Speaker 1: When you go into a situation, then it's true of
Speaker 1: less things will resonate with you because you already are
Speaker 1: sort of in a closed off space.
Speaker 2: Wow, welcome to the one you feed throughout time. Great
Speaker 2: thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have.
Speaker 2: Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 2: you think ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 2: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 2: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 2: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 2: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 2: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 2: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 2: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 2: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf.
Speaker 3: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 3: Kwan Berry, the Lorraine Hansbury Professor of English at the
Speaker 3: University of Wisconsin, Madison and the author of seven books
Speaker 3: of fiction and poetry, including the recent novel When I'm
Speaker 3: Gone Look for Me in the East, which The New
Speaker 3: York Times described as mesmerizing and delicate, a dazzling achievement.
Speaker 3: Kwan is one of a select group of writers to
Speaker 3: receive the Neea Fellowships in both poetry and fiction, and
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty one was awarded the American Library Association's
Speaker 3: Alex Award. She currently serves as Forward Theater's inaugural Writer
Speaker 3: in Residence. The world premiere of her first play, The
Speaker 3: My Delenian Debate, was part of Forward Theaters twenty twenty
Speaker 3: one twenty twenty two season.
Speaker 4: Hi Kawan, welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4: To have you on. I was telling you before we
Speaker 4: got started that it was sometime I don't remember when.
Speaker 4: I'm terrible with time, but I picked up your book
Speaker 4: from a local bookstore. It just looked great. It's called
Speaker 4: When I'm Gone look for Me in the East and
Speaker 4: started reading it for pleasure, which I don't get a
Speaker 4: ton of time to do, and about one chapter, two
Speaker 4: chapters in, I was like, all right, I've got to
Speaker 4: talk to Kwan. So I'm so excited that we're having
Speaker 4: you on. I've thus gone on to read another of
Speaker 4: your novels, and I really enjoy your writing. So we'll
Speaker 4: be talking about all that in a moment. But let's
Speaker 4: start like we always do with the parable. There's a
Speaker 4: grandparent talking with a grandchild and they say, in life,
Speaker 4: there are two wolves inside of us that are always
Speaker 4: at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things
Speaker 4: like kindness and bravery and love, and the other's a
Speaker 4: bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear.
Speaker 4: And the grandchild stops, thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 4: looks up at their grandparents, says, well, which one wins,
Speaker 4: and the grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 4: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 4: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 4: that you do.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. I love this parable because on
Speaker 1: the surface it seems really simple, and yet there's so
Speaker 1: much to unpack. So I have to admit that I
Speaker 1: bring a little bit of my English professor, you know,
Speaker 1: close reading skills to this, so on the most superficial level,
Speaker 1: on the surface level, and then just thinking about it
Speaker 1: with respect to my life. You know, it's the idea
Speaker 1: of you reap what you sew. You know, if you're
Speaker 1: pumping negativity into the world, it's hard to get positivity back.
Speaker 1: And so I think that that's the first reading that
Speaker 1: most people would have in hearing this parable, right, But
Speaker 1: if we dig a little deeper, there's like so much
Speaker 1: more going on. One of the things that I'm really
Speaker 1: interested in is are the wolves themselves and of thinking
Speaker 1: about them in terms of nuance. Right. So it's true
Speaker 1: that for me, and thinking about how the world has
Speaker 1: shifted in the last particularly the last five six years,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in this idea of nuance rather than
Speaker 1: dichotomies and binaries. Right. So we have these two wolves
Speaker 1: on good one's bad, and again for the sake of
Speaker 1: parable it makes sense that it's fairly simplistic. But again,
Speaker 1: I think the world oftentimes, you know, we're not looking
Speaker 1: at things in terms of just black and white. It
Speaker 1: really is a world in which we're working along a
Speaker 1: spectrum and in which things, you know, very easily move
Speaker 1: from one space into another. So when thinking about these
Speaker 1: wolves and in thinking about the idea of nuance and spectrum.
Speaker 1: You know, many of your listeners, I'm sure, are familiar
Speaker 1: with the Buddhist idea of near enemies, the idea of
Speaker 1: how compassion can morph into pity, and conversely, how sometimes
Speaker 1: things sort of perceived as being bad can morph into
Speaker 1: being good. So when I hear this parable, like I said,
Speaker 1: it makes sense to me that it would be a
Speaker 1: fairly simple teaching in order for us to take in.
Speaker 1: But if we look at it a little bit more closely,
Speaker 1: we can think in terms of our own wolves and
Speaker 1: when they begin to shift along that spectrum. You know,
Speaker 1: when does what I do here? When is it a
Speaker 1: good thing? And when does it become a bad thing
Speaker 1: over here? So that's something that I'm really interested in.
Speaker 1: Two other things that also come up when I think
Speaker 1: about it is this idea of the question of how
Speaker 1: we actually feed them. Right, there's like the active feeding
Speaker 1: of quote unquote wolves, and then there's like the passive
Speaker 1: feeding of them. And so for many of us, obviously
Speaker 1: the active feeding of a wolf would be you know,
Speaker 1: our time, our energy, our attention, our money. And we
Speaker 1: can oftentimes think of the ways in which we feed things,
Speaker 1: particularly like online social media. You know, it's obvious to
Speaker 1: us the things that we're feeding in those particular realms.
Speaker 1: But something that we sometimes don't think about as much,
Speaker 1: again is the Buddhist idea of aversion right or resistance,
Speaker 1: and that sometimes you can actually feed things again through
Speaker 1: that more passive channel by resisting it. And oftentimes actually
Speaker 1: those passive channels are actually the ones that are stronger
Speaker 1: because we're not as aware of them in many ways.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: So that's something else that I'm interested in. And then
Speaker 1: the last thing, and just unpacking this seemingly simplistic parable,
Speaker 1: which has a lot going on, is I'm really interested
Speaker 1: in that idea of the word win, Like what does
Speaker 1: it mean to win? So you know, when the child says, so,
Speaker 1: which one wins? If you think about it, it's such
Speaker 1: an interesting word because if you take that word out,
Speaker 1: it completely destabilizes the entire parable, Like if it's not
Speaker 1: about winning, So what would you have then, if it
Speaker 1: wasn't a question of these two wolves in competition, what
Speaker 1: would you be left with? Right? And So in my
Speaker 1: own life, I don't necessarily think in terms of the
Speaker 1: word win. But a similar kind of word that I
Speaker 1: think many of us struggle with is the word like succeed.
Speaker 1: For the word you know, success, like what does that mean?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: And so that idea that if you take that word
Speaker 1: out of an equation, So if you're in your life
Speaker 1: and you're feeling like something's not going with, well, what
Speaker 1: does success mean? Like, what would success look like if
Speaker 1: I take that word out? How might this situation then
Speaker 1: look much different? How might it not be as daunting?
Speaker 1: You know, if I take that particular word out, So
Speaker 1: in many ways, by using the word win, like I said,
Speaker 1: it sets up a struggle already, and so you're already
Speaker 1: in conflict, right, And so those are just some things
Speaker 1: that come to mind, just again and hearing this, like
Speaker 1: I said, very simplistic parable, which again, if you dive
Speaker 1: a little bit deeper into it, there's just a lot
Speaker 1: going on. I'm sure there's many other things too that
Speaker 1: I haven't mentioned.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I love that, and I don't think anybody has
Speaker 4: as systematically unpacked it as that, all the different levels,
Speaker 4: and I love it. I love the way that often
Speaker 4: writers and poets know how to look at things at
Speaker 4: multiple different levels. I always admire that as a skill,
Speaker 4: as you call it, your close reading skills, you know,
Speaker 4: to be able to read something and go, Okay, well
Speaker 4: that's what I got the first time. What happens if
Speaker 4: I look a little bit closer. I talk a lot
Speaker 4: about attention because I think attention is one of the
Speaker 4: most important resources we have at our disposal. And I
Speaker 4: always admire artists because that is one of the things
Speaker 4: that artists seem to be able to wield, is they
Speaker 4: seem to be able to use their attention in deeper
Speaker 4: ways than we do in our ordinary day to day life.
Speaker 4: And I guess I'd like to start, maybe from there
Speaker 4: with a question about that, because you've mentioned that your
Speaker 4: novels have come from you made a joke I think
Speaker 4: once somewhere that you get all your ideas from NPR.
Speaker 4: You know, they come from places you've been, places you've traveled,
Speaker 4: And I'm just kind of curious. Is there a way
Speaker 4: in which you are moving through the world that you
Speaker 4: feel like you have your artist hat on and other
Speaker 4: times you don't. Is it a default way of being.
Speaker 2: For you now?
Speaker 4: Like that level of attention. Do you feel like you
Speaker 4: have to sort of turn it on and remember to
Speaker 4: turn it on? What does it feel like a default
Speaker 4: stance to you at this point?
Speaker 1: Going back to you know, my earlier comment when I
Speaker 1: was talking about the idea of the parable and this
Speaker 1: idea of nuance, right, So it's true that so oftentimes
Speaker 1: in life, you know, we put on caps or we
Speaker 1: wear labels and we only think of ourselves in terms
Speaker 1: of those labels. So one label that I'm interested actually
Speaker 1: in extending to the entire world, not just to a
Speaker 1: subset of humanity, is the label of poet. Right. So
Speaker 1: the word poet actually comes from the Greek poeo, So
Speaker 1: literally from the Greek, the word poet, literally as a verb,
Speaker 1: just means to make. So a poet is simply a maker.
Speaker 1: Like that is all a poet is, right, And so
Speaker 1: if you use that as your definition, then we're all poets, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think sometimes, particularly in the West, though
Speaker 1: we can think, oh no, there's a special group of
Speaker 1: people who are artistic, who have these sensitivities, who see
Speaker 1: these things that the rest of us don't see. But again,
Speaker 1: to me, it's all about like I said, it's all
Speaker 1: about that spectrum. It's all about the idea of putting
Speaker 1: that hat on for yourself and thinking of yourself in
Speaker 1: those kinds of terms. So for me at this point,
Speaker 1: you know what I've been doing, been a professor at
Speaker 1: the University of Wisconsin and Madison for the last twenty
Speaker 1: two twenty three years. At this point it is sort
Speaker 1: of second hat for me to just sort of see
Speaker 1: and observe. But I think it's always been sure. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm the youngest of five children. In some ways, as
Speaker 1: the youngest of five children, I very much learned to observe,
Speaker 1: to observe people, to observe the world, to take things in,
Speaker 1: and to learn from those observations. As an adult, I sometimes,
Speaker 1: you know, as we all do, have a tendency to
Speaker 1: be judgmental in those observations. But again, the more I
Speaker 1: can simply be observant and not judgmental, then the more
Speaker 1: I can actually learn. And so for me, you know, now,
Speaker 1: when I'm traveling or when I'm hearing stories or things
Speaker 1: like that, I'm always interested in the story behind the story.
Speaker 1: There's one ways in which in thinking about you know,
Speaker 1: Buddhist teachings, the way in which things are what they
Speaker 1: are and what's happening is what's happening, and what is
Speaker 1: is what is. But on another level, I think that
Speaker 1: because we have this relative world and we have this
Speaker 1: absolute world, but there's more going on than we know,
Speaker 1: and I'm interested in thinking again beyond just the surface
Speaker 1: level of things. I feel fortunate that as of right
Speaker 1: now in my life, I actually, for whatever reason, have
Speaker 1: a pretty good memory. And so it's true that when
Speaker 1: I travel to various places, I don't do any kind
Speaker 1: of specific documentation in order to help me remember it
Speaker 1: later for a book or what have you. But usually
Speaker 1: it's the kind of thing I'll be in a space.
Speaker 1: It could be even potentially years later that I realize
Speaker 1: what I want to do with that space and how
Speaker 1: it might work in my writing. For example, I was
Speaker 1: in Antarctica in two thousand and four, and it's only
Speaker 1: now almost twenty years later that I'm actually writing a
Speaker 1: story to set in Antarctica. But when I go back
Speaker 1: and I think about it, I look at pictures and many,
Speaker 1: many memories come back to me, and I feel fortunate
Speaker 1: about that. So the last thing I'll say to answer
Speaker 1: your question, though, is that, yes, attention for me is everything,
Speaker 1: and I often think of attention, you know, as a
Speaker 1: form of deep listening right and to be present in
Speaker 1: our world. There's so many forces at work that do
Speaker 1: not want us to be conscious and fully present, and
Speaker 1: I know that for me, I don't call myself a Buddhist.
Speaker 1: I've obviously studied Buddhism. It's important to me. I was
Speaker 1: raised as a Unitarian, and I still in some way
Speaker 1: sick of myself as Unitarian. But when I first came
Speaker 1: to Buddhism and began taking classes in it, you know,
Speaker 1: a teacher asked like, why are you here? What do
Speaker 1: you want? And I realized, I said at the time,
Speaker 1: as I wrote this out, I said, I want to
Speaker 1: live a deliberate life. You know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: just have things just sort of happen. And I look
Speaker 1: back on it and wonder why I made those decisions.
Speaker 1: So say, idea that I want to delive a deliberate life.
Speaker 1: But again, it's also a paradox because in some ways
Speaker 1: I also am a believer in the fact that the
Speaker 1: more you can give up control to life, to the universe,
Speaker 1: and the happier our So it's a paradox living the
Speaker 1: deliberate life, but then also recognizing the limits of one's control.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that absolutely is a paradox, and I think that
Speaker 4: we are awash in them in life, and the more
Speaker 4: that we can recognize that, the better. I mean, it's
Speaker 4: one of the things you mentioned this about the story,
Speaker 4: you know, the Wolf story as it is, is fairly
Speaker 4: douistic in life. Just isn't that clean and simple? I mean,
Speaker 4: anytime anybody tries to make anything clean and simple, I
Speaker 4: generally rebel against it because I'm like, well, there's more
Speaker 4: to this. You know, there's there is nuance, There's lots
Speaker 4: of different perspectives there, and often when you look, there's
Speaker 4: that paradox. And I was going to ask you a
Speaker 4: question about the idea of being satisfied and content with
Speaker 4: where you are and what you have, which is a
Speaker 4: key sort of Buddhist slash spiritual tenant. It's just a
Speaker 4: good way to try and live life, and also that
Speaker 4: desire to do more and be more, have more. I mean,
Speaker 4: you're a I'm going to use this term, and I
Speaker 4: don't mean it in the way it's going to sound
Speaker 4: ambitious person. And what I mean is you create a
Speaker 4: lot of stuff. You know, you're a poet, You've written
Speaker 4: multiple novels. It sounds like you're writing stories. You're a playwright,
Speaker 4: you're a teacher. There's a lot going on there, and
Speaker 4: I'm curious for yourself, how do you balance that desire
Speaker 4: to be happy with what is and what's here and
Speaker 4: the desire to continue to do more.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great question. I've been thinking about it
Speaker 1: quite a bit now as I slowly move into a
Speaker 1: playwriting space. More. Playwriting is a very different world than
Speaker 1: the world of literature that I've inhabited it, and I'm
Speaker 1: learning a lot about it from what I've seen playwriting world.
Speaker 1: I'm not disparaging it in any way, but you need
Speaker 1: to have from what I've seen is just my observation
Speaker 1: a little bit more quote unquote hustle. I'm not really
Speaker 1: a hustler. I respect hustlers right in the arts, Hustling
Speaker 1: is a major part of things. When I'm talking to
Speaker 1: graduate students, I often talk about the idea of luck.
Speaker 1: You need luck to be in these professions. Like obviously
Speaker 1: skill is involved. At the end of the day, there
Speaker 1: is an element of luck and you have to be
Speaker 1: prepared for when you're fortunate enough to have that door open, right.
Speaker 1: And so from what I'm seeing, as I've mentioning with
Speaker 1: this idea of hustle, which I recognize in certain ways,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of grandfathered in and I don't have to
Speaker 1: participate in hustle culture as much as younger writers do
Speaker 1: because I came of age before the intern and all
Speaker 1: those kinds of things, and I built my career before
Speaker 1: Twitter and before all that kind of fun stuff which
Speaker 1: I've anticipated. Right, What I'm understanding is I moved slowly
Speaker 1: into this playwriting world, like, oh, I might have to
Speaker 1: be a hustler here, Like what does that mean for me?
Speaker 1: How would I maintain kinds of things that I'm interested in?
Speaker 1: You know, Hustling for me is not fun. It does
Speaker 1: not make me happy, it doesn't bring me joy. And
Speaker 1: so that's something that I've really been struggling with. And
Speaker 1: I thought that I had recently come to a place
Speaker 1: where I understood that, potentially for me, that success in
Speaker 1: the playwriting world would be writing plays that I think
Speaker 1: are smart and are working on many levels, and getting
Speaker 1: to work with actors and directors, mostly locally here in Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: because there's some great theater happening here in the state
Speaker 1: which a lot of people don't know about, And seeing
Speaker 1: my work produced and brought to an audience, but again
Speaker 1: doing that mostly here in Wisconsin, and not thinking more
Speaker 1: broadly nationally, you know. And so I thought that I
Speaker 1: arrived in a place where I was okay with that
Speaker 1: without okay, maybe I'm going to be a Wisconsin play right,
Speaker 1: my work will maybe not be done on the coasts
Speaker 1: or what have you, And like I said, I thought
Speaker 1: I was alright with that. In chatting with other people
Speaker 1: who are in this world, you know, some of who
Speaker 1: had said to me, and again I say this all humility,
Speaker 1: They had said that the idea of me being like
Speaker 1: quote unquote, I don't want to say, justinis constant play right,
Speaker 1: but actually made them a little sad because they felt
Speaker 1: like my work deserved to be seen more broadly. Right.
Speaker 1: And so I moved again back in this space of
Speaker 1: having to think about, well, what does that mean then
Speaker 1: for me to be ambitious, you know, and yet to
Speaker 1: also have this balance of the kinds of things that
Speaker 1: I want, right, And so I think at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, the way I'm sort of figuring that
Speaker 1: is a I'm not in any rush, right, I'm not
Speaker 1: in a rush. I think a lot of hustle culture
Speaker 1: is about like right now, and about trends and things
Speaker 1: like that. And if I have a mindset like I'm
Speaker 1: not in a rush, you know, if the playwriting world
Speaker 1: opens up for me in twenty years, great, and if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, great, So that sort of helps me. I
Speaker 1: also think to the way in which I define success
Speaker 1: can still you know, have a lot of what I
Speaker 1: was talking about before, the idea of writing something that
Speaker 1: pleases me, and ultimately the end of the day, you know,
Speaker 1: sometimes my students will want to talk about audiences and
Speaker 1: how writers think in terms of audiences. I have to
Speaker 1: admit again, this is not a path for everybody, but
Speaker 1: for me, I rarely think in terms of audience, because
Speaker 1: really the audience is me. And I say that again
Speaker 1: with all humility, is that I write because I want
Speaker 1: to see what somebody like me would write. That's how
Speaker 1: I sort of began writing in the nineteen nineties when
Speaker 1: I was an undergraduate. Back then, this is like what
Speaker 1: thirty years ago, forty years ago, there weren't as many
Speaker 1: writers of color, you know, creative work, and so I'm somebody,
Speaker 1: I'm biracial, I'm transracially adopted. I recognized as I was
Speaker 1: coming up that I saw this hole in the literature, like, Okay,
Speaker 1: what would it look like for somebody like me to
Speaker 1: write books, or to write poetry, or to do these things?
Speaker 1: And so I began writing because of that. I wanted
Speaker 1: to see, like, yeah, what does somebody like me produce?
Speaker 1: And that hopefully still is my main impetus for creating
Speaker 1: these books and for writing and doing the things that
Speaker 1: I do, And so the more I can steer my
Speaker 1: ambition towards that and remembering like why I began doing
Speaker 1: this in the first place, and the less I game
Speaker 1: my ambition out towards the larger world and wanting things
Speaker 1: and wanting glory or whatever that might look like, than
Speaker 1: the happier I am.
Speaker 4: There's so many great things you just said in there
Speaker 4: that I'm going to circle back on here. But there's
Speaker 4: a line in the new book that the distance between
Speaker 4: heaven and Earth is no greater than one's intention. And
Speaker 4: you know, I think as we talk about these ideas
Speaker 4: of what success is and you know, what our ambition is,
Speaker 4: that intention becomes really really important. And at least for me,
Speaker 4: I know that I have really good intentions and reasons
Speaker 4: that I do what I do and I do this show,
Speaker 4: and I try and stay close to those. And when
Speaker 4: you're talking about audience and the size of your audience
Speaker 4: being how much money you make and all those factors
Speaker 4: start to come in, I find it really important to
Speaker 4: have to sort of keep redirecting myself back to sort
Speaker 4: of what you said, more of the intrinsic stuff, because
Speaker 4: it can always be more. Like you said, you think
Speaker 4: I'm going to be satisfied if I get my plays
Speaker 4: just produced at all, And then you're like, I'll be
Speaker 4: satisfied if I'm just known well locally.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: It's the mind always can want more. That's a pretty
Speaker 4: core Buddhist teaching. And so I find for me that
Speaker 4: recognizing like, yeah, of course I have multiple intentions and
Speaker 4: impulses going on here. Can I try to the best
Speaker 4: of my ability to keep reorienting back to the ones
Speaker 4: that are most meaningful and the ones that are actually
Speaker 4: under my control.
Speaker 1: Yeah, No, absolutely, anything.
Speaker 4: Else you'd like to say about intention.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, you know, until I was about forty,
Speaker 1: I don't think I had a sense of intention, which
Speaker 1: sounds really weird. You know, I was building my career,
Speaker 1: learning how to teach, you know, building my life here
Speaker 1: in the Midwest, and it wasn't that I was unconscious.
Speaker 1: And again, I feel like I was raised to be
Speaker 1: a contrarian a little bit. So for example, like I
Speaker 1: don't have a smartphone, you know, I'm not on any
Speaker 1: kind of social media, I don't have a TV. And
Speaker 1: again I don't say those things with pride. And I
Speaker 1: also recognize that in many ways those choices are actually
Speaker 1: a privilege. It's actually a privilege not to have like
Speaker 1: a cell phone, right because I recognize a lot of
Speaker 1: people have to have those for jobs or for family
Speaker 1: or things like that. So again, it's a privilege, and
Speaker 1: I don't say it like in a glib kind of way.
Speaker 1: In many ways, like intention, I had a path, and
Speaker 1: the path was there, and I knew what I needed
Speaker 1: to do to get tenure, to get these books done,
Speaker 1: to do whatever, and I just sort of followed that path.
Speaker 1: It was right about when I termed forty, and not
Speaker 1: because consciously I thought that forty was any kind of
Speaker 1: demarcation in any kind of way. It was A friend
Speaker 1: of mine asked me if I wanted to start taking
Speaker 1: these meditation classes. He's also an artist and I've done
Speaker 1: some collaborations with him, and I was like yeah, and
Speaker 1: so we kind of came to Buddhism as artists. Whereas
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people and again, I think
Speaker 1: it's great that it works for a lot of people
Speaker 1: for a lot of different reasons, but I think a
Speaker 1: lot of people come to Buddhism more out of a
Speaker 1: sense of suffering or of a sense that things not
Speaker 1: being right, whereas again, we had creative interest in it
Speaker 1: and that was why we were sort of there. And
Speaker 1: so when I sort of landed in that space and
Speaker 1: the idea of intentionality as a sort of tool became
Speaker 1: much more interesting to me, I think because creatively, I'd
Speaker 1: always thought that too much intention you know, Robert Frost
Speaker 1: has this famous line, no surprise for the writer, no
Speaker 1: surprise for the reader. Right, So if you're not surprising
Speaker 1: yourself as you're creating, then what you come out with
Speaker 1: is silted. And so I think that because I thought
Speaker 1: of that almost like as a life matra, you know,
Speaker 1: like the more you're planning things out, the less spontaneous
Speaker 1: your life is and the more stale it is. But
Speaker 1: I began to realize that intentionality doesn't necessarily equate with staleness, right,
Speaker 1: that there can still be a vibrancy to setting intentions
Speaker 1: and things like that. All I would add to all
Speaker 1: this is that my intentions, I find they're not goals. Again,
Speaker 1: there's a difference, right, And so I've actually started in
Speaker 1: the last year or so with my graduate students having
Speaker 1: them set an intention on the first day of class,
Speaker 1: like what are your intentions for this class, right, as
Speaker 1: opposed to what are your goals or objectives? And I
Speaker 1: thought it was really interesting to see the kinds of
Speaker 1: answers that they came up with as far as intentions,
Speaker 1: and usually again that you're talking about it's like the internals, right,
Speaker 1: intentions are about the internals and not about the externals
Speaker 1: with respecta goals and objectives.
Speaker 4: In that exercise asking students to write down their intentions,
Speaker 4: did you used to ask them to write down their goals?
Speaker 4: Or this was just a whole new line of thinking.
Speaker 1: I used to ask for goals. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: still do. I think I asked for both, so I.
Speaker 4: Make it okay. Yeah, And so you could see some
Speaker 4: real differences in what they write when they're looking at
Speaker 4: and an intention versus a goal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say that Again, their goals were about
Speaker 1: professional kinds of things, right, their intentions from what I saw,
Speaker 1: which was really interesting to me. And I don't think
Speaker 1: they thought this consciously. It was just just what they
Speaker 1: put down, but it was much more. I could see
Speaker 1: they were interested in thinking through ways to help them
Speaker 1: achieve life balance, you know, work, how to take criticism,
Speaker 1: especially in an art space, How to receive criticism and
Speaker 1: not have it, you know, internally damage you. How to
Speaker 1: give criticism and a way again thinking about loving kindness
Speaker 1: or what have you? Right, So, like I said, their
Speaker 1: intentions were much more for their inner lives than they
Speaker 1: were about again like the externals of goals and things
Speaker 1: like that.
Speaker 4: For me, an intention is generally about like who do
Speaker 4: I want to be? How do I want to be?
Speaker 4: You know? It's like it's how am I showing up
Speaker 4: in the world, you know, and what's important to me?
Speaker 4: You just said about how to take criticism without it
Speaker 4: crushing you. I think I'm sort of paraphrasing how do
Speaker 4: you do that? I think as an artist there's an
Speaker 4: element to it, but I think that applies broadly and
Speaker 4: generally to being human. What are some of the things
Speaker 4: you've learned about that?
Speaker 1: So, if anybody knows what a writing workshop is traditionally,
Speaker 1: it's true that pedagogically this is changing, particularly since twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: there are more people of color, more women in certain spaces,
Speaker 1: and thinking that the traditional model of a writing workshop
Speaker 1: perhaps needs to be rethought. So the traditional model that
Speaker 1: I came up with through the nineteen nineties was you
Speaker 1: write something, you bring it into your workshop, the class
Speaker 1: discusses it. As you sit there in what's called the
Speaker 1: cone of silence, so you don't say anything, you're not
Speaker 1: defensive about it. The class discusses it, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: they rip it to pieces, you know, hopefully they also
Speaker 1: have positive things to say. And then at the end
Speaker 1: of that discussion you simply say thank you and you
Speaker 1: move on. Right, there's something to be said about that
Speaker 1: as a tool for learning about your craft. But there's
Speaker 1: also ways in which you can imagine. It's incredibly disempowering. Right,
Speaker 1: It's disempowering. You had intentions in that work and here
Speaker 1: are people talking about it and you can't express to
Speaker 1: them and explain things and etc.
Speaker 4: Etc.
Speaker 1: So that was the traditional model. Now students are being
Speaker 1: more and more empowered to share their voices during the
Speaker 1: process with respect to intention and those kinds of things.
Speaker 1: For me, coming up in the traditional way of running
Speaker 1: a workshop, I actually feel it was a gift. I
Speaker 1: can understand the negatives about the process when I teach.
Speaker 1: Now I try and teach a combination of things. I
Speaker 1: think that that traditional process, when done with care, can
Speaker 1: be an extremely loving situation. As I try and tell
Speaker 1: my students, when else in life do you have like
Speaker 1: twelve or fifteen people sitting around and giving you their
Speaker 1: total attention for something that you have created. Right, the
Speaker 1: idea of coming at that and realizing that that is
Speaker 1: a gift. Their attention is a gift. Listening is a gift, right.
Speaker 1: And the more that you can inhabit that space of realizing, Okay,
Speaker 1: these things are here to make me better and not
Speaker 1: to tear me down, it's my job as the workshop
Speaker 1: facilitator to help that space remain positive and constructive and
Speaker 1: not to have it just become a free fall. And so,
Speaker 1: like I said, those particular spaces for me were they've
Speaker 1: also helped me in my playwriting because in many ways,
Speaker 1: as I've learned, is that in playwriting you have a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of people who have many, many opinions about things.
Speaker 1: Whereas when I write a novel, when I write poetry,
Speaker 1: it's really between me and my editor in many ways
Speaker 1: and anybody else. But the obviously in the playwriting world
Speaker 1: there are a lot of cooks in that kitchen. And
Speaker 1: so learning how to listen just it comes down to
Speaker 1: certain things resonate. You know, you'll hear a criticism, and
Speaker 1: the question will be does that resonate with you or
Speaker 1: does it not? And the more you can be open
Speaker 1: to it, the more you can let go of your defenses.
Speaker 1: If you have a lot of defense when you go
Speaker 1: into a situation, then it's true, the less things will
Speaker 1: resonate with you because you already are sort of in
Speaker 1: a closed off space. So the more you can open
Speaker 1: yourself to hearing anything, no matter how painful or what
Speaker 1: have you. Again, it shouldn't be painful, but even if
Speaker 1: things you know at times do feel painful, then, like
Speaker 1: I said, you hear those resonances and they ultimately help
Speaker 1: you hopefully take the work into a stronger space.
Speaker 4: And as part of what you are teaching students is
Speaker 4: how to hear criticism and make it only about their
Speaker 4: work and not about themselves. Because we become very attached
Speaker 4: to our creation. We often identify ourselves as a creator,
Speaker 4: and so when people are sort of taking that apart,
Speaker 4: I think it's very easy to feel all kinds of
Speaker 4: different emotions that may not be wonderful. And so is
Speaker 4: that part of what you as you're teaching writers, you're
Speaker 4: teaching them how to do.
Speaker 1: That absolutely, so you know on the first day when
Speaker 1: we're having workshop, I talk through some things with them.
Speaker 1: You know, we talk about that we never assume that
Speaker 1: the character and a poem or story is the writer.
Speaker 1: You always make a space when we're talking about it, like, well,
Speaker 1: the narrator says here or it said here, but again
Speaker 1: we never say you said x y racy. I'm always
Speaker 1: having to help students and remember that, like, no, we're
Speaker 1: creating that space or that distance, right. Sometimes they don't
Speaker 1: want that distance, which again, then you can complicate things
Speaker 1: and they're like no, I thought that. No, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like okay, but you know, for the spakes sake
Speaker 1: of us in this space talking about this work, what
Speaker 1: happens if we maintain that distance?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: So, yes, a lot of it is helping them be
Speaker 1: able to understand. Again, like I said that, there's a
Speaker 1: different and the ways that people talk about their work.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing that for me in certain ways,
Speaker 1: because I've been doing it for so long, it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to remember those first workshops. But I recently
Speaker 1: had a student who asked a visitor to my class
Speaker 1: this question, like, how do you know, not personalize the
Speaker 1: kinds of things that were said, and the visitor to
Speaker 1: my class was actually the same age I am, and
Speaker 1: he was like, again, because we've been doing this so long,
Speaker 1: we've kind of forgotten, like, ah, gosh, I don't know,
Speaker 1: it's just there. I think for me one of the
Speaker 1: hardest things to teach my students because they get that,
Speaker 1: they understand that, okay, because I think they understand it
Speaker 1: because they're doing it for other people as well. So
Speaker 1: you're receiving homework and you're doing it to other people's
Speaker 1: work as well, and you know hopefully that when you're
Speaker 1: doing it for other people's work that you're not being
Speaker 1: personal hopefully, right. I think the most difficult thing for
Speaker 1: me to teach students is to believe in their own
Speaker 1: voices and to believe in their inner thing that tells
Speaker 1: them when something's working when something is not. You know,
Speaker 1: this is particularly true for what I hate to say it,
Speaker 1: but for my female students, but really helping them understand,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's so many ways in which is
Speaker 1: particularly for women, that we're taught to second guests ourselves.
Speaker 1: So part of my job is helping them realize now,
Speaker 1: you know, you know what the answer is to this. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: last night I was just listening to a live broadcast
Speaker 1: with Adjashanti, the obviously not dualist teacher, and you know,
Speaker 1: and he was talking about this idea of like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's called sak guru, but it's
Speaker 1: the idea of your internal guru, that that actually is
Speaker 1: who the alt teacher is, it's not an external teacher.
Speaker 1: And so that's something that I like, I said that
Speaker 1: I'm always trying to inculcate in my students.
Speaker 4: I love Adiya Ashanti. We've had him on multiple times.
Speaker 4: He's always a pleasure to talk to when you're getting
Speaker 4: feedback like that. We're talking about getting feedback on writing,
Speaker 4: and this isn't a show for writers necessarily, but I
Speaker 4: think this speaks broadly to the human condition. How do
Speaker 4: you encourage your people to think about what you just said,
Speaker 4: because again we're kind of back to paradoxical ideas. On
Speaker 4: one hand, you trust your own voice, you know your
Speaker 4: own voice. On the other hand, you are open to
Speaker 4: what other people have to say about that and feedback.
Speaker 4: And you know, I find that it's very easy to go, well,
Speaker 4: you know what, I know what I'm doing, So here's
Speaker 4: my voice. Everybody else is wrong and block it out
Speaker 4: or just simply lose yourself in everybody else's opinion. How
Speaker 4: do you encourage people to think about, like, let's take
Speaker 4: what's useful from what's being said, but you also know
Speaker 4: when like that feedback isn't useful to you, that feedback
Speaker 4: isn't pointing you in the right direction.
Speaker 1: A great question. It's tough. If I if I could
Speaker 1: bottle it, you know, be the easiest thing. You know,
Speaker 1: My answer is is it's a very writerly answer. Like
Speaker 1: I wish that my answer was something that could apply
Speaker 1: to life like in a broader way. I'm not sure
Speaker 1: it can. But it has to do with how I've
Speaker 1: set up the space in which we're in. Right. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that I talk about is I
Speaker 1: talk about this idea of a smorgas board. Right, So
Speaker 1: I'm like, we're in here and we're creating a smortgage
Speaker 1: board for the writer. So we are piling as many
Speaker 1: different ideas and suggestions on this mortgage board for them
Speaker 1: to then come and decide which those things they want
Speaker 1: to take. So it's like a supermarket right of ideas
Speaker 1: and comments and thoughts. And I think that something about
Speaker 1: phrasing it like that it empowers people because ultimately they're
Speaker 1: the shopper. They're the one who's going around and deciding
Speaker 1: what to take and what not to take in those
Speaker 1: kinds of things. So it's it's not prescriptive, it's not
Speaker 1: you have to do X to make this better. It's
Speaker 1: the idea of again, you're in this space, if IBA's
Speaker 1: trying and expand that to like life and how that works.
Speaker 1: I think in some ways, yeah, maybe the supermarket you
Speaker 1: know metaphor sort of works. I mean, obviously there are
Speaker 1: ways in less people talk about, you know, cafeteria Catholics
Speaker 1: or cafeteria bits, you know. But again going back to
Speaker 1: that idea of the sak guru, you know that, like, yeah,
Speaker 1: ultimately it is your inner voice that's guiding you through
Speaker 1: these things. And I think the last thing I'll say
Speaker 1: about it is the idea of not being afraid to
Speaker 1: make mistakes. So I know that when I was a
Speaker 1: younger writer, that was something that was hard for me.
Speaker 1: It was hard to write things that were quote unquote ugly.
Speaker 1: It was hard to like see myself fail on the page.
Speaker 1: And if you let that overwhelm you, then you don't
Speaker 1: end up writing anything right, So that idea, they're like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe sometimes you buy the wrong thing. You know, it happens.
Speaker 1: Like I said, I think that that's empowering in many ways.
Speaker 1: And so, like I said, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm just always trying to empower my students.
Speaker 4: Let's change directions a little bit. Do you want to
Speaker 4: give us a brief summary of what your latest novel
Speaker 4: is kind of about? I mean, I could take a
Speaker 4: stab at it, but it's probably going to be better
Speaker 4: from you, just to sort of as we go a
Speaker 4: little bit further into it so listeners have some context
Speaker 4: for it.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So, When I'm Gone look for Me in the
Speaker 1: East is set in contemporary Mongolia and it follows two
Speaker 1: identical twin brothers who are tasked with going out into
Speaker 1: the vast Mongolian countryside in the search for a Buddhist reincarnation.
Speaker 1: So basically the story opens, we have these two twins
Speaker 1: who are estranged. So one is actually a novice Buddhist
Speaker 1: monk and again he's been asked by the abbot of
Speaker 1: his monastery to go out and searching for this reincarnation,
Speaker 1: and so he asks his twin brother, who had as
Speaker 1: a child been discovered to be the reincarnation of an
Speaker 1: important lama, but who has since left the tradition. He
Speaker 1: asks his twin brother to help him on this quest,
Speaker 1: and basically, like I said, they go out into the
Speaker 1: bass Mongolian countryside, which Mongol is an amazing country that
Speaker 1: has many different spaces in it which are very different.
Speaker 1: It has mountains and snow, it has the Gobi Desert.
Speaker 1: So these two brothers go along with a few other
Speaker 1: folks from Tibetan India to go search for this reincarnation.
Speaker 4: And the two brothers also are sort of psychically linked
Speaker 4: in a way.
Speaker 1: They are. Yes, so they're twin brothers. And you know,
Speaker 1: were they born with a call over their face? Do
Speaker 1: they have the ability to read each other's minds, share memories. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's definitely a part of it as well.
Speaker 4: So I wanted to just start with the two characters.
Speaker 4: You've got one who is still very deep in the
Speaker 4: Tibetan Buddhist tradition and is planning to ordain I believe
Speaker 4: you know, is getting to that point. And then the
Speaker 4: other who is considered sort of a celebrated figure in
Speaker 4: that tradition. Right, he was a reincarnation of a previous
Speaker 4: master who has left it and is living in more
Speaker 4: of a modern, westernized way. The two of them certainly
Speaker 4: represent these two ideas, one of a monastic and the
Speaker 4: other of a modern life person. And for those of
Speaker 4: us that are on some sort of spiritual journey, I
Speaker 4: think we have this call and tension between us all
Speaker 4: the time between going deeper in and pursuing our spiritual
Speaker 4: path and being more of the world. Do you find
Speaker 4: that those characters represent different parts of you in a sense?
Speaker 1: I feel like they represent different parts of exactly what
Speaker 1: you're talking about, just like the human condition, right, and
Speaker 1: from that whole idea that the spiritual versus the material, right.
Speaker 1: And so I was very much thinking about them, going
Speaker 1: back to our earlier conversation about the parable and the
Speaker 1: idea of nuance and how things slide in and out.
Speaker 1: The beginning of the story, they seemingly would appear to
Speaker 1: be diametrically opposed as far as they're objectives and wants
Speaker 1: out of life. But hopefully by the end of the book,
Speaker 1: you know they've gone on a journey. They both come
Speaker 1: and had self realizations, and maybe they realize that they're
Speaker 1: actually not all that different after all.
Speaker 4: What I thought we would do is I would just
Speaker 4: continue to pull a couple lines out of the book
Speaker 4: and just see if they spark any sort of conversation.
Speaker 4: I mean, the chapter titles. I just love, love, love
Speaker 4: the chapter titles of this book.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 4: I mean, I could just flip it open and see, like,
Speaker 4: this is a title of a chapter. The constant arising
Speaker 4: of uncertainty is the only aspect of life of which
Speaker 4: we can be certain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So a couple of things about the book. The
Speaker 1: chapter titles were a late addition to it. So when
Speaker 1: I was in the book, I I'm not sure at
Speaker 1: what point, because I write it over many years, I'm
Speaker 1: not sure at what point I realized that these would
Speaker 1: all be very short chapters. I can't remember if again
Speaker 1: in earlier permutations, if they had been longer. I actually
Speaker 1: think that maybe they actually were short chapters even when
Speaker 1: I first started writing it. And so I had all
Speaker 1: these short little chapters, and originally they didn't have any
Speaker 1: titles at all, and then something about the shortness of
Speaker 1: the chapters. The entire book is written in present tense,
Speaker 1: regardless of time, so even when they go back in time,
Speaker 1: it's present tense. Even if somebody has a future thought.
Speaker 1: It's in present tense. The entire book's written in presentents.
Speaker 1: It's very fluid, right, and there are certain kinds of
Speaker 1: ways in which it moves slow, but it also moves fast.
Speaker 1: And so I realized that I need to sort of
Speaker 1: chapter titles to sort of like make each one kind
Speaker 1: of a snapshot in certain kinds of ways. And so
Speaker 1: I went through each chapter and I just simply pulled
Speaker 1: out a phrase or aligned. So almost all of the
Speaker 1: chapter titles actually are a phrase or aligned from that
Speaker 1: actual chapter, right. And so in thinking about the one
Speaker 1: that you just read, you know, I don't have any
Speaker 1: kind of like personal matras or anything like that, but
Speaker 1: if I were too, it probably is just the idea that,
Speaker 1: to me, the only absolute, that there are no absolutes. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: And so the idea of uncertainty, particularly for us in
Speaker 1: the West, uncertainty is many people, you know have a
Speaker 1: hard time living in uncertainty, myself included. Right, I'm actually
Speaker 1: writing a book right now, which, as I had mentioned,
Speaker 1: I was in Antarctica in two thousand and four. All
Speaker 1: of my books are very different, you know. One of
Speaker 1: my books is a comedy. This book is obviously meditative
Speaker 1: and spiritual. I have another book about Vietnam which is
Speaker 1: very lyrical and almost like a ghost story. The book
Speaker 1: that I'm writing that's set in Antarctica is actually I
Speaker 1: describe it as a horror book, but we'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: And so because of that, I've actually been asking people
Speaker 1: about what scares them. And I'm not interested in like
Speaker 1: spiders and that kind of stuff. I'm actually interested in
Speaker 1: existential things that scare them. And the number one thing
Speaker 1: that people keep mentioning is just the idea of a
Speaker 1: loss of control and uncertainty. Right that those are like
Speaker 1: they're number one fears, and so it's interesting if you
Speaker 1: really unpack that, like why that is, Like why is
Speaker 1: it that we fear uncertainty? I can understand why we
Speaker 1: fear loss of control because it's that feeling like if
Speaker 1: not in control, then anything could happen, which obviously is
Speaker 1: the truth. But the idea of uncertainty, again, it's one
Speaker 1: of those things where if you slide, you know, thinking
Speaker 1: about it along the spectrum, uncertainty can also be like
Speaker 1: really exciting. You know, there's a freshness to it. Anything
Speaker 1: is possible in a positive way, right The glass is
Speaker 1: half full, and yet it's something that we really really
Speaker 1: super fear and like I said, myself included, right, And
Speaker 1: so I don't remember the specifics of that particular chapter
Speaker 1: that you too. As an idea and thinking about this book,
Speaker 1: one of the things that the brother who's the Monk
Speaker 1: is dealing with is that he's on the cusp in
Speaker 1: a few months of actually taking his final vows, and
Speaker 1: he knows that when he takes these final vows, he
Speaker 1: will be giving up, for example, the idea of you know,
Speaker 1: having a love and committed relationship that he's basically vowing
Speaker 1: to be celibate, and the uncertainty of that, and I'm
Speaker 1: not knowing if that's something that he can actually live,
Speaker 1: you know, is really it's tearing him up inside, and
Speaker 1: it's something that he's really struggling with. So yeah, so
Speaker 1: just been thinking about our lives in all the different
Speaker 1: kinds of ways in which uncertainty presents itself each and
Speaker 1: every day. Is definitely a major theme in the book
Speaker 1: and something that I think about a lot.
Speaker 4: Yeah, It's interesting to see his struggles as he thinks
Speaker 4: about taking his final vows. Because most young people are
Speaker 4: driven to some degree by what is normal in that
Speaker 4: period of life, which is, you know, attraction to who
Speaker 4: you're attracted to and those desires that come along with it.
Speaker 4: And so he has all that, and on top of it,
Speaker 4: since he's sort of telepathically connected with his brother, his brother,
Speaker 4: after having left the tradition, has gone out and experienced
Speaker 4: what it's like to be with a woman, and so
Speaker 4: he actually has that window into it, and it's really
Speaker 4: interesting to watch him sort of struggle with those ideas.
Speaker 4: And you know, it's back to that sort of between
Speaker 4: our spiritual quest and the material. You know, I'm not
Speaker 4: saying that. I actually am not one of those people
Speaker 4: who believe at all that like physical desire is an
Speaker 4: unspiritual thing at all, but in his tradition it actually is.
Speaker 4: You know, in the Tibetan tradition, he's considered, you know,
Speaker 4: to be a monk. He has to give that up,
Speaker 4: and the way you write about his struggles are really helpful.
Speaker 4: I wanted to ask a question about something you said
Speaker 4: a second ago about writing the whole novel in present tense.
Speaker 4: I've heard you say that you like to give yourself
Speaker 4: a little bit of a challenge in writing, as if
Speaker 4: writing isn't challenging enough, you like to step it up
Speaker 4: a notch. You'll take on a task like writing and
Speaker 4: making everything in present tense. Was there any underpinning to
Speaker 4: why you chose that besides the fact that it was challenging.
Speaker 4: Did you feel like it spoke to this core idea
Speaker 4: of always being present that permeates the Buddhist tradition?
Speaker 1: Yeah. Usually when I pick a challenge for myselfware a constraints.
Speaker 1: Sometimes writers will call them constraints. Generally speaking, is not arbitrary,
Speaker 1: but it somehow serves the story.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 1: So for example, my second novel, We Write Upon Sticks.
Speaker 1: In that book, the entire book is written from a
Speaker 1: collective we point of view, so it's first person plural
Speaker 1: is opposed to like first person singular. And again the
Speaker 1: purpose there is that it's a story about a teen
Speaker 1: girl group of field hockey players. So it made sense
Speaker 1: to me that collectively that they would tell like their
Speaker 1: own stories. So again that's why I did that, And
Speaker 1: thinking about this book, when I realized that I needed to, like,
Speaker 1: what was the constraint going to be? Again, to me,
Speaker 1: the constraint needs to serve the story, and so I'm
Speaker 1: thinking about the idea of Buddhism and thinking about the
Speaker 1: idea of one of its major tenants is, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of the power of now Cartole that this is,
Speaker 1: this is what is, you know, this is all it is.
Speaker 1: It made sense to me that the story would be
Speaker 1: told in present tense and present tense only the other
Speaker 1: thing that it does. And it's true, you know, because
Speaker 1: I'm the poets originally, that's my training was in poetry,
Speaker 1: and my first books for all poems. There is a
Speaker 1: part of me that I like my readers to have
Speaker 1: to slow down a bit, you know, I'm not writing
Speaker 1: page turners. There's some be said about that, but that's
Speaker 1: just not what I'm interested in. And so you would
Speaker 1: think that maybe by writing an entire book and present tense,
Speaker 1: that would have it go really fast in a certain
Speaker 1: kind of way. But there's actually a way in which
Speaker 1: I think it slows it down. So yes, it was
Speaker 1: very much intentional and thinking about like the themes that
Speaker 1: I was interested in exploring in this book, and that
Speaker 1: was the reason why I chose that.
Speaker 4: Did it give you any insight into living in the
Speaker 4: present tense? By having to think about everything in that sense?
Speaker 4: Did anything come to you in your own spiritual life
Speaker 4: that came out of that.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned, you know, I don't consider myself to
Speaker 1: be a Buddhist, and it's true that John duality is
Speaker 1: uh is that out there, it's in the world. What
Speaker 1: does it means? Many different things to many different people,
Speaker 1: But it's the teaching that does resonate the most with me,
Speaker 1: and it's something that I think about like all the time,
Speaker 1: even as a practice, the idea of like now and
Speaker 1: coming back to now, coming back to now, coming back
Speaker 1: to now and again, the recognition that what does it
Speaker 1: even mean to say coming back to like where were you?
Speaker 1: Like no, you were right here right So exactly, it's
Speaker 1: really at the heart of my practice in many ways.
Speaker 1: And so I wish I could say that writing the
Speaker 1: book Like helped me understand more about it, but it didn't.
Speaker 4: Enough.
Speaker 1: It is sort of what I strive and where I
Speaker 1: strive to be is to be here.
Speaker 4: It is interesting to think about when you're writing the
Speaker 4: book about a character's memories, you're writing them in the
Speaker 4: present tense, as if they're happening now, and in a
Speaker 4: very real sense we know that to be sort of
Speaker 4: what is happening with memory, right, I mean, we are
Speaker 4: having the memory right now like that, that experience is
Speaker 4: all still incredibly present.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, in my own meditation practice, you know,
Speaker 1: I've experienced moments. I'm sure many people have, you know,
Speaker 1: experienced moments of what feels like like a very deep
Speaker 1: of being very very deeply present and recognizing certain things,
Speaker 1: right and so so yes, the idea that everything happens
Speaker 1: here there is nowhere else, there is one moment can't
Speaker 1: be cut up or divided like this is it.
Speaker 4: Similarly, you mentioned writing in the first person plural for
Speaker 4: we write upon sticks. As you were talking about that,
Speaker 4: it also occurred to me that when I'm going to
Speaker 4: look for me in the East and we write upon
Speaker 4: sticks have one thing in common, which is that there
Speaker 4: is some degree of mind melding that has happening between characters.
Speaker 4: Is that just sort of coincidental?
Speaker 1: I don't think so so. As I mentioned in, my
Speaker 1: first four published books were poetry books. And then for
Speaker 1: some reason I was like, I'm going to write a novel.
Speaker 5: Why not?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: And my first novel is called She Weeps Each Time
Speaker 1: You're Born, and it's set in Vietnam, and it follows
Speaker 1: a woman who is born towards the end of the
Speaker 1: Vietnam more up through contemporary times, and in that particular book,
Speaker 1: the quote unquote power that she has is that she
Speaker 1: has the power to hear the voices of the dead,
Speaker 1: which in Vietnam is a space in which there's obviously
Speaker 1: many missing and many dead. And so when I was
Speaker 1: first writing that novel, I realized it was set in
Speaker 1: Vietnam but had a very different theme and very different story,
Speaker 1: and I had to scrap it. And I had to
Speaker 1: really think, like, what are my strengths as a writer?
Speaker 1: Like what am I doing? And I thought, I say this,
Speaker 1: you know, humbly, I think, because I'm a poet, that
Speaker 1: one of my strengths is actually language. I can put
Speaker 1: words together in interesting patterns, I think. But then I
Speaker 1: realized that another strength of mind which I had never
Speaker 1: realized as a poet. I think it's going back to
Speaker 1: being the youngest of five children for whatever reason, like
Speaker 1: I have the ability to just make stuff up, like
Speaker 1: when it comes to plot. Some writers have a hard
Speaker 1: time with plot. I don't know why. Plot for me
Speaker 1: is very easy. And then I also realized that if
Speaker 1: I added one magical element to a plot, it's almost
Speaker 1: like taking something from three D and taking it into
Speaker 1: four D, because then you can just go one again.
Speaker 1: You don't want to get too crazy with it. So
Speaker 1: in that first novel, it's the idea that she can
Speaker 1: hear the voices of the dead, and that was the
Speaker 1: extra four D thing. And the second novel was the
Speaker 1: idea that this team can kind of collectively mind wise
Speaker 1: share thoughts. Yeah and so, and in this book it's
Speaker 1: the idea that it happens just between these two twins, right,
Speaker 1: and so it's true that each one of those magic elements,
Speaker 1: going back to when we were talking about constraints that
Speaker 1: I set for myself, they're not just arbitrary, but hopefully
Speaker 1: they also enhance the story as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they all have something to do with being
Speaker 4: able to understand what's happening with other people. There is
Speaker 4: an empathetic element to all of those three things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I hadn't thought of that, But yes.
Speaker 4: I'm curious whether when you were trying to write in
Speaker 4: the first person plural, whether that gave you any insights
Speaker 4: into how to think about us collectively or as people,
Speaker 4: or how to be more empathetic or I mean, I
Speaker 4: think as a novelist of a certain type. You have
Speaker 4: to be very empathetic because you were basically putting yourself
Speaker 4: in the minds of all these people. But there is
Speaker 4: a way in which doing it in the way you
Speaker 4: did is a different type of empathy. You're putting yourself
Speaker 4: in each of their minds individually, and then there's a
Speaker 4: collective element to it.
Speaker 1: The collective element of that book for me, wasn't the challenge,
Speaker 1: and it didn't necessarily broaden my views of how we
Speaker 1: think about ourselves as a community, but the individual stories
Speaker 1: of those characters certainly did so. For example, there's a
Speaker 1: trans character in there, and I really had to think,
Speaker 1: I am not LGBTQ, you know, I had to think
Speaker 1: long and hard about how I was going to portray
Speaker 1: that character, how I was going to have their story
Speaker 1: be sympathetic and yet true and honest and reflect you know,
Speaker 1: the experiences of LGBTQ people coming up in the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighties particularly. I thought long and hard, like, well, if
Speaker 1: I don't have this character and I had something else, like,
Speaker 1: what would that mean? And for me personally, I came
Speaker 1: to realization that if I didn't include that voice and
Speaker 1: that character, that that would be a kind of a reachure,
Speaker 1: and I didn't want to meet. The community of women
Speaker 1: includes all kinds of folks, right yeah, and so, like
Speaker 1: I said, the writing of the book in first person
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily broaden my thoughts about community, but the individual
Speaker 1: character stories did.
Speaker 4: One of the things you said about writing this book
Speaker 4: was you didn't have to go anywhere or do much
Speaker 4: research on it because you kind of lived it, meaning
Speaker 4: you grew up in that area in that time frame.
Speaker 4: And I did not grow up in the Boston area
Speaker 4: or the New England area. I'm Ohioan, but I grew
Speaker 4: up right in that timeframe, so all the cultural references
Speaker 4: are spot on. It did feel very much. There have
Speaker 4: been a few moments where I was like, I have
Speaker 4: not thought of that idea, that name, that whatever for
Speaker 4: a long time. So it was fun in that way
Speaker 4: for me. Near the very end of the book, I
Speaker 4: don't even know how to say what's happening in this
Speaker 4: section because I don't fully understand exactly. Maybe you can
Speaker 4: tell me what you know.
Speaker 1: I'm guessing he's in the sand. Is that what it's saying.
Speaker 4: It's the very last section, and it has a section heading,
Speaker 4: which is another great one. I was going to ask about,
Speaker 4: do not seek an easy victory, but always prefer a
Speaker 4: defeat that advances your learning. Which we could talk about
Speaker 4: that one for sure, if you want, you want to
Speaker 4: have a little motto, that's a very good one. But
Speaker 4: the character is giving a thesis. It's a little bit
Speaker 4: like a PhD world where you're giving a thesis and defending.
Speaker 4: In the Zen world, we would call it sort of
Speaker 4: dharma combat. Right, you're saying something and then the teacher
Speaker 4: is sort of poking at it. What's happening in that scene?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a couple of things. It is. It's the
Speaker 1: very it's the very end of the book. The poet
Speaker 1: in me, when I ask these kinds of questions, I
Speaker 1: oftentimes you know, mangle paraphrase Hemingway, you know, when he
Speaker 1: was asked about the old man the sea, you know,
Speaker 1: is the old man to see a Christian Aligordon? And
Speaker 1: he would say, you know, if I've written it, well,
Speaker 1: it means many things to many people. Yes, And so
Speaker 1: there's a part of me that doesn't like there to
Speaker 1: be like one definitive interpretation of what's happening at that moment.
Speaker 1: You know, your physical description of the idea of debate
Speaker 1: within the Buddhist community is spot on. So again not
Speaker 1: to be overly serious about it, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: beg off from answering that question. But like I said,
Speaker 1: I feel like you know a lot of what you've said.
Speaker 1: That's basically the setting of what is happening in that
Speaker 1: final passage, and for me, the one thing that I
Speaker 1: would say in which I love and again if I
Speaker 1: had a personal mantra, I feel like I've said like
Speaker 1: ten personal luntras. But the last line of the entire
Speaker 1: book is again obviously in translation from the poly but
Speaker 1: are allegedly the Buddhist dying words, make of yourself a
Speaker 1: light that is unwavering. You know which that line that
Speaker 1: phrased to me, I just like when I hear it,
Speaker 1: I feel it, you know, make of yourself a light
Speaker 1: that is unwavering. I can't say that I set out
Speaker 1: knowing that that was gonna be a last And it's
Speaker 1: a spoiler alert. Sorry if anyboe who has read the book,
Speaker 1: but it's just it's such a great line you have
Speaker 1: to give the boot of the last word.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, it is a book that has a Buddhism
Speaker 4: featured very heavily in that last section. There is a
Speaker 4: line that one of the characters is talking about. They're
Speaker 4: talking about permanence and impermanence, and the character is basically
Speaker 4: making a state that love is not impermanent. The line
Speaker 4: is love is not a product like a jar or
Speaker 4: a sound. Love is a force. And elsewhere very shortly after,
Speaker 4: love is not something we create. It is something that
Speaker 4: wells up in us, like sap in a tree. Did
Speaker 4: you pull that somewhere in Buddhist tradition or was that
Speaker 4: a feeling that came over you or a belief that
Speaker 4: you have.
Speaker 1: So, just to elaborate a little bit more again, when
Speaker 1: you would mention this idea that this particular section feels
Speaker 1: like a thesis debate in many ways. So it's true
Speaker 1: that I read actual transcripts of Buddhist debate. So in
Speaker 1: the Tibetan world, it's true that there's a lot of
Speaker 1: debate that happens. You'll see monks in courtyards debating each
Speaker 1: other where they have all these sort of scripted moves
Speaker 1: and they're actually like it almost looks like they're dancing.
Speaker 1: There's ways in which like they clap their hands and
Speaker 1: they stamp the earth and one person says something and
Speaker 1: then you know, they clap and stamp and the other
Speaker 1: person responds, right. And it's very formulaic linguistically. So, for example,
Speaker 1: I don't remember what the opening lines are in that
Speaker 1: particular section, but there's a formula to how they speak
Speaker 1: to each other, right. And there's also the idea of jars.
Speaker 1: There's a way in which when they talk about material things,
Speaker 1: you know, they'll talk about like a jar or a
Speaker 1: vessel or so a lot of the language, a lot
Speaker 1: of just the structure of that particular scene does come
Speaker 1: from the idea of these debates. With respect to the
Speaker 1: argument that he's making about love, I mean, that's like
Speaker 1: I wrote that, that's just you know, what I'm thinking about. So,
Speaker 1: I mean I wrote all of it obviously, but those
Speaker 1: kinds of things I was trying to think through. Okay,
Speaker 1: So here's this person who is debating this topic to
Speaker 1: show their knowledge about Buddhism. What would the ultimate topic
Speaker 1: for them be to debate? And then how would they
Speaker 1: make their arguments? You know, what would the person who's
Speaker 1: debating against them say, you know, what would this look like?
Speaker 1: And in many ways, Tibetan Buddhism, I think, and again
Speaker 1: I am no expert by a long shot. So the
Speaker 1: idea of a paradox that everything is impermanent, and yet
Speaker 1: Tibetan Buddhism does believe in this kind of like this luminosity,
Speaker 1: which seems that is all right, and so to me
Speaker 1: thinking about that and wanting to be true to bet
Speaker 1: in tradition, you know, I just sort of turned that
Speaker 1: into the idea. It's it's love, right, even in the
Speaker 1: face of this impermanence, the only permanence is love, you know.
Speaker 1: So again if we go back to the only you know,
Speaker 1: the only absolute is that there are no absolutes. Again,
Speaker 1: but the paradox of it, it's like, yeah, but the
Speaker 1: only absolute maybe is this idea of love. Right. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's kind of where those ideas came from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a beautifully written section, and I just really
Speaker 4: do love that line. Love is not something we create,
Speaker 4: it is something that wells up in this like sap
Speaker 4: in a tree is definitely a very beautiful and poetic line.
Speaker 4: Thank you. I think that's a great place for us
Speaker 4: to wrap up on that thought. Quwan, thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Like I said, I really loved when I'm gone look
Speaker 4: for me in the East. I have been having a
Speaker 4: blast reading we ride upon sticks, and I've really enjoyed
Speaker 4: talking with you, so thank you so much for taking
Speaker 4: the time.
Speaker 5: Gotlus, thank you for having me.
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