Maggie Nelson & Michelle Tea in conversation

[Music] thank you [Music] hi everyone welcome to the Hammer Museum I'm Claudia bester I'm the director of public programs here and I'm very very pleased to welcome you to tonight's Hammer conversation with Maggie Nelson and Michelle T before we get started I'm going to remind you to please silence your cell phones and I want to quickly mention some upcoming Hammer literary programs you might be interested in tomorrow night Alice Elliott dark will read from her wonderful new novel Fellowship point and she'll be in dialogue with novelist Mona Simpson afterwards then next Tuesday James Hanahan the author of the new book didn't nobody give a [ __ ] about what happened to Carlotta we'll be here in dialogue with Jonathan Latham the author of motherless Brooklyn and don't didn't nobody give a [ __ ] about Carletta is such a great book I just love it you'll love it too so come to that then next Thursday the celebrated poet and former Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky will be reading from his recently published Memoir as well as from his new unpublished poems on Friday February 17th Hilton alls will be here speaking in dialogue with Jennifer Krasinski and then on February 23rd the Pulitzer prize-winning poet Vijay shashrati will be reading here as well so we have a lot going on if you'd like to receive reminder emails about our upcoming event please sign up for our email list there's a sheet of paper in the lobby you can sign up on or you can always find out more information on our website so now I'd like to introduce this evening's wonderful writers Maggie Nelson is the author of 10 books of prose and poetry and is a serious scholar of critical theory philosophy psychology feminist and queer Theory cultural and art criticism the history of the avant-garde and aesthetic Theory her books include the art of Cruelty blueets the red Parts Jane and the Argonauts the Argonauts is now widely regarded as one of the defining literary works of the 21st century it was a New York Times bestseller and was awarded the 2015 National book critic Circle award in criticism and in 2016 Nelson was awarded a MacArthur genius Fellowship for quote forging a new mode of non-fiction that transcends the Divide between the personal and the intellectual and renders pressing issues of our time into portraits of day-to-day lived experience her most recent book The National bestseller on freedom four songs of care and constraint has just come out in paperback and we're very very excited about it and we're really thrilled to have her back at the hammer for the eighth time um to talk about this new book Michelle T is the author of over a dozen books including the cult classics Valencia and rent girl her first book the passionate mistakes and intricate Corruption of one girl in America was published by semiatext in 1998. she published against Memoir in 2018 which won the Pan America award for the art of the essay her most recent book is knocking myself up A Memoir of my infertility long before publishing all these books she co-founded the lesbian feminist spoken word and performance art Collective sister spit in 1994 which toured twice to the Hammer Museum and to this day the videos from those performances are some of our most watched of all times she also started drag queen Story Hour which as we all know is now held throughout the entire world but about to be banned in half the United States she also started her own queer publishing imprint at the feminist press called amethyst Editions so tonight Maggie and Michelle will have a dialogue they'll take some audience questions and then I'd like to invite you all to join us for some light Refreshments out in the lobby and we'll have Maggie and Michelle's Books available for purchase and they'll be there to sign some for you so now please join me in giving a very warm welcome to Maggie Nelson and Michelle T God we were told we wouldn't be able to see you guys and yet you can see all of you so clear we can see every single one we were so busy talking out there we didn't barely hear our on our call on so we're already we're already going here we're already chatting we're caffeinated we're ready to go this is Maggie Nelson this is Michelle Taylor um Maggie's fantastic book this is the Canadian Edition not to brag but it does have orange on it um which is pretty cool four songs of carrot and constraint it's such a generous book and um it asks really big questions that are just impossible to answer and makes your brain explode um about sex drugs climate change art and it really ends up interrogating what it means to be human to have a mind maybe even to have a soul what brought you to this giant mess of thought like it's so much how did you even come to this Insanity yeah I believe it totally Insanity um well let me just say Michelle I'm so happy to be here with you I love Michelle so much and you know and I'm just uh I can't when I thought of you reading this book this week it just like made me you know you're like an ideal readers made me very happy um and I'm also happy to be here to talk to all you guys I think this is like I don't know I I don't know if it's the first or it's one of three in-person events I've done for this book since it came out in 2021 so it's really special especially because um this is our town apparently now it is now I know oh my god when will that seem normal so this book this book was you know yeah it was like a real it was a real like octopus wrestling experience you know and I think um you know I started it actually before I wrote the Argonauts it was a book I was about to start working on after I wrote a book called The Art of Cruelty and I got you know I was really into kind of keyword thinking like I'd been thinking about cruelty for a long time and then the the kind of big word that kept you know getting like kind of bowled out of that book was Freedom only because I just started thinking a lot about the way that in a lot I mean well I started writing a lot about John Cage weirdly in the cruelty book and I was starting to think a lot about the ways that um maybe uh in all of his writing about you know his defining Love is Like Making space around the Beloved and all this kind of idea of like space making and I started feeling like a lot of the cruel scenarios or brutal things I was writing about in The Art of Cruelty really had to do with um a feeling of not being able to get out of them like it wasn't so much that they were the brutality of it it was also that something felt foreclosed like an agency had been foreclosed there wasn't space to move and so I started just thinking about that a lot and then reading you know people who'd written um you know I say in the introduction you know Hannah ran on freedom or different people Foucault different people I mean obviously a lot of more pragmatic you know or abolitionist thinkers um but I just started getting really interested in um not just the outer resistances to I mean not just the outer forces that make Freedom not possible which I think we all could probably have a pretty um you know quick and agreeable conversation about what those forces are but also what some of the inner resistances to Freedom are and what a what a more marbled experience it can be to be working you know inside oneself with restraint and constraint and freedom and so I started just collecting notes and reading a lot and I had a lot of fire I mean I wasn't I don't when I'm working on a book it's just not I mean it depends on the book but in this particular book I wasn't for a long time I didn't have an image of it I didn't know if it would be like autobiographical I didn't know if it'd be poetry I didn't know if it would be scholarly like I just really didn't know I just like read and collect and then when I kind of looked at what I'd collected you know one has to make decisions so I began to decide to sort them out into these these four categories you know are sex drugs and climate and then and then the octopus wrestling part was just once I kind of decided that I would attack the subject matter by writing on each one you know each chapter was long and they ended up I think they're probably each about 50 pages maybe 50 to 70 pages in the book but you know in manuscript they were over a hundred each and and I wasn't even sure if there were going to be more chapters like I was going to do one on digital media and surveillance like there was other things so it eventually I just had to um you know put a constraint on it and end it and especially because some of them like art and sex were probably like the the ones I had most native experience with but then the um certainly climate I did a lot of research for him so that took a long time and then the drugs chapter even though I have some experience there as well um I was really interested in reading a lot of drug Memoir and literature and literature about addiction and sobriety um to come and libertarian drug Theory I mean all kinds of things so I actually did a lot of research for that chapter as well so all of which is to say it took a long time and you know like all books but maybe more in this case than others it felt like a kind of truce when it had to end you know like it could have it could have gone on and on um but then you know also covid happened in the midst of it and that's a whole other topic but yeah were there other um possible songs that didn't make it into the book besides like surveillance I mean there's a lot about surveillance in the book um were there other no I mean that was the main one I think at the end of the day I felt happy that I think all the thinking I did that was like stray thinking about other things I think I smashed it all into you smashed so popular chapters wild so I feel like I kind of got you know my rocks off or whatever like there's a lot of footnotes I said like there's a lot of stuff I said in the foot like I I think I I think I got it all down yeah the footnote is like another section and then the bibliography I'm like daring myself I'm like what if I just dared myself to read the entire bibliography for on freedom like yeah I want to do it I started searching at my library to see what they have again that's great yeah I mean it's funny to publish things like this that are like uh like after I wrote like one I guess book that could be called like official scholarship you know with a university press and stuff after that I was like I'm never ever doing that again and how come what was so horrible about it Tony I don't know it just was it like the state did it make you write in a particular voice that you hated or was it dealing that's boring but it had been my dissertation and I think I I cared a lot about it I mean it was about you know women in the New York school poetry and uh painters and I cared and I thought it was a totally worthwhile intervention um and it had chapters on Eileen miles and Bernadette Mayer and Alice notley and Barbara Gaston John Mitchell and a bunch of people I thought were Super Rad and I so I wanted so I cared about all that but I'm getting to the point about the bibliography which is uh one nice thing about publishing not in a scholarly fashion is that you know no one really makes you do apparatus you know no one really demands if that there be footnotes or bibliography or indexes and you can really make your own on call and I think in this project you know I don't think it made like every reader happy but it made me happy that I made some calls that were toward the cumbersome um in order that I just as you just said like could relieve a road map of all this thinking because the road map to me was more important really then it's not like a non-fiction book that's like on freedom what what will we do now and how will we live it tomorrow you know it's not like I mean they're like the Malcolm Gladwell style of non-fiction like it it's not that and so I think it's painful sometimes like if you are interfacing with the mainstream I mean you've had this too like that that that's what they're you know like I'm not that writer but you're just kind of like in drag doing it or whatever we are doing that you know but I think I intentionally kind of bulked it up with with with the like a trail of crumbs you know yeah it's great it's really exciting actually it's like it feels very generous like I love I love turning people on to writers that I love and I love hearing writers I love what they're reading so it's it's an important part it's very funny to me like this happens a lot like people be like the Argonauts or this book or something they'll be like well what you know what books inspired it and I'm like the whole thing is just like an interfacing with the books that are like totally just pick it up and open it up yeah like I feel like I have to come up with like a a slate of ghost books that you know secret books yeah but I mean but that said you know I mean sometimes there are ghost books or Ghost songs or I mean there are things that Inspire that are not on the table but mostly in an effort like this you know everything's on the table all right I'm gonna read I'm going to quote you to yourself which is fun um and this this is from the segment that is on Art it's such a great quote as you say she says it's naive and unfair to expect artists and writers to have special access to the most intense extreme or painful aspects of life than to act surprised and appalled when they turn out to have a relationship to those things that exceeds that of abstract contemplation or simple critique it made me think of so many things right it made me think of like I love I'm like obsessed with this one part of like Jean janae's story about how when he got kind of like adopted by Jean cocteau and Jean cocktail was like oh this guy you know like brought him into his like very fancy Bourgeois Parisian [ __ ] life and then Janae like stole from them all like ripped them off and they would just be like oh you know that trade stole and it's like well you that's what you you know you want you like that about him and then also he's a thief that's the name of his book the same wasn't there a book title yeah so and it made me also think like you know okay this is like a little cringy to admit but I I do enjoy the music stylings of Marilyn Manson you know and I like it because it's so sexual and violent and self-loathing and then you learn that he's a [ __ ] monster and he's just like Marilyn Manson you know and it's just like you know I I just feel like such a big Bozo like of course right like that is exactly what draws you to it even if you're projecting or you know it's a fantasy and and then it's maybe not you know yeah just really coming out to you guys about all my truly guilty pleasures um like Michelle warned me about that question but because I want to know who you're I know that's what you said and I was like oh no I said you can't I mean I mean the thing is is it I mean I mean I just mentioned the book The Art of Cruelty I mean that whole book is about uh it's not about it's not true it's not about um I mean I don't think I actually wrote about anybody in that book who I uh I don't know it was like a reprehensible human being well I mean they may be I mean I don't know them like personally but I mean like I think I was um uh like I didn't write about anything that didn't seem to me like truly worthwhile like I didn't spend a lot of time on things that um but I do didn't write about Marilyn Manson well no but I did write I mean but I think that there are I mean but I did write in that book about you know that whole book was a lot about um the differences uh and the blurrings between art and life and the kind of 20th century obsession with that blurring and about whether it was like the Viennese actionists or you know whoever like um whether it's you know the uh or even I mean I talk about the actionists and John Waters like in the same breath about like their use of you know uh foul um like chickens or sacrifice or you know like using them for [ __ ] and um Pink Flamingos I guess anyway but like I think that um I'm trying to leave you guys a trail of crumbs for later on tonight no um chicken [ __ ] yeah exactly exactly um but I think yeah but I think in that whole book I was really uh I mean what that quote that you just read was really I'd already thought about that a lot you know and I'd already thought a lot about that through that project and also because that project was preceded by this is kind of off topic but two books about a murder in my family where I thought a lot about the differences between like representing something that had happened violent like versus violence and um whether or not there was like even in all my good-hearted you know feminist ethics like there were I you know I I did feel like that it was um you know I was working with very priant material that had interest to editors and to readers because a young woman was murdered in a Serial killing right you guys see where this is going so like I'd already and I kind of had and I'd had to reckon with like I called the first book of about that you know I was trying to find a subtitle I ended up calling it Jane colon a murder kind of in admission to myself that like this what I was murder like I felt like I was doing something again with her like her life like in these in this writing although of course I don't think it was equivalent to a murder you know but I think that I was definitely in touch with my own voyeurism and fear and anxiety mastering and um all that stuff so I I thought about that a lot and I thought about also a lot um you know in researching those books and watching a lot of or just having imbibed a lot of movies where like the female detective is kind of like up against Hannibal Lecter and it's kind of like you know is she working out something from her past is she really you know she doesn't really want to be cannibalized or murdered but like what's she doing there and like I I just kind of had I just had thought a lot about that and I think it's a kind of a binding question for me about a a feminist question too about um and we talked about this a little bit in the green room but about um how to go about the world like acknowledging and protesting and resisting you know sexist and misogynist violence um at every turn while at the same time um not by virtue of gender or sex like um uh divorcing oneself um like putting all ethical goodness on one side and divorcing oneself from The Human Condition because of those commitments and so I I guess I'd already thought about that a lot and so in the art chapter that in on freedom you know it was a it was a it was a relief to me in a way because I was writing about other other people and other people and other artists and I think that quote you read though is really I mean I think people really do have a fantasy that you know we can you know just have intimacy with these places and fantasy and every other teeny part of our life will be ethically buttoned up you know and we would still be able to produce all the art that comes from touching those places and that just does not you know I mean there may be a couple people I can think of like that but generally speaking is not my experience at all but what Writers Do you or do you like that are horrible that are horrible people oh I don't know I don't know I mean yeah you probably I mean a lot you know a lot a lot I know a lot yeah you know a lot you can just leave it at that I mean the Marquita sod you know a big fan of the marquisite I mean a lot there to think about yeah about his life yeah yeah yeah I'm reading a biography right now oh amazing yeah it's just it's kind of I'm hate reading it and it's not because I hate the author not decide right who I don't know how I feel about it it's just the author is really terrible it feels like reading it so I mean biographies are always like that right like you're just you're just like I think they exist to be angry I guess so I don't I really love reading but like I love um like the Janae biography that's like that thick like I actually prefer that to half of janae's actual writings just reading about his life yeah I mean I just finished the Thousand Page biography and was kind of obsessed with it oh anyway but now we're back I know we're so off topic okay let's get back to to sex the sex chapter which I loved so much and yeah like you um It's The Ballad of sexual optimism you quote um these writers who are saying these wild things that I feel like I don't hear that often about how promiscuity can be a place of learning that sex can be a means of moving towards pain and difficulty as if that's a good thing because I feel like as a culture we're obsessed with our sex never having pain or difficulty and if it does what does that mean and you know female sexuality almost being celebrated for being a site of trauma and danger you know as in spite as opposed to you have that great quote which I actually didn't write down exactly but that basically you could for instance enact sexual fantasies see how they go if you don't like them think about them and try to unders it just felt so like logical and it made me realize that I don't see a lot of just plain spoken like I don't know liberated discourse about you know what it means to you know I don't know be an afab person a female a femme and be an adventure Seeker maybe sexually and maybe be okay with you know having doing something that's risky yeah yeah and it's so anything I mean I think your work has been like holds that place in a really important way you know and speaks that out and I think it's really um I mean I think I mean I knew that that chapter really I think it's so scary for people to go into the space that you're just talking about and that I knew that the chapter probably like some people reading on a kind of Top Line would be rubbed the wrong way but I really wouldn't have done it if I didn't believe you know really truly and deeply like what that um that the kinds of like sex uh negativity or puritanism like that we're kind of uh that I see like every day that we're kind of backing into even with like good intentions um or really is not the the vision for like an emancipated you know like feminist future that I deeply want and like and and and think is um uh as you know as possible both both not I don't mean now like everyone's like Ruby way like I don't mean like now in every way every day I just mean um I think you and I share this too like when you were when we were coming up like people like Amber hollabaugh or Eileen miles or all the you know sex radicals um especially active in HIV AIDS and fighting for sex even when it was you know potentially fatal and when the when the war was really on about uh puritanism and you know and the stakes were really high I think the the kinds of things that you were saying like that they were saying and I'm quoting in that chapter made me so brave and kept me from harm and pain I could have caused Myself by the way that I thought about um like uh you know encounters or Adventures um and I feel really I just feel really grateful that that they were there and that they were so brave and that they spoke so much and I really do feel like we're I mean it's all kind of a pendulum so I'm not against it's not like a lot of people have talked about that chapter and have been like you're you know so you're really not a fan of me too and I'm like I never said that like it's not that's not the point it's not a fan or not a fan or a thumbs up thumbs down it's not the point it's more like trying to look just always trying to keep a very critical eye on whether or not we're making space you know for forms of sexual experience activity desire that are non-shaming that don't incarcerate people or push them outside of an ethical Circle when that's not necessary you know just lots of things so yeah yeah it's very it's very daring of you to write it all but I felt super seen by it I loved it um and I wanted to know like are there any beacons of sexual Freedom that look inspiring and strong to you right now hell no by Beacon you mean like like I don't understand anything like anything out there in the culture that you're like yeah that is that's cool that makes me feel happy you know I mean no I mean I generally I mean that chapter is called The Ballad of sexual optimism and obviously there's a you know a play on both the Dan golden but also a play on you know a ballad of optimism don't always go together so like that was the kind of the point was to hit this chord you know but the chord which has the ballad in there which acknowledges the pain and it acknowledges the songs that we have to sing of the pain you know and sometimes tends to make it tolerable um but it also has optimism penis and like I am an optimist you know I I don't know like sue me you know like by Nature so I think that I I mean I was watching I don't know if any of my students are here but we were watching some of I am not your negro there the documentary on Baldwin and you know he just says I'm an optimist because I'm I'm alive you know and I just it's like I I think that I'm alive so I'm an optimist and I think that's all that meaning I think we are going they're a good thing there are a lot of good things happening right now I mean you and I both have young kids and I think I mean despite what you know all the what you know whatever all those people want to make us feel you know they um you know what they see as this Grand horrifying mutilating experiment you know I would imagine that we see as like a gift of what sometimes is bewildering but completely and totally new um emancipation around ways of thinking and growing up around sex and gender I think it's totally exciting and um I think that there's no Silver Lining like whatsoever full stop about the row um overturning but I am hopeful that as we fight um for what's next that instead of this kind of um you know apologist thinking about um about unwanted pregnancies and and whatnot that we will uh and that's partly what this chapter is trying to do with other people I admire trying to do you know I'm hopeful that we will get to a place where we're moving you know forward with more options and more emancipated thinking as opposed to the kind of sex negativity Backwater which kind of says like you know what I mean this is what my chapter kind of starts off with this kind of like I mean I I feel for it I'm making fun of it at the moment but I'm not really I actually feel for it but this kind of new narrative developing which can be a place where some you know some feminists you know me some right-wing like anti-feminists of kind of like you promised us the sexual you know Revolution you promised us Liberation and you know what it sucks like it's not good out here you know and some people are like oh I guess we should do Trad wife you know or whatever they're they're they're a solution to that problem is the other people are more like it's not good enough yet okay but but the but insofar as those things are meeting on a kind of like maybe we shouldn't have had all of that Liberation because it didn't turn out I mean that to me is just completely wrong-headed and so yeah I feel like there's always been that weird strain of feminism though that has been anti-sex and I feel like when you were talking about like the era that maybe we came of age and sort of in the 90s I feel like the people that were just ahead of me that were like a generation above me had survived like the lesbian sex Wars and so they were like we won let's [ __ ] they were just like sex sex we're gonna have back rooms like the [ __ ] we're gonna like do it and I was like whoa okay you know and I I I had like come to San Francisco after just like all the only there weren't any books out at that point for me to be like oh there was lesbian sex Wars and maybe the sexy lesbians won I was reading all the second wave feminism so I was like okay I guess all penetrations rape okay all right cool I'm gonna I'm gonna move to San Francisco now and I moved to San Francisco and there's these like these like leather dykes fisting each other literally on the dance floor and I was like okay you know I just was like immediately just like I I don't know you know and so um what was my point of talking about that I mean you know I mean I feel like there's always been and you know there's always been that sort of like I just feel like it can be I can't tell whether it's really depressing or if it's sort of lightens the situation a little bit to know that these are the same struggles that have been going on for [ __ ] ever I mean it's it's disheartening to feel like we haven't moved forward but clearly we have like there's been so many things that have changed but there's always it's like the eternal you know Battle of good and evil or something in different kind of guises and there is always you know that sort of strain of feminism that does fit really neatly with you know conservatism yeah and I think you know I think running through all of my books and this one too or not all of them but a lot of them have this um actually I think you quote this somewhere not in this but I'm trying something I read of yours recently maybe it wasn't against Memoir about storytelling and about like the dangers of telling ourselves stories I love I love you're so good at checking yourself like you won't let yourself get away with anything well I know what I mean I was like maggots not letting herself get with anything I can't either no well I think I think I was just gonna say through a lot of the books I think that there's um you know there's this Paradox of especially when I moved out of just writing lyric poetry and into things that might you know that had to work a little bit more with with narrative was like you're never going to get out of telling the story that's not like a possibility and yet um that kind of uh you know intense attention to what what are the pre or what are the pre-given stories and then what is the one I'm creating here and am I talking myself into something or what are the holes of this and I think that's why the ballad of sexual dependency I'm sorry the ballot of sexual optimism starts off um I think the first line of it is a story We a story we are told or something and then it moves into um uh like uh an essay about a story that you know the the the the bummer story the story that like we were promised all this and it never came and now what you know that story about feminism and I and I say you know pretty quickly in that chapter like um because the book is about Freedom that you know this is part of the problem of the stories of Liberation is a story of Liberation always has a come down and the come down is always like we thought we emancipated now it's not as good as we thought because there isn't I mean in my opinion there's not you know the promised land I don't know if it's when you're dead or whatever but it's not here you know here we're here with each other we're in the muck you know this is it and uh and so I'm not saying can't be made better but I think this idea that sex will you know someday the scales will fall from our eyes and we'll just have good sex to me is just it doesn't make any sense whatsoever you know at all and so I think it's a I think it's really important to keep a Keen Eye on the you know on what that's what I was kind of trying to say before about harming ourselves like whether or not we're actually harming ourselves with certain stories about Liberation um that are setting us up for demoralization despair failure paralysis and that's especially true you know in the chapter on climate as well um and yeah yeah um you kind of as you draw to a close on this next chapter you start talking about Buddhism and and I love how you talk about the Zen Cohen which is just like this unsolvable you guys know what that is like this unsolvable riddle and which I feel like so much of what you're talking about is an unsolvable riddle like we can't get to that place that we think that we are aiming for like it's got to be okay that we land someplace else and become curious about that um in your list you list all the time all the cones such as quote our desire to treat everyone with compassion and kindness and forgiveness and to throw harmful [ __ ] off a cliff is a big cone it's like there's this whole sort of like thing all the things that are the big cones um and it just made so so much sense to me that you ended the chapter there because I really feel like when everything else fails there's Buddhism and it made me really wanted to know more about your relationship to Buddhism yeah um yeah I mean I think well it was funny because I was um I didn't really you know put it at the Forefront but the but it was interesting to me that the the strain of Buddhism I was kind of doing a lot of reading and doing like you know attending sessions and um also had like a big sex scandal while I was writing um this chapter so that became a really interesting you know place and and as I watched the sex scandal unfold in the pages of the New York Times and I read I read the whole file and like a camera was called project sunshine I read I read everything and you know this this um you know a lot of people felt really angry um I mean this is a common thing you know that I got people who are um I mean it's not it's a special circumstance like why these people felt betrayed but I think it's but it comes up in Buddhism in general which is like um you know uh a real concern about what happens if we let go of things like blame or right and wrong or accountability um like holding others accountable like a lot of the principles that uh are very uh that are very deeply interrogated if not discouraged in Buddhism that um are very high uh highly valued in other spheres and the sex scandal there was you know really pitting um those two ideologies against each other and I thought it was very fascinating to watch play out because as you just say neither it wasn't that it wasn't that one was right like they both um like it wasn't um like he he it wasn't like all the Buddhist teachings were just like um you know a a toxic miasma meant to cover you know bad behavior that's not that's not accurate but that is how um some people may have treated them and how some people may have felt about them you know what I mean it's like there was a lot going on anyway so I think I was thinking about all that when I was uh finishing that chapter and thinking about um yeah how how I it's not it's not to say there isn't like right action or there isn't ethical action but the interrogation of it which is kind of what you're saying about the questions that don't have answers goes on you know yeah um so you teach and because you teach you are in close contacts with young adults in privy to their opinions and concerns and I want to know if you can tell us how the youth are doing oh there's youth here already my students here [Music] um as much as you can speak for you know a demographic I just read someone just forwarded me an article I can't believe it's called the I don't know if it's called The Trouble with the youth they're swing by Mary gate skill have you read this piece no no but I want to uh yeah you have to like get a code but I'll send it to you later um um yeah I don't know I mean this is I mean you and I are both you know moms as well so I think it's like a it's a multi-faceted question I mean I guess I'll just answer it in a way maybe it's like a Buddhist way of answering it but I guess I would just say it by not answering yeah I guess so but I but it's not it's a paradox but I think it's okay because I think that um like I think that there are modes of suffering going on that are new and that are particular and that need to be attended to in all of their particularity you know and that they don't need people don't need to be told like it's always been like this or you'll get over it or it was worse for me or imagine if you were you know born into a you know feudal system or whatever people tell people like none of that is what is called for you know what I mean so there's like a lot of attending to specificity about you know the so-called polycrisis uh that that things that are going on and clearly I think being a parent makes that very obvious to you because you're not gonna like I mean some people do but I'm gonna you know try and show up to listen to the specificities of what's going on with your students or your kids you know all that at the same time here's the Paradox part is like again with these stories you know the story that like um it's things are worse now than ever people have had to deal with things but they didn't have to deal with the end of the planet or all that kind of stuff um it doesn't seem to be like historically or spiritually uh like true and it also doesn't seem the most likely to build you know feelings of like safety and resilience which which are necessary to um you know to keep going so I think that some kind of way that you can attend to both of those features seems to me called for it's not easy and I think I you know say and do the wrong thing all the time but I think that that's that's the that's the value I Aspire towards you know I mean I feel like this is just again and again the heart of this book or these like paradoxes where it's like both and both and you know um I was flipping through it earlier today and I landed right on that great quote that you have by the writer Kate Braverman who I've been thinking about a lot lately um and she had said you quoted her saying when men engage this is in the drugs part when men engage in bad behavior they're enacting the Mythic writer's life when a woman writes about Outlaw activities she's considered a mentally ill [ __ ] and I was like yeah you know when I was young and I was writing and my writing was very entwined with my Outlaw activities I really felt this you know and I felt like it you know it gave me this sort of um bravado or justification or motivation of just like I was being doing something feminist by like snorting crystal meth and like running around you know and then when I got sober I was like obviously that is so sad that I thought that you know and now that I've been sober you know for like 20 years I'm like that kind of was maybe I don't know I can't tell it's both and right it's like and I just was wondering how those you know those those archetypes that come up in in that whole idea which is like you know the wild man writer and then the the messy lady drunk or like the tough girl who can like drink men under the table that's why I mean the quote that you read originally from the art chapter is actually quite relevant here about you know intimacy with certain experiences and then expecting that everyone's like you know acts perfectly because I really I wrote a lot and I write a lot in that drug chapter about women's uh different Memoirs of drug use um and and accounts of using because you know people aren't putting on like but was William brose a good mom like William bros what did he do for the climate did you know how shot his wife you know what I mean get out of town right but you know we all know I mean this is boring because it's like I mean I tried in this chapter to go beyond this I tried to kind of lay it out at the beginning but because of the um you know because of the onus of like care and ethics and responsibility and the expectations of nurturing and protecting and all these different all the bag of whatever that we you know hang on women you know uh you know women using drugs and in the throes of addiction you know are not just you know you know are are are just despised you know utterly abjected you know out of the out of the social order and um you know just think about you know the you know think about how you feel I mean I talk about this movie that I watched you know growing up I think it was oh my god well I guess it's it's Paul my Daisy I think is that what I'm ready yeah yeah and it was like it's this famous beat movie like Alan Ginsberg and Gregory corso and stuff like they're they're all gathered in this Bowery Loft I don't want to talk about this too long but the but the point is is that like they're all giggling and you know having their whole drug induced you know drunk you know whatever um uh thing going on in on Larry Rivers and you know and there's a and there's a mom there with the kid right and you know the last scene of the movie which I just remember watching I describe as like a young 20-something also living in the Lower East Side also aspiring to a life where Ohio is aspiring to be an alcoholic I just was but like well done well thank you um I had to get off my chest so but like watching the end of the movie when the boys are rolling down the stairs to go out and continue their night and then and the mom is at the top of the stairs you know scream mang and screaming and you know I like you know like how can you do this how can you leave me whatever but like but the music is coming up it's Jazz like and you're supposed to be like really happy that they're like thank God they got away from this shrew with The Wooden Spoon but you know but that's why I say in the book imagine if she'd gone out like who was gonna stay the stick kid you know like I'm sorry I'm like really animated about pull my Daisy tonight but like but I think that I'd talk about watching that as a young woman and like being really with those guys you know like and really I don't know like that was clearly the life you were supposed to want and have as a young writer and everyone was like aren't they cool and you know and it was just really um it was confusing you know it was confusing and I think uh that I wanted to spend a lot of time with women who who did leave the kid and go out you know in that in in my chapter to talk about uh just a you know a a just a cul-de-sac of literature and Memoir that um that's really fascinating in part because precisely of what you say about this outlaw try on and this kind of you know abjected from the sphere of femininity and its expectations but also I spent some time with a lot of male writing about addiction because a lot of male writing about addiction that I I talk about on rhema's show and him describing being a mescaline being like being date raped and like there's a lot of there's a lot of writing about uh feeling penetrated uh made made a slave subjected um you know dissolved like there's a lot of really kind of I don't know if I want to call it like overtly feminized writing but like a real dissolution of the subject in a pathetic way in in in male addict writing that seemingly gets totally lost in the gloss of it just being cool you know and I and I really feel like there's just so much more going on under the surface when you really read those uh books closely like I guess the last thing I'll say is just I think what you see in both cases is also a kind of longing for for the dissolution yeah of the self so instead of this kind of idea of like the addict is is an outlaw with agency there's actually a lot of longing in those texts to be no longer in control or overwhelmed and to no longer be kind of the um the agent of one's life which is uh corresponds a lot to the kind of writing I was doing about sex about um and what I was saying before about the inner resistances to Freedom is that we we tend to talk as if most of our day we want to be the agent the free agent in control of our lives but I don't think that is a good psychoanalytical read of Consciousness or subjectivity for sure yeah and that and that's all the way through this book also what is that the James Baldwin quote like most people look upon very few people have the real desire to be free you know very few of them are Americans yeah yeah all right we've been read um and in your climate change um chapter writing the blinds you quote a NASA climate scientist who talks about the inevitability of passing quote responsibility and guilt onto her child do you feel that like that parent do you yeah yeah totally right because it's like and you know and I really hate like I've always hated when you hear people of like I don't know our generation or even when I was younger being like the young people are Gonna Save Us it's like oh my God this is awful at the height of your political power and agency and perhaps earning power and everything else you know voting rights you're gonna be like thank God somebody else like looking at a toddler is going to come save me it's so rude it's so rude yeah I know I actually went to like a I saw some play and like there was like the last line of it where someone was like you know I don't know it's had like this quote that everyone like stood up and applauded for but it was like oh it's all right because the youth there'll be like the flashlight that lights our way and I was like I want to be like find your goddamn flashlight I just I don't let them be in the dark it's just like this weird it just makes it seem like you get to a certain age and then like you've just given up and you're just a lamp in a corner or something you know what I mean you're just like you don't do things anymore you don't think you don't affect the world and Bill mckibben's been doing a lot of work you know with with uh you know I can't remember what the project is called probably someone here knows but you know with the with you know an older generation of like of people of activists and kind of and you know countering that idea and I think that's been really you know I think that's been important work especially as it partners with the sunrise movement and stuff like that you know yeah um as a mom how do you or parent how do you go about sort of explaining or showing the big messy world to your kid like do you have a sort of God are you winging it is there you have a philosophy is it just like a different I was asking I told Michelle like I said watch out because I'm just gonna say what do you do that's fine okay what do you yeah I mean I actually really like um the challenge of trying to translate whatever is happening into a language that he can understand you know like in general I try to like just tell him what is going on I I think I um I mean I I feel like especially because he was sort of um you know he's eight so he was really at this particular age you know when Trump got elected and there were protests and we went to protests and you know when black lives matter happening and like he no I wanted him to know I didn't want him to be protected from things that a kid of color his age would have to know about you know so I would try just try to figure out how to explain things to him but I do worry sometimes that I'm painting the world as just a complete [ __ ] nightmare especially just like I don't know like uh you know I'll tell him things where like we have this great illustration by Miriam Klein style of like Harry hey in our house and he'll be like who's that guy you know and I'll be like oh explain I'll just be like you know gay people couldn't marry each other and he'd be like what you know and it's like so cute and great to see how see the the real absurdity of stuff like that in the response of a kid um but I just yeah I I think that sometimes I I guess my concern is that well first of all I'm way too long-winded like I can't tell it to him simply I'll be like back in the day there was this thing and this and he's just like oh God stop like he doesn't care you know so I have to find a way to be like really fast with it yeah I think you're I mean I think you're right that I think one you know the the Heaven and Hell parenting is that you know all of your traits are revealed to you and Technicolor and I think that I'm a femme splainer yeah exactly I'm a big Femme I'm a big I'm a big like Circle the wounder you know so and you know there's no accident that a lot of my books you know are like really going straight at the bad thing you know and I think that it's something you know inherited in a funny way from my mom who I kind of joke about in the Argonauts about how she had this kind of part in there where she's like telling me all about killing Tree in Cambodia of like smashing infants against it like kind of over and over again just because I had a baby and she was like it just reminded me and I'm like that's great like that's kind of kind of and as I said it's kind of like like I felt like she was always because she was traumatized you know and like you know I kind of always wanted me to know how bad how bad you know place the world could be like in case I might you know slit my mind or something so but I'm not blaming my mom I'm actually saying that like I understand why she was like that and I understand and I think it actually has great like for me that in my writing life especially has been of Great Value and it has been like a scene of Bravery or of like fortitude if not bravery it was too strong a word but um but I do notice that I have to be really careful if I'm in the car with my son because I've noticed that like if I'm looking at him I can like self-regulate but if like I'm just driving and he's like what happened on 9 11 we'll be like three miles out I'm back and then you know and then I'll just be like oh and we're at school you know see ya yeah yeah and so it's you know that's hard I mean I think it's it's yeah that's hard I'm really careful in the car oh my God um do you have a death practice don't you just want to know these things about people who do it tell me your death I don't know that I have one but like we have a friend Beth Pickens right who's a writer and a mutual friend she has a death practice so she just like does this thing where she just like I don't know sits with herself every day and reminds herself that she's gonna die there's this app she had that you could get on your phone tells you you're gonna die yeah and I got it I was so excited about it I was like Beth there's this app that tells you it reminds you every day that you're gonna die she's like I have that app I was like okay you know and I don't know um medical daily anxiety mortality doesn't does that count no it doesn't count as a practice it's I don't know is it like you know it can't not make you anxious I feel like but then there's a sensitive it does make you anxious you're somehow doing it wrong so it's like just another Wellness practice for you to feel like [ __ ] about yourself about sort of you know another thing to do get wrong like I'm not doing my death practice right [ __ ] so I don't know I can't remember what part it was some part in the climate change I think the last line of that chapter says something like you know if we can live as best we can and not my you know not mind dying uh you know as best we can then you know then I say my heart feels shaped right you know and I think I mean I think there's uh I mean this is back to the thing about stories there's a kind of um it's really hard to get there I'm not saying I get there but there's this kind of um you know a lot of this book is about like is about uh you know gripping and then like letting go and as it relates to kind of it's kind of like an image of Liberation in certain ways and and it comes up a lot in this kind of I talk a lot about like what happens when you actually start to hold on to like a freedom dream itself with like a with like a grip like you have that kind of idea about that freedom dream and that maybe that too you have to let go of and maybe at times I mean you know one has to let go of One's Own uh desire for freedom and put other people's desire for Freedom you know first like there's a lot of that kind of thinking about letting go and I this is the part I was going to say I'm not there yet but I do think that there's a kind of and again this is can be kind of Buddhist but there's a kind of no big deal in this as a perspective on like on on everything you know that and I don't mean this is a very particular kind of no big deal in this you know it's not a it's a um and I think in the chapter on climate what I'm trying to get at in part is that the big the big dealness which is again the story of like but it's never been like this but this is the catastrophe but this is the end but this is the highest you know this like this is the biggest test you know humans have ever encountered or this is the you know a lot of that like some of these things may be empirically true some of them may not but they all in order to try and use them to Rouse action they also are they also I'm doing this because they're they're also trying they're also means of like um producing anxiety that like holds onto your grip and that I actually think that there's this book that I talk about you know this Timothy Morton book dark ecology um that I write about in that chapter in the way that he kind of imagines learning about the climate crisis as like a series of darknesses like there's a sweet Darkness there's an uncanny Darkness but he kind of has it's like kind of like a Tibetan Book of the Dead Journey Through the darknesses to like to be able to uh really be in a different spot to like think and interact with with the climate crisis and I think that one of those darknesses is the part where you let go like like it's okay like if you know the the Earth is very small like on in the scheme of things you know like this time is very small but it doesn't mean that you're not then return to action on the earth and as he says you know giving up on the dream that the Earth that the world is about to end um you know is so important in fact a real action on Earth depends upon it and I am really again with the Paradox I'm really interested in what that process of letting go maybe of that grip actually might uh like return us to action in a more you know in in a more stable fashion than um then running around in the state of panic and pain you know yeah that's your death practice that's great this book is your death practice um I think we're at the place now where we can have questions from the audience okay great and we didn't talk about um Michelle's book because we're talking about my book yeah I know but if you have any questions for Michelle too and her recent book getting I'm sorry knocking myself up myself up yes exactly and then this book I just reread for this week against Memoirs she's also so good you know and I think you should feel free to ask her questions as well I'm available and the ushers are going to come to you yeah because we're not ignoring your hand yeah and then somebody will like come to you yep all right I got a question um so this is my daughter Lydia Jones he's a writer she's an artist she's a brilliant mine here in Los Angeles it's fantastic um two-page long stories and even I wrote a three and a half one it's awesome about your weekend that's so cool do you write about your own life you make stuff up so we came from this crazy struggle and I told her like people like James Baldwin are Inspirations to me because where we come from and everything but you know as people that come about a skill row people that come up out of the trenches I wanted her to get some insight you know from it's a student named Taylor that invited us down here I wanted her to get insight from a female author that might Inspire her so if you could give her any insight to get inspired from a female perspective I know you quoted James Baldwin but as a [ __ ] from the streets I can be inspired by James Baldwin forever you know what I'm saying but I like to give her some Inspirations from females so if you give her any type of inspiration I would appreciate that 100 really really real stuff man you seem like you are already inspired all you gotta do is just keep that notebook with you and keep writing everywhere you are like it's so cool that you're not like oh I write it you know like you're here in a theater you got your notebook on your lap and you're going the only thing that you need to do to be a writer is just write that's all you need to do you're already a writer you just got to keep it up and it's the best it's the best thing because you can do it at any age it's the cheapest art form you just gotta can always grab a napkin if you need it and write with a pen steal someone's pen off a table no big deal like it's it's so accessible and you clearly get the fire in you so you know you're blessed that's like really great you just gotta just always know that it's really special to be a person who wants to do the things that you're doing thanks for being here just yeah just let's just let it sink in I was already nervous to ask my question but following that has made me very nervous um I'm such a fan and admirer of you both um especially of the daring ways to use Michelle's word Maggie uh but also the logical ways um that you talk about sex and gender in your work and I've really appreciated the discussion of paradoxes here um the juxtapositions of like the Buddhist drive all blames into one but also like systemic issues action um I think like obviously complicating narratives that feel really safe problematizing narratives that feel really safe but also embracing narratives that feel uh really wrong uh is a state that we humans don't really like to be in but it's a state that you both seem to embody so naturally and my question is when you feel yourself sort of like getting too comfortable in an ideology how do you keep yourself uh like clung to paradox that has a really good question that's a really good question I mean I think it's um I think it's uh I think like that to me like that's what research is you know and it's like if I read something I find really convincing I'm excited but then I kind of immediately like well you know I want to find something else really convincing you know and and I just want to say like because I think you know I'm aware of the fact that um you know what you're appreciating you know some people just find like equivocating you know what I mean and I and I'm aware of the fact that my own writing that I always have to be aware uh and I always have to make sure that I write I also have to make sure I write what I want to say and I'm not just like on the other hand on the other hand you know that's not that's not like the end of the process you know and so I think um so I do think that there's a kind of art of that but I definitely feel like uh I definitely feel like I I don't read things in bad faith you know like I don't read people who I think are writing like in bad faith but I will read things that are pretty far afield from what I might naturally like think um and like I mean in the drug chapter I spent a lot of time with this writer Thomas says I mean not like a lot of time but like you know he has a book called the right to drugs he's a Libertarian about drugs and really feels like people should be you know even if it kills them they should be left to do what they want you know kind of like Loosely part of like okay there's kind of like a cross with some of the anti-psychiatry stuff about not not taking people off the streets or different things and you know I think that there's a lot of that that intersects I mean there's a lot of that that just seems like uh some of some moments I'll be reading it and like it feels like it's patently kind of evil you know and there are a lot of moments where I'd be reading it and I'd be like well I think like I really agree with um like or if I think that a lot of this is a very valuable like corrective to some of the kind of plotting like leftist ways that one can get kind of into thinking about just like I mean I think this is also I mean Michelle and I you know like I think recovery stuff also has an interesting relationship to Notions of care and agency and like autonomy of others and and intervention and I think that it doesn't always break down like in the in the ways that people act like those things are going to break down so I don't know so I guess I just try and yeah like in in the in the reading trying things on and and then let and then time I think is an important aspect because I get very swept up in things that I read and then I have to like let them settle for days weeks or months to kind of see if I just got like seduced by it and then what do I really what do I really think about that you know and then and writing for me is the arena whereby I lay out the thought process of like hey I got seduced by this but now I think this right like I like but time is really important in that too you know I don't know if it's because I'm a writer or an American but I feel like this like I'm supposed to know what I think about everything you know I got my opinion you know and there something happened and I think it was around getting sober honestly there was something that happened around that in the process of that where I was like um oh what if I just like don't know how I feel about something like what if I just don't know if it's like right or wrong and that to me is really awesome it's like such a relief you know rather than trying to like you know have a fight in my head about something is just to like let myself like withhold like why do I have to have an opinion about everything you know like I can kind of take it in and see the terrain and accept that it's all there and you know sure think about it it's not about like just being like a goofball about it but you know you don't always have to you know come down really it's like I'm like I'm not a judge like I don't need to your your essaying against Memoir Camp trans you know which I just um just reread I mean and for this you haven't read it what year did you write that piece oh my gosh I think I wrote it in like 2004 right so it's like it's so long ago yeah and yet you know given the you know crackpot [ __ ] that's like raging right now like I was just so impressed in reading it I mean I guess I'll just to say like when I read the essay of Michelle's or something Michelle is so good at um really having a standpoint about this is about like the Michigan Women's you know music festival and Camp trans um kind of cropping up outside of it in protest of its like you know women only uh you know women whatever and whatever they say policies but I think um but whereby I don't come away from the peace feeling like uh like like like she's written um really healthy like respect and understanding into the people who run the Michigan Women's Museum Festival like with almost like everybody that you talk to but it doesn't keep you from like saying what you think right they're still wrong yeah but I just maybe sometimes like you know sometimes you just you do know what you think about something but it's awesome but it's uh but it's but it's an experience like of reading like going through that essay that I think um it's just very different if you just start off being like you know these people are evil and they're wrong like it's just it's just it's it's a very whatever it's she's just really good at it and I actually and she has another essay in there called how not to be a queer douchebag which is also like it takes I think one of the hardest genres which is the kind of like sermon or like speech to the youth or something and yet it is not like doesn't hit you know a wrong note like the whole way through so you know yeah it's hard to do here we go hey hi Michelle T Kim airs here hi come here hi we go way back um so what I always like to find um this is a great conversation by the way of um where were you from birth to age 20 geographically because I think that that forms a lot of it you know like yes there's the parents but I also think where you're brought up has an impact on where you go in your future and things so I'm curious to hear that from both of you age birth yeah I mean I think that that's true and actually I think that when people were first asking me like about this book like where did it come from and I'd have all these like intellectual things like oh where Baldwin and rant had this amazing fight that I thought about the New Yorker blah blah but then I was actually like I kind of also realized like I was born you know right after the Summer of Love in San Francisco which is where I grew up and I went to high school and I hate Ashbury and I was kind of like living like in the literal ruins of like the dream of of a certain kind of Liberation you know like with like skinheads just kicking hippies and Mexican blankets on the you know in front of the you know new Ben and Jerry's in the corner and you know it was just like a real 80s come down you know from from this other era but it and it and it and I didn't know because I was young I didn't know about neoliberalism I didn't know like about what had kind of been wrought economically I didn't know a lot of like the factors going into it but I did know that people really were having a real feeling like we tried something and it's now it's like not good and you know again you know speed was the heavy drug you know it was no psychedelics I mean anyway so I grew up and I grew up there um and then you know but I will also say that by the end of my high school time in San Francisco you know AIDS head or mid early you know aids would hit the city and I talk about in that sex chapter how like people didn't come to do consent workshops or anything everybody who came to my high school you know showed lesions and talked about condoms and it was like it was really heavy but it was but that's where I first also started to um hear gay men talk about sex and got really excited about I mean I quote Amber Hall about saying that she learned as a lesbian from gay men she said as I'm one of my favorite quotes she says I learned from them you know like not to face my taste bad before he tried you know like about like as a sexual practice and I so I was like there was a lot of learning there and then I moved to the east coast I went to college in the east coast and then I moved you know um to New York right after I turned I guess right yeah like two months after I turned 21 and then lived there for in the next many years but I think that those scenes um gave me a lot of sense of both what was not going well but also again with like then when I moved to New York and it was like David manarovich and this whole other scene again very HIV related I was just but I was just so in addition to all the things that were going so terribly I was also getting such a deep education in in in the power of like what one could have or be in a life even in the midst of those circumstances so it's pretty it was pretty you know I I was I felt pretty lucky you are lucky then also it's like where do you go when you're born in San Francisco to New York yeah okay of course yeah totally um I was um I grew up in a city called Chelsea that's outside of Boston it's um it's like a very you know it's very close to Boston but everyone nobody in Chelsea and that I knew growing up would go into Boston because you'd get raped but Chelsea was really violent you know it was just like a very it was very it's a it's a city that has always um had immigrants so you know like my you know grandparents great grandparents were like Irish immigrants and when I was growing up um when my mother was growing up there was Italian immigrants and it's very racist it's like very like I mean the kind of racist that like my grandfather couldn't believe I had an Italian friend like which I was just like the Italians are white people you know it's just like none of it made sense it was very um very wild and it's um yeah I just really think of it as a very sort of like a place where like all of the white people were super resentful of all of the next waves of immigrants who were people of color and it was really tense it was a very tense place to be um and most I want to say about it it pops up in the news sometimes in these really weird ways where like there was like a 60 Minutes episode about it because it became the only city in in the in the nation that wasn't governing itself it like went bankrupt or something and then with covet it was in the news again too because it was like the had the highest um covid numbers in all of Massachusetts and just a little bit of a rough place um you know I I lived there until I was 2021 I I chased a girl to Tucson Arizona who was horrible but thank God because it got me out of Massachusetts um and then my best friend moved to San Francisco and so when the Tucson girl kind of Tanked I just went to San Francisco because I didn't know where else to go I knew there was nothing in Massachusetts so and next thing you know fisting on the Dance Floor true I went from Reading like the horrible Janice Raymond in Arizona to you know Pat califia Patrick califia in San Francisco so we just end up where we're meant to be I like talking into a microphone is what I admire most I always feel like my voice is too loud so it's nice to like I don't know see people I really respect able to do that but it's like a trade thing sorry but um okay I'm probably gonna ask this question in a really messy way but like I have this issue where I will I don't want to call it an issue necessarily but like I'll think about things that I care about a lot and I kind of have this image in my head of like my thoughts as this giant spiral of words that kind of just like eventually end up strangling me because I think about it too much or I think about it to a degree that is just obsessive and compulsive and I guess what I want to know is you both think so deeply about things that I care about a lot that I want to keep thinking about but I don't want to strangle myself so like is there any advice you have about how to balance contemplation versus rumination or if those two things are even like binary opposites do you have any advice about how to not like Crush yourself and do you want to do you want to write them down like is that something that you try like a practice you try and do yeah it usually ends up going poorly like with my head and my hands like oh my God I have to stop but yeah um I mean it's like two questions right like it sounds like one like how do you like take care of your head and then another like how do you write it all out is that true I mean maybe the have you just tried instead of writing about ideas to just write about experiences try that try that and then because you know a lot of writing is like show don't tell you know and a lot of like if you're if it could you could just be Talent you know if you just show yourself in action or you know it could end up um embodying the kind of things that you're that you care about kind of can come through in that way maybe without you even trying that hard you know and for everything else Buddhism I mean it seems like I don't know your mind sounds like an interesting place you know I like this I like this idea of the spirals and like all the things you're doing with your hands I thought was really interesting and I and I think you know everyone thinks really differently you know so it's really like getting to know your own mind you know and I've and I think I mean I will say that the reason why I asked you about writing is that um you know I think a lot of people like I might have like an idea like oh all these big heady thoughts about freedom and then it always turns into just being like and here's the book I wrote like like like it never matches the swirl you know because it has to become you know has to manifest you know and I think but I think the longer you go on as a writer and this is why if you like writing like I would encourage you to do it is that like that moment when you start to try and put the swirling thought into it into language is actually you know a good A friend of mine a writer I respect a lot Wayne custom Baum has talked about it as like the moment that you enter prison like the prison of the sentence like it's syntax like and suddenly the swirl hits like word syntax like and and even though that's like sounds awful to meet prison is actually like now you're in a new problem you know now you're in a new problem and the problem is the sentence the problem is what what how do I get this thing and then what you thought you thought mid-sentence is maybe not what you thought or it's not as interesting or or maybe if you change the verb the thought you know the Kaleidoscope clicks on your thought and so to me you know now I'm not really interested in my swirl of thoughts anymore like I'm really interested in the latter part because I know nothing really happens with my thoughts until I start articulating them you know so I think kind of the faster you can get to that place maybe the less the former might bother you but I'm not sure but that might be my suspicion you know hello hi I'm here um thank you guys for what you've said tonight um I'm I'm very um just excited when I hear both of you speak about the way you've chased life experience and whether it's intentionally or not and very curious because I similarly have you know whether it's through drugs sex art or you know climate and condition um both you know Global and personal um I've sort of chased that experience to find Freedom right to find Liberation and then it's that story you reflect back on oh I'm older was I being liberated oh my God was I told that I wanted that oh was it and it's where you're saying with like a decrystal method and then I'm sober and then it's well was that good actually and so I'm wondering when and how you both recognize those moments of freedom and whether or not you let that be you know fluid and sometimes realize that it was actually the incarceration or it can solidify and stay as moments of Freedom through whatever you know expression it takes form in it's the Paradox again I know I mean so then Cohen again it's so deep though because I mean the end of the drug chapter in this book has a kind of long thing about the way that um you know like the reason why people might say like that that you know an addiction is like you know like a self-diagnosed like disease is because it's really like only something that you can know like there's some kind of intimate relationship with like and as I say like only you know when something um uh you know I say like other you know something that that once really may have delivered Liberation maybe now has soured or now is delivering and it's not like a switch too I mean it's like and I think I actually liked it Michelle when you said earlier what did you say you said something like I don't know you said something that kind of indicated that like a previous experience of drugs or alcohol was like like you were an outlaw or like you've reconsidered like first you were like oh God that was entrapment and they were like oh maybe I was that was red or whatever but that kind of like those self-reflections over like a life to me are like it would be very boring if we decided upon the story right and like if the story that we told ourselves was like you know you know like one day you're like oh I was with that guy and he was a villain and I was with him because I was self-destructive but now I'm better and I choose better you know and it's like and then maybe you know 10 years from now you're like in a more self-forgiving less like you know maniacally healing State and you suddenly realize all these other things that you got that were like not what you like everyone whereas before it was really important to where you were to just see villainy and adjust these self-destruction but like there's not ever one story about it right so it's like I mean I write about in the alcohol chapter about how like with this not like an on off switch that like you know when I moved to New York and I was I by bartended you know and like close up shop at like you know two three in the morning you know having been drinking you know a lot and like walking home alone to my apartment you know staggering whatever you know that like it was really um you know couldn't last forever but but those were like given how fearful I'd been as like a teenager and given like growing up under the shadow of my mother's uh sisters you know sexualized Murder and some other things like that was important for me you know does it mean that um you know it wasn't it wasn't all one thing but you know one can still reject it and say like it's not worth it it doesn't work anymore it's not what I want without necessarily having one read on it you know yeah everything that Maggie just said I mean it just it just really is about being comfortable with the with it being messy with things being not all one thing you know that it's like we we don't have to just like completely condemn it or be like no it was so great you know it's like it's both things like most things in life right also what you describe about looking back and seeing that you were less free than maybe you thought I'm not sure if that's quite what you said but like I mean I write about that a lot in this book because there's something about time that allows us to see the forces that we're pressing down on us in a particular instant that are very difficult to see in the moment and so I think it's actually like a really great way of like forgiving ourselves things because in the moment we can feel very like flush with our agency or whatever and then later on we can be like oh you know like you can call it karma you can call it you know your upbringing you can call it your trauma you can call it whatever you want but all different ways that you you know got shaped made you make a decision at a moment and often it takes like 20 years to understand why you made it and to forgive what the forces were on you which were just weren't clear you know or weren't surmountable you know I always just think that like if if there are parts of my past that feel that weird like why did I do that you know like to me I'm just like oh I've completely lost touch with the person I was at that moment because everything I ever did made sense in that moment right it's just that time moves and you change and I've lost my the the intimacy of connection with that person I was right then and so you just have to kind of for me I'll just sort of shrug at it a little bit you know hi um thank you for being here and I'm wondering when you both knew that you wanted to be writers and what was the journey like from that point to your first book being published oh my God I wanna I want to read to you I'm not gonna do it but I want to read to you the part from against Memoir where you talk Michelle about all the different things you wrote growing up can you just say a couple of them they were so amazing there's so many there I I wrote a lot when I was a kid I I wrote um I I got really inspired by Shel Silverstein and I started writing wacky poetry when I was like in third grade poems like I wrote this like really impassioned poem about like against hunting you know like Hunters are so I'd seen Bambi right and those like Hunters were like I lived in the most urban place I never met a hunter in my life but I was like Hunters are a menace um and then I started like a school newspaper in second grade and I wrote a really great article called um chicken pox or sweeping the second grade and and I also did the jokes column and the cartoons I did almost all of them and then when I was like in fifth grade I started writing screenplays I wrote an episode of um oh gosh I wrote an episode of The Facts of Life in which Joe gets the Go-Go's to perform at the school I wrote that script and then I was writing short stories like inspired by like really lurid headlines like in in Massachusetts there's when I was growing up there were two different newspapers there was like um the Boston Globe which was respectable and then there was the herald American that's like the New York Post you know it's just like trash and that was what my family read so there'd be always like kids getting abused and murdered on the cover and I would just be like write these stories about these abused and murdered children and I wrote one I can't even talk about it it's too much it's too much it's it's fun you guys will laugh and feel bad about laughing and I don't want to do that to you but yeah I wrote I wrote a lot when I was little um and I would like dedicate the stories to like these girls that had been her hurt by their parents oh that was another thing you said you did which I also really shame Faithfully did too which was like you said you were like introductions or afterwards or things to things that you hadn't like like um oh I tried to write like I wrote blurbs for my book right exactly yeah yeah well I didn't know like I remember actually in second grade it was very I was prolific in second grade guys it was very you are oh my God yes it's a very important time you're like getting your voice um when I was in second grade I was like I had gotten chickenpox I was trapped at home and I'm like this is it I'm gonna be really productive I'm gonna write a novel and so I I remember looking at a book and being like okay first you draw the cover right and then like it had been like I don't know like a Judy Bloom book or something it was just like fantastic you know that publishes weekly so I would do that you know incredible you know and then I would write the synopsis on the back and then I go I was stumped I was trying to write an alternative dictionary also of like um that was like humorous where like abundance was a bun dance get it you know yeah lost material yeah but what about you what was your agenda we should move on to another question I think but but let's just say yeah I was just gonna say that it's uh yeah you know similar yeah different titles okay very good okay me too oh no Maggie I went to last night yeah um when did you decide that you wanted to be a teacher and what does motivates you to keep doing when I decide I want to be a teacher you said yeah was there a second part or no and yeah when um what keeps you motivated to keep teaching okay teaching yeah I would say like Michelle and I think it's interesting we have so much in common but I was thinking of me here today but you know I kind of took this like academic swerve that like we don't share necessarily but I you know just but I think that I um I never really decided to be a teacher you know but I just uh pursued higher education you know um and that like I moved to New York and I um did Art and writing and I was very involved in I guess what you would call post-modern dance and performance and um uh but then after a few years I just you know I felt these like critical projects growing in me that I wanted to write like I wanted to you know write like Susan Sante like I wanted to I want and I didn't I was having fun but I could feel this certain part of me like atrophying you know so I went to the City University of New York um I consulted The Gertrude Stein statue in Bryant Park and asked her what I should do and she told me I should do it oh my God I love that I know I don't know if I've ever said that before it's really hokey but I'm just inspired by our intimate connection this evening but um yeah like I just didn't know if Academia was exactly right for me but but CUNY was a good school because I could just take the elevator up and then take it down and be back in my life and knowing that like I bartended with and stuff even really knew like what I did with Mike they were still like sleeping in and I just like in classes or whatever so I got my PhD there and you know and had started teaching like creative writing at different schools in New York because I was a poet then and was publishing poetry books and so I you know inexplicably was being hired to teach poetry um like an mfas which is just wild I was quite young but um but I really liked it and then I and then when I had the you know doctorate degree it just um you know I just wanted to keep teaching but I didn't I did I did a year in a regular English Department and it was not a great fit I was and then I got that's my that was the only year where I got a little worried because I just thought oh this is dodgy like this is dodgy like I don't know and then I um that was on the east coast and then just you know I mean it's not really a chance it was like over determined because of my California past and my interest in art and whatnot but I I was hired to join the school of critical studies at Cal Arts um Cal arts and uh and uh and it seemed like a better match because it was teaching art students uh about things I knew about as a as a writer and scholar and about the overlaps between literature and theory and art making and then I came out here to do that and I taught there for 11 years and wrote a lot of books and had it and it was a great place to be and um learned a lot more about art than I'd done before and and then now I teach at USC's I know it's a longer answer I'm like just babbling but I love teaching and I don't even have to I don't have to try and stay motivated to do it it doesn't like that never has occurred to me you know I just like it I think we only have time for one more question oh God no pressure hi I too escaped from Massachusetts um so you got out I got out you got out kid and I choose a reformed post-modern dancer so it's been amazing you know what everyone keeps making fun of people who majored in like gender queer dance Theory I know I'm like it was so good they don't know what they're missing it's truly clown clown [ __ ] um uh So speaking of teaching I wanted to ask so I'm I'm at UCLA right now I'm getting an MFA and dance LOL oh my God and uh I'm I'm also so I'm I'm co-teaching I'm a TA for this initiative that does uh sex ed work with the undergrads and they make these generative theater productions for high school students and they're great I love them my students are freaking amazing they're all like super queer a lot of them have these like invisible disabilities and they're all like rock stars and they're also all like terrified I can see in their eyes there's this like hunger and there's this um like uncertainty about the world around them but also just about what they're doing around like sex and consent and I think the two of you both have a really great way of talking uh about mentorship like being mentors and I guess I'm wondering like if you were to walk into my class tomorrow I'm not inviting you but like I mean if you like we're crashing like like it's it's Friday at 11 room 208 at wakti um but like if you were to like come into the class and you had maybe 10 minutes to Don't Take 10 minutes right now but like if you were to talk about pleasure to them I guess I'm sure you said pleasure yeah because I think that's a that's a really important component to what to the work we're doing it's also a component that feels really missing from sex ed work um I guess I'm curious how the two of you would talk about pleasure to a bunch of 19 year olds laughs I mean I think that I'm just trying to imagine myself at 19 and what I would have wanted to hear you there you said they are they are [ __ ] they are eat then that sounds good I don't know um but you said they're terrified meaning like they're terrified of doing something wrong or they're terrified mm-hmm I mean in your work specifically not right I mean I think there needs to be a little bit of a safe space to [ __ ] up you know and I think people need to be a little bit Brave and like in touch with their own intention and their own heart and know that if they [ __ ] up that's an opportunity to learn how to be accountable that's an opportunity to have a conversation that's an opportunity to learn how to be an adult in the world we all [ __ ] up you know it's like they're set they're setting themselves up for some some gnarly experiences if the idea is just to be like never to never make a mistake I mean that's just simply not possible you know and I know the stakes can be high when your mistakes are public because you're an artist you're putting stuff out there but um you know I guess I just think about like knowing their own intentions you know and I know that it paves the road to hell I know you know but I I feel like a safe space to [ __ ] up I think is very important you know and if we can offer that to each other I mean also you probably and I can tell just by like the way you're talking I think you're probably already doing it but and like and your palpable love for them you know but like what's that yeah but I think I mean here's the thing it's not I mean it's too much responsibility on a teacher to be like oh you can give that all to them but you but I do think that like modeling a space like where how you respond to um things uh you're forming how they're going to then take your cues and how to respond you know and I think that that um I mean I think about that a lot you know and I think about the way that like often when you're a student you want the professor to like shame the other terrible people in your class like they say something you're like oh yeah now Maggie's really gonna take him down and then I'm sure they're really frustrated but I'm like hmm so does anyone want to say something about what Joey just said and they're like and they're not it's not what they want right but I'm doing it I'm doing it I mean I don't always do that depends on what gets said but you know I'm doing it in part because I want first of all like you know they're whatever they're doing with accountability or like for themselves or with others like you know they're eventually going to need to do together it's not about an authoritarian who's gonna you know give it down from on high so just and then secondly you know they they can work things out better than they think they can if they're given the opportunity to and and like the space to do it you know so I think and if I modeled that kind of shaming they might think it's what they want when in fact it would just perpetuate something terrible you know so there's a lot of I think chaotic feelings there but I mean the stuff about pleasure is really interesting to me I think I want to like talk to you later to know more what you have in mind you know I think pleasure gets like a bad rap in many shapes or forms and I think that um you know I've never been I mean masturbatory to me is a positive adjective you know some people are like this work is really narcissistic and respiratory I'm like sign me up like I don't it just isn't like I'm not I'm like I'm like what I'm like who's like this novel The 600 page historical novel is not is you know less masturbatory than you know my 67-page book about a heartbreak like just spare me you know what I mean like in my opinion you know I'm not I just don't buy it so and I don't think you can make things without pleasuring yourself like I mean and that's why I actually I'm kidding about masturbation but I really mean it because like you you can't I mean really what's the point right and it's not that every it's not every minute of making me a lot of making is a slog but there's like these deeper Pleasures as to why you do it you know um it's not all just compulsion it's also the satisfaction of like the thought well said it's like getting rid of the swirl in your mind and getting it down it's like sharing it with others it's a really weird ugly word next to a really a you know long latinate word you know it's like all these things and I I think um you know your curiosity and your pleasure are like linked and if you don't have your curiosity then why are you going to make anything you know you're not going to make anything so um you know and and and I I don't know I trust you though I think you got this all right I think that that I think we're done but you guys have been great thank you so much [Applause]

Channel: Hammer Museum

Views: 2,095

Keywords: Hammer Museum, Museum, Armand Hammer Museum, Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Museum

Id: dNOFAKYHe-4

Length: 96min 8sec (5768 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 27 2023