Salon@615 with Elizabeth Gilbert

[Music] it's a plush chair it is oh wow yeah you just go right wait all the way back I have a guard you have the cordless oh that's good cuz I'll be singing and dancing uh-huh I have a one thank you that I have two is Lily here who makes borscht I would it was a low good thank you so much thank you to Lily for she said me last night normal people borscht which is she had two kinds one vegetarian and one called normal people I had the normal people one was normal person really important thank you that was amazing I had to personally thank you for that all right hi hi so here we are in Hume Fogg one of my very favorite places to be I love this school and I love this auditorium and I love you I love you and we we have been friends for a really long time and this is how writer friends get to see one another they agreed to interview one another on stage and and then we get to talk the only way we've ever seen each other it's it's days I me think there was once but I think certainly three or four times we've managed to arrange this so that we can spend some time together yeah it's crazy I wanted to start out I actually I have questions that I wrote and I read them over in their act they're great they're really good questions and you wrote them of course they're great I know I'm prepared and award-winning question but I want to tell a story from our day to day because it was particularly fantastic Liz came in last night and we had a whole day together today with our friend Jane Hamilton who is also here and which was even more amazing and we went to UAL to go shopping I only go I went to the Parthenon and UAL two places I only go when I have out of town guests and Liz a pair of shoes they are not their shoes they were equally amazing Christian Dior flats that were about 10% of what they had once cost so they were so beautiful I was licking them in the store and the only problem with these unspeakably beautiful Christian to your shoes is that they didn't fit her and one one of them did one shoe fit fine and the other one caused her exceeding pain and we were in you a off as one is for quite a long time and she was wearing them the whole time and one shoe she kept saying it felt so good and the other one hurt just so much and I said well of course you wouldn't buy them only an idiot would buy shoes that hurt that much and you said I said of course I'm gonna buy them and you said you're in denial about these shoes they don't fit you I said first of all only one needs to fit for the shoes to fit secondly did you see the price and thirdly I'm not in denial they're perfect for me I'm gonna marry them we're gonna have children and they're gonna stop drinking we're gonna be so happy together stop blocking my happiness that's waiting for me with these shoes I thought this is what it means to be a woman you know to think it's not working now no no it's gonna be fine we're gonna work it out we're meant to be together and we'll work it out after I buy them and after we get married we'll fix everything so you wrote Eat Pray Love did you ever read it oh do you know what I just read it I just read it um because it's the 10-year anniversary can you believe that in January yeah and so Riverhead is putting out a 10-year anniversary edition of Eat Pray Love and they asked me to write the introduction I thought I should probably I should probably read it again and do you know I firstly liked it it's a good book it's a good one and although I haven't read it in 10 years the thing that struck struck me about it there were a few things that struck me one how it what an incredibly lucky thing to have been able to do to have spent a year alone traveling what an amazing thing to have been able to do as I was reading along I was like that chick is so lucky oh sorry I know we're in school but I was like and I got suddenly honestly for the first time it's sunken to me the criticism of people of entitlement and that I was like I agree that was a very fortunate human being who got to do that the other thing that I had forgotten was how desperately sad I was at the beginning of that story because that it ended so well that I had sort of erased the deep deep deep sadness from and ten years of happiness will do that will do that will erase that deep sadness this is so interesting to me because I've never read one of my books and I'm wondering have you read your other books and by which I mean you read them 30 times as you're finishing and editing copy editing and but when a book gets to the point where I can't change something I never read it again so happy the first galleys you never know no never I don't think I ever have either I think Eat Pray Love is probably the first book I sat down and I thought I would just skim it but then I got sort of interested in you I wanted to see what happened no I can really see that that's that's fantast you're gonna make out with javonni or not I wanted to know but I have to say and I am a Liz Gilbert completest I've read and really truly loved all of your books and I'm one of the books of yours that I think about the most is pilgrims which is your first book we say that things love that look that is a genius book I think that is I will go so far as to say it is up there with nine stories for me in terms of being a perfect and well-balanced collection and I so often think of a story in that book as if it was a story someone had told me but have you ever read it no I've never read it I mean what year did you publish it 1997 1996 or 7 I think she'd let me to have a 20 year anniversary edition of that book because that would be astonishing to bring that back into the bright light of the list because clamoring for it climber class because you know if we did a 20 year anniversary we could sell another thousand copies of it which should be amazing would double our lifetime sales of pilgrims you look at it differently now maybe it could it could very well be just go ahead so I can ask you these questions okay give us an overview because you guys got the book to come in here so I'm assuming a lot of you haven't read the book yet I'm sure some of you have but just explain briefly what big magic is all about a so big magic is a book that I've been thinking about writing for 12 years and when I say thinking about writing I mean every single day thinking about a book that I wanted to write about creativity I've been living by the principles of that book by an entire life so it really is sort of my central manifesto about creativity which I would say is a combination of extreme magical thinking and tremendous Yankee pragmatism so it's fairy dust and it's garden soil sort of it there's nothing in the middle it's all either way up here or way down there and I think the reason it took me this long to write it is because I feel like I I must have felt that I needed to have a few more books under my belt before I believed I had the legitimacy and the chops to sit down and say here's a way that you should do creativity I think I must have needed to feel I had to prove something more to myself so I wrote three books on the time that I was thinking about writing this book and the other reason I didn't write it was because I couldn't figure out how to how to write it I wasn't sure if it should be a very heavily researched academic treatise most of my books are very heavily researched and so I spent years collecting hundreds of books about every aspect of creativity the neurobiology of creativity in the psychology of creativity in the history of creativity and gender and creativity and creativity and suicide and creativity and alcoholism and creativity and culture and I looked at that heel shelf of books one day and thought if I have to read even one of these books I'm gonna kill myself I can't even I don't care and I'm proud to say there is not a single fact in big magic it is a fact free book so I think you can either say it's completely unresearched or you can say the research has been the 25 years I've been living by the principles that I put forth in this book and then I finally you know what it was is face book it was three for how many people here do I know from my facebook page sweeties I love us on that page I do and it's a really big part of my life and my day sort of talking on that page with with all of you and and you may some of you may remember that two years ago I put him a notice up and I said I'm about to start writing this book on creativity if you are not living a you know any sort of creativity in your life right now tell me why you aren't let me hear all the problems all the obstacles so that I can discuss them all and then many of you wrote very long like legal lists very intricately of all the obstacles and all the problems and all the details and I read every single one of those comments very carefully and honest to god all I saw an invisible link through all the reasons and the obstacles was fear just a huge amount of fear and so that became the central topic of the book let's talk about creativity and fear and how to get around it and through it and over it and under it in order to be able to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you that I can only assume are so okay one thing that you just said you said this is how you should yeah I'm at this book so I can tell you this is how you should live a creative life do you mean that I do not this is how you can or this is one option I talk a lot of smack in there about how hey it's not for you don't worry but I actually mean you should do your she's right I really I really do and that's why I'm not afraid to call it a self-help book because I am it's the first time where I feel like I'm putting myself out there in a way saying I'm gonna speak as an expert about this because it will often come to me with questions that are so above my paygrade that I really can't I mean I want to help and be there but I don't know how to advise people about problems with their children because I'm not a mother and I don't know how to talk about women in the workforce in the corporate world because I've never worked in the corporate world and I'd there's a million things that people bring me that are really serious questions where I just think I don't know but I know you can get through it like that's usually my answer and but if you want to talk about creativity that's a place where I feel very confident to say okay let me tell you what to do and and it's probably the only place I can't even even meditation spirituality people come to me with those questions and I'm like I have the sketchiest lamest meditation practice if I you know I'm not the person to ask go talk to pee Michoud heard about this but this subject I feel like this is what I do and I do it in a way that is very pleasurable and very generative and very enjoy like it's just full of joy and work at the same time so I thought yeah what if I just throw down and say this is how you guys have to do your creativity all of you I mean you might as well say it cuz people either will or won't you know but yeah I kind of secretly wish people would do it this way you not so secretly now that we've said it here in the auditorium so let me instill a little fear in the audience right at the beginning you have a Jack Gilbert quote Jack Gilbert being the poet who has no relation to Liz Gilbert although they had they had spiritual overlap and they almost shared an office so the quote is do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you to which I would say that's a really great point of fear right do you have the do you have the courage to go down to me when I read that quote what I think is the reason if you're afraid you're afraid to go down there to find out that in fact there are not really jewels there there may be some rhinestones or a little lumps of coal or something but what if you spend your life feeling good about yourself because you feel like a really creative person but if you had the courage to sit down and really do the hard work of chipping those jewels out and you find out not so great well you know I like rhinestones and lumps of coal truly I'm really interested in them and if somebody said to me I think it was an NPR interviewer said aren't you afraid that your book is just gonna encourage more talentless people to make more bad art which is a very like I think that is what I'm asked it's what you're asking but you're asking it it and then I in a nicer way a nicer you're asking it a nicer way and I will tell you as a populist which is what I am and as somebody who's interested in people people becoming people in the process of becoming people in the process of search people in the study of themselves people as my guru in India used to say becoming a scientist of their own experience right I think there's nothing more interesting you can do with your life than that so for me coming from that aspect of it my issue with the world is not that there's too much bad art in it my issue with the world is that there are millions and millions and millions of people who aren't making anything at all because they've been told that they don't have anything to say or to share or to do or because they're afraid there's no point in it or because there's afraid that they're afraid that they can't they can't divorce the commercial aspect of it and so they think well I'm never gonna make a living at it so why in the world would I do this what other purpose would you possibly have for making a thing that possibly nobody wants you know those are the issues that I'm much more interested in then I you know this is why I'm not a critic this is why I'm not a teacher even because it's not a comfortable position for to sit around saying this person is talented this person isn't you've got nothing skip it you have something maybe you you know I I would never feel comfortable doing that world has humbled me out of that because if I look back at twenty years ago and the people hi I hung out with there were people who I would have bet the farm on who I thought had everything they had everything they were shining with promise and they did they did nothing and there were people who I dismissed and ignored and was arrogant and almost and probably very rude about who then blew my mind with something that they made that I could never have looked at them and seen was in their I have a friend who like said oh I'm writing novels like you know 20 years ago I won't even say who it is that somebody who's a very now very renowned novelist and when he showed this book to me and all of our friends we thought did he go hiking and find a cabin and there was a dead body and he moved the body and underneath that there was a pie of manuscript he couldn't have possibly so so having seen book really we were like where did he buy this this is a person with no soul this is a person with no imagination who you can do it this way but I want to know will you tell them if I don't want to get out there no I can't I can't cuz I just and I love feminists here but he's tremendous tremendous um and and so having seen that I've heard Erin Strauss the book was chattering yeah okay the book was Chang an egg yeah and many wonderful books to come and I shouldn't say it no soul he just didn't that's gonna go all over the fight he's a friend of mine but I can yeah can we just have a pact can we just be such days here and say what's what happens in Vegas so what I'm saying is I'd the the question to me that is the least interesting in the world is the question of talent for two reasons one is because it can never be objectively measured we will have I have no idea how much writing talent I have there's no way for me to know all I know is that I've devoted myself to this as a craft from a very early age and I've put years and years and years into it what I'm interested in is what are you gonna do what are you gonna do I don't know what's in you I don't know what's in people I can't look at people and decide that you know we sort of them interesting thing for me and the most interesting way that I can go through the world is to assume that everyone's got something fascinating in them and it may not be a Pulitzer Prize winning novel but it's but I I think it's a much more interesting way to go through the world than being like no no okay but I'm not talking about you judging someone or me judging someone I'm talking about self judgment and it's gonna fit into this next question when I was in Provincetown 25 years ago and I went away for seven months and I wrote my first novel and I decided that for one time in my life I was going to do my best work I was gonna go to the wall and I wasn't going to write something and then say well you know if it hadn't been for this guy or if it hadn't been for this job or if it hadn't been for you know whatever it would have been better if I was going to see what I had and and that's the judgment I'm talking about not the judgment of the world but when you look inside yourself and you see coal or you see rhinestones if you make art but you can always say to yourself or you don't make art and you'd say well if I had the time if I had this if I had that it would have been so much better you actually feel a lot better about yourself do you do you well there's the question because I disagree well because it can be painful to sit down and look at yourself and think ah that's not it's not there first of all I don't know a single artist myself included who doesn't at times or at many times look in and see coal right so if that's the criteria by which you should stop working no not or stop working not stop working but I'm just saying it's it's painful I have such a different view of this it's remarkable like we are so on the different side of stage of this because my view of it is so much more in line with the pain of not being a maker and the pain of being the sort of frustration and the I'm gonna say the sort of flatlining of being a just being a witness a bystander consumer to me that's much scarier that's much scarier and brené Brown are we all done with Bernie Brown you know brené Brown and I had a really interesting conversation about this on our podcast on the last podcast I did with her which was she's fabulous on this and I said so what does creativity mean to you this is a woman if you don't know of her who's a sociologist who studies vulnerability shame wholeheartedness resilience and one of the things that she discovered in her data is that creativity is actually like expressing creativity whether you're good at it or bad at it whether it's diamond circle is essential to a wholehearted life and she said she would have never realized that years ago and she said if you had asked me five ten years ago what do I think of creativity I would have said oh that's very cute I don't do a RT I've got a Jo Bay which is you know just how she felt about it she thought it was sort of that's not I have a real life so I don't mess around have fun making your puppets it was basically what her opinion and she said the problem is that all of her research has shown that and yet the line that she is that I love is unused creativity is not benign that your creativity is a sort of life force within you that's part of your human inheritance that 50,000 years of human beings have participated in at some level or another and it's part of something that needs to be it's an engine that needs to be going and if you don't use it for something it doesn't just idle in neutral you know it's it's as I say in here having a creative mind having a human mind is like owning a border collie for a pet you have to give that thing a job to do or else it's gonna find a job to do and the job it finds you won't like and so what I want all I want is to let people let their Border Collie run a little bit and let's see what it is do you think that that's also true for compassion generosity intellectual stimulation unused virtue is not benign yeah yes I would say so unused love is not benign yeah you know we are richly made and filled with remarkable mechanisms and software of a feeling and sensitivity and emotion and I think they need they need some space and if they don't get it there's I mean my lived experience I don't have the data that per day has but it matches my lived experience when I see lives of people sort of they sort of take a gray pallor and there's something and then they can restate it I mean this is my favorite story that I tell in the book is of my friend Susan who took up figure skating when she was in her 40s and you wrote about it I love that story too yes so my friend Susan was a very talented figure skater as a teenager it was her life it was her passion it was her joy and then she was informed one day as very talented young people often are off the ice you'll never be an Olympian you're done by pack up your skates and she got off that what a system first of all so here young person who has devoted your entire life to this thing that you love more than anything else we just realized and did the data that you're never gonna win a gold medal so I guess you're done with this good SIA and 25 years later when she was in her 40s and feeling very and dull and sort of just uninspired she did a big soul search and asked herself when the last time she had felt really alive was really kind of in touch and invigorated and creative and to her horror she realized that hadn't been since she was 14 or 15 years old and she was bigger skating so she went and got some skates and found a rink and hired a coach and three mornings a week before her demanding day job began she would go and skate and she didn't sell her house didn't quit her job didn't get divorced didn't move to Toronto and didn't win a World Championship she just gave herself back this thing that was the most efficient engine for her to feel a certain way that she couldn't seem to feel any other way and what I don't tell on the story is everything else that opened up in her life after that after that then she was like this job sucks I need a better job and so she got a better job not in figure skating just in the field that she was in and publishers in San Francisco no no no this is an editor who I used to work with at GQ she's like I'm tired of sitting in my pajamas eating cereal out of the box in front of the TV every night I'm gonna start dating she met her husband she said I've lived in this apartment since the year I graduated from college I'm a 45 year old woman I deserve a better place with some Sun and I could afford it all of this came from the figure skating right so that's what I'm talking about about it doesn't have to be and look she was the only middle-aged woman on the ice with a bunch of feathery nine-year-old girls flying around her and she was like I don't care I don't care I just want to be here because I can't feel this way any other way that's what I'm interested all right but but a big problem if you read to the end of the index card [Music] is that in writing right I'm always trying to tell people it is so beyond okay beautiful wonderful important you right because you love it you don't need to publish you don't need to make money you right because you can't help but write you love to write it improves your life but the desire to monetize the art and I will only speak for writing but I'm sure it's true all over the place completely squashes the art in so many cases with so many people when they say I would like to do what you do they're talking more about the living delight we're now I want your capture I want your career not sure art and what I love about the story of Susan is that is removed I don't care how good you are if you are 40 years old you are not ever going to be an Olympian doesn't make any difference Diana Nyad has really thrown a curve in this whole thing for me but you know it's channel swimming for most of us is not going to be competitive at this point how can we get that across to people well what I always do I mean look you can't take people's Hope away from them and you can't take people's dreams away from them in your I mean I think I try to see as realistic as I possibly can be in this book and talk about please don't please don't Bank on you know please don't Bank on this please don't Bank on that please don't go into debt to become an artist that's the number one rule that I have whenever anybody asks me for creative advice first of all please don't go into debt for a lot of things but mostly please do not go into debt to become an artist it's not fair to you or to your art or to your creativity don't do that there's no need to do that so I mean we can speak as rationally as we can to people the only thing I can do when I talk to people is to ask them and here I'm gonna go back up into sort of the magical thinking that's at the basis of so much of how I operate because it's what I have to tell myself is it's perfectly okay to have an ego we all have one the definition of your ego is it's a bottomless hole of desire it can never be satisfied with anything your ego is the thing that will sell 20 million records and wonder why it wasn't 30 million right and if and and that's it can't be set can be satisfied for moments but it can't be eternally satisfied no matter what your ego gets there's gonna be another level where it wants more it wants five of them it wants them in blue that wants it tomorrow morning you know that's the definite we all have this at some level in ourselves so I had a letter on Facebook the other day from a young woman who said I don't think it's fair for anybody to tell me that I shouldn't want to be a successful actress I'm going to acting school and I want to be a successful actress and I said that's of course you want to be a successful actress I wanted to be a successful writer when I was your age I wanted to be published if I didn't want to be published I wouldn't bother try to get published I would have just written in my bedroom and put it under my desk had been fine but I wanted it to be seen it's fine but make sure you have if not a stir if you're not capable of having a stronger motive than that make sure you at least have an additional one make sure you have an additional one and let that additional one be something that has more to do with your soul than your ego because you are also a soul and your soul wants a bunch of different stuff than your ego wants your soul wants wonder it wants becoming it wants unfolding it wants process it wants connection it wants some sort of sense of meaning those are the things your soul wants and I have this lecture with myself all the time so that when I get a bad review and I'm miffed about it and I feel like I've been misunderstood or worse understood and revealed in a way that I don't want to be I can see this difference where I can check in with my ego and my egos wounded it doesn't like it I would like everybody to like everything I do it hurts I still don't like it after all these years and I'll be like I would shut don't that didn't feel good I didn't want that and then I check in with my soul and say how you do and in my souls like we're fine can we play more can we make another thing I just want to make another thing let's do it again let's do another one let's do it differently let's try this and that's you know I can never totally circumvent my ego but as long as I'm making sure to constantly check in with a richer and more interesting part of myself then I feel like I'm alright and that's the only thing I can never tell people and they will or will not hear it they will or will not hear it but that's what I've got to offer um something horrifying that happened to me four years ago on a stage in Australia doing a panel the moderator asked me what I thought about my brand did I ever tell you the story now what did I think about my brand how did I cultivate and market my brand it was a moment that changed my life in a terrible way because until then I never knew that I had a brand I had no idea like I never knew that that word could be applied to me I mean I guess I thought Taylor Swift has a brand but probably everybody under her were brand 'less so you did you can ask you how you answered it what did you do in that moment I mean I show you I burst into tears and run off the stage I said I have no I really I was like I'm sorry I'm gonna have to go into therapy for years before I can answer this question I don't know it really shook me up it really really shook me up and it's sort of like a nasty thing that's been in my head because people will ask me to do things when I interviewed Shirley MacLaine at TPAC a few months ago and I actually came off the stage thinking that probably wasn't good for my brand and I hate having that thought but your brand is enormous and and in in I don't want to say it's in conflict with itself but you are doing very different things I understand how they're all connected but your of you're a brilliant fiction writer you your novels your short stories your you are tops and there are a lot of people who would say writing self-help even writing Eat Pray Love I mean is somebody who owns a bookstore the people who don't like Eat Pray Love when I would say oh you know signature of all things this is the book that you would love and they would say oh no no I'm gonna read her I don't like Eat Pray Love I said did you read Eat Pray Love no I didn't no no I didn't eat I'm your brand takes you up there are people who are going to read signature of all things because they loved Ypres love and your brand crashes you to the ground and now on top of it you've got this third thing which is an enormous social media presence which is a different kind of brand go for it there's a question in their signature I can assure you I hear you um and I'm having the time of my life I'm having the time of my life and the thank you here's the thing about what happened with Eat Pray Love a bunch of stuff happened because of Eat Pray Love I messed with my brand what I had of won by even writing that book because prior to that oh that's that I mean I was not a well-known I was not a well-known writer but if I was known at all I was known for a very certain kind of thing I was known as a woman who wrote very sympathetically about men I wrote I mean my two of my first three books had the word men in the title which says a lot about my 20s first of all but you know I was I was writing for GQ I was writing for spin if you haven't read last American man it's genius I mean honest to god that is a genius book um and I kind of blew that up I knew that I was blowing that up to go and write a memoir about a woman's journey I just knew that that was it and I felt I had no choice I just thought well sorry everybody and this is literally what I was thinking as I was writing I was like sorry everybody and by everybody I meant like 5000 people but sorry everybody we may be done here and you may never take me back again but this is a book I really need to and want to write so no one's gonna like it but here it is so it didn't feel like a safe gambit to write that book it felt like I was and I quit my job at GQ to go and do that I lost all my credibility as a literary figure I mean it felt like a big risk so obviously turned out great we all so to a couple things happened one is to be very frank that book made me incredibly wealthy to the point that I can do whatever the I want for the rest of my life and and so and so I will because the other thing it did is that it made everyone decide some stuff about me and the great thing about that is that that's in concrete essentially so once enough people have decided what you are you are totally free because there's nothing you can do to alter their opinion of you it's such an enormous waste of time anyway but they're finished they already decide they're done you're there it's done they're done with you so do whatever you want do whatever you want and that's and that feels those two things feel so liberating and don't think I am not aware that first of all no woman in the history of my family has ever been independently wealthy to know very few female artists and creators have ever had that kind of freedom and don't think I'm gonna waste that by not taking doing whatever I want and taking whatever risks and do you think I think it's so great to write a self-help book right now right after signature of all things was just beginning they were just beginning to take me back you know they were just beginning to take me back and I can't they're now they're like oh my god and now that and now basically a book that's a that's a Facebook post you know like and I was like yeah that's what I want to do right now and next and so I have this so my brand is my bread there's a level at which your brand is decided is put upon you by other people you're not I mean unless you're a superb marketing genius essentially your brand is what the public decides you are and then just do whatever you want anyway you know I mean I have such freedom I have such freedom and I don't want it I mean I'm not kidding when I say I mean the reason I wrote the signature of all things is because I thought there aren't a lot of women writers who have the time and the resources to spend four years writing a book about a 19th century virgin who spends their life studying moss and can afford to go to Tahiti and do this I mean I can do this so I'm gonna do this and people can come along with me or not but I'm having a ball so much respect for you for that but it's a it is a bold thing I had so many people tell me in the business who loves signature you would have won a Pulitzer if it hadn't been free Pray Love I don't need no I know you don't I absolutely know you are not managing your brand know the way the world no wouldn't manage and I'll tell you if I started managing it that way I think it would go very badly I had a conversation with the performance artist Sarah Jones recently and she said the greatest thing that I've now been stealing and saying everywhere but she said at the moment of the beginning of creation for her not the beginning of creation how whenever you think that may have occurred fill in the blank years ago four thousand years ago when the island but what she's talking about her own creation right and she said she said there's a highway that I need to get on when I'm inspired and excited about something and the minute I start thinking can my agent sell this will people like it does this reflect my brand will my audience come along with me she said at that moment of the initiation of the creative journey the second I have any of those thoughts I have taken such a bad detour off that highway and I'm gonna end up in a neighborhood and this is where she said where they're gonna beat me robbed me and take the hubcaps off my car that is where I'm gonna end up immediately after getting off the highway that I needed to be on right and and I believe that enormous ly to be true you know this is not the same thing but it's sort of similar I really believe in writing literary fiction you have total freedom total total fruit no one's looking because you know when I the book that I wrote after bel canto and I remember going out on tour and people saying weren't you so terrified to write another book after a book that was really popular and I was like nobody reads these things you know I mean honestly even if it's 12 million people in in the scope of the world it's kind of like you know and then it's it's over we're not curing cancer we're not working working out the malaria problem and so I always sit down and feel like oh my gosh I can say whatever I want I can hide in plain sight and we're not even you know I met Karen slaughter who writes mystery novels when I was in Amsterdam on a book tour that woman has sold something like a hundred and sixty million books in her life the wind big kid the wimpy kid guy a hundred and fifty million Captain Underpants eighty million books I mean you know we actually just let you peanut butter on toast you and I accidentally had a hit within the very small literary world and then there's all this thing around that right we're so small scale compared to what and that's Captain Underpants very we are very small Scott I mean to me all a lot of this comers say not our conversation but the sort of conversation around literary fiction reminds me of Kissinger is lying about his answer when somebody said why is academia why is the world of academia so vicious and he said because the stakes are so small you know I mean I don't and I don't I truly don't I truly don't care about a legacy because I won't be around to enjoy it I did you know I my life at this very moment but when I'm dead what possible benefit am I gonna have from having any kind of legacy dead doesn't help me I want to do stuff now and I want to do this stuff that makes you know there's that wonderful Japanese word icky goo is that your reason to get up in the morning it's so flattering that you're looking at that I'm like it's the reason that you wake up and go what do we get to do today what do we get to do today what are you scared of now same thing I've always been scared of confrontation emotional confrontation with people I care about that is the biggest remains the biggest fear of my life and I'm getting so much better at it but it's still very scary for me and it doesn't have anything to do with creativity or what we're talking about on stage here but there are certain conversations that are so almost impossible for me to have that it's easier for me to move to another country and never see that person again than it is to pick up the phone and say that really hurt my feelings Wow it's very hard so but I'm but I'm I'm getting there I don't want to go to my grave with that I want to kind of I want to be process you know working on that my whole life we'll talk about that in the car later now I'm terrified is there anything that you're scared to do creatively well no I mean this this is in the list somewhere but I think about the whole hunter-gatherer thing and I think you are 100% hunter and I am 100% gatherer one of the reasons that I really think that we do this so well together is we are very good friends and we arrive at the same destination and our planes come in from the completely different sides of the airport and and yet I think we have a lot of respect for each other we meet in the airport lounge we meet in the airport lounge I have so much respect for your hunter quality both in how you live your life that you will go anywhere with a backpack not having any clue where you're going and what the conversation that we were having this afternoon about the hiking and and bringing your father along on these incredibly long hikes and not knowing how long they were and trudging in and I just think god I could never do that and and that sort of I mean I wouldn't want to I I mean I always say my idea of taking a real risk is reading Proust in the straight back chair I I am I am a gatherer I will get your nuts and berries and put them in a basket and bring them back to the heart but it's also in your work so you're always putting yourself out there you are always on the journey you are the hero's journey and it is any of that scary for you yeah all of it is scary all of it is scary well is that true is it all scary I know it's not it's it's more it's not scary for you it's more you know it's more here's the thing I feel like I'm uh I don't feel particularly physically courageous you told me in the car today that your goal was to walk for a year yeah but that's walking on not gonna surf I'm not gonna go skiing I'm sure that you know be home and you're gonna wear the same pair of underwear every day and you're gonna just I do that even when at home and yes but yeah anyway I here's the thing my view of myself is I thank you for calling me a hunter because that makes me feel like a sexy cougar so thank you but I you know that is not actually how I proceed myself because I think I still have a sort of chaya vision of myself as a child I was always very timid and very fearful and I feel like inside I still feel it that way often here's what I feel like my saving graces is that as scared as I am and as tremulous as I often feel in the world I'm just 1% more curious than I am afraid that's beautiful I have to be 1% more curious than afraid to do the thing and so the curiosity just outweighs the fear well you know I have something all my life the risk to pleasure ratio what I really worked out when I lived in Montana and every night on the local news there would be new and interesting way that citizens died in Missoula you know they they did their hang-glide and caught the downdraft a cougar ate them in the parking lot whatever and I would always think no I mean there there is the risk and almost never outweighs the pleasure for me that I think I would get more out of bungee jumping then I might get when the cord breaks and I I hit the bottom of the gulch but you you creatively bungee jump and you as a gatherer yes I I create of Li no but I love what you're saying about curiosity and that's I think you know and I talk a lot in this book about you know another one of my guiding principles is curiosity / passion because I think another way that people end up getting left out of creative life is that they're constantly being told to follow their passions and I always feel terrible for graduates sitting in audiences where people tell them to follow their passion and they're like what that is if I have one or and what direction did it go in how could I follow it or people who are sort of struggling on their own path at any age and people will just sort of blithely say well you know just follow your passion move in that voice and I feel like it's sitting I feel like it's a it's sometimes a very cruel piece of advice and sometimes and usually not very helpful because the deal is this if you have a central burning passion odds are ten to one you're already following it that's kind of a definition of passion you do that's what it means to have one as you're doing it if you don't have one and somebody tells you to go find one they're constantly sending you back to look in your purse for the car keys that you have said for twenty years are not in the purse and they're just like yeah but did you look in the little side pocket and the purse god have we ever done this before that's one of my favorite metaphors really I use that all the time the keys are in the drawer no they're not go back and look again what really I didn't know look it's big magic and and so for me I just feel like and we live in a passion fetishizing culture and I think sometimes when people keep hearing that and then they keep saying yeah but I don't have that thing then they think well I must not be special or matter or maybe I'm just not supposed to be a thing maybe I'm just not a thing whatever a thing is I guess I'm not one and and I feel like the more interesting life is the curiosity driven life the passion driven life is all about sort of big signs and dramatic gestures and shaving your head and getting divorced and moving to Nepal and opening an orphanage which most of us don't need to do this week and the curiosity driven life is the breadcrumb the trail of breadcrumbs which you know is available daily in a way that passion is and I think of myself as a very passion driven person but I can't access my passion every single day but I can access my curiosity every single day I mean only when I was in the most savage jaws of deepest depression did that die but even then I there was still a little amber of something that was even curious about how are we going to get out of this depression you know do you know it's really funny I can I think of that in terms of I can access my work ethic every single day yeah which is just again coming at it from a different place I don't think about curiosity I don't think about creativity I can excess your discipline every day I can access my discipline every day I can get myself there and trust that if I sit down and sit there long enough sooner or later it may not be today it will come what did David Carr say you can type until it turns to writing I actually I would buy that I really would tell me about Oprah and going out on tour with her and how that experience influenced this book as I think it must have you know I'll tell you to drop a name I was talking to Oprah one day I tell the story about the gym I just I love that story so so much oh um she's incredible she's she's extraordinary and I will leave a room if someone says a bad thing about her I think that my loyalty to her and my respect for her is incredible and I've always had that respect for her but having spent some time around her now that has returned to reference because she is really really extraordinary the gym story is that I was in Seattle on book tour for signature of all things and I had a time zone thing so I woke up early because I was I'm on the East Coast time but I was on the west coast so my husband who never gets up early and who never travels with me was with me and we did a thing we have never done before or will ever do again in our life which was go to a gym at 6:30 in the morning even though you were so wild yeah I can how are you gonna beat that though we walk into the gym at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seattle and we do 10 minutes of exercise which is about what we do when we go to the gym and we're wrapping it up a good we're a minute nine and we're like we're good we're good it's six let's go to the breakfast buffet now right and and in walks Oprah Gayle Winfrey with her bodyguard 6:45 it's no 6:45 crazy and I and I you knew her because you'd been on her show yeah on our show twice at that point that was all the interaction that we had had and but it was long ago and a million and a half people have been on her show and she and she saw Josie and sort of smiled politely at him and my husband his real name's not Felipe by the way and then I saw her and I said Oprah it's Liz Gilbert and she said how are you and I said I'm the one who wrote I was like I felt like I had to give her she said I need it I know who you are Liz and and then immediately Josie and I started backing out of the room bowing like you would do with the Queen just and I just kept saying I don't want to take your time I don't I know you have no privacy and it's beautiful to see you and she looked at Josie and said and you're the Brazilian husband I've been hearing so much she knows everything about everybody she's amazing um well and then she said that I she got the bookstore to order more of your books she said I was in the bookstore in Santa Barbara and they were out of signature of all things so I told him to order more I was like thanks mom that's what my mom does gee I wonder if they did it ah she's extraordinary um you know I going on that tour so she did then did this tour and invited me and we are magical thinking about that is that she remembered me from the gym and was like I came it came very shortly thereafter and I think and my husband's theory is she saw how much you fast you ran out of a room to leave her alone and she thought I could probably spend six weeks with her and she's not gonna be a problem she's not gonna bother me because I just don't want to bother I didn't have certain rules around her and one is that I will never ask her for anything any others I will never hand her anything because people spend eternity putting things in her hands that is their dream this is my can you read will you support can you you know and I just won't but I will tell you the moment that where I saw why she's Oprah Winfrey and nobody else's please and it was in Newark New Jersey at this event so this was this huge tour she did with iyanla Vanzant and Deepak Chopra and Rob Bell and me and her and um these stadiums it was giant ginormous thing and she's at this stadium tour in Newark New Jersey and there she's there's a young woman in the audience who I would like to put the spotlight on for a minute and she said this is I can't remember her name but let's say this is Natalie Natalie's here with her family Natalie is 14 years old and she's a guest of the make-a-wish Foundation so you know you don't know what but you know we all know what the make-a-wish Foundation is and we all know that there's something very horrible happening to this girl into this family and so she this bright beautiful girl stands up in waves and in Oprah said hey got to meet her backstage and she's so terrific and vivacious and she loves music and just gives her this moment that is so fantastic and her parents are standing behind her crying and it's beautiful great that's terrific a lot of people could do that and then she says and there's somebody else I'd like to introduce you to who is also a remarkable young woman who I met backstage Natalie's little sister Tiffany can you stand up the nine-year-old who's the little sister of the dying girl and has been probably four years and no one sees and she said can you can you stand up I got to talk to Tiffany backstage she loves horses she's really good at math she wants to be a scientist when she grows up she's a fascinating young woman I think she's gonna be a tremendous she reminds me of me when I was at her age she loves to read and she just put the light on the person that nobody else sees and pays attention to because she has this 360 degree vision of empathy and I was like that's why you're that that's what you do that nobody else would do and totally self-generated things so she's amazing so did did that tour have an effect on this book you know what it did in that I told her I mean I've only had one personal conversation in my life with her and it was at one point in that tour and we were talking and she said what are you working on and I told her I was working on this book about creativity and she said is it just a book for writers or is it going to be a book that's useful for all people and at that point it was just a book for writers and I was like and I said oh it's gonna be a book that's useful for all people so yeah she influenced it enormously okay we've been talking for an hour so we have to you know we have you look above the exit sign up there there's a glowy clock so we have to make some decisions [Laughter] okay and we're gonna take a couple of questions from the young here's my rule do you wait I have rules okay cool whoops no such hard asses about this do you want to do yours and I'll do mine or which way here's what you don't do you don't get up and say it's not so much a question as it is a speech it's not so much a question as it is a weird assault it is not so much a question as it is a plea for you to read my manuscript so don't do any of those things just if you have an actual question that is a real question we will hear your question that is my rule mine's very similar I say if you're the crazy person in the audience realized realize that about yourself and just hold yourself in your seat I'm so stealing that one an okay one one very brief non sequitur I I interviewed Sally man actually both in Nashville but also it's Symphony space in New York the day her book hold still came out which is a fabulous book Sally man wrote a memoir about her career she's a photographer and if that name sounds familiar it's because she took those amazing naked pictures of her children that really rocked the world in the 80s and so I said this you know if you're the crazy person just just hold on really tight and wait in your chair till we leave the theater and everybody was great they were so great and the questions were so smart and then at some point this guy stands up and he's crazy guy and he's standing up and he's going on and on about you know Sally's been persecuted all these years and nobody's ever given her the chance to say that she loves her children and he's going on and on and he's so crazy and we're up on stage and she leans over and she says to me not on the mic she goes it's my brother and I said to her out him immediately and so she goes it's my brother Bob you can sit down him and I said who guessed crazy guy is actually Sally man's brother it was really she said to me later you know my daughter Virginia said the just the craziest thing to me after that event she said that you said who would have guessed that crazy guy was Sally man's brother you didn't say that who would have said something like that I said Virginia what a horrible thing and he was crazy you know like he really was so with all of that luggage behind you who has a very succinct and specific that smacks you just you've got sanity written all over you yellow scarf yes just shouted us I'm a psycho magnet so I'm not gonna pick the person thank you so much let me repeat the question a bit but it's when you're the questions about something for me pray love when you're in the jaws of depression and you're really in the darkness and the 1% of curiosity seems so far away how do you push yourself through that here's the crazy in the end I started to think of it as this really weird almost physical challenge because I thought this is really interesting at the moment in your life where you feel the weakest and the most depleted and the most defeated you have to summon the most strength that's insane what a weird product what a weird system that is for how we transcend and yet again and again and again when you speak to people who've been all the way down and come up but they'll still talk of that being the truth and the reality of what it means that somehow you have to find when you have no strength you have to find more strength than you'd ever needed in your entire life it's tremendously ironic it's also really interesting as a sort of psychological and almost physical challenge and so what I would do is I started this thing where I would wake up in the morning and I usually woke up I had a some of you who have depression and anxiety may know the 4:30 in the morning wake up where you wake up in the gasping darkness and it's too late to take a sleeping pill it's too early to get up and you're just being eaten by your thoughts and it's awful it's the worst and I would do a kind of cat scan on myself so you know when you go and get a cat scan what you're looking for is the one spot right is that what a cat scans and radiology or x-rays are chest x-rays you're looking for the one dark spot which is the pathology so when you're in severe depression your whole body is pathology your whole life feels like a pathology and you do this reverse cat scan where you're looking for the cluster of five cells of light you know that's what the challenge is and so every morning when I would lay there I would and it was a job to try to find the tumor of light right that was growing in a completely pathologized life and then think what can I give that what can I feed that I'm gonna call it a tumor because I'm just doing this reverse metaphor but what can I feed that today so that tomorrow it's like eight cells and the next day it's ten and the next day it's twenty because you can't push darkness out you can only grow light you can only grow light so you have to find whatever and and the thing would be different every day sometimes it would be call somebody who you really care about give something to someone practice some generosity today who can you give something to just to feel like you have something to offer right who can you look in on who how can you exercise in a way that makes you feel some vitality again what can you read that's inspiring how about not listening to Leonard Cohen you know how about maybe not watching Verner Hertzog movies how about doings how about crossing the street to walk in the sunlight deliberately how about choice after choice after choice seeing what you can feed that's a nutrient to get that light to grow and for me a big one was starting to study Italian which is where Eat Pray Love really began so I just thought I need to replace some language all the language in my head is so disruptive and so dark right now so I need to put a new language in my head that has no bad memories so I literally have to learn a new language and I went to like adult school for divorce ladies and started taking an Italian class so that I could literally have new words that didn't have any dark association so all of that is about does that make sense um it's it's the biggest challenge of your life it just seems so very helpless but but everyone who had ever been through it said the same thing like well here's the game you have to find all the strength in the world when you have a nun go WOW intense it's beautiful I want to get somebody over here because I haven't been facing away the whole time yes well I think the question is about changing conversations about creativity in the arts you know I think we're living in an at-sea moment and I'm so glad I'm so glad that we are because that sort of exemplifies everything that I believe in and stand for felting what's that Phil a lot of felting a lot of felting going on a lot of coloring books it's a big change in the cultural conversation around the arts you know I I got to tell you I one thing I'm really terrible about is huge social questions because I don't tend to see the world that way I'm not good at that my record so far in life for solving huge social issues is zero I'm much better kind of in like the questions of the individual than I am at the questions of the culture because I feel like the culture gets so big I don't know how to deal with it but what about committed right I take that back I'm so good at writing that is a big cultural question isn't it it really and and in a worldview cultural question that what she was asking about creativity is what you did with marriage and committed which is another book that I really love and if you're if you know anyone who's thinking about getting married give them that book because it's such an incredible thoughtful look at marriage all over the world he said look you did it I needed to write that book because I needed to figure that stuff out and there are books that you know they're books that you want to write and they're books that you need to write and that was when I needed to write because I the only way I could change my thinking about marriage was to learn everything about it and then find a pathway to make myself feel comfortable with okay so you can you answer that question I don't know if I can I don't know if I have an answer I mean I it's hard for me to say I don't know cuz that's a hard thing for me to say about it but the truth is I don't know that I have a big vision on that but thank you for thank you for asking how's the balcony all the way in the very back grow yes you have such a strong authentic voice how did you find it that's a good question thank you I'm I'm tempted to say by trying out a bunch of others first right the the wonderful psychoanalyst Adam Phillips says that sometimes the only way we can learn I mean that this is for me this is how I've learned everything in my life sometimes the only way we can learn boundaries is to practice excess to see where the boundaries are because otherwise you just don't know and so I think it's almost the same way for me with like that's certainly been the case for me with most of the lessons that I've learned in my life is that I was only able to learn them by going over the boundary of what was too much and then being like oh I guess that's where the line is oh that hurt and heard a bunch of other people back it up you know um and I think with my voice it's a little bit the same practicing I mean certainly in my 20s I was trying to write like everybody I was trying to write like Annie Pru for so long most of the stories and pilgrims I think sound like Annie Pru I don't think well not for lack of that's only because I wasn't doing a very good Annie Pru imitation but I was trying to I congratulate you and loves Annie proves writing you can see I I think I just tried a bunch of other voices and and then through that and ultimately I don't know how did I get a strong authentic voice I think it's actually Dee I really I mean no joke I think it's like being tall it's like being blonde it's like it's who you are I'm tall blonde strong and authentic I don't know I mean I think I had to I think I played I played around with Ali you didn't know me in my twenties I played around with a lot of different identities we were at the store today and there was a jacket that I said there was a period of my life when I would have worn that like there's a bit something I was going to be trying to pretend to be so I think I had to pretend to be a bunch of stuff until I found my way to my real self and I don't advise that if you can do it another way do it another way but unfortunately that's the only way I I was ever able to figure it out and I just made eye contact with you so yes can I can I jump in here because this is a question that I have in my lap talk about the Melville letter to Hawthorne that was so helpful to me to read that okay um I will and I will go and repeat her question I will also say I think you can value your work without jeopardizing your life I valued my work through my entire 20s and I never put myself in financial jeopardy over my work when I talk about not quitting your job I'm talking at the most real level about not putting yourself in a situation where you're going to be in trouble and I have full faith in your resourcefulness as an adult that you can do both of those things at the same time and at the same time that I was working three jobs to pay the bills because I needed a roof and I needed and I needed there's a I can't worry about I grew up in a family where like taking care of yourself was so valued and it was so driven into me that if I worry start worrying about how I'm gonna look after myself or where the money is going to come from next month that's the only thing I can think about so I needed to set myself up so that I was didn't have to worry about that so I needed to become my own patron right I needed to become my own sugar daddy my own studio wife my own grant writer you know and the way I did that was foot bartending and waiting tables and working in a bookstore and selling things in a flea market and doing journalism when I could get the work and all of that never did that devalue the work because the work came before all of that even the work was setting the alarm an hour earlier the way I valued my work was getting up an hour earlier and before I did any of those other jobs doing my writing so I could go tired to my bookstore job but I wasn't gonna go tired to my writing valuing the work man every single week sending out another short story to another magazine another request another time valuing the work meant knocking on doors at magazines and saying I'm really good writer you should hire me I should have a job here all of that could be done at the same time as making sure that I didn't go under do you understand what I mean so I don't see them as being in fact I actually think that there's a tremendous honor that you come into an sort of bone building that you come into by supporting yourself that will make you stronger as an artist that will make you more powerful and more confident as an artist so do both the answer is yes both if that makes sense and and also think of it as being in love if you have three jobs and you are in love with somebody you are gonna see that person you're gonna find those minutes and it's never gonna feel like a burden and you're never gonna quit your job so you have more time to spend with your lover everybody understands that that's craziness but again you have to go to the excess to find the boundary but you're absolutely right and no one who is ever having an affair had their lover who they haven't seen in a week call and say I'm in town I have an hour and they said I'm a little busy like when you're when you're in love you you make you find that hour you make it the Melville story is a letter that Melville wrote to Hawthorne they were pen pals not unlike Austin and he it's this heartbreaking letter where he just said I am pulled hither and thither by circumstance he just this lot in the whole I only put a piece of it in big magic but there's a whole long letter where he just is laying out all his burdens all his responsibilities all his troubles everybody wants a piece of him he has no time and he said I'm longing for the cool summer green grass uninterrupted days in which a man should compose and I put this in big magic to say this is the desire that never goes away I don't know a single artist no matter how successful they are who doesn't long for this Eid anak dream of some sort of utopian thing that's gonna happen someday we're all the obstacles and all the responsibilities are gonna be removed and you're just gonna be given this eternity of slow languid warm summer green grass growing days in which to focus completely on creativity no one ever gets that no one ever gets that Melville never got it and he wrote Moby Dick anyway he wrote it anyway he did it the way we write our books I wrote today I had 20 minutes before I met you here and I worked on my matte novel and I'm one book to her and that's how much time I had and it's not ideal it's not this is not an ideal circumstance and which to be working on a novel you could have left you al a little early no I I had obligations Liz Gilbert why don't you tell us why you won't be having a signing line tonight okay so here's the situation you guys my book tour began in the middle of September in New York City and it ends in the middle of December in Germany and along the way I'm going to six countries and I don't even know how many cities I haven't had the stomach to look at the number of them and I'm not and this is something I want to do and it's something I particularly want to do with this book because I feel like if you write a manifesto then you should bring your manifesto into the world right you should go out there and sort of like stand tall for your manifesto and I want to bring this book to as many audiences as I possibly can but as I was planning this tour and looking at what the demands of that tour was going to be I realized that the only way I was going to be able to do that and get through it without getting sick and you and I know about getting sick on book tour it happens usually every book to her for us is usually by the third day was to be very real and honest with myself about the limits of my energies and my capacities what I can physically and emotionally do when I'm going from airplane to airplane in city to city in hotel in hotel and venue to venue and so I decided that for the first time I've been on tour for books for to over 20 years now and this is the first tour where I'm not going to be doing a book signing line and we won't be doing selfies and I won't be meeting you face to face and this was a really hard decision for me to make because I know that some of you come great distances and there's things that you want to say and there's a moment that you want to have and so the two things that I want to do now one of them is to formally explain why I'm not doing it which I just did and to ask your forgiveness for it and and I hope that you'll understand and not throw bottles at me and the second thing is that I want to close with this idea and take take you out on this because I'm 46 years old and I'm starting to finally get real about what I can and cannot do again pushing over the boundaries into the excess before you realize where the line has to be and the reason that I wanted to tell everybody personally why I'm not doing the book signing line is one to all the folks are all signed they're all signed oh here's what I did do I went to a warehouse in the middle of Maryland this summer for three days and I signed 20,000 copies of big magic to make sure that everybody gets the signed copy so I didn't totally abandon you but what I wanted the other reason I want to talk about it is that when I did that face book shout out two years ago and I asked you or whoever of you were on that Facebook page if you're not practicing your creativity why are you not one of the main things that came up again and again and again was people saying I don't have time I don't have energy by the time I've given everything that I give at the end of the day there's absolutely nothing left I'm being sort of eaten by my life and and that time isn't there and so I hope that you'll take this example of this thing that I had to say no to that disappointed a lot of people and allow yourself to walk out of here thinking about what in your life you might have to start saying no to even at the risk of disappointing people that you care about even at the risk of maybe not being as loved in order to create the space and the time to do the thing that you keep saying you want to do right because we don't have all the time in the world and the only way you're going to get that time is to make it and the only way you're going to make it is to start saying no to a bunch of other stuff and look if the if the no was easy you would have said it a long time ago right so the things that you might have to start saying no to might be very difficult and very hard for you to say no to but they have to be done and I'm somebody who never said no until I was I think 34 was I think the first time that word came out of my mouth which again explains a lot about my 20s but I just I didn't know how to I didn't know you could and the reason and it's such an interesting thing because the reason I never said no I'm a big pleaser and I want everybody to be happy and I want to be liked and I want to be loved um the reason I never said no to people for so many years was because I didn't want people to be disappointed and I didn't want people to like me less that's quite frankly why I said yes to everything and then I finally hit a wall where I realized I had to start setting boundaries in my life or even learning what they were and what I realized when I started saying no to people it was actually really amazing so I'd had this huge fear that if you say no to people they won't like you as much and and they'll be disappointed when I started saying no to people what I discovered was that they don't like you as much and they get really disappointed it's totally true there's a reason I never did it because everything that I feared comes to pass people don't like it I don't like being said no to right nobody likes being said if there's something you want from someone and they say no you don't like it it's just a fact of life and yet part of maturity and part of honoring the limited energies that you have is being able to allow another person to stand in their disappointment and being able to observe it and feel it even and say recognize that this is disappointing for you and I'm going to let you have that because I need to hold this no because I'm not gonna be here forever and there's stuff I want to do and there's a way I want to feel and I'm not doing that stuff and I'm not feeling that way and it has to start now so that's what I'd like to invite you all to think about as you walk on it thank you and thank you for not throwing bottles at me I appreciate it will you sing a song with me and Anne and then we actually do have to go and Jane meet me up here and Jane is gonna come and sing with us Jane where is Jane can you come sing come come on up Jane Hamilton everybody oh where is she where is she she left 15 dishes [Applause] I'm giving Jane my microphone so on this book to her one thing I've been doing instead of the book signing line is I've been doing a song at the end of the night and asking everybody to sing brené Brown hi Janie I'm not wearing your outfit I had to do something sort of extreme just to you know say that was really great two out of three I was gonna say two of the best female novelists in the world are on this stage right now I'm not gonna say who do you have your phone with you so we get the lyrics and for your voice okay yeah cool so here's what y'all so here's why I'm doing this there's something that happens when people sing together that can't happen any other way and and it is Nashville and you probably guys probably sing more than other cities so I'm expecting good stuff unless you go to church unless you sing in a band you probably don't do public singing and public singing is really important one of the things that Brenna found in her research about wholeheartedness is wholehearted people sing and dance and she kept trying to bury that data because she it freaked her out and and her graduate students kept saying Brittany how come you never published how come you and she's I don't want to talk about the singing in the dancing so last I saw burn a two weeks ago and we sang together we saying I Will Survive which was fantastic with a bunch of women in an audience it was really great so what we're gonna sink if you would all take out your devices because I know you have them what you're gonna do is you're gonna google lyrics to take me home country roads on Denver which is my go-to karaoke song because it has three notes so we're gonna do and then we're gonna walk out of here don't let me down Nashville I want hands in the air I want people standing up will you stand up I kind of be a little preparation would have been what you kind of basically know it because you can say well I also sing at every Wednesday at the rat karaoke bar in Frenchtown New Jersey in the basement where my friends and I planned days in advance what our song list is gonna be for karaoke cuz it's very important to us here you again okay can I get coming in the middle I can't I can't I'm gonna sing it low and then everybody can join along you'll jump in she's got it I got it we got it ready almost have West Virginia Blue Ridge Mountains Shenandoah River life is old there older than the trees younger than the mountains blow in like breeze control [Music] take me home to the play is along West Virginia Mountain Mama take me home country road someone's harmonizing so beautifully Emrys gather round her miners lady stranger to blue water everyone does dark and dusty painted on the sky mister taste a moonshine teardrops in my icon she rose take me home on to the base happy long West Virginia my take me home country roads I hear her voice in the morning hours she calls me Radio reminds me of my home far away and driving down the road I get a feeling that I should have been at home yesterday yesterday country roll take me home um to the play is happy love West Virginia memama take me home on country road one more time country roll to take me home to the place I belong West Virginia Mountain Mama take me home country roads I want you to take me home country [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Nashville Public Library

Views: 522

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Id: eTgI8LfU3mQ

Length: 84min 20sec (5060 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2020