. I feel like there are just systems that we’re not paying attention to, and that there is abundance everywhere, and we’re just sort of skittering into the ditches of scarcity without really realising the car is going off the road. And that goes for social media, computers, whatever, therapy, food, screens, life, kids, all of it.

It’s so good to know that there is someone like you in the world, who’s gonna be doing the work, and waving the flag for sanity while we all sit here wondering whether we’re going fucking crazy.

Sherry 69:56

In my way of thinking, this is a fight ahead. You’re right that things are still stacked for the patriarchy. This is a call to arms for empathy. This is not a ‘things are cool now people have discovered it.’ This is a call to arms for empathy. This is not an ‘oh, thank God you have my little manual, you know how to do your empathic…’ This is a call to arms.

Amanda 70:28

Thank you for writing such an incredibly brave book. I can’t imagine how it must have felt penning some of those sentences, but you did a beautiful, beautiful thing.

Sherry 70:41

Thank you so much.

Amanda 70:42

And I love you. Even though we’re 12,000 miles away from each other and through a screen.

Sherry 70:49

It’s been great.

Amanda 70:50

It still counts!

Sherry 70:50

It still counts. I look forward to coffee. Bye bye.

Amanda 70:53

Thank you, Sherry.

MUSIC BREAK – Bottomfeeder

Amanda 71:00

This has been The Art of Asking Everything podcast, I am Amanda Fucking Palmer.

You can also check out the discussions that we’ve started about her books on the Shadowbox, which is our community internet forum.

For all of the music you heard in this podcast, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast

Thank you to Morten Gamst at Envy Studios in Auckland, New Zealand, for recording today’s interview.

And this podcast would not be possible in any way without my incredible globe-spanning team. Hayley Rosenblum, out of New York, who manages the Patreon, so many projects, so many artistic and audio and visual endeavours, thank you Hayley for just being an amazing human being, wearing 8 billion hats. In the 8 billion hats department, my assistant Michael McComiskey, who has had a really, really busy couple of months cleaning out our New York office and moving around, and grabbing archives from my Boston apartment, is back to being a full-time assistant, and that is great. Our Merch Queen in the UK, out of London, Alex Knight, transcriber extraordinaire, he’s always pushing to make this podcast more accessible to all of you, and it’s been growing beautifully. And also, he’s behind all of the amazing merch that we put out. Our Merch Queen, Alex, thank you sweetie, you are wonderful. Kelly Welles is new on Team AFP, also out of the UK, she is my editorial assistant and social media masterminder-helper-person-friend. You’re gonna be getting to know her more and more through the Patreon, through Twitter, you’ll see her around. She’s helping me craft bigger and better podcasts, and more importantly, she’s helping me to write more. She’s a great editor. So that is Kelly, and thank you Kelly for a lot of help on this Sherry episode. Cat and Rose at Spellbound, for graphics, video-making, and all around marketing support. And last but not least, my wonderful manager out of Sydney, Australia, Jordan Verzar, who sees everything, connects the dots, supports me and my staff, and helps me to become a better, and hopefully less busy, artist.

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

If you want to join the Patreon, it would mean so much to me. It’s as little as a dollar a month, and it keeps all of the lights on.

Right now there are six super high-level patrons who go way above and beyond in the funding area, so I wanna give them a special thank you: SImon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Robert W. Perkins, and Leela Cosgrove, who’s from Australia and I chat to all the time, big hugs to all of you. You are making my life possible.

All of you listening, it’s really a hard moment in the world right now. I just wanna remind you that I love you.

Thank you so much for listening.

I will hopefully hear you, see you, and feel you again soon.

Signing off for now, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

The post Sherry Turkle: Is Technology Killing Our Hearts? first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Sherry Turkle: Is Technology Killing Our Hearts? appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Dr Rola Hallam: The Fuckery of Philanthropy

Kelly Welles — Mon, 15 Mar 2021 14:00:11 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/48671627

Doctors don’t get much more punk rock than Rola Hallam. And I mean old-school, boundary-breaking, structure-shattering punk rock. When government red tape in Syria stopped funds from being allocated to hospitals suffering bomb attacks, Dr Rola crowdfunded an entire hospital. They called her crazy. She ignored them.

This episode is a call to arms. March 15th 2021 is the tenth anniversary of the Syrian conflict and Dr Rola is raising funds again; this time to buy early warning systems for 150 schools to help protect children who are being targeted while trying to get an education. This is DIRECT ACTION. We, as a community, can mobilise and contribute directly to Rola’s campaign to save kids lives.

Go to SaveSyriasSchools.org and donate what you can. Make me proud.

Episode 21 of The Art of Asking Everything: Dr Rola Hallam: The Fuckery of Philanthropy is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Show notes:

Description

Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Dr Rola Hallam, recorded February 25th 2021 at Envy Studios, Auckland, New Zealand. The engineer was Morten Gamst.

Dr. Rola Hallam is the founder of CanDo; a crowdfunding platform that puts resources in the hands of the frontline healthcare workers in war-affected communities.

In 2011, when war first broke out in her home country Syria, Hallam became involved in the humanitarian response. Working with various Syrian-led NGOs, she played an integral part in building 7 hospitals in Syria including the first ever crowdfunded hospital.

To address the issues she had found within the aid system, she established CanDo, a not-for-profit social enterprise and crowdfunding platform for local humanitarian organizations. She ran a crowdfunding campaign in 2016 called People’s Convoy, which raised money to build Hope Hospital for children after the last children’s hospital in Aleppo was destroyed having been bombed for the 6th time. She and the Convoy drove the entire provision of medical equipment for the hospital from London to the Turkey-Syria border in December 2016. She says, “Hope Hospital was built because thousands of people came together from around the world and said: It is not acceptable to bomb hospitals, it is not ok to bomb children. And we will rebuild.”

March 15, 2021 is the 10-year anniversary of the ongoing war in Syria. Hallam is now fundraising to help protect children who are being targeted in schools. Go to SaveSyriasSchools.org to help purchase early-warning systems for 150 schools.

CREDITS:

This has been the Art of Asking Everything Podcast.

Thank you to my punk rock doctor, Dr. Rola, for her work, for her immense amount of heart, and for sharing everything that she’s shared with us today.

Once again, it’s the 10 year anniversary of the war in Syria. You out there can help protect children right now who are being targeted in attacks like the ones Rola was talking about, so please, donate a little, even if it’s $10, to save Syria’s schools, where Rola is raising money to install these 150 early warning systems, to help kids get out of buildings before they are bombed. And you will also be supporting trauma therapy for the kids, which you know is deeply important to their future selves, to the health of the whole country, to the health of the whole world.

The URL again is SaveSyriasSchools.org. It’ll also be plastered all over the internet, you can Google it, it’ll be on my feeds.

And check out the show notes for links to Rola’s TED talk, and the BBC documentaries that she talks about in the podcast.

For all the music you heard in the podcast, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast.

Thank you to Morten Gamst at Envy Studios in Auckland, New Zealand, for recording today’s interview, and helping with the filming that we’re using for the promo.

My assistant Michael McComiskey, who makes sure that scheduling happens, and trains run on time, and that I’m able to do all the things.

Our Merch Queen Alex Knight, who’s also helping us transcribe this podcast, so that the conversations are accessible, much love to Alex in the UK.

Also in the UK is Kelly Welles, my social media guru, co-editor, mastermind, sister-friend.

Cat and Rose at Spellbound for helping with the wonderful graphics and the video making. And of course, in Sydney, my manager, Jordan Verzar, who brings us all together, and makes sure we all get paid. The podcast was produced by FannieCo.

And last but not at least, as always, again, this podcast would not be possible without patronage. At current count, I’ve got about 13,000 patrons, they make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit. Just the truthful media, as far as we can make it. So special thanks due to my high-level patrons Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Robert W. Perkins, Leela Cosgrove, thank you guys so much for helping me do this, and make this.

Everyone else, please go to Patreon, become a supporting member. This will also give you access to the live follow-up chats that I sometimes do with the guests after the podcast comes out. I won’t be doing one with Rola, because this was so immediate, but that’s a perk of the Patreon.

And thank you. If you donated, thank you. If you could just listen and share, thank you. I love you.

Signing off for now, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

The Art of Asking Everything

Rola Hallam: The Fuckery of Philanthropy

Amanda Palmer 00:34

This is The Art of Asking Everything, I’m Amanda Palmer.

You probably don’t want to hear what Dr. Rola Hallam has to say. Trust me.

Rola Hallam 00:44

For ten years, governments have failed Syria’s children. For ten years, schools have been getting bombed, and so have been kids. And as a doctor, as a humanitarian, and as a mum, I think it’s time that we change that. And I have time.

Amanda 01:07

It is, this week, the 10 year anniversary of the war in Syria. And I say that kind of ironically, knowing that it’s probably not marked on your calendar, or even something that you might be aware of. The war in Syria is far away for a lot of us, and ongoing and exhausting for those who are paying attention.

You may not know much about it, except that it’s bad, and tragic, and occasionally in the news, and every time that you see something about it, you just sort of feel powerless to do anything.

Children and civilians are being targeted, and killed. It is a crisis that is almost unfathomable, and therefore, we find ourselves not really wanting to fathom it.

But for the actual human beings, the Syrians who’ve lost their families, lost their jobs, their houses, any sense of order and sanity, this is their lives. This is the daily reality. People who had totally normal lives, like many of you, and me, even though this year has been anything but normal. People who are artists, teachers, tech people, doctors, they’ve found themselves fleeing their normal lives, and living a nightmare that most people I know who live in America, Europe, or Australia just can’t wrap their heads around.

One day you have a normal life, with a normal job, and a normal family, and then, for seemingly impossible reasons, it’s snatched away from you. And you find yourself begging for help.

My guest today, Dr. Rola, was defiant in the midst of an onslaught from all sides. And having not only seen the government attack its own people, its own schoolchildren, she saw that help was

not on the fucking way. And any resources that were getting into the country were slow in coming, and weren’t going to the hospitals in the middle of a warzone. And as you’ll hear her explaining in the podcast, they are bombing hospitals and schools, attacking the most vulnerable. Not by accident, but as strategic, planned acts of domestic terrorism. Absolute destruction. Leaving behind dead 6-year-olds. Deliberately meant to destroy the human spirit, at its deepest core.

The title of this episode might sound crass and offensive to you, ‘The Fuckery of Philanthropy,’ given the gravity of the topic, but the story behind the title is actually great. I was working with my podcast team on the day of the recording with Rola, and we were like, uh, will Rola be too offended if we use a title like, ‘How To Hustle Money For A Hospital In A War Zone’, or ‘How TO Pimp A Hospital Into Existence.’ And we were like, ahh, and we sent these ideas to Rola, and she wrote back, ‘These are great, why don’t we just call it The Fuckery of Philanthropy?’ and I was like, oh my God. This is a sister on my level. She is not fucking around. She gives no shits in all the right areas, and all the shits in the right areas.

And Rola, like me, is considered by many to be the village crazy lady. Seeing this devastation around her, and feeling no power to change a broken system from the inside, and being just one woman, one doctor, she took it upon herself to crowdfund an entire hospital. And it worked.

And she’s done so much more since then, you’ll hear all about it in the podcast.

There is one thing. She is helping fundraise right now, right here, to put early warning systems into 150 Syrian schools. And these early warning systems will help alert students and teachers to aerial bombings, so that they can get out of the building in time. And a few minutes is all it takes to be able to alert these kids in a school to run away, and not get bombed and killed, and this is Rola’s mission right now. This specific fundraiser, to get money to make sure these alert systems get into schools and hospitals, so that innocent kids don’t have to die.

I have never before put out a podcast, and also put out my hand to fundraise on behalf of one of my guests, but I’m doing it now, and I offered to do it with Rola, it wasn’t her idea, it was mine, because it is such a specific, immediate, and desperate ask. And I know this community, and when this community motivates, we can get stuff done. So Rola is donating the money that she would have been paid for this podcast back to the charity, I’m taking a chunk of this episode’s Patreon profit and donating it back, and I am asking you, listening, to kick in 10, 20, 50 dollars, and send it to Rola’s crowdfunding mission. It’s called SaveSyriasSchools.org, it’ll be plastered all over the podcast notes.

And I hope after you’ve heard the podcast, you’ll understand why it’s so important. And you guys, this is some heavy shit. It’s COVID, we’re all exhausted. Some people are financially tapped. It is totally understandable if you feel unable, and have no capacity to even listen to this conversation, and these tales of suffering, and war, in a far off land, in an unfamiliar culture. And

I talk all the time about self care, and self protection, and right now, with what is going on in all of your lives, even more so.

But our worldviews are always limited by our perspective. What we know. The stories we hear. One of the reasons that I started this podcast was just so I, myself, could broaden my relative perspective, and take you with me. So at the very least, listen. Listen to these stories, donate if you can. If you can’t, tweet. Send the Save Syria’s Schools call to action onto your social networks if you can. And maybe don’t just post the link, but tell the stories that Rola is gonna tell you. Share the stories of these kids in Syria.

And as Rola says in the episode, this isn’t just about what’s happening in Syria, the sad, faraway land that some of you may never go to. It’s about something bigger. Because if we turn our backs, this could happen where you live. What would you want someone to do for you? For your family? For the kids in your school? Think about it that way.

And with that, I give you Dr. Rola Hallam.

Dr. Rola, thank you so much for joining us today.

MUSIC BREAK – There Will Be No Intermission

Rola 08:46

Thank you for having me, I’m honoured to be here.

Amanda 08:49

You are a fucking punk rock doctor. I’m just gonna start with that. And even today, when we were talking about what to title the episode, and I was like, can we say that you’ve pimped a hospital, crowdfunded a hospital into existence, and you’re sort of like a crowdfunding hospital pimp? And we were like, God, the doctor’s gonna be offended. You wrote back and you said, let’s just call it The Fuckery of Philanthropy. And I’m like, I love this human being.

The first thing I want to start with is ‘The Conflict in Syria for Dummies’. And I want you to pretend that there is a 14 year old American teenager girl listening to this podcast in suburban Wisconsin, America, who only knows the word Syria vaguely as a place far away where maybe something bad has happened, because she heard it on the TV. And what can you tell, in the simplest terms, especially given that it’s the 10th anniversary of the conflict in Syria, what can you tell that teenage girl about what has happened? And who you are, and where you come from?

Rola 10:11

So before when I would think about Syria, I would think about the smell of falafel opposite my grandmother’s house, or the wafting of spices from the old souk, or walking in the ancient old Damascus, which is just so beautiful. And that all changed in 2011, when peaceful protesters

started chanting for freedom and dignity. We’ve been under a dictatorship for decades by the Assad regime. And as part of the so-called Arab Spring, people decided enough was enough. The poor were getting poorer, the very few who are rich were getting filthy rich. The classic story of corruption, and bleeding your country dry, and people had had enough. And so it erupted with peaceful protests, and my cousin who was there used to tell me it was jubilant. He said it was like a festival, he said it was men, women, and children. Music, chanting, dancing, food. People had broken through the fear barrier, and were literally calling for freedom and dignity. And that carried on for a few days, and then a few weeks, and then slowly but surely, the regime decided to meet that with tanks, and guns, and crack down on the protesters, to quell this uprising.

But it was too late. People like Assad had lost the fear barrier, and they kept going to the streets, more and more of them. And the regime had taken a bunch of 13 year olds who had written on their school ‘Down With Assad.’ And he had rounded up these 12 and 13 year olds, tortured them to death, and returned them to their families, as ‘thou shall not speak against the regime.’ The boy was called Hamza. And that really kicked off mass protests across the country.

And as the protests grew, the bloody crackdown grew, and the defense, then people started to want to defend themselves. And so where my family are from is from a city called Homs. It’s the third largest city. And I don’t know if you remember back in 2012, do you remember Marie Colvin, the journalist who was killed in Syria? She was there with them. Yeah, she was there with a photographer called Paul Conroy and where they had been, they’d snuck themselves into one of these civilian enclaves that were surrounded by the regime. And basically they were massacring civilians who had dared to go up against them, and that’s how she was killed, God rest her soul, and how he was severely injured, and that’s where my family are from. And that’s when we lost more than 30 members of my family.

Amanda 13:18

Before we go too far, it is really important to point out, we’re in the middle of another crisis, a giant global pandemic. COVID is ravaging everyone, and everyone’s attention span, and ability to care about fucking anything outside their bubble. What has that meant for something like the conflict in Syria, where it doesn’t care if there’s a pandemic raging, it’s still happening? What have you felt around your own fatigue, and the fatigue, and the ears and hearts of people who you’re trying to tell these stories to? What is happening?

Rola 14:00

Hmm, such a great question. I think, unfortunately, there was already Syria fatigue before the pandemic. We’re talking about 10 years of it now, right? And I think there is something so devastating to each one of us when we talk about war, that we can’t, not only can we not fathom it and understand it, but it’s so dark, right? This idea that we are killing each other. It’s not a natural disaster. It’s not a virus, it’s not an earthquake, it’s not just a freak chance, or a freak accident. We’re murdering each other. And so I think the natural human tendency is like, I don’t want to talk about that. I don’t want to hear about that. I don’t want to see that. Because if you think about it, we do that within ourselves, right? How often do we deny our so-called negative

feelings or emotions, or our so-called shadows or darkness? How much of our lives do we spend running away from our shame, from our anger, from whatever it is that we don’t want to see in ourselves? And so it is outside as it is inside.

And so I think that that was sadly already there, and then, yeah, you get to the pandemic, and my God, I can’t get anyone to want to talk about it or hear it. Even though, here’s the thing, the world’s crises march on, whether you’re talking about the racial issues in the US, or you’re talking about ongoing sexism, and the need for the Me Too movement, or the climate change,. There have always been multiple frontlines, and there still are multiple frontlines, it’s just that we now have a unified, as it were, frontline, that we’re all having to deal with. And so yeah, it absolutely has, I think, made it so super difficult to cut through people’s attention, and get it to their hearts and minds. And I think that’s where the power of storytelling comes.

Amanda 16:05

I saw you doing an interview with Trevor Noah, on a television interview, and you actually said something really incredible, that stopped me in my tracks, about the idea of Syria as a microcosm, and especially given what’s going on globally, politically, right now, do you feel like you have an even more powerful perspective on the fact that if we’re letting this happen there, it’s not going to be long before it’s happening in your own backyard? And do you look around at the UK, look around at the States, and go, do you guys understand that this isn’t just over here, it isn’t just these brown people in this teeny little country that you’ll never have to care about, like, if you don’t pay attention, this is going to come and this is gonna come for you. Do you see that?

Rola 17:06

Of course. I mean, it’s so blindingly obvious to me that I don’t see how the decision makers don’t see this. We protect hospitals, and enshrine them in the international humanitarian law, because what protects one protects all. It’s there for our collective safety. And if you start to say it is okay to bomb a hospital over there, that is a signal that it’s okay to bomb hospitals full stop. And actually, that is what’s happening. The hospitals are being bombed in more places, even the school bombings. I talk about bombings of schools in Syria, bombings and attacks on schools have happened to 93 countries in the last five years.

So we mustn’t let these injustices, and these war crimes, and crimes against humanity, to become the norm. We must absolutely, every day, at an individual, and a collective, level, be protecting these, because it’s when it breaks for one, it breaks for all.

Amanda 18:10

Well, and maybe if the pandemic has one giant silver lining, it might actually smack people awake to the idea that there actually really is a wider collective. And that if you don’t pay attention to hospitals being bombed in Syria, that is actually, you can look at it as a kind of a self interest. And now with the eye-opening perspective on how interconnected we are, given what’s happened with the virus, maybe this will actually be a little bit of a wake up call for people.

Rola 18:50

Oh, absolutely, I think that’s exactly what the message I hope is to most people. What happens to someone in China matters to someone in the US, and it matters to someone in the UK, and it matters to someone in Syria, because we are all interconnected.

While solutions must be local, there has to be a global effort. And that is what we’re seeing right now, to some extent, but with just so much selfishness still at play, which just feels incredulous, really, but I really do hope that everyone does see this beautiful interconnectedness. And actually, it’s not something to fear. It’s something to rejoice at, and just understand, actually, just understand, and be with, and see, how do we make the most of that?

MUSIC BREAK – You’d Think I’d Shot Their Children

Amanda 19:54

I have come up with a new catchy phrase for crowdfunding and patronage that is not at all catchy, but it is: ‘the entire system is fucked, and maybe someday we’ll fix it, but for now, please do this.’ It’s not very catchy! But it’ll do for now.

Rola 20:09

Maybe if you put a tune to it or something.

Amanda 20:10

Oh God, I can go talk to my branding and marketing department.

And where were you? Because you’ve been based in the UK, so what’s your relationship between Syria, what was happening there, and being in the UK, and how much of that time have you been in Syria versus living in the UK, and working as a doctor in the UK, or in Syria?

Rola 20:36

So my childhood was in Syria. I was in Syria from when I was like, 2, till I was 12. And so it’s very much, my childhood is all about Syria, and playing with my hundreds of cousins.

And then when the war kicked off, I was in England. I was a trainee anesthesiologist, and I was working full time as a doctor in the National Health Service. And my father, my sister, and my brother were in Damascus, were in Syria at the time of the revolution, and then the war. And it was a crazy time, because the security device of the regime is so strong, is very much like the kind of Gestapo, where phones are monitored. And so, I would be seeing on the screen all of this massacre of civilians going on in our hometown, and getting messages about our family getting killed. And when I’m speaking to my dad, he’s like, ‘Everything’s fine! Yeah, don’t worry, everything’s fine! No, they’re just exaggerating!’ and like, we had to develop code words, so that I would know when I needed to send money, or when I needed to do anything, because you couldn’t actually openly speak about it.

Amanda 21:50

And did you go? Take me back to 2011, 2012, 2013, did you physically leave the UK and go to Syria, back to your hometown, or at all, to see with your eyes what was happening?

Rola 22:03

Yeah, absolutely. So from what I was telling you about, when they started to attack civilians, it then just literally just went across the whole country. And one of my things that pisses me off the most is calling it a civil war, because it’s not. Civil war means there’s two sides killing each other. This is a war on civilians. This is a war, by a regime, on its own people, trying to stifle their freedom, and trying to stifle their voice, and trying to stifle their call for freedom.

So I did the only thing I knew I could, and I joined the humanitarian effort. My raison d’etre has always been about helping people have access to health care, it’s all been about, life is precious, we need to protect it and save it. And so I joined that humanitarian effort, and so I would take holiday from my hospital job in London, and on my holiday, I would go on medical missions to northern Syria.

Amanda 23:05

And what was it like?

Rola 23:11

I remember the first time that I went, and I was at the border area, and I was with a Syrian-led organization, and there was a bunch of us doctors who were going to go on a medical mission, and it was the first time we were going. And just like, about an hour before we were about to go in, they said, ‘Have you got a will?’ I was like… no? He’s like, ‘You should probably write a will.’ I was like, okay. That was sobering.

Because I’d really, genuinely not thought about going in and dying. I just like, I’m gonna go, and I’m going to be a doctor, and I’m going to do what I can. But it sounds stupid, because you’re going to a dangerous war zone, but genuinely, I hadn’t thought that was gonna happen.

So I did, wrote a will, there and then. And in we went.

And I’d been dying to go back to my home, to do what I can, for my bleeding homeland. But when I went there, it didn’t look like home, it didn’t feel like home. It was unrecognizable. I just saw just thousands of homeless people who were just destitute, looking at me with just such desperation in their eyes, just crowding around you, people just carrying their children, just looking at me, like, please help us, please help us, we need shelter, I need medicine, just like a cacophony of sounds and voices, and pleas. And that was just the beginning. That was just, you’ve just come in. And I hadn’t even at that point gone anywhere near the front lines yet.

I remember this one guy who had said to me, he said, ‘Please don’t see me looking dirty, and smelling, and thinking that I’m nothing. I’m a teacher. I used to have a home. We had a happy life. We had two cars. And that’s all gone. We have nothing now.’ And he was carrying three children, and he’s like, ‘I’m not asking for a handout. Please help me to find a job. I can translate, I’m an English teacher, I speak English really well. Help me survive.’

And that’s what I’ve seen throughout this whole experience, is the reason that people survive in crisis is because of the local doctors, nurses, and aid workers. It’s because of the people themselves, who don’t want a handout, they want a hand to help themselves.

Amanda 26:01

Wow. I’ve looked at a lot of your talks, and a big part of your story is what happened in 2013, when there was an aerial bombing in Aleppo. And so, to understand the story of your work, and what is happening now, in 2013, you managed to get some media covering this, and the BBC came to do a documentary called Saving Syria’s Children. And there was an aerial bombing, a school bombing, outside Aleppo, and something happened, and I want you to tell that story.

Rola 26:44

So, a few weeks before that, I was on one of my medical missions, and I was just walking around an internally displaced people’s camp, having just come from one of the frontlines where a bakery had just been bombed, and there was just pieces of bodies everywhere, and I just called up one of my friends who was a doctor, and a humanitarian, and also she wore a media hat, Dr. Saleyha, and I was like, where the fuck are the journalists? Why aren’t they here, seeing what I’m seeing, and reporting on the humanitarian situation, reporting on the civilian suffering that I’m seeing, instead of reporting the bang bang stories that they’re always putting out?

Amanda 27:27

And by the bang bang stories, you mean the frontlines, and the people engaged in conflict?

Rola 27:31

Yeah, basically, just always talking about the military, always talking about the politics, always talking about this, this force versus this force. The people who caught, and were suffering as a result of it, were ordinary people, and that story wasn’t being told. And that’s what I was dealing with. And that, to me, was all that mattered.

I feel like it confuses the matter when you talk about sides, because it becomes a political discussion, or a military discussion, but you forget that actually, children were dying as a result of it. So I really wanted to focus the conversation on that.

And so, with the BBC crew in tow, we went off to northern Syria. And this is now August 2013. They were essentially filming me as I went round, and doing my normal medical mission. I was then the medical director for a Syrian-led organization called Hand In Hand For Syria, and I was

going around our different facilities, doing quality assessments and checks, and going to the various frontlines in the area, to see what medical services or or health aid they needed.

And for context, just five days earlier was that giant chemical weapons attack that had happened in Damascus, the one that Mr. Obama at the time had said was a red line, and that that was the red line for the United States of America, and that there was going to now be repercussions as a result of it. So we’re in that timeframe.

So on this day, we’re at one of the hospitals that I had helped to set up. And the first thing that happens is a seven month old baby comes in with burns. And so we’re treating the child, and then before I knew it, there was just an outpouring, and just dozens and dozens of severely burned children, teenagers, started to come through our doors.

It’s a day that’s etched on my heart, mind, and soul. And I’ve told the story so many times, but I think I’ve told it before as a doctor, and a humanitarian, but now I’m a mother. And now it just hurts in a way that is very different. Because now, I somehow have started to feel the pain of the parents in a way that I thought I felt before, but I now know I hadn’t gone anywhere near, until I now have my own daughter.

So they start pouring in, and quickly the room fills with an awful smell of burnt flesh, and the temperature rises really high, and they’re covered in this white powder dust, and because of this chemical weapons attack that had happened just days earlier, we had no idea what we were dealing with. At that point, we had zero intel, I’m like, what the fuck is this? And I just remember, for a second, pausing and going, this might be the day I die.

Okay. Carry on. No time to dwell on that thought.

And in the UK, in the US, anywhere with a good health system, you would have the tools, the equipment, the medicines that you need in order to treat that mass casualty. That day, I had the ability, and the knowledge, to administer potentially life-saving treatment to these kids. But that day, I didn’t have these things. I didn’t have the oxygen, I didn’t have enough painkillers, I didn’t have enough ventilators, I didn’t have any ambulances. These kids were arriving in the back of a pickup, and we were sending them on in the back of a pickup, it was completely shoddy, Something that no one would ever accept for their own child, you know?

And they were all so severely burnt, that I knew that most of them weren’t gonna survive.

Amanda 32:18

There was a story, I just want to make sure you tell it, because I saw you tell it somewhere else, but there was the story of one boy, and what happened, and what you asked him when he came to you, can you tell that story?

Rola 32:42

So, I’d love for people to just go and see the documentary, Saving Syria’s Children, because seeing it is gonna just tell you so much more than I could possibly describe.

But I remember seeing this boy walk in, and I’d never seen anything like it. He came in with his arms up in front of him. Do you remember that famous picture of the Vietnam War, and the Napalmed little girl, she comes out with her arms in front, and he was a bit like this. And he was so severely burned that he looked like a tree trunk. It was just unbelievable. And it looked like it was some kind of Hollywood scene. Honestly, it looked just so incredulous, and I was incredulous he was alive, and walking towards me, and I didn’t know what to say, except, ‘how are you?’

And he replied, ‘Hamdulillah,’ which means I’m fine, thank God. And he’d obviously had internal burns, as well as the external burns, which is why he could barely speak, and I knew that he had just minutes, maybe an hour, to live. That’s it. And I knew that, really, considering how many patients we had, and how few doctors and nurses we were, that I probably should have just, we would have just said, that patient, it’s futile to try and treat them, because they’re not going to survive. But I knew he was gonna choke to death because of the burns, and so I treated him so he would just slip away quietly without choking, and he was one of eleven children who died that day.

Amanda 34:44

‘How are you?’ is a really weird question right now. I have just been noticing, when you know someone is suffering, when it’s so obvious that someone is suffering, that question really changes. And when I heard you telling that story, because I was watching this video of you a few days ago, that situation is so extreme, the most extreme, and the most tragic, and the most suffering that you could imagine, especially with this being a child.

But it made me think about the weird poetry of that question nowadays, because nowadays, that question comes up all the time, every time I talk to a friend, a relative, someone who’s now been in lockdown for 12 months. And you ask someone, how are you? And then there’s always this pause.

And I also think, in our culture, in your British culture, and American culture, I don’t know about Syrian culture, there’s almost two questions. There’s like, am I asking how you really are? Or am I just saying, hi, I am authenticating your existence and making a sound?

Rola 36:11

Absolutely.

Amanda 36:13

So that you know that, even if you’re an hour away from dying, I care about you. And maybe that really should be the greeting that we evolve towards, which is instead of saying, hi, how are you, you just say, hi, I care about you.

Rola 36:27

I like that.

Amanda 36:28

Which is sort of more or less what you were trying to say to him.

Rola 36:35

I think it’s all about how you say something as well. Like, ‘how are you?’ is different to saying, ‘how are you going?’, ‘how’s it going?’ How are you in a more nonchalant kind of way. There’s one where you’re genuinely interested to hear, and one where it’s like, I’m ticking a box.

Amanda 36:53

Absolutely. In my hometown of Boston, Massachusetts, the colloquial greeting is how are you? And it’s even like, at a coffee shop, when you go into Dunkin Donuts in the airport, the woman behind the table says ‘Hi, how are you?’ And you say, ‘I would like a bagel,’ and she says, ‘Okay,’ to the point where it’s devoid of all meaning. But also, that’s what happens with language, and we’re getting off topic, but we’re not, because this is actually what we’re talking about.

So, at that point, you were a doctor, you were going over there, you were doing these acts of humanitarianism as a doctor. You were presumably purportedly working under other umbrellas, right? You were sort of aligning with nonprofits, I assume, aligning with organizations, you weren’t just packing your bag, getting on a plane, taking a taxi to the middle of the conflict, and saying, hey, how can I help? You had an organization and an umbrella, presumably, around you.

And fast forwarding to 2016, and there was a bombing at a hospital with children, and this moved the needle for you, and what you decided to do. So can you tell that story, and take us through that?

Rola 38:16

What happened in that school bombing really shook me. And the main lesson that I took away from that was that if we truly wanted to save lives on the frontlines, we needed to put the resources in the hands of those who are saving lives, and that was the frontline health workers. That’s the local doctors and nurses who are from the hardest affected community.

And from my experience, that was not where the resources were. There were, and still are, billions of dollars that pour into the humanitarian system, and then there are so many large, huge institutions that take huge chunks of that money, and very little of it arrives at the front lines. And so I was still, as you said, kind of going and coming between Syria and the UK, with various different Syrian-led organizations, and in that time had helped to build six hospitals in the north of the country, because the one thing that a lot of people don’t seem to know, despite

everything, is that our healthcare system was being targeted. Hospitals were being purposefully bombed. Doctors and nurses were being purposefully killed.

Amanda 39:40

Why? Why?

Rola 39:44

Well, in one video, one of the regime competents had said, if you kill a doctor, it’s like killing a thousand civilians. It makes perfect sense, if you are trying to terrorize your population. It makes perfect sense when you know the framing is a war on civilians, because what you’re trying to do is bomb civilians and civilian structures, and how else can you terrorize people than say we’re gonna bomb you, and there’s nowhere that is safe for you, not a hospital, even. And so, Physicians For Human Rights, who are a US-based human rights organization, say that they’ve got the evidence of nearly 400 healthcare facilities that have been bombed, and nearly 900 healthcare workers who’ve been killed. And, imagine this, 40% of them under torture.

MUSIC BREAK – You Know The Statistics

Amanda 40:48

And so, you’re in the midst of all of this horror, but there might be the sense that help is on the way, because, great, the BBC came, and was all of a sudden covering it, and the world’s eyes will be watching the horror, and the attack on health workers, but was that the case? Did that happen? Did all of a sudden the world start to care deeply about what was going on? Because clearly, it didn’t fix, and it’s now 2021, and we’re 10 years in.

Rola 41:15

Yeah, I don’t know if it was my naivete back then, but I’d hoped, I guess, thought, assumed, that if the world truly saw the horror that was going on, how children were being burnt, I thought world leaders would act. And so, when Mr. Obama said, this is a red line, and we’re going to do something, I remember my dad calling me and saying like, ‘Obama’s gonna bomb, they’ve mobilized the Navy, you need to get out.’ And I was like, well, I’m kind of needed here right now. Plus, I didn’t really believe this was gonna happen.

And so the documentary goes out, and… and nothing. Everyone sees it, a lot of people cried, I’m sure, millions, probably. But no decision makers did anything. Obama’s red line turned into a green light for the Assad regime, and the Russian, and the Iranian, and every Tom, Dick and Harry who was killing civilians, to continue.

And so, meanwhile, obviously, I just carried on. And one thing that so many people don’t know is that I was having to build hospitals, and rebuild hospitals, and so were my colleagues, because hospitals were being bombed. They were being targeted, they were being strategically destroyed as a weapon of war. Not accidentally, not like, oops, sorry, the bomb fell, it wasn’t meant to be there, it was meant to go to a bakery, or school! It was actually as a weapon of war.

So Physicians for Human Rights, a US-based human rights organization, they’ve been documenting this for the last 10 years, and they’ve documented nearly 500 attacks on healthcare facilities, and about 900 of my colleagues have been killed, 40% of them under torture. And they say that 90% of these killings and these bombings are by the Syrian regime.

And so, the crazy thing, when my friends and my colleagues and I were trying to rebuild hospitals, we would literally be asking ourselves, where might this hospital not get bombed? I mean, what the fuck? No one should be having to ask a question like that, right?

Amanda 43:43

Does such a place exist? Can we put a hospital in a place where it can’t get bombed? A hospital is big.

Rola 43:49

Yeah, I mean, literally, we were having to then, like, we put a hospital in the duty-free area, literally between the Turkish border and the Syrian border, because it was as close to Turkey as we could get it, and we kind of thought that maybe the regime wouldn’t go as far as doing that, although we did get one bomb there. We built a hospital in a cave, we’ve built hospitals underground, we were literally needing to hide ourselves, creating what we called field hospitals, which was kind of taking over villas and houses and things like that, and turning them into makeshift healthcare facilities, so that we could try and treat patients in relative safety, because it wasn’t a known hospital.

But it’s not enough. It’s not protective enough. And so, fast forward to 2016, and now we’re talking about Aleppo, and the siege of Aleppo. So, again, one of the big tactics of the regime was the sort of siege, starve, and surrender tactics. So it would besiege an area, it would starve it, like in medieval times, and then just before they’re all gonna die, then you say, okay, you’re gonna be nice now? Okay, fine, we’re gonna let you out.

And so they had bombed, in the space of five days, several hospitals, including a children’s hospital. And I will never forget the footage I had got of the head nurse, who had literally just ran into the special care baby unit, and was grabbing babies out of incubators, putting them under her armpit and trying to get them to safety before she broke down in tears.

She’s an incredible woman, you need to know her story. She’s called Malakeh, which means Angel. And she really is an angel. She’s seen so much, and been through so much, yet she always has a smile on her face. She’s been injured 10 times. Not just like, I’ve cut my finger. Like, concussion, broken spine, hit her skull, major life-threatening injuries. The kind that, after one, you’d be like, fuck this, I’m packing my bags, I’m out of here, if you even get that far. And she would recover, and go back to the front line. She would recover, and go back. She was just so dedicated to saving children’s lives.

And one day this hospital gets bombed for the fifth and final time, and I was furious. I was so angry. I remember when I was getting all this news, I don’t know if you’ve felt this, have you ever felt so angry, like you just didn’t know what to do with yourself? You’re just stomping around just like, I don’t know whether to scream, or shout, or hit myself, or hit something, hit someone. What do you do with… There’s just the egregious injustice of it. And the fact it had been happening for years. For years. Everyone knows it, everyone knows this is going on, and standing by going, ooh, that’s bad, isn’t it?

Amanda 47:24

And so what did you do?

Rola 47:30

Well, I spent a good two days just being angry. I just couldn’t get out of that, sending various ‘what the fuck?’ messages to people, and just couldn’t think, I was just so out of my mind with the frustration of just, there we were, literally sweating blood and tears to build hospitals, and try and save lives, and they just kept bombing them, and in everyone’s view.

But one thing that I’ve really learned through this journey is that anger never solves anything. I hear it so much at various conferences, events, activists calling each other to be angry, we should be more angry about this, let’s be angry. But the thing is, that’s just part of the story, right? We must feel the anger, we must allow it.

Amanda 48:28

It’s a motivator.

Rola 48:31

Yeah, it has to be there. But anger is like fire, if it’s well contained, it can be positive, it can warm you up. But if you don’t then keep it in check, or transform it, then it will burn you, and it will burn everything, and it will be a destructive force. And so it’s always about like, what I’ve learned is you have to feel it, and allow it, and accept it, and not judge yourself. But then you have to either let it go, or you have to transform it. And you have to lead from that transformed place, which is love. Because that’s how you heal. That’s how you change. You can’t lead and charge with anger.

Amanda 49:19

This is so true about fucking everything. I mean, war, countries, politics, the pandemic, marriage, your relationship with your kids, everything.

Rola 49:33

Everything. Racial injustice, sexism, everything. Yes, we have to feel the anger, and allow it, but it’s not where you lead from, it has to be harnessed, and changed. And so, after a few days of fury, I managed to connect back into love, and, okay, why am I doing this, and what’s the purpose? It’s like, okay, to save lives. And then it was like, okay, right, that’s it. Well, if

governments are not going to stop the bombs from falling, well, we’re not going to stop from saving lives, so we are going to rebuild this goddamn hospital. And you know what, we’re not going to just rebuild it, we’re going to take all the hospital equipment all the way from England to Syria, in a convoy. If the governments are failing, the people will take charge. And so I launched The People’s Convoy, with 38 other organizations and partners, and everyone thought I’d lost my mind.

Amanda 50:33

So this is the story that brought us together. So you crowdfunded a hospital. And I mean, that is so beyond the boundaries of my imagination, that I need a little bit of information, and also to understand, why crowdfund a hospital, especially if there’s a chance that that hospital is going to get bombed, why not just let the government spend another million dollars, or someone else spend another million dollars? Why crowdfund the people’s money, your community’s money, into a hospital that might just get bombed again? What was the difference? What was the difference between working within the system, and going fuck the system, I’m gonna just do this off grid? Why? Why did you do that?

Rola 51:27

I just felt very strongly that governments had so very clearly failed. They’d been watching this unfolding, and doing very little to solve the root cause issue. They’ve been just throwing a plaster at it, instead of using diplomacy, and any other options to protect civilians. So there’s that.

But I think the other thing that most people don’t appreciate, and I didn’t know it until I got involved in the humanitarian response, was that the humanitarian system is broken. The humanitarian system is not fit for purpose. The humanitarian system is generally led by huge, bureaucratic, multinational organizations, that frankly still operate in a colonial way. It still has that white man, white woman, going somewhere to save poor brown and Black people. And my experience of it in Syria was that it was slow, and cumbersome. And I would be calling up all of these charities at the beginning, and saying, help, we need help, can you do this, that and the other, and they’re like, okay, well… Yeah, sure.

Amanda 52:43

Send it up the chain.

Rola 52:44

Yeah, send it up the chain. And literally, I’d be having the same conversation like, 3, 4, 5 months later. I’m not joking. And I’m like, I hate to tell you this, but it’s a fucking war zone, the bombs are dropping now, not in five months time. Like, we need action now. And so, I wanted speed.

And I also wanted to help to harness that people power. Because I knew that a lot of people cared, I knew there was a lot of us who were sitting there going, watching it unfolding on the news, and not knowing what to do. And I knew that, from my experience, the most impactful,

and cost effective, and cost efficient, way to save lives was, let’s get the resources to those who need it, those frontline health workers, let’s help them to rebuild a hospital, because that’s what’s going to help us to save lives.

Amanda 53:33

What year was this? What year did you launch this crowdfunding campaign, this was 2016?

Rola 53:37

So this is December 2016. And I’d never done a crowdfunder before.

Amanda 53:41

So what did you know, at that point, about crowdfunding? What did you feel about crowdfunding? Were you afraid? Did people tell you, this is crazy, this is stupid, this is greedy, this won’t work? Paint me the picture of what it was like going into the concept of crowdfunding, and maybe what did you think was gonna happen? And what did happen? And especially tell me about the blowback, because there must have been at least some, if not some criticism, some cynicism.

Rola 54:13

Yeah, there always is. So I’d already been looking into crowdfunding, because of all the reasons that we had just mentioned, and I just kept hearing from people like, I want to help, but I don’t know how, and I’m fed up of giving my money to charity, and not knowing where it went, and how much of it arrived, and what good it did, it feels very disconnecting. So I was like, okay, how about if we connected people who cared from around the world directly to those on the front lines, and channeled the resources directly there, cut out all of that middlemen, all of the…

Amanda 54:51

Skip the UNHCR.

Rola 54:54

Control Alt Delete, just delete the United Nations and all of that stuff, let’s just get it straight to the frontline, from people who cared. And so, it was already an idea that I loved, but I had no experience of it, and so that was very much my test case. I was like, I’m gonna try it, and if it flops, then I’ll have to try something else. And you know, it was a huge amount that we were wanting to raise, it was like £90,000, and I know that most crowdfunding campaigns are like, give me 500 bucks to make a poster or whatever. And so, I knew we were asking for a lot, but I just thought, sod it, you don’t ask, you don’t get, so let’s try, this is really important.

And I also thought, we’ll galvanize a lot of partner organizations to work on it. And everyone really did think, a lot of people didn’t tell me that they thought it was mad til afterwards, because they didn’t want to freak me out. It was only afterwards that I then got so many emails from people who were participating in it, to go, I really didn’t think you were gonna pull it off, but somehow you did, and it’s really amazing.

People didn’t disappoint. It went viral. And I think it captured people’s imagination. People wanted to do something, and they wanted to do something tangible, and practical. And so off we went, five of us, representatives of the people on the convoy, and we traveled through snow, and we arrived on Christmas Eve with the hospital equipment.

Amanda 56:24

Describe the convoy. This is just a bunch of vehicles carrying hospital equipment?

Rola 56:28

Yeah, it was like two huge trucks filled with incubators, and hospital beds, and ventilators, and serum bags, and stethoscopes, and everything you can imagine a children’s hospital might need, we packed it into the vans, and then we were three humanitarians, and Paul Conroy, who is the journalist who was with Marie Colvin when she passed on, and off we went, and catalogued our journey as we we traveled there.

And it was incredible, because the campaign was still running as we were going, and so we were getting all of these updates as someone was throwing in 10 grand, and then someone else threw in 30 grand, and before we knew it, we were at 150% of our target, which just seemed just unbelievable, and it was so… It felt so healing, actually, it felt so healing. Because I, and so many Syrians, had been feeling unheard, unseen, and uncared for. Literally, the world has been seeing us being butchered, burnt, gassed, bombed, every mechanism of death has been tried, and everyone’s going, ooh, that looks bad, let’s bring another bag of popcorn, shall we? Keep watching this saga on TV. And so, for thousands of people to come together and say, I hear you, I see you, and I’m standing together with you, in solidarity of your efforts to save lives, it was huge. In a way that it doesn’t feel like that when it’s a government grant or something like that. It’s energising.

MUSIC BREAK – Remember The Fair Ma

Amanda 58:30

There’s something extraordinary about that, because that’s my experience, and many artists’, and musicians’, experience with direct patronage. Our work is very different, but in a weird way, that’s the same story that I’ve heard from any artist who has been… There’s a difference between being the recipient of a government grant, or getting signed by a major label, and selling a bunch of copies of a record, versus having 10,000 people literally pull out their wallets and say, you. I’ll give this to you for your work, because I see you. And trying to describe how that emotionally feels different from, hey, we got a call from the UN, and they’re gonna give us half a million dollars, and you’re like, okay, and just not being able to feel the humanity, the actual connected humanity. And this is something that I find myself trying to explain, and describe to people, over, and over, and over again, about a direct system of patronage, because it’s just hard to describe how, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a doctor or a musician, knowing that your community is right there saying, yes, we’re here to help, we got you, is really different from

going, I’ve been authenticated from above, and I’ve got my check, and I’m gonna go off and do my job.

And yet, there’s a couple of dark sides here. One is, and I just want to ask you these two questions, because I can’t imagine that on your side, it’s that much different from my side. Is there a feeling that, by going off grid and saying, the fucking government’s broken, the system is broken, we’ll just do it ourselves, which also, speaking of the patriarchy, and a bunch of women going, fuck it, it’s just not working, we’ll just figure it out, that it’s almost a darker tragedy, that this is what we’re reduced to. That as amazing, and as inspirational, as these stories are, this is what it’s come to. That the system is so broken. And with all of our wealth, and all of our academia, and all of our intelligence, and all of our evolution as a human species, it’s come down to one really, really smart, brave, I just don’t give a fuck if you think this is a crazy idea, woman, doctor, who goes, there’s got to be a better way. And that, in a weird way, your exceptionalism almost proves the rule of how incredibly broken the system is.

Rola 61:36

It’s so bad.

Amanda 61:40

And I don’t even know how you’re gonna answer that question, but maybe that’s just…

Rola 61:44

Okay, so the ODI, the Overseas Development Institute, is a British think tank, and they just straight up said in a report two years ago, the humanitarian system is ineffective, inefficient, and not fit for purpose. Boo.

Just to give a little bit more context, so in the Syria context, the data shows that Syrian humanitarians and aid workers and medics do 75% of the humanitarian work.

Amanda 62:14

Wow.

Rola 62:16

Yeah, which is the first thing, right? Most people don’t know that, most people are like, oh, yeah, I think it’s Save The Children, and the UN, and all of these things, and it’s not. They do a really good job in refugee countries where it’s safer, but they do a really, really bad job of being in country where the bombs are falling. And so Syrian humanitarians are doing 75% of their work, but they’re getting 1% of the budget.

Amanda 62:42

Wow. And the budget, whose budget? Which budget? What’s the budget?

Rola 62:48

So, this will be governmental budget, so this will be member states of the United Nations, for example. They will each be giving a chunk of money that goes towards a humanitarian response, and then that will get distributed. And most of the money basically goes to various UN organizations, and then some of the bigger international NGOs, like the International Red Cross, for example.

Now, don’t get me wrong, these organizations all do good work, and they are filled with incredible people, but they are huge, gigantic bureaucracies that have become self serving, and spend money in order to maintain their existence. And so the question has long stopped being, how do we best serve this affected community? The system should be saying, hey guys, you’re in a war zone, you’re up shit creek, what do you need? How can we help you? Tell us how we can assist you, and we will help you. But it doesn’t do that. From New York, it says, I know what we’re gonna do, we’re gonna build a hospital there, and we’re gonna put a clinic there. And hey, do you guys want to do that for us? We’ve got the money!

Amanda 64:04

So I have a question about, right around this, and I think we’re also just seeing this with civilization in general, communities in general, systems in general. How much of this is just about scale? And you must think about this all the time, because you can be efficient when you’re small, lean, mean, human-being-trusted. And then the minute things sort of start to balloon out, you wind up with the giant, bumbling, stumbling, inefficient bureaucracy of a huge government that can’t really take care of its people, as we’re seeing all over the world right now. And giant systems, like if we want to take the parallel back to the arts industry, the music industry, giant systems that have just lost the plot, don’t serve the purpose of making art, inspiring people, connecting people, because it’s so messy, and so profit-driven, with no accountability anywhere, that it just doesn’t work. And do you think about that, because you must constantly be tempted to scale up, hire more people, build more hospitals. And do you think about that scale as it relates to system, and how you will keep yourself able to respond today, instead of six months from now, because all of a sudden, I’ve got a board, and I’ve got to check with these people, and we’ve got to do this, and by the time you get around to it, the children are dead, and the hospital’s been bombed. Where do you see yourself, you’re at this moment in the story, where you’re actively trying to do this work so that you can respond right now, but is it just a scale issue?

Rola 66:00

Yeah, such a good question. I mean, the thing with scale is these organizations all got big in order to scale their response. But we all know from business, if you’re going to scale, you end up having to basically have a cookie cutter approach. And so you end up with a one size fits all. They will tell you it’s not really like that, but it is really like that. And that’s where it fails, because you can’t respond in Syria, same as in Somalia, same in Sudan, even though they all begin with the letter S. We are different communities! And so that’s where the failure of it happens.

But on the other hand, you do need scale. Because here’s another thing that many people don’t know, is one in five children live in a war zone. That number is rising. And actually, war and conflict drives 80% of humanitarian needs. Most people think humanitarian aid is an earthquake, it’s whatever, it’s a tornado, it’s whatever, it’s some sort of natural disaster.

Amanda 67:09

Drought.

Rola 67:10

But it’s not. Actually most of the conflict, most of the humanitarian response, is driven by conflict. But here’s the thing: most people don’t like giving to conflicts. People like to respond to an earthquake, because it’s a natural disaster, and most people don’t even want to think about war, let alone wanna look at a war, let alone wanna respond to a war.

And so this is where you have this problem with scale, is that the scale of the disaster is gigantic, and so it does need to be met with scale. But you have a failure of that, because you don’t have enough money, and the money that is going in isn’t doing things in an effective way.

But back to me, honestly, this is how I came, I started reading your book, because I was having a bit of an existential crisis about the whole thing, because I had created CanDo, and created the CanDo platform as a crowdfunding platform, with the idea that it was giving these small, nimble, local-led, community-driven humanitarian organizations a chance to connect with a global audience, so that there could be this rapid response, so that there could be this response to that was needs-based, and being delivered by the pillars of the community, in a culturally appropriate way. And it sounded all great, and the People’s Convoy was a great success, so I was like, great, let’s do this.

And five years on, we have been impactful, we’ve reached nearly a million people with seventeen different health projects that we’ve done, and HOPE Hospital for Children that we built with the People’s Convoy, I mean, my God, that’s still going, and it’s treated hundreds of thousands of children now, so that’s people power. They have been saving lives since it opened in April 2017, so it can be really impactful.

But my experience has been two things. A – the structure of setting up a charity as I’ve done it, is itself limiting. Even though we’re small, and nimble, and agile, there’s so much bureaucracy that’s put on you, from the Charity Commission, from this, from that, that actually, it’s crippling to a small organization. This is why these organizations end up getting big, because the whole system is set up to say, we need more paperwork. We need more, we need report on the report about the report about the report. And you need more people to do that. And then you need more money, and so before you know it…

And so yeah, this issue of structure, I’ve even been toying with maybe doing something more like your mechanism with a Patreon-lite program, and saying, okay, who likes the work that I’m

doing? Who’s in this with me? Who wants to get shit done, and build hospitals and save lives with that? Shall we do it more like that, because it’s…

Amanda 70:13

And so much it comes down to you being you, and people trusting you. And that’s the thing, is as soon as it gets out of the bounds of, I trust this person, this entity, even if it’s you and your five doctor friends, once it’s beyond that, and once it’s faceless, and it’s just a billboard saying, ‘People are dying, please give money,’ that’s where you lose people.

And that’s where I think our conversation becomes the most interesting. Because you have probably talked on a million Zoom calls, on a million screens, or news programs, or even podcasts, about this work, and the suffering, and what needs to be done, and I started a crowdfunding system. But you are a human being, who’s also trying to actually do your other job, your main job. You were not put on this earth to just crowdfund things into existence. You’re a doctor. The same way I technically forget most days that I’m a musician, because I spend my whole day doing the hustle.

And now also, like me, you’re the mother of a young child. You just had a baby, right? How old is your baby?

Rola 71:31

Naya is one years old.

Amanda 71:34

So you are trying to be a human being mother, trying to actually do your job as a doctor, and then your side hustle, main hustle, is this system is broken, no one else is fixing it, why the fuck do I have to fix it, but I guess I’ll fix it because no one else is fixing it.

And one of the things that I was even just talking about with my podcast team is like, it would be two fucking women sitting in like the middle of nowhere having this, with teeny children, with no time to do this, having this conversation, because of course we would be. Because when the system is so giantly broken, it would take a couple of women going, I don’t care if you think I’m nuts, I don’t care if you think I’m crazy, I don’t care if I’m going to be the village crazy lady, because I’m just going to go and build a totally off-grid system over there, because I just see a need.

And I guess my question to you as a human being would be, and especially because of the pandemic, how are you? And how are you coping with trying to prioritize spending time with this actual child of yours, that you just gave birth to, plus trying to give birth to a system to save the broken system, plus trying to even just do your actual work? My actual work, that I feel like I haven’t done in a year and a half, is like, sit down, write songs. And if your actual work is like, sit down, heal people, how are you juggling those three things right now? Actually, how are you? Stop crowdfunding for a second.

Rola 73:28

Yeah, exactly. How am I? You know, honestly, I’m variable. My baseline is one of hope and enthusiasm, but I’ve definitely been very variable, and on a rollercoaster.

It’s the 10 year anniversary, right? Honestly, I’m tired. I’m tired of trying to make people care about the fact that hospitals are being bombed, that schools are being bombed, that children are being bombed. I’m tired of having to state these things, I’m tired of having to say these words, but yet, can’t not say them, because they are happening.

And I’ve learned that as a doctor, to save lives, it’s not just about building a hospital, it’s about bearing witness. It’s about telling these stories. It’s about bringing the stories of those who are unheard and unseen, and trying… I’m a storyteller on a mission, right? So that you can, in whichever way, try and create this human connection, that might result in the magic that both you and I know it absolutely can.

But on the other hand, the platform didn’t work, and it’s for the thing that you just said a couple of minutes ago, which is that people would give when it was me asking, but when I connected them to these incredible human beings who were there doing the actual life saving work, I was just sort of being their pimp, their hustler, and working alongside them, obviously, when I can, and helping them to build the hospitals, but when I connected them directly to the people, actually, it then didn’t work. Actually, people would give money…

Amanda 75:20

They missed their charismatic leader!

Rola 75:24

People would only give money when I was on stage, or at a conference, or an event, or they’d hear me on the media, and they would speak, and so I found that really hard, because here I was trying to give people a platform and create that direct connection. And you know what, this was something that the BBC team had said to me back a few years ago, when we were talking about the documentary, and I didn’t want to be in it, actually. I just thought I was gonna say, you should go there, and here and there and speak to these people and go, off you go.

Amanda 75:50

Go film this.

Rola 75:52

And they were like, no, you need to tell this story. I was like, why? They were like, because people listen to people who look and sound like them. And that was such a startling thing for me. As a backpacker who, as a student, used to just literally put all her student savings and go off in a backpack, and relished the variety, and my name, Rola, is the name of a big Bedouin family in the Sahara Desert, I think I’m a Bedouin at heart, and so I never think that you have to

look like me or sound like me for me to give a shit about you, but actually, for a lot of people, unfortunately, it is a thing. So I definitely feel just sad that I have to do that, that the system is so broken that I have to do that.

But motherhood has been incredible. It’s literally been the single most transformative experience of my life, and I’ve been through a warzone. She, I think, has made me a better human, a better activist, and a better doctor. She really has. Just in this one year of being her mum. She’s reminded me about joy.

Amanda 77:20

I feel that way.

Rola 77:21

And she’s reminding me it’s okay to feel joy. Even in the face of suffering.

Amanda 77:25

I feel that way about Ash. I can’t imagine how I would have felt through this last year of the pandemic, if I didn’t have this kid to just constantly pull me out of this global catastrophe, and into like, look at this ant! And I’m just constantly, he’s like a vortex back into the moment. And yeah, children are really handy that way.

Rola 77:56

Amazing! Totally. I’ve sung the Wheels Of The Bus Go Round And Round 20,000 fricking times today.

Amanda 78:04

The wheels on the bus keep going round and round.

Rola 78:08

She loves it.

Amanda 78:09

Are you feeling stretched, just in terms of your priority between doing these gigantic projects, and just spending quality, non-stressed-out time with this baby?

Rola 78:25

One of the things that I’ve learned through this whole process is, finally I’ve learnt it, is self care. I think it literally took me getting pregnant, and realizing how important my health was for her, both when she was in utero, and thereafter as a baby, for me to really, finally understand that my well being is intrinsically linked to the well being of those around me, and to everything I’m trying to do. And so, it really created a mental shift from it being this luxury that I was gonna fit in when I could, to something that was really necessary. And so, for the first time ever, I’ve started to draw boundaries around, okay, I’m finishing at five, because from there on, it’s Naya time. And,

bloody hell, I’m actually doing it. My team are like, what?! This is a new you! And I’m like, I know!

But hey, but it’s really difficult. Because we’re coming up now to this documentary, and this new campaign we’re launching, and I’m finding myself, whereas normally I would have worked till 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, any hour given, now I can’t. Even if I tried, I’m so exhausted that my brain is dysfunctional. So there is a tension, and certainly, often I don’t want to leave her, but then I say to her, Mommy’s going to help save little babies like you. And it makes me feel a bit better about leaving her, when actually I just want to stay with her and sing The Wheels Of The Bus Go Round And Round.

Amanda 80:05

It’s also a really important project, just you know, I will remind you. Both projects are super worthy. That’s the thing, with Ash, I find myself constantly pulled, and I just have to constantly remind myself, it doesn’t matter which project I’m working on, they’re both totally worthy projects, whether it’s Wheels on the Bus time, and looking at grass, or going off and doing save the world shit, or working on my artwork. And that has been a hard level to get to, where I’m not always just looking over the fence at the project that I’m not doing, whether it’s I’m not with the kid, I’m not saving the world, I’m not working on my art, I’m not dealing with my team, I’m not tending to my friendships, whatever. It’s just, on any given day, I’m like, I’m just gonna work on this one, and if I give it my attention, then I’m giving it my attention. I can’t give it half my attention while I’m sort of looking over the fence at the kid, or the world, or whatever. And I’m not saying I’m nailing that every day, it’s still a struggle.

Rola 81:16

It’s still work, right? It’s still work. I used to pride myself on being a multitasker, and then I started meditating and realizing I was being a total dick. Like, what? No! It’s not about multitasking, it’s absolutely not about that. And somehow, in our society, we’ve been taught that that’s how it’s really good, and well done you if you can split your attention 20,000 ways. And now I’m like, no! That’s how you go cuckoo!

Amanda 81:44

No, it’s just fucking us all up.

Rola 81:46

It’s like, no, you try and focus, you pay something attention, and you then move on. But yeah, it’s definitely a challenge. But they’re interlinked, right? Because on the one hand, I want to make the world a beautiful place, or a more beautiful place, for Naya when she grows up. But on the other hand, I want her to grow up being a powerful, conscious woman, who is on the front lines of change, whatever front line she decides to be on. And so you’re right, they’re both essential. So it’s not a case of this is lower than this, or whatever.

Amanda 82:31

Apples and oranges, in a way.

Rola 82:31

It all feeds into one. Because everything is one, everything is connected.

Amanda 82:36

I’ve got a new mantra with Neil, when we’re dealing with, and juggling the household, the kid, the work, the time, and energy, and priorities, and I just keep saying, we’ve got to do one thing at a time right now. Because the two of us are really historically terrible, panic driven multitaskers, where we are convinced that texting on the phone, while talking, while running down the street, is actually really efficient, and it’s just become more, especially with the pandemic, it has just become more and more and more obvious, that we will be more efficient if we stop, look at one another, do one thing at a time. We’ll remember more, we’ll be more considerate to one another. And also, when the 5-year-old is watching you, I don’t want the 5-year-old watching us going like, let’s try and do five things, because it’s like, what a terrible way of being, to teach the 5-year-old.

We’re starting to run out of time. Before we run out of time, I want you, because we’ve been touching it all over the place, but you haven’t directly explained, or made the pitch for CanDo, and what you’re doing right now. And for the patrons, you’ve got a captive audience right now, of the people who are going to be listening to this podcast, because the majority of them believe in patronage, and they believe in direct, no bullshit, anti-corporate, fuck-the-bureaucracy giving, because now that we’ve met Rola, and we trust her, this actually sounds like a place that I need to send my $50.

So knowing that you’ve got that captive audience, if they’ve made it to the end of the podcast, what is happening with Syria right now, in your work with CanDo, and beyond Syria? And how can people listening right now, who are inspired by everything that you’re saying, how can they help? And what should they do right now?

Rola 84:42

So one thing that I’ve been working with the BBC team on now for over a year is doing a follow up documentary. We have traced the survivors, and the victim families of that school attack, and we’re just in the final stages of putting that documentary together, for them to tell their stories, of how their lives were torn apart, and how have they managed to get them back together after that. And so, we’re hoping, through that, to tell the story that, you know what, this wasn’t the only school that was bombed. This was one of over a thousand schools that have been bombed, and this still is happening to this day. And so, that’s going to be airing any day now.

And with that, we are launching a big campaign to save Syria’s schools. I am fed up of waiting for presidents and prime ministers to stop the bombs falling on schools. I have been scratching my head how we might protect children, and stop them from getting injured before they arrive at my hospitals burnt. And we have found this hardware, an early warning system, that uses a

combination of human observers and sensors, to input into a system, and alert a network of users before a potential aerial strike. And so, this early warning system will give each participating school up to six minutes warning before a potential bomb. And that would give them a chance to evacuate safely, and hopefully stop the injuries, stop the trauma, and the devastation that we have been seeing all of these years. So I am super excited about this, because this is going to be the first protective measure that’s going to be putting in place for schools. We’re working with our local partner Hurras to do that and several other partners like Help Refugees. So we’re about to launch the campaign, Save Syria’s Schools. I would love if everyone who’s listening would go check it out, and just give what you can. We want to get this early warning system into 150 schools that are at high risk.

And one of my favorite bits about this project is we are going to be providing all the children, and the teachers, with trauma recovery therapy. Mental health is so often forgotten, and these children, so many of them have been devastated through what they’ve seen and been through. So it’s time to give them some hope for a brighter future, so please, yeah, go to Save Syria’s Schools, and give what you can. We can put in the solar panels, and an internet connectivity, and give them this early warning system, and help protect lives, and heal minds, and we can’t do it without everyone mucking in and giving what they can. So please support.

Amanda 87:39

Well, you’ve come to the right community, and I know I will be giving, and some of the money from this podcast will be directly donated to the effort, and I am sure people listening are gonna pitch in.

Rola 87:53

I’m so grateful for that, that’s beautiful.

Amanda 87:56

Because this community is awesome.

Rola 87:57

It literally is awesome.

Amanda 87:57

And you are an amazing punk rock fucking doctor.

Rola 88:02

Thank you.

Amanda 88:06

And I just want to say, it’s so incredible when a doctor and a musician have so much in common. It’s really weird. Our jobs are really different, our backgrounds are really different, but I

feel like I have more in common with you, your life, and your work, than a lot of mainstream musicians out there. It’s just so weird.

Rola 88:31

Totally. That’s true. When I was reading your amazing book, I was like, first of all, I thought, damn, I should have totally read that before I set up the platform, because I probably wouldn’t have set it up if I had known what she had told me. I learned so much from it. But I was like, I need to meet this woman. So yeah, I’m really happy that I’m meeting you, albeit across the ether.

Amanda 88:55

I am so honored, actually, that you reached out to me. And I know my whole podcast team is too. And thank you, especially with the time change, thank you for making the time to tell us the stories, and to talk. Thank you.

Rola 89:13

Thank you.

MUSIC BREAK – Bottomfeeder

Amanda 89:20

And before I let you go, I’m going to try something. This is my team’s idea yesterday. It’s totally fucking random. This is the Amanda Palmer Bonus Round Rapid Fire Question, an inaugural outing, virgin voyage.

The first nine questions are taken from the ten questions that originally came from this French series called Bouillon de Culture, and better known as the Inside the Actor’s Studio questions. So I am exhuming these questions from the past, because they were very 70s questions, but they’re still awesome. And then I added my own questions.

So just clear your mind. First answer, best answer, it doesn’t matter if it even comes out as complete gibberish or nonsense. Just free associate. Free your mind. Free yourself. Let us do it.

Dr. Rola, my punk rock doctor icon mentor. What is your favorite word?

Rola 90:21

Compassion.

Amanda 90:23

What is your least favorite word?

Rola 90:25

Hate?

Amanda 90:27

What turns you on creatively, spiritually, or emotionally?

Rola 90:33

Nature. Any walk in nature. Sound of the sea. The sound of the birds.

Amanda 90:39

What turns you off?

Rola 90:44

War.

Amanda 90:49

War, good. What is your favorite curse word?

Rola 90:53

Oh fuck. Throw a fuck in, all the fucking time.

Amanda 90:59

What sound or noise do you love?

Rola 91:06

Naya’s laugh.

Amanda 91:10

What sound or noise do you hate?

Rola 91:12

Snoring. Fuck that. No. Get out, get out! We’re not doing this!

Amanda 91:22

What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?

Rola 91:27

Dancing. My alter ego is a dancer.

Amanda 91:35

What profession would you not like to do?

Rola 91:39

Oooh. I’ve never really thought about that, what profession would I not like to do? Well, look, I don’t like numbers, so accounting or something like that, I’d be like, ah shit. I’d be so bad, and I would hate it.

Amanda 91:55

What do you do with your phone at night? Do you keep it on, off, or on silent? Where does it go?

Rola 91:59

Airplane mode, and then I try to not turn it on until I’m actually ready to face the day. I just found I woke up so much more relaxed when there wasn’t anything on my phone to be that instant adrenaline shot. So yeah, airplane mode. Occasionally I feel guilty about it, in case disaster strikes and I’m not there, but I got over that.

Amanda 92:21

You’ve got to turn off sometimes, especially when you’ve got a baby. Can you tell me a song that makes you, or has made you, cry?

Rola 92:31

A song… Well, actually, that happened just today. And I was listening to… Don’t leave me high, don’t leave me dry.

Amanda 92:43

(Singing) Don’t leave me high… That’s Radiohead

Rola 92:47

It suddenly came on today, and I was like, oh, I love that song! And then before I knew it, I was crying. I was like, what? Where did that come from?! No idea.

Amanda 92:56

The lyrics in that song are incredible.

MUSIC BREAK – High and Dry (Radiohead cover) by Amanda Palmer

Amanda 93:21

What is a bad habit that you would rather not tell me that you have?

Rola 93:25

I pick my nose.

Amanda 93:27

We all pick our noses, that doesn’t even count!
As a child, what is the first time you can remember the feeling that things were not okay?

Rola 93:45

I remember being told off. I’m the oldest of four, and I remember being told off for doing something with my youngest sibling, and I just remember being told very distinctly, it’s not about you. You’re now the big sister, and you have to look after what they need, and what they want. And I just remember, just feeling really shocked, like somehow my needs didn’t matter. Like, now that I’m a big sister, it was all about these little babies. And I think it’s partly why I am responsible in the way that I am. But I think it was definitely also a little bit of a… Okay, it’s not about me any more.

Amanda 94:35

A humbling wake up call. Oh, my God, this was going to become the theme of your life.

What’s one of the hardest things you’ve ever asked for?

Rola 94:54

Hmm… Telling my husband that I was going to Syria on my first medical mission, I think that was… That felt really, really hard, his face dropped as I said it, and I could just see the fear in his eyes. And it was not like I wanted to go, but I needed to go. And he was super supportive, he was incredible, but that was really hard. Especially when I then phoned him and told him, ‘I’ve just written a will! I’m leaving everything for you!’ I must change that, with divorce.

Amanda 95:34

I didn’t know this was gonna lead on so perfectly, because you may have even already answered this question, and I wrote this on the ferry this morning, just thinking this would be a great question to ask anyone. What’s the closest you’ve come to dying?

Rola 95:57

Let’s see. Well, I mean, you’d think, in lots of my forays in Syria, that would maybe be taking me as close to it as I could. But yeah, so I guess that day, as I told you, that was maybe the day, the only day in my life where I had really truly thought, this could really happen.

Amanda 96:22

This might be it. Wow.

And this is my last question. Tell me the first word that comes to mind when I ask you to close your eyes, and think about, and picture, your childhood bedroom.

Rola 96:43

I see three beds, for three sisters.

Amanda 96:53

Thank you.

Rola 96:54

We all bunked together.

Amanda 96:59

You are amazing.

Rola 97:02

You’re amazing

Amanda 97:03

Thank you so much for doing this, but also, thank you for being a fucking incredible force in the world.

Rola 97:10

Thank you.

Amanda 97:12

You’re a real inspiration, to me, and I’m sure to everyone who’s gonna listen to this.

Rola 97:18

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Amanda 97:20

Thank you.

Rola 97:21

I’m so happy to be here with you.

Amanda 97:29

This has been The Art of Asking Everything podcast. Thank you to my punk rock doctor, Dr. Rola, for her work, for her immense amount of heart, and for sharing everything that she’s shared with us today.

The URL again is SaveSyriasSchools.org. It’ll also be plastered all over the internet, you can Google it, it’ll be on my feeds.

And check out the show notes for links to Rola’s TED talk, and the BBC documentaries that she talks about in the podcast.

For all the music you heard in the podcast, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast.
Thank you to Morten Gamst at Envy Studios in Auckland, New Zealand, for recording today’s

interview, and helping with the filming that we’re using for the promo.

And lots of thanks, as always, to my incredible team. Hayley Rosenblum, who makes so many things possible, she is the ghost in the machine of our Patreon, and she makes sure so many things get done, words, pictures, live chats, general internet love. I could not do this without her. My assistant Michael McComiskey, who makes sure that scheduling happens, and trains run on time, and that I’m able to do all the things. Our Merch Queen Alex Knight, who’s also helping us transcribe this podcast, so that the conversations are accessible, much love to Alex in the UK. Also in the UK is Kelly Welles, my social media guru, co-editor, mastermind, sister-friend. Cat and Rose at Spellbound for helping with the wonderful graphics and the video making. And of course, in Sydney, my manager, Jordan Verzar, who brings us all together, and makes sure we all get paid. The podcast was produced by FannieCo.

Everyone else, please go to Patreon, become a supporting member. This will also give you access to the live follow up chats that I sometimes do with the guests after the podcast comes out. I won’t be doing one with Rola, because this was so immediate, but that’s a perk of the Patreon.

And thank you. If you donated, thank you. If you could just listen and share, thank you. I love you.

Signing off for now, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

The post Dr Rola Hallam: The Fuckery of Philanthropy first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Dr Rola Hallam: The Fuckery of Philanthropy appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Clare Bowditch: Putting Hope Into The World

Kelly Welles — Tue, 09 Feb 2021 02:00:21 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/47078444

books, bereavement and breaking down.

Reading is an empathy factory. When I read Australian singer-songwriter Clare Bowditch’s memoir, “Your Own Kind of Girl”, I related deeply to her struggles with insecurity, self-worth and sanity. We had so much in common it was uncanny, like finding an accidental lost twin sibling through a bookshop. Join us as we talk (and laugh, and cry) about owning your own self-doubt and self-hatred, how books can actually change your life, the emotional cost of telling your own true story….and more.

Episode 20 of The Art of Asking Everything: Clare Bowditch: Putting Hope Into The World is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Show notes:

Description

Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Clare Bowditch, recorded March 6, 2020, at Sing Sing Studios, Melbourne, Australia.

Clare Bowditch is an Australian actor, radio presenter, and entrepreneur.

She started performing in the Melbourne pub circuit at seventeen years old.

In 1998, she formed the band Red Raku and recorded two albums along with producer and drummer Marty Brown—who is now her husband, producer and music manager.

In 2010, Clare was awarded Rolling Stone’s Woman of the Year.

In 2006 she won the ARIA Award for Best Female Artist and in 2012 was nominated for a Logie Award for her work on the TV series Offspring.

She has since founded Big Hearted Business, a training ground and classroom for other female entrepreneurs.

Her memoir, Your Own Kind of Girl, is an exploration into her own inner critic that pulls no punches. If you’re an artist, you’re going to want to read this book.

She also hosts Tame Your Inner Critic – an Audible Original that’s a playful take on self-development.

CREDITS:

This has been the Art of Asking Everything Podcast.

Thanks to my guest Clare Bowditch, check out her music, book, and other things at clarebowditch.com

Our interview was recorded by Nick Edin at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia.

For all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to the new, improved amandapalmer.net/podcast.

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

Lots of thanks, as usual, to my amazing team. Hayley Rosenblum, Michael McComiskey, Alex Knight, Jordan Verzar, and introducing Kelly Welles, who’s been helping me newly on the social medias.

And last but not least, this whole podcast would not be possible without patronage. Like I said at the beginning, this keeps us ad-free, sponsor-free, endorsement-free, weird-corporate-podcast-world-free, so please, if you’re not already backing, come in, it’s a dollar a month, and just having you there, and knowing that your support is there, means the world to me.

And special thanks to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, St. Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Leela Cosgrove, Robert W. Perkins. Thank you, all of you, whether you’re in for a dollar, or more, for helping me make this podcast.

Things are going to evolve over the next couple of weeks and months, so stick around, and see what happens, I’ve got some really exciting guests coming up in the next while. So, so, so excited!

Thank you.

Signing off, this is Amanda Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

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Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Amanda 00:35

This is The Art of Asking Everything. I am Amanda Palmer.

Before we start this episode, just a note about the podcast itself. We are slowly coming to the end of what we’ve been calling the ‘historical’ recordings. When I was on tour last year through 2019, I interviewed over 20 people, and we’ve been putting these podcasts out every week with the Patreon basically funding the whole production. And that is about to change. Not the patronage, but the historical part, because we’re caught up. And the exciting thing now that we’re done putting out all of these historical recordings, is that I can work in real time. So starting next month, I’ll be interviewing real life people, right now, right here. These interviews won’t be from a year ago. And the frequency of the podcast might decrease a little bit while we get the production value up, and while I get my footing, and we’ll see what happens, we’re experimenting.

But meanwhile, a reminder that the reason this podcast has no advertisement breaks, and no sponsors, and no ‘you can hear my podcast now exclusively on Spotify, or Luminary, or fill in the blank!’, the reason I have no overarching superiors telling me what to do with my podcast, is because of Patreon. So I am coming to you to ask you to join the Patreon, it’s a dollar, it’s an amazing community, it’s awesome, it pays my staff, it pays for the production, it pays the podcast guests, it makes all of this possible. So please join, even if it’s just for a dollar a month, it would mean the world to me and my team, and it will keep us corporate free. So if you’ve been listening and loving, please, I am talking to you, put your money where your ears is, and I thank you. And to all of my Patreon people who have been supporting for the last, going on six years, you know how much you mean to me, thank you so much for making my whole life, and all of this, possible.

This week’s guest is Australian singer-songwriter and memoirist Clare Bowditch. I met Clare sort of through the indie music scene in Melbourne a few years ago, and we didn’t really know each other that well, but this past tour, when I was in Australia around December 2019, and this was just before the bushfires and COVID all sort of wiped out our ordinary lives, I ran into Clare’s new book, in a little book store on Brunswick Street in Melbourne. And the cover was what grabbed me, and I recognised Clare’s name, and I didn’t know she’d written a book. But there was this photo of this little girl in a swimsuit. And this little girl kind of looked like, 8 years old, but also 67, as if she should be holding a pack of Pall Mall cigarettes and a dry martini. She was wearing these designer sunglasses, and looking really, really real for an 8 year old. And I thought, Clare, I’ve got to get this book, so I bought it, and I read it.

And then, because Clare poured out her story, and her truth, and her pain, onto the page, and she goes deep, her eating disorder, her insecurities, her full mental breakdown, her sister’s death… I read this book, and I knew her. I knew, now, who this person was. And we had so much in common, and I was so glad to know her. And I knew she lived in Melbourne, and I wanted to be her friend, and just as I had bought the book, I ran into her, not literally, but there she was in the street, and I was in the street, and she recognised me, and it all felt really fateful. So I asked her to come on the podcast to talk about the book, but also about music, and life, and everything.

And as a person who’s written a really honest memoir, I also like feeling the other side of this sort of strange recognition. Because when someone has read The Art of Asking sometimes, my memoir, they will come up to me and say, ‘Hey, Amanda Palmer, it’s very silly, but I feel like I know you.’ And I always say that it’s not silly. You do know me. Because I told you who I was, in my book. You do know me.

And that being said, there’s a lot that you can’t tell someone in a memoir, because it’s not fair, or safe, or kind, to the people in your life. And as I was reading Clare’s book, that’s what I kept thinking about. It was like, what did she have to leave out? How did she ride this line? How did she tell this story without hurting her family? And that’s what I found myself wanting to interview her about. How do you tell the truth in a book without hurting people? Or in a song, without hurting people? And I know what I had to do, for The Art of Asking. And I wanted to know what she had to do in her book, to ride that line of truth and compassion.

Also, sidenote, because of getting to know her through her book, I also invited Clare to duet on a track with me for my Bushfire benefit album, which I round up calling Forty-Five Degrees. And it’s the song you’re listening to right now.

Here we go. And whether it is the books we both read, or the little acts of kindness from strangers that saved us both in our darkest moments, or the emotional cost of telling our stories, this is it. The overarching theme of this episode… What are the mechanisms we develop to cope with the shit that life throws at us? She’s really good at it. Meet your new friend, Clare Bowditch.

MUSIC BREAK – Black Smoke

Amanda Palmer 07:04

Clare Bowditch. Hi.

Clare 07:06

Darling. Amanda Palmer. Gosh, it’s beautiful to be here with you.

Amanda 07:11

Talk to me about Frank.

Claire 07:13

Frank. Now, I wanna front-load this with an apology to anyone who is called Frank.

Amanda 07:19

Go for it.

Claire 07:20

But I’m quite tender about Frank these days. Frank is a name that I gave at the age of 22, 23, I spontaneously gave to the voice in my head that I identify as my inner critic. People in history have called it our ego, our saboteur, the id, the devil. For me, it was really useful to name the clusterfuck of feelings I was feeling, to name it Frank. And Frank was just the name of someone, I didn’t know anyone called Frank at the time, and it was off the book of reading a Jack Kornfield book, A Path With Heart. Now, are you familiar with Jack?

Amanda 07:55

Oh my God, yes. So, if you don’t know who Jack Kornfield is, he’s one of the…

Clare 08:01

Run, don’t walk.

Amanda 08:02

One of the most old school American mindfulness, vipassana meditation teachers, writers. Think old school, 70s, brought meditation to a lot of people in the Western world.

Clare 08:18

And he has a wonderful, playful sense of writing, and voice in writing, and this great sense of humour.

Amanda 08:23

So you were reading Jack Kornfield when you were 22?

Claire 08:26

Yeah, oh yeah, I was reading anything I could get my hands on.

Amanda 08:29

How did those books come into your life, how did you know about them?

Clare 08:31

I was desperately yearning to find this sense of an other, of a higher power, of a God, of a way of thinking, of a way of living, of a way of staying alive, of a way of finding meaning. So I guess I was on that journey young. I was brought up in a deeply religious, very profoundly faith-driven family. We were brought up Catholic, my mum was Dutch, her faith was profound, my father’s faith was profound, and I knew I didn’t fit neatly into Catholicism, but I saw the gift that they had, and this focus on love. So I got that bit, but I was deeply rebellious, and I guess I started reading A Course In Miracles when I was about 16, and I had no idea what it was about. I probably came to it via most people, I watched Oprah as a 10 year old.

Amanda 09:21

Really, no, but that’s important, how books wind up in our lives. I don’t think it’s unimportant how these books find their way to us. Because it could just be there was a good book store with a curated section and it was lying on the table, or an older friend goes, ‘I think you might be interested in this and need to read it.’ And when I think about some of the books that changed my life right around that age, I look back and I don’t take for granted that the books that opened up my head canon didn’t wind up randomly in my lap, they came to me.

Clare 09:52

Tell me one.

Amanda 09:54

I had a book that really changed everything for me, right around the same age, I was about 25, and I read a book called Dropping Ashes On The Buddha, by Seung Sahn, who was a Korean Zen master, given to me by my mentor, Anthony. I’d had it kicking around for a couple of years, and I was travelling in Australia for the first time, I was a street performer, and I just decided to give it a go one day. It was the book that I needed at the time that I needed it, about non-attachment, and mindfulness, and Frank, and the voice in your head that is controlling you, and you’re just not really noticing it, because you’re just lost in it.

So when you were in your teens or your early 20s, what was Frank saying?

Clare 10:36

So for me, Frank had actually been with me from a very young age, and again, we speak about it playfully as the voice of another, as a way of detaching or having some distance from that cruel voice in our head, which I know now is a very normal, natural function of a survival brain, it’s part of our ego, a part of our drive, it’s completely entangled in everything wonderful that I’ve ever been driven to do as well.

But it was, for me, very loud as a kid. Not long after and around the time of 5, when my sister passed away, my sister Rowena was 7, I became very aware then of this voice of wrongness within me. And children are complex in the way that we process trauma. For me, for whatever reason, I was the fat kid in my family, I was the fat kid at my school. I was much taller and much bigger, and I always had been. And Frank developed as a ‘there’s something wrong with you’ sort of a voice, it was very loud in my head. I was bad. I didn’t have any language for my sadness, or where to put my grief. And then as a teen, it really focused strongly around my body, around my role as a woman in the world, around wanting to please my parents.

But at the age of 21, it had gotten so incredibly loud, I was actually travelling, and trying to find my life, adventure, you know, I knew I wanted to do something with my life, but I somehow ended up working at a call centre and dropping out of uni, and really not feeling confident enough in my body size, in my voice, in my heart, to step into showing the world who I was. And the voice then got so loud that it was really dangerous. That was around the time that I had my toughest, toughest time with mental ill health, which probably one of our listeners will know about, because this is such a common experience. But the reason I talk about it is because it’s the most useful experience of my life, and the story of my recovery is a story that so many people share.

Amanda 12:40

So one of the things that I felt reading your book, which is incredible, by the way…

Clare 12:45

You are.

Amanda 12:46

Was just a sense of ‘twinny-ness’. Because I went through a really similar kind of confounded breakdown around the same time in my life, and I was abroad.

Clare 12:59

But did you know what was going on?

Amanda 13:01

No. When I was 19, and I talk about this in my show, when I was 19 I lost a boyfriend that I had just broken up with, died over Christmas, and I had broken up with him, mostly because he had a hard drug habit and I didn’t know how to handle it. And then right after that my grandmother died, and then my grandfather died, and then my older brother died.

Clare 13:21

Good lord.

Amanda 13:21

All in about six months. Right as that happened, I went abroad to study in Germany for a year, and I had access to alcohol for the first time. Like you, when you left Australia and went to London, it’s the nadir, or the peak of the book, whichever way you wanna look at it, you leave your safe little community in Melbourne and you go off to the UK, hoping to find yourself and have your adventure. And I went off to Germany to study, hoping to get away from everything and find myself, and find my adventure, and instead I just became an insane person, and a drunk, who was just careening around and fucking everybody, and pretty much getting sloshed every single night. And also on anti-depressants, and also just clueless. I had a complete existential collapse breakdown that year, and no safety net.

I just wanna zero in on this one teeny little detail in the book. You’re in London, or Oxford, I can’t remember. You’re on the edge of a kind of suicidal depression, and you don’t know what’s going on. And you don’t really have any family there, and you don’t really have much community. And there are these teeny little acts of kindness. These people that you barely know look at you. They don’t really know you, they don’t really know what you’re going through, they don’t really know what’s going on, and they just take care of you. And I remember…

Clare 15:02

I can’t even think about it without tearing up, still.

Amanda 15:06

Yeah, and you can tell a couple of those stories, because I feel like they’re so important.

Clare 15:10

Oh, they’re so important, they were life-saving.

Amanda 15:12

I remember being about that age, again having no idea what I was doing, and I wanted to go to this performance art workshop in California, I didn’t know anything, I didn’t know anyone, I saved up my money, I bought a plane ticket, I landed in San Francisco, I stayed at a really, really shitty little youth hostel, cos I could only afford $13 a night. And the minute I got there, and the first day of the workshop was supposed to start, I got incredibly ill. I got the kind of flu where you can’t get out of bed. And it was before cell phones, and I had no one I could call, and I was just deathly ill, on the bottom bunk of a shitty youth hostel, paralytic, just going, ‘I don’t even know what to do!’

Clare 15:57

I’m shivering thinking about it, you poor darling.

Amanda 15:58

I don’t know who to ask, I’m shivering, I’m sick. And this random guy who worked the front desk one shift at the youth hostel sort of clocked what was going on. And I was just this weird-looking 24 year old kid or whatever. And he just was like, ‘I’m gonna take care of you. You’re gonna be okay. What do you need? I’m gonna go down the street and I’m gonna get you some food. I’m gonna get you some soup.’ And I just remember being also so clueless at the time that I was like, ‘Why are you being so nice to me?! I don’t understand what’s going on! Why are you being kind?!’

But all of these, there were so many moments like that in my life in Germany too, where I think back at these acts of gorgeous, unnecessary kindness that these total strangers, especially when I was drunk, and I was lost, and I was in danger, and I had put myself in these stupid ass positions…

Clare 16:54

Cos it connects you to this sense of something much bigger. You were so vulnerable, and then that kindness comes in, and it just makes you feel like you are part of something good. And I think in those moments, and I’ve seen this in everything you do, your resolve is then to wanna pass it back along. Once you know that kind of kindness, and we are lucky as humans that many of us will understand that kindness at a certain point, you just don’t forget it, because it’s gotten into you deeply, and it changes everything.

Amanda 17:29

Absolutely. Can you tell one of those stories?

Clare 17:32

Yes. I just wanna say, you couldn’t see this, dear listener, but as Amanda was telling that story, her eyes were full of tears, and mine were too, just thinking about this. Because the people who were kind to me I never even saw again, but I still carry them with me. So I was in London, I had gone on my grand adventure, I’d also had a devastating break-up that I didn’t want to break up, did break up, just one of those motherfuckers of a break-up, and off I went to London, completely unprepared, with very little money in my bank account. And I was lucky to have a dear friend, Libby, who was there, one of my best friends to this very day, who was there in London.

To set the scene, I stopped being able to sleep, we’d had an experience on a train with a friend who’d fainted, and it had triggered in me post-traumatic stress disorder, which I didn’t know I had, I had no idea. Just for me, that meant recurring flashbacks, nightmares, and waking up through the night, and being unable to leep, and it spiralled. So I started being very sensitive to noise, and very sensitive to all sorts of things. I’d decide that I’d wake up, a grand idea, I’m gonna go to Oxford and have some quiet time, and perhaps find, I don’t know, my gang, my people, I didn’t know what it was.

Amanda 18:48

And how far is Oxford from London? It’s pretty close, right?

Clare 18:51

Yeah, it was a couple of hours on the bus. I caught a bus there. This was now 23 years ago, so I remember that journey, I remember feeling an immediate sense of relief. The city of Oxford, something about it soothed me, and I thought, good.

Amanda 19:05

Cute.

Clare 19:06

So gorgeous. I love the gargoyles, and the water. Anyway, I checked into the cheapest hotel – sorry, hostel, that I could find. And some wonderful things happened. Even though I wasn’t sleeping, I was in a room with probably a really big gang of other women. It was very noisy through the night. I didn’t realise at this point that I had stopped eating, and that I was just feeling sick all the time. And I had no context that this was actually cortisol, adrenaline, my life catching up with me. And it spiralled.

And there were two kind things that I really remember clearly. There were many, but there was one, a chap called Ian, which is my dad’s name, so I remembered his name, he was behind the counter. And I just thought, I’m dying. I had that thought in my head, that was one of my recurring fearful thoughts. I’m dying, there’s a terrible something happening to me, I don’t know what it is, I’ve clearly got a virus or something.

Anyway, he was kind to me, and he gave me a quiet room to sleep in, and just to be able to get six hours of uninterrupted sleep when he snuck me into a private room, and he called a doctor, and he helped me, and that kindness got into my bones. And I still remember his face, and I never saw him again. I did not get a chance to say thank you, because I grew so unwell from that point that I had to, Libby got me on a plane home, basically.

But there was another chap who I still remember to this day. He ran the local open mic. It was just in its infancy. It was called the Cat Weasel Club. And when I’d arrived at the backpackers, a lady had seen that I had a guitar, and I did that thing that we sometimes do in life which is a bit magical, where I wasn’t out yet as a singer/songwriter, but I desperately wanted to be out.

Amanda 20:50

But you were carrying a guitar around.

Clare 20:51

I was carrying a guitar. My hope was in that guitar, and I had three chords and the truth, and I’d written a couple of side songs. So off we went, she said there’s an open mic, and I had my first profound experience of having the courage to say yes to play on stage. And this guy, Tom, had said, you did great, that was great, invited me back in again, but I lost my confidence after that, and I didn’t go back in.

But when things got really bad, I remember getting myself into a church at a certain point, and feeling the darkest feeling that you have, where you can’t stop thinking of death, and for me I was very overtired, and I was very traumatised, and I didn’t want to die, but I couldn’t seem to stop thinking of darkness, really, and that there was no way out. And I remember walking out of that church, and sitting on a chair, and just weeping on the street of Oxford. And then past walked Tom. And he just said, are you okay? And I said, I don’t think I am. And it was so sweet, he said, right. You need a cup of tea. So we went to a tea room.

Amanda 22:01

So British. So British!

Clare 22:04

We got a cup of tea, and then he invited me over, he had a beautiful little barge.

Amanda 22:09

Like a longboat.

Clare 22:10

Yeah, a longboat. And he invited me for a home-cooked meal, and it was a real moment of light, where I had that hopeful feeling again. I didn’t realise it was my thoughts and my fear that was spiralling me back into the panic attack of the time. But that was my first clue, because I remember feeling safe with him, and eating a meal with him, and for a moment remembering my stronger self.

And then on the way home, my fearful thoughts came back in again, and I was back in Australia before I knew it.

MUSIC BREAK – Are You Ready Yet?

Amanda 23:19

This moment in the UK where your friend passed out on this train, and you describe it really beautifully, it just spirals you into PTSD panic that you can’t really identify at the time.

A lot of the beginning of the book is about two things: your basic scene growing up, and your relationship with yourself, but you talk a lot about Rowena, your sister, who you lost. You say at the beginning of the book, I knew I was gonna write this book. You had it in you as a directive somewhere from early on, I’m gonna tell this story, I’m gonna write this story down, and that that was a thought in your head all along. Did you have to be ready to talk about Rowena? And then why did you choose the moment that you chose to tell the story, which is such a hard story to tell?

Clare 24:11

For anyone who doesn’t know me, I spent most of my life here in Australia as a singer/songwriter, working in radio. These are not really stories that I spoke about in any detail, ever. And then I sat in my career, sort of spent 15 years in the public eye, and I’ve alluded to it, and I’ve written songs that allude to it, but I haven’t gone into detail because I have always known I would tell this story.

So when I was 21, I came home, 22, I had the good fortune to read a book, a simple little book by a woman called Dr. Claire Weekes, who was a stalwart of the Australian GP society, the first Australian woman to earn a doctorate at the Sydney University, she was quite a trailblazer, she was a GP who treated people with PTSD before there was a name for PTSD, and she did that using a simple technique, which I’ll explain to you in a sec.

So a friend of my mum’s gave me a book. She saw where I was at, I didn’t know what was going on with me, I just thought I was going nuts, and I’d lost a lot of weight, and I was finding it hard to leave the house or have any conversation or sleep, or just think of a future. And this little book came on my lap, called Self Help For Your Nerves.

Amanda 25:18

Nerves!

Clare 25:20

The kind of title that I might have dismissed. It had a little picture of a woman on the front who looked a lot like the queen, and I was that desperate, I needed something simple and effective, so I read this, and I learned about my nervous system, I learned about facing, accepting, floating, and letting time pass, and this is a technique for getting through what she called nervous suffering. And she had a voice like this, this is Dr. Claire Weekes speaking. I’m here to tell you that if you’d like to recover from your nervous symptoms, you can! So look up on YouTube, her voice is much cooler than that, but she was derided, she was seen as a mad woman, this psychiatrist said, ‘Who do you think you are, speaking in this space?’ But meanwhile, her technique helped me, it saved my life. It gave me a sense of being able to see into a future, and it gave me a sense of realising, ah, it’s my thoughts that are triggering these symptoms of panic, so I have some control here.

And again, in that moment of vulnerability, the gratitude came in. And I’d always known I’d write something, but I realised, ah, so this is the story that I need to tell, there is hope. And I said, I will write this story one day, and it made me feel enormously useful, and like life was worth living, to think that I might have something good to pass on down the line.

So I’m a kid here. I go to art school, I try writing it a few times, it’s too frightening, too terrifying. I avoid it. But I need the hope of the promise, and I wanna fulfill it, so I say, okay, I won’t write this right now, this book, cos I’m still in the process, but when I’m really fucking old, so 40, I will write this. Just really rude. So 40 came recently. And I thought, okay, it’s time to fulfill that promise, so it’s kind of that simple in a way.

But Rowena, speaking about Rowena, our darling Rowena… Look, I think I only really learnt to talk about her through writing this book, and through the conversations that I was able to have with my family. So my sister was a normal healthy girl, two years older than me, I’m the youngest of five, we’re all 18 months apart. As mum would say, decades on a rosary. Beautifully timed, one of the few successes of the rhythm method in history.

And there we were, a pretty normal, healthy, happy family, with all of our foibles. And Rowena got mysteriously sick when she was in prep. I was 3, she was 5. We had a really incredible community around us, but the thing that you don’t want to happen the most in life did happen, and Rowena’s illness was undiagnosable, and by the time they found a name for it, it was too late, she was already in the children’s hospital. So it’s difficult to talk about these stories often, because they’re shared stories, and our family’s way of really living through that experience of two years on life support in the children’s hospital, that was our life. So Rowie still has this record for the longest ever living child in intensive care in the children’s, because these days you might have a respirator that you can go home with or so on, but…

So learning to speak and understand it’s okay for me to have had a childhood experience, it’s okay for me to speak about the human rather than the faith-based context that my parents very cleverly gave us. Again, it’s a hopeful story to learn to live with it. And not wanting to speak on behalf of any of my siblings, cos each of us have had such different experiences. But I needed to talk about that, because that, for me, was the genesis of my illness later, and also the genesis of everything that I do in my life. My love for my sister, my family, is my driver.

Amanda 29:00

Those stories about Rowena, you don’t put her on a pedestal, you draw this really human portrait of the kind of person she was.

Clare 29:10

Yeah.

Amanda 29:11

And then all of these scenes in the hospital, and you’re thinking like a child thinks, because you just are given the reality that you’re given. There you are, going to the hospital again, spending all of this time by her bedside, doing what a kid would do, and thinking the things that a kid thinks about jealousy, and anger, and why does she get that, and why don’t I get that? And the older you get, the more you go back, and you look at those formative experiences, and it can be frightening to look at it, especially if you’re lifting up the lid on something new, and you’re like, oh my God, of course, this all makes perfect sense, 40 years later, how did I not know?

Clare 29:51

Well you and I, and most artists, know something now that I didn’t know as a kid, and we didn’t know as kids, which is that when we can tell the truth, the whole truth, as much of the truth as we can gather, when we can find a way to tell that, and be of an age or a maturity where we’re able to do that, that is pretty much it. That is the gift that we are passing on, and we’re trying to do that as beautifully as we can, or as truthfully as we can. That’s the gift. To feel that I’ve been able to say these things I was so ashamed of for all of my life, I was so ashamed of all the feelings I had about… I used to wish I could break a leg, so I could get to be in the hospital. And as I became a mother, earlier, the horror of really what had gone on became clearer and clearer. And then later also, what happened was the beauty of what had happened. My sister lived her full gestalt. That was her life. And that was a full, profound, glorious life, and she was just a normal little girl, and she was also a precious little girl. So to come to terms with that, and be able to speak that as an adult, I felt that was something I wanted to do to honour her.

MUSIC BREAK – Woman

Amanda 31:35

Especially as a parent, trying to imagine what your parents go through when they lose a child is kind of unimaginable. Of course your head goes there all the time, and your anxiety takes you there all the time, but I kind of try to imagine what would happen if Ash got hit by a car, and was just disappeared from the Earth. And it almost, probably for really important, protective sanity reasons, I can’t go there. I think I can maybe, but I feel like really I can’t.

And when I imagine what my parents went through losing my older stepbrother, and also the complications of, well, he wasn’t my real brother, he was my stepbrother, and he wasn’t my mom’s ‘real’ son, even though she helped raise him, and there was that extra layer of, I don’t even know how to tell this story, I don’t even know if I’m allowed to tell this story. The more I think about it, Karl was, I think he was 27, I was 20 when he died, and I think of the impact that it had on my parents, and what they did or didn’t deal with, even now. It’s almost so unimaginable that you can’t talk about it, and you can’t write about it, because what do you say?

And I watch you trying to tell this story, and we had dinner together the other night, and we were talking about this. Any time I read somebody else’s story in a memoir, I become more and more conscious of who you have to protect. What you’re not really allowed to say, and the stories that you can tell, you’re just skirting around. There’s a huge truth here, but I can’t really, totally tell it, cos I have to be really responsible to all these other people in my family, so how do I do it? How did you navigate that in this book?

Claire 33:36

Oh, it took a long time. First, it’s just understanding that it’s okay that I had an experience. The survival instinct is so strong, and so amazing in human beings. The things that we go through, and then keep chugging on, keep surviving. One of those experiences that was so normal to me, losing a sister, that I think I had these flashes, as a child, of how, cos it was a water that I’d swum in, I remember saying to my mum when I was about 11, just casually, off the cuff, we were in the laundry, and I said something like, oh, I’ll probably lose a child, too. And I saw her face, and her face was… And I just burst into tears, I said I’m so sorry, and she said, I think what came out of her mouth was, ‘Don’t say that!’ And I got that insight into, right, so this is…

Amanda 34:33

Not normal.

Clare 34:34

Not normal. This is not something that we want to happen. So a lot of what I had to understand was my brain was formed in this experience of trauma, and deep, deep love, and what really helped was my parents had to impose some structure. And for me, the routine of food, of meals, became really important, and the taste of meals, and the memories attached too. I knew I must never forget these times, so I have a very long, distinct sense of memory, because something in me knew, we must not forget. But then when it comes to being an adult, and trying to make sense of that, I needed to speak to my siblings, I needed to ask my mother questions that I had avoided asking most of my life, because who we love… Rowie’s in every photo on all of our walls, and is such a big part of our lives, but we’ve gotten on with living, and it’s difficult to say, hey, can we stop for a minute, can we go back there? So it’s a big ask. And I’m very lucky…

Amanda 35:38

Yeah, and just because you’re in the mood doesn’t mean anybody else is in the mood.

Clare 35:43

Exactly. You feel emotional as I’m saying this, what are you thinking of?

Amanda 35:46

I’m mostly just so grateful that you just kept being brave, and you pushed through, and you did it anyway. It’s such a gift, and I think this is the thing about being an artist who chooses to share a story, I’m not sure people are aware, and maybe they shouldn’t be aware, of what it costs to tell a story. The hidden tax of telling a story. Because by necessity, when you write a book like this, you have to make it look like a walk in the park, and no one is allowed to know the battlefield of landmines that you have to weave around to keep your relationship safe, to keep your community safe, to protect your parents, to whatever.

And I’ve been dealing with this in my show right now. I’m so proud of my show. I’m so proud of it, and I think it’s so good, and it protects everybody. And when Neil came to see my show, I talk about him only with love, and only with compassion, and only with, ‘Oh, poor Neil while I was going through this indecision about this abortion, he was just having to deal with me, and the indecision, and the back and forth.’ From my vantage point, he just comes out like this wonderful, heroic, sweet, loving husband. And I remember the first time he saw the complete show, he was upset, not at me, but he was like, ‘That’s… You didn’t quite tell it the way it happened, Amanda.’ And he’s come back to see the show again, and actually, we can now joke about it, and I know you were telling me a little bit about your sister, who’s not a storyteller, not an artist, and who gets to tell the story? Clare gets to tell the story. And Neil is a storyteller. And actually, it was only when I could put words to it that I think it calmed us both down. And I remember saying to him, I gave him the pass, I was like, don’t come see my show in Perth. You don’t have to sit through it again, it’s four hours. And also, since you’re Neil Gaiman, professional storyteller, and narrative controller, it really is your idea of fucking hell to be strapped in a chair for four hours.

Clare 38:21

I’m amazed he didn’t stand up and…

Amanda 38:23

And I have the mic, and I get to tell the story, and you don’t get to interrupt.

Clare 38:28

He must really love you.

Amanda 38:30

Oh, my God. And I’m like, it really is your personal hell, isn’t it, that I’m telling this story, and you can’t interrupt and say, ‘Well, it wasn’t quite like that, my suggestion is that we…’ or whatever.

Clare 38:42

See, this dance, I love hearing you speak out loud about this, cos you are both people who do put your work in public. Neil does it through fiction, but…

Amanda 38:52

Yeah, which is really different.

Clare 38:54

Yeah?

Amanda 38:55

It’s really different, and it’s a different zone. And putting yourself out through fiction, it just has a really different flavour than getting up on stage and saying, listen, let me tell you about my abortion story. It’s very, very different.

Clare 39:10

Those difficult, tender stories that often we have kept to ourselves, and people do keep to themselves, and that’s a coping mechanism for many, there are still whole generations of people who cannot talk about what happened in the war. And respecting that each person has their own way of living with life is one thing. When we as artists choose to live our lives this way, which is to say things out loud that may or may not include or involve other people, that’s one of the things that nearly stopped me from being an artist at all, or singing songs at all, that question of what right do I have to have an opinion here, and say it more loudly?

Amanda 39:54

Why do you think you’re so special, Clare?

Clare 39:56

Yeah, why are you so, why do you have such a compulsion, why is it so important that people hear what you have to say?

One of the saving graces in writing this book is I did have to blame my mum, actually, for the idea of writing it, because in that true Catholic ‘offer it up’ kind of tradition, when I was unwell, and my mum and all her mates were at prayer group for me, and she said to me one day, ‘You will use all of this one day. You will pass this on. You will use this for a greater good.’

Amanda 40:28

So you had to…

Clare 40:31

So we had to sit together for days, going through chapter two, which is a childhood telling of what I remember from Rowena’s experience of being unwell, cos my first memories of her, I have a couple, but most of them are at the children’s hospital, and feeling really bonded and attached to hospitals. I still wander into them, it’s really odd.

Amanda 40:56

That’s where everything’s gonna hopefully be made okay.

Clare 40:59

That’s the hope, exactly. And I thought, I loved her generosity spirit, cos we are very different people. This is my mum, Maria. We’re so different in the way that we look at the world, and the way we vote. We’re not different in the way we love, and we’re not different in our hopes for each other, and our hopes for what we do with our lives. And so, I gave her a first draft. Amanda, I did this, I thought, I can’t live and get this wrong, I’m gonna give her the first draft, I’ll give her this chapter, and I’ll just see if she’s got anything, if I got anything wrong technically, about the medical diagnosis, or something that I thought was said that wasn’t said.

Amanda 41:39

Fact check.

Clare 41:40

And I gave her some sticky notes, and I said ‘Mum, if there’s anything, you just make a sticky note.’ I mean, it was very carefully negotiated on both of our parts, and there was a generous generosity in the whole family about this, thank God. I don’t think that made it any easier for them, but they were willing to go there, and let me go there.

Anyway, a week later, I come back, and Mum said, ‘I’ve just made a few…’ Mum’s quite Dutch. ‘Just made a few little notes.’ And I look, and there are about 74 sticky notes sticking out of this one chapter, and my heart fell. I went, oh God, I’m never gonna be able to do it, and I despaired, because I had suffered for a year to try and write just this draft, and I did find that experience of writing profoundly delightful, brilliant, excruciating, horrific, all the things. But I went there cos I needed to do this thing.

Anyway, it turns out there were a few changes we made, but mainly it was just line editing, she’s quite a fine line editor. Commas, full stops, apostrophes.

Amanda 42:46

She was copy editing your book.

One of the other things that I was just thinking about when you saw me going into lala-land during your story, being in the laundry with your mom, and saying you’ll probably lose a child… The logic you have as a kid, I wanna tell you a story that happened this morning, cos I started thinking about Ash. I was actually a little late this morning too, we were both late.

Neil and I were in bed this morning, and Ash runs into the bedroom with a knife. Not a steak knife, a butter knife, but still, 4-year-old with a knife, not a good scene.

Clare 43:17

It’s a thing.

Amanda 43:19

He goes, ‘I want to kill you!’ And Neil and I are like, giggle giggle, this is cute, and it’s also really dark, but eh. And he doubles down, he goes, ‘I want to kill my parents!’ And Neil and I are like, ha ha, this is kind of funny, it’s also really…

Clare 43:36

It’s good he’s saying it out loud.

Amanda 43:38

Kind of not. And then he giggles, he’s naked too, naked with a butter knife. Runs out of the room, and Neil is already standing up, and I’m in bed, and I go, it’s your turn, you’ve gotta take that knife away from him. And Neil’s like…

Clare 43:53

Disarm that child.

Amanda 43:54

Yeah, and Neil’s like, ‘Let me get dressed first,’ and I was like, ‘You’re not gonna get dressed, kid with knife!’ So I hop out of bed, I run down the hallway. Ash is hiding, giggling, on a couch, holding the knife. And I look at him, and I say, ‘Ash.’ I put on my serious face. Serious mom face. ‘Ash, it’s not funny. I need that knife, right now. You can’t run around with a knife. It’s very dangerous.’

And he looks at me, giggling, again like this is all a funny game, clutching his knife, ‘But I want to be dead!’ I said, ‘No, Ash. Ash.’

I take the knife away, and I say, it’s not funny, Ash, and you don’t wanna make me angry, but it’s really dangerous to run around with a knife, you can’t…

Clare 44:42

Now you’re hiding the knife.

Amanda 44:44

‘But I want to be dead!’

And I look at him, and I get really angry. And I grab him, and I put him on a chair, and I say, ‘Ash. Do you know what it means to be dead?’ And he goes, ‘What does it mean?’

Clare 44:59

Oh, man.

Amanda 45:01

And I go, ‘Ash. When you’re dead, you just disappear. You’re not here any more.’

And he looks at me, and you know that thing when you totally silence a child? And he just… his whole face crumpled up. And then he lost it. (Screams) Like, he just started sobbing and wailing, and he threw himself in my arms, and he started shaking, and clutching me, and he looked at me, he was like, ‘I want to be disappeared! I don’t want to disappear! I don’t want to! I don’t want to! I want to be here! I want to be here! I want to be with you and dada!’ He just lost it. And then I lost it! Took a crying, sobbing child into the other room with Neil, and Neil was trying to make jokes about the knife, and I was like no, we’re past the knife now, we’re in an existential crisis. And we sat down, and for ten minutes, we held him while he wept, and told him how much we didn’t want him to die, and how mama didn’t want dada to die, and dada didn’t want mama to die, and he just had to go through it.

But it was so powerful to watch a 4-year-old having an existential crisis.

Clare 46:22

Well he really learnt, he’ll remember this.

Amanda 26:24

Oh my God, it was a good one. It was a great morning, Clare. Great morning in the Palmer-Gaiman household.

Clare 46:31

I know this territory so, so well, where we go there with the kid, with ours. And then we’ve got a similar dynamic in my relationship with my Marty, and he’ll come in and play when we’re lighting it, which has its health too, timing…

Amanda 46:48

Marty is your baby daddy.

Clare 46:49

He’s my baby daddy, and he’s my producer, and my manager, and all that stuff. He’s my man. My heart broke as you were telling that story.

The thing is this, that we can say to our kids quite often, but that’s very unlikely. I don’t wanna die, and you can say that’s very unlikely that you will die, and he will know that, really, because he’ll understand, you’ll explain to him, if you didn’t already, that dying is usually something that happens to older people. That grounding is important, and understanding death is terrifically difficult.

I think maybe what happens for kids where someone has died, or with Rowie, my parents could never say that convincingly, and say, it’s not likely that this will happen.

Amanda 47:35

Everything’s gonna be okay.

Clare 47:36

Yeah.

Amanda 47:37

Cos you knew it might not be.

Clare 47:39

And I’m trying to work out, as a parent, what’s the gift? What age do we tell them about this stuff? Sometimes the opportunity just comes upon us, and we take it. How important is it to their survival that they know this? Very important, I’d say.

Looking back at that, talking about that, you were crying. Do you feel that that, would you have done anything differently, if you look back now, was the right call to make at the right time?

Amanda 48:04

Oh, yeah.

Clare 48:06

He now knows something very important.

Amanda 48:08

And conversations sort of like this have happened with him before, because for whatever reason, he’s really into death, and killing, and graveyards, and zombies.

Clare 48:20

Gee, I wonder. I wonder why. You haven’t, by any chance, allowed him to be exposed…

Amanda 48:25

I blame Neil Gaiman. It’s just in the DNA.

Clare 48:29

Well, I’ve heard Neil talk…

Amanda 48:30

He’s just a dark, goth motherfucker. This 4-year-old goth.

Clare 48:35

But I’m gonna assume that he has a strong sense of what he’s doing, and the reason he tells stories the way he does is because he believes that there’s some things children should know earlier, that we protect them from, or that we, as a society, don’t allow them to process maturely until they’re… What do we think, a guy’s gonna get to the age of 15, and then suddenly be able to understand what these things are?

Amanda 49:01

More that it usually has a negative definition, but I am a pretty… I’m into mortality. I find it fascinating, I find our relationship with death, and dying…

Clare 49:15

It’s deeply directive too, isn’t it? I mean, do you find it makes you braver?

Amanda 49:19

It makes me feel very alive, thinking about death. And this is an old tradition, this is also, getting back to the book I was talking about, this is an old Zen tradition, is the more you meditate on death, the more vital you are! We are gonna die. Everyone right now on this planet isn’t… Check in in a few years, most of us will be gone. And having an appreciation for the fragility of life is really great for getting up in the morning, because you don’t take for granted that this is all a gift, talking to you, having a coffee, seeing the sky. Not everybody gets to do that, a lot of people are dead. So teaching that to a child, I don’t think there’s anything really morbid or wrong about it. And also, safety’s important. Don’t run in front of that car. Life is fragile, and you only have to run in front of that car and die once for me to want to say this. Cos that only has to happen once, you only have to lose your life once, for this conversation to be important.

At the same time, I don’t think you wanna burden. If you look at the lessons you had to learn, or maybe not even learn, but digest, you got the whole kitchen sink thrown at you at the age of 5.

Clare 50:44

There was just a bit missing in the middle. I knew that Rowie was gone, and I knew that, in our faith framework, that she was in a better place, so this was comforting. The reality of what had happened, I got to leapfrog to the comfort of thinking, maybe that hadn’t really happened. The bit in the middle was the bit that I struggled with, because who do you have those conversations with? It was the 1980s, and we didn’t have any real understanding of how to help children process trauma, or grief, or any language, how to help ourselves process trauma or grief. We’ve spoken about books a few times, and I remember the books on my parents’ bookcase were… There was like, two books on death. There was Elizabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying, and there was another book called Life After Life, and that might be a Rabbi’s book about when bad things happen to good people.

Our language now, it’s so much more possible, and kids are allowed to process in a different way, given room enough to do that. So Ash will have so many more questions, and so much more to come back to you on, on that point.

My mum and dad were carrying on, and surviving, and doing actually a pretty solid job of holding things steady, but how do we speak into that space, and allow ourselves to come back, cos it’s quite common actually, for us to have experiences of trauma in our life. For some of us it happens early, and this is not to glamourise it, or gloss over it, but if we are able to find a way to go back in there, to sit with the corpse of it, as you would in Zen practice, we will come to know things that are hard to describe with words, that are useful to us, that are feelings. But I appreciate, in this day and age, I don’t have to go back in there alone. I get to go back in there with the other people who’ve been through it, or with experienced therapists, or with books that give me frameworks. We are in the most fortunate times, and still we suffer, and still we struggle, and still we wake up and look forward to a coffee.

MUSIC BREAK – Your Own Kind of Girl

Amanda 53:31

This seems to be one of the biggest things I have learned, particularly on this tour that I am just wrapping, which is, we can handle almost anything, the darkest of the dark, dark, dark, if we do not feel we are handling it alone.

Clare 53:48

That’s heavy work! You don’t just go and tap dance, and give high fives, and sing a little love song. To actually commit to going into this work with them, and feeling safe to lead them out and back into the world again, your show is for four hours, I just need to ask, what the fuck?

Amanda 54:07

Yeah, I don’t know.

Clare 54:09

Has this been what you hoped it would be, or has the cost of it been too high for you?

Amanda 54:14

Oh, no. The cost has been whatever, emotional and energetic, and I’m a little exhausted all the time, and there’s way more lines on my face than there were at the beginning of this tour. I’m so happy that I did things this way. The same way, I imagine, you are so happy you wrote this book, even if it exhausted and frustrated you in the process.

Clare 54:41

Yeah, but I’ve had a year in between. You’re in the middle of it still!

Amanda 54:44

I’m still in it. A performance is so different from a book. Because I also wrote a memoir, and really agonised over it, and struggled with it, and then it was done, and I remember pressing send on that motherfucking final approved draft to the publisher, and going, oh my God, I can’t believe this has an ending!

Clare 55:03

It’s done! It’s done!

Amanda 55:04

It’s done! And a performance like this is never quite done. I change the draft of the script of the show every night, including now, part of act 2 is talking about Aboriginal rights and bushfires and all of the sexual assault stories that I heard down in Tasmania, and you’re just like, this endless trawler of pain, picking up… You can’t help but just pick up as you go along…

Clare 55:32

You’re like an alchemy machine.

Amanda 55:34

Exactly! And then everything has to sort of be incorporated, or at least that’s the challenge that I give myself, because I could have just written a simple script 18 months ago, and said, this is it, I’m tying a bow on it. But instead, I feel like I have to incorporate everything, or it feels inauthentic.

And now that I am done with the tour, it’s finally, really, really, really good, and I only have 4 shows left in New Zealand! And I’m like, ahh! And now what? Because now, it almost feels like I’m ready to press send, cos the draft is finally copy-edited and finished, and every story fits in the hole, and now I’m done, and now I’m ready to show it to the world, but fuck, my tour is over!

Clare 56:21

How would it be, have you filmed it at all, would you film it at all?

Amanda 56:25

I think that’s the key, is to hopefully do one final run of it, and film it. But also, I basically did this tour, saying…

Clare 56:32

That’s a DVD boxset.

Amanda 56:35

When I’m done with this, I’m never gonna do it again, but now that it’s in really good shape, I’m like, maybe I should go do a festival run, maybe I should go do it in a theatre.

Clare 56:42

Why did you say you were never gonna do it again?

Amanda 56:44

Because it’s fucking exhausting! Because, actually, sitting with that kind of darkness for 4 hours every night, while it is incredibly cathartic, there also is this question of, okay, well where’s the line? Where do you stop rehashing the past, and living in the story of darkness and trauma, and get to the good part, where you get to be done with your trauma, and you get to just go have your fucking coffee, and tap dance with your friends, and get a little bit of light in your life. Because I think it’s dangerous, and I am not a superstitious person at all, but I do think it can be dangerous, to sit too long in the dark. Shit can get moldy. You gotta air it out.

Clare 57:35

See, you’re airing it in public, and then are you doing that consciously, and purposefully, because your art is about serving, you’re there to serve and tell stories. This is why people who do this kind of work sometimes have struggles with how the hell to shift off. At the end, the thought of having something that would help you get into a different mood state really quickly is very, very attractive. But what do you do? You’re a mum now, you’re out there, you’re gonna be woken up by a small child in the morning.

Amanda 58:08

Well, I think if I have learned anything after 20 years of being a performer, and also on this particular tour, at the very beginning, I was so exhausted, by the process every night.

Clare 58:21

I love the way you said that word. Exhausted.

Amanda 58:24

By the process every night, that I was like, how am I gonna do this? I could barely even talk to people after the show.

Clare 58:30

Well then you should have a small cupboard in every single… A hiding cupboard, where you just get to hide for a little bit after!

Amanda 58:37

But then, I noticed it was sort of like a muscle. Code switching between ‘this is the four hours that I talk about trauma, grief, abortion, miscarriage, death,’ and the amount of adjustment time that I needed to go back into tap dancing coffee world, would get shorter and shorter and shorter and shorter, to the point where I couldn’t believe it, but by the time I was doing my shows in London, it was just like, the minute I stepped off stage, everything got left on stage, and it was a totally, a great place to entertain 40 people, oh my God, darling, how are you? I am so glad you were so touched by the show, why are you crying, do you need a hug, do you need a tissue, do you need a drink? I can take care of everybody now because I am so fucking good at leaving that where it needs to be.

Clare 59:26

And then what happens? So then you say goodnight, you get in the car, you go to your hotel, then what happens?

Amanda 59:32

Bath, bed.

Clare 59:33

Done.

Amanda 59:34

Bath and bed. And also, I have been saying no to every single opportunity that has been handed to me post-tour, because I have built a fence around a few months of time where all I do is home, tap dancing, coffee, child, friends.

Clare 59:52

I might make a little album in there.

Amanda 59:55

Well, that was an accident.

This morning… So, it was 10:30, we were supposed to meet here at 10:30 for the podcast. I texted you, hey, I’m downstairs, are you here yet? And I had this spidey sense. And the minute I saw your little bubble, and then you were like, fuck, fuck, fuck, hold on a second. And I was like, she forgot. She either isn’t gonna be able to make it, or she’s gonna have to scramble all the way down here from north Melbourne, what’s gonna happen?

You called me, which was so great, instead of texting, and you just told me the truth. My kid is sick, I thought it was Thursday, it’s Friday, I’m so sorry, I’m on my way. I so appreciated you being so honest. But can you do me…

Clare 60:37

I was in the shower! I was literally in the shower!

Amanda 60:42

Why were you checking your texts in the shower?!

Clare 60:44

No, I heard a ping. I was listening to a podcast, and I heard a ping, and then my conscience must have kicked in, (gasps) ahhh! And I went, my darling…

Amanda 60:43

Because you have done so much work around anxiety, and being triggered, and the shame spiral that can happen, and this is not as punishment.

Clare 61:06

I love it.

Amanda 61:07

This is because it’s such a fresh, good opportunity to talk about something teeny-weeny…

Clare 61:09

Hit me. Love it.

Amanda 61:11

And I have a billion of my own like this, because I can be very forgetful and misplaceful… Tell me what’s the first, second, third, fourth thought that goes on, and how you manage a moment like that?

Clare 61:31

Great question. Amanda, thanks for the opportunity to…

Amanda 61:34

You’re so welcome.

Clare 61:35

Firstly, fucking apologise. I’ve gotta start here, I don’t like being late, I don’t like letting people down, and my life, like most working mums and dads, is many moving parts. And I’m heavily reliant on my calendar, and on my crew, who often fill in my calendar for me. It’s been a funny old week, and I woke up this morning, first thing I would normally check what’s going on with the day. I woke up to a cat jumping on my head, and then my son calling me, it was quite weird, he’s two rooms away. It was quite early in the morning. I went, that’s odd, and I picked it up, and I could hear…

Amanda 62:13

How old is he?

Clare 62:14

He’s 13. He’s had a sore throat. He loves school. So he was sick. Got up, someone was cooking an egg. Anyway, the day got away from me, and my head just said it was Thursday. And Marty had rushed off in the morning, he’s like my frontal lobe, which is a terrible thing to say, but I think this is how we’ve learned to function. He’s very detail-oriented, and I’m big-picture-ish.

So anyway, kids are off to school, everyone’s off to school, Ash has got an exam today, my girl. Eventually jump in the shower, I think I’m having a lazy day at home with my kid, with something in the afternoon. I’m in the shower. I see your message. I think… no, it’s Thursday. And then I think, hang on a minute. And I check, and I realise it’s Friday. Fuck, fuck, fuck, I say to you.

And now, here’s the difference. So that was a long lead up. I knew it was you for a start, and I know that you understand these things, actually. That when you have a life like this, there are lots of things going on, and sometimes you drop the ball on a little thing, and I knew that you’d get it, and that if you could accommodate waiting 25 minutes for me to get there, you would. So I had that feeling, I knew that to be true. In the old days, I would have just caved in on myself. I would have got there in 25 minutes still, with my hair wet.

Amanda 63:38

Yelling the whole time.

Clare 63:39

Yelling the whole time in my head about what a stupid idiot I was, and how profoundly disrespectful, and I’ve ruined everything, and it would be very dramatic. These days, after that many years of parenting, and surviving, I just went, yep. Fucked it up. I’ll do my make up in the car. And from the moment you texted and said, do you need a coffee, I knew we would all be absolutely fine.

So that’s the difference now, I am a little kinder to myself, and more playful. I used to think that I was gonna get it all right, and I used to think that I’d failed if I hadn’t. In the same way that I used to think, one day the voice of Frank would go away and disappear, and that would signify true success.

And then I also used to think I could somehow escape death. I’ve thought all sorts of things, and I could change all sorts of things in my life that I’m not able to. So I work within that powerlessness, and I work within the fact that I’m gonna fuck things up, and I’m gonna show up anyway, and I’m lucky to have forgiving friends.

Amanda 64:43

Do you find that you also know how to deal with people when they are dropping the ball, or whatever, and since you’ve been there so many times, you know how to ease other people’s anxieties, because you’ve been there yourself?

Clare 64:59

Yeah. Well, I had a radio show for two years here in Melbourne, and we had 24 different guests each week. And people have lives, sometimes things happen, people get sick, they forget, or they’re very, very nervous. So I think probably the best thing that I’m able to do, and you’ve got this gift too, you did it with me, you didn’t punish me, and you weren’t gonna punish me. I mean, that’s the worst bit, isn’t it, when you’re like, I have fucked up, and I’m gonna get punished by someone else, and shame my family, and reputation.

Look, a reputation is based on integrity, and that’s when I… When I have someone in the room with me who’s nervous, I just remind them that we’re okay, and as soon as playfulness is in there, we’re alright too. We’ve spoken about a lot…

Amanda 65:51

Humour is key.

Clare 65:52

Yeah. Spoken about a lot of pretty difficult stuff today, but I think one of the things that I will be doing, and you will be doing too, is I’m off the hook. I get to tell jokes for the rest of the day! We’ve done our deep work!

Amanda 66:06

We’ve done our work.

Clare 66:07

And I did try to take that approach too, with the book that I wrote, and with everything that I do. We’re light and shade workers. We’re trying to talk about profound things, or real things that don’t sink people, and we’re trying to add some levity to it as well. Our world is in a fricking intense moment in time. You and I were just talking to ourselves about the virus that’s going round, we’ve had the bushfire, we’ve had an extraordinary time of disruption in world politics. There’s so much going on with our climate. We’re gonna keep putting one foot in front of the other. We’re alchemy makers, we are attempted buddhists, we can do whatever we need to do to keep putting our hope into the world.

So I wanna thank you for everything that you do, Amanda, sorry to just be mushy, but I need to do that.

Amanda 66:58

No, let’s be mushy. And I loved that I randomly ran into you right after I got here, and then your book was right there in the bookstore, and I was so happy to have this book in my life, as part of my trip here.

Clare 67:15

Did I tell you that only a few days before I saw you, walking around the streets of my home town, and you and Neil were walking? I had, of course, thinking of you, I had listened to your Rich Roll podcast. Then I’d got a MasterClass, I’d been watching Neil’s MasterClass, and it was only…

Amanda 67:35

You were already hanging out with both of us.

Clare 67:37

I was already hanging out with both of you.

Amanda 67:38

Psychically.

Clare 67:39

And feeling I truly was, so then when I saw you, it wasn’t such a surprise.

Amanda 67:43

Well, your book is fucking phenomenal, and one of the things that I really do love about it is that it is a gorgeous combination of heavy and light, and it’s really, really fucking funny. Your vulnerability and your confidence are in there, just in a gorgeous dance, and I loved reading it. The book is so comforting.

Clare 68:03

Thank you, so, so much.

Amanda 68:06

I’m gonna send you guys out on a recording that Clare and I just did together.

Clare 68:12

What a treat.

Amanda 68:13

A cover of a song called Black Smoke by Emily Wurramara that was on the Bushfire benefit album that I put out.

Clare 68:18

She’s a brilliant Australian, young Australian singer-songwriter. Such a glorious sister.

Amanda 68:23

So, here we are, it’s me and Clare, singing together in beautiful, desperate harmony.

MUSIC BREAK – Black Smoke

Amanda 70:16

This has been The Art of Asking Everything podcast.

Thanks to my guest Clare Bowditch, check out her music, book, and other things at clarebowditch.com

Our interview was recorded by Nick Edin at Sing Sing Studios in Melbourne, Australia.

For all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to the new, improved amandapalmer.net/podcast.

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

Lots of thanks, as usual, to my amazing team. Hayley Rosenblum, Michael McComiskey, Alex Knight, Jordan Verzar, and introducing Kelly Welles, who’s been helping me newly on the social medias.

Things are going to evolve over the next couple of weeks and months, so stick around, and see what happens, I’ve got some really exciting guests coming up in the next while. So, so, so excited!

Thank you.

Signing off, this is Amanda Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

The post Clare Bowditch: Putting Hope Into The World first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Clare Bowditch: Putting Hope Into The World appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Madison Young: Can Porn Be Feminist? (Spoiler Alert: Yes It Can)

Kelly Welles — Tue, 02 Feb 2021 02:00:51 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/46834809

pleasure, porn and procreation.

ok, maybe the answer to the question ‘can porn be feminist?’ doesn’t require a spoiler in this context. maybe a conversation between a porn star, activist and noted expert on sex and BDSM and I would only ever be a celebration of kink and pleasure? you’re not wrong, but Madison Young is so much more than that. she’s a tower of burning energy that, having spent an hour with her, you’ll feel the flames on your skin.

get dressed and hit ‘play’.

Episode 19 of The Art of Asking Everything: Madison Young: Can Porn Be Feminist? (Spoiler alert: Yes it can) is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Show notes:

Description

Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Madison Young, recorded June 11, 2019 in Portland, Oregon.

Madison entered the world of erotic filmmaking as a performer in 2002, then started directing films in 2005.

She is a noted expert on sex, BDSM, and sexual power dynamics.

Madison has taught workshops, given lectures, and acted as a panelist on the topics of sexuality, feminist porn studies and the politics of BDSM at institutions such as Yale University, UC Berkeley, and the Berlin Porn Film Festival. She is the founder of the Erotic Film School, a three-day erotic filmmaking training program held in San Francisco, CA, that introduces students to the pre-production, production, and post-production process of making erotic film.

She is also the founder of the now closed Femina Potens Art Gallery, a nonprofit art gallery and performance space in San Francisco that served the LGBTQ and Kink communities.

Madison published her memoir Daddy in 2014.

Along with Moorea Malatt, she hosts the podcast, Wash Your Mouth Out.

CREDITS:

This has been the Art of Asking Everything Podcast.

Thank you so much to my guest, Madison Young, for her incredible bravery, truth-telling, shameless awesomeness. I want more guests like Madison!

You can check out her podcast, cos she’s got one too, it’s called Wash Your Mouth Out, her memoir again is called Daddy, you can find that online, and in your local bookstore, indie please. Check out her web-series Submission Possible on RevryTV, and Fragments is on Lust Cinema.

Our interview was recorded by Sonia Parrish at KBOO in Portland.

For all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to my website, and the section for the podcast is amandapalmer.net/podcast

This podcast was produced by FannieCo. Lots of thanks as always to my incredible team: Hayley Rosenblum, Michael McComiskey, Alex Knight, Kelly Welles, my manager Jordan Verzar, all of them have been wearing lots and lots of various hats and doing tons of stuff to make this podcast, and all of the stuff around it, possible.

And this whole podcast would not be possible at all without my patrons. All of them, there’s about 14,000 right now, make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit, just the media, doing what we do.

So many thanks right now to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, St. Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Leela Cosgrove, and Robert W. Perkins. Thank you to them, and to all of you who are contributing even a dollar to make it happen.

If you’re not part of the Patreon, please, become a supporting member. It also gives you access to the patron-only parts of the forum, the live chats that I do with the guests sometimes, you’ll get the podcast right in your email inbox, and it would mean a lot to me and my whole community if you would join us. It is a great place to be, especially as the rest of the internet turns into more and more of a cesspool every day.

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

No ads.
No sponsors.
No censorship.
We are the media.

Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

Go to Patreon.
Become a member.
Get extra stuff.

Join the community at patreon.com/amandapalmer

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Amanda 00:36

This is the Art of Asking Everything podcast, I am Amanda Palmer.

Greetings from Aotearoa New Zealand, it is the end of January 2021, and I’m trying something a little bit new with the format of the next few episodes of the podcast. Not too different, but mostly I am framing it around a question. It is the Art of Asking Everything, after all, I figured that made sense. And the podcast, as you know if you’ve been listening from the beginning, has sort of been an ongoing experiment, format-wise. It’s my podcast, and I’ll do what I want to!

So here is the question: why can’t porn be normal?

This week’s guest is Madison Young. So a little bit about this: right now, as arguably through most of human history, there has been a global war waged around what ‘normal’ even means. What social norms are. And whether you are right now watching abortion controls tighten, or the social responsibility of certain news organisations loosen and fly away, one thing is clear: the western world is getting, in many ways, in many aspects, more conservative.

So let’s talk about porn. What does that mean for porn? The porn industry has come so far since the internet enabled those of us who are not straight white men to exercise our desires for porn, and as a porn user, hello, thank you internet for that, it’s really nice! But progress is never a straight line, excuse the pun. Profit rules, sexism and misogyny still shape the narrative, and the flow of information, even if that information is boobs.

Luckily, we have experts in the field like Madison Young, this week’s guest. Madison entered the world of erotic film-making as a performer in 2002, then started directing films in 2005. She is a noted expert on sex, BDSM, and sexual power dynamics, and has taught workshops, given lectures, and acted as a panelist on the topics of sexuality, feminist porn studies, and the politics of BDSM at institutions such as Yale University, UC Berkeley, and the Berlin Porn Film Festival.

I will come out right now, I’ve come out many times before, and remind you, yours truly, Amanda, your host, was briefly a sex worker, I was a stripper and a dominatrix, and so the world of BDSM, and the politics of the work around BDSM, are of particular interest to me.

Madison is also, like me, a parent. And she is also the founder of the Erotic Film School, a three-day erotic filmmaking training program held in San Francisco, that introduces students to the pre-production, production, and post-production process of making erotic film – ie porn school! She’s also the founder of the now closed Femina Potens Art Gallery, which is a nonprofit art gallery and performance space in San Francisco that served the LGBTQ and kink communities. And she published a memoir called Daddy in 2014, and if you want to go further into Madison-land, there’s a lot of places you can go, there’s gonna be lots of links on the site, and definitely get her book, we’re gonna start a book club on the Patreon about her memoir.

Her new scripted series, Submission Possible, is on RevryTV, you can also see her there, and her feminist-erotic web series Fragments is on Lust Cinema.

We had an amazing conversation when I was on tour in Portland, Oregon, when I was there on the There Will Be No Intermission tour. I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

Everybody, Madison Young.

Madison 05:04

I grew up in conservative southern Ohio. I knew very early on that I was different from the people around me. I knew that I was queer, I knew that I was kinky, and I felt a whole lot of shame. I was in this pocket of homophobia. Everything and everyone around me was telling me that I was going to burn in hell, and it felt like I was living in hell. And I really found my escapism through art. I knew I wanted to be an artist, and work in theatre, and I convinced my parents, I made a deal with them that if I got a 4.0 for two years, they’d let me audition to go to the performing arts school downtown. I did, worked very hard, and auditioned, and got into the school, and I finally started to kind of find my people.

This was in Cincinnati, and it was after that I went off to college, to Chicago, and then San Francisco…

Amanda 06:09

And to Antioch.

Madison 06:10

The way Antioch works is you’re there for a semester, and then you go anywhere in the world, and you doa co-op living experience that’s supposed to be based on your major, and I was a theatre major, so I went to San Francisco, and I opened a feminist art gallery and performance space, called Femina Potens, and then I was like, okay, I’m doing what I wanna do for the rest of my life, why would I go back to Ohio? So I stayed in San Francisco and ran a feminist art gallery and performance space there for over a decade.

Amanda 06:$6

Now, one does not just accidentally start a feminist art gallery. What happened? So you were what, 18? 19?

Madison 06:53

I was 20.

Amanda 06:54

20, okay, and so you show up in San Francisco. How did you wind up starting a feminist art gallery?

Madison 07:00

I’m a witch, and I’m very magic, and pretty much any time that I want to do something…

Amanda 07:05

It manifests.

Madison 07:06

It manifests.

Amanda 07:07

You’re a master manifestor.

Madison 07:08

I am. I’m a Virgo with an Aquarius rising, and an Aquarius moon, which I say means that I’m a dreamer that gets shit done. I knew I wanted to manifest this gallery, and that it was really important, and the only spaces that I really saw for queer women in San Francisco were bars, and I wasn’t even old enough to drink. I knew I wanted to start…

Amanda 07:31

Just a space.

Madison 07:36

This art gallery, this space, where we could celebrate our culture, and art, and have these conversations. And so I found that space. I didn’t even have a place to live, I was living on couches, I was couchsurfing. Found this space, and I only had enough money for the deposit and for the first month, and then once I got into the space, I was like, okay, well, other queers are doing sex work in order to pay for their art, let me get on Craigslist erotic section, and started selling my dirty underwear, and doing porn. It was kind of like I became the porn star that did anal scenes to support the feminist art gallery.

Amanda 08:24

Do you remember the first time someone pointed a camera at you, and you were being intimate, and what it felt like? Cos I had kind of a similar story, and I did a lot of photography, and I was a stripper, and I was a dominatrix. But your comfort level, you don’t just start right there. Maybe some people do, but how did you feel the first time you were nude in front of a camera?

Madison 08:51

Yeah. Especially when I started modelling, I never really thought of myself as beautiful, or what a porn star looks like, porn stars were tall, and had big breasts, and had a different kind of body, and I was full of piercings, and I had this way of cutting my hair where I would close my eyes and then chop at my hair with scissors.

Amanda 09:19

But you’re a witch, so it always came out great.

Madison 09:24

So I didn’t think I was exactly what they were looking for, but I kind of thought about it as performance art, and I was very comfortable using my body as a material, and as a medium, so I thought about it in that way. And for me, especially BDSM, and doing bondage modelling, made a lot of sense, because it didn’t feel like it was about what I looked like, it was how fucking strong I am. It’s like, you can hit me with a whip as hard as you want, you think that fucking hurts? Give it to me.

And then not only that, taking all that energy and then transcending it, and melting it into this delicious pleasure, and then orgasming from that, and then being paid, and then funding a feminist revolution with it. The whole thing was just amazing.

Amanda 10:15

Were there any points, especially early on there, where you looked around and you were like, ooh, this is not amazing, this is suspect, this is sleazy, I’m a little bit squicked?

Madison 10:28

Yes. Definitely. I did a lot of performing, it was how I made most of my money during a certain point of my life, 2002 until like, 2010?

Amanda 10:40

2002, that is pre-YouTube. So where was the media winding up?

Madison 10:46

I mean, I’m definitely on some VHSes.

Amanda 10:50

Right!

Madison 10:52

And DVDs…

Amanda 10:52

Vintage.

Madison 10:54

And yeah, a lot of DVDs, a lot of websites that don’t exist anymore. A lot of clips that are still floating around out there. My specialty for five or six years was that I worked specifically in bondage, I was a bondage model. Some people that were bondage models didn’t even consider it to be porn, that that was something else. I did a lot of really tight rope bondage, a lot of suspension. I love to be off the ground, I love to push my body.

Amanda 11:34

There’s an element of theatricalness to that, and also sort of acrobaticness. It’s just like, can you do this thing with your body?

You were in San Francisco, which, if you’re gonna choose this as your line of work, better than Cincinnati, probably. You mentioned performance art, to even have the language for that, I remember a time in my life when I didn’t know what performance art was, or what it meant. Where did your education come from?

Madison 12:04

Some of it was from college, I was a theatre major there, but then once I moved to San Francisco, I really fell into this scene of really vibrant, queer performance art that I addressed sexuality very head on. Many of those folks were also a part of this queer sex work community. Annie Sprinkle was definitely one of those. Annie Sprinkle and Carol Queen.

Annie and I met in 2003. Annie Sprinkle is so many things, Annie Sprinkle was a porn star in the 70s, 80s, into the 90s, but is also a brilliant performance artist, and had many one-woman shows, was a feminist porn director, is a sex educator, and is now leading the movement of ecosexuality, as a filmmaker, and an incredible artist who makes work with her wife, Beth Stephens, and they’re my two mamas.

Amanda 13:08

That’s amazing. I had a rough ride in college and didn’t really enjoy it, but there were a few things that I did take away that were amazing, and one was a class that I took called Postmodern Performances, this was at Wesleyan University in like, 1995 or something. And we were being schooled in performance art of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and as part of the course, we watched one of Annie Sprinkle’s ten-minute orgasm videos. And I was like, this woman is amazing! Whether or not that orgasm is real, it doesn’t matter! She is just having an amazing time, and I can’t believe this exists! I can’t believe this is real, I can’t believe she’s real, she is so amazing! Cos she’s also Annie Sprinkle, she has the perfect sense of humour, mixed with gravity, to send you the message of sexual liberation, she’s just incredible.

Madison 14:01

She’s fucking brilliant, and she’s also just… Her and Beth are just… They’re the kind of people that when you walk into the room, you feel the love. I feel like there’s only a few people that I’ve met that you enter the room, and it’s like, thick. It’s palpable. You feel it. They generate that much love, and when I met them, they were really making a whole lot of work. Their work is still very centred on love, love surrounding the environment, and they have the Love Art Lab, and they were doing cuddle art…

Amanda 14:38

Cuddle art!

Madison 14:40

Yeah, so good, and I was like, this is fucking radical! Love is so fucking radical! This is what is going to change things. Love! Of course! The biggest taboo.

Amanda 14:53

And the ultimate word for it, which to me is compassion. I mean, they’re the same thing. You could feel that from Annie Sprinkle’s work, is that it was compassion-based. It wasn’t performance narcissistically-based art, it was love-based, compassion-based, like I want to liberate you and help you and delight you, and I’m so happy to know that she’s in your life like that. That’s amazing.

Madison 15:18

Yeah, she’s amazing. And she’s an amazing grandmother to my kids, and a mama to me.

MUSIC BREAK – Look At All The Women In The Street

Amanda 15:26

I’ve also used my body in various ways for my work, I mean as a performer you’re using your body period, right? Any kind of work, you’re using your body. You said something like you were not the typical looking porn star, you weren’t 6 feet with blonde hair and big boobs or whatever, but how did you find that your own relationship with shame, and your own relationship with your body, your boobs, your legs, your hands, your face, your hair, your lips, how did you find that relationship evolve, not just through being on one side of the camera, and performing, and knowing that your body is being used as this tool, but what happened? Because you were doing this for years and years and years, right? Your relationship with your body must have evolved in certain directions. What happened?

Madison 16:24

When I started, I was so young, I was, I guess 21, when I first stepped in front of the camera. I was insecure, and awkward, and still developing a sense of my sexuality, and sexual pleasure, and exploring my sexuality, and so many of my firsts, including my exploration of kink, happened in front of the camera. All of my 20s are in front of the camera. Which is amazing, and I have so much documentation of me, and different lovers that I love, that I had incredible sex with, and amazing experiences with. And the very first time that I met my husband, and the father of my children, and my dominant, and the love of my life, we’ve been together since 2005, that moment that we met is on camera.

Amanda 17:28

Wow.

Madison 17:29

Within moments, he had me in an inverted suspension. And I can look at that, I can see that moment where we were testing each other’s boundaries of, ‘oh really, you’re that much of a badass?’ ‘Yes, I’m that much of a badass, do you know who I am?’ ‘Yes, I know who you are.’ ‘How about this?’ ‘Yeah, I can take that.’ Just testing each other out. And we still do that. It’s like finally meeting your match, and he continues to challenge me.

Amanda 18:01

There you were, sort of growing up in a performance mode, sometimes on camera, with your own sexuality and your own body, but did you just get more comfortable because that’s just what happens when you’re in front of a camera again and again and again and again?

Madison 18:15

Yeah, I developed a relationship with the camera, I feel like the camera, like a blackbox theatre, or a camera, they’re these safe spaces, they’re these containers of… And the camera has been there, I have a relationship with the camera.

Amanda 18:35

What about the people on the other side of the camera? The ones who are sticking that DVD into their players in their own living rooms? Do you think about them?

Madison 18:44

You know, if I’m looking directly at the camera, I’m thinking about… I guess I’m kind of thinking more about the universe as a whole, and sending my erotic energy out to the entire universe through this portal, so it’s manifesting this sexual energy, and then sending it out through this portal, and it’s like, enveloping the universe.

Amanda 19:13

You are a witch.

Madison 19:16

Yes.

Amanda 19:18

So did you watch yourself shedding shame? Did any of it have to do with the outside world validating you, authenticating you, reaching out to you and going, it doesn’t matter if you aren’t a triple-D, you’re still an amazing porn star? There’s always balance there, how much of it came from your own battle royale with yourself, and how much of it came from others?

Madison 19:47

I think when it comes to porn, I feel like it’s been very much a documentation of my own sexuality, and it’s a way that I have documented my sexual evolution, and I think that it’s really important to show authentic orgasms, and healthy communication about sex, and some of the videos of me and my husband surrounding kink are some of the only real couples that you’ll find in BDSM having an authentic experience that involves negotiation, and involves very active consent.

For me, being in front of the camera, the way that I could do it was really not making it so much about the outside. I’m way more of a hippie, I’ve never been an uber-femme, I can’t do my nails or my make up. If I’m getting make up done, someone has to do the make up, because I just can’t. It’s not my thing. And being in front of the camera, it was about talent, it was about how good of a bondage model I was, how tight I could take bondage, how I could perform in it, making it a performance. If it was having sex with someone, it was about having sex in the best and most feminist way, and holding space, say if it was in a mainstream setting, being the one to come into that setting and hold the space, and aggressively negotiate, because that space wouldn’t necessarily be held.

Amanda 21:31

Can you give me an example of that?

Madison 21:33

There’s differences between feminist porn and mainstream porn. In mainstream porn, a lot of the times you’re not going to know the person that you’re performing with until the day of. So you meet the person, so they set the person aside, and I’d say hi, I’m Madison, here’s a little bit to know about my body, this is how I like to be touched, I’d like to know a little bit about you, these are things that I don’t like, what do you like, what don’t you like. Just having those conversations, that was considered unusual.

Amanda 22:07

What was otherwise expected, that you would just show up, high five the person and start banging?

Madison 22:12

Pretty much. I mean, it’s just a lack of communication, and a lack of emphasis on, say, pleasure. So very much like Annie Sprinkle, I’m a pleasure activist. I think that in documenting pleasure, and in documenting authentic pleasure, that that is feminist.

I mean, I’ve been in so many scenes, and I think there were only a couple that were highly problematic. I was pretty vocal about really advocating for myself in mainstream settings. In any setting. You had to really come in prepared in a mainstream setting.

One time that I was in the middle of a scene, and had an anal tear, which is not very fun, the guy pulled out, and was like, ugh! I was like, oh no, there must be some poop or something. And I looked down, and there’s all this blood, and I was totally freaking out, I ran to the bathroom, and I continued to bleed more and more, and I called my agent, and I was like, I’m out of here. I’m bleeding, I need to go to the hospital. He was not very helpful, he was like, oh you can finish the scene, it’s no problem.

Amanda 23:35

Bad agent.

Madison 23:36

Yeah, bad agent. And I was like, okay, well, I’m just gonna get an Uber and go right to the airport, because even though I should have probably gone to some place in LA, just wanted to be back in the Bay Area where I was living. So I went to the hospital as soon as I landed in Oakland. Of course received very biased opinions as well from the medical provider, from the doctor who saw me and said, you know, you have an anal tear, and I said, well when can I have anal sex again, because I have to pay for my feminist art gallery! This is expensive rent in San Francisco!

Amanda 24:22

So you were really young when this happened.

Madison 24:25

Well in the porn industry, not super young. I was, I think 27? 28? And he said that I should never have anal sex again.

Amanda 24:33

Oh, wow.

Madison 24:34

Because, of course, what doctor is going to say that?

Amanda 24:39

Was this a male doctor?

Madison 24:40

Yes.

Amanda 24:42

How did this male doctor explain that? He was just like, anal sex is too dangerous, just don’t have it?

Madison 24:49

He didn’t even give a lot of explanation. I just asked him very upfront, this is part of my job, when can I go back to work, which involves anal sex? And he was like, you shouldn’t have anal sex.

Amanda 25:06

No pun intended, but what an asshole.

Madison 25:08

Yeah. Total asshole. So I’m always telling people, it’s so important to find sex positive doctors.

Amanda 25:16

So how does one go about finding a sex positive doctor?

Madison 25:19

Interviewing them. You have to…

Amanda 25:23

If you’re in an emergency, you don’t really have that luxury.

Madison 25:26

Exactly. The hard part is when there’s an emergency. For general practitioners or midwives or things like that, you can do more research, and there’s a great site called kinkawareprofessionals which is really great. It’s hard. There’s a lot of judgement out there.

MUSIC BREAK – Congratulations

Amanda 25:51

In your life right now, things have changed as well, because you’re how old?

Madison 25:56

39 in a couple of months.

Amanda 25:59

And you have an 8 year old and a 2 year old. And having children changes your body, being pregnant changes your body, and then being pregnant again changes your body, and did you breastfeed?

Madison 26:09

Yeah.

Amanda 26:10

So breastfeeding changes your boobs, and even if you don’t breastfeed, pregnancy changes your boobs. I knew that pregnancy would change my body, I didn’t know that pregnancy, and then the aftermath, was going to change my ass so profoundly. And my ass more or less snapped back, but I did a photoshoot, I had just given birth, it was weeks, not months, and I decided to do this amazing, badass mom photoshoot on the beach at dawn in LA, I was wearing this weird dress that had no ass because it was actually a theatrical dress, I was holding a big machete, I was holding my child. And the vision that I had in my brain for the photograph was me from behind holding the child, and holding the machete. But I hadn’t looked at my ass since I had had a child. And I don’t think anyone else had either, I had mostly been rolling around in a bed, just dealing, and then occasionally shuffling off to the shower, shuffling to the store, cos I had an infant attached to my boob at all times. And I didn’t even know until I looked at the contact sheets, and I was like (gasps) what happened to my ass?!

Something happened. Well, I know what physiologically happened to my ass. It was filled with pounds and pounds of water, and then the baby happened and my ass just deflated like two balloons, and that’s what my ass looked like, it just looked like two fleshy, shrivelled balloons that had just been let out. It was just a horrifying sight. And there I was, I was just so used to my ass that I was posing for the camera like I had the ass that I had, not the horror ass.

And then I was like wow, I am confronted with my own vanity. That’s the shot. But wow, look at that amazing, hanging, sagging, postpartum… wow. That’s not the shot I had in my brain. But then, Amanda, hyper-uber-feminist, why are you afraid of that ass? What about that ass is scary to you? But also, this shot from the front of you holding the baby with the amazing dress is also amazing, maybe we use that.

But I really was amazed at my love of, and appreciation of, the camera, with which I have also had a lifelong relationship. And I was like, wow, that camera is showing me something that I wouldn’t have otherwise seen. I just never would have seen my postpartum ass. It’s hard to look at in a mirror, I wasn’t anywhere where there were two way mirrors, I wasn’t in any shops where I was trying on clothes, I was just recovering from childbirth.

And there is something very beautiful about the camera as friend, as truth-teller, non-judgemental, shower of you to you, that for someone who doesn’t spend a lot of time professionally in front of a camera, and that does not mean you’re taking selfies with your phone, being professionally, especially naked, in front of a camera, really gives you a relationship, a comfortable, if you’re doing it right, hopefully, a comfortable relationship with your body that’s not automatically available to other people, and I wonder if you’ve felt that same thing.

Madison 29:46

I shot porn through the pregnancy of my first kiddo, and my second kiddo, much more with my first child than my second.

Amanda 29:57

Why was that?

Madison 30:00

I just had other things going on, including being a parent. And I very rarely perform in erotic films any more. I direct erotic films for Erika Lust, and I write non-erotic films, and I write books, and I have a podcast, I’m doing a television show, I have other projects that I’m working on. So during the pregnancy of my second kiddo, I didn’t do as much. I did one or two solo shoots, cos I love the pregnant body, and I wanted to be out in nature, and get some gorgeous erotic photos, and things like that.

It’s a very different relationship that I had with my body when I’m pregnant. I’m a big pregnant lady. I’m a pretty small person, I gained 60lb with both of the kids, each time. I lose it. My mom also gained a lot with both of her kids. My body just packs it on during a pregnancy, and I become very round. I love that though, I love the roundness of a pregnant body, I think it’s gorgeous, and I think it’s really important to show that when we’re pregnant, we still have a relationship with our body, and with our sexuality.

And then I also did some work postpartum with my first kid, and that was tough. I mean, I think that people don’t spend enough time writing about the postpartum experience, because the relationship you have with your body… You’re right, it’s like, celebrated when you’re pregnant, and you’re round, and you’re full, and then…

Amanda 31:48

You’re a moon goddess!

Madison 31:50

Yeah! And then you’re just exhausted.

Amanda 31:53

And flapping.

Madison 31:54

And flapping, yes! Everything.

Amanda 31:56

The flapping ass, the flapping vag. The thing I was most fascinated by postpartum was just how gigantic everything was. My vag and my labia were so magnificently swollen, that I was like, wow, I feel like I’m packing. There’s just so much happening down there, and no one told me about this. But also, I gave birth in the most wonderful place, I gave birth at the Farm.

Madison 32:27

Yeah! Oh, I knew it on hearing that, that’s so great.

Amanda 32:31

With all these wonderful, wisened midwives, who had done literally thousands of births, and they were prepped, and they do something called a twatsicle. And a twatsicle, they made them, and then they gave me the recipe for them, and it’s basically a pad, sanitary pad, soaked in witch hazel, that you stick in the freezer, and then you take the twatsicle, and you put it in your underwear. And they’d say, get a twatsicle for Amanda!

Madison 32:58

My second birth was at a beautiful birthing centre in Berkeley, surrounded by midwives, in a gorgeous, huge tub, and it was the most supportive, ecstatic experience of my life, it was so transcendental, I was like, making out with my husband, and going into these other realms.

Amanda 33:20

It’s a trippy experience.

Madison 33:23

It was so amazing.

Amanda 33:24

And I was so glad that I didn’t have to have it in a hospital, or on drugs. It was intense, but also as someone who’s comfortable with your body, and especially comfortable with your own bits and not holding a lot of shame around that, it’s probably… You already have a language for it.

Madison 34:41

Yeah. And it was nice to be in that supportive environment. My first kiddo, we had Kaiser insurance, and we were like, you know how to do your thing, let’s just do it at Kaiser, have them stay out of the way, we’ll bring our doula, it’ll be fine. But I think just being in that environment, it wasn’t fine. I’m a long labourer, both kids were 47 hours, which is fine, but it wasn’t fine in the hospital.

Amanda 34:10

Cos you’re stuck there.

Madison 34:12

They don’t like those numbers. They’re all about the numbers, and checking constantly, and with the midwives they checked once.

Amanda 34:20

So I have just a curiosity question. So the porn that you did when you were pregnant the first time, was any of it pregnant-centric? Was it just, this happens to be a pregnant person having sex, and this is totally normal and normalised?

Madison 34:33

There were a couple that were pregnant-centric.

Amanda 34:37

My favourite new word. Pregnant-centric.

Madison 34:42

But I also did some porn that was, I was doing a tour in Australia, and was shooting with some folks there, and it was just different queer and feminist porn that I was booked to do.

Amanda 34:59

And you just went and did it.

Madison 35:00

And I happened to be pregnant.

Amanda 35:01

Did anyone have a problem with it, within the community and without the community?

Madison 35:05

Not within the community. I mean, I think that folks, especially within the queer community, were kind of excited about it, and in the feminist community I think as well. But with mainstream porn, it mostly was kind of a niche thing, once I started to show in my second trimester.

Amanda 35:26

You’ve gotta be ready to drop nine.

Madison 35:30

Yes, you kind of go from being marketable, the first trimester I was able to stretch that first three months, and only pull off a burrito belly kind of thing, and then not marketable really until the third trimester, where you’re very pregnant.

Amanda 35:50

Right, and you look like a pregnant lady.

Madison 35:52

Yes. And I couldn’t do most of the bondage work that I was really well known for doing, due to liabilities. Not due to it actually…

Amanda 36:05

People aren’t into that.

Madison 36:07

Yeah, I mean I did a spread for Hustler’s Taboo magazine where I was very pregnant, and in rope and things. It’s completely fine and healthy to explore BDSM and kink while you’re pregnant. Just doing it in a way that modifies for your pregnant body.

MUSIC BREAK – You’d Think I’d Shot Their Children

Amanda 36:32

And so, when I said from without, I don’t even mean, so you’ve got the queer porn community, and then the mainstream porn community, but then you have the world.

Madison 36:40

Oh, the fans, and the world. Yes.

Amanda 36:41

Well yeah, and the fans are even whatever, but then there’s the world. Has the world had anything to say about that? Especially the tour that I’m doing right now, and the conversation around how we are with pregnant women, and that we are female, we’re put on this planet to give babies, and make babies, and do babies, that’s our job. And people have really, really strong political opinions about what pregnancy is, and how it is done, and I would imagine that there would be some people out there who would be incredibly pissed off to know that a pregnant woman was doing porn.

Madison 37:25

I had a lot of support during pregnancy. What I had a lot of backlash from was once I became a mother, because that’s very different.

Amanda 37:36

Then you’re a mom doing porn. Moms don’t do porn.

Madison 37:39

No. You can be a MILF in porn, but you can’t be an out mom, and talk about it all.

Amanda 37:49

Where did that backlash come from?

Madison 37:51

I saw it from both within the community, and from people who had been fans in the past, and everyone. I mean, I feel like it was a really hard transition into becoming a parent.

Amanda 38:10

Which is hard enough as it is.

Madison 38:12

Yeah, I mean it was a hard transition as it was. It kind of exploded with… I had planned this prior to becoming a parent, because I was a workaholic, and travelled around the world, getting tied up and doing porn, and then also writing grants for non-profit feminist art gallery, and providing all of this programming in San Francisco at my art gallery. I was just working 70 hours a week prior to becoming a parent.

So I had decided that I was going to do a plan in our programming, an exhibition called Becoming MILF, and it would be surrounding the transitional experience of what is it like to balance our relationship with our body and sexuality, and motherhood? And I would document it, and do this photo series, and have an exhibition of it, and it would be up eight weeks after giving birth.

Amanda 39:17

And it would fix everything.

Madison 39:19

Why not? Of course I can create 13 new pieces of art and…

Amanda 39:21

And a child.

Madison 39:23

And a child, and exhibit it. Why don’t I just have the child in the gallery too?!

Amanda 39:26

Yeah! So how did that go?

Madison 39:27

I learned. It was a wonderful learning experience of what not to do. Some beautiful pieces of art came out of it, and we survived, and my kiddo spent lots of time at the art gallery, as I was mounting the show. The public that showed up for the show, which was sponsored by the National Endowment for the Arts, and we had a grant for, it was at a very nice gallery, everyone was very supportive. Then the press kind of glommed in. There were images from the show that were taken out of context. There were interviews and things about the show that were not necessarily bad, they were completely fine, but the images went out into the interwebs world, they went from the gallery onto online.

Amanda 40:20

Are these images of you and new child?

Madison 40:22

The specific image that came under attack was an image that I tried to recreate of a famous Avedon image of Marilyn Monroe, where she’s kind of looking to the side, and she’s very pensive, and she has this halter dress on, it’s black and white, and I’m doing a similar image, dressed as Marilyn, in a halter, and breastfeeding, and looking to the side, just like this transitional period of time. You don’t see my nipple, you don’t see a breast, you don’t see the face of my child.

If I was anyone else, no one would think this image was sexual at all, or erotic at all. But the attacks coming in were saying that as someone, even though I had a long history as an artist, because I’d done porn, that my image and my self were always under an erotic eye, and would always be sexualised. And so if I was bringing my child into an image, and I was…

Amanda 41:30

Then you were putting your child in porn.

Madison 41:32

Yes. And then from there, it spun onto, oh, I’m taking my child onto…

Amanda 41:39

A porn set.

Madison 41:40

Porn sets, yes, all of these things that were completely not true, I hadn’t even been near a porn set since the birth, and I was like, in that weeping stage, and leaking stage, and doubting who I was, and in this glom of emotional mess, with just what seemed like everyone in the world…

Amanda 42:02

Yelling.

Madison 42:04

Yelling at me, and phone calls started coming in from talk shows, and Anderson Cooper, and all these people, and like, I don’t wanna talk to anyone! Pretty terrifying. Also just as being someone who did work in erotic film, having people in the community say things like, ‘You need to be careful, someone might hurt you, or you could have your child taken away from you, I’m like, all I’m doing is rocking here with a colicky baby, like I’m so normal right now! This is the most normal I’ve been in a decade! Just leave me alone!

Amanda 42:51

I’m so sorry.

Madison 42:53

Yeah, it was very traumatising. But it was after that whole experience, and having space from it, it just became so clear how the public perceives mothers, just how taboo that is. And I include that in my one-woman show, after all the shit I’ve done, the most taboo thing that I have ever done is become a mom. That’s it.

Amanda 43:19

Well, because you’re not allowed to break that mold. We are not allowed to break that mold within this patriarchy. It’s sacrosanct. We’re like service providers, who are supposed to just provide babies in a certain way, with a certain tone, and you start fucking with that, and you make people very, very, very, very angry. I mean, I certainly haven’t had anything that bad. People get a different kind of upset within the conscriptions of this culture when moms are involved, and kids are involved. There’s a different kind of outrage.

Madison 44:00

But I think that after that, I mean I’m glad, in a way, that it all happened, I’ve seen so many more… That was eight years ago, with my first kiddo, and many more women in the adult film industry since then have become out about being parents, and are documenting their pregnancy, and are able to…

Amanda 44:22

I love that you have to be an out parent.

Madison 44:27

Yeah, exactly! I know, it’s like that’s the thing that you’re being out about, but it’s like, I am that complicated, look, I’m not hiding! Because before then, so many people, if they were in front of the camera, they’d just hide during that time, and then come back when your body is back.

Amanda 44:44

Well, there’s some other interesting areas, in entertainment and beyond, where that’s also true. In the music industry, and I’ve seen a lot of women talk about this, especially women rockers of the 80s, some of them weren’t out.

Madison 45:01

Right, right, I can completely see that.

Amanda 45:04

It’s just not rock and roll. It’s just not rock and roll, and it fucks with the image, so just hide that child.

I’m really proud of you for weathering that storm. I mean, you definitely, I’m sure, have kicked the gate down and the door down for a lot of people.

Madison 45:21

I’m working on an anthology of women and non-binary folks who work in porn that are also parents, of many different ages, it’s really interesting, right now we have about 25 submissions. I’m really excited to get their stories out there.

Amanda 45:40

Did you ever think this would be your life?

Madison 45:42

This?

Amanda 45:43

Yeah.

Madison 45:44

Yeah. I totally did. I grew up super shy, and quiet, and nervous, and bullied, and I would stare out the school bus, and I saw this woman. I completely knew this was out there. I’ll talk to my spirit guides and stuff, and they’re like, we gave you those visions. We gave you those visions because we knew it would get you through, and we knew you would step into that woman one day.

MUSIC BREAK – I Don’t Have This Shit Figured Out

Amanda 46:25

Given where you are now, given everything you’ve been through, is there anything about your body that you still struggle with?

Madison 46:33

Hmm… You know, our relationship with our body changes on a daily basis. I think that for me, it’s really about gifting affirmations to parts of my body that really need it. So if I’m feeling like my boobs are saggy, and I have a negative thought start to come in, I touch them, and I tell them, I’m like, I love you. You need love.

Amanda 46:59

Thanks, boobs!

Madison 47:00

Thank you so much. Or my belly. Whatever it is. And I think that, in the last year, I’ve really gotten into high intensity interval training, and strength and conditioning and stuff, and becoming really strong in that kind of brings me back to that place of what I also enjoy about bondage, and being strong in my body, and pushing those boundaries. So I think for me, the next step is a lot of the internal stuff, the spiritual stuff, and working on all the inner gooey stuff inside.

Amanda 47:40

Chiropractic adjustments of the soul.

Madison 47:42

Yes!

Amanda 47:43

I was really shocked after I had Ash, I notoriously, among all of my friends and Neil and everyone around me, everyone knows I really hate the cold. I hate the cold, I hate being cold, I hate having to deal with the cold. If given a choice of temperature, I will stick it on 80, that’s just where I want it, I want every room 80, if I’m going somewhere and I get to pick, I wanna go to the place where it’s 80, or 90, I just like being hot. And then after Ash was born, I started going into cold water. Ice cold water. And in that same way where I was really interested in how strong I could be, and testing myself, and going into ice baths, and going into glacially cold lakes, and just… I know! She just shivered. But I think I was really emboldened by childbirth. I was like, I just did that. I just did that. I just endured a 24 hour labour and gave birth with no drugs, and that was… quite intense, and quite long. Am I supposed to believe that I can’t endure being in glacially cold water for three minutes?

Madison 48:58

Right, bring it on.

Amanda 48:59

Three minutes is just not that long! And now I’m like an addict.

Madison 49:05

Wow.

Amanda 49:06

I just desperately want to get into a cold plunge at all times, it’s amazing.

Madison 49:09

I’ll have to try that out.

Amanda 49:10

You should try it. And also, you get out of the cold and you feel like you have taken some amazing drugs, it’s an incredible feeling, not unlike the feelings that I know come up for people who do suspension, and do crazy, unexpected body challenges.

But yeah, that makes me very happy to hear. You just seem so comfortable within yourself, and I’m so glad that you’re out there being an advocate, and an activist, and you’re following the Annie way.

Madison 49:39

I am!

Amanda 49:40

You’re using your powers for good.

Madison 49:42

Absolutely. She’s been a shining light.

Amanda 49:45

Madison, thank you so much for being on my podcast. Madison has her own podcast, I’m actually on it, I’ll post up the link, but do you wanna give your podcast a plug, and just tell people where they can find it and what it is?

Madison 49:56

Sure, it is Wash Your Mouth Out podcast, you can find us at washyourmouthoutpodcast.com. We are a stigma-smashing feminist podcast that is addressing power, pleasure, and parenting.

Amanda 50:11

And you’re on Patreon.

Madison 50:13

Yes, I am on Patreon. Both for Wash Your Mouth Out, and Madison Young.

Amanda 50:18

Make sure you check out both of those Patreon pages, and good luck with everything that you’re gonna do. I hope we get to check back in.

Madison 50:27

Yeah, definitely! Me too.

Amanda 50:29

Find out what’s happening five years from now.

Madison 50:31

Oh my gosh. We’ll be in… Who knows where we’ll be?

Amanda 50:35

Thank you again for doing this.

Madison 50:36

Thank you.

Amanda 50:40

This has been the Art of Asking Everything podcast, I’m Amanda Palmer. Thank you so much to my guest, Madison Young, for her incredible bravery, truth-telling, shameless awesomeness. I want more guests like Madison!

Our interview was recorded by Sonia Parrish at KBOO in Portland.

For all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to my website, and the section for the podcast is amandapalmer.net/podcast

Thank you so much everyone. Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

The post Madison Young: Can Porn Be Feminist? (Spoiler Alert: Yes It Can) first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Madison Young: Can Porn Be Feminist? (Spoiler Alert: Yes It Can) appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Rachel Jayson: I Want The Thing

Kelly Welles — Tue, 26 Jan 2021 02:00:54 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/46745190/

lies, shoes, grief and mixtapes.

we recorded this episode in my home in woodstock back in September 2019. like the best long-yarn conversations with good friends, it roams across an ocean of emotions. we share war wounds from the mainstream media, Rachel talks about what it means to be ‘Dapper Q’, the church of LL Bean and the joy of finding music that’s as angry as you are.

Episode 18 of The Art of Asking Everything: Rachel Jayson: I Want The Thing is out now wherever you get your podcasts.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Show notes:

Description

Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Rachel Jayson, recorded September 10, 2019 in Woodstock, NY.

Rachel Jayson is musician, educator and fashion designer. She is the violist in two bands: Jaggery and Walter Sickert & the ARmy of BRoken TOys. She also teaches music and conducts two award-winning orchestras at Lexington High School outside of Boston. You can also find her slinging funky footwear at John Fluevog Shoes or designing and making her own clothing creations in her spare time.

CREDITS:

This has been the Art of Asking Everything Podcast.

Thank you very, very much to my guest, Rachel Jayson. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram, her Instagram is beautiful. You can visit armyoftoys.com and jaggery.org if you wanna check out either of her bands.

And as you might have noticed, we played some wonderful music in this episode. Very specifically, Russian Sailor’s Dance from the Russian ballet The Red Poppy, composed by Reinhold Glière, Serenade for Strings by Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and Nimrod Variation, which you are listening to right now, composed by Edward Elgar, part of his larger work The Enigma Variations.

The engineer for this interview was Jimmy Garver. For all of the music you heard in this episode, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast.

It was produced by FannieCo, and lots of thanks as usual to my incredible team. Hayley Rosenblum, who makes so many things possible with the podcast and the Patreon. We couldn’t do this without her. My assistant Michael McComiskey, who makes sure all the emails get answered and the trains run on time. Our UK Merch Queen Alex Knight, who’s also helping transcribe all of these conversations so they are accessible to everyone, thank you Alex. Kelly Welles has been helping us with cuts and snips and social medias. And my manager Jordan Verzar in Sydney helps bring us all together. Thank you to my whole team.

And last but not least, this whole podcast wouldn’t be possible without all of my patrons. They make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit, we are just making the media and putting it out there. So thank you to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, St. Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Leela Cosgrove, and Robert W. Perkins, thank you so much all of you guys, for helping me do this.

Everyone else, please go to Patreon, become a supporting member, this will give you access to the posts as they go out, and also live chats, and I’m gonna do one with Rachel, so I hope you listen to that too. And usually the podcast comes out on a Tuesday, the live cast comes out shortly after that if we do one.

The Patreon is also full of all sorts of other goodness, it’s a fantastic community, so please, even if it’s just for a dollar, join up.

Meanwhile, thank you so much, everyone. Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer, keep on asking everything.

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

No ads.
No sponsors.
No censorship.
We are the media.

Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

Go to Patreon.
Become a member.
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Join the community at patreon.com/amandapalmer

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Amanda 00:40

This is The Art of Asking. I am Amanda Fucking Palmer. I wanna talk for a second about what this podcast is. I mean, I called it The Art of Asking Everything for a very good reason – because it meant I could literally do anything, talk about anything, take it anywhere, talk to anyone, talk to myself, which I like doing. I could decide that I wanted to do a podcast about my journey to an ashram in India, and kind of the title would fit, it’s a nice, broad title for a podcast, it contains all of the things.

And last week I started stretching the boundaries a little bit, I had a long conversation about life and meaning with my therapist, Wayne Muller. But also, Wayne is a bestselling writer, and he’s a speaker, and he’s used to doing these sorts of interviews in the course of his daily life.

For this episode, I am finally delving into a big reason that I wanted to start a podcast, which is to eventually meld and blur the “famous” people that I know and meet, with my actual, real friends, and also my patrons, and my normal community, many of whom are more interesting, and sometimes smarter, than a lot of the “famous” people that I meet.

And this brings us to Rachel Jayson, she’s one of them. I met Rachel because we were both in bands in Boston. She was, and still is, a viola player in my housemate Mali Sastry’s band Jaggery, and Mali, by the way, would be another incredible friend to have on. She has deep knowledge. And when I moved to upstate New York, she and I had babies right around the same time. And that started to sort of bond us together. And also, before the babies, she and her wife had borrowed me and Neil’s rental house in Cambridge to get married in, when I was living in Cambridge to take my friend Anthony to chemo, long story there, just read my book.

Anyway, Rachel and her wife and their baby Asa started visiting me and Neil, and staying at our new house in Woodstock. And now here’s the weird coincidence: at the time, Rachel’s wife was working as a firefighter in my old hometown, Lexington. And at the same time, Rachel got a job teaching orchestra at my old high school, Lexington High. So we were all clearly, weirdly, karmically linked.

Rachel and I recorded this conversation at our old house in Woodstock in Neil’s writing cabin, in September 2019. Remember September 2019? With an engineer named Jimmy Garver.

And here’s a bit more official bio for Rachel: she is a musician, an educator, and a fashion designer. She is a violist in two art-rock bands, both of them from Boston, Jaggery, Mali’s band, and another band called Walter Sickert and the ARmy of BRoken TOys, who are like a big, loud, crazy, theatrical outfit. You should check out both of those bands, they’re great. And she teaches music and conducts two award-winning orchestras at Lexington High School. And I love this, she has designed footwear for John Fluevog shoes, one of my favourite shoes to put on my feet, and she makes her own clothing. And her Instagram feed is worth following, even if you’re not into clothes and shoes, because I don’t normally follow any clothes stuff, but Rachel makes clothes art. She is just a style genius, and her posts are always really beautiful, because she blends the personal and the fashion.

So we sat down, and we had a good old-fashioned yarn. Fake news headlines, racism, postpartum anxiety, what it’s like to teach kids about punk and mixtapes, what it’s like to lose a mentor to a sudden death, we just talked and talked. The conversation doesn’t even start, by the way, with a ‘Hello, Rachel’ and a welcome, we just dive right in, and we start the conversation with a story, and a question I ask Rachel about something that had just happened to her, that I could easily relate to. It was a story about what it feels like to be misrepresented by the media.

Let’s do it. Everyone: Rachel Jayson.

I originally met Rachel through friends in the Boston music scene. She was playing in a band with my housemate, Mali, from the Cloud Club, and she’s now teaching music at my alma matter, Lexington High School, we have all these friends in common, we have children about the same age. One of the things that I wanted to do with this podcast is just interview my friends and family, along with random climate scientists that I met at TED, and have it not just be a podcast about someone who’s got a book being published this week, but also a podcast about my interesting friends who are interesting.

I’d love to start this podcast off with having you tell the story of what happened when the Boston Globe reached out to you, and asked if they could cover a day in your life.

Rachel 06:10

I don’t have a lot of individual experience with the media. I’ve played in rock bands for a long time, my band ARmy of BRoken TOys has done lots of stuff in the Boston area, but when we’re interviewed, we’re interviewed as a herd. Lots of us, we have lots of things to say, and that’s very different from somebody kind of shining a spotlight on you.

The parent of one of my students at Lexington High School reached out to me, and said ‘I write for the businesses section in the Boston Globe, and I would like to write a day in the life podcast, here’s an example,’ and the example that she sent me was a day in the life of an undertaker. Which was totally fascinating! Like, what the actual, on the ground, minute to minute looks like, if this is your job.

I’m like, this is fantastic! People are gonna learn that as a mother, your day starts super early, and I have this whole experience with my two year old before I go off to school, and then they’re gonna find out that as a music educator, as an artistry director, approximately 75% of my job is moving chairs, then the other 25% is making really amazing music with hundreds of awesome students, and I get to talk about my music appreciation class, where I get to teach pop music to kids who don’t know anything, and I get to use Beyonce and The Beatles as examples! And this is gonna be so rad, and then I’m gonna talk about how I go to band practice afterwards, and I get to make my own art with my peers, and this is gonna be this great day in the life piece! So cool, I’m so honoured!

And she asked me because she had seen me at a big town-wide orchestra concert. So, I teach high school, but this is a concert combined with the middle and elementary schools, and I think her child was in one of the younger grades. And she thought to reach out to me after seeing me at a concert with hundreds of other people.

Amanda 07:57

Why do you think she chose you?

Rachel 07:58

I take up a lot of space, visually. And so, even in a gym with four other conductors, and 200, 300, maybe 400 students performing, it was a big concert, I still take up a lot of space, so even though I’m not particularly tall, I’m probably 5’4 and a half, I usually wear very tall shoes, I’ll wear fairly dramatic clothing, so even though I was probably wearing all black for this concert, I think maybe I was wearing a pair of red boots.

Amanda 08:28

And this is not par for the course in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Rachel 08:31

No, it’s not par for the course in Lexington.

Amanda 08:33

Land of L.L.Bean

Rachel 08:34

Yeah, it is land of L.L.Bean, I…

Amanda 08:37

Bless, but…

Rachel 08:38

Yeah, yeah. Bought my hiking boots there. My wife tricked me into buying hiking boots! I did go into an L.L.Bean, it was a wild experience. The best part of walking into L.L.Bean was looking at the line to the register, and seeing everybody in the line wearing L.L.Bean, holding L.L.Bean that looked exactly like the L.L.Bean that they were wearing.

Amanda 08:59

It’s like a church of bland uniformity. But practicality! I was raised by a woman who was clad in the L.L.Bean catalogue. And my mom had no brand loyalty, she was just like, these clothes are well-made and practical, and gosh darn it, they work. And like, that’s such a fucking New England approach to clothing.

Rachel 09:22

It’s a fact, I mean, I wear clothes cos they work, but also because they are beautiful and wonderful, and my way to make my personal art piece. So I also have long dreadlocks, and usually I wear bright lipstick, I have some visible tattoos, and so I think, even from a distance during a concert, this parent thought, hey, I wonder what that person’s day is like.

She said, ‘Can I write a day in the life piece?’ And we had an hour and a half long interview, it was a phone interview. The conversation veered pretty quickly off into other areas of my life that I was happy to talk about, but I was really just taken aback that they even came up. So very early in the conversation, she said, ‘well, I read an article about your clothing that you make, can you talk about the clothing that you make?’ And I often make myself pieces of clothing that are kind of whacky or bright or big, or sometimes I make clothing out of other things like umbrellas, or plastic bags, or whatever I have around that I feel like. And she really wanted to hear about that. I’m like, yeah, this is something I do for fun, it’s like a creative outlet.

And then I went back to talking about my day, like oh, so at 7:45 I do this and that. And she’s like, ‘I see you work at this shoe store, can you talk about the shoe store, what attracts you to it?’ I’m like oh yeah, I still work occasionally at John Fluevog shoes, it’s kind of a whacky shoe store, and I spent a long time there. And still, the conversation kept pulling away from my day job, and what I thought the interview was about, to all of these other elements.

She said, ‘I read an article’ – she was referencing an interview that I did with an amazing queer blog called DapperQ, and DapperQ is more about masculine-of-centre fashion.

Amanda 10:59

Wait, what do you mean by masculine-of-centre fashion?

Rachel 11:02

As in like, a space that’s not particularly for queer femme fashion, they focus on suiting for bodies that are maybe not male bodies, that’s where their slant happens to be. Dapper clothing, so dapper in the traditional sense is usually a masculine-defined word. And so while this blog reflects people of all genders, the clothing and the aesthetic of the blog tends to lean what I would call masculine-of-centre. And they wanted to broaden that, and so they started an awesome side project called Hi, Femme!, and they wanted to basically include this femme wing of the queer community, and say we wanna shine a light on these people as well.

And so, DapperQ had reached out to me about doing an interview about my fashion sense. In that, I talk about the complexities of being African American in a city that is still pretty segregated, and what it means to take up space visually, and how I move through the world, and all these things. And one of the things that I said in that article was, I teach at a school that doesn’t have many other African Americans on faculty, in fact I think maybe there’s one other Black person on faculty, and so I understand that the students are interacting with me, and I may be the only African American adult that they interact with that day, and that’s a responsibility.

Amanda 12:24

And to clarify, for people listening, cos you know Lexington and I know Lexington, how many Black kids are actually attending this school?

Rachel 12:32

Not many. Lexington also still participates in a program called the METCO program, which essentially buses Boston students that are usually minority out to suburbs, various suburbs, so Lexington has been participating in this program for decades, so a lot of the African Americans, certainly not all in the student population, but a lot of the African Americans in Lexington school population actually live in Boston. It’s not many, and it’s even fewer in the orchestra program, unfortunately.

So, in the DapperQ article, I spoke about that part of my identity, and the intersectionality of being a woman and being African American, and being in front of an audience. The Boston Globe interviewer asked me about that, and I was so confused, because I was really happy with the way I’d put it in that other interview!

Amanda 13:17

And also, what did it have to do about your day?

Rachel 13:19

Right! Which was confusing! So I was like, oh yeah, you know, I’m happy to answer that. So she read my quote back to me, and she says, ‘what do you mean by that?’ And I was like, oh, I meant what I said… It’s kind of like I’m a proxy for other African Americans, because I’m the only one that they interact with. And I summed up what I said.

So, we finished the interview, I get off the phone, I talk to my wife, I’m like, wow, that was not what I expected, but, you know what? It’s gonna be fine. I sent the Globe a bunch of pictures of me for them to use, but they sent a photographer. The photographer comes to my orchestra rehearsals, takes a glorious picture of me, fantastic.

And then, a little while later, in the business section, on page 4, the article comes out. And it’s titled ‘In The Classroom, She’s A Proxy For All African Americans.’ That’s the title of my day in the life, cutesy rundown of my job. And my heart just sank.

And I read, I saw it online first, it dropped online. And there were some factual inaccuracies which were very scary, where it’s like, that’s not how that happened, oh my goodness, things about where I went to school, or how I got the job that I got, that just didn’t translate directly. So I immediately contacted the writer, and was like, can you please fix this, this, and this? Mistakes happen, it’s totally fine.

But the article read like this odd, kind of cut-together, not quite highlights of my life, it was just kind of this watered down Xerox of a Xerox of a Xerox, of some things that make me me. It was like a laundry list of some things that I do. It wasn’t about me being an African American teacher, and it wasn’t a day in the life, and it wasn’t a nuanced picture of me. I felt like it was trying to be all three of these things, and it didn’t end up as any of them.

I avoided posting it for a little while, sharing it with my community, this is such an honour, this is the Boston Globe! I needed to figure out what I felt about it.

What really made it stick out was when they tweeted about the article, which I was surprised about, because why would the Boston Globe tweet about a third page business section line? The business section was like, ‘Rachel Jayson is a creative music teacher, something something, blah blah blah. Read about it here!’ And then it links to the article. And whatever the tweet was would have been…

Amanda 15:54

A great headline.

Rachel 15:54

A really flattering and wonderful headline. And so I shared that. And felt weird. And my students were coming up to me the next day in class, and they were saying, ‘Miss Jayson! We saw you in the Globe!’ And they could see that I wasn’t beaming, didn’t lean in and be excited about that. And I just said to them, you read it, what did you think? And they were like, ‘that was a weird article.’

Amanda 16:19

That must have been kind of a relief.

Rachel 16:21

Oh, super validating! And I just love my students so much, and this was with my chamber orchestra, so these are my juniors and seniors, and I was like, I’d love to hear your opinions, cos it wasn’t what I expected, was how I left it, and I wanted to be cordial and neutral, because it’s not up to them to process me trying to process this. And one of my violists, she was sitting in the front row, Eunice, said, ‘They kind of commodified you.’ And I was like…

Amanda 16:48

I love that a high school student was smart enough to say that

Rachel 16:51

Yeah! And I was like…

Amanda 16:52

The kids are alright!

Rachel 16:53

Yeah, they’re alright. It’s like, yeah. That’s… a great way to put that. And I just kind of let that hang. And I had a couple more nuanced conversations with students after that, but that’s… She put in words what I was struggling with, which is weird that it felt like this article was trying to be these three things, and wasn’t any of those things. And I felt sad, because it felt like this odd representation. To me, it felt like, ‘Look! Lexington has… a Black teacher! Who does stuff!’

Some of the comments, I mean… Oh, never read the comments. But some of the comments on the online article were a little dicey, and a little like, ‘Oh, it’s nice to see Lexington has hired a Black!’ Some really wild language.

MUSIC BREAK – Feeding The Dark

Amanda 17:47

As someone who’s been on the receiving end of really cruelly-assembled media journalist… God how do I wanna say that… As someone who has been on the receiving end of, oh my God, I was so naive, I just trusted that this journalist had my best interest in mind, wanted to share about my band, wanted to do this, wanted to do that, and then having to open the paper two weeks later going, oh my God, actually, this journalist didn’t even like me to begin with, and they had it out for me, and oh, media is more complicated than I thought!

Especially in the situation that you’re in in Lexington, as a Black person who is in the vast minority, in the faculty and in the school, and knowing that the intention of that writer, slash the business section of the Boston Globe, slash the Boston Globe, is probably somewhere in the right place, we should be talking about diversity, if there is a Black teacher in Lexington, that’s something we should be covering, what do you think they could have done right, to not get it so wrong?

Rachel 18:54

So one thing that I learned in the process was that it is likely the person who chose the title of the article, which I can’t even remember, did I say it?

Amanda 19:02

Yeah. The terrible title?

Rachel 19:03

Yes.

Amanda 19:03

Oh yeah.

Rachel 19:04

Okay. So it is likely that the person who wrote the title was not the person who interviewed me and wrote my article, that it was a separate job, so that was my big media lesson, was wow, somebody else put those things together.

I think it is a symptom of a larger problem, that the title that was chosen was evocative, the title that was chosen would attract people to the article, but it wasn’t the article that was there. And so I think one thing that they could have done to get it right was write the article they wanted. If they wanted to interview me specifically because I was an African American teacher in a majority-not-Black district, doing unusual things, and it is very unusual to be an African American classical musician first, that puts me in a minority. I’m in a minority as a conductor that’s African American, I’ve conducted at Symphony Hall. Standing on stage at Symphony Hall, I remember thinking, I wonder how many Black people have conducted on this stage. And I wonder how many Black females have conducted on this stage. I wonder how many queer Black females have conducted on this stage.

Amanda 20:11

Probably not a lot.

Rachel 20:12

Probably not a lot! If you’re out there, say hi! Let’s get coffee!

So I know I take up this space that there are not a lot of people in. If they wanted to talk to me about those facets of my identity, ask me about those facets of my identity, and I will speak to them, hopefully with some grace, and definitely with a little more detail and depth than what was able to be shown in an article that was supposed to be about my day to day.

So I think the Globe should have written the article that they wanted. If they wanted the kind of clickbait-y title of, ‘We’re the Boston Globe and we’re talking about a race issue!’ Great, get people talking about race, but let’s have a conversation about race. If you want a day to day on a music teacher, I’m happy to do that too.

Amanda 20:52

If the Boston Globe had access to you, there’s 20 articles that they could write.

I had a similar experience with the Boston Globe that broke my fucking heart. I did Cabaret at the American Repertory Theater. I had always wanted to do a really big theatre production with my director-drama-teacher-mentor, Steven Bogart, who had been my shining light in high school, he taught me everything I knew about theatre, a lot that I know about art, just a huge influence on me. And when I was in my 20s, I stayed connected with him, and I did little theatre projects with him, and I always wanted to work with him, and then the American Repertory Theater, which is a big deal theatre in Boston, invited me to do a show. I asked if Steven Bogart could be the director, they hired him, we did this really gorgeous 42-show run of Cabaret, in which I played the Emcee, Bogart directed it, was a total genius.

And if you don’t know anything about Cabaret, it’s a show about the rise of Nazism and anti-semitism in Germany. It’s a really, for a musical, it’s pretty fucking heavy. It also has a theme of sexism, feminism, and abortion, along with the racism and nationalism. It’s an incredible musical, ones of my favourites.

And the Boston Globe came to the theatre during tech week to interview us. We did a long, heavy interview, felt really well-researched, really good. They had sent a photographer, I went into the dress-up room and grabbed a pair of heels and a bra and did a slapdash Cabaret outfit. Bogart sat there in his jeans and t-shirt and director’s cap. They took a photo of us side by side at a table.

At the top of the arts section in the Boston Globe, the title was ‘Hot For Teacher.’ With a photo of me, wearing a bra and heels in my Cabaret outfit, next to my high school drama teacher, 20 years after graduating high school. And I could not fucking believe it. And I especially couldn’t believe that the Boston Globe, which is supposed to be this semi-conservative-liberal voice of reason, totally tasteful, the Boston Globe is the tasteful newspaper. It is not the National Enquirer, it is not the kind of place you would ever expect to see a headline like that, that was so sensationalistic, and also not fucking at all about anything in the article.

Rachel 23:27

It was a good article!

Amanda 23:29

It was a really good, nuanced article, about drama, Bogart as my mentor, and Cabaret, and a piece of art that’s about the Holocaust, and oh my God… And if it weren’t bad enough I had to look at it, I saw it came out online, I was really excited to go buy the paper, and I was like, oh my God, I can’t believe this. And then Steven Bogart called me, and said that his wife was literally in tears at their kitchen table, looking at how we were represented. And this was her husband! In his 50s! That title, those three words, have so much darkness embedded in them, and when you say ‘hot for teacher’, even though it’s a reference to a funny song from the 80s or whatever, it’s incredibly dark, when you think about it.

The fact that the person writing the clickbait-y headlines doesn’t even talk, necessarily, to the journalist who did the interview with you, who doesn’t even talk with the photographer who shows up, and their only assignment is get some cool pictures of Rachel Jaysen at her job, all of these things are a product of a kind of desperate, flailing media, or a media that just doesn’t know how to do its job well.

Did that experience of being torn apart, and slightly misrepresented in a mashed up article with a bad headline in the Boston Globe, did it change the way you read media?

Rachel 24:50

I don’t pay as much attention to the headlines. That’s one thing. If I see a couple of words in a headline that I’m interested in, I’ll read the exposition of the article.

And just acknowledging that there is such a disconnect was a wake up call. You know that these things are being designed to be consumed, whether it’s consuming information, or consuming entertainment, or somewhere in between, and newspapers do kind of straddle that line, it was a real wake up call. This is designed to make you look at it. And the person who chose that headline read this whole article, and picked the one line that they thought that people would click on and connect with.

Amanda 25:31

And that’s unfortunately real.

Rachel 25:34

Yes.

Amanda 25:34

And these newspapers are ad and sponsor driven.

Rachel 25:38

It was odd to be asked to be featured in that article, because I was working at the high school, the other orchestra director of the high school, Janet Haas, had been there for 30 years, and was my mentor teacher, and a lot of the things that you talk about with Bogart, I had a similar relationship with Janet, I did my student teaching with her, we had worked side by side for the last decade, and I didn’t think anything of it, of the article, I was like, oh, this is weird, why was I asked? I didn’t see the writing on the wall that like, hey, maybe they asked you because you looked interesting. It was just like, ooh, somebody’s interested in my job!

And the morning the photographer showed up, I had this heartbreaking conversation with Janet, with my colleague, who I just spent every day learning from her. She was like, what’s that photographer doing here? We didn’t talk about this, I didn’t know. I was like oh, you know, they’re coming to take pictures of my ensemble and me for this article. And she had this look on her face, and she’s a very stoic person, somehow warm and stoic at the same time. And she looked just a little wounded in a way that I hadn’t seen.

In that moment, I realised, this is a legacy teacher, she’s given her whole heart and soul to this program, she built it from nothing. Why is the Globe talking to me? Why aren’t they recognising her and her excellent teaching? The article is supposed to be about excellence in the music classroom, I’m surrounded by that, so why did they choose me?

And so that moment was really humbling for me, that was when the pictures were taken, so the article hadn’t been printed yet, and that’s when I started to kind of worry about the way that things were going, and why I was asked.

MUSIC BREAK – Intermission Is Relative

Amanda 27:20

It’s tragic, because you could totally see the intention somewhere is good. The intention of the Boston Globe to say ‘Hey, we should shine a light on diversity’.

Speaking of Lexington, the fact that you are literally, physically teaching in the place that I got a lot of my own weird sideways music education is not nothing. And I actually don’t talk, really ever, about the musical journey that I took for the four years that I was at Lexington High School. It was a pretty weird one. And sometimes I feel guilty, because I talk about Steven Bogart, my drama teacher, a lot. I don’t talk as much about Jeffrey Leonard, who was my jazz teacher, I was in jazz improv class for 3 years in Lexington High School. I don’t talk that much about the influence that being in high school musicals had on me, although it was huge. I don’t talk a lot about the fact that for my entire junior year, I was in a music independent study that I created myself, because I tried to drop out of school, and it was my parents’ bribe, along with Jeffrey Leonard to keep me in school, that I was allowed to just spend two periods a day “composing” in the practice room.

And all of that stuff is pretty weird and unique. I have a real love/hate relationship with the place, because I look at it now, and in retrospect, I was given an insane amount of freedom, I was incredibly privileged, I had access to all sorts of music and sounds and teachings and instruments. There were pianos everywhere, there were practice rooms everywhere, I could eat my lunch in the practice rooms and write songs, which I did a lot, cos I didn’t have a lot of friends, and I was scared.

My first song that I wrote that was really good, that I wrote when I was 15, I wrote and finished up in a practice room in Lexington High School, and the first person who heard it was Jeffrey Leonard.

Rachel 29:29

I bet that piano is still there.

Amanda 29:31

That piano is probably still there. And that song is called Slide, and it’s on the Dresden Dolls’ first record.

Rachel 29;35

That’s amazing!

Amanda 29:37

And I can see all that, and yet when I was there, I really hated it. I just was so deeply unhappy. I couldn’t stand high school. I couldn’t stand anything. I just wanted to leave. I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. I was a really, really angsty, uncomfortable, unhappy teenager. And that’s where I was. In these same halls that you’re teaching in now.

I have always felt, ever since leaving high school, since the day I left high school, I have felt a sympathetic resonance with all high school kids, because I don’t know if I can save them or help them, but I feel such a heavy duty sympathy, empathy, tragedy, connection with them, because I will never forget those four years of my life being the hardest.

Rachel 30:32

Yeah, they’re formative, they’re frightening, they’re this period of intense, social anxiety development, explosion, no feelings are big enough to capture what you’re feeling. I feel like my job as a music teacher is to help students articulate in some way some tiny portion of that experience. And whether it’s like you’re gonna come to my orchestra class and you’re gonna play really loud and aggressive, and that’s gonna feel really good, or if you’re gonna play really calm and peaceful, and it’s the only peace that you’re gonna have that day, or I’m gonna play a System Of A Down song for my music appreciation class, and we’re gonna talk about song form, and you’re gonna have your mind blown, cos you didn’t know that music could sound like that.

My whole job is just, how can I make music a tool? And whether it’s a tool for now, a tool for later, just how can I make this available? How can I make this art available?

Amanda 31:28

I remember, you were staying here at my house, and you were grading papers. Do you remember that? And I picked one of them up, and my head exploded.

Rachel 31:44

That was my music appreciation class.

Amanda 31:45

Your music appreciation class!

Rachel 31:46

It’s called Mixtape Anatomy…

Amanda 31:47

Mixtape Anatomy! And I literally, my brain exploded, because I forget what exactly the question was, you would probably know it, but it was basically a question about cassettes.

Rachel 31:59

Yes! History of recorded music. That’s a stressful test for that class.

Amanda 32:02

No, but something about the way the question was phrased led me to understand that this generation of kids didn’t really fully understand what a cassette was until they were taught by a teacher. And I was like, (gasps) ahhhh, this is crazy! How can you not know what a cassette is?! Everybody knows what a cass- oh, wait, no, everybody doesn’t, these kids are 14!

Rachel 32:26

Not even close. And so, there are a lot of funny and amazing things about that class. That particular question I think on that test was comparing 8-tracks to cassettes, and why…

Amanda 32:38

Yes! Yes!

Rachel 32:39

Why did one medium win out over the other, and what could cassettes do that 8-tracks couldn’t? So which one was around for longer, which one won that war?

Amanda 32:48

Which one survived?

Rachel 32:49

And why? And the idea of the answer is 8-tracks are a separate and ridiculous thing, look up the history of 8-tracks if you don’t know it, thank you American Auto industry, cos they’re the only reason that that medium got off the ground.

Amanda 33:01

Cos you could play it in a car.

Rachel 33:03

Cos they wanted something portable that could be played in a car, and the technology was ready just a hair before cassette tapes were in the 60s. But cassettes, you can rewind, which you can’t do on an 8-track, which is hilarious. And cassettes, you could record them yourself, and you could record off the radio, and you could make a copy! You could make a mixtape!

And so it allowed music to all of a sudden become very flexible, for you to pick and choose what you wanted to hear, and for you to pass it to your friends, like what an amazing tool!

There were also really neat side effects to cassettes, as an aside. Like, cassette tapes allowed a lot of western music to make it behind the iron curtain, cos it was so flexible and portable, so even as CDs were slowly coming into being in the 80s, cassettes were still the dominant force, it was like, either vinyl or cassettes, because that’s how the music can get around.

That whole unit in the class is amazing. I start from wax cylinders, and then here’s a 78, here’s a vinyl record, here’s how it works, blah blah blah. We go all the way through MP3s. Later on in that same test, I ask, what is Napster? Add how did you use it? And one of my favourites…

Amanda 34:09

What was Napster, and how did you use it!

Rachel 34:11

What was Napster! It’s important! And it’s hard to explain.

Amanda 34:13

And this happened before you existed.

Rachel 34:14

Yes!

Amanda 34:14

Oh my God.

Rachel 34:14

And I’m coming into the first time where I have no students who were born when 9/11 happened, and that’s wild.

One of my favourite answers to that Napster question was, Napster is a technology that aids you in taking naps. Students need to be taught!

Amanda 34:30

Wow.

Rachel 34:31

And even just the concept of mixtapes, as a finite pool of music, in a set order, that you chose, is a wild concept, because the motion of building a playlist is so much like throwing something into an endless bucket. They’re like oh, I want this mood, I’m gonna throw this piece in there. And students don’t think about order, and flow, and…

Amanda 34:55

Amount of space between each song.

Rachel 34:57

These are key factors. And that’s something that I got to teach. I got to teach it in this class, I got to assign it as projects. The last project for that class is an autobiographical mixtape.

Amanda 35:07

Wow.

Rachel 35:08

Where I ask them, they have to make 12 inch album art.

MUSIC BREAK – I Don’t Have This Shit Figured Out

Amanda 35:14

Tell me a little bit, and everyone who’s listening, a little bit about, not just where and how you grew up, but what your high school, and your experience of high school, was like?

Rachel 35:27

I grew up in Montgomery County, Maryland, which is just north of Washington, DC, and I went to Gaithersburg High School, which is about half way up the country, so it’s a big school system. So basically I was within the DC metro system, I could take the train downtown.

I stayed busy. I did not like being at home, I did not get along with my mom or my stepdad. I did not wanna spend any time in my McMansion, middle class house. So I did everything I could. When I figured out in middle school that if I did a play, I could be after school, and I could just stay there after jazz band, cool. I’m in.

So when I got to high school, I played field hockey, and lacrosse, I did all of the theatre productions, I was a string player, and I learned every instrument, and when I got to high school, I played violin and piano, and when I left, I also played viola, cello, and bass, cos I was like, what do you need? Great, I’ll do it.

Amanda 36:26

Wow.

Rachel 36:26

How else can I stay after school, can I be in the marching band? I don’t play a marching instrument. Colour guard? Oh, yeah.

Amanda 32:32

Why didn’t you wanna go home?

Rachel 32:33

I hated being there. My house was really isolating, I fought with my parents constantly, I just hated it, and I wanted to be around people, I was so social. And nobody played outside in my neighbourhood, the houses were slightly too far apart, it was like new development, mid-90s, peak…

Amanda 36:54

Peak McMansion?

Rachel 36:55

McMansion. Which was confusing, cos I was like, this is a big house. Are we… rich? No? It was confusing.

Amanda 37:05

And were you the only child?

Rachel 37:06

I have two older step-siblings who were largely out of the house, they’re 5 and 8 years older than me, they couldn’t have cared less, cos they were way far away in their life. And so, it was just really isolating. I wanted to be around friends, I wanted to be around my friends’ families.

And I figured out that music was an awesome escape. I could do all of these activities, and I could be doing something that I liked and loved, I could connect with other people, and so I just did everything.

By the time I was a senior in high school, I was taking six music classes and English. It was like, I don’t think I have a great voice, but I can read really accurately, can I be in the choir? What about this other choir? What if I just play piano for the choir? What if I just help these other people learn their parts for the choir for credit? Okay.

So I was like a TA, like I did everything I could think of just to cram music into every possible corner, just to take up the space.

Amanda 38:00

And what were you listening to in high school?

Rachel 38:03

Oh, man. When I went into high school, I was listening to lots of classical music. And then I came out of classical music, into peak late 90s Total Request Live, MTV, but as angry and crazy as I could get. So it was like, Limp Bizkit! And Eminem!

Amanda 38:28

No!

Rachel 38:29

Oh, yeah! And I was like…

Amanda 38:31

You liked Limp Bizkit?

Rachel 38:32

Oh yeah! Just because I wanted something that was…

Amanda 38:34

I’m not judging.

Rachel 38:36

Oh, you can judge away.

Amanda 38:37

I’m not judging.

Rachel 38:38

Man, Significant Other? That album, yes! Korn, yeah!

Amanda 38:42

Wow!

Rachel 38:42

I was angry! And these people were angry!

Amanda 38:43

You were 90s!

Rachel 38:44

Oh, I was super 90s. Super late 90s, super early 2000s, super nu-metal. And then I was just so happy to hear somebody that was as angry as I felt.

Amanda 38:56

Can relate. You get a high five. Yes.

Rachel 38:59

And so that was like my gateway. And because my older siblings, my older brother listened to lots of like, 90s gangsta rap, obscure stuff like Onyx, and then like, my step-sister listened to Mariah Carey, and New Kids On The Block, so I had this taste of pop, and I was like, eh… And then I found all this angry music that felt very, ironically, real to me.

Amanda 39:24

Yeah. I’m not saying Limp Bizkit isn’t real! It’s real.

Rachel 39:26

It is real for my 14 year old self.

And then it was through friends, and through amazing mixtapes and mix CDs made by my friends for me, that my knowledge and my appetite for music just exploded. All of a sudden I wanted to listen to everything. So it wasn’t just nu-metal, I’m like, who else is angry? Who else is weird?

When I graduated from high school, I had a roommate who loved the music video for Radiohead’s song Just, which is from The Bends. And I remember watching that music video, actually I feel like music videos were largely responsible for a lot of the music I had access to, cos I sat in the basement and I watched MTV. I watched MTV. And that was during, right at the edge where MTV was like, we still play music videos! But also, here’s a bunch of reality TV, but then also we play music videos!

So I watched this Radiohead music video, and was like, wow, these guys are angry in a different way. Also this video is blowing my teenage mind. The video features a guy walking through a city, and people…

Amanda 40:38

All lying down?

Rachel 40:39

Slowly start lying down.

Amanda 40:39

I’ve seen it. It’s so beautiful.

Rachel 40:42

And then there are some words exchanged at the end of the video, and there’s this huge mystery about what words are being said. And I just thought this was so profound and amazing, but also, it introduced me to Radiohead.

So then, I got to move backwards and forwards through Radiohead. And then, from there, found all of trip-hop music, and Portishead, and all of my darkness and my anger could be filtered through all of these other, more tense feelings. And then, my metal expanded, and my rap expanded, and just, my world blew up, because of people handing me things, because I would get in a car, I remember getting in a car with a friend, and an Aesop Rock song was playing. And I was so blown, I was like, people can use words like this?! What’s even happening?!

And it’s such a great rabbit hole to go down. And everything was, who are they working with? Oh, they were in this band?! Oh, they were in this band?! Oh, they listen to this band?! Everything kind of filtered out and up, and I couldn’t get enough. I would hate asking people what music they listened to, because everyone would say, ‘oh, everything, except for rap and country, and five other genres, and classical, and jazz…’ And I was like, I actually want everything. I just wanna eat it. How could I get close to it? How does it work? I was so fascinated.

Amanda 42:04

You said last night, when you started teaching, you were still really young. You went to Lexington High School when you were 23?

Rachel 42:12

Yes.

Amanda 42:13

Barely out of high school yourself.

Rachel 42:15

Yes.

Amanda 42:16

What did that feel like? What did it feel like to be so close in age to the people that you were teaching?

Rachel 42:22

I understood the job I had to do, and I didn’t want to be my students’ friends. I think I was really selfish. So at 23, I had clawed my way through school, and grad school, and I got my degrees from Boston Conservatory, so I have an undergrad in viola performance, and a Masters in education, and I smashed them together as tight as I could so I would get the fewest student loans possible, so I was like, I’m getting in the classroom!

I did my student teaching at Lexington, with Janet Haas, and then got hired for this tiny sliver of a job. Super part time, just working with one of the orchestras. And so, I came in, freshly graduated from college, but really humbled by being able to be in this amazing place, and feeling like I’m a guest here, and I have work to do, and I’m here to do that work.

It was kind of the difference between, so I took a year off between high school and when I started college at Howard University. So I started in Howard, and finished in Boston. The difference between my attitude stepping into a classroom after taking a year off and not knowing if I was gonna go to college, and how I would go to college if that worked, the difference between my mentality and my posture, and the space that I took up, and the students around me who had just graduated from high school, we were only a year apart, or some of them were my same age, but it felt like 13th grade to them, and for me, it was a whole different game, it felt like the stakes were super high. And so, my first year in Lexington, my first couple of years in Lexington, it felt like the stakes were super high. I was there to do a job, I’m here to prepare my music, how can I help my colleague, I’m doing the work. And so I did…

Amanda 44:04

Well, and you needed to be taken seriously.

Rachel 44:06

Yes! And so I took up a lot of space, and I was really careful. I would come in and I would ask Janet, is this too much? And I’d be wearing a knee-length skirt. And Janet’s like, you’re fine.

I was hyperconscious of the way I would present, of the amount of space I would take up, of the type of language I would use. And because in the beginning I was only teaching orchestra, I didn’t have a reason to connect with my students about the music that they were listening to. Even though I wanted to have those conversations, I basically closed that part of myself off. And it wasn’t until a few years later, when I was teaching at Lexington full time, that I would keep these tiny gates open.

So my birthday’s in September, and I say to my ensembles at the beginning of every year, that all I want for my birthday is a mix CD. And it’s amazing that as the years went on, students were having a harder and harder time making a mix CD! Because in order to make a mix CD, they had to find a computer with an optical drive. Then they had to figure out where to get a blank CD. It was just like a whole production. But the students that were willing to do it got to share a part of themselves with me, and the trade that I made with my students, that I still make with my students, is if you make me a mix CD at any point that’s not my birthday, I’ll make you one back. And so I have musical penpals.

And every once in a while I’ll come in, and on my desk there’ll be a CD waiting for me. There’s one student that I really love who graduated several years ago, who continued to make me CDs, and she would always wrap her CDs in old maps, or in printed copies of maps.

Amanda 45:45

What is the best musical discovery that you have made through one of those mix CDs?

Rachel 44:50

Oh, man. Through a mix CD from a student?

Amanda 44:54

Yeah.

Rachel 45:55

Brockhampton. Do you know who Brockhampton is?

So I love these guys because they are breaking the concept of what it means to be a band. They have reclaimed the word, early 2000s word boyband, which in the early 2000s, late 90s, would have been an auditioned, curated group of guys performing together. So Brockhampton is essentially a music collective, there are a bunch of them. And they’re sort of rap-y, sort of pop-y, but one of the people is only a producer, and one of the people only does graphics and design, so they’re a boy band, but not everybody plays an instrument, because they’re all part of the art block.

Amanda 46:38

They’re a trans-media posse!

Rachel 46:40

Yes! And a student put a Brockhampton song called Sweet on a mix CD for me, and I loved it, I loved the energy, I loved that they didn’t take themselves too seriously, that they were out there making exactly the art that they wanted, and that their weird shape allowed them to be very flexible, and kind of make art in all sorts of venues, and if Brockhampton wants to release a t-shirt, they can.

MUSIC BREAK – You’d Think I’d Shot Their Children

Amanda 47:19

I wanted to ask you something more personal, because you talked about your mom, and your stepdad. Where was your dad?

Rachel 47:26

My dad died when I was one. He died when I was a baby. And it has been the anxiety of my life, trying to put together what that even means. My mom never talked about my dad. My dad sounded like he was awesome, I knew the Cliff Notes, which was like, your dad went to MIT and Harvard, he was a doctor, he did his residency I think in Philadelphia, and he and my mom had just moved to the DC area. He got a job working at I think Georgetown hospital, and my mom got a teaching job, she was a lifelong teacher, and they had the dream, he had convinced her, let’s have a baby, she was like, heck no, he was like, let’s do it! They do it, they have me, they’ve got a house, everything’s awesome, and then I’m like 13 months old, and he goes to a conference in Chicago, a medical conference in Chicago, and he dies in his sleep, from a pulmonary embolism, at age 32.

Amanda 48:25

Oh my god.

Rachel 48:28

Blood clot in the lungs, in his sleep, and everything is taken away. So my mom gets a knock on the door from a police officer, and she has a one-year-old, and the police officer says, your husband is dead. And the whole…

Amanda 48:40

Every mother’s worst nightmare.

Rachel 48:42

Yeah, it’s just…

Amanda 48:43

I mean, among…

Rachel 48:44

There are so many, there are so many worst nightmares.

Amanda 48:46

That’s a bad one.

Rachel 48:48

And so, there are a lot of things about my mother that I understand in the context of, she did what she had to do. So we were alone until I was 5, she met my stepfather and re-married. I didn’t get it, he was much older, he was 18 years older than her. Not that my 5-year-old self could understand their love, but as an adult, I was like, oh. She did what she had to do. She went for security, and family.

Amanda 49:12

So now that you have a 2-year-old, have you ever had moments of reflection, where you find yourself holding Asa and thinking, oh my God, what would I feel like right now if I got that knock on the door?

Rachel 49:27

Yes.

Amanda 49:29

What did my mother emotionally have to traverse when that happened?

Rachel 49:32

Yes. And what’s more wild is that my wife is a firefighter, and so it literally could happen, because she has a job where she can die. My mom had me when she was 30. I had my son when I was 31. My parents met in Boston when they were 20. I met my wife in Boston when I was 24. They spent their courting days walking across the Mass Ave bridge, around MIT. My condo was three blocks from MIT, and I spent a lot of time going across that bridge with my wife. My mom met her best friend working in a shoe shop. I met all my best friends working in a shoe shop.

So there are all these really weird parallels. And I was convinced that the universe was gonna kill my wife at age 31. And I spoke this anxiety to her out loud, I was like, I’m really afraid that something awful’s gonna happen, because this is it. We both have a job, we just got a house, we have the kid, it’s coming. And I think this is a fear that lots of people have, of ‘things are too good right now, something’s gonna go wrong.’ But, having all of these eerie parallels, and I’m not particularly religious, or particularly spiritual, but it felt like the universe was organising, and that things were maybe not going my way.

So there are definitely, I spent a lot of time holding Asa, and saying, oh my God, what if? Oh my God.

Amanda 50:52

Just out of a kind of resonant superstition… Yeah. And also, you’ve told me that you went through some legit postpartum.

Rachel 51:02

Oh, for sure. For me, it was postpartum anxiety. And for me it didn’t manifest until I went back to work. So my son was born in February, I took off that spring semester, and then I went back in the fall. So what a privilege to be able to spend six months at home.

And I went back in the fall, and it just felt like I was choking, all the time. And I felt like my executive function had just disappeared. So it felt like there was a tower of blocks with everything I was supposed to do, and somebody had just smashed the blocks over. So I could pick up the block that said ‘make a list of what you need to do,’ but then I couldn’t move forward. It’s like, I knew the steps that I used to do, and I would try and do them, and I just couldn’t. It’s like I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I wasn’t eating, I lost a ton of weight in a really unhealthy way. I wasn’t making eye contact with anyone, I wasn’t even speaking in full sentences, I would just sit and watch my kid on the floor, and be like, I’m engaging! He’s playing with blocks! Look at those blocks! And my wife would come in and be like, ‘what are you doing?’ It was really hard, and I totally refused to get help, which is also not like me.

It felt so internal, my anxiety felt so internal, I don’t know that I connected it with the fears of something’s gonna go wrong, because I was too busy trying to catch the parts of my life that were going wrong.

Amanda 52:31

What got you out?

Rachel 52:33

My wife is quite amazing, and after months of saying ‘go see a doctor, go see a doctor,’ and me just shrivelling, and this is not… I’m the kind of person where if I want the thing, I go get the thing. If I want the thing, I’m gonna ask the people around me who have the thing, how did you get that thing? I want that. I’m not somebody who’s usually too proud to take help. If the help gets me the thing I want, I want the thing.

Amanda 52:58

That’s a pretty healthy attitude, just saying. Even your expression of the attitude sounds pretty fucking healthy to me!

Rachel 53:04

So like, that’s how I’ve gotten lots of things. I think I was talking the other day, I wanted to pay off my student loans by the time I was 30, so I asked everyone around me, how did you pay off your student loans by the time you were 30? How’d you get that thing? And I heard a variety of ‘ha, those student loans are absolutely still there!’, or ‘Grandma or Aunt June or whoever came in and helped me out,’ or ‘I’m lucky enough to not have loans,’ or ‘I’m just throwing away aimlessly.’ I found one friend, Karen Akunowicz, who’s an amazing chef in Boston, Karen was like, ‘I worked very hard, and worked a million jobs, and paid off my student loans by the time I was 30,’ and I was like, that! I want that! So I’m gonna do that! And that’s exactly what I did, I worked a million jobs, and paid off my student loans.

But in this case, what was most confusing, and it’s like I can watch myself from the outside and see it, was I saw that something needed to change, and I was unable to change it. I was going to school, and trying to do my job, and not succeeding, and not thriving, and hating it, and I knew I shouldn’t hate my job. Because I love all parts of my job.

And there are some external factors that were making my job very hard; my long term boss, Jeff Leonard, who you brought up earlier, had retired, so I knew there was gonna be transition, and transition in leadership, that’s always hard, all the people around me were also going through transition, cos Jeff had left. I knew that there were some external factors that wasn’t entirely me, but I also understood that I was really broken. And I couldn’t ask for help. And when people offered help, I couldn’t reach out and take it. That was the most confusing and scary thing, is coming home and going to sleep at 4pm, just missing chunks of my life, and I can’t imagine how lonely my wife felt during that time. Because I was blank. I was not engaging with anybody, or anything, I was just trying to get through.

Amanda 54:58

And you had a teeny baby.

Rachel 55:00

And I had a teeny baby. And then, just before Asa’s first birthday, my best friends were pregnant, and my friend Jonny delivered, and had a very hard delivery, and the baby, Juno, suffered a lot of trauma, and lived to be six days old, and passed away. And spending time in the NICU with all of my best friends, being in a hospital with all of my best friends, and looking around and saying, we’re not supposed to be here for 50 years. I’ll see you in the hospital in decades. But instead, being around this immense tragedy, it’s like, I didn’t think, if you had asked me Christmas of that year, could you be any worse? I would have said no. It felt like the bottom dropped out of the bottom.

And after Juno died, before Asa’s birthday, I remember just breaking down at school, and a colleague of mine was like, ‘You’re gonna be okay, here’s my doctor. Here’s a doctor that is holistic, that will help you, just go and see a doctor. I will take your kid. I will come to your house and watch your kid, and Claire will take you to the doctor, and we will do it today.’ And it was like, I needed an entire intervention.

And eventually, that was it, and I catatonically was dragged to the doctor’s office, and got help, and slowly crawled my way out, and spent the rest of the year crawling.

And then, this fall, this fall that just happened, the school year that just went through, this is my first school year after that, that I actually feel like I’m thriving and able to teach.

So this year I came back stronger, and more stable, and started the year strong, excited. And things roll on and on, and I’d known that my colleague, Janet, was close to retirement. I think I asked her flat out last year, when I was having such a hard time, I was like, Janet, are you retiring this year? And she was like, ‘no, I’m going to retire at the end of next year.’ And that was the first time in 10 years, cos I ask her every year, I’m like, when are you going out, with this year’s kindergartners? Okay! You know, like when they graduate from high school. And last year, she said, ‘next year’s gonna be my last year.’ She was 59, and she would have been teaching in Lexington for 32 years, it would have been.

Amanda 57:27

Wow, yeah. So she had done a long time.

Rachel 57:30

She had absolutely done a long time, and built just a dynasty, an amazing programme, quite exceptional.

So while I was at my lowest, Janet held me up. We always had a mentor-student relationship. We were colleagues, and super respectful. We had super different viewpoints on politics, and religion, and we were always able, because we saw each other as artistic and teaching peers on one level, we were able to have really great conflicted conversations. And there was always this mentor-student relationship. I was always learning from her. And I actually would look around, and she was much lighter, and kind of loving with some of my other colleagues. And I would look at that and be like, man, I’m not jealous, it’s so wonderful to see her so warm and connected, but I actually don’t want that. I love our relationship. I’m able to learn so much, we learn from each other, this is really great.

And so, she held me up, and I got to have this amazing conversation at the end of two years ago, clawing my way out, saying, Janet, thank you, thank you for holding me up. And she looked at me and she said, ‘People held me up when I needed it.’ I’m so glad I was able to thank her out loud for that.

So going into this year, I knew that Janet was gonna retire, so everything was the last thing, and I was trying to suck out all of the institutional knowledge. Like, Janet, where do you get this base item repaired? Janet, where do you order this obscure piece of music? All these little questions that you take for granted that that person knows the answer to. I started looking at Janet’s programming for her ensembles, and she’s programming insane pieces. (Music underscore – Russian Sailor’s Dance by Reinhold Glière)

I work with the oldest kids, the smallest ensemble and the most advanced ensemble, and Janet was working with the middle orchestra, and she’s programming these really intense pieces, and I’m like, wow. She’s programming her last year. If you’re gonna go out, you’re gonna go out with a bang!

Amanda 59:27

Go out with a bang, yeah!

Rachel 59:30

It’s like, you’re gonna do all of the huge hits, Russian Sailors’ Dance by Glière, which is like this crazy, loud, full orchestra piece. (Music underscore – Serence for Strings by Pyotr Tchaikovsky) Tchaikovsky’s String Serenade, all these huge pieces. (Music underscore – Nimrod Variation by Edward Elgar) And Nimrod, from The Enigma Variations, by Edward Elgar, which is just this heavy, beautiful, symphonic piece. If you haven’t heard it, it’s slow and sonorous, and beautiful harmonies, only about four minutes long.

All this stuff is on Janet’s desk! And I’m like, you’re doing that?! I’m supposed to be doing that with the other ensembles, okay! This is your last year, you’re gonna do whatever you want. And you’re Janet, so you’re gonna do whatever you want, cos that’s how you roll.

Janet is notoriously independent. One morning in December, she was setting up chairs for her ensemble, cos as I said, 75% of the job is just chairs. And she couldn’t form the word, she was calling out to my colleague, Jason, he’s the choral director. And she was saying I need three. I need three. And Jason’s like, ‘Woah, one, Janet never asks for help, so something weird is happening. And two, she can’t think of the word chair. Something’s really happening.’ And Jason went and got the school nurses, and Janet was taken to the hospital. She had a couple seizures, she was put in a medically induced coma, which was very scary. And we didn’t know, we didn’t know what was happening.

My colleague, who’s 59, and springy, and an ice skater, and a gardener, and just an avid musician, who never stops moving, who works in all of the buildings in Lexington, she taught in every single building, every year. And here she is, incapacitated. And it was horrifying. So we took her ensembles that day. I went to go see her in the hospital that day, and it was horrifying, and I cried a bunch, because it was just tubes and beeps and quiet, and I hated it.

And the next day, I told my boss that I wanted to rehearse, we have a concert coming up the next week, so this is December, and I told my boss that I wanted to take her ensemble, and conduct them at the concert. It’s like, I know these pieces, I need to conduct this programme. And those kids, we were in rehearsal that morning, and we were rehearsing Nimrod from The Enigma Variations, and I told them this story, which is one of my favourite teaching memories, which is at a winter orchestra concert many years ago, that’s the big concert that I referenced earlier with like, hundreds and hundreds of kids, elementary through high school, you always programme your hotshot movie music, to convince the young kids that music is awesome, and that they should stay. So we always programmed the most fun stuff for that concert, and Janet had programmed Nimrod, this sensitive, delicate, sombre, beautiful piece, for the winter orchestra concert? I’m gonna play Hoedown Rodeo by Copland, and trick everybody into being a viola player! That’s my plan! And Janet, she was just such a master educator. She turned towards all of the little kids, and this is a concert in the round, so people everywhere, so she has her back to the audience, she looks at all the 4th graders, and her whole voice and demeanour changed. And she got just so soft, and looking right at them, and only them, she goes, ‘I want you to think of something very slow, and very beautiful, like a sunrise, or a sunset, that you wait a long time for… and finally it’s there, and then as soon as it’s there, it’s gone.’

(Music underscore – Nimrod Variation by Edward Elgar)

And every 4th grader, and this is a concert with a lot of ambient noise, every 4th grader had huge eyes, and they’re all waiting for the next line in the story. And instead, out of that silence, she starts the piece, and the piece starts with this one single note. And then it flips.

If anyone has ever read The Phantom Tollbooth, do you know this children’s book? There’s a chapter about playing the sunrise, that’s so beautiful, that made me think of this piece, and the story about Janet. And all the kids stayed silent through the whole thing. And then after the piece, cos it ends kind of as it begins, just kind of glistening, there was total silence. And then applause. And I thought, oh my goodness, what a beautiful moment, what an amazing teaching experience, what a gentle guiding of listening. She didn’t give them a bunch of musical elements to listen for, she just said, ‘Here’s the experience that I wanna curate for you.’

And I told this story to Janet’s students on this Friday morning, while I know that Janet is lying in a medically induced coma, which is very scary. They play the shit out of that piece. They played the shit out of it, and I cried like a baby.

Amanda 64:48

The same piece?

Rachel 64:49

Same piece. And Janet just happened to have programmed it. It happened to be the thing that we were rehearsing. And they played so well, and the kids are so concerned, and all we knew at this point was Janet’s in the hospital.

That afternoon, I went to go see her in the hospital. Her husband, Eric, was there with me, and I had brought some cookies that I had stayed up late making, because I didn’t know what to do the night before, I was so worried, I just baked cookies at 2 in the morning. I told Eric, I was like, it’s so quiet here. I hate this. Has Janet woken up yet? Has she wiggled? And he’s like, ‘oh, she wiggled a little bit earlier, still waiting.’ It was so quiet here, I hate this, it’s like a din of news channel in the background, and then all these beeps and machines, and exhaling and inhaling and exhaling, mechanically.

And I pulled out my phone, and I’m down really low, talking to Janet, I’m like, Janet, your students were so wonderful in rehearsal today, and we talked about you, and I told them this story, I told them this story about Nimrod, and I was like, here, it’s too quiet here, I’m gonna play you this piece, and I’m sorry about the phone speaker, but I think Elgar would forgive us. (Music underscore – Nimrod Variation by Edward Elgar)

And I played it, from my phone, whatever recording came up on the search first, and I told her, as the song was playing, the story of her kids, and the story of me telling her kids the story of her. And I’m crying, and Eric’s crying, and Janet nods. She’s nodding. She’s nodding and nodding and nodding, and I’m like, oh my God, she’s moving, this is the first time I’ve seen her move, and it was this one glimmer of hope, of this is gonna be alright, maybe she’s gonna be alright, she’s still in there, she knows the piece, and she’s nodding really emphatically, and I’m like, yes, this is amazing.

And then afterwards, I said, okay Janet, I was up late last night, I made you these cookies, I know the nurse would be really mad if I tried to feed them to you, so let’s try our old trick, cos this would happen when I would bake other stuff, she couldn’t have too many sweets. I would bake something and bring it in, and I’d say, Janet, I made cookies, and she’d say, ‘Can I smell them?’

And so I said, I think the nurses would be really mad if I tried to cram a cookie in your mouth now, but I’m gonna hold the cookies right underneath your nose, so you can smell them. I put them under her nose, and she raised her eyebrows. She raised both eyebrows, which was very exciting, because they had thought she had had a stroke, and so I was really concerned, like oh my gosh, what if she’s paralysed on one side? And so seeing her raise both eyebrows, and the joy, the tiny bit of joy that was in her face from those chocolate cookies, was like, she’s gonna be alright! And then Eric, martyr that he is, ate the cookies for her. That was his job, was eating all the snacks.

It was this wonderful moment of hope, of sharing, and of music, and I still hate that hospitals are so quiet, and that it was such an ordeal to get anything that would play music, like I brought all these speakers, and was like, Eric, can I set these up? And Eric’s like, ‘too much.’ It’s like, okay, I’ll take the speakers back.

It was a tiny glimmer of hope. And after that, Janet got better, and then got much worse, very fast. And it turns out that it was really late stage cancer in her brain, complicated by diabetes and life and everything. And she passed away in early January, it was 32 or 33 days from the day that she got sick. And she was 59, waiting to retire. But not waiting to retire, she wasn’t one of those teachers phoning it in at the end, she was a teacher running harder and faster and stronger than she ever had, and she was gonna run that way until the end.

Amanda 68:55

Wow.

MUSIC BREAK – Nimrod Variation by Edward Elgar

Rachel 69:08

Yeah, the end was pretty painful. Obviously it’s painful when you know that somebody’s going to die, and the morning that Janet was going to pass away, Eric sent a text message and said, we think this is it, things are not looking good, we think she has a couple hours. And I was driving to work, and I got that text message sitting at a red light, I was like, Eric’s texting me, it’s 7 in the morning, what’s going on? I immediately started sobbing, I called my boss, and my department secretary, the secretary is trying to get me to calm down so she can understand what I’m saying, and what I’m saying is I’m going to the hospital.

And what was really amazing was, I went to the hospital. The other string teachers came to the hospital. The music teachers all came to the hospital. And so I don’t really know what the classes looked like on that Tuesday, because half of the music teachers in Lexington walked out of their classrooms to come and be with Janet. And so it was this amazing, odd reunion, and it was funny, and sad, and quiet, and loud, and there was just a lot of love, and a lot of reverence in the room. And we all had to go to work the next day.

And I was at the hospital until that afternoon, when it was time to say goodbye, and let Janet have family time, and we kind of knew that that was the last time we were gonna see her. And all of us said, what do we tell our students? What can we tell our students? And the whole time, the students, we just told them, she’s sick. She’s coming back. She’s sick. She’ll be back. And Janet was saying, I’m sick, but I’m coming back! I’m sick, but I am coming back! Until she couldn’t talk anymore, she was talking about how soon she was gonna be back in the classroom. So no one really knew anything. A couple of us knew some. The students knew that their teacher had been gone for a month.

We went to school on Wednesday morning, and were told, don’t say anything, because we need to organise how the information is disseminated. They have their systems in place for this, there’s a whole team of people that meets up. Administration, and guidance counsellors, and school social workers, and the nurses, like all of the people who you would expect.

But the solution that they arrived at, which they didn’t arrive at until late in the day, was that they were gonna send an email home at 4pm. I think I got an email around my lunch time, so like 11am, that said definitively, she’s passed away. I had to teach the rest of the day. And I’m looking at these students who have had continuous relationships with this woman since they were 9 years old, because of the structure of her job many of them had had her as a teacher consistently since they were 9. And I’m looking at these, and the students know that something is very wrong. They can see it in the faculty’s faces, and especially in the music classes, where all of the music students are having the same experience, they can absolutely pick up. They know that something is really wrong. So that was a really painful day, and I know that I said words about music theory, but I don’t know that anything got taught. I think I had to reteach that lesson on second inversion triads, cos it was not getting there.

So the students got an email at 4pm, and then the next day, we were given a one paragraph announcement to read in our first period class. The announcement was Janet Haas, who taught at Lexington for X number of years has passed away suddenly, we are super sad, it was just kind of a one paragraph, very…

Amanda 72:47

Stock.

Rachel 72:48

Yes. But what is stock for that? How often do you have the unfortunate experience of having a faculty member pass away? This is so awful. And it just didn’t cut it. And there was no space. There was no space for processing, and there was no time. And I mean, one thing in Lexington is that it moves at an incredible pace. But one thing that I gave myself and my students that day was a lot of space.

So I had orchestra first block, and was looking at 100 of Janet and I’s shared students, it’s an ensemble that we taught together. Very close to the beginning of that day. I guess, oh my God, I had to see all the orchestras that day, so I ended up having that conversation three times. And essentially, I read the piece of paper, and I got to the end, and I said, that doesn’t really cut it, does it? And I spent another 20 minutes, 25 minutes, just talking about what she meant, and acknowledging all of the different ways that they might feel, that they may feel a lot, or a little, that they may be sad that their friends are sad, that they may be sad in three weeks, or in three months, or three years, and it’s not linear, and it’s not organised, and I’m trying to draw on my very, fortunately limited, experience of grief, which was mostly poor baby Juno dying almost a year exactly before. And what I learned is that you don’t understand it, and that it comes in waves, and that it’s not organised, and that it’s easier when you share it with other people. And so, I asked my students to be kind to each other, and I asked them to lean on each other, and to acknowledge that other people might need to lean on them.

And in some of the classes, we played a little bit of music, in my chamber orchestra we played the very beginning, we had been working on Dvořák’s New World Symphony, and we played just the opening couple of bars of the second movement, which is Largo, which is sometimes called Going Home. There was music where there could be music, and sometimes I just let it be silence, let students have time.

And then Friday was back to business. And two weeks later it was concerts. And then it was more concerts, and more classes, and more, and we go, and we go, and we go, and we roll on, and we roll on, and we roll on. And it just felt so surreal. Because all of these students had gone through this trauma. And I said that to Janet’s ensemble many times over the course of the year, it’s like, you are going through an exceptional year. This is trauma. This is a wild circumstance, and it’s not normal. It is gonna feel like chaos. And it was never acknowledged in groups.

And I think one of my colleagues who stepped in for Janet long term, and is now in her job, she was working with Janet’s sixth-grade orchestra, so these were Janet’s kids, they’re 11 years old, and she took the whole class period that Friday, the next time she saw them, to just talk to the kids, who had a ton of questions about losing their teacher. To just talk to the kids about, you know, here’s what happened, in kid-friendly language, or I’m gonna acknowledge what you’re feeling. And she got a lot of pushback from the administration, because they’re like, we really think it’s better for the kids to get back to business. They need the structure.

Amanda 76:14

No, no, no, no, no, no!

Rachel 76:16

I don’t know what the right answer was. But I certainly needed to have some acknowledgement with my students, and I know that my colleague needed that, and I definitely know that the students needed that, and I absolutely know that she’s acting within the best interest of the students. But it was so heartbreaking to hear that she wasn’t supported in that particular decision. Life rolls on and on, and there was no time to process.

The biggest growth of this year for me, I grew in a bunch of ways, but the biggest growth for me was learning to be vulnerable in front of my students, and continuing the process of grief, and showing my students that grief is not linear. Things like, hey guys, I don’t have that music photocopied, because I think that music was on Janet’s computer, and to be quite honest, I’m stalling, and it makes me really sad when I think about it. Just to be very honest. I’m still being professional, and I’m still leading them to make music, but I also think it’s important for them to see, I miss my friend, and I miss my colleague.

Amanda 77:21

Have you cried in front of your students?

Rachel 77:23

Oh, man, this year? Absolutely! So many times!

Amanda 77:27

And how do you ride the line between showing them that it’s okay to be human, and vulnerable, and grieve, and knowing that you also have to hold it together and be the professional adult?

Rachel 77:40

I think some of it is posture, and some of it is already built trust. So they know me as a teacher, as a provider of music. I would like to hope that you build some sort of rapport, and some sort of cred up, of, here are the values that I bring, and here’s the information that I bring, and I’m solid enough that you can lean on me if you need to.

Often this year, I was crying while doing something else. So when I was giving this impromptu eulogy to Janet, tears were streaming down my face, but I’m still talking the same way that I’m talking to you. When I cried while conducting Nimrod, my mascara was a hot mess, very upset that no one said anything that my make up was running, but I conducted. I went on. And I think I said something to the audience, I think I told the audience at that December concert when Janet was in the hospital, I told them the same story about the little ones, and thinking of a sunrise. And so many parents were like, wow, I’ve heard that piece a million times and I never thought of it that way, that’s wonderful. And then I proceeded to cry like a baby, while conducting, but it rolls on and on.

In terms of losing myself, really being overwhelmed with emotion, that happened once this year. And I don’t know that I handled it well, and it felt like a moment of weakness, so even though I can cry, and I can articulate my emotions to my students, still the one absolutely vulnerable moment, I felt like I was weak and a bad teacher.

The last class for Mixtape Anatomy for the spring semester was on the morning of Janet’s memorial service. The memorial service was in June, even though she had passed away in January. I was taking a group of students to perform, so a group of current students and some alumni, to perform at her memorial, at a church in Boston.

Little backstory, we had had these couple of rehearsals, and at the beginning of these extra rehearsals after school, I started by saying, do you guys just wanna share a memory about Janet? And it ended up being this amazing, almost therapy session, for myself included, that I really needed, which is just to be in a space where other people loved this person the way that I loved this person, and could share funny things, silly things, serious things about them, and just live in that energy. So we would start, I think we spent three quarters of the first rehearsal just talking, and ran a couple of pieces.

So it was the day of taking these students to the memorial service. It’s like it was finally real. And maybe it’s because all the concerts this year were over, and the AP exam was over, and all the big tests are over, so finally there was less to distract me. That morning, I was a wreck. I was just on the floor in front of my desk, sobbing. And my coworkers are holding me, and they’re asking, ‘Do you need anything?’, and I’m saying no, I’ve gotta go to class, I’ve gotta teach, and I’m wiping tears off my face, and I stomp through the band room, and I stomp across the quad, and I’m gasping for air, and I fall down on the ground again, and I’m just sobbing. I’m sobbing. The dean of the foreign language building comes out, ‘Are you okay?’ No, I’m not okay, Janet’s memorial is today, and I’m just losing my stuff, and I have to go into this class, and I have to say, I’m so sorry, I can’t teach you. My boss is really proactive, and he’d already sent a sub down to my room, cos at this point I was like, 10 minutes late to class, cos I’d just been staying outside crying, and it’s like, I stumbled into this room, and my eyes are totally red, and I’m barely keeping myself standing, and I said to my students, I’m so sorry. You know I lost this colleague. And these are students that aren’t necessarily in the music department, so they didn’t have the same connection. Unfortunately, there were only about six kids left in this class, cos they were mostly seniors, and it was after the seniors had left, so these poor six kids get this teacher that is just totally broken and crumpled in front of them, and I said to them, her memorial service is today, and I thought that I could teach you today, but I can’t, and I’m so sorry. And I just… I’m sobbing.

So that day, it didn’t feel bad to be out of control, it just felt like feeling, and it felt like, there’s no control to be had, this is just what’s happening. And I was so grateful to my colleagues who were so gentle and kind with me that day, to the people who had to do all of my teaching, because I was a mess. I was a mess. And I had never been a mess like that.

Amanda 82:17

I told you about a memory I had of my beloved French teacher, Gigi, who was going through a massive life upheaval heartbreak. And I was 18, I think I was a singer in high school, and I remember going into her classroom during a down period, and she was sobbing and broken down. And I look back at my whole high school experience, and I think of all the impressions that I have of all the teachers, all the geometry, and all the physics, and all the Latin, and all the French, and all the jazz improv, and all the home ec, and physical education, and all of the fucking bullshit that they taught us, and I think you cannot understand how priceless it was to walk into a space like that, with a grown up teacher adult, being so vulnerable, and then not shuffling her papers and hiding her tears and saying, ‘Oh, Amanda, how can I help you, do you need to talk about that test?’ And instead she looked at me, and she said, ‘I’m so heartbroken. I’m falling apart here, I don’t know what to say.’

And I was like, oh… You trust me. You trust me enough to cry in front of me. That is the most embiggening, most empowering thing an adult in this high school has ever done for me. And they’ve tried to do a lot, and they’ve given us a lot of tests, and they’ve made a lot of lists, and they’ve bought a lot of overhead projectors. This is teaching me, and giving me more, collectively, than almost all of these teachers combined. This shared vulnerability and human moment.

And looking at how we educate our kids, how insane is it that we’re so bad at taking care of each other? And that, with all of the hours and work and effort and buildings and infrastructure and parking lots that go into making a space of educating kids, there’s so little thought given to just how we are together, and how the tribe works and functions together? And an episode like this, where, guess what? The real world still fucking happens. People die. Teachers lose spouses, get ill, lose babies, and still have to get up in front of the class and teach. And how insane is it that it’s become so compartmentalised, that everyone is supposed to be keeping it together all the time? We’re not supposed to be keeping it together all the time, grief is real!

Rachel 85:04

That means a lot, and when you told me that anecdote about your teacher, it was so humbling that you’ve carried that memory, because I think about what my students went through this past year, I hope that some sentence that I’ve said to them, some little part of the experience, has at all helped. And just knowing that that could potentially live on as a moment for them is really…

Amanda 85:33

I cannot imagine that it won’t.

MUSIC BREAK – Nimrod Variation by Edward Elgar

Amanda 85:38

This is Amanda Palmer, you are listening to The Art of Asking Everything podcast.

Thank you very, very much to my guest, Rachel Jayson. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram, her Instagram is beautiful. You can visit jaggery.org and armyoftoys.com if you wanna check out either of her bands.

The engineer for this interview was Jimmy Garver. For all of the music you heard in this episode, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast

The Patreon is also full of all sorts of other goodness, it’s a fantastic community, so please, even if it’s just for a dollar, join up.

Meanwhile, thank you so much, everyone. Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer, keep on asking everything.

The post Rachel Jayson: I Want The Thing first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Rachel Jayson: I Want The Thing appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Wayne Muller: A Chat With My Therapist

Kelly Welles — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 02:00:36 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/46343637

EPISODE 17 OF THE ART OF ASKING EVERYTHING: Wayne Muller: A Chat With My Therapist IS OUT NOW WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

This may seem like a weird one, but it’s a great one. My therapist also happens to be a best-selling author and comforting, insightful and beautiful conversationalist. Wayne writes mostly about the upsides of making it through trauma, the tricks our minds play, and the power of slowing down. He’s also hilarious. And a minister, and a photographer…and a pretty good guitar player. So after leading a week-long retreat with him for my patrons, I lured him into the recording studio to talk with him for over an hour about the human condition. Cheapest hour of therapy I ever wangled.

Show notes:

Description

Wayne Muller is a minister, therapist, and leadership mentor. And he’s my therapist.

He serves as a consultant with community, educational, and healthcare organizations.

Wayne’s books include A Life of Being: Having and Doing Enough, Sabbath:

Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives, and Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood.

Wayne’s books are all available at WayneMuller.com and in the world-world. If you want to contact him about therapy, speaking engagements, or otherwise, his contact form is on his website, and he’s pretty good at getting back to people. He is also in the middle of a move right now, so give him a moment.

CREDITS:

This has been the Art of Asking Everything Podcast.

Thanks to guest Wayne Muller! Get his books and more at WayneMuller.com

The engineer for this interview was Jon Coors.

For all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net/podcast

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

Millions of thanks go to my incredible team:

Hayley Rosenblum who makes all things possible — she is the ghost in the machine in our Patreon and also makes sure everything else gets done — words, pics, live chats, and general internet love. I could not do this without her.

My assistant Michael McComiskey who makes sure all the trains run on time and that I am able to do all the things, all the time…

#MerchQueen Alex Knight who is helping us transcribe so these conversations are accessible to ALL!

Kelly Welles on social media!

And, of course, my manager Jordan Verzar who brings it all together.

And last but not least, this whole podcast would not be possible without my patrons. At current count, about 15,000 of them. They make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit, we are just the media, doing what we do. So special thanks are due to my high level patrons, Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, and Leela Cosgrove, and Robert W Perkins thank you guys so much for helping me make this.

Everyone else, please, go to Patreon, become a supporting member. This will also give you access to the follow up live chat that I’ve been doing with every guest a few days after the podcast comes out. The podcast comes out on Tuesday, the live cast is usually Friday. You can follow my social media or the podcast page for more information.

The Patreon is also full of extra things, and pictures, and all sorts of goodness, and you will get the podcast right, plop, in your inbox.

Thank you so much everyone.

Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

No ads.
No sponsors.
No censorship.
We are the media.

Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

Go to Patreon.
Become a member.
Get extra stuff.

Join the community at patreon.com/amandapalmer

FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Amanda Palmer 00:34

This is The Art of Asking Everything, I’m Amanda Fucking Palmer.

It is January 17th, 2021, as I sit down here in Aotearoa New Zealand to record this intro to a conversation that took place in upstate New York in July 2019, like a world and a lifetime and a pandemic ago.

And I wanted to note here that I have actually have been equivocating since I recorded this, whether or not I would highlight the fact that the guest is my therapist, or would I vaguely mention it, but mostly kind of keep it in the background. And then I realized as I just sat down to make the intro for this, that I actually still feel this strange stigma about saying that I have a therapist. I think partly because I grew up in an immediate community culture that considered therapists okay, but slightly… “woo”, and also the flip side of feeling like saying that you have a therapist is this thing that privileged metro New Yorkers do, and between those two things, I’ve always been pretty private in public about the fact that I have a therapist.

But, and let me just say it, I fucking love therapy. And always have. My best friend and mentor growing up was a therapist, and I have seen therapy, all kinds of therapy, transform, and save, and I’m not being hyperbolic there, save the lives of dozens, hundreds of people in my life. So why am I, at age 44, considering sort of lying about it? I don’t know. That’s probably worth its own podcast episode.

But part of this decision to just go, oh yeah, this is a conversation with my therapist, was also sort of inspired by my episode that came out about a month ago, with Tim Ferriss, and listening to his recent podcast, which was like a heart-pour about trauma, that he did with Debbie Millman, another podcaster, and just how totally open and shame-free the two of them were about talking about therapy as this normal thing you do, as a human being.

So, all that being said, let me tell you a story.

Many years ago, before I had a child, but after I’d gotten married, I was at one of those TED-like conferences, where musicians, and climate scientists, and doctors, and people who design space-age prosthetic limbs, all get together, and talk about things, and do workshops, and listen to each other speak. And there was a free afternoon at this place, where you could either go on a hike up a cliff, or learn archery, and all these activities on offer. And one of them was horse whispering. And I did not know what that meant. I thought, possibly, you actually – this is how little I knew – I thought maybe you actually whispered to a horse. Or, because I threw it in that pile of really out there things that people do, maybe horse even whispers to you, psychically, in some reiki way, if you got close to it enough. I just didn’t know anything! I didn’t know what it was!

And because I had been listening for a couple of days to top scientists and world-changing people talking about risk assessment and fear, I was like, okay! I will do this unknown, strange thing.

And that is how I found myself, one afternoon, many years ago, weeping uncontrollably in a horse paddock, because I finally became deeply aware of some of the dark working of my own mind, in a way that didn’t just scare the shit out of me, but actually made me deeply sad.

And that is how I met Wayne Muller. He was dude with the horse.

So as I learned, horse whispering is actually basically just therapy with a horse as a kind of tool, and a prop. But it’s just therapy.

And so I met Wayne, and I told him I’d written a book, and he said “Oh, I’ve written a couple of books,” and we traded books, and between that experience, grieving the state of my mind and whole life in the horse paddock, and the fact that his books, when I read them, were really, incredibly good, I was sold. And since then, he’s been my therapist, and he’s also become a true friend, to me, and to my family, and to many other people in my life that he’s taken on, and helped out, in some of their darkest hours of need, and he is my emergency phone call. And in a way, he sort of picked up where Anthony, my old mentor, left off, and I don’t find it a coincidence that Wayne walked into my life right around the time Anthony walked out.

And going on two years ago, when I decided to lead a retreat in the woods of upstate New York on a lake for about 50 of my patrons, Wayne was the other leader I chose, alongside Leslie Salmon Jones, the yoga teacher and healer who I also had a guest on this podcast a few episodes ago. And these guys were a dream team, and there’s sort of a meme that came out of this retreat, that my patrons still refer to, cos we sometimes catch up on Zoom calls, and we called it the Wayne Sigh. Because we were all just in love with the sound of Wayne’s giant sigh that would open up every gathering. And it’s a good one. Trademark 2021, the Deep Wayne Sigh.

So before I bring him on, here’s a little bio: Wayne Muller is a minister, therapist, and leadership mentor. He serves as a consultant with community, educational, and healthcare organizations. His books include A Life of Being, Having, and Doing Enough, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in our Busy Lives, and an earlier book, which is very beautiful, it’s called Legacy of the Heart: The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood. Think about that for a second. The spiritual advantages of a painful childhood! You might wanna read that one.

He’s currently at work on a new book about addiction that I cannot wait to read. Title forthcoming.

But meanwhile, here we go, here’s the very candid, very open, beautiful conversation we had with each other way back in July 2019. We recorded it near my house in upstate New York, in Woodstock, just a few days after that retreat I told you about, and we talked about everything under the sun, as usual, but some of the highlights were about the lies we tell each other, and ourselves, how hard it is to say no, which is becoming a real theme in this podcast, and how “no” is a like a deer fence around your metaphorical garden, and a beautiful detour also into how we all have the power to console someone who is frightened, or lonely, which, in 2021, with a pandemic now still raging across the world, it feels like a very important message.

Please welcome my therapist, Wayne Muller.

MUSIC – You’d Think I’d Shot Their Children

Wayne 09:22

(Sighs) Amanda.

Amanda 09:24

(Squeals) It’s so good! And then I go, Wayne!

Wayne 09:30

Exactly. We find one another in that frequency.

Amanda 09:35

So I’ve talked to you on the phone a lot in the last three years, because all cards on the table, you have been my therapist, and my marriage’s therapist. My marriage itself has needed a therapist, and you have helped me, and my husband, and my family, and at this point, a handful of my friends, and fans, and community, because I have begun a system of Wayne referrals far and wide. Wayne is currently staying at our house, we’re in Woodstock, and we’re recording in downtown Woodstock.

So I sent you guys a screenshot of a tweet, and the writer of the tweet is @kramski, and the tweet has been liked 263,000 times, and retweeted almost 100,000. It says, “I love how being an adult is just saying “But after this week, things will slow down a bit again” to yourself until you die.”

What can you tell us about that tweet, and the fact that everyone in the universe feels some kind of a resonance with it?

Wayne 10:48

Well, I absolutely loved receiving that last night, when I got into my room, because you sent it to me, and I think Neil as well. And there are several stories, actually, in that brief sentence fragment. One of the stories is that there is a point at which our responsibilities that are feeling oppressive, or hard to deal with, or impossible to finish, will, at some point, once we do things correctly, vanish, be done, no longer be an issue, and then the space after that will be the way the white space looks on our calendar when we look far into the future, empty space, able to handle anything beautiful that comes our way. That’s one fiction, that of course isn’t true, because the moment we get there, many other barnacles have accumulated on the whole of our lives.

Amanda 11:53

Oh, that’s good.

Wayne 11:57

And they really are like barnacles, in that, they’re not that big, it’s not that… And so, it’s very easy to say yes to, because it’ll just take me 5 minutes, 10 minutes, which of course is another lie, because nothing really takes 5 minutes, or 10 minutes, and so we underestimate what will be required, we overestimate our capacity, and so we are dishonest with ourselves about what we’re really capable of. We also over-emphasise the value of how important whatever it is on our list is to the wellbeing of either ourselves or our loved ones, the world, whereas if we step back from time to time, and look at the grander things in our lives, we see where things belong, in terms of what really needs our heart’s best, most pure, passionate attention. And if everything gets the same kind of attention, then we will start to feel brittle, and thin, and weary, and used up.

Amanda 13:03

Why do you think we overestimate? What is that about? Why are we like that? I mean, we could be any way under the sun, why are we like that instead of some other way?

Wayne 13:20

We are astonishingly slow learners, as a species. I mean, look at evolution. Okay, it took us a million years to figure this out, and then we took another million years to figure this out.

Amanda 13:35

Why are we so dumb?!

Wayne 13:39

There was a time in our lives, when we were young, when we didn’t have to think about how long things took, because, in theory, we had parents, and people around us who were bigger than us, who figured that kind of stuff out, so there was a lot of magic in our world.

Amanda 13:56

Our job was just to play.

Wayne 13:57

Right, exactly. And they gave us the slots, and we just lived in them, and so we didn’t have a lot of experience in the planning, the figuring, the deciding, the choosing, so that is really an adult skill, which is another thing that makes that tweet so elegant, is because it really is an adult skill. Children don’t learn that skill until they become adults.

Amanda 14:24

Right, or learn the fine art of fucking up that skill.

Wayne 14:27

Right, more often than not. We don’t learn by success anywhere near as effectively as we learn from sheer, unadulterated failure.

We also don’t want it to be true, which again is a magical way of thinking. The child part of us wants it to be able to be easy, so that we can then be set free. And in truth, it’s also taking longer to do things, and that’s actually true in real life for almost everybody. It’s not just a psychological issue; the minimum wage being where it is for ten years now means that people have to work more than 40 hours in order to afford an apartment in the United States, if they work for minimum wage. So work takes longer than it used to. That’s just economics and physics combining. If we haven’t planned for that, and we think we can still work 40 hours, that extra 20 hours feels like an invasion, rather than how things really are.

Seeing things as they are is one of the hardest things for human beings to do.

Amanda 15:41

Something that came up a few months ago, I was sitting with a friend in a cafe, and she was telling me that she’s found a really useful name for a phenomenon that she sees happening with certain people, and with certain friends, which is the disease of equal value, and that the emotional time, and attention, and degree of drama and panic, that accompanies ‘I lost my cell phone’ is the same amount of drama, panic, attention, tragedy, that accompanies ‘I just found out my sister has cancer.’

Wayne 16:17

Or ‘I lost my child at the mall.’

Amanda 16:20

And at the same time, if you believe the zen masters of old, there is kind of this invitation to equal value, that’s sort of liberating. I’ll never forget something I read, I read it in my 20s, and it was a book by Thích Nhất Hạnh, and he’s talking about having a conversation with one of his friends, and how that friend of his realised that he was dividing his time up between getting his time to himself and being able to work, and that was good, and then the time that he needed to spend taking care of his child, and that time was just kind of annoying. And like, he loved his child, and he loved doing it, but he couldn’t wait to get back to his time. And then one day, he realised that if he just changed his perspective, and called the time that he was having with his child ‘his time’, he gets to always be having his fucking time, whether he was working on his book, playing with his kid, doing the dishes, because those are the dishes that happened to have accumulated, and that’s his time to do the dishes. And that strikes me as a form of enlightenment, that even when you’re walking the dog, or doing the dishes, or taking a shit, or doing your taxes, if you can have that kind of equal value, and not look at all of life as a struggle, and then maybe you’ll get that 5 days of vacation with the maitai in your hand, then you can actually enjoy your entire life.

But, there has to be some kind of distinction between those two concepts. So what is it?

Wayne 17:59

What we bump into is our humanity, and you know what the Buddhists speak about has some very real truth deeply embedded in it, clearly. Run through the oddness of being human, it has to go through some mazes in order to find its way into our lives. I remember having a similar epiphany when I was thinking about, how am I gonna carve out X amount of time for quiet, stillness, reflection, whatever? And the concept of figure ground, which a lot of artists will know, and some psychologists in the Jungian sphere, or anyone who understands archetypes, figure ground essentially means if you see a photo, or an image of a tree, and a house, and then there’s mountains and sky in the background, the figure is the house and the tree, and the ground is the mountains and the sky, and the earth around. My ground was being busy, getting a lot of things done. The figure that I was seeking was time for stillness, quiet, and reflection. And I said, well, what if I flipped that, and I made my ground being in stillness, quiet, and reflection, and I would only leave that place for very specific figures that required my attention, and then come back to my ground.

And so, I start with stillness, and the only thing that pulls me out of that are things that I choose to participate in.

Amanda 19:44

So, I can feel the anxiety, and the panic, rising in anyone listening to this the world over, going, that sounds fucking fantastic, and completely unrealistic. Because that sounds fucking great, WAyne, but how can you tell me to live a life of stillness and quietude when there’s three screaming children and the guy has run out and I can’t pay my bills? And what do you say to that person?

Wayne 20:11

I’m painfully aware of the economic and social and political realities of our age, and that it’s not so much making a big change in how we live, as it is a big change in how we think, feel, internally approach, what we’ve been given in life right now. For example, you and I just co-led a retreat at Omega, and we started as a practice to begin with some kind of mindfulness sit, for maybe five minutes, ten at the very most. And a mindfulness practice is, in essence, a way to focus one’s attention, so that rather than living by accident, we live a little bit more on purpose.

Mindfulness is, essentially, paying attention. By learning how to pay attention to how our breath feels, if we’re feeling anxious, if we’re feeling tired, if we’re feeling excited, whatever it is, we’re often asleep to those feelings, because we’re so focused on the next thing that needs to be done.

What I noticed most potently was when we went around the circle and asked people, what would they take from this retreat? At least fully a third of the people there said, I’m going to begin a mindfulness practice, based on five minutes. That much, they could feel, would shift the way that they stepped into the river of their life that day. People can feel the difference between beginning a day with five minutes of time where they just settled in to feeling their incarnation, this brief period of being alive, in a deeper root system, and that shifted how they approached whatever they were going to face, so powerfully that that was the one thing they wanted to change when they got home.

MUSIC BREAK – You Know The Statistics

Amanda 22:39

The metaphor possibly creates a misunderstanding. Because when you picture in your mind a framed painting, with a landscape, and a figure of a house and a tree, it leads you to believe what I actually think creates a general disconnect between your average layperson who gives no shits about meditation and yoga, and thinks that it is for people who have a lot of time to give to it. Because if we’re imagining that pie chart, the same panic and the anxiety that came up in me, on behalf of all the people who might have been feeling it, is you need all of this expertise, and all of this time, that I clearly don’t have.

But what you’re actually saying is, it’s more, if you are deciding to make the ground a baseline of stillness, it doesn’t mean you need to permanently live there. It’s almost a better metaphor to say like, this is a precious blue dye that I’m going to stick in the giant gallon of white paint in my life with which I am going to paint, but I know that underneath everything, whether it is catastrophe, sickness,abuse, stress, anxiety, drama, there’s a baseline under everything of stillness. Not that like, I’m gonna do stillness for seven hours a day, and then the rest of it I/m ust gonna be one of those hypervigilant schedulers, because I’m gonna know what to do, but actually, just that everything is ground, or everything is figure, and what it is is not coming from a place of anxiety and panic, and constant catching up, but coming from a place of, at any minute I can be unshakeable because I know how to take a deep breath and not get caught up in the panic of the moment.

Wayne 24:40

Some substantial percentage of people listening to this podcast at any time will be wrestling with some version of where should I be living, in one way or another. Maybe they need to move, maybe some relationship has been created, or is coming apart, or a job, it doesn’t matter. But wherever they’ve been living, they need to find a place to live, and move. In fact, once they get there, they may only spend six hours a day in that place, and go off very early in the morning and run around and do work and do all kinds of things, and walk in the door and collapse on their bed, in their clothing, and six hours later, jump up, shower, change, and off they are again, but they call that home.

The question for me is, can we make that initially five minute experience home? Even if we only spend a little bit of time there, just like that apartment or house, or wherever, where we only spend six hours sleeping, but we still call it home.

Part of it is claiming as home, not the running around, but the stillness from which we come, and to which we return. It’s a fundamental archetypal question about home, whcih is, for many, many people, in a very deep way, many people are confused about that word and its meaning in their life, and often don’t always feel at home in the place where they’ve put that tack on the map. So part of it is making it internally, so that the world has very little to say, or can’t take away your home, whereas it can in the world.

Amanda 26:30

Neil and I have been in a ‘what is home?’ struggle, and the proportions are just bizarre, because we travel constantly, so whatever we’re calling home isn’t even just the place that we sleep, it’s the place that we’ll come back to every six months and spend some time unpacking and doing our laundry again before we go out and live in London for four months, or live in Australia for three months, and go on tour, and live in tour buses, and taking turns taking care of our child. I really struggled with our current, let’s call it sleeping house. I’ve struggled with our current sleeping house, but I also was dealing with my own internal struggle in my relationship with Neil, reorienting myself as a parent, just feeling homeless on every kind of level.

I see it with Neil too in his career, but I certainly feel it as I tour. There is a kind of a home base for me, emotionally, doing a show, and just being with my community. And when I have felt upended and disoriented and homeless in my little domestic sphere, I can feel very relaxed and at home when I tour, and I’m with a group of semi-strangers, the same way I am sure you have felt that with different groups of people, because you’re sort of a group leader, and a workshop leader.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this retreat last week, and get these 60 people together, and I think I even mentioned it a few times in the course of the retreat, is like, this is where we live right now. With each other. I’m used to this. I’ve changed homes maybe 600 times in the course of my adult life. I’m good at it, and I also really know what I need. And what I really need is to just feel connected to the people who are in the room right now, and I can do it at the drop of a hat, cos I’ve had to learn how to do that.

One of the things you’ve really helped me with, just to have someone to work through all of this internal stuff, because also I used to have Anthony on the phone all the time, he wasn’t my “therapist”, but he was a therapist, and he raised me. You, in a way, almost took his place as a kind of homing mechanism. Even just to have someone to talk to, to remind me what I’m struggling with, what’s going on, what is home, why does this feel so disorienting, what am I doing? And I can say right now, when I shifted my internal feeling within myself, within my relationship with Neil, around where I was, my feeling in my own house transformed. Because I went, oh, right, none of this fucking matters. I could be anywhere. I could be on tour, I could be in the Congo, I could be in Iceland. I was really trying to rely on the correct Tetris combination of domestic certitude, rightness, right decision, to make me happy, and that was incorrect. It wouldn’t have worked.

Wayne 29:57

When you call me from a place of whirling, or flailing, or unknowing, that feels in that moment bigger than you, or frightening, or painful, or really 99 times out of 100 what I will be doing is mirroring back to you some way of helping you remember who you are, where you live, where your gifts and where your wholeness is, because me, in Santa Fe, as much as I would love to, can’t grant you the peace, the ease, the relief from those things, that I would love to, but you do when you remember the spaciousness of your container.

There’s a Tibetan story about if you take a tablespoon of salt and stir it into a glass of water and drink it, it tastes terrible. If you take that same tablespoon of salt and stir it into an enormous clear blue mountain lake, and then you taste the water, it tastes just as sweet. The salt isn’t the problem, how spacious the container is is really what creates the suffering. And when we speak, I can feel you remembering how much you can create a space large enough to hold even this, and still be alright. And that’s not in service of holding more and more, that’s not the point. The point is to be able to remember who you are.

And when we choose a home for ourselves, the world right now is a very difficult place for almost everybody. The economic pressures are statistically so jagged and heart-shredding for people, it’s not really being talked about, people have to work harder just to keep up. Finding a place of peace, a time of quiet, is almost impossible. But if there are ways, and if we have one another’s back, and if we know one another well enough, what we need really more than anything, are communities of people who know one another, love one another, have one another’s back, so that we can remind one another who we really are, how strong, how beautiful. We need to resurrect our magnificence with one another.

Amanda 32:36

Goddamn, Wayne! That was beautiful!

I just don’t know a single person who isn’t struggling to figure out how to spend their time and attention. What can help?

Wayne 32:54

If we tend to a few questions well, it will invariably be of use. It won’t necessarily make everything perfect, or solve every problem, but they will be of use. The first is, what is our first fidelity? What is that thing to which, in the core of our being, from the top of our leaves to the bottom of our root structure, what’s our first fidelity? And then based on that first fidelity, what are the few things that are in our constitution, our bill of rights, our ten commandments, our four noble truths, whatever, to which we go back when we have many things to decide about? Well, we go back, as we theoretically do, to the constitution of the Supreme Court or whatever you decide, these are the most important. And many people don’t, and it’s not like we have to figure them out, it’s more about listening, because they live inside of tus, they’re there. It does take some time and attention.

What are the things which will always get my priority, after which, if I have time, and do them well, everything else then has to get a no? And it becomes really hard to say no, because at a certain point in our lives, as we pick up this egg and that egg, no matter how big our hands, or how small the eggs, at a certain point, we can only hold a certain amount of eggs, and if we don’t put one down before we take up another, there will be an uncooked omelette on the floor. And so, the choice that we have to make, is what gets our first priority, and after a while, all the things being asked of us are good things, and there’s no good reason to say no to a good thing.

Amanda 34:53

So can you take me back, just to take it a little bit out of the abstract, first fidelity, describe a life where you can actually concretise this concept?

Wayne 35:05

I have a friend who’s a rabbi, who’s very good at, he loves teaching, he loves being with small groups of people, he loves being able to have the time to do it well. If something’s going to get in the way of that, he says, I’d love to, but I’m committed to this group of people. So he’s very clear about his fidelities. And then everything else that doesn’t fit that gets an absolutely compassionate no, filled with love and kindness, but it’s still a no.

A no is like a deer fence around a garden. If you don’t put a deer fence around a garden, you don’t get any food at the end of the season. A deer fence is not an act of violence, it’s an act of allowing life to happen. If we can’t say no, even to good things that aren’t in our first fidelity, nothing in our first fidelity will flourish.

Amanda 36:02

What if we can’t discern or distinguish what is or isn’t going to serve that fidelity, because we just don’t know?

Wayne 36:12

That’s an excellent question, and again, it really comes back to trial and error, mostly error, and hopefully, if we really attend mindfully to looking in our errors, and they tend to fall in certain boxes, then that’s a place of learning, and we can help one another.

Also, I get stuck here. Do I know someone else who can take these things on because they like to? And that’s one of the virtues of community, and having one another’s back. So I know it will be tended, so I don’t feel so bad, but I can’t do it honestly. I can offer dishonest kindness, I can offer counterfeit compassion.

Amanda 36:54

The problems a lot of people have, they don’t know how to answer that question. How would you advise someone even begin answering that question?

Wayne 37:04

There are a couple of questions, practices, for people to just sort of hold, and turn over in their hand, heart, and day, that I offer to people. One is to pay attention to what captures your curiosity as you move through the world. Because your curiosity is spontaneous, it’s not something you think about. If you feel your curiosity being grabbed by something, keep a journal notebook handy for a month, and watch, what are the things that have captured my curiosity? Don’t think about them, don’t explain them, don’t write stories about them, just make a little note, trusting that the organism is sound, and we are responding into some sympathetic vibration in the world.

The second is, what do we really love? And there’s a chapter in my book on enough about doing the next right thing. That’s really the only thing we ever do, is the next right thing, and then after that we do the next right thing, and then we die.

Amanda 38:11

Woohoo, we’re back to our tweet again!

Wayne 38:13

A different version of that tweet, hopefully a better, more hopeful version, but we really just do the next right thing, and someone rightly asked, how do you know what the next right thing is? And what it feels like to me is the discerning we need to do is, do you love it, or can you handle it? And if you love it, then that puts it in one category. If you can handle it, that immediately sends it way down the priority list, because we can handle all kinds of things, but we don’t have a tremendous amount of extra time in this life to waste on things we can just handle, that other people might love to do. And so, being honest with ourselves, we can talk ourselves into thinking we like certain things, so it requires a rigorous honesty between us and us, which is where, again, some practice of being quiet enough, even for five minutes, resentments, difficulties, things we wanna not have in our lives, will bubble up very quickly, and we’ll get that information if there are things we’re holding that we really don’t wanna be holding.

Amanda 39:28

And if we take it back to the Thích Nhất Hạnh story about his friend, that’s almost exactly what it sounds like, is he’s saying, I can handle spending time with my kid, it’s fine, I got it, but I can’t wait to get back to my life, where I get to do what I want. And in that sense, that was sort of the script that he was running on, but he also had the ability to flip the script, which I’ve seen many people in my life do, when they stumble into parenthood accidentally, cos it happens, cos egg met sperm, and oh shit, this was not something that I really had on my list of things to do to love.

Wayne 40:05

I have heard of these stories.

Amanda 40:08

But, those people, I’ve seen people move from, ‘oh my god, can I handle this? Okay, I think I can handle this’, to, ‘I love this’. You’re allowed. And I wonder, that journey from, ‘oh my god, can I handle this?’, to ‘I think I can handle this’, to ‘I have this down, to I actually love this’, this is where my curiosity is drawn. What’s the difference between that person, and the person who lives in a state of, ‘it happened to me, I’m not happy about it, but I can handle it,’ and they just stay there until they die. Because I’ve met those people. I’ve met them at 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, deathbed, going, ‘I fucking handled it,’ and I’m like ah, but you never loved it, did you? You never got past ‘I can handle it.’

Because, again, getting back to the figure ground, there’s so much we don’t have control over. We don’t have control over when people get ill, and we’re called to the bedside, to the hospital, to the cemetery, to the chemo ward. We don’t get to pick so many things. And I sort of write a song about this on the last album, this is sort of what Death Thing grapples with, which is like, are there spaces where it’s better to say ‘I can handle this’ than ‘I love this’, ie getting the call saying it’s time to come to the emergency room, something horrific has happened to your child. I don’t wanna love that. I wanna handle that. So that’s all really interesting to me.

But what you were saying, the answer was coming from a question about how do we find the core fidelity? If you’re using the garden metaphor, what are you trying to grow, so that you know what that fence is made out of, and comprised of what, no I can’t, I don’t have time, I can’t take that on.

And the equal value thing is really interesting, and I actually, as someone who studies the internet, and has been, I’ll plonk my cred down on the table, a fellow at the Berkman Center at Harvard, and really has thought deeply, and discussed deeply, and also been in the trenches of the internet that surrounds us, and the smartphones that surround us, and the style, the lifestyle that we’ve all kind of stumbled into in the last 10, 15 years, the equal value problem has a lot to do with the design flaw of our environment. Because emails and texts are just coming in in a list.

And I mentioned something, Neil and I were having some disagreement about a random house guest popping by, and these sorts of things fall right into the equal value of, well, if it just landed in your inbox right now, and you happened to be staring at it, and you know you can say yes, and why not, that’s really different from making a deliberate decision three days ago, three weeks ago, or three months ago, to say we’d really like to spend a weekend with these particular people, around this kind of company, with a bunch of strangers. But it can be so tempting to just do what’s right in front of us, because it’s like this whack-a-mole. It’s just there, and it’s really satisfying to just be like, I can do this, because it’s right here, and why not say yes!

Wayne 43:58

And if it’s three hours since we checked our email, then both the email about our friend telling us that they’ve just got a cancer diagnosis, which is right next to the Nigerian business man, have both already scrolled past the bottom, which means if you don’t go look for it, you won’t get either one. You won’t get all that money from Nigeria, to help your friend with cancer!

Amanda 44:26

And I don’t wanna blame technology, but also, having looked at the science, cos the science is in, and the dopamine hits don’t lie, and we really do get excited by an unread email, or an unread text. There’s a little chemical thing happening to us, going, ooh!

I love this idea, I saw a great TED talk a few years ago that just reminded us that our ancestors, way back in the day, were driven by only two things ever: threat, or opportunity. That’s it. You could divide everything, and every decision, into is there someone chasing me, or am I chasing something that I might eat tonight? That’s it.

And I think of our ancestors when I look at my phone, and I go, ooh there’s some unread texts. And I go, really, I’m just back in the Savannah in the world of threat or opportunity, because this news is either gonna be exciting news, pleasurable news, opportunity news, something fantastic, or wants to be my friend. Or something bad has happened, and my sense of ego is inflated because I am being informed, and I need to deal with it, and I need to go handle it.

And yet, these things are just coming at us with no attached information as to the level of their importance in regards to our life’s fidelity. Stick a fucking bw on that and print it. Because that’s how we’re living right now. We’re just living at the end of a conveyor belt of constant emails, texts, information, news feed, Facebook, Instagram, and there’s so much coming at us, that our equal value machine, and I see it with me, I see it with Neil, I see it with all of my friends who suffer under the pile of admin, family, domestic, relationship, sex life, friends… It’s so overwhelming, I might as well just do the thing that’s in front of my face, cos I have to do fucking something, and this is right here, so I’ll just do it. And nobody seems to have an organisational grace figured out. Everyone I see is just kind of flailing.

Wayne 47:11

Right. Which is why language, and questions, and how we name things, which can sound so archaic and too large, but really, the nobility of the human contribution to the world has been so diminished and devalued over the years, where people are now seen as more like appliances than as sentient beings. Martin Buber’s book on ‘I, thou’ relationships as opposed to ‘I, it’ relationships, he was trying to understand how people could put other human beings into ovens, and well, the way you do that is other people become things. It’s not an ‘I, thou’ relationship, it’s an ‘I, it’ relationship, they become other than ourselves.

And the world is in the process of devaluing what human beings bring to the table, as being beautiful, magical, exquisite, inconceivably elegant. And you think about the libraries of Alexandria, or you think about the floating city in the middle of a lake that the Spanish found when they came to Tenochtitlan, which is now Mexico City. It was the most beautiful architecturally advanced thing they’d ever seen before. This is what human beings could do 1,000 or 2,000 years ago. They were so taken by it, they forgot that they were there to kill everybody, until they got a fax from the head office, and said, well have you killed everybody yet? Oh right, right, yeah!

Amanda 49:03

Peace through distraction.

Wayne 49:04

We forgot, sorry! Yeah, we’ll get right on that. But that’s sort of where we are now. It’s like, we’ve gone a little bit to sleep, remembering when you think about… and it doesn’t matter, but all the painters, the artists, the musicians, the dancers, the creators, the architects, the people who’ve imagined, dreamed amazing, beautiful things, this is in us. And we end up diminishing the range in which we operate, if we don’t take a little bit of time to claim the nobility of the gift of a brief human incarnation, to offer our gift to the family of the Earth, and people.

And I started to think about this when I was the AIDS chaplin in Santa Fe, back in the mid-80s at the height of the AIDS crisis, where we didn’t even have a diagnosis, let alone a treatment, and all we could really bring was our presence, because there was nothing medically we could do to help people. And the amount of care and compassion and empathy that came from all sectors of the community to sit at the bedside of essentially a mystery that was taking young people, many of whom were moving to Santa Fe from LA, San Francisco, New York at the time, which is why there’s a song in Rent about people moving to Santa Fe, because they were. But we didn’t have anything to offer except something beautiful in our humanity that we really don’t give much credence to, and just being good company with someone who’s frightened, or lonely.

You don’t need degrees in psychology, you don’t have to have all the right technologies, you don’t have to have seen all the right TED talks to know what to do. There are ways that wisdom blows through us like wind through a flute, we become a kind of music that soothes those we love to the best of our ability. We forget how beautiful are the things that we bring to one another when we’re reduced to the metrics of our output. And if we start thinking in those terms, it’s interesting to me that shelves that used to be full of books on self-help are now full of books on productivity. The productivity is a horrible metric for the measure of human life.

MUSIC BREAK

Amanda 52:06

You’ve been around long enough to see the self-help new age… I mean, I was born in 1976, I’m 43, so I remember the moment in the 80s, early 80s, where all of a sudden there was just this crystal, new age, self-help, dancing with each other. Now, I was a child, I wasn’t an adult, but in the way that we now have an interesting perspective on “the boomers”, and everyone can theorise, well this happened, and so this happened, and so this happened, what do you have to say about, or what did you see grow out of, flourish out of, or completely fail, from that era of 70s, 80s self-help… Did they work? Were people helped? Or was it sort of junk food, cotton candy for most people, and then they just got back to the enslavement to a system that is ‘it-ing’ them? ‘IT-ing’ them.

Wayne 53:24

I think it speaks exactly to what we’re talking about, because for me, what was important was the assumption underlying the reason why those books were written, and many of those assumptions ultimately landed in some country that had, at its root, you are broken and need to be fixed. And I have a sort of visceral…

Amanda 53:50

You’re talking about America here.

Wayne 53:52

Yeah. And I have a visceral theological opposition to that. Thomas Merton talked about people having a hidden wholeness, and as a therapist, as a minister, I’ve always tried to make an alliance with that hidden wholeness in people. And those books were, if you read this book, I will help you get fixed. When I work with people, I spend more time arguing with them, they say they’re broken, I say they’re not, it’s like the opposite conversation. And trying to convince people that they’re not broken is the hardest work I do.

Amanda 54:33

Not all of those books were buying into that system, though. I mean, Ram Dass, Be Here Now wasn’t buying into that system.

Do you think people, this culture, has a better relationship with, a worse relationship with, even just the concept of finding a way to the door handle to get out of the darkened closet and into the light?

Wayne 54:58

Well, it’s interesting because in that time, as you mentioned, my first book, because I spent an hour on the Oprah Winfrey show, that sort of catapulted me onto the bestseller list, but that book was on the spiritual advantages of a painful childhood, and I was intentionally…

Amanda 55:22

And that’s Legacy of the Heart?

Wayne 55:23

Yeah, Legacy of the Heart, and the subtitle was The Spiritual Advantages of a Painful Childhood. I was intentionally swimming upstream against the presumptions that whatever happened to people in whose company I was sitting, who as children grew up with alcoholics, abusive parents, sexual abuse, poverty, war, oppression, loss of every imaginable and unimaginable kind, were then necessarily broken, defective, in need of being fixed. I was saying well, that’s not necessarily true. It was really not to take anything away from the anguish, or the suffering, and you really had to develop your intuition to get a quiet way of knowing what was really happening around you, and so that’s something you’ve developed, you had to become more porous to let in more information, so that you knew the next right thing to do. You had to learn how to become still, because when the shooting started, then you wouldn’t be the more visible target, or quiet and go inside, and find a place of sanctuary. This is monastic training 101 at a very early age.

And so, that doesn’t cancel out soul-crushing feeling of being abandoned as a child with no parents in a family that looks like it has parents. But it also doesn’t mean then, that you have to spend the rest of your life getting fixed. You may still be whole, there may be part sof you that can’t be broken. What if that thing that allows grass to push up through concrete lives in you as well? And this is what all spiritual traditions point to, is soul, spirit, true nature, whatever. What if that can’t be taken from you, and you still have it? How, then, would you like to claim what you love, what captures your curiosity, what sets you on fire?

When I watch you, I know that when you’re curious and excited about something, that’s something you’re passionate about, that’s something you will give your heart’s energy and attention to, and I’ve also seen you invoke skillsets to get through things that have to be gotten through, which is also part of life, but you know the difference. You can feel the difference.

Amanda 58:02

Sometimes. Most times.

Wayne 58:04

Yeah, sometimes. And sometimes it’s in retrospect. But over time, hopefully, what our life is about it refining, and refining, and getting closer and closer, and having more and more of those moments where we feel whole, not broken, when we’re following what we love, and not just what we can handle. When we’re claiming those, having to say no to beautiful things, deer are lovely creatures, but when they’re in the garden, the garden disappears.

Amanda 58:33

You’re working on a new book right now. It’s a book on addiction. Can you talk about the book, and just tell us about it?

Wayne 58:40

So many people have written about addiction, and I’m writing it because I was asked to write it, and at the same time, the only way I can really feel good about writing it is to put it in a larger context that we all share, and that is that there’s a tremendous amount of despair in our, I can say at least American culture, right now, because a lot of truth isn’t being told about how hard life is, how hard people have to work just to make it, how many people are living paycheque to paycheque, how many people have to make choices between am I gonna get healthcare for my child or am I gonna pay my rent? Those are real, those aren’t just a few people, that’s actually a majority of Americans have that conundrum as a truth in their life. So it’s not unusual, then, that people are becoming addicted to alleviating pain. That’s the drug with which we’re having the most difficulties.

Amanda 59:53

You mean pain-alleviating drugs? Cos right now we’re dealing with an opioid crisis.

Wayne 59:57

The opioid crisis.

Amanda 60:00

Yeah, we don’t have a country that’s addicted to LSD and third eye mind squeegeeing psychedelic acid trips.

Wayne 60:10

We do have a country that’s addicted to alcohol, but alcohol can be taxed in such a way that they keep it available for as many people as they possibly can, so there are addictions that are appropriate, according to civilisation, and inappropriate.

But I think, the Buddhist spoke about craving, or Duḥkha is the word he used, which is very difficult to translate, but it’s a thirsting, a craving, a wanting, and that wanting, according to the Buddha, is the source of all of our suffering. And an example might be that you see the iPhone 12 or whatever it is, that hasn’t come out yet, but you know it’s coming, and you’re saving, and you can’t wait until it comes out, and every day you look and see when it’s coming out, and you have a little separate account just for the iPhone 12, in case it’s $12,000 or whatever. And you read everything you can about the iPhone 12, morning til night, you’re just thinking about, will I get a white one, a silver one, or what about rose gold, where did rose gold come from anyway, what am I gonna do, how big is it, shall I get a different wardrobe so it fits in my pocket, what shall I do?! And so you’re completely in a state of despair, and you’re out of your mind with worry, and all of a sudden it comes out, and it’s exactly the amount of money in your account, it’s perfect, to the penny, $15,487 and 28 cents, and now you have, in your hands, the iPhone 12, and you take it home, and finally you’re happy!

Until… you realise, oh, the other one had that other kind of camera, that was the one I really wanted. And now we’re on it already again, and what we’re after is not the iPhone 12, what we’re after is the relief of wanting an iPhone 12. It’s the craving of the iPhone 12 that we’re trying to get relief from. It’s not the phone. It’s the craving that we’ve created.

Addiction is essentially that writ large, in our hearts, bodies, souls. It’s not that different from what the Buddha taught. But in a society that denies people value, nobility, magnificence, and financial sufficiency, medical care, the craving for something that will make it better is growing desperately in our country. It comes out sideways, in alcohol, opiates, and people are addicted to sex, drugs, rock and roll. I mean, we can become addicted to anything.

Amanda 63:23

Hey! By the way, look who you’re talking to! If you have a rock and roll addiction, I support you.

Wayne 63:29

It’s not that the sex or the drugs or the rock and roll are the problem, it’s the craving, that we’re not enough. We’re not sufficient. We’re not whole until this happens

Amanda 63:41

Well, this is the message we are hammered with from birth. You will be happy when…

Wayne 63:51

And then you will be enough. You will have enough.

Amanda 63:53

And then according to our tweet, which kicked off our session, then you’ll be dead.

Wayne 63:59

Thank God!

Amanda 64:00

Thank Christ!

Amanda 64:05

This has been the Art of Asking Everything podcast, thank you so much for listening. I’m Amanda Palmer.

Thank you to my guest, and my therapist, Wayne Muller. Get his books at WayneMuller.com.

The engineer for this interview was Jon Coors, it was recorded at Applehead Studios.

For all of the music you heard in this studio, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast

The podcast was produced and edited by FannieCo.

Lots of thanks as usual to my team: Hayley Rosenblum, who makes so many things in the background possible, working on the Patreon, and the posts, and making sure everything gets out, and is clean, and also fielding all of your questions. Thank you Hayley, I could not do this without you.

My assistant, Michael McComiskey, who fields tons of emails every day, and makes sure all the trains run on time, I would be nowhere without him, thank you Michael.

Lots of thanks to our Merch Queen in London, Alex Knight, who’s now also helping transcribe this podcast so the conversations are accessible to everyone, thank you Alex.

And to Kelly, who is helping work on the social media and the promo of the podcast.

My manager in Sydney, Jordan Verzar, is bringing everything together as usual.

And, of course, this whole podcast would not be possible without patronage. At current count, we’ve got about 14 to 15,000 patrons who are making it possible for this podcast that you just listened to to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship. Just the content and the media. So thanks especially to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, and Leela Cosgrove, also Robert W. Perkins, thank you guys so much for helping me make these things.

Everybody else, if you’re not part of the Patreon, please go, you can become a supporting member for a dollar a month, if you cap your pledge at $1, and this will also mean that you just get the podcast in your email inboxes, and I also do little morning voice rambles sometimes where I just talk about what’s going on, and how I’m feeling, and it’s a great community. So if you’re looking for a good place to go that’s not Facebook, Twitter or Instagram, come over to our Patreon community, it’s a beautiful place.

That being said, you can follow me on social media, I’m everywhere @amandapalmer. And, for now, signing off, this is me, Amanda Fucking Palmer. I love you. See you next week. Keep on asking everything.

The post Wayne Muller: A Chat With My Therapist first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

The post Wayne Muller: A Chat With My Therapist appeared first on Amanda Palmer.

Fred Leone: Song Man

Kelly Welles — Tue, 12 Jan 2021 02:00:47 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/how-important-is-44587373

EPISODE 16 OF THE ART OF ASKING EVERYTHING: Fred Leone: Song Man IS OUT NOW WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

Twelve months ago, the Australian bushfires were center stage. I was in Australia for the final leg of the “there will be no intermission” tour and all that mattered was raising money to help the effort. With the support of my patrons, we made Forty-Five Degrees: Bushfire Charity Flash record and on March 8th 2020, we staged a fundraiser.

I recorded this interview with Fred Leone, who participated in both the record and the fundraiser, two days before that show, and less than two weeks before Covid really upended the globe. A conversation about the marginalisation of first nations Aboriginal Australians and their culture might have lost its impact after the craziest year in living history, but you know what? It’s all so fucking RELEVANT. Our ability to communicate with each other well – through words, through music – is the glue that holds us together and if we can learn anything from recent events in the US, it’s that Western culture’s glue is no less vulnerable to erosion than any other.

Fred has worked for years to preserve the language and rituals of Aboriginal culture, through the traditional means of storytelling, music and art. We talk about how tech has usurped these channels, how it might be repurposed to reopen them and how swiftly their disruption leads to extinction. It’s weird how a conversation can be so sad and yet full of hope. And Fred’s voice…I could listen for days. I hope you hear the music under it all. It’s more important than ever to keep sharing our stories and singing our songs. It’s our light in the dark.

Show notes:

Description

Fred Leone is a musician and artist with traditional ties to Butchulla and Waanyi Garawa country and is of South Sea Islander descent.

He is the frontman for the hip-hop group Impossible Odds, which expresses issues facing aboriginal people through music.

Fred is also a leader in his community and a First Nations advocate.

He is committed to passing down the cultural knowledge of his ancestors by passing on traditional songs and dances to younger generations via his work as a song man.

CREDITS:

Thanks to Fred! Check out his music on Spotify!

The engineer for this interview was Nick Edin.

For all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net/podcast

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

Millions of thanks go to my incredible team:

My assistant Michael McComiskey who makes sure all the trains run on time and that I am able to do all the things, all the time…

#MerchQueen Alex Knight who is helping us transcribe so these conversations are accessible to ALL!

Kelly Welles on social media!

And, of course, my manager Jordan Verzar who brings it all together.

And last but not least, this whole podcast would not be possible without my patrons. At current count, about 15,000 of them. They make it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit, we are just the media, doing what we do. So special thanks are due to my high-level patrons, Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, and Leela Cosgrove, and Robert W Perkins thank you guys so much for helping me make this.

The Patreon is also full of extra things, and pictures, and all sorts of goodness, and you will get the podcast right, plop, in your inbox.

Thank you so much, everyone.

Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

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Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

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FULL EPISODE TRANSCRIPT:

Amanda Palmer 00:34

This is The Art of Asking Everything, I’m Amanda Palmer.

It’s January 11th 2021, as I record this. Happy new year, everybody. Oh my God.

I wanna tell you a story. A few days ago, while I was looking through my phone to find photos and video clips for the post for this episode, I came across a clip that I had forgotten about, from the day this was recorded, and it was Fred Leone, my guest, playing while I sat and listened.

MUSIC CLIP: Fred playing a song for Amanda

Amanda 01:38

I found this clip the day after the Capitol building in my home country of America was stormed and defiled by a bunch of assholes. For reference, I’m in New Zealand right now, very far from home, and I was just feeling all the raw pain of this moment.

And it was amazing to me how just listening to this sound calmed me. And I thought, I’m not gonna wait until it’s time to “promote” this episode, I wanna share this and put it out into the world. So I put this little video clip up on Instagram, and somebody wrote in the comments, “I love this because you can hear the magic and soul connection in his voice.” And I thought yes, that is it, there’s this thing about music, sometimes it just transcends language, and time, and space, and place, and we can’t explain, of course we can’t, and that’s why it’s music.

There’s a little background: I met Fred Leone through my manager in Sydney, whose name is Jordan Verzar, and he is a beloved long-standing member of my team. And Jordan knew that Fred and I would connect with each other.

Here’s Fred’s official bio: Fred is a musician and an artist with traditional ties to Butchulla and Waanyi Garawa country, and he’s also of South Sea islander descent. He’s the frontman for the hip-hop group Impossible Odds, which expresses issues facing Aboriginal people through music. And he’s also a leader in his community, and a First Nations advocate. He says he’s committed to passing down the cultural knowledge of his ancestors, by passing on traditional songs and dances to younger generations through his work as a song man.

And when I met him, you’ve gotta remember, the bush fires were all anyone was thinking about, they’d ravaged his country. And I was in Australia touring at the time. Now let me note the date of this recording. It was March 6th, 2020. And we were at Sing Sing recording studio in Melbourne, Australia. This was less than two weeks before the COVID madness really struck. And everyone in Australia was fiercely focused on the bushfires. And I was only a few days away from doing an event, a charity event, with Fred, that was a benefit concert for the bushfires. But the money didn’t go straight to relief. It went to an Aboriginal group called Firesticks, which educates people about cultural burning. About how to work with the land, as the Aboriginal people have been doing for tens of thousands of years, instead of just plundering it and ravaging it, in dialogue with the land.

And as I think back on this moment, and this discussion with Fred, and the benefit, and that whole time, I think about how music, and knowledge, ritual, education, these things that we’re supposed to pass down, this important information, how desperately we need music, to be able to heal and continue. Not just immediate music that helps us and comforts us, which is important, and music is amazing at doing that. But this other, bigger thing that music does, when it acts as a bridge, and the connector, between people, through time. The thing bigger than language and the printed word.

And I think there could not be a better time to put this episode out, when we need so much healing. I hope you love it. Everyone, please welcome Fred Leone: Song Man.

Amanda 05:46

Fred, thank you for coming and being part of this podcast.

Fred 05:50

No worries, thanks for having me here.

Amanda 05:51

Before we get into it, I wanna listen to a song, that I think is well over 10 years old now. Tell me a couple of things about Laugh It Off, and how you wrote this song.

Fred 06:01

Growing up, Aboriginal people in Australia seemed to have, we call it like, fellas too comical, or that’s just comical, and so there’s this way of dealing with extreme tense situations and pressure by just sort of, at some point someone will turn it around so there’s something everyone can have a laugh at.

But this particular song was about some young neighbours that I had, rented a place next door, and invited me over for beers one Friday night, and they had all their friends there. And one of the guys turned round, he said, oh man, you’re so cool, and that’s why I invited you over, you’re alright, but those others, they’re lazy, smelly, and they whinge. I’m not racist! And then I was like… ugh.

And then I wrote this song, and then it got high rotation on Triple J, and was on Qantas international in-flight radio, it went around the world, and I thought, just laughed it off at the time. I could have lost my shit, but I wrote a song about it.

Amanda 07:03

Yeah, let’s listen to it.

MUSIC BREAK – Laugh It Off

Hey boys and girls, here’s a bit about me

Fred Leone, nowadays known as Rival MC

Back in the day growing up, I got teased just because

Could never put a finger on just what it was

Til I was told one day, it was because of my skin

I mean you’re alright, but those others, they’re lazy, smelly, and whinge

I cringed, thinking I should knock this fella’s block off

Kept my composure and just decide to laugh it off

Amanda 07:28

When you listen to the message of this song, is there any part of you that has changed your opinion about laughing something off versus having some kind of degree of righteous anger?

Fred 07:42

I’ve changed heaps now. That was a while, that must have been about 2007, a long time ago. And yeah, that righteous rage… I just channel it into healthy outlet, or in a way, spin it into a narrative where people can understand, give them a clear snapshot of why something might be totally fucking infuriating.

Amanda 08:12

What were your major hip-hop love influences?

Fred 08:15

Public Enemy, NWA, when I was little, yeah, NWA, my older cousins played NWA. There were no Aboriginal role models on TV. Once every few years, Ernie Dingo might pop up in a movie or something. There was no Aboriginal, Australian Aboriginal, First Nations mob on TV. So the only black people that popped up were these rap stars. And they were talking about stuff that I was seeing in my own community. The only difference was at the time we didn’t have crack, we’ve got crack now. We call it ice. And we didn’t have guns. But everything else was relatable, like the characters, the people, the music, and the struggle, I could relate to as a young person.

Amanda 09:00

Where did you grow up exactly in Australia?

Fred 09:02

Between the northern suburbs of Brisbane, moving around in black housing and housing commission, and then Inala, late 80s, early 90s, had the highest crime rate in the whole country. Around Inala, mainly the outer suburbs, cos everyone from Inala was doing the stuff in the suburbs around Inala. And a melting pot. So it’s not just the indigienous people living there, there’s white kids, Vietnamese kids, Italian, Albanian, were all living in housing commission, nobodys got any money, everybody’s bored, what do you do?

Amanda 09:40

What did you do?

Fred 09:41

Really stupid stuff. It was weird because it was very much like a Robin Hood mentality. So if they’d say come through, he’s come through with cash. So suddenly he had 25,000 bucks. Then he’d be in a maxi-taxi, dropping off food to my aunties, his aunties, his family, a Vietnamese mate’s houses. And that was the thing to do, everybody did it. We were all just one big crew of people, for whatever reasons, were stuck in this situation where there was no opportunities to get out of the community, and so everybody just sort of stuck together.

Amanda 10:20

So I’m thinking about the listeners who don’t really know very much about Australia, don’t know much about Australian history, Aboriginal history. What’s the primer that you would give to, say, a teenager in America who hasn’t learned any of this yet, and wants to know the basics of indigenous Australian culture?

Fred 10:45

Look at first contact, so colonisation of Australia. The context of colonisation globally. Australia was colonised by England, by the crown. And then within the context of the last 250 years, 230 years, 250 years? Assimilation, dispossession. In there there’s also massacres, and wars, internal warfare, guerrilla warfare. It’s only in the last 200 and something years. By international standards, a “young” country, but the history beyond that goes right back, through song and dance.

Amanda 11:29

You come from Butchulla people.

Fred 11:31

Yeah.

Amanda 11:32

Can you explain what that means?

Fred 11:33

Before colonisation, there was 300, roughly, tribal groups. But within those language groups, they call them language groups or tribal groups, pretty much like Europe, so you can go to different sections of Europe, and everybody’s speaking a different language, it’s the same here, across the whole continent. All up, there’s 6 to 700 different dialects, across the whole country. On the Butchulla side of my family, we’re from K’gari, from Fraser Island, which is well known tourist destination, and then on my grandfather’s side, we’re from up in the gulf of Carpentaria, several thousand kilometres away, up in the gulf of Carpentaria, in the Northern Territory. So one’s dry, they get a wet season, they get monsoon wet season, and the other area’s sort of subtropical. So it’s… the humidity is what hits you too.

In the context of Captain Cook landing, and then the process of annihilation basically, there’s best practice models that were taken from every other country that England colonised before they got here, we’re the last man standing so to speak, in terms of an independent country of people, so all the best practice models were set into play by the time the British came to Australia.

And then, in the States they have reserves, in Australia we have missions. And so missions were set up, and then missionaries were sent to those outposts. If there were survivors, they massacred some people cos they wanted to put cattle there, and those people wouldn’t give up land, and they’d get massacred, and the ones that survived, the warriors that survived, instead of just taking them and putting them all in one reserve, three of you are gonna get sent to Victoria, three of you are gonna get sent to South Australia, three of you are gonna get sent over to WA, and just split them up. And so what that does is then, you drop 30, 40 different language groups into a community where they’re not the traditional owners of that community, they’re not the traditional people of that land, they can’t speak that language, there’s conflict, and so they went, okay, we want you to all get along, so assimilate. Here’s a bible and here’s English, and that was it.

Then you had things like the Opium Act, so there was an act, when the gold rush started, and the Chinese came, with the gold rush, with people from Europe, then government were like, okay, well we need to sort this out, so they brought in a law called the Opium Act, so you could pay Chinese and Aboriginal people with just opium and alcohol, you didn’t have to pay them.

Me personally, I feel like some Aboriginal communities are really dysfunctional today, and I feel like we didn’t have that renewal of people coming, like with the Chinese community, there was always people coming and renewing it, and making sure that the cultural practices and stuff were staying strong, and those communities were building, and the Opium Act, the effect of it, I feel like, didn’t hit home as hard as it did in Aboriginal communities, because there was no renewing or refreshing of new people coming, it’s like, this is all we had. There’s only my great grandfather’s era.

My great grandfather survived three massacres, the last one was in 1896. He was a part of wild time, so when Australians were moving up into the Northern Territory, there’s a place called Hell’s Gate, and that held off settlers for 30 years, called Hell’s Gate. The military would only take people to that point, and they said, after this, you’re on your own, if you wanna go dig for gold, or farm, or take your cattle out, this is it. We’ll only escort you to Hell’s Gate, and that was the gateway to the Northern Territory, and all up to Arnhem Land and everything. And 30 years, there was a 30 year conflict, that my great grandfather and my great great grandfather, they saw it in their lifetime.

Amanda 15:32

Just definition-wise, what does it mean to be a song man?

Fred 15:36

Ah, a song man is someone who keeps the stories alive, and so from a young age, you’re sort of keeping an eye on older song men, older people that are holding that knowledge, are watching the young blokes in the community, and I just happened to be one of those guys. Obviously I was always singing, I was always rapping. But also, I’d sit there, and if my older brothers were singing songs in language, I’d just learn the song. And so, learn the song, I was always interested in it.

And so then those stories, older people will watch, and I’d call the process fishing, so I’m doing it now. Sadly, I had one of my nephews who I was imparting songs to, and my brother was imparting songs to, and then he ended up going to jail, and he came out and said, this is your last chance, if you mess this up, fuck this up, no more of your grandmother’s tongue. And then he did it again. And so, said no. And it was the most heartbreaking thing, cos when you think about it, our languages and our culture… it’s close to extinction. On my grandfather’s side, there’s maybe five speakers, full speakers of that language. And they’re all 70, 80 plus. So they’re getting old, and they’re gonna die. But the younger people, even my age, in their 40s and 50s even, and under us, been seduced by technology and stuff, and drugs and alcohol.

Amanda 17:20

So who’s there right now? Who’s there to catch the language?

Fred 17:23

On the east coast? I know everybody. Everybody knows everybody, you can count them on your hands and toes how many people there are. Arnhem Land, there’s a whole bunch of people, so it’s strong. WA is strong. Just depends, Central is strong, but say, out of 300-and-something language groups, there’s probably twelve that are strong. The rest are in all different states of flux, all different states of extinction. But being a song man, you get that knowledge, so it’s just trained into you since you were little, like you just learn these songs, you learn exactly what country it’s from. It’s all these other little intricate things that take place in your brain.

Amanda 18:11

This is interesting, you talk about getting seduced, or whatever, your cousin being seduced, and you definitely got, maybe seduced is the wrong word, but you listened to hip hop from Compton, Los Angeles. This is not your community, aren’t really your people, and yet, something about it really spoke to you. Where do you see that hazy boundary between, oh my God, there’s so much to seduce you and take in, and now I have access to the internet, and now I have access to hip hop, from all over the fucking world, and oh my God, there’s so much out there, and on the other hand, this teeny, fragile, little thing, that feels like a fire not tended to, oh my God, it’s just gonna go out? You’ve probably had your own struggle with this in your life, like how much out, how much in?

When you’re looking at someone who’s 20, and has access to literally everything because they’ve got a smartphone, how do you teach them to balance out between the seduction of the whole wide world, and that’s your fucking grandmother? Listen to her, she has a story to tell you, and that story belongs to you!

Fred 19:12

Yeah, once she’s gone, it’s gone, you know? There is no, ah, I’m just gonna get on anytime and download the information I need, once she’s gone, she’s gone.

So the first part of your question, there was this analogy I put together, and I said, I say it to young people, with hip hop in particular, cos that was my thing, I’m a part of that subculture, supported Public Enemy and Dead Prez, people like that, and hung out with Brother Ali, and so I feel like that’s a part of who I am, and that’s a part of, I belong to that subculture, but also I belong to my culture, and some people often ask how? How does that work?

I look at it like this. In rap, you have an MC. In Aboriginal culture, we’ve got a song man and song woman. In hip hop, you have break dancer. We have shake a leg. In hip hop, you have the DJ. We’ve got the didge. In hip hop, you have graffiti, those are the four elements. In our culture, we’ve got the oldest graffiti on the face of the planet. When it comes down to the crunch, that’s why it was so accessible for me, I think, and young indiginous people in Australia, young First Nations people in Australia.

Amanda 20:19

I read an interview with you where you were talking about the fifth pillar being knowledge. This is about passing on knowledge to the people around you.

What’s funny, I don’t know how much you know about Neil, about my husband, but he thinks a lot about stories, what they do, why they matter, and he was talking at the literary festival about, and I know you know this, cos I’ve also seen you talk about this, these stories, here, are the oldest ones. These stories go back God knows how many generations, how many years, how many thousands and thousands of years. It really does make you wonder, are we being careful with how we’re sending these stories on, into the future? What’s the best package? Is it hip hop? Is it poetry? Is it dance? Is it no, we just need to have a really fucking amazing internet infrastructure with every little Wikipedia fact etched in some kind of material that won’t die?

What do you make of this collision with the oldest culture in the world, and the newest technology, and how they can aid and abet each other?

Fred 21:37

Yeah. I think it’s happening now, it’s slowly happening with animation and things like that, and making sure that the core old stories, old songs, old narratives that have been there for thousands of years, are kept, and being able to be passed on. But, if Aboriginal people were a koala, koalas are nearly extinct. Aboriginal people are nearly fucking extinct! First Nations Aboriginal Australians are nearly extinct. We’re still here, but once your language dies, the culture dies, because then you don’t have that connection, that connection is lost. Learn that, even in linguistics, so that’s in a scientific setting, in linguistics, they talk about it, we talk about the connection between language and a culture.

If we’re gonna worry about the koalas, we’ve gotta worry about this. This is the oldest culture on the face of the Earth, but it’s the oldest, as human beings we’re all here, and we’ve all been a part of the Earth for around the same amount of time. Except in Australia, what was a little bit different is each clan group stayed in one area, and was responsible for one lot of stories. In our family, we know if the black wattle starts flowering, we’re gonna walk down and we’re gonna catch fish, so look for warmer for the bird. Once the bird starts to drop, then we’re gonna, and that’s just from thousands of years’ observation, and just passing that knowledge down, just drilling it into people’s heads, about this is what happens on this section of land here. It’s different for that other mob, so they do whatever they do. And so, that knowledge passed down from generation to generation is…

Amanda 23:18

You can’t have culture without language. But also, place is really important. But also, you see this, I mean certain cultures are just diaspora, and we’ve managed to be a culture without a place because whatever, we’re on the run, or what you were saying about the Australian government, or whatever, the British government back in the day. Divide and conquer. Take language away, take land away, erase culture.

Fred 23:45

Yeah. And then, in a weird twist, hundred years later, turn around and go, okay, knowing that families have been moved and taken as a part of legislation, we’re gonna move them round the country, and then say, okay, well, we’ll give you native title and land rights, but you have to prove your unbroken connection to that part of the land. When they’ve just spent two generations in another place.

Amanda 24:08

Can you explain land rights, versus sovereignty, and what this would mean to someone in Australia who’s an activist?

Fred 24:19

Yeah. So land rights was a time in the 70s, 80s, when the government of the day decided, okay, Aboriginal people have rights, they have land rights. Land rights is anything that’s not already built on, they own it, they own it outright, there’s no and, ifs, buts, or maybes. But once people started… They didn’t expect for the rush, for people to go, actually, we do know all our stories, we’re gonna show you, in a court of law, in a federal court, in the highest court, in the high court of Australia, we’re gonna show you that yeah, we have these connections to the country, to the land, and these are the songs for that land. This is a creation story for that mountain, that river, that section of the ocean. These are stories that have been handed down, generation to generation.

That happened, and then it only happened for a short window before the government went…

Amanda 25:13

Oh shit.

Fred 25:14

Oh shit! Okay! Well, let’s move the goalposts, okay, suddenly, oh no, we’ve changed it now, it’s called native title. And so, native title is a watered down version of land rights. So in native title, the government, you’re acknowledged as the traditional people, and they can consult you if they wanna do anything on your country, but it’s not gonna stop…

Amanda 25:39

Them from just going in there and drilling all the oil out?

Fred 25:40

From lining, from anything. From drilling, yeah, doing whatever. So it’s just sort of turned into just this joke, basically, a token sort of gesture to say…

And then you have sovereignty, like sovereignty was never ceded, so when the British first came, in the law books of the empire at the time, even to now, it says when the English were going to new lands, if you went to a new land, if it was gonna be colonised, there had to be some sort of two way…

Amanda 26:12

Someone had to throw down their sword.

Fred 26:13

Yeah. And so, in Australia, what was interesting about Australia, and this is why I feel like it was a really dirty, underhanded thing to do, learning best what worked the best, and then this is the last colonised place in the planet by England… By the time they got here, it was like okay, we’re just gonna say it’s terra nullius. No one was here.

Sovereignty was never ceded, there was no official, and I hear it on the news all the time, they talk about the sovereignty of the government, the sovereignty of the Australian government. You can look it up in the UN, go to the UN and read through all the documents, sovereignty was never ceded, Aboriginal people as a whole group of people, maybe one, and even that is contested, they didn’t speak Englsih, so how the fuck are they gonna… People have popped up and said, we’ve got this…

Amanda 27:04

In order for something to be terra nullius, this land is just empty, blank slate. And yet, there are all these beings on it. It speaks to the complete dehumanisation.

Fred 27:17

Yeah. 1967, my mum was born in 1952, 1967 she became a human being. 1967 was the referendum for Aboriginal people to be counted in the census as human beings. We were counted as flora and fauna before then.

To find my grandfather, where he was born, mum was looking up birth certificates, he was on a cattle register. Just a first name. On the cattle station register, as cattle. Livestock, sorry. That’s in my mother’s lifetime.

Sometimes it just gets a little much in Australia when people are like, just get over it! Like, no. You can’t. There’s no getting over my mum is about to get a payout from the federal government for stolen wages. So up until the 80s, Aboriginal people were having two thirds of their wages, working in mainstream jobs, with everybody else, getting two thirds of their wages taken, and set aside in a special fund for Aboriginals, which ended up being used on public works, so main roads, were all built off this money.

Amanda 28:28

Basic tax.

Fred 28:29

Yeah. And so, the government have just been now, they’re not paying back the full amount, but they’re paying back.

Amanda 28:35

When you look at this stuff, and you talk about those Australians who say just get over it, we’ve moved on, where do you see music, whether it is indie rock, or hip hop stuff, or the desire to carry on super old school traditional music, how do you see that it has broken through to people in a way that maybe just sitting around and talking hasn’t, or going to an activist meeting in a town hall or something, or just reading a book, or just reading an article in the newspaper?

Do you think music has helped people get any of this?

Fred 29:16

Yeah. I feel like it has. And the reason it has is because, as human beings, the core of our being, since the beginning of time, has always been some kind of music. Our oldest songs in Australia, the old songs, are all… your mother’s heartbeat, all the rhythms are like this. As human beings, we feel that music has that power to move you, you don’t even have to understand what the fuck somebody’s saying, but you can feel it, you know what it is. You innately already know what it is. Especially when it comes to traditional types of music around the world.

I can sit and listen to classical music. You can feel what the composer was, the heartbreak that they were going through, or whatever’s being conveyed in that music, and so that’s what I feel today, music, and the performing arts, but music particularly, has the power to transcend language, or politics. Anything like that. It breaks down all barriers. I’ve toured around the world, and I’ve seen it. People come up crying, having people translate, saying, I don’t know what you were saying, what you guys were saying, but I could feel it. I felt it.

Amanda 30:37

Can you explain for someone who’s never heard the words, or has never come across the concept, what the dreaming is?

Fred 30:43

Dreaming is like the closest English word to describe what First Nations, what Aboriginal First Nations people here in Australia, the closest thing I can think of is chi, the life force, is like the dreaming. The dreaming was there in the beginning, it’s every section up until now, and it’ll be here when we’re gone, and we’re all a part of it. But what’s interesting is, with the songs in particular, their descriptive verses on sections of the dreaming, sections of that echo in time, from different parts of it, that were handed down from generation to generation, to explain what was happening in a time and a place throughout history.

Amanda 31:31

Can you explain song lines too?

Fred 31:35

So there’s song, so I’ve got songs, some are public songs, and just songs that are connected to certain areas. But a song line will stretch across a massive expanse of country, and explain every single detail of every single mountain, every single river, every creek, how it was created, what animals, what creatures were there, there are witnesses within the song line, throughout the echo of that happening, so it’s like when you’re singing too, it’s all a part of it, it’s like an echo. So if you stand on the edge of a mountain, and you go ‘coo-ee’ and you hear it go ‘coo-ee’, you can’t see it, but you can hear it. You know it’s there.

Each one of us is a step in that echo, each one of us is one of those echoes in time, so echoing that old voice of those old people, and it’s coming through, carrying that same story about different animals witnessing the creation happen, and then the being that’s creating things, that character, there’s characters in it.

Amanda 32:42

So can a song line be performed, and does it have a beginning and an end?

Fred 32:48

It does, it has a beginning and end, and in terms of me talking about it, I’m 41, and still what I can talk about is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an iceberg, there’s the tip, and then it goes down, and that knowledge is held by high up old people.

Amanda 33:05

Can you sit down with someone, and play them a song line, and…

Fred 33:11

It’d take a long time. There’s one for my clan, it’s 300 verses.

Amanda 33:17

How long would it take to deliver?

Fred 33:19

Months.

I was talking to somebody, my big brother, I was talking to him about it, and I said, it’s just heavy lifting, it’s like the most mentally taxing thing you can do, that you choose to do, and when you start it, you just can’t stop. You have to complete it.

Amanda 33:44

So when I was up in Darwin, I was in the local history museum, the art museum, and I found this book that’s clearly just local, it’s not a book you can find on Amazon, just local printer, teeny weeny book, called White Fella Culture. And it’s a handbook on how to understand how, and why, white people are behaving in these really difficult to understand ways.

And then also really interesting, at the end, flip side, this is the 7th edition of the book, there’s a bunch of stuff that white people just do not understand about Aboriginal culture, we all have to live here together, we all have to work here together. And it was so interesting to see, this is a basic handbook. This isn’t some woke activist, this is just basics, like you have to do a job together, you don’t understand each other’s cultures, you don’t understand each other’s etiquette.

And one of the most fascinating things I came across, especially cos of what interests me, was about asling. What you’re allowed to ask of another person, according to this brochure, in white fella culture, versus black fella culture, Aboriginal culture. What have you seen, just in terms of oh, this is just a giant misunderstanding, in terms of the way white people ask for things, and then what they expect, and how they expect it all to go, versus the way indigenous people…

Fred 35:11

I was talking about this just yesterday, actually, saying, there’s a whole thing around, it’s like extraction, I feel like it’s more, even when it comes down to linguistics, there’s an extraction, and the big thing that is disturbing to a lot of Aboriginal people in anthropology, so it’s just this mass extraction of information. That sort of comes through in… not all the time, but there’s an extraction of oh, that’s not a reciprocal thing that happens.

Amanda 35:48

So when you say anthropology, you mean people just coming in, looking at this culture, sterile academia, just I want this knowledge, I want these facts.

Fred 35:58

I want the knowledge, but not to just have a conversation, like we’re having, but it’s like, I want the knowledge, but I need it in this scientific way, set out like this, I’m recording you, start talking now, bang. Okay, wait. And then it’s totally, it needs to fit a scientific practice that’s been happening for a hundred years, that’s out of date, and out of fashion, and out of style, everything, but everything has to fit within that context, whereas there’s no conversation, there’s no talking.

Amanda 36:32

Well, there’s no humanity.

Fred 36:33

There’s no humanity in it! Yeah, the humanity’s sort of removed. But then there’s like, with asking, we’ve got this thing where, I don’t notice it all the time, and I’ll notice I have to translate it sometimes, cos I have cousins and they’ll say, if I’ve got a non-indigenous mate, he’ll go, oh man, can I get a lift, I’m going to… and people will say oh okay, no I can’t, I’m going the opposite way. But black fellas won’t ask you the question directly, they’ll go, oh… Where are you going to after this? You got a car? Oh yeah, yeah. Elicit a response.

Amanda 37:06

An invitation.

Fred 37:07

An invitation.

Amanda 37:08

You invite an invitation.

Fred 37:08

To then say, oh, well where are you going? Oh, okay, well I can give you a lift. And so, I’ve seen it happen a million times, where just mob, communion mob, from anywhere in the country, will be like, where are you going, which way are you going after this, where are you heading? And that’s the question, and so if I’ve got a non-indigenous mate, they’ll be like, oh yeah, I’m just going home. I’m like no, no, brother man’s asking where you’re going, and if you’re going the same way, he wants a lift. Like, oh, okay.

Amanda 37:42

Yeah, and so it’s really handy to have a translator. I mean, I have definitely, as an American married to a British person, they have a lot of the same rules. British people, they will invite you to invite them by skirting around a subject. I go through this with Neil all the time. His thing is like, so darling, are you a bit hungry? Are you hungry? And I’m like no, I’m good. Anyway… And he’s just sitting there going like, but she’s supposed to ask me if I’m hungry and then offer food, and I’m like, yeah. Where I’m from you’re just like, hey, I’m hungry, can we go eat? And yeah, that’s not, they’re not allowed to do that. Just not allowed.

When you get two sets of etiquette, and you are trying to get shit done, it can be very difficult.

Fred 38:31

And what I find in Australia, which is really unusual, black fellas have to learn, from when you’re born you have to learn English. You have to learn how to operate in two totally different worlds. Non-indigenous people in Australia, I don’t need to know about their fucking world, that’s over there. I’m just gonna do what I do. Oh wow, that happened?! It’s like, come on, read a fucking book. Go to the library, read a fucking book, it’s history, it’s recent history, this shit is here, it’s not just popped up out of nowhere, shit happened, shit’s happening now, it’s gone on.

So you can opt in or opt out. Whereas Aboriginal people, we have to learn… my mum, when I was little, can I teach you this now? What’s that? Betty Botter bought some butter, but she said the butter’s butter, if I put it in my batter it will make my batter bitter. But a bit of better butter made Betty’s batter better. All these things about diction and all this, I said, what? And I remember thinking, why are we doing this? She said, one day, you’re gonna have to go out into that world there, and you gotta speak their language, you can’t be walking around going ahh, yeah, what you doing my brother, which way, eh, oh yeah, you can’t talk like that. You’ve gotta talk, there’s a linguistical term for it, when I go to hang out with my cousins…

Amanda 39:50

Code-switching.

Fred 39:51

Code-switching, yeah! Just code-switch, totally.

Amanda 39:54

You’ve toured Europe and the US.

Fred 39:59

I’ve holidayed in Europe, but I’ve toured the US.

Amanda 40:01

Well, you’ve been there. You’ve soaked it up. So, do you feel a difference in the way Australians are dealing with this kind of stuff, dealing with history, dealing with genocide, dealing with what they’re being confronted with?

Fred 40:17

In Australia, it’s weird. If you go to Germany, there’s shrines, it’s talked about, it’s taught in schools. The Holocaust happened. It was a thing. It happened, it was real, it happened, it’s there. There’s no escaping it. And then how do they move forward as a country? Educate their next generation, so that shit never happens again. That’s the narrative that’s happening there.

In Australia, it’s like, it just sort of doesn’t get a mention, it’s just sort of like nah, just leave that over there, don’t worry about it. It’s Australia Day, man, it’s not Invasion Day!

I wrote a poem once, the lights are on but nobody’s home. It’s too close to home, it’s too…

Amanda 41:09

Well do you wonder if that has to do with the fact that Germany got its ass kicked in the war, and then most of the Jewish population, there was almost a return to, well we can go back to the way things were before this whole insane thing happened, and this Jewish community can still live here, or they’re gonna head over there. And here, it almost seems like to completely reckon with what happened, there might just be too much to lose. What’s the way out? How do we fix this? And since we don’t think we can, it’s just too confusing to talk about.

Fred 41:47

Yep. We’ve got like, third world conditions in a first world country, just five hours away. For instance, with our mob, Butchulla mob, Fraser Island, K’gari, it’s the biggest… It gets the most income of any national park in the whole country. Millions upon millions of dollars. The community just said, we have native title over the island. If you gave us 2% of that, our community would be flourishing. 2% of those millions.

Amanda 42:18

Those millions that usually go towards what?

Fred 42:21

It just goes into the economy. Or non-indigenous businesses. So as a native title holder, it means fuck all. You can’t have economic gain, on your own country. So there’s all non-indigenous tourist companies running. We’re not allowed to have one. We can’t bottle the water, we can’t do anything. But the government can allow a mining company to come, and just mine the fuck out of it. They can’t on the island, because it’s protected, like world heritage protected. And saying that, the cultural heritage act around the country is a joke. They use that to protect sacred sites, but you can lay a map of cultural heritage sites, and mine sites, over each other, overlay them, and it hasn’t protected anything.

Amanda 43:02

So, we were just at the same music conference, and speaking of music and art, trying to wrangle its way into this conversation, make any kind of attempt at progress, how do you see artists, especially when white people come up to you and are like, how can I be a good ally? Especially when things are feeling a little hopeless, what can you say to them?

Fred 43:25

One is like, just educating yourself on the history of the place. Even the history of the community where you live. Pardon me, there’s like, just around the country, every major city and major little town has a Boundary Street or a Boundary Road. And if you look at the map, it goes round the whole city. And after dark, if you’re black, you’re getting hung or shot, and that’s the reality of it, and so that’s never talked about. So one thing is education.

But then when it’s time for action, it’s just like, pass the mic. Give it to someone who can speak from an authoritative viewpoint on it, and give them the voice. Don’t assume you can be that voice, people need to be empowered to have a voice, because for far too long we just haven’t, we’ve just never, we haven’t had autonomy, or the power to have a voice. It’s always just been controlled. Controlled, but then, because it’s been controlled by government, then they’ll sit there and pick it apart. Oh, it doesn’t work, you guys are the problem, you’re the Aboriginal problem, it’s a problem, it’s a problem, every news report, what are we gonna do about Aboriginal communities, they’re just out of control, it’s this, it’s that, it’s like… You’ve got the strings, you’ve got the power.

Even with mining companies going into the communities, some communities are getting royalties, but those royalties, and the jobs that they’re getting, are shit-kicker jobs in the mine. Nobody’s getting a university education out of it, or working their way up as an executive in a mining company. All the mining money is going, all the workers are flying in and flying out, the community get royalty cheques. There’s programmes and stuff that money gets funneled into. And in some communities, people might get a royalty cheque. Some communities have the skills to know what to do with the money, others don’t. And we share, so if I’ve got something, and somebody asks me, I’m fucking giving it to them. If I’ve got $50 in my pocket, and they ask me for $30, yeah, okay, here you go, and that’s our responsibilities to family, to make sure that other family… But that concept doesn’t work in the western structure, in today’s… So if somebody’s getting their royalties or whatever, everybody that they’re connected to, even if it’s a neighbour, and the neighbour’s not connected to that tribal group, the neighbour’s getting fed.

Amanda 45:59

It’s a generosity-driven system, as opposed to a I’ve got mine-driven system.

Fred 46:07

Yeah, but then it’s looked at as a backwards system. It’s like, no, it’s not backwards. The thing that is dysfunctional about it is all stuff that was introduced to the culture, not what is the breadth and depth of the culture, and everything that it represents, the realness of it. It’s all the imposed stuff that government sort of picks apart as oh, that’s your culture, it’s like, no, that’s imposed, that’s all imposed, it’s stuff that was imposed on us, we’re not…

Amanda 46:38

So with Australia sort of back in global headlines right now because of the bushfires, where do you see the connection between this breakdown that we’re talking about, and the country being on fire?

Fred 46:51

A prime example is the recording you just put together, the Firesticks Alliance has been there for a year. There’s not even a mention of it, of this organisation, in any mainstream media whatsoever. Talking to the fire chief, and the fire chief’s like…

Amanda 47:09

And for people who don’t know what Firesticks is, to explain what it is…

Fred 47:12

Yeah, Firesticks is an organisation of Aboriginal people that use traditional burning methods on the country that have been used for thousands of years, to keep from there ever being the magnitude of bushfire that we’ve had in the country now, and then when we had Black Friday. And because that traditional knowledge is there, and that has been shared around different communities, but it’s not getting federal government funding, it’s been totally ignored.

Amanda 47:43

And do you think that’s just pride?

Fred 47:44

It’s pride thing, cos we’re not gonna acknowledge that, you’re not gonna acknowledge your connection to one place, for 4,000-plus generations, 65,000-plus years, we’re not gonna acknowledge that. What we will acknowledge is ah, you know, you’ve got some kids who sniff petrol every now and again, and we’ll acknowledge all the dysfunctional shit, and we’ll make sure we slap that on the front page, and they won’t acknowledge… It’s bizarre. Because it’ll save the government so much money, but even…

It’s crazy, cos I was watching the news, and just the other day, they were talking about, we’ve now had all this rain, so now we’ve gotta work out, how do we get all the cattle and the animals that are being farmed, there’s a book called Dark Emu, and in the book it talks about any native animal in Australia doesn’t have hard hooves, it has soft, padded feet for a reason. They’ve adapted. And so they’re made to integrate with the land, in a way that’s not compacting soil and things like that, whereas that’s happening. And so the talk is, the bushfires are slowing down, we’re getting rain, and now people are still talking about oh, we’ve gotta re-boost our stock and all this stuff, and it’s like, are you that crazy? Just insane?

Amanda 49:13

That’s how it felt after 9/11 in New York. When the overarching narrative wasn’t, how did this happen, and how can we keep this from happening again, but it was like, the most important thing right now is go to the mall and spend money. Get the economy back up! Wrong reaction. You’re not getting the right lesson out of this punch in the face.

What are a couple of things you’re seeing right now that are actually giving you some hope?

Fred 49:38

I feel like it was a bit of a wake up call for some sections of Australia to go, you know what? There was a non-indigenous… no, I don’t know if it was non-indigenous, I think his wife was non-indigenous, he’s an indigenous elder in a community, but they own a whole bunch of acreage. The bushfires happen. They’d just had the Firesticks Alliance guys through, the season before, two seasons before, to do some traditional cool-burning they call it, coal-burning, cool-burning. Literally, their property didn’t get touched. And their neighbours, and surrounding areas got touched, and I think that was a bit of an eye-opener for people to say, hey, you know, there is this traditional knowledge, and it’s not knowledge, it’s a science. There’s a science to it, it’s not just gobbledegook that somebody’s made up. That’s sort of opening the eyes of the country.

Music, in terms of music, indigenous music in Australia is getting bigger, and more widely accepted, and the stories, and the narratives that are being played out by musicians where there’s hip hop, or folk, or whatever, rock. I feel like in the last 10 years, 10, 15 years, there’s been a… especially with that word you were saying earlier, woke, especially with people being woke to exactly what is happening, and being able to… I think people are educated, slowly becoming more educated about, especially now in the here and now, where it’s the cult of the individual, everybody’s just about me, and there’s no one else, and I’m gonna get famous, I’m gonna be an Instagram influencer, I’m just gonna do this. But I feel like there’s, not to that extent, but certainly to more of an extent than there has been in past years, there’s this community of people, and a generation of younger people coming up now, that are hungry for what they’re not being taught in school. They’re hungry to learn, and find out…

Amanda 51:44

They’re curious.

Fred 51:45

All the information that’s being held from them, or not being… Yeah, they’re curious about it. Approaching life with this thirst for knowledge of what it is to just be a human being, and exist, and other people’s stories of being a human being that exist. So I feel like that’s an awesome light at the end of the tunnel in what sometimes feels like a bit of an apocalyptic thing.

But it’s like, it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s cool stuff happening.

Amanda 52:14

You brought something. Will you play for us?

Fred 52:17

Yes! We call this djaju. Don’t worry if you get the pronunciation wrong, cos I won’t judge you! But a djaju, it just means stick. It’s what we call a boomerang that doesn’t come back.

(Fred sings in his native tongue)

I just said hello, women and men, boys and girls, anybody that’s listening, the language that I’m speaking in, that’s my grandmother’s language, Butchulla. Today, right now, I’m gonna sing you some songs in my grandmother’s language. It just means look, listen, learn. That’s the closest translation.

So if you ever get the chance to visit sunny Queensland, there’s a place called Harvey Bay. There’s a suburb in Harvey Bay called Urangan. Urangan mate, Urangan. And the proper way to say Urangan is Urangan. And Urangan is the sea cow, they call it the sea cow. And so this song is an old song, it was recorded in 1949, by old Cobo Williams. It’s one of the last old initiated men from my tribe there now, Butchulla. It’s a song of how the urangan migrates, and what happens when it comes up the east coast, like what we do. Sorry any vegans that are listening, but we taste it with a spear, and there’s a tip on the spear, and the spear comes off into the animal, and then you basically on a canoe, and you follow it around until it’s worn out, and then you can drag it in. And then everybody’s eating for a month.

This is a story about that, and the process of it. Ganay is a spear, and ganay-du is when you shake the spear and you let it go. And then the second part of the song is about the men doing that, and the women collecting the yams, and getting ready for the men to bring back the meat, so that we can have a feast. The story is an old story, and every different Aboriginal group around the country would have a separate section of that story.

(Fred sings in his native tongue)

And it goes on and on and on, and just repeating, it’s like a meditative thing.

Amanda 56:14

Can you translate some of the words?

Fred 56:17

Yeah, so ganay is a long spear for urangan hunting. Ganaydo is when you’re shaking it, rattling it, getting ready to let it go. And then (Aboriginal phrase) is saying the women collect the yams, and they’re getting ready for everybody to come together for a feast. And so there’s that.

There’s a whole bunch of different stories, and different levels, and places where you can and can’t give that information, freely give that information out, even within the context of family, or tribal situations. And there’s stuff that, when I go up to Harvey Bay, Butchulla country, I’ll go visit my brother, and the other Butchulla songmen, we’ll sit down, and we’ll sit down for two hours, and sing songs that each one of us has learned, and been given, and some of them that we all know, and have been given collectively, and just remember those old people that passed on that information, and the older big brothers that gave us that information.

But then, every generation, when you’re singing, they’ll say, it’s not you singing. I was talking about that echo, it’s not you singing, it’s the soul and the collective memory passed down from generation to generation to generation. And that’s what hits people, when we all look in the mirror, these eyes don’t belong to us, they’re not ours, they belong to somebody… somebody who had to dodge a wooly mammoth. Somebody had to survive epic changes in climate over thousands and thousands of years, for us to just even be sitting here in the studio, as individuals. So when you think about that, and then the collective memory, and that passing down of that knowledge, and then the essence of that being, and knowing that they’re there with you, and when you sing, they come out, and they’re here for that moment in time, and then they go back.

Amanda 58:22

As a musician, do you feel physically different when you’re playing that stuff versus when you’re freestyling, or creating something new?

Fred 58:32

There’s times when I can be doing a folk song, and that same feeling comes across, or listening to music, listening to people, and you can tell straight away, you’re like ooh, your hair stands up, it’s coming from another place. We’re each here, but we each represent, what we all individually represent, is generations and generations and generations of people that have passed it on from the beginning of time. Music has always been there.

Amanda 59:03

When I met you at Woodford Folk Festival, I had just seen Archie Roach talking about his new book, which I picked up and started reading, and it’s incredible, an entire generation plus of indigenous Australians, just forcibly taken out of their communities and given over to white people, and adopted. And Archie grew up that way, and then became a really powerful songwriter, storyteller.

And I asked him, which vessel do you pick? If you make all sorts of different kinds of stuff, and you are a storyteller, and you’re into traditional music, and you play guitar, and you can conduct a children’s choir, and, and, and, like, what do you feel about the choices you make about which vessel is gonna carry on which story? And he said something really beautiful about how, when we’re all gone, and the big we’re all gone, there are no more people, he said something to the effect of, these stories aren’t gonna die. Almost the vessel doesn’t matter, because as long as you put forth the effort to carry the message on, no matter what the package is, whether it’s hip hop or clap-sticks or guitar or fucking insane avant garde modern dance, it’s lamost like the intention to carry the story forward carries the story forward.

You and I met at this festival, and then it’s very possible I would have never seen you again, but then I needed a didge player for this Bushfire record. I called you, and you really graciously just said yes. What was your context for this song? I, as an American, had literally never heard the music or the lyrics or the title of the song Solid Rock until a month and a half ago. Because I’m American, it’s not part of our lineage. And everyone who I told that to in Australia, was like, dumfounded, jaws on floor, how could you not know this iconic, anthemic song? I mean, there you go. I didn’t know cos I didn’t know. I came to find out really quickly how much this song meant to so many Australians, but what can you tell me about the song, what it meant, if it meant anything, maybe what it didn’t mean? Anything about this song that can give some context.

Actually, let’s listen to a second of it, just so people can get some context.

MUSIC – Solid Rock by Goanna

Well they were standing on the shore one day

Saw the white sails in the sun

Wasn’t long before they felt the sting

White man, white law, white gun

Don’t tell me that it’s justified

Cos somewhere someone lied

Amanda 61:53

This would have been, I think, 1983, 1984, when a band of definitely all white people, Goanna, singing this song that they’ve penned about indigenous rights. What did the song mean to you?

Fred 62:04

Yeah, when I was growing up, if it came on the radio, or somebody had the tape, and then eventually the CD, we’re pumping it, we’re just like yeah, solid rock! And it’s an anthem, and we were like, yeah, man. This is somebody, not from our community, that’s talking about our plight in a song! In this anthem, which is essentially a protest song!

Then, when I got older, I had the opportunity to play didge on that song with Shane Howard a couple of times. I was talking to him about it a few years back, up in Bourke, so I call him Bawanya, which means big brother. And the reason I call him big brother, crazy, and it’s… so when you said, come play didge on this song, it’s called Solid Rock, I was like, yes!

So the significance of my connection with this fella is, when Shane Howard and that song, is when the song went big in the 80s, and they toured, it went off, but it turned into this pub anthem, and so everybody was singing it, didn’t really understand the context of it, and were using it in the wrong way, to be like, fuck yeah, this is an Australian anthem, man! Solid rock! Living on…! And so, the uncomfortable bits in the story of the song sort of got skirted over, skimmed over. And Shane lost his shit not long after, and was like, fuck this. And he told me, word of mouth, I’m gonna tell you a story here real quick. So he was really disheartened that it got picked up, and used in the way that it was used, and went, okay, I’m going bush. And he went bush, up to the gulf.

Amanda 63:55

What does it mean to go bush, for the outsiders?

Fred 63:58

He went off…

Amanda 64:00

Off grid.

Fred 64:01

Off grid, for several years, and lived up with all my family and mob up in the bush. So they gave him my skin name, Bulanyi, and because he’s older than me, I call him Bawanya, big brother. And so, he was like, disheartened with it all, went bush. Went and lived with the community, and they took him through certain things, and he became a part of that community up in the gulf of Carpentaria, so he still has that connection to this day. I was up visiting my auntie, my Gowija, it’s like your mother’s sister, Biligi is a kinship term, Biligi is the eldest sister. And she’s really cool. And somebody said ah, gee, if anybody had Shane’s number… I was like, yeah, I’ve got his number! Don’t put it on! And my auntie, she just… ah, hey my boy! He’s like, hello auntie April!

And then they started singing a song together, she sang him this song when he was, back in the 80s and 90s or something, then she’d always sing it to him, and then he started singing that song, and then she’s crying, and she’s singing it, and he’s crying, he said ah, I wish I could be up there. And it was just this nice little connection with family, cos he’s family now. It’s not anything other but family. He’s connected, and he’ll always be connected.

So then, when you mentioned it was that song, I was like… I’ll be there.

Amanda 65:42

That’s so amazing. It’s such a teeny, beautiful, weird world.

Fred 65:48

Yeah.

Amanda 65:49

This has been the Art of Asking Everything podcast. Thanks so much to my guest, Fred Leone, and also to Jordan Verzar for introducing me to Fred.

You can find Fred’s music on Spotify, YouTube, and also we are putting together a companion Spotify playlist for this podcast, so watch out for that.

The engineer for this interview was Nick Edin, for all the music you heard in this episode, you can go to the new and improved amandapalmer.net/podcast

The podcast was produced by FannieCo.

And lots of thanks to my incredible team, who are in the middle of taking some very, very, very, very deserved time off. Hayley Rosenblum, who makes so many things possible, she’s the ghost in the machine of our Patreon, and she makes sure everything gets done, words and pictures and live chats. She worked her ass off in the run-up to this time off, putting together so many things, including the posts with all of the photos and the footage, so thank you Hayley.

My assistant, Michael McComiskey, who makes sure that everything gets scheduled, and that emails do not go missing. Thank you, Michael.

My Merch Quene, Alex Knight, in teh UK, who’s also helping transcribe all of these conversations so they’re accessible to everyone, thank you Alex.

And we welcome in a new team member, Kelly Welles is helping me do a lot of the social media posts, and is also helping with some editorial, thank you Kelly.

And of course, my manager Jordan Verzar, who brings it all together.

And last but not least, and very importantly, this whole podcast would not be possible without patronage. Right now, we’ve got about 14,000 people making it possible for this podcast to have no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit. Just the media, doing what we wanna do. So many thanks to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Leela Cosgrove, and Robert W. Perkins. Thank you for your generosity, and for helping me make all the things.

Everyone else, please, if you’re not supporting the Patreon, I cannot tell you how much it means to me to be able to work with that kind of sustained support. So even if you can only give a dollar a month, go become a supporting member. That also will just mean that the podcast lands in your inbox when it comes out, along with the posts and all the background blogging that I do. It is coming out every Tuesday, and we’re gonna keep going with that as long as my team can manage.

And I just wanna thank everyone who has been rating the podcast, and spreading the news, and sharing the episodes. It means the world to me. I don’t have a big promotional company, I don’t have a huge team going out and advertising this podcast, it’s just word of mouth, so thank you to everyone who’s been rating, reviewing, sharing, and doing all of that good stuff.

I’ll see you soon. I love you. Signing off, this is Amanda Fucking Palmer. Keep on asking everything.

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Masarat Daud: I Am Not Responsible for your Ignorance

Kelly Welles — Tue, 05 Jan 2021 02:00:10 +0000

This podcast is patron-funded and ad-free! Please support us on patreon for as little as $1. For a post about this entire podcast (stories, photos, links, reading list, transcript and more) go to: https://www.patreon.com/posts/44587346/

EPISODE 15 OF THE ART OF ASKING EVERYTHING: Masarat Daud: I Am Not Responsible for your Ignorance IS OUT NOW WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS.

Here’s a link to all the places you can get and subscribe to the podcast: https://linktr.ee/AskingEverything

We had little to do in 2020 but contemplate our connections. To our planet, to our lives and most importantly, to the flesh-and-blood humans who surround us. And yet with every day that passes, the spaces we inhabit feel increasingly intolerant and hostile, progress towards a more inclusive, thoughtful world crushed beneath the weight of internet-yellings and fake news-wars.

My guest this week, TEDx curator and education activist Masarat Daud, has dealt with the consequences of exclusion on the basis of her appearance since she began wearing a burqa at 17… and she has much, much, much to teach us about the way our judgements and biases form, manifest and harm others. We talked about everything from how to flip expressions of hatred into resilience to the casual removal of agency by the feminist who told her ‘you’re oppressed but you don’t know it yet’. Ooh boy.

There’s never been a better time to stop and reflect how we look at the world, at other people and wonder whether we ourselves could be more compassionate – and more willing to embrace difference – than we imagined. I hope you find this conversation (and Masarat’s penguin headscarf) as enlightening as I did. Enjoy!

Show notes:

Description

Amanda Palmer presents an intimate conversation with Masarat Daud, recorded October 29, 2019, in London, England.

Masarat Daud is an alumnus of Cambridge International School, Dubai.

She later studied at the American University of Dubai and also completed a Certificate course in Tech Tools and Skills in Emergency Management through TechChange.

In 2009, Masarat Fatehpur returned to her village of Shekhawati in Rajasthan, India.

She soon founded The 8 Day Academy, a global education movement with a mission to make education accessible and relevant to all communities.

She has also worked as a columnist for the Khaleej Times and as Deputy News Editor for CPI Dubai.

In her TEDx talks, she discusses how to break stereotypes and how she learned to love her burka. And in fact we met at TEDx.

She is the curator of TEDx Shekhawati; a conference that takes place in rural Rajasthan.

Masarat currently lives in London with her husband, Tauqeer Jamadar.

@masarat

CREDITS:

Thanks obviously to my guest, Masarat Daud. You should go and watch her TED talk, which is called How I Came To Love My Burqa. It’s really good.

The engineer for this interview was Christo Squier. For all the music that you heard in this podcast, you can go to amandapalmer.net/podcast.

This podcast was produced by FannieCo.

Lots of thanks to my team. Hayley Rosenblum, who makes so many things possible in the background, thank you so much, Hayley. Also my assistant Michael McComiskey, who helps me run my entire life, and makes sure all the trains run on time. Also in London, my Merch Queen Alex, who’s helping us transcribe these podcasts, so the conversations can be accessible to everyone. My new team member Kelly Welles, who’s helping out with social media and all sorts of other stuff in the imaging department. And of course, my manager Jordan Verzar in Sydney, who’s bringing everyone and everything together all the time.

Last but not least, this whole undertaking, this whole podcast, would not be possible without all of my patrons. At current count, we’ve got about 14,000 to 15,000 people, and everyone’s contributing a little bit of money to make sure that this podcast has no ads, no sponsors, no censorship, no bullshit. Just the media that we want to put out into the world.

So many special thanks too to my high level patrons: Simon Oliver, Saint Alexander, Birdie Black, Ruth Ann Harnisch, Robert W. Perkins, and Leela Cosgrove. Thank you guys so much for helping me do this.

This podcast is 100% fan supported. There are no corporate sponsors or restrictions on speech.

No ads.
No sponsors.
No censorship.
We are the media.

Exclusive content is available to Patrons only.

Go to Patreon.
Become a member.
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Join the community at patreon.com/amandapalmer

The post Masarat Daud: I Am Not Responsible for your Ignorance first appeared on Amanda Palmer.

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