Speaker 1: That oftentimes we compare ourselves with the worst in ourselves
Speaker 1: and the best in other people. And when we do that,
Speaker 1: we will always look down on our journey. We will
Speaker 1: always diminish how much we've changed. Welcome to the one
Speaker 1: you feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance
Speaker 1: of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this
Speaker 1: episode is Dante Stewart, a theologian, essayist, and cultural crack.
Speaker 1: His work has appeared on CNN, The New York Times,
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, and more. Dante received his b A
Speaker 1: and sociology from Clemson University and is currently studying at
Speaker 1: the Chandler School of Theology at Emery University in Atlanta, Georgia. Today,
Speaker 1: Dante and Eric discussed his book Shouting in the Fire
Speaker 1: An American Epistle. Hey Dante, welcome to the show. Hey,
Speaker 1: what's up, man, It's good to be with you. We're
Speaker 1: gonna be talking about your book Shouting in the Fire
Speaker 1: An American Epistle, among other things. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: let's start, like we always do, with the parable. In
Speaker 1: the parable, there is a grandparent talking with a grand
Speaker 1: child and they say, in life, there are two wolves
Speaker 1: inside of us that are always in battle. One is
Speaker 1: a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery
Speaker 1: and love, and the others a bad wolf, which represents
Speaker 1: things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild
Speaker 1: stops and thinks about it for a second, looks up
Speaker 1: with their grandparents, says, well, which one wins? And the
Speaker 1: grandparents says, the one you feed. So I'd like to
Speaker 1: start off by asking you what does that parable mean
Speaker 1: to you in your life and in the work that
Speaker 1: you do. Yeah, wow, that is actually a great, great parable.
Speaker 1: And the immediate thing that comes to mind is back
Speaker 1: in college at Clumpson University, where a similar story was
Speaker 1: told about investment. About whatever investment that we make in
Speaker 1: our bodies and in our minds and the things that
Speaker 1: we're doing outside in the world is eventually going to
Speaker 1: come out. And whichever one gets fed the most is
Speaker 1: the one who's going to endure the longest. So we
Speaker 1: think about running. I just got finished working out cycling.
Speaker 1: Actually I just got finished cycling, And whenever I'm cycling,
Speaker 1: it's always like that. My ability to be strong long
Speaker 1: is dependent on what I ate thirty minutes ago, people
Speaker 1: what I ate an hour ago. And so when I
Speaker 1: hear that parable, particularly around the work that I'm doing
Speaker 1: across theology and and black literature, and politics and and
Speaker 1: gender and sexuality and and many of these intersecting topics.
Speaker 1: I want to feed the one that's going to create
Speaker 1: the greatest community. I don't want to feed the wolf
Speaker 1: that's going to destroy everybody. I want to feed the
Speaker 1: wolf that's going to create a community of care. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of where my mind goes Awesome, that's a
Speaker 1: lovely answer. So I want to start off. There's a
Speaker 1: question that you pose early in the book that I
Speaker 1: think sits at the heart of the work you're doing.
Speaker 1: But I think a different version of it sits in
Speaker 1: the heart of the work all of us do it
Speaker 1: anyway in our life. Right, And you say that, I
Speaker 1: wonder to myself, how do I be black and Christian
Speaker 1: and American? Right, and that, you know, trying to be
Speaker 1: all three of those things and and then calling different
Speaker 1: things out of you. And I think we could add
Speaker 1: mail to that, right, male as a whole whole element.
Speaker 1: You know, we might have listeners who are like, well,
Speaker 1: what's it like to be black and atheist and female?
Speaker 1: And we each have these different identities. I think that
Speaker 1: may sort of call to us in different ways. And
Speaker 1: I'm just curious how you think about being a whole
Speaker 1: person that balances all those different identities, particularly if they're
Speaker 1: calling for different things from you. Yeah, yeah, incredible question.
Speaker 1: My mind. Immediity goes to tone Uet Bombarba's The Salt Eaters,
Speaker 1: which was a fantastic, fantastic novel, which is the story
Speaker 1: of a woman who is very much engaged in the
Speaker 1: struggle for liberation, but she finds herself in the psychiatric
Speaker 1: ward at the beginning of the book, and she's in
Speaker 1: this community of healers who have disability to heal people,
Speaker 1: and there at the beginning of the book, there is
Speaker 1: the question that is asked, again and again and again,
Speaker 1: are you sure you want to be wail? Because healing
Speaker 1: the wholeness ain't no trifling matter. And one of the
Speaker 1: things that I love about this book, and I have
Speaker 1: been just sitting with this book and sitting really with
Speaker 1: Tony cab and Bar for a long time now, is that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a difference between doing creative and compelling
Speaker 1: work and actually being a good and healthy human being.
Speaker 1: You know, some people are really good at what they do,
Speaker 1: and they may do it very well, but oftentimes in
Speaker 1: the process they destroy themselves and others in the process
Speaker 1: because they don't know how to integrate various aspects of
Speaker 1: what it means to be a whole and healthy human
Speaker 1: being in what they're doing. And for me, I've made
Speaker 1: that mistake in the past, and I have to continually
Speaker 1: be aware of my own limitations as it relates to
Speaker 1: my work. Right now, I think about my family, I
Speaker 1: think about being in ministry, I think about being a
Speaker 1: writer and a student, and then somebody who's trying to
Speaker 1: do work in public. So many of these roles are
Speaker 1: calling me in various different directions that it's very easy
Speaker 1: to burn out, is very easy to allow insecurity, to
Speaker 1: win out, is very easy to work from a place
Speaker 1: of imbalance. Is very easy to be resentful and even
Speaker 1: regretful in ways that I failed, in ways that I
Speaker 1: missed and fumbled the bag in the past. And I
Speaker 1: have to constantly remind myself of why I do this
Speaker 1: work that I do. I do it, as Baldwin said
Speaker 1: in is Far Next time, I do it because I
Speaker 1: love us, I love myself. I want all of us
Speaker 1: uh to be whole and healthy. And back to your
Speaker 1: initial question of that what sits at the heart of
Speaker 1: my book is that question what does it mean to
Speaker 1: be Black, American and Christian? And it is really a
Speaker 1: nod to Ardrew Lord, the black lesbian feminist poet, a
Speaker 1: mother who she self described herself. As she writes in Zombie,
Speaker 1: a new spelling to my name around page one seventy
Speaker 1: one seventy six, something like that, she says, I remember
Speaker 1: what it is like to be young and black and
Speaker 1: gay and lonely. And she goes and separates those various
Speaker 1: experiences not with a Comma, but with the word and
Speaker 1: and it's as if she's suggesting that one needs to
Speaker 1: take into account what these various particularities in my identity
Speaker 1: mean and the ways in which they intersect in the
Speaker 1: most beautiful and terrible ways possible. Then she goes on
Speaker 1: and says that we had to create various models. We
Speaker 1: had to create communities of love and accountability and responsibility
Speaker 1: and wholeness because we had no models. We had people
Speaker 1: who rejected us. And in those various experience we had
Speaker 1: people who let us down and filled us. And we
Speaker 1: have to find a way to show up in the
Speaker 1: world as our full and whole self instead of simply
Speaker 1: being reminded of what other people did to us. And
Speaker 1: so me, when I think about wholeness and healing and
Speaker 1: shotting in the Fire and American Epistle, it is that
Speaker 1: journey continually not trying to be the hero, but trying
Speaker 1: to find ways to be whole and healthy as a
Speaker 1: human person. A beautiful answer. There's so many things you
Speaker 1: sit in there I could touch on. It reminded me
Speaker 1: of a line in your book A little Bit where
Speaker 1: you say, as a writer, I came to the realization
Speaker 1: that far more important than people liking my work or
Speaker 1: even resonating with my work, or even using my work
Speaker 1: to shake things up. Was me liking myself and liking
Speaker 1: the complexity of life and believing that I had something
Speaker 1: worth giving that was saturated in maturity and love. And
Speaker 1: I love that last idea because any of those identities
Speaker 1: we wanted, any of those identities we take or that
Speaker 1: we inherit or whatever, if we bring to them that
Speaker 1: idea of maturity and love, then that feels to me
Speaker 1: like a lot of the battle. Oh yeah. And I
Speaker 1: think inside of our work that we do, of trying
Speaker 1: to offer you say, in your platform, practical wisdom for
Speaker 1: a better life, or in my space, me trying to
Speaker 1: create a world of love and liberation, where in some
Speaker 1: sense my kind of sprain board is at the intersection
Speaker 1: of Jesus and James ball Went Black, literagy and theology.
Speaker 1: It's very easy to allow that work or that platform
Speaker 1: or whatever that is to mask who we really are,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's easy to allow those things to
Speaker 1: allow us to run from ourselves. As I know in
Speaker 1: the book that whether I was in the Orange Jersey
Speaker 1: or whether I was reading theology, or whether I was preaching, teaching,
Speaker 1: leading in these spaces. These spaces allowed me opportunity to
Speaker 1: run from myself, or run from other people, or run
Speaker 1: from where I became, or in some sense made me
Speaker 1: the hero in the process. And I think at the
Speaker 1: heart of so much of the running is insecurity and
Speaker 1: fear that says that if people know me for who
Speaker 1: I really am, if people hear the whole story of
Speaker 1: what I actually have become, then they will not accept
Speaker 1: me in my full self, and they will reject me
Speaker 1: for who I want to become. And so much of
Speaker 1: our work, so much of this kind of growing up
Speaker 1: that we need to do, must be saturated in maturity
Speaker 1: to realize that off the times we compare ourselves with
Speaker 1: the worst in ourselves and the best in other people,
Speaker 1: and when we do that, we will always look down
Speaker 1: on our journey. We will always diminish how much we've changed.
Speaker 1: And we would try and prove to people that what
Speaker 1: they are projecting on us, or what they remember about
Speaker 1: us in the past, is actually who we really were
Speaker 1: when the actuality that is just one part of the journey,
Speaker 1: and it made us who we are today, and the
Speaker 1: fullness of that story is everything that came before and
Speaker 1: everything that happened in between. Yeah, that's awesome, very well said.
Speaker 1: I think it's time that we pivot a little bit
Speaker 1: to your story, because I think it's an important part
Speaker 1: of the book, and I particularly want to focus in
Speaker 1: on kind of where you start. The book primarily is
Speaker 1: really around the fact, and I'm gonna I'm gonna set
Speaker 1: it up a little bit for listeners, and you correct
Speaker 1: me if I get anything wrong. You grew up in
Speaker 1: the rural sal Pentecostal and then you went off to
Speaker 1: Clemson University to be a football player, and while that
Speaker 1: was happening, you began to get involved with, for lack
Speaker 1: of a better word, the white church. I'll let you
Speaker 1: kind of pick it up from there, kind of share
Speaker 1: a little bit about what was pulling you in that direction,
Speaker 1: and then we can sort of talk about your movement
Speaker 1: away from that, and then, um, I think that leads
Speaker 1: into a lot of other areas we can go here. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So at this moment this was in I was rising
Speaker 1: leader in this predominant white church, and by that time,
Speaker 1: in two thousand sixteen, I had already graduated from Clemson.
Speaker 1: I was very much invested in white evangelicalism through college
Speaker 1: where we come onto campus as young black athletes, and
Speaker 1: the ones who have greatest access to us when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about like wisdom and spirituality and maturity and vocation,
Speaker 1: those who are shaping those ideas and those ideals are
Speaker 1: those who are white. When you think about preaching and things,
Speaker 1: we should be involved. And it wasn't during that moment
Speaker 1: thinking about the injustice that was around us. Of course, uh,
Speaker 1: those as my teammates were concerned about those injustices, particularly
Speaker 1: when I tell the story about Treyvon Martin, and my
Speaker 1: team may stand in solidarity with him, but me a
Speaker 1: line said, I had work to do. Uh. So there
Speaker 1: were definitely moments and movements, uh that that wanted to
Speaker 1: take seriously the suffering that black people were enduring and
Speaker 1: trying to liberate us from the the kind of enduring
Speaker 1: structures of white supremacy that we're so pervasive in every
Speaker 1: aspect of our society. But in a very real way,
Speaker 1: that wasn't an overwhelming thing. It was more so like,
Speaker 1: you're here to play football, and you're here to get
Speaker 1: an education and everything else you know you need to.
Speaker 1: It's like that the idea of the blinders. You need
Speaker 1: to leave all the noise when in actuality we never
Speaker 1: took into account, but we were missing when we had
Speaker 1: such exum and zero sum focus. And for me, so
Speaker 1: much of what I was missing was the wisdom and
Speaker 1: the love and the art and the culture that came
Speaker 1: from my black Pentecostal real upbringing. When I was at Clemson,
Speaker 1: so much of it was me seeing whiteness is something
Speaker 1: to be desired and bringing me protection and bringing me
Speaker 1: resources and bringing me things that my parents and people
Speaker 1: around where I came from said was gonna make me successful. Now,
Speaker 1: over time, I started to believe it, and I started
Speaker 1: to get invested and get involved, and it changed how
Speaker 1: our names saw and showed up in the world. You know.
Speaker 1: Steady suggests that the longer people of color and black
Speaker 1: people are within these white dominant spaces, the more we
Speaker 1: individualize our racial identity uh and the less we identify
Speaker 1: with our people that we come from. And so what
Speaker 1: tends to happen is the longer we're in those spaces,
Speaker 1: the more we're socialized out of where we come from
Speaker 1: and socialized into an environment that oftentimes want us to
Speaker 1: seem mel lay in ways that that does not question
Speaker 1: the dominant power structures, that does not question the stories
Speaker 1: at work within these spaces. So two thousand sixteen happened
Speaker 1: for London Castile and Alton Sterling is murdered, and it
Speaker 1: shook me up out of the ways in which I
Speaker 1: had devalue where I come from and distanced myself from
Speaker 1: the people that I came from. And then Donald Trump happened,
Speaker 1: and I'm reaching teaching leading, and so many of these
Speaker 1: white members in this church were not just apathetic to
Speaker 1: our identities and our experiences, but they actually was actively hostile.
Speaker 1: And so that just wasn't for the members, that was
Speaker 1: also for the leaders. And so then in that moment,
Speaker 1: I had a decision I had to make. Either I
Speaker 1: stay and assimilate and be silent and it eats me
Speaker 1: up on the inside and I felt myself and my
Speaker 1: wife and my friends and very legitimate ways, or I
Speaker 1: make the more courageous decision to actually change and do
Speaker 1: something about the reality that I knew was harming all
Speaker 1: of us. There's so many things you write in the
Speaker 1: book about this that I think are so powerful, and
Speaker 1: I think what you're describing, we're framing it in the
Speaker 1: context of black and white, and that's an important part
Speaker 1: of your story and all that. And I think as
Speaker 1: a human experience, there is a you grow up, you
Speaker 1: kind of move away from what you were raised, you
Speaker 1: want to learn something new, you're looking for something else,
Speaker 1: You lose touch, you know, and there's this reckoning that
Speaker 1: goes on inside of us right between like how I
Speaker 1: was raised and who I am now and what I
Speaker 1: believe now. And I think that's that's so interesting. Of course,
Speaker 1: yours was amplified by the fact that you sort of
Speaker 1: suddenly realized, like, oh, I'm in a space that's hostile
Speaker 1: towards my people, you know. And I'm curious to the
Speaker 1: extent that you sort of knew where you were and
Speaker 1: you really wanted to be there and you were willing
Speaker 1: to overlook a lot of things, or to the extent
Speaker 1: that you were surprised and you went, Holy mackerel, like
Speaker 1: some of this ugliness is coming out of the cupboard.
Speaker 1: And it's probably a little bit of both, but you
Speaker 1: say a little more about that. I definitely think that
Speaker 1: that's very perceptive. Actually, so much of my story is
Speaker 1: that tension of I'm not making myself the hero. I
Speaker 1: actually wanted to be there, and I write in a
Speaker 1: book that I had become a weapon, and it was
Speaker 1: a weapon that was always used against us, the black US,
Speaker 1: or any marginalized community, whether you're talking about black women,
Speaker 1: you're talking about l g B t Q. This idea
Speaker 1: of being white, conservative, evangelical male as like fundamentally Christian,
Speaker 1: that this this idea of listening to that voice as
Speaker 1: the dominant voice for how I thought about the world
Speaker 1: harm so many people. And I desired it because it
Speaker 1: brought me so much of what I was longing for,
Speaker 1: and that was affirmation. And me and my friend was
Speaker 1: talking to some time ago one of my teammates and
Speaker 1: he was like, yo, bro, Like we all live for
Speaker 1: this one thing when we playing ball, and it's to
Speaker 1: hear from the coach, great job, I see you, You're
Speaker 1: doing great. We're living literally in and day out for
Speaker 1: that final affirmation at the end of every day, at
Speaker 1: the end of each game, at the end of each week,
Speaker 1: at the end of each year, great job, yo, You're
Speaker 1: doing amazing, etcetera, etcetera. Now, when you speak to amplification,
Speaker 1: I think when we start taking into account social identities
Speaker 1: and affirmation, especially within the context of giving injustice around
Speaker 1: experiences of race, class, gender, sexuality, place ability, etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 1: This kind of affirmation and assimilation is amplified, and we
Speaker 1: long for these things because you know, these people in
Speaker 1: some sense have the ability to determine whether I stay
Speaker 1: here and go beyond or whether I go back home.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we didn't want from where
Speaker 1: I grew up is to go back home, because it
Speaker 1: was almost like a metaphorical death sentence to go back home.
Speaker 1: And so, like so many young people that I was around,
Speaker 1: we live for the affirmation. And so inside of this
Speaker 1: white evangelical space, that affirmation came, and it came again
Speaker 1: and again and again. And I want people to understand.
Speaker 1: I don't want people to be unaware that YO, to
Speaker 1: be young and black and male and straight and charismatic
Speaker 1: is to be marketable in these white spaces, especially if
Speaker 1: you don't say anything about you know, oppression and justice,
Speaker 1: gender sexuality, even how we think about the world and
Speaker 1: culture and cultural production. You know, we're very marketable. And
Speaker 1: it's not until we start to push back against these
Speaker 1: dominant stories that we realize that these spaces only one
Speaker 1: us insofar as we make them feel good about who
Speaker 1: they are or what they're doing. Case in point, Colin Kaepernick,
Speaker 1: case in point, many of the black women who stand
Speaker 1: up against this injustice in the NBA. I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: Maya Moore, uh. Case in point. Uh, we see black
Speaker 1: gay men, black gay women standing up against the dominant
Speaker 1: forms in which even we black men and up whole patriarchy. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so when when you started thinking about this silencing
Speaker 1: and this assimilation and things like that, and just the
Speaker 1: ways in which is amplified, especially for me, in this space,
Speaker 1: I started to see that I was actually full to
Speaker 1: desire this space. I was shaped to desire this space.
Speaker 1: It didn't naturally happen this space called me to that desire,
Speaker 1: called me to that assimilation. And it wasn't until black women,
Speaker 1: particularly my wife and others, started to force me to
Speaker 1: see how that desire for affirmation was destroying us and
Speaker 1: them in the process. It wasn't until then that I
Speaker 1: started to see the person that I had become, and
Speaker 1: that person was somebody who was really, as I said
Speaker 1: in the book, was anti black. And I have to
Speaker 1: own that. What you say about wanting that affirmation from coaches,
Speaker 1: from all of these people, I'm a straight white male.
Speaker 1: You know, as far as we talk about these imbalanced
Speaker 1: power dynamics, right, I sit up near the top, right,
Speaker 1: and that desire for affirmation, still in the past, has
Speaker 1: ruled parts of my life. I can only imagine the
Speaker 1: pull of the forces when you add everything else into
Speaker 1: the dynamic that I simply don't have to cope with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I think you think about race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, geography,
Speaker 1: immigration status, any of these kind of experiences of modernization
Speaker 1: brings both visibility and invisibility. So when you're marginalized inside
Speaker 1: of a space, you're hyper visible, like you're always conscious
Speaker 1: of being seen. You're always conscious of people seeing you
Speaker 1: and you being conscious of that being seen. And so
Speaker 1: this is like one of my one of my brothers,
Speaker 1: Darn them More. He has this podcast, Being Seen, which
Speaker 1: is sitting at the intersections of black male gay life
Speaker 1: and queer life and trans life. And one of the
Speaker 1: things he talks about and weave so well in this
Speaker 1: podcast is these various experiences of hyper visibility. And when
Speaker 1: you're talking about hyper visibility and being seen, you're oftentimes
Speaker 1: just differently than those who believe themselves to be the norm.
Speaker 1: And I think when you're talking about these marginalizations and
Speaker 1: being seen. You're always mindful of how you show up
Speaker 1: in the world. You can't be enraged like other people
Speaker 1: can be raged. You can't be sorrowful in ways that
Speaker 1: other people can be sorrowful. But there's also a hyper
Speaker 1: visibility as well. So it's the tension. It's the paradox
Speaker 1: where you're conscious of being seen and other people see you,
Speaker 1: but they don't take your experience seriously enough to actually
Speaker 1: change the conditions that you have to live in. So
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the experience of college athletes right now
Speaker 1: trying to fight for rights and trying to you know,
Speaker 1: trying to create better contentions or even Brian Flores, the
Speaker 1: coach from the Miami Dolphins s Woo, calls the NFL
Speaker 1: working like it's on a plantation. We're not only hyper visible,
Speaker 1: but we're invisible in this space. It's like, yo, you
Speaker 1: should be grateful for being here, when the actuality, we're
Speaker 1: not just grateful to exist. We actually want to have
Speaker 1: an experience of being free. And you can only be
Speaker 1: free when your humanity and your reality and your experiences
Speaker 1: are not only seen and felt, but actually taken into
Speaker 1: account inside of environment where you feel seen, inspired and protected,
Speaker 1: and so so much of that invisibility, invisible in these
Speaker 1: white institutions that my story is woven into, is me
Speaker 1: trying to figure out a way how to give voice
Speaker 1: to so much of the pain, so much of this struggle,
Speaker 1: so much of the rage, so much of the violence
Speaker 1: that I was experiencing, even though it may not have
Speaker 1: been physical, it was psychological and emotional violence. It was
Speaker 1: trauma and being reminded of this trauma. And so much
Speaker 1: of my book and so much of these experiences are
Speaker 1: about giving voice to what we experience and what we
Speaker 1: know to be true and what we feel and are
Speaker 1: embodied social sales, whether you're talking about being inside of
Speaker 1: the classroom, whether you're talking about being inside of a
Speaker 1: social space, whether you're talking about being inside of the
Speaker 1: civic organization. As theologian Katy Kennon would say, there is
Speaker 1: no value free space. We bring whoever we are, and
Speaker 1: we need to take that seriously, and we need to
Speaker 1: find ways of being together where we are all seen
Speaker 1: and inspired and protected in ways that make us more
Speaker 1: human and not less, and takes into account that we
Speaker 1: don't all come here the same way that black women
Speaker 1: see different than I see that me as a young
Speaker 1: black male see different than white people see that black trends.
Speaker 1: But men and men see different than we, as those
Speaker 1: who assist hit see And we need to take into
Speaker 1: account that their experiences as much is as important as mine.
Speaker 1: And I need to take that into consideration and take
Speaker 1: that seriously and how I show up in the world.
Speaker 1: You just said something there about there being no value
Speaker 1: free spaces I want to present. Yeah, that was another
Speaker 1: question I wanted to sort of get at. So you
Speaker 1: were in the white evangelical church, right, which we know
Speaker 1: that white evangelicals are the large majority of people who
Speaker 1: elected Donald Trump, right, So it's easy for me as
Speaker 1: a white person to go, well, dude, you were hanging
Speaker 1: with the wrong You're hanging with the wrong white cars, right.
Speaker 1: So seriously, though, my question is are there spaces that
Speaker 1: would have been less hostile or felt less violent to
Speaker 1: you as a black man, or is that the fact
Speaker 1: that they were mostly white spaces by their very nature
Speaker 1: are that way? Yeah? Yeah, I think it's by the
Speaker 1: very nature of being white space. Um, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about a conservative space or progressive space. Oftentimes, you know,
Speaker 1: white people take for granted that they actually are white.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we don't think about it. Yeah. And so
Speaker 1: one of the things James Baldwin talked about when he
Speaker 1: made the statement about, you know, working with the American Communists,
Speaker 1: is that the American communists forgot that they were actually American,
Speaker 1: and so many of these value systems of American nous,
Speaker 1: of dominance, of control, of politics of fear and etcetera, etcetera,
Speaker 1: was even at work in a separ proclaim radical organization.
Speaker 1: And so I think it's by its very nature of
Speaker 1: being inside of that white space that was hostile to
Speaker 1: my reality. And I think we have to take into
Speaker 1: account the social construction of whiteness, that it is a
Speaker 1: value system um that we have in area from colonialism
Speaker 1: that makes whiteness the dominating force and how we name
Speaker 1: see an act within the world, and that dominating force
Speaker 1: sees itself as the norm. And whenever you're inside of
Speaker 1: the space that sees itself as the norm, it is
Speaker 1: only going to take into reality your way of seeing
Speaker 1: the world. It is only gonna take that into account
Speaker 1: very limited ways. Uh. And so I think by very
Speaker 1: nature of me existing in those spaces was really the
Speaker 1: culprit of my experience and the kind of struggles that
Speaker 1: I face. And I want to be clear, this runs
Speaker 1: rampant as well in black church spaces. So I talk
Speaker 1: to people all the time about the Black church and
Speaker 1: things like that. I say, you know, if we say,
Speaker 1: you know, the Black church is always a space of liberation,
Speaker 1: we could say that and say, yeah, that's kind of true.
Speaker 1: But then also I tell people, you have to take
Speaker 1: into account if I'm a Black man in that space,
Speaker 1: then that may be true with me more than if
Speaker 1: I'm a Black woman in that space. But if I'm black,
Speaker 1: g b t Q in that space, oftentimes that space
Speaker 1: is not a space of liberation, but oftentimes a space
Speaker 1: that uses patriarchy and called patriarchy God and really utilizes
Speaker 1: the Bible as a weapon in the same way as
Speaker 1: white people utilize the Bible as a weapon against us.
Speaker 1: And so I think, as you're talking about the human experience,
Speaker 1: we all are shot through with that kind of reality,
Speaker 1: and we can easily become the worst of who we are.
Speaker 1: But there are spaces where that might be true more
Speaker 1: than others. So I want to live in that tension
Speaker 1: of not triumphalizing one space over the other, as if
Speaker 1: like this space is going to be the space that
Speaker 1: finally saves what we lost from other spaces. But I
Speaker 1: will say that you know that some spaces are actually
Speaker 1: better than others, and we need to find out how
Speaker 1: to shine light on those spaces and support those spaces
Speaker 1: so that those spaces are created again and again and
Speaker 1: again inside of our society and hopes that even in
Speaker 1: our differences, as ardre Loot was saying, even in our differences,
Speaker 1: that so many silences can be broken, that we can
Speaker 1: meet and greet one another and our particular experiences as
Speaker 1: human beings who cared deeply about the world we live
Speaker 1: in and create together. Yeah, I think this is such
Speaker 1: a thorny problem because how do we find or create
Speaker 1: spaces that feel equal. You know, let's just say there's
Speaker 1: a predominantly white space that really says, look, I really
Speaker 1: want to become a space that's welcoming and open to all.
Speaker 1: And so in the beginning, I have a few black
Speaker 1: people who come right in the beginning, it's not their space.
Speaker 1: It doesn't feel right. Like you said, it's still not right.
Speaker 1: But it takes time for people to sort of you know,
Speaker 1: first there's a few, then there's more, and more, or
Speaker 1: we could reverse this and say it's a black space
Speaker 1: and a couple of white people come into it. How
Speaker 1: communities evolve in general is something I'm really interested in,
Speaker 1: let alone. I know how hard it is to create
Speaker 1: and involve any community, let alone one that solves some
Speaker 1: of these equality problems in a fundamental way. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: I think this is the ongoing challenge. You know why
Speaker 1: why the work and the art is so important is
Speaker 1: because you know, we have inherited problems that have had
Speaker 1: centuries to develop. I'm reminded of talking to one of
Speaker 1: her students, Tea Butler, the writer Uh. And the student
Speaker 1: came to her and asked about the parable of the source,
Speaker 1: and the students said, you know, is it as bad
Speaker 1: as you make it seem in the parables? And she said,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't create the problems. All I let
Speaker 1: them do was get about thirty years and let the
Speaker 1: dangers of the past become their disasters in the future.
Speaker 1: And so the student noticeably shook as he would be acts, Okay,
Speaker 1: where are we doomed? Uh? And I tell you Butler says, no,
Speaker 1: we're not doom We're we're here right now in this moment,
Speaker 1: and the student says, well, what is the answer? And
Speaker 1: Octavia Butler says, there is no single answer. There are
Speaker 1: thousands of answers, you know, and you can become one
Speaker 1: if you so choose to be. And when I'll tell
Speaker 1: your Butler wrote that in Essence magazine it was entitle
Speaker 1: a few rules for predicting the future. She says, we
Speaker 1: need to learn from the past, we need to respect
Speaker 1: the law of consequences, and we need to count on surprises.
Speaker 1: So as I think about that, and I think about
Speaker 1: my work, and I think about the work of trying
Speaker 1: to find healing and wholeness and black stories, black life,
Speaker 1: black art, and creativity, I want to try and figure
Speaker 1: out how to continually find in search for those answers
Speaker 1: and continually, in small ways, become that answer. Because I
Speaker 1: know that there is even my book and so many
Speaker 1: of these books that I'm surrounded about, or so many
Speaker 1: of these great thinkers that I lean on, there is
Speaker 1: no one single answer, but there are many answers that
Speaker 1: we can find in their literature. Where I'm thinking about
Speaker 1: James Baldwin or Tony K. Bambara or Alice Walker or
Speaker 1: Richard Wright or somebody in in the in the just
Speaker 1: were like James Cone or Katie Kennell. I'm Shawn Copeland
Speaker 1: that there are so many answers in these very spiritual
Speaker 1: teachers and leaders, and so many answers in the everyday,
Speaker 1: ordinary ways that we black people take whatever we have
Speaker 1: and we turn it black. And I want to find
Speaker 1: those answers. I want to find those things that would
Speaker 1: allow me to embody the best of what we can
Speaker 1: become and hopefully, over time, like a sculpture and artists,
Speaker 1: that that over time, every single hit would turn that
Speaker 1: sculpture into something beautiful, so that when people the years
Speaker 1: and years and years from now will look back on
Speaker 1: this sculpture, they will not only here about the journey
Speaker 1: that got us here, but they will also be able
Speaker 1: to see the product that we have actually created. And
Speaker 1: that's what I think is the answer. It's doing whatever
Speaker 1: we can in our art to give voice to these stories,
Speaker 1: to give voice to these experiences, but also to say
Speaker 1: that we are not just simply what other people make us,
Speaker 1: but that we are human and worthy of the deepest
Speaker 1: love and the best any of us have to offer
Speaker 1: in any given moment. Beautifully said, I was listening to
Speaker 1: something this morning and they were talking about an idea
Speaker 1: that's not terribly unusual but seems to be coming up
Speaker 1: for me recently, which is that reading fiction makes you
Speaker 1: a more empathetic human being because you have to see
Speaker 1: the world through someone else's eyes or done well. And
Speaker 1: I'm curious to the extent that you think part of
Speaker 1: an answer is for white people to be reading black authors,
Speaker 1: to be getting an understanding of what that actually looks like,
Speaker 1: and I specifically mean in some cases fiction, given its
Speaker 1: potential for creating empathy. I'm curious if you have any
Speaker 1: thoughts on that. Yeah, that's a hard one, you know,
Speaker 1: because because we have been writing literature, whether you're talking
Speaker 1: about poetry, you know, fiction, essays, sermons, songs, we've been
Speaker 1: doing art for centuries. And even as we have done
Speaker 1: art for century, there have been white people who have
Speaker 1: learned and who have changed, but the vast majority of
Speaker 1: white people have stayed the same and wanted to maintain
Speaker 1: the white supremacist power superstructure, uh and the inside of
Speaker 1: our societies. And you know, even when we're thinking about
Speaker 1: the abolitionist movement of the time of enslavement, that even
Speaker 1: the abolitionist in this movement they thought about charity rather
Speaker 1: than justice. They were okay with, you know, fighting for
Speaker 1: the calls of seeing black people free from the bondages
Speaker 1: of slavery, but they did not want to see themselves
Speaker 1: free from the bondage of white supremacy. So white people
Speaker 1: were always reading our literature and always taking whatever we
Speaker 1: created in this world, sometimes exploiting it. Even now where
Speaker 1: you're thinking about like black creatives and black TikTok, how
Speaker 1: so much of like millennials and gen z we're creating
Speaker 1: so much and still white young people are still benefiting
Speaker 1: from our creativity and exploiting it, you know. So this
Speaker 1: is always been like a constant story. But I do
Speaker 1: think that literature does hold promise for a change. I
Speaker 1: do believe that people can change and do change. But
Speaker 1: for me, I don't think that that is the framework
Speaker 1: that is most important in my own life and in
Speaker 1: my own work. I recently wrote a essay with CNN
Speaker 1: on Black History Month. Whether essay was entitled we Redefined
Speaker 1: Blackness as a World and a Gift and then this essay.
Speaker 1: One of the things that that really stood out to
Speaker 1: me in my process of writing this essay is I
Speaker 1: was thinking about Black History Month and thinking about two
Speaker 1: thousand twenty, where so many of our black books became
Speaker 1: best sellers, and those books deserve to be best sellers
Speaker 1: because some of them are great art, and many of
Speaker 1: them are great art. But oftentimes I realized that so
Speaker 1: much of the conversation about black life and art in
Speaker 1: history is oftentimes flattened because people failed to look at
Speaker 1: life through our own eyes, like they failed to see
Speaker 1: the ways that we move and dance and create life,
Speaker 1: and they felt the felt to see the ways in
Speaker 1: which like that we are people, that we are human
Speaker 1: beyond their gaze. And I wanted to argue that your
Speaker 1: black history and Black art and creativity is not about
Speaker 1: saving America or saving white people, that it is about us.
Speaker 1: That it is not just simply asking the question, you know,
Speaker 1: how can I remember a learn from black people? But
Speaker 1: it's all of us asking how can we love black
Speaker 1: people by seeing us and hearing us and creating a
Speaker 1: world where we feel seen, inspired and protected. That is
Speaker 1: very much farther than simply seeing us as your you know,
Speaker 1: reading us, talking to us, being around us to teach you,
Speaker 1: you know, because that simply centers you and what you
Speaker 1: can learn, how you progress. What I want to do,
Speaker 1: as Tony Morrison done and so many black writers have done,
Speaker 1: is take away that kind of gaze and say, you know,
Speaker 1: it is about us. It is about the world that
Speaker 1: we are living in. It is not totally about us,
Speaker 1: because you know, Baldwin would always say you know that,
Speaker 1: and the devil finds work that no person can leave
Speaker 1: of without the others, or Martin Luther King talking about interdependence,
Speaker 1: that no person can be free without the freedom of
Speaker 1: another person. But there is something to be said about
Speaker 1: the ways in which people reduce us to simply what
Speaker 1: we can educate them in and and make them feel
Speaker 1: better or less racist, and how that actually harms us
Speaker 1: and fails us to see us as fully human in
Speaker 1: and of ourselves. And so to think about can black
Speaker 1: literature teach white people or save white people. I don't
Speaker 1: know in that sense, because history doesn't give us uh
Speaker 1: any you know, legitimate evidence to believe that fully and finally,
Speaker 1: like reading us being around us will save people. But
Speaker 1: I do believe that literature our lives do hold the
Speaker 1: problemless uh for all people, and mostly for us to
Speaker 1: say that we don't have to prove who we are,
Speaker 1: but that we are actually full of love, full of truth,
Speaker 1: full of grace, full of failure, full of imagination, full
Speaker 1: of beauty that's worth studying and documenting and talking about
Speaker 1: rather than simply reducing list. At the end there you
Speaker 1: refer to the white gaze. Right. You referred to your
Speaker 1: work not being about educating white people, which I couldn't
Speaker 1: agree with. More. You said wanting to be seen as
Speaker 1: fully human. And this is where I get challenged personally.
Speaker 1: I feel like I do see black people as fully human,
Speaker 1: and I also know that if I ignore the specifics
Speaker 1: of what it is to be black for them, I
Speaker 1: feel like I'm missing up and I'm I'm asking this
Speaker 1: is a very genuine, earnest question about how to relate
Speaker 1: just human to human. But if we're not careful, that
Speaker 1: human to human relationship becomes about what I've learned is
Speaker 1: propagating white supremacy. Is to say, well, I just don't
Speaker 1: see color. So I feel like I'm trying to balance
Speaker 1: these two things. I'm like, well, okay, I want to
Speaker 1: just see human to human. You've got you've got children,
Speaker 1: I've got children, You've got parents. You know you've got
Speaker 1: at a grandparent who passed the dementia my partner's mom
Speaker 1: has Alzheimer's, Like we're living the same thing. They're human
Speaker 1: to human, you know, And then there are these factors
Speaker 1: of identity and wanting to respect those and understand those,
Speaker 1: but also not separate. And so that's not even a
Speaker 1: question so much as it's a you know, yeah, no, no,
Speaker 1: I got you know, I got you, I got you,
Speaker 1: And I think I think we have to talk about,
Speaker 1: you know, the continuity and the discontinuity in our human experience.
Speaker 1: You're right, there are going to be aspects of our
Speaker 1: human experience that intersect, you know, in very real ways,
Speaker 1: but they're also going to be aspects that intersect in
Speaker 1: very different ways. So to think about suffering, we're thinking
Speaker 1: about health care. Let's take healthcare and into example, it's
Speaker 1: very clear that black women die at higher rates than
Speaker 1: white women. We may both struggle from hemorrhaging, we may
Speaker 1: both struggle from emergency induction, we may both struggle from
Speaker 1: the pains associated with the body of pregnancy. But when
Speaker 1: we go inside the hospitals, when we go inside these structures,
Speaker 1: those structures determine so much in that experience and how
Speaker 1: that experience is related to and the outcome of those experiences,
Speaker 1: and so I think we have to talk about that
Speaker 1: discontinuity as well, that that many of us may experience
Speaker 1: some of the quote unquote same things, but when we're
Speaker 1: talking about a kind of ecosystem that we're living in
Speaker 1: a structure of life conditions, there's so much discontinuity, you know,
Speaker 1: in that if we're thinking about social pain and injustice,
Speaker 1: that that oftentimes, you know, white people experience pain just
Speaker 1: like we experience pain, but white people also live in
Speaker 1: a society that believes their pain battle more than other
Speaker 1: people's pain. And so you see, we're living inside of
Speaker 1: a country that oftentimes it's more concerned about poor white
Speaker 1: people and appealachia then it's concerned about a system that
Speaker 1: that has impoverished black communities and black schools and and
Speaker 1: black businesses. Where we're both experiencing poverty in in in
Speaker 1: very real ways, and there's continuity. But oftentimes the society
Speaker 1: says that your pain matters more than someone else's pain.
Speaker 1: And I think many ways for us to kind of
Speaker 1: think about that. Many of the ways that we can
Speaker 1: think better about that is in some sense, you know,
Speaker 1: creating ways to enter into struggles with the under standing
Speaker 1: that our struggles may be similar but their fundamental differences,
Speaker 1: and in some sense I should relate to someone as normal,
Speaker 1: but that normality is always rooted in the particularities of
Speaker 1: your identity. You know, when I relate to black women
Speaker 1: inside of this society, and I think about the ways
Speaker 1: in which like I oftentimes upheld patriarchy. When I started
Speaker 1: to Rebill Hooks and Alice Walker and Tony Morris and
Speaker 1: an Tony que Barbara, you know, I had to be
Speaker 1: both disciples out and socialized out of the ways in
Speaker 1: which I've thought of myself as a black man. You know,
Speaker 1: then I had to relate to black women and black
Speaker 1: l g b t Q as normal. Those experience of love,
Speaker 1: those experiences of failure, those experiences of dreaming and imagination
Speaker 1: and desire and intimacy is as normal as how I
Speaker 1: think about my own self. And it wasn't enough for
Speaker 1: me to read The Will to Change or Be Real Cool,
Speaker 1: or In Search of Our Mother's Gardens and of Likes,
Speaker 1: or deep sightings and rescue missions, or reading June Jordan's
Speaker 1: and and so much of her work. It was enough
Speaker 1: for me to read Black Feminists UH and Woman in
Speaker 1: Theology but I had to fundamentally alter how I thought
Speaker 1: about myself as a black man to take into account
Speaker 1: that the way y'all see me needs to be taken seriously.
Speaker 1: And of course I struggle and with oppression the same
Speaker 1: way as you struggle, But there is a discontinuity in
Speaker 1: our struggles where I may be empowered in one area
Speaker 1: that you are not. And I need to show up
Speaker 1: and move move in the world with that awareness and
Speaker 1: how I converse and how I relate and even public conversation,
Speaker 1: whose pain whose struggles are oftentimes mute and silence, and
Speaker 1: how can I bring those struggles along with me when
Speaker 1: I showed up in public. So it wasn't enough to
Speaker 1: just simply read their book and try and change how
Speaker 1: I thought about myself. I needed to change how I
Speaker 1: move inside of the world and who I brought along
Speaker 1: with me. So if we're thinking about patriarchy and gender
Speaker 1: and sexuality and then bringing race and white supremacy and
Speaker 1: anti blackness into that, you know, white people should be
Speaker 1: doing the same. Relate to us as if our reality
Speaker 1: and our art and our culture is as important and
Speaker 1: as normal as yours. And I'll never forget Tony Morrison
Speaker 1: talking to was being interviewed and the interviewer asked about
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, white white characters in her literature,
Speaker 1: and she makes the statement that the interviewer didn't understand
Speaker 1: just how profoundly racist that question was. To ask Donni Morrison, like,
Speaker 1: you know, when you're gonna write about why there are
Speaker 1: more white people in your literature and when you're gonna
Speaker 1: write about more white people? And then Tony Morrison made
Speaker 1: the statement, you can't even imagine that the way I
Speaker 1: live is actually the mainstream and you're outside of the mainstream.
Speaker 1: So it is changing how we think of ourselves and
Speaker 1: relate to ourselves as we relate to other people, and
Speaker 1: thinking about these norms and values and ideas and reshaping
Speaker 1: them so that you know, we found better ways of
Speaker 1: being together. Yeah. I am now again need about ten
Speaker 1: or fifteen minutes to fully process everything that you said there.
Speaker 1: I love what you say about the places where we
Speaker 1: sort of intersect and then also diverge, you know, and
Speaker 1: that being real. And I think that what you were
Speaker 1: talking about with relating to say, black women brings up
Speaker 1: some of the dynamic, right, which is how do I
Speaker 1: relate to a group that I see as having been
Speaker 1: marginalized in certain ways, and that I'm part of the
Speaker 1: marginalizing group, you know, in certain spaces. And what's the
Speaker 1: proper relation, you know, because you mentioned earlier about the abolitionists,
Speaker 1: you know, wanted charity not justice. You know. So these
Speaker 1: are a lot of really profound questions that we are
Speaker 1: running out of time to be able to answer, and
Speaker 1: as you said, they're they're incredibly complex. I want to
Speaker 1: spend a little bit of time though, talking about your
Speaker 1: work and the relation it has to your life, the
Speaker 1: role that creation plays for you, going all the way
Speaker 1: back to where we started talking about being whole humans.
Speaker 1: You know, what is the role that creation plays for
Speaker 1: you in being a whole human if we think it
Speaker 1: in religious terms of like creation as the created world,
Speaker 1: or I mean you as an artist? Okay, cool, cool? Yeah,
Speaker 1: And I think it does have relation to like the
Speaker 1: created world as well. That so much of you know,
Speaker 1: our work as artists, as James Bob would say, is
Speaker 1: in some sense taking the intangible dreams that reside inside
Speaker 1: of us and around us and making them tangible inside
Speaker 1: of the world. That he said, this is not the
Speaker 1: statesman that is our strongest arm in leading us away
Speaker 1: from the old world into the new. But it is
Speaker 1: the writer and I think because as we pay attention
Speaker 1: to the created world, we realized that these circumstances have
Speaker 1: been created, and if they have been created, then they
Speaker 1: can be rethought and reimagined. And so so much of
Speaker 1: my work as an artist is looking at the world
Speaker 1: that we have inherited, both on a social political level,
Speaker 1: but also looking at the black worlds that I have
Speaker 1: inherited and figure out how to lean and dance and
Speaker 1: explore these black worlds that I've inherited, so that this
Speaker 1: world that we are living in, that we have inherited
Speaker 1: a world marked by white supremacy, anti blackness, homophobia, transphobia,
Speaker 1: able ism, all the isms marked by so many fault
Speaker 1: lines and so much power struggles and and ideas of control.
Speaker 1: That our work as artists is to try and find
Speaker 1: ways that we can uncover the beauty and the sacredness
Speaker 1: of our lives and uncovered the tension and the complexity
Speaker 1: that we bring to life every single day, and try
Speaker 1: and again and again and again to show up on
Speaker 1: the page telling people to pose and look again at
Speaker 1: us and say that there is so much more for
Speaker 1: us to see. There's so much more for us to explore,
Speaker 1: There's so much more for us to lean into. Because
Speaker 1: when you think about healing and wholeness, if you're just
Speaker 1: thinking about our own kind of emotional healing and wholeness,
Speaker 1: Oftentimes finding healing and wholeness is about making sense of
Speaker 1: what has happened in the past and how that lingers
Speaker 1: in the present and hopes that in the future we
Speaker 1: can show up better than what we were. And I
Speaker 1: think my job as an artist is to lean inside
Speaker 1: of the stories of so much of Black literature and
Speaker 1: Black religion and figure out ways to make sense of
Speaker 1: the past and figure out how we can be better
Speaker 1: in the presence so that we embody something better in
Speaker 1: the future. What is that creative process like for you personally?
Speaker 1: In what ways do you feel that you being an
Speaker 1: artist lifts you up personally? I think for me, so
Speaker 1: much of that work is about finding ways to speak
Speaker 1: to what I'm feeling, you know. So much of my
Speaker 1: writing is out of things that I read and things
Speaker 1: that I'm wrestling with. You know, so much of this
Speaker 1: work is bound with so much insecurity in reality, Like
Speaker 1: whatever we create has the opportunity to make us most
Speaker 1: insecure because oftentimes we're creating work out of competition and
Speaker 1: felt need to be relevant in the sense of, you know,
Speaker 1: the algorithm. The algorithm, you know will destroy us because
Speaker 1: we gotta always create, create, create what's been designed in
Speaker 1: this present moment, and if we do that over and over,
Speaker 1: we're going to gonna get burned out. And I feel
Speaker 1: like that that this, like comparison, is the thief of creativity,
Speaker 1: and so much of my work is trying to create
Speaker 1: away from that, move away from comparing myself to people
Speaker 1: and right and what I want to write, Like like
Speaker 1: I wrote this joint on Tony Morrison hopefully that goes
Speaker 1: live this week because I wanted to write it. That
Speaker 1: the piece for CNN. I wrote it because I wanted
Speaker 1: to write it. I'm working right now, want to essay
Speaker 1: on some of soul and black gospel because I want
Speaker 1: to write these things. So for me, so much of
Speaker 1: this work is doing the work that I want to do.
Speaker 1: You know, it's easy to try and beat somebody else
Speaker 1: as a writer, or be somebody else as a podcast,
Speaker 1: or be somebody else as a creative, but so much
Speaker 1: of our life depends on us being who we are
Speaker 1: and trying to be the best that we can be
Speaker 1: in that and for me, that makes me come most alive.
Speaker 1: It's challenging, it's hard because sometimes what you want is
Speaker 1: not what others want from you. And the moments you
Speaker 1: gotta give people what they want you do as as
Speaker 1: a writer, there are moments where you just gotta give
Speaker 1: people what they want. I was reminded of this even
Speaker 1: with that Tony Moore is an article. I had to
Speaker 1: be rioted of that that yo, like like my boy Robert, Yeah,
Speaker 1: to remind me give the people what they want when
Speaker 1: they ask it for this article, you know, and sometimes
Speaker 1: it's going to be like that that you've got to
Speaker 1: give people what they want. But you also want to
Speaker 1: do what you want to do and what makes you
Speaker 1: feel most alive. And I think so much of creation
Speaker 1: and being an artist is about interviewing people that make
Speaker 1: us come alive or writing about things that make us
Speaker 1: come alive. So yeah, I think that's a beautiful place
Speaker 1: for us to end. Dante. That's a that's a beautiful
Speaker 1: sentiment to go out on. So thank you so much
Speaker 1: for coming on. Your book is called Shouting in the
Speaker 1: Fire and American Epistle will have links in the show
Speaker 1: notes where people can get access to that you are
Speaker 1: an exceptional, exceptional writer. It's really powerful book. So thank
Speaker 1: you so much for spending some of your time with us.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Eric, and thank you to the listeners of
Speaker 1: the One You Feed You Make podcast and what it is.
Speaker 1: You make so much of this what it is, and
Speaker 1: I want to do this as I do at the
Speaker 1: end of every interview, I want to thank you listeners
Speaker 1: for engaging, for supporting, for sharing. Keep doing that keeps
Speaker 1: going up for Eric and others. So thank you. Thanks
Speaker 1: dot If what you just heard was helpful to you,
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