Well Darlings,
Somehow, summer is over, and I’ve yet another Deep Dive due. 🍂
As I take a look at my notes from August’s Artifice guests, I realize this may be the first time (or one of very few times) that all three guests are people I’ve known for many years, if in completely different contexts.
It immediately takes my mind back to this “elevator shaft” analogy I built for myself in February 2023.
There’s something rich about interrogating retrospect in this way. So much to learn.
And indeed, reconnecting with these three old friends has me “looking out sideways” from our shared memories, armed with fresh perspective.
At the same time, the recent past is…recent. Its lessons and hypotheses are so easily recallable.
And it feels like a theme of the season is the exploration of our micro-mediums, the greater network (or…maybe it’s better conceptualized as a nest?) of practices culminating in our most-vibrant lives. Ever-evolving, as are we.
I loved connecting with Lauren on this topic.
A diversion…
When I interviewed Kat Nix (Ep. 138), she said something that changed my life.
She was talking about her grandmothers (one Italian, one Mexican), telling me about all of the wisdom, crafts, and practices she received from each.
I remember being immediately struck with such a sad feeling, and expressed to Kat that with all of the trauma in my family history, I find myself in grief over a deficit of heritage.
Whatever fruits might’ve been there felt spoiled by high-demand religion, secret-keeping, and other various means of control – culminating in a most oppressive scarcity, genuinely fearsome.
With the most graceful sort of confidence, Kat acknowledged the devastation of this familial disenfranchisement, while also encouraging me to look closer. She assured me, my heritage (my inheritance) is there somewhere. I might just need to look for it differently.
The more I think about this (and listen, I think about this a lot), the more I realized Kat is exactly right.
Abuse and betrayal aside, my childhood was full of many vibrant mediums, and many vibrant creatives (couched as both have been in maladaptive behaviors and nefarious power structures).
I’ve been learning to see them, to integrate all of it. More on this another time, but it feels a crucial nugget to introduce in this moment…
Now, back to the present.
I didn’t go in expecting to connect with Lauren about the folk arts of our Mormon ancestors (maladaptation aside), but am so pleased to have found her on this same page. I hadn’t realized how much I was longing to connect with a sister-soul about this.
Of course, Lauren is magical and earnest in this exact way.
We never talked much during the years when we saw each other regularly—but I think we both sensed some of that sort of kindred magic in the other.
Again, I’m so grateful for this present-day conversation to pull it together.
First, we bonded over a shared love of American Girl dolls. We both had Felicity, as girls (though, I’ve since gifted nearly all of my American Girl treasures to a neighbor child).
I agree heartily with Lauren about the exquisite craftsmanship of the historical costuming and accessories. Felicity’s writing desk still makes me swoon. The tiny drawer! The tiny porcelain ink well and quill!
Of COURSE this is early exposure to art. Carefully dressing the doll in such beautifully-sewn gowns, shoes, bonnets…it’s art communion. Beauty on the fingertips. Right up close.
As an adult, Lauren has developed this practice further. When she re-reads their books, she changes the dolls’ outfits to keep pace with the storyline.
I LOVE this practice, and I love that Lauren shared it.
Let me tell you some more of the artful practices and micro-mediums Lauren and I discussed…
- Her mother’s sewing school, based out of their home.
- Her father’s miniature “Christmas” trainset (to be set up and enjoyed annually, of course). So lovely!
- MY Mormon grandmothers and their many folk arts – quilting, crocheting, breadmaking, homemade strawberry jam, etc. etc. etc.
- All that’s implied in this gorgeous quote… “I think I was very obsessed with having secret spaces, you know? Secret forts, and secret hide-outs, secret places, secret escapism.” << again, sister-souls. I was just the same as a child (and now).
- Writing! Especially the way it goes with you wherever you are because it lives in your BRAIN. The best.
- Consuming art made by others. Oh, how I love considering the consumption of art as active creativity. Love, love, love. True, true, true.
- One of my favorites…simply NOT MISSING BEAUTY! The artful act of looking everywhere for beauty, as to not risk missing it. I relate hard to this private medium. It’s a terrible notion, that one has entirely missed something beautiful. Awful! Let’s never do it!
- Note-taking, archiving drafts and retired projects, cataloging the creations and iterations of our past selves. What a beautiful, self-honoring medium. I highly recommend a version of this practice to any artist whose brain leans this way.
- Group collaborative play! Aka, make believe. 🧚♀️
Indeed, for a creative person living creatively…perhaps everything we do is creative, is a medium.
Thinking thoughts, firing synapses, building myelin sheaths, building relationships, building our lives.
I’ve known Kolby since we were little kids. He sticks in my mind as the first child-peer I heard declare an intention to pursue art into adulthood. It made a strong impression on me.
Kolby’s young mind was busy investing lots of its creative juice into making connections, synthesizing life in a way that matched his values.
Once again (as it often does), Mormonism looms large in the origin story…
“Once the appeal of mythology/theology got its hooks in me, I was interested in cosmic-scale epic storytelling…I was world building. I was pulling from the sources that I thought were authoritative, I was taking elements of the world that I experienced and observed outside of a religious context, and I was finding ways to fit them in. I was building a paradigm.”
I relate so deeply – in my present mind, and in my childhood memories. I spent (spend) so much time trying to make things make sense, to codify disparate “truths” in some sort of coherent whole.
In my opinion, the construction of one’s personal cosmology is a medium we’d all do well to be more aware of. 👀
Along those same lines…building one’s persona.
As a lover of the human vocal instrument, and a student of paralinguistics, I love how Kolby describes this…
“You tend to develop a vernacular, a language, that eventually you can gain some confidence in.”
Amen! So well said. Another creative endeavor we mostly fail to acknowledge.
In a stroke of wonder, Kolby, like Lauren, also shared thoughts on group collaborative play. It warms my heart, so. Sibling souls, for sure!
“I love the idea of the stream-of-thought narrativization of experience that kids will often indulge in without knowing that there’s this creative process happening.”
I’d like to indulge in more of this as an adult, frankly.
And finally, of course there’s magic…
“At the end of the day, it’s about being entranced. Finding something magic that – it can be escapism, but more and more, especially as I’ve transitioned away from my childhood enchantment with media of all forms, art of every kind…applying human themes revives that magic for me, now.”
I love it. Humans are so interesting.
I’ve been wanting to interview Brian for so long. He’s simply so wise.
As he puts it, Brian was raised with a lot of “enrichment.” A culturally-rich home with thoughtful, intellectual parents.
Now – here’s what I love about Brian, though.
Even as a child he understood that this “culture of enrichment” was something he’d learned. Something he’d been taught.
With a visual artist as a father, Brian grew up spending time in museums and galleries. He “knew what to do.” Stand in front of a painting, put your hands behind your back, and…look.
Then, while on a high school field trip to a museum, Brian observed the other teens navigating a much less familiar environment, and realized intuitively that appropriate museum behavior was, indeed, a language. A culture. One has to learn it. He knew it was something he had been taught.
I think this sort of self-awareness is rare for anyone, but especially for a child. I’m so impressed with it!
I see this as an early sign of one of Brian’s best mediums, empathy.
What’s more creative than imagining what it might be like to be in someone else’s context?
I see this sort of mindful, knowledgeable empathizing (and the curiosity that inevitably accompanies it) aiding and guiding all of Brian’s professional efforts.
In step with these past two conversations (with Lauren and Kolby), Brian and I spoke a lot about “the mediums we name and put on our resumes,” versus the mediums we privately love, but would never claim in this particular way.
Certainly, most of us would find “empathy” an odd line-item for a CV.
But even the obvious, resume-appropriate mediums can be difficult to parse.
Brian’s painter father, for example, always saw teaching as his lesser medium. Meanwhile, for Brian, teaching is a “primary outlet of creativity.”
Of course, I absolutely agree with Brian that teaching can be every bit as creatively enlivening as making music.
But also.
We are both musicians.
I think Brian would agree that each medium becomes more beloved, more enriching as it evolves alongside the other.
How could we insult either by separating them, even for the sake of argument?
They exist as part of a whole. As do empathy and curiosity.
There are also our hobbies. And there are the mediums we don’t think about at all. The ones we never even name.
Our various mediums inspire us in unique ways. Each plays its part in the creative body, the creative life.
Increasingly, I find it a medium of mine not only to discover and name each little stepping stone of my own creative inner landscape, but to see and name the ones I see in my students, my guests, my colleagues, chosen family, friends.
In a competitive, commercialized, increasingly quantifiable world I find it a gift to assign real value to each of our little creative acts – even the ones that exist entirely in our grey matter. We are bundles of creative energy, making choices all day long. Having opinions and preferences.
Each and every one of us, a wonder.
As Brian says of why he loves his favorite subjects/topics… “there are people involved.”
Where there are people, there is art. We just have to call it by its name.
Happy fall!
Emily
P.S. Baby Emily and Kolby!
