We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Your Joy & Pride Infusion for Today!

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

We need more JOY. In today’s bonus episode, internet sensations corook and Olivia Barton delight us with their performance of “If I Were a Fish.” Plus, Glennon and Abby coach them on how to not let criticism keep you from sharing yourself with the world. For our other conversations about delight, check out: Episode 216 How to Find DELIGHT Today (and Every Day) with Ross Gay and Episode 217 Start a Daily Delight Practice with Abby, Glennon & Amanda. corook  TikTok: @hicorook IG: @hicorook Olivia Barton TikTok: @oliviabartonhaha IG: @oliviabartonhaha To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome back to the most delightful week ever on We Can Do Hard Things. Tuesday we spoke with Roske about how to notice delight and joy in our everyday lives, and yesterday we shared our own personal, delightful things. So today we thought we'd close the week by bringing you something special so that we're not just discussing delight, but we're actually experiencing it together. Today we welcome a pair of talented musicians and love bugs having an incredible moment right now with a video for their viral track, if I were a fish. I think it now has like 18.1 million views on the TikTok.

I don't know. So, Karuk wrote this song called CGI about being kind of like an underdog, they say that somehow got the girl of their dreams. After they published that song, they got so many hateful responses from the lovely interwebs that they were devastated. Okay, so they sat with that devastation for a while, mined it for gold, and then created the song, if I were a fish. They took that shit from the internet

and they turned it into joyful gold, which we are obsessed with. And so we invited them here. I have to tell you too, Karook and Olivia that Abby and I are old and we were standing in our kitchen one night recently. And our daughters listen to a thing called the TikTok. Okay? The TikTok, yes. We are on the Instagram because we are in different queer generation with you. Understood.

Okay. Sometimes we see what you're doing on the TikTok, there's something called the Reels. Okay? But a year and a half later than you're doing them. Okay. So, what happened is, Amma was in the kitchen playing this song and I was like, what the hell is that song? That is the best song I've ever heard and Abby, me, Tish, Amit, we sat around and sang your song that night and I don't

know it was the antidote of everything terrible. Yeah. You are the antidote of everything terrible. No pressure. Oh, that is so cool. That's the coolest compliment I've ever gotten. That's for sure. Can you just tell us before we get into your song, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and how the hell all this happened? Because I mean, apparently I'm not the only person who thought

that that song was the best thing ever. I think there's something like 20 million other people at this point who also agreed, how do. How did this all happen for you too? So we're both musicians. Yes, you are live in Nashville. We've been making you want me to talk? Okay, it's basically oh my gosh. You do what I do. You're the Abby. Yes, we are a couple. We live together.

We live here in Nashville together. We have a dog. And yeah, we make music all the time. And that's separately and together. Most of the time separately, but this time was together. Right. And yeah, that day specifically was like just a really hard day on the internet, which I'm sure you know about me too. I was just getting a lot of hate comments and continue to, you know, and it's a really hard thing to deal with, especially as somebody that like

I'm just coming into my adulthood and accepting myself for who I am. I recently came out as non-binary. And so to be getting these hate comments during this time that I'm like trying to come to terms with like who I am and love myself has been really hard. And so I kind of brought that to Olivia. And she was like, well, yeah, you're weird. And that's awesome. And I love that about you. And let's put this into something good.

And let's make a song about how weird you are. What's the weirdest thing that you can think of. And I was like, well, if I were a fish, I think all the weird things about me would be cool. Yes! Right? They were like, I feel like all these things that people are hating on me for just because I was a human, but if I was just like something else,

they would think it was like super cool that I was like big and colorful and weird. I would be like a catch. And she was like, that's the weirdest thing I've ever heard. Let's do that. Yeah. It's perfect. Oh my god.

OK, now I thought we were just going to talk about the song. But you're just such love bugs. What? How did you meet and fall? And what is this story? Well, we have identified with you guys a lot because I was in a straight relationship and Kryn came along and sort of the rest of the history, I guess. We've been together.

We went to school in Boston, music school, we met there. It was quite the U-Haul situation. Love, if not at first sight, very quickly thereafter. And so we've been together for almost five years. June is our five-year anniversary. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's so cute. I feel like we've lived a lot of life in the last five years because it's just this time, you know, you're like mid-twenties, it's just so much change, so much self-discovery, so we've seen lots of versions of each other at this point. We like that, lots of versions of each other. It's really cool, and it also gets better. And you know, I just want to tell everybody who's listening, I mean, I'm gonna show me your various TikTok sites and such. And there are so many beautiful songs.

This is just one of them. They're all so good and they're all about being human and they're so honest. They made me feel less alone. Y'all are doing really, really beautiful things. I didn't know that if I were a fish, it was a gay anthem. It's so fucking cool.

I didn't know. I did. I didn't know. I did. Yeah. Yeah. You could smell it. Yeah. Yeah. You could smell the queer.

Something's fishy here. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. No, that was good. It was really good. Yeah. What's it been like with all this attention now?

Is it okay? Are you freaking out? Are you okay? Oh, we're freaking out. Yeah. Yeah. Are you getting asked to do like the lots of gigs and all the things now? Like, are you proper rock stars? I mean, proper rock stars? I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. My hair is insane right now. I can't believe like all the things that I have, they're all like wonderful, but like also really hard to get used to in terms of like scheduling and like what my life was going to look like throughout the next six months.

But yeah, it's been like a struggle of like that and like trying to be in the moment and love everything and accept all the love that we have been given, you know, and also try to combat the hate comments and try not to look at those. I personally am having a much harder time than you maybe around that. I think it's just with the sheer volume of attention, there's going to be difficulty to that. My dad put it really well when we were talking to my parents about just how it feels to receive all that attention and the negative and the positive and my dad was talking about the law

of gosh, I don't know anything about science guys, but basically it was like an equal reaction, like an equal, like so the amount of positivity. Yes, there you go Amanda, yeah. The amount of positivity you're putting out, like it's attracting the opposite. And so almost like to gauge how much joy you're putting into the world, like looking at that negativity as a way to gauge like how much of yourself you're putting into it. That's right.

Yeah. It's so good. I mean, from coming from a sports background, I used to get called Dyke. That'd be booed out in stadiums, like harsh, harsh shit. And I realized as I got older, and maybe my stats kind of started to go down as they do when you get a little bit older, they stopped booing me as much. And I was like, oh, they were scared of me.

That's what that was, or jealous, or whatever, it had nothing to do with them like not accepting me. They just were worried about me, like crushing them, you know? And I think the same goes for all the trolls and all the negativity that happens in social media. So I think your dad's on the something. And listen, I can see in your face, the little one pink fish,

you are gonna have to be careful with paying attention to this shit, because I think Olivia's all right with this, but I'm relating to you right now. And it's in order to do the art that you're meant to do, you're gonna have to stay really soft-skinned. I'm just, that's so funny, you say that. Like, I think this whole thing has been a lesson

of how sensitive I am. And coming into my adulthood is, that is something I have been accepting for the first time. It's like, I am sensitive, and that hurt my feelings. Yes. And like, and I'm over here all the time. I'm hurt all the time. But Karina's been the one pretending like they're not hurt.

And now they're like, when they're not hurt. I think I am hurt. So that's a gift. Look at you, you're sensitive little fish. Yes. And I think that there's so much art to make from that place. Yes. Is what I've learned.

That's just where my best stuff comes from. And I just, I do, do your right. I have to stay Open and soft. Yeah I have this friend named Rachel Hill Evans and she has passed but She used to get lots of hate mail and she would print it out And then she would sit in her room and turn it all into origami into little teeny swans Quite literally. Oh my God, she's smart out of it.

Wow, that's amazing. But you don't have to make art a right way because that's just puzzle culture, right? So you're like, feel the feelings, sit in it and then make something beautiful eventually. I would also have people around you that can armor for you, that can kind of protect you from some of the stuff.

Like Amanda has been Glennon's kind of the blocker of stuff. So it allows Glennon to be open. And then I came along and helped in that department. So I just pretend everybody likes me. And then I do. You know what? You know, our mutual best friend told us the other day that he read some of the hate comments and Karin started to cry and was like, I didn't realize how good that would feel for someone else to even just like know what is being said. And yeah, yeah. Yeah.

And it's not creative. That's the other thing. I can tell you guys respect creativity. That's only going to be the same five things over and over again forever You don't have to read it anymore. You've already seen it off You're so right. You're so right. We needed you guys Don't know you were interviewing us, but really we're just like soaking in all the stuff and it's so funny What's funny tell us something funny? Don't tell them we didn't know that we were going to meet you guys today.

What? You guys came on and we were like, We didn't really. We're gonna talk to them now, okay. There's podcasts. Did you think you were on? Did you get tripped? We thought it was called the different lights podcast.

We thought there's just called, we can do hard things. And so we were like, We don't know what's happening in the relay. Okay, we're just gonna meet the people we've been listening to for years. It's fun. Oh, yeah. So we're happy to be here. Yeah. Well, I listened like to walk the walk

that you guys are walking. Everything that comes your way will help you learn something more about yourself. Like when something hurts that you read, or like, oh, I didn't know that that was something that I needed to uncover. I didn't know that that hasn't been resolved for me. So, like, for me, people always are misgendering me.

They think that I'm a dude. It's fine, addressed on binary. It's kind of part of the fun that I like to have. But it actually like really upsets me. So every time I read those comments that like, you're just a guy or whatever, I'm immediately reminded, oh, you still have work to do here on that. You still have work to do here on that. It's just something to think about.

Or you could also just catch and release. True. Catch and release those. Bless and block. You can block, we call it, bless and block. We love a good block party. Yes, we do. Yeah.

I also think that most people spend their entire lives scared to death that people are going to say something or other. Oh my God. Like they spend their entire lives making decisions, not doing the thing just to avoid someone saying the thing. So when someone says the thing and it's public, you're fucking free. Yeah. You guys are right. There's not going to be a freight of anymore. Sorry, the worst has been said. The worst camera sense of it.

Still alive, still breathing, still doing the thing. Yeah. Still fucking fishing over there. Still fishing. We love you. And if you need help, we can be your clear old reals. Fishing. We love you and if you need help we can be your queer old reals antists. You already have I just love that this is what we're talking about because the genesis of the song was about this And we actually haven't talked about this with in any with anybody at this point So I think that if there's time I would like to bring up one delightful thing. Please. Yeah About the experience which I don't think is talked about enough. Cool.

I love this. From that whole genesis of the song of me saying, this hurts. Help me. You didn't go, oh, no, no, no, no, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Like, let's just do this and we'll do this and we'll do this and it'll be fine. Don't worry.

You don't have to feel that way. You were like, ouch. What do you want to do about it? Let's make something out of this. And I think that for us, that has been like a really long road of getting to a place where we can hold space for each other's pain. And I think that also that's part of why the video is so big because they can sense between us. Just how much there is. And for me, it's part of why the video is so big because they can sense between us.

Just how much there is, and for me, it's healing. Yeah, and we wouldn't have gotten to that place if we hadn't spent the couple of hours before it, like really going there together and crying about it together and then getting up and doing that, yeah. Delight. You too are are delight.

You two are delight. We use sing song for us. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, wait, we set this up earlier. Okay, we're going to have to switch our little mics. Alrighty. Oh my God, I'm so excited.

Okay, we're not going to say. I don't know if it's going to be possible. And then we'll sing it again later, but I don't know. I'm meeting myself. It's just going to be like accidentally. I'm just going to. I am not meeting myself. I'm moving the microwave from my face. Okay. No. That comes closer. Yeah.

Ready? Okay, not too close to that one. Okay. Ready? Maybe. Thanks. I've been a guest in the sea You'd win first prize if you caught me Why does everybody on the internet so mean? Why does everybody so afraid of what they've never seen? If I was growing through and I saw me I'm fopping around and singing my song I'd say down there cute and sing along

If I were rock you would pick me up and say that's a nice rock Sip it is on the lake Plop, plop, plop, plop on the perfect shape And if I were a sock you would put me on and say that's a nice sock Happiness does appear I found you know I'm not scared, why is everybody on the internet so mean? Why is everybody so afraid of what they've never seen? If I was scrolling through and I saw me Flumping out around and singing my song

I'd say damn and I saw me Flumping out around and singing my song I'd say down there Q and S sing along How lucky are we Of all the fish in the sea You get to be you And I get to be me Just letting to be me, just let it be me, where's free is can be, to be the use of me, and of me is of me.

If I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I was fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, if I were fished, fished, if I were fished, fished, fished, if I were bush, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do to go forth and be artists, thinkers, and seers, and feelers, and notisters, and observers of things, and not to be lawyers who follow around your art and defend it and forever defend your right to make art. You don't have to do that. That's what takes people out of the game. Not because they're not artists, but because they're not lawyers.

Oh my goodness gracious. You don't know how bad we need to hear that. If the question is, do you get to make beautiful shit and put it out in the world? The answer is absolutely. The rest you don't have to do. Okay? Right. Okay. We need you to keep doing this.

Thank you. We love you both. Call your, your, um, we are Instagram aunties if you need us. Beautiful. Okay. All three of you. Okay. Our, our, our aunties. Thank you. We love you. What a delight you are. Thanks for coming on. Thank you. Thank you so much. Bye, Pods. Bye. Bye. If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us. If you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do each or all of these three things, first can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

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