Good Life Project - Morgan Harper Nichols | How Far You Have Come

Episode Date: April 26, 2021

Morgan Harper Nichols is an artist and poet whose work is inspired by real-life interactions and stories. Morgan spent the first couple of years of her professional life as a college admission counselor, and then, as a full-time touring singer-songwriter and musician. It was on the road that she cultivated her curiosity and passion for writing, art, and design and slowly began to share her work online.In 2017, Morgan started a project where she invites people to submit their stories to her website. From there, she creates art as a response to their stories and sends it to them before sharing the work publicly. All stories and names are kept private. The fruit of this project is shared daily around social media, in publications, and various creative collaborations and installations.As an artist, Morgan has collaborated with a wide range of brands including Coach, Adobe, Vogue Singapore, Aerie, and more. As a designer and author, her work has been available in many stores, including Anthropologie, Barnes and Noble, and Target. Her latest book, How Far You Have Come: Musings on Beauty and Courage (https://amzn.to/3azMSgm)is a beautiful collection of illustrations, poems and essays and we dive into the verse, experiences and moments that often reveal deeply personal, yet universal awakenings, in today’s conversation.You can find Morgan at:Website : https://morganharpernichols.com/Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/morganharpernichols/Check out our offerings & partners: My New Book SparkedMy New Podcast SPARKEDVisit Our Sponsor Page For a Complete List of Vanity URLs & Discount Codes.Ana Luisa: Sustainably-made jewelry with a conscience. If you’re looking for a gift for yourself or a loved one, check out Ana Luisa's pre-Mother’s Day sale at analuisa.com/goodlifemd to get 15% OFF.AquaTru: Countertop reverse osmosis water purifier that's certified to create bottled-quality water. Receive $100 off an AquaTru plus free shipping when you go to AquaTru.com & enter code GOODLIFE at checkout. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My guest today, Morgan Harper Nichols, is an artist and poet whose work is inspired by real life interactions and stories. So interestingly, Morgan spent the first couple of years of her professional life as a college admission counselor before hitting the road as a full-time touring singer, songwriter, and musician. And it was on the road that she cultivated her curiosity and passion for writing and art and design, and then slowly began to share her work online and realized something powerful was happening. In 2017, she started a project where she invites people to submit their stories to her website. And from there, she creates art and words as a response to their stories and sends it to them before then sharing the work publicly. All of the stories and names are kept private, of course, but the public

work has taken on this extraordinary global phenomenon type of experience. Her work is shared around social media and publications and various creative collaborations and installations and viewed regularly by millions of people. As an artist, Morgan has collaborated with a wide range of brands from Coach and Adobe to Vogue and so many others. And as a designer and author, her work has been available in stores all over the world. Her latest book, How Far You Have Come, is this beautiful, deeply soulful and vulnerable collection of illustrations, poems, and essays. And we dive into the verse and experiences and moments that often reveal these deeply personal yet somehow universal awakenings. I am so excited

to share this conversation with you. I'm Jonathan Fields, and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him. We need him. Y'all need a pilot. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist,

whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. So you're working on this book, which is beautiful. And the language, the words,

the essay, the illustrations, all during this totally altered reality time over the last year or so. And I'm just really curious what it's like for you to be in this deeply generative, like creation driven space where there's also expectations around your ability to create a certain thing at a certain level in a certain timeframe. I'm curious about what that experience has been like for you. Yes. So I came into the experience actually planning on doing quite a bit of travel. I've always loved to read about writers who go places and have their grand gesture moment and go right in a place. So yeah, we had some flights booked, some places that we were planning on going, and I was just

hoping to kind of immerse myself in different places and be inspired to write this book. So yeah, it all got cut off. I wasn't able to do any of the traveling and I was stuck at home. And I was just in a very interesting space. I was like, what on earth do I say right now? I'm like, I don't know what's ahead. We've never been here before. You know, there's no books I can really read on how to navigate through this. So what I was kind of left with was, well, I can look back. I can't quite look ahead with certainty, but I do have the past. I do have my life that I've lived. So I literally started going through my phone's camera roll and the cover of the book is actually an iPhone photo. Oh, that's too funny. So yeah, that was what started the book. It was looking at this one photo, which I took leaving Albuquerque, New Mexico at sunrise when I was about 24 or so. And it's just become my favorite photo that I've ever taken.

And it's a photo that's beautiful to me. And at the same time, anyone could have taken this photo. I mean, if you have a phone and you held it up to the sky, it was just that beautiful. Anyone could have taken that. And I keep coming back to that photo at different times in my life. And it was during this past year. And I looked at it. I was like, isn't it interesting how this photo is so beautiful to me?

And at the same time, it was a very challenging time in my life. And these two things were happening at once, this beautiful landscape while I was simultaneously struggling. And even though I couldn't see it at the time, I was growing in courage at the same time. So I was like, well, you know what? There's probably other moments like that of my life. So that's how the book came about by literally looking at physical landscapes that I've been on or that have just touched my life in some way. And then looking at what was the internal thing that was happening at the same time when I was there. So yeah, it was a very

eye-opening experience because as someone who does crave new experiences and I am curious and I like to keep going, I like to make new art, I like to try new things. It was interesting to kind of look back for the source of inspiration. Yeah. I mean, I wonder if also that looking back, especially at this time where it's really hard to look forward, especially when you were writing the book, because we're all kind of living day to day and we don't know what comes next from there and you're confined physically. And in addition to sort of saying, oh, well, this would kind of be like an interesting thing to deepen into, to explore, to write about, to create around, just on a personal

level for you spending a solid chunk of time just saying, hmm, like where are these places and what are these moments going back? I wonder how it affected you to kind of revisit these moments, these stories, and connect them with these landscapes? Yeah, it caused me to be creative in all new ways. I was literally, so one of the landscapes is set on a lake that sits on the Georgia-Alabama line. And for that essay and that whole experience, I was just busy on Google Maps on Street View, like trying to remember what it felt like to be there because I couldn't get there. And that was just so interesting because obviously I would prefer to be there. I would prefer to go back or at least be at some lake, if not that one. So it was interesting to, I spent a lot of time on Google Maps,

actually for the whole book that ended up happening because it was the closest I could get. And it was interesting just to have this experience with between that and between like my phone's camera roll, these things that I just kind of see as tools that I use to get from point A to point B, we just have them, they're available to us. But to see that as kind of like a portal into self-reflection, and it just made me think

about how it's like, okay, yes, I'm hoping that someday I'm able to travel again and go places, but what if I can't? What if that, for whatever reason, what if I couldn't go? What other things could I explore just by being at home? And then I think I just started to also just think about how, even though in our modern times, it's new for us to not have... you know, when that first weekend happened or whatever, when all the flights got shut down, like that was just, that changed the world because we're so used to having all this access and we can get anywhere. But it's like, if you just go like a hundred years ago, even less, it's fairly recent that we've had so much access, so much speed to be able to get places.

So I started to, as I was like reading other poets, I even started to realize, I was like, wow, they may not have been quarantining, but look at what they were able to create. Look at what Emily Dickinson was able to create just by being on her family's property, taking care of her mom and writing poems on napkins that are now considered incredibly important poems. So that just made me think about that. Even when all of this ends, I think I need to keep some kind of practice in my life where I'm, it's like, what can come out of that stillness? And how can I intentionally keep it in my life? Because it's not going to, it might not necessarily come naturally because there is so much access, you know, to driving. And I mean, I say this from a place of privilege, not everyone has that access for sure, but I'm someone who is able to drive, who is able to fly. So what does it mean to not have those

things? And how could I still find meaning, not even just in a creative sense, but just in a wellbeing sense? So yeah, I feel like this year has caused me to ask a lot of those questions. Yeah. And you and so many others, right? But it's just, it is a really fascinating reflection to think about, you know, we kind of think, well, we need to go out there and we need to go out and create all these different things and explore and be adventurers and push the edge and push the limit, you know, to really have experiences that are meaningful to us, that are memorable to us. Like, so that when we tell the story of our lives, you know,

it's an exciting and alive story. And to sort of have this forced constraint that makes you actually say, well, how close can I get to that right here where I am, you know, and how much of it can I access through technology from my room, am, you know, and how much of it can I access through technology from my room, but also just like, what about the inner landscape of our minds? You know, like how, how much can I really be with that? And how can I mine that to create something maybe not the same, but different in a way that's equally moving and meaningful. Yeah. Yeah. That is a lot of what I'm sitting with. And it's interesting because I feel like I actually thought I was someone who had that figured out. I think I

thought I was- Don't you love those moments? Yeah. I was like, wait, I thought I was pretty content and I'd kind of grown a little bit in terms of, you know, just feeling, being satisfied where I am, being present where I am. And yeah, I just recognized I had a lot of growth to do. And within that, I ended up, I ended up reading a lot more over this past year, which was really good, and lots of poetry. And that just really helps me see. One thing I love about poetry is, I feel like for me and many other people, it kind of unlocks the pattern of language that I normally go to. I mean, I love nonfiction books. I mean, I love sentences, but sometimes the traditional sentence structure is like, okay, we kind of know where this is going and we can kind of follow it along. But poetry disrupts that. It just kind of, with the line breaks and the different phrasing,

it just makes you see things. You literally see it in a different way. You hear it in a different way. So that was really, you know, you mentioned the inner landscape. I mean, I love that because that really, I feel like that my inner landscape became more rich in the sense that I was just paying more attention to different patterns and different words and how they stood out to me and why they stood out to me. Like I started, I started a spreadsheet of words that I like. Like I've been writing for years. I don't do things like that. You know, I'm going to have to ask your top three now, right?

Oh my goodness. You know, it's one of them. It's shown up a lot in my work over the past year. It's aliveness. I love that word. I love that word. I love that word. And a lot of the words are words that we use, but with any SS on the end. Because apparently just, I guess, I mean, like reading older poetry, that just happens a lot.

Like they find ways to put a ness on the end of words. So aliveness has come up quite a bit. And then I'm trying to think of some more. Oh my gosh. Some of them aren't even, they're just kind of typical words or they're pairings. I have pairings on there as well. So another pairing that I have on there is struggle and song. That was a part of a subtitle of a book on African-American poetry. And I just, just that, I mean, that phrase just references so much. And another one I'm trying to think of, it's, it's pretty, it's pretty long at this point and I need to actually organize it. It's just interesting to just kind of collect words, because I feel like in many ways, at least in the context that I've lived in, kind of the social currency is to collect moments and experiences.

And there's nothing wrong with that, but it's also just like, okay, but what if you just, instead of a list of trips, you had a list of words or a list of podcasts you're going to listen to. Like, what if that is, is where, is where you are right now? And what if that is some, some kind of way just as beautiful? Yeah. I think there, you know, we all have those, we all have the places we go and the channels that we sort of pursue to grow and to push ourselves and to find solitude. And sometimes it involves the physical domain, sometimes it's words, sometimes it's images. But I think it's really cool when we start to find out what that language is, what the process is for ourselves. And we give ourselves permission to not have to make it what everybody else is doing. And then there's

like the forgiveness that comes along with that. And then you're like, oh, this opens up an entirely different world for me. For you, and you write about this in the new book, so the book is actually laid out as a set of states and experiences that you relate to moments in these different states. But the early context is really when you're a kid, I guess six years old, the had things to do there. And this becomes sort of like the frame, not just for the book, but also it seems like it's a moment in your life that becomes powerful in a lot of different ways. Yes. I, it's interesting because the book, it starts with the road trip, like you said, with, with my family. And when I was thinking about moments in my own life,

I kept coming back to that story. And I was like, there's nothing there. I was like, that's such a typical road trip experience. Like, what's there? And I had to come back to it several times to see it from the perspective of, okay, let's not worry about how this could be interesting to someone else. Let's just figure out why it keeps coming up for you. And I came to the fact of when I was a kid, that experience, even though I was not driving and I was in the back seat, that experience of being on the road and driving somewhere, that just unlocked something for me. It was just, there is a world beyond and I get to go see it. I, who sits here every day in this house, gets to go beyond this place to a new place. And that was just electrifying for me. And I just couldn't

get away from that childlike experience of it. So I was like, I'm just going to try to write about it and just see if it makes sense on paper and just see if, because I mean, I think about my life a lot in the sense of like, if I'm ever just, you know, in periods of self-reflection, I think about it as a road, which I feel like that's just one metaphor. There's other ways of looking at it, but I think of a road. I'm very visual and I kind of go to a road and I kind of see myself sometimes like, okay, we're on that widening path of the road through the mountains.

Some moments feel like open highway moments where it's just like, watch out. Here I come. I'm going somewhere new and I'm going as fast as I can legally. And I'm headed somewhere. It sounds like I've got to write something about the road, even though it feels so ordinary. This doesn't seem like something revolutionary. But it was in going back through it that I really saw how important it was to, like, in a way, I felt like I was kind of nurturing my childhood self in writing that. Because it's like six-year-old Morgan was just so in love with adventure and wonder and seeing new things. And there's nothing wrong with just kind of writing

in a sense of cheering her on. And that's why that's the first story of the book. It just had to be that because I felt like a lot of the poems in the book, kind of for the first time, I really gave myself permission to get specific about things that I really cared about. And that can be hard when you start to put your work out there and you're aware that other people pay attention to it. It's like, okay, well, I'm here to serve them. You know, I have to give them something that they would want or that would help them. So for me, sometimes it's hard to talk about things that I care about because I'm like,

well, what if I put it out there and everyone hates it or ignores it? And then this thing that's special to me is now out there in the world in this way that I can't control. So it took a lot of courage to write these stories because in many ways, a lot of the stories in the book are stories that I had looked over throughout my life as I'm not sure this is like a big moment, but it's important to me. I keep coming back to it. So I'm just going to go with

it and see what happens. Yeah. It's so interesting, right? I think a lot of times when we think about telling the story of our lives or some of the stories of our lives, we immediately just go to, let me make a catalog of this, like the grandest possible things that I can remember. Like, you know, the crazy breakthroughs, the biggest college, the horrific failures, not realizing that, yeah, those are the moments that sometimes bring us to, you know, elation and connection and to our knees, but, you know, probably the cumulative effect of what really has made us us is just, it's the accumulation of, you know, like thousands of smaller moments and stories that, and it's

sometimes just the quieter moments. It's like the, just the simple things when, you know, it's just us. I mean, you share one of the other early stories is relating, and this kind of ties back to what you shared earlier. You know, it's, it's a moment where, you know, there's this lake that kind of straddles Alabama and Georgia and you decide, huh, I wasn't planning on going in, but you start swimming out and it becomes this, you know, this metaphor for something just so much bigger, you know? So what on the surface seems to be just this simple action, oh, I'm just going to, there happens to be water here. Let me just start paddling out. It becomes something so much bigger. And part of my curiosity is,

does it become something bigger upon reflection now later in life? Or were you aware of what was actually like, oh, this is a moment that I need to pay attention to back then when you're younger, in that moment while it's unfolding? That is such a good question. It is always later. Yeah. I sometimes wish it would be earlier. It seems to be the pattern. I'm like, can I just have once in real time? It's like, hey, this is one of those big moments, life lesson, pay attention. Yeah, that doesn't happen for me. It's later. And that story specifically, I had not shared that with my sister, who I'm very close to. She didn't know that story.

And she heard me talking about it. She was like, what? That's what happened at that school? I was like, yeah, that's why I left. And she had no idea. Yeah, I just kind of closed it off. I knew, and as time went on, it became so big that I couldn't ignore it. And then I got back to it, and it's like, Morgan, what you went through, so many people go through this experience.

And I closed it off because of probably when I look back, I would not have used this word then, but because of shame. I felt so much shame for that failure. And it came to a point where that closed off shame that wasn't dealt with became so big that it encapsulated the whole experience and made the experience in my mind worse than it probably actually was. And it took, yeah, I mean, it took over 10 years to be able to write about that for the first time. So yeah, it definitely takes time. Yeah. Making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

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The failure that you mentioned was in the context of college, you know, it's this, wow. Okay. So maybe this isn't my future. Maybe this isn't where I'm supposed to be. But also there was this moment where it's sort of like, but it doesn't define me, you know, which I think was the big awakening. You know, you mentioned that the road tends to be this, you know, like common metaphor for you when you think about so many different things. But also what really occurred to me is water for you. This was a setting where it's a lake, but water seems to come up a lot in different ways as different metaphors and settings for you. And I was curious about your call to explore that as both a reality and a metaphor at the same time. Yes. I'm so glad you asked that. It started out very specifically when I was younger. We had one of those baby name books that had all of the names of, you know, the meanings of every name. And I looked up my

name and one of the definitions of it was for Morgan was end of the sea. And I was just like, that's amazing. I love the end of the sea now. So it started out that way. But after that, it just so happened to be that every time I'm near water, it just calms me down. I deal with a lot of things that make me anxious and cause me to overthink every little thing. But I could literally close my eyes right now, and not instantly, but close to instantly. If I'm in a place of like, okay, I need to calm down, my mind drifts to the water. And I don't know why, other than I'm kind of weird. I mean, maybe it's not weird, but I do think that I actually found out that Morgan is a family surname and it's been in my family for generations.

So I am kind of like, I don't know, maybe there's something ancestral there that comes through when I'm by the water. I don't know. Maybe I'm, maybe there's somebody way back there. Right. Maybe the seeds were planted, right? Generations ago. Yeah. So I can't really make sense of it beyond that.

But I love to paint it in my artwork. I love to paint the water. I could just spend hours honestly painting blues. It just calms me down. Yeah. I'm right there with you. I grew up in a water town. So the end of my block was a bay.

And so for my whole life, it's just kind of in my blood. You know, that's where I go if I'm stressed out, if I'm freaked out. When I was a kid, if I was upset, I would just go down there. I'd climb up on top of like, you know, the abandoned lifeguard stand and I would just sit, you know. I didn't need to do anything. I just need to be near it. And to this day, I feel it when I'm too far from it. There's just something about it that is, it's where I touch stone, you know, it's where everything comes back down to, you know, baseline for me. You know, interestingly, it also, it shows up in your work

in the context of freedom and struggle too. Can I have you read something actually? Oh yeah. Yeah. Assuming you have a copy of your book. I do actually. I think it was page 58. And this is in the part of the book where you're talking about Mississippi. Yeah.

And there's this one poem that I thought was, I mean, there's so many that were so powerful, but this one I thought I'd love if you could read that. Mm-hmm. Come and be by the stream, many miles from that old sea. See how the land opens up, a waterway for the weary, a reminder of all that is passing, unexplainable peace everlasting. Lay down your burdens by the riverside, where the water trickles from the north into the belly of the south. It might be hard to catch a reflection when the water moves so quickly. But these shores cry out that it matters that you are here. You made it through these trees, and you were made to be free. And if nothing else,

live to see. For all of the trouble in your soul, the river still flows. Tell me more about where this comes from. Yeah, so I wrote that piece as my hope for a young slave girl who might have been escaping slavery. And when I was a kid, I would just imagine better endings for young slave kids. I would read and it would just break my heart that I'm like, wow, why? Like, why? And then to find out like, oh, but some people were able to escape. And so from that moment forward, any picture that I would see, any sketch that I would see, I wonder if this is someone who was able to escape. I wonder if this is someone who was able to escape. So yeah, the Mississippi chapter is another kind of childhood going back to that childhood hope for something better. As an adult, I tend to get stuck a lot when it comes to

trying to rationally or figure out or just even getting impatient with the progress or lack of progress around racial injustices. And it's just fascinating to me As a kid, I had that same fire and frustration in getting educated about slavery. And at the same time, I was just equally just as hopeful and imaginative about like, oh, I wonder what could have happened, like what could have been better for them. So I wrote that for her. And one of my favorite poets, Langston Hughes, he actually writes a lot about rivers. And around this time, I wrote that poem. It was interesting because I actually had this whole section of the book, which is about the Mississippi River and the story. I had already had it mapped out.

I wasn't quite finished with it yet. But I ended up reading this poem. I want to say it's called Rivers. I can't think of what the actual name is. I know Rivers in the title. But it's a Langston Hughes poem. And at the beginning, it says that he wrote it for two 14-year-old boys who were lynched in the South over this particular river. And the way that Langston Hughes is able to write about landscape over just with so much tragedy in mind. And he was alive during these and seeing this happen. And yeah, for me, I find healing in knowing of the injustices and racism in my own family story. For me, it's a very healing and freeing experience. It's like the history book doesn't really always capture, you know, the emotion and the soul of person or group of people. And that's the beauty and the gift of poetry and art and music is that it's like one little drop in that massive river of people creating art to honor those stories. So, yeah, I think, I know I kind of said a lot there, but I think ultimately the biggest thing of what that poem was about was just kind of honoring that history and imagining something better for the future. Yeah. And I mean, you're writing that also at a moment

in time where we're in the middle of that history. It's not like any books have been closed. And it's funny, as I was reading that and a lot of the rest of that chapter, actually, where it really is this, you know, it talks about the struggle and about violence and sadness and hope, you know, and it keeps coming back to hope. And I'm sort of reading that in the context of what's going on in our world right now, in our country right now, you know, where this is history that is unfolding every single day around us and crossing that river to freedom. You know, I kept thinking to what end we're not there yet, you know? And then your words kept bringing me back to hope.

It's like, well, there's work to be done, but there's also, you know, I don't know what this looks like or how far or how long we have to wait, but there is, you have this sense of hope that just keeps, you keep floating it into the water, basically. Well, thank you for saying that. I feel like you're sometimes in the way of just like, you know, to what end, how far do we have to go? And for me, that's why I have to kind of keep going back to, honestly, these childhood moments that, for whatever reason, I'm able to remember. And I'm so glad that I do because, I mean, children are literally the future. And they also just possess this hope that is just so easily forgotten the older we get.

But the good thing is, I think the writer Mad like the writer Madeline, you know, she said, you know, I'm every age that I've ever been. So it's like we get older, but we're still that age. So that six-year-old self, that eight-year-old self is still there. So it's like whatever age we were, where we did imagine more and we were like, what if, what if, like, what if we dreamed this and what if it worked? I just hope to help foster that within myself and foster it within other people, even if it just comes up as flickers amongst us. We might not always feel all hopeful all the time, but it's like if enough people are hopeful at enough times, then I think that that could matter. Yeah, I think poetry is also such a fascinating medium to tell truth.

And sometimes really hard realities, even if it's language in a form and in a rhythm and a tone and a cadence that seems to somehow bypass, you know, the, the normal walls that I think we put up to let me argue this out with you. And it just kind of goes straight to the heart. It's just instant understanding and instant emotion, instant feeling. I think it's a really, it's a powerful, I think it's a powerful contribution to the conversation, especially in this moment in time to offer these ideas, these words, these stories, these images, this hope in that format because it lands differently. I mean, do you feel that? Oh, yes, absolutely. I feel like I try to keep poetry around my house for that reason, because

I haven't been able to read as much as in the past few months. I haven't been able to read as much. I have a toddler who's getting older and busier. So my windows of reading are getting shorter and shorter and shorter. So what I found that I was like, but I can read a poem, though. I'm like, I might not always be able to get a chapter of a book in, but I can get a poem in. And I have found, like, even just those moments that I have, even if I don't fully understand the poem, it's something about, like, even the energy of that poet just sitting there for that length of time and crafting that. You can sense the meaning in it. You can sense the heart of it.

And even if there is an argument being made, like some poems have like a full-blown thesis, an argument in it. There's still this, you can feel the soul of it, because as weird as that may sound to some people, but it's, I think there's a reason why amidst all of the technological advances we've had that we still have poetry. It's kind of interesting when you think about it, that it that it's still here and even if we're not you know even if everybody's not reading poetry all the time it's just what poetry has done it's it's in our song lyrics it's it's in the way that we phrases that we use i just find that really fascinating i have yeah no i haven't figured it all out but but I'm just so intrigued by this form and how it's still with us and what it could mean.

Yeah, totally agree. And we're both word nerds. So I'm fascinated by language and patterns and words. Yeah, it's funny because I've written a lot over the years. And I've written maybe two or three poems that I've shared publicly. And I have to say, I was probably more terrified to hit publish on those than anything else. And I've often wondered why. And maybe it's because I know nothing about poetry. I don't know the form. To me, it's a spoken word cadence.

And that's how I set it up on a page. That's how it comes out. It's much more. But it's for sure, it's written in verse. It's not written the way I normally write. And when I do that, there's something about it that terrifies me when I put it into the world. And I've often tried to figure out,

I've written so much, like millions of words publicly. Why do those two or three things make me so nervous about sharing them? It may be because there's something about it that's just more personal or more vulnerable in some way. Yeah. It's kind of, I'm paraphrasing, but there's this quote by one of my favorite poets, David White, and he said that poetry is language for which there is no defense. And I find that fascinating because I think it's sort of like when you put a poem out there, it's just like, it is what it is. Like, this is what I feel like this is. Whereas everything else you can kind of more clearly say, you know, like this is sort of the thesis of what I'm saying. There's some feeling in there, but there's, but you kind of,

you're putting that feeling there first. It's very vulnerable. I think just the, the actual, I think the line breaks themselves, like even just saying, I'm going to take up all this page by creating all these line breaks. Like I even think, I even think there's something to there of just leaving the room for the white space that, that really kind of causes this moment to pause that doesn't happen throughout the rest of the day. So yeah, it's very vulnerable to share poetry. Yeah, so agree with that. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

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Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. What's interesting is you, in a lot of your work, it feels like you have shared so much and there are moments. I feel this similarly is interesting. We had Amara and John recently, whose work I love also. And you both share a tremendous amount of artistry and language with a lot of people. And there's something about both of your work that both expresses what's in your heart and also somehow seems to give language to what so many other people feel, that it becomes a gift for them, not just because what you're saying makes them feel less alone, but you're

also helping them explain themselves to themselves and to others. Yeah, it's interesting because I'm so grateful for moments like that, especially this considering how alone I have felt in my own life about especially with how I felt and when someone says that something that I wrote speaks to their own experiences I'm I'm just mystified by it I'm like how like I literally I cannot understand how it's so, yeah, it's a mystery to me. I don't know what that is. I mean, I know the whole thing about the universals are in the particulars. Just the particular things you've been through are universal.

And the more you get to those specific things, the more you actually end up connecting with people. So I understand that. But at the same time, I didn't feel that way growing up. I felt different. I felt weird. I felt outcasted. So my particulars were something that I was like, no, you got to hide those. Like, that's not something that you share publicly or share too much of because people, you know, they kind of want something else. So it's been interesting because in writing poetry, I've had some poems slip out there that I'm like, whoa, did I really say that? Like for others to hear? And oh, I guess I did. And ultimately, I'm glad I did, because a lot of times it's those poems that someone reaches out and tells me a story that is completely opposite of my story. But at the same time, you know, we as humans, we're not as separate or as fragmented or as different from each other as we sometimes feel like we are based on what we see. Yeah, we think everybody else is doing better and has more friends and everyone else is sort of like looking at and feeling the same thing. I mean, it's interesting because you were homeschooled as a kid and which, you know, can also, that in itself can create a certain sense of outsiderness, of othering.

You write about actually an experience where you drop into New Orleans and kind of like with some new-ish friends who you think like this is going to be the moment where like, finally, you know, I fit in, like I have my crew of people. And it turns out very differently in the way that you're kind of describing. But again, what's fascinating is like you drop into this moment where you find yourself being alone for a lot of the time, which is you write as being in some way really brutal, but then it comes around to you having a different frame the more that you sort of linger in it. Yeah. I think by the time that story took place and I was in college, I was so afraid of getting back to that place of feeling other feeling on the outside. I'm like, no, no, I'm so

close to having friends. Like I, I feel like everyone else did having growing, had growing up. I'm so close. I don't want to let this go, but, and I definitely am accepting this more and I feel like I'm owning this more now of there is a certain awareness that you get about yourself in the world that you can't always get being around other people. And it's very hard to say that at times because I don't want anyone to suffer from loneliness. Loneliness is painful. And at the same time, as someone who has felt a lot of loneliness in my life, I can honestly say that sometimes in that loneliness, it leads to stillness and it leads to listening that you might not have always seen if you were,

you know, with other people. And that is what ended up happening on that trip. What I thought was a community trip with friends, you know, and, you know, we were serving the community after Hurricane Katrina, which we were, it ended up being a very sombering, grieving experience that ultimately needed to happen for me to grow an empathy that I have today. And I'm not sure if that would have happened that way had I been kind of socializing the way that I thought I was going to. So yeah, I was very, I really wanted, that was another one so hard to write because it was just such a cringy time in my life. I mean, I was just, oh my goodness. But I was like, you know what?

I'm going to remember the fact that for whatever reason, there are people in college who read what I write. And if one person reads this who has felt that way in college, I hope that this can give them that feeling of being okay with that. Because I know that I'm not alone in that kind of loneliness experience. Yeah, you are definitely not. I'm going to ask you to read something else, actually, that there's something that you've written and shared. It's sort of like the tail end of a story that we were just talking about in your book. I'd love if you'd sort of like read a little part from that to bring home what you were feeling.

Yeah. We have a choice to be present. We have a choice to write new endings, even for storylines we didn't start. We don't need to be powerful insiders before we show up for others living on the outside. We can serve, and maybe no one will notice, but we can still act in love. In fact, we must. And when we do, we are made new. Yeah, so powerful.

And again, I think that's one of the things that we tend to come to often not through having joyous times in relation with others, but when we're sort of like forced to be with ourselves. Yes. You know, it's like it emerges, the water, the mud in the water starts to settle and like the clarity comes and you're like, oh, this is an interesting observation slash truth. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's definitely something that I feel I'm still learning and I hope to continue

to learn for sure. Yeah. We've talked a lot about your love of language, but that's part of the way that you express yourself. For a chunk of your life, it was music that sort of like took front and center. And it was always wrapped around language for you. It was always wrapped around notes you've been taking your whole life. And then there were moments where you kind of said, oh, music is cool. It's always going to be part of me, but maybe it's not how I earn my living and support the family. But the evolution for you also really started to bring in shapes and colors, like the visual side. And it almost creates the container for the words. you know, they, they all almost

always appear together whenever you see them. It was really fascinating to read how strongly you were influenced because you have a very distinct color palette, you know, and a very distinct way that you, you draw and make lines and shapes and curves. Um, and it's fascinating to learn how powerfully influenced that has been from the geography of the American Southwest. Oh my goodness. Yes.

Color has a profound impact on me and always has. And, um, actually recently it got a bit more clear as to why I actually recently found out I was diagnosed with autism. I found out that I was autistic and that within that, and autism looks different person to person. And within my diagnosis is a sensory processing disorder actually as well. And I'm very sensitive to color and sometimes it's a difficult thing. For instance, I will try to usually wear mostly black because colors, I mean, it kind of wears me down throughout the day. But the other side of it is that I can kind of like see colors within colors.

And for instance, we have this couch in my house that's like a fake leather couch. And it's brown. And then my husband bought an ottoman to match it. And I was like, it doesn't match. They're not the same color. He's like, they're literally the same color. I was like, no, the couch has yellow undertones brown and the ottoman has red under the brown. He's like, I don't see what you're talking about. Like, oh, does everyone not see colors within colors? So yeah, I see a lot of colors just being out in the world. And it's just been interesting when I started creating digital art on my iPad. I mean, the color possibilities are endless.

They're infinite. And I find so much peace in just like I'll layer like a blue and a green. And then I'll just like find the new color between and press the color picker. And I'm like, oh, that's a new one. Let me save that one. And I'll even go back and look at the color codes. I'm like, yep, that was a new one. I knew it. And it's just interesting just to see how all the way from the technical side of that to even just being at the Grand Canyon or just being among oak trees. I see all of these colors and it's a very

spiritual experience for me. Even just, just the colors themselves. Yeah. I mean, that's, that's so interesting, especially when you, when you take like a hypersensitivity to hues really, you know, to colors where like you're, it sounds like your brain works in a way where it processes almost like more data than the average person sees in the experience of color, which can be really like hard to deal with, but also on a subtler level allows you to see and maybe feel more from something that

other people just kind of dismiss as, oh, that's brown. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And in that way, I'm so grateful that through all of the random paths in my life that I have that I have found art found visual art because it is an outlet for me at the end of the day when I've dealt with sensory overload and I've and I feel worn down by bright

lights and all these things that it's like well there is a place where that's a good thing for you. And it actually calms you down to be able to work with these things. So I am very grateful to have that. Yeah. It's like you take a similar experience and you tune it to suit you. And it becomes instead of a place of rage, a place of refuge. Yes. Not necessarily rage is the wrong word, but you know, instead of a place of agitation,

it becomes a place of refuge. Yeah. Makes sense. Yeah. You tell a story also that, you know, you, it sounds like you and your dad were really close. You used to watch him preach preach, but not just like, you know, on the pulpit, not just in the room on Sundays, but also just sitting and studying

and preparing and crafting, you know, every word that he was going to share and the ideas and the stories. And you were simultaneously sort of like filling out your own notebook. And you share this really beautiful moment that I think is a nice way to sort of bring our conversation home, where you've kind of been doing this as a young kid, for yourself. And you knew that your dad was this master of his craft and you had your notebook and you're kind of doing your thing. And there's this moment where you get the courage to just kind of like, you know, give him the opportunity to see what you're doing. Share a little bit of that moment.

Yes. Oh, and thank you even just for reflecting that story back to me because it's such a dominant memory for me and it has a lot of significance. And yeah, I watched my dad preach, and my mom also, both my parents preach, but my dad, I would watch him preach, and I was always just so fascinated by it because I couldn't quite understand the, for me, the speaking in front of people. I saw that as, I was like, okay, that's a part of what he's doing. But there was this whole other part, this like inward part that he would spend hours just by like the lamp and the house and, you know, his study area, just mapping everything out that he

was going to speak about. And that's what I was just so fascinated by. And I began mimicking that. And even while he was preaching, I used to write notes and draw pictures and create stories and all these things. And I wouldn't have used this language back then, but I mean, I really was sort of like kind of learning how to nurture my own inner world at that time in a world where I often didn't feel like there was a place for me. And one day I just got the courage to show my dad one of my little illustrations that I had done when he was preaching. And he just looked at me and just said, God made you to make art. And from that moment forward, the things that I created in my notebook,

they were a spiritual experience. From that moment forward, And I can honestly say that because I have kept a journal or a diary since I was eight years old. That's like the only thing I have stuck with for that length of time in my life. And they are filled with everything from prayers to poems, songs, doodles, entire pages that are scratched through because I thought they were cringeworthy. And all of that for me, it's just a way of honoring and of who I am and not just who I am that everyone else sees, but this whole other part of me that is valid and is worthy of knowing. Even if I'm the only person that sees it. And sometimes it comes out in the form of art.

So, yeah, that moment was pretty transformative for me because it helped me link the creative process with something bigger than myself and something bigger than just like, okay, just put this out there so people can see it. And now I still maintain that. I very regularly make things that I'm like, yeah, no one's going can see it. And now I, I still maintain that. I very regularly make things that I'm like, yeah, no one's going to see that but me. And, and I hope that I always have that. I really do. Yeah. That's beautiful. Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well. So hanging out here in this container of good life project, if I offer up the question

to live a good life or the phrase to live a good life, what comes up? Right now, it's the first thing that came to mind was that that was small joys. I really have just out crayons, candles that smell good. We have a baby Yoda on our fireplace mantle and just makes me laugh. Like doesn't go with the decor, but it's just funny. And yeah, I think a lot of times I love that word good. It's a good word. And I think sometimes I can take it a little too seriously, you know, of like, oh, to do good work and to live a good life, you put out something that's important and special and will last for centuries. It's like, or it's also just making sure that you laugh today, making sure that you did something just because for someone else.

And that to me is a good life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks also to our fantastic sponsors who help make this show possible. You can check them out in the links we have included in today's show notes. And while you're at it, if you've ever asked yourself, what should I do with my life? We have created a really cool online assessment that will help you discover the source code for the work that you're here to do. You can find it at sparkotype.com. That's S-P-A-R-K-E-T-Y-P-E.com. Or just click the link in the show notes. And of course, if you haven't already done so, be sure to click on the subscribe button in your listening

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