When Life Becomes a Commodity

Modern capitalism celebrates efficiency and productivity at the expense of quality human experiences. Essential services such as healthcare, education, and social interaction are increasingly reduced to market transactions. This commodification strips away inherent dignity and leads to a social fabric that values output over the well-being of individuals. For children—whose formative years deserve nurturing, creativity, and care—the impacts of such a system can be particularly devastating. Rather than planting seeds for flourishing future lives, the relentless pursuit of profit risks turning these seeds into mere investment units, sidelining the true potential and value of human life.

The Unifying Power of Games: A Metaphor for Humanity

Consider the world of games—where players and spectators, despite their different roles, unite in pursuit of a shared goal. Whether on the field, in the arena, or behind the screen, games symbolize collaboration, passion, and a common purpose. In sports or board games alike, the rules may be strict, but the ultimate objective is to create a collective experience that transcends individual competition. This idea offers a striking metaphor for reimagining our economic and social systems.

Imagine an economy where every stakeholder—be it a worker, business leader, policymaker, or community member—plays a role in a grand game. In this game, no one is judged solely by individual scores or material gains. Instead, the real victory lies in achieving well-being for all; in fostering environments where children grow up in supportive communities and every citizen is valued for their unique contributions. Just as games bring together disparate roles to celebrate collective victories, our society could be retooled to measure success not only through financial indicators but through the strength of community bonds and the flourishing of human potential.

Human Rights Over Market Rights

To challenge the commodification of life, we must reset our societal compass. Rather than allowing financial metrics to define success, we should prioritize well-being and social solidarity. A reformed system would place human rights at its heart, emphasizing that every individual—especially our children, the bearers of future hope—has intrinsic worth that goes beyond economic output. Measuring success by quality of life, mental health, educational access, and community resilience would honor the unique contributions of every person, fostering an inclusive society that stands united in its diversity.

Ubuntu: Embracing Our Shared Humanity

The ancient African philosophy of Ubuntu—”I am because we are”—provides a profound counterpoint to the isolating tendencies of commodification. Ubuntu reminds us that our collective identity and prosperity emerge when we recognize the interconnectedness of all lives. Integrating Ubuntu into our economic thinking could shift public policy toward universal healthcare, accessible education, and robust social services that support every community member. This approach honors both the individual and the community by ensuring that no one is left behind while pursuing collective progress.

Charting a New Path for Economic Renewal

Creating an economy that prioritizes humanity over commodities calls for transformative strategies:

• Redefining Success: Shift your focus from profit margins to metrics that value mental health, environmental sustainability, and community well-being.
• Protecting the Vulnerable: Institute policies that keep essential services as public goods, safeguarding the nurturing environment our children need.
• Fostering a Game-Like Spirit: Emulate the unifying dynamic of games where diverse roles coexist to achieve collective success. This outlook can inspire corporate responsibility, where profit-sharing and ethical practices replace ruthless competition.
• Cultivating Social Solidarity: Strengthen community participation and social initiatives that prioritize public interest over short-term monetary gains.

A Call for Transformation

At the crossroads of economic policy and social justice lies an opportunity to redefine how we measure prosperity. Confronting the notion that life is merely a commodity, we must reclaim its human essence—celebrating the beauty of teamwork, unity, and the intrinsic worth of each individual. Just as games unite players and spectators around goals that transcend individual achievement, our society can embrace policies that ensure a future where human dignity supersedes market values. For the sake of every child and every human life, it is time to realign our priorities and reshape our economy around the principles that bind us as a shared, interdependent community.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Sammy Attoh.

The feature development was actually a very long time. The short [Akashi] came out in 2017, and we shot in 2016, but it was also a play in 2016. So, the story was there for a while. Then with the 2017 festival run, we gained this momentum, which then led me to representation in LA and with [talent agency] Gersh. I think when they came on board, the idea was planted in me that this should be a feature. Then we started writing—“we” as in “me.” I would work with my manager and go back and forth a lot because this was my first time writing a feature. I think 2018 is when I had my very, very first draft, pretty much a vomit draft of the feature. For years I was just polishing and polishing and polishing.

I didn’t go to film school… So while I was hoping to get this feature off the ground, I also was like, “I got to clock the hours!” I made shorts and music videos to continue learning and honing my skills as a writer and director. Between that, I had acting auditions and getting gigs as an actor or as a dialect coach. There were a lot of detours that I made because of gigs. One of the other things I did was cultural consulting, which led to becoming an associate producer for the A24 show Sunny. The detours all eventually became prep for my feature. I did it because that was the opportunity that came in front of me, but I made sure these experiences were meaningful for what I really wanted to do, which was making Akashi. There wasn’t any big, “I’m going to leap into this.” I was more like, “When will it happen?” Waiting to start at any moment was my status for a long time. So it felt like, “Okay, finally, we’re here,” when we were about to shoot.

Were there any fears you had making this film? How did you navigate those obstacles?

I was afraid people would oppose me taking on the roles of actor, writer, and director. Early on, that fear lingered, but surprisingly, everyone else was convinced it had to be me—far more than I believed it myself. It was such a wonderful and unexpected validation. I kept doubting myself. I didn’t think I should do it at first, because it’s my first feature and it’s the lead. It was just such a huge undertaking. For marketability, you would want the “number one” [lead actor] to be someone… It doesn’t have to be, at all, but if you’re thinking of strategy for film festivals and overall marketability for the film, it is harder if you don’t have a “name” attached. So, that was a considering factor for me, as a director. I was a bit worried about that, but weirdly, nobody else was. Or maybe they were really nice. [*laughs*] But they all made me feel like it had to be me. It was a support system that I got from my producers, DP, cast—everybody, everybody.

Working on a long-term project like this and balancing many roles, how did you maintain your energy and focus without burning out?

I was lucky because the year before, I did the show Sunny. We were shooting 100 days. We had 10 episodes to shoot from July till the end of December. To this day, I think that was the most challenging thing I’ve ever done. Not only are we doing that many days and long hours, but also producing was not something that I knew how to do comfortably. I had to dive right into it, which was a great experience and totally prepped me to learn what that routine is like, and how I can reset myself to come back on Monday after. Because obviously, over the weekends, you’re still kind of working.

I had this thing where I would go to a head spa for one hour. That one hour was the reset time, so that I could be away from any notification, phone, anything, and someone is just touching my scalp with no interruption, just my thoughts. That brought me sanity, I think. I realized that you have to check in with yourself. What are you doing this for? Who you are? All of these very bare bone essential questions that you seem to forget when you get so busy.

You’ve talked about the importance of collaborators. What do you look for in the people you bring on board a project like this?

I love people who know how to be good to others. You can’t do this alone, and you can’t always put yourself first. Of course, you have to prioritize your work because you’re responsible for it. But at the end of the day, it’s always a collaboration. Personality matters so much, in my opinion. When I say, “good vibes only,” I’m not joking. It’s so important. Just one bad vibe can throw everything off.

Something that I love, that I think Akira Kurosawa said: “I like to work with people who have been loved by their parents because they’re not afraid of giving away love and kindness.” They don’t think that something is taken away from them in the giving. They won’t think that way because they have had that abundance of love inside them… A mentor of mine a long time ago said, “I love that you’re loved by your parents. I can tell you’ve been brought up in a family where you were loved.” I’m like, “What does that mean? What does that have to do with my career?” But he kept saying, “You’re going to do well just because you were loved by your parents.” I think now I understand. I agree with the fact that I’m not afraid to give love, or give away whatever I have, because it’s not precious to me. The more the merrier, in terms of good vibes.

You talked about that first “vomit draft”, as you called it, and how you worked at polishing and polishing. Looking back at that draft, and the polish, what difference do you see?

I think I actually did [look back] when I was editing because sometimes when you’re feeling like you’re a bit stuck in an edit, it helps to go way, way back to see what the origin of this scene. In a good way, the very, very first draft just tells it as it is. Which is often not good writing, but very informative. Like, “Oh, right, this is what I was clearly trying to say.” It was almost like a note about what the seed of the scene was.

What definitely improved was, “How do you leave a scene earlier?” I remember reading the earlier draft thinking, “How do I get out of this scene?”—which means that you should have gotten out of it a page before. I felt like I was lingering, or looping what I’m trying to say, many times.

What advice do you have for creatives who may feel stuck in one phase of their career and are unsure of how to take that next big step?

If you feel stuck, then purposely put yourself in a different place. Just fully shift 180, and it doesn’t even have to be in the same field… It’s about taking a leap and trusting the process.

I felt like doing music videos wasn’t a thing that I had imagined, but because of Amanda [Sum]—I knew her from theater—we did a super, super, super low budget one in 2020. When we decided to do another one [Different Than Before], that just took off and went to big festivals, and then we won SXSW. I truly did not expect that outcome because it really was a labor of love with everybody. We strategized so that the video would have an impact in our community, but never thought of how it would do well in festivals because that wasn’t the goal, really. It was just to spread the message of Stop Asian Hate. So we were all feeling pleasantly surprised that we kept getting so much response from everywhere. Again, [directing music videos] was not really my field, and it was, to me, a 180 in terms of doing something but still keeping my essence as a director and keeping my vision.

You talked about how films rarely go to perfect plan. What’s your advice for dealing with imperfections in your creative work?

I purposefully don’t make it perfect. I will leave enough space so that there’s a wiggle room for exploration always, because I don’t consider myself perfect and I also don’t think there’s such a thing. I think joy comes from exploring [a creative work] with other people and finding it in the unknown space. Also, setting the foundation really strong so that it’s bulletproof is important. If we know that the foundation is solid, we will be able to dance freely on top of that. I feel like that’s the joy in creation. Freedom within form is where you want to be.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Kailey and Sam Spear.

It wasn’t always like that. I went to school for photography, and then I moved to New York with a dream of working in fashion. This was around 2011. I came here and I started interning, then assisting. As I got more involved with the industry and I got more of a behind-the-scenes look, I was not super inspired by the lack of community and the superficiality of it. I started transitioning more into beauty, which led me to portraits around the same time as the Black Lives Matter movement was starting to build steam [due to the murder of] Trayvon Martin and some unfortunate events that happened in 2015, 2016, when we were having public conversations around systemic racism in America. I used that conversation to examine my own contribution. I just had never—I mean, [I’m a] white person, privileged—examined that before.

I started looking at my own work and realizing that I was probably contributing to the problem of having a one-size-fits-all beauty standard because I was working a lot with the stereotypical thin, young, white, cisgender female. Around 2015, I began to take an active stance in my personal work where I said, “I’m not going to contribute to that anymore.” [You] don’t have so much flexibility with [paid work] because you’re working for a client, but at least in my personal work, I felt like I had control to exercise decisions around casting, who I was going to collaborate with, and making intentional work. Everything for us, [in] New York City as creatives, goes on Instagram, [where] you can have a small audience or a huge audience, and I think that a level of responsibility goes with that.

After Trump got elected the first time, I saw a lot of people in Brooklyn try to get involved in organizing and put their politics front and center in their work, but then they burnt out on it within a few months. You’ve had the opposite arc with politics in your work, so what advice would you give to creative folks going through a similar reckoning, who want to figure out how to prioritize more left-leaning politics in their creative work?

As someone who works commercially—and Brenna [Drury, makeup artist for Prim ’n Poppin’] does as well, [as do] a lot of my other collaborators—I think it can feel disempowering when you have other people in power dictating what you can and cannot do. In that case, I recommend having casual conversations with people in the creative force who could potentially be swayed to make a different decision when it comes to the message they’re creating with their work or the type of person they’re casting… Sometimes just giving a seed of an idea to people in the creative field who also are in corporate can be really useful.

And then, [I recommend] exercising your power as much as possible in your personal work. For me, what that’s looked like is collaborating. I’ve taken an interest in many issues that don’t necessarily affect me personally. In doing so, I’ve developed many conversations and relationships with different communities that I’m collaborating with. In that way, a lot of the work I do, I consider partner-oriented. For example, with Prim ’n Poppin’, Brenna and I came together to do this work. I would never say that I work in a vacuum and it’s all only mine. [Collaboration] can lead to important conversations about, “What messages should we be putting out? What’s important to you?”

I did a project recently around voting, and I collaborated with a queer couple who are both immigrants, and it was their first election cycle that they could vote. We had all kinds of conversations I wasn’t even thinking of, and the project took on new meaning in that context, and it wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t [chosen] to collaborate with them.

How do you balance your time between paid projects and passion projects?

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve taken on [fewer] projects and, at the same time, made sure those projects are more meaningful. I used to shoot casually a lot more in the past, but those projects take a lot of time, resources, planning, and post-production—therefore, having to pay for things—but they weren’t necessarily so developed, or the message was much smaller. If I’m going to dedicate time to unpaid personal work, which is incredibly important to me—especially, again, with the political climate—I want to take the time to do something impactful and meaningful.

Whether it’s a few projects a year that you put a lot of time into, or one day a month, even, if that’s what you can do, great. It’s hard to balance it, and the more you’re doing paid work, the less you can have energy for personal work. I also think having grace around seasons of your life and your career [is] important. I don’t think it’s helpful to feel guilty.

To ask about Prim ’n Poppin’ a bit more: there was the 2021 campaign, then a 2024 campaign timed around the election cycle. Did you ever think, “Is this still worth doing depending on which way the election swings?” What questions were you asking yourself as you considered relaunching the campaign?

The project has always been based around diversity, equity, and inclusion. The reason, pre-election, that we were talking about relaunching was because we were seeing a decrease in DEI in advertising and beauty. I mean literally a decrease in terms of the jobs available to models that we know. Championing talent is the highlight of what our project is about. We were noticing and hearing—not only just visually and being on set, but also through models that we know [who] are trans or disabled, for example—that they weren’t booking as many jobs, and it was a sharp decrease from previous years. [From] 2019 to 2022, we [had] this inclusivity boom. It seems like after that, people were over it, got bored or were feeling like, “This had its moment, it’s not trending anymore, so there’s no point in us paying attention to it.”

[The campaign has] always been an excuse to have conversations regardless of which way the election would’ve gone. It wouldn’t have meant that having conversations around inclusion isn’t still extremely important. It just happens that, since the election went the way that it did, it’s even more important, timely, and urgent.

The press release that I got about Prim ’n Poppin’ relaunching describes the 2021 campaign as “massively successful.” What does success mean to you, particularly for personal projects? Is success just being a conversation starter?

We were measuring success in terms of the amount of coverage we got and, therefore, the amount of people talking about it. We were noticing that big places like the Guardian posted, and we were looking at the comments coming in, and it was really interesting to see a certain percentage of the comments [being] really supportive, and that made us think, “This feels like it was so needed. A lot of people want to be having these conversations.” And then there was a percentage of comments that were quite negative, as I’m sure you can imagine. Troll-y people saying very mean things. Even though there’s buzz and that’s great, obviously we’re not done here.

Your artistic style is very colorful and bold. How did you land on that style?

It’s just what I’m attracted to. It’s that simple. I’m just not inspired by basic color. I like intentional color—strong, intentional contrast. I’m bored by soft, smooth, natural-feeling colors.

Is that something you’ve always known about yourself, or did you have to come to that realization?

I used to—many, many years ago—exclusively do black-and-white, and it was always high-contrast. At the time, I was resolute that I wouldn’t do color until I understood color enough to do it intentionally. This is just my personal opinion, but I think if color’s not going to contribute something to what you’re doing, what’s the point? I think color can be really distracting, particularly in photography. If you’re not going to be intentional with it, shoot it in black and white. I’ll get what I need to know without being distracted by the color.

You also work in video and create GIFs. As you’re approaching a project, how do you know which of your mediums is right?

Producing video is very cost-prohibitive. I only did my first personal project that included film recently. Two projects that I worked on within the last couple of years that had motion [were] not client-oriented, and that was the first time I could exercise my creative direction in that medium. All other video projects prior to that have been client-led because they have money for that, and producing video, at least the way I would want with strong lighting and color, you need some amount of money to do it. Photography has been a lot more accessible for me in that way, and GIFs [too]. GIFs just take longer on the backend. Photo’s been the easiest medium for me to work in. And then if I feel like it’s appropriate to do a GIF or an animation, I do.

How do you know when a photograph—meaning the post-production image—is complete?

It took me a lot of time to come to a place where I could call something done. It’s just intuitive. Through years of experience—and I have employment history of being a professional retoucher—I know when [I’ve] taken it too far. Also, [with] people’s attention spans, no one will care as much as you, the artist, cares. My “done” is already past what many other people would probably consider “done.”

One thing that’s been really nice for me as a creative is this ability to do a gut check, whether I’m on set or working on post-production. In my regular life, I don’t have that same level of intuition, just trusting my gut.

How do you go about starting a photography project?

Because I work a lot collaboratively, it usually starts with a conversation [that] will lead to a series of actions, and on my end, that next step is usually pulling an inspiration. I’ll use the Freedom Project, which was this political project I worked on recently with acrobats, as an example. Their domain is what they do with their bodies. That’s not my domain. My domain is the photo stuff. It was their job to come to me with a design of, “We want to pose people in this way.” I took that and said, “I have these references I’m really inspired by. I want the light and color to go in this direction.” I mapped out, for each one, my approach.

Is there anything else you want to share about Prim ’n Poppin’?

In terms of approaching things politically or using your artistic expression as a means of activism, I have found it much easier to engage a wider audience if you’re creating work that is beautiful, visually appealing, something that doesn’t make a viewer turn away. There’s a space for that work, and that work is important, but in my case, if your intention is to not only preach to the choir but to reach people who don’t share the same set of beliefs as you, or don’t know as much as you know about a certain topic or community but are open, you want to meet them in the middle. You want to meet them where they’re at.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Max Freedman.

When I was writing the book, I was so immersed in the experience of writing it, so much so that I wasn’t necessarily anticipating it becoming a book. I’m discovering through this process that I’m really motivated by the day-to-day animations that happen through the experience of writing. That’s where I feel energy and life.

I had published a number of magazine articles and essays over the years, so I was familiar with the strangeness of working on something in private and then releasing it to the broader public. However, I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about other people reading the book and if I was going to find other people’s readings of the book to be motivating and animating in the same way that I found the writing. It’s been immensely pleasurable to have other people reading the book alongside me. It’s helped me understand the book retrospectively. And though I’ve been grateful for the process of publication and the various structures around it for enabling a community around the book, they aren’t particularly galvanizing for me.

So, you’re saying the success of the book or the metrics around the book, they’re not as validating to you as you thought they would be?

Yeah, and there’s something completely liberating in that, too. It would actually be very depressing to me if I found them to be validating, and if I found them more motivating than the process of writing. I’ve been relieved by how little those things have tended to matter in terms of structuring my mood. Even when good news happens, I still feel lethargic or crazy, or bored, or whatever.

Are you saying writing a book didn’t change your life? [laughs]

No.

I don’t know if that’s supposed to be really exciting or really sad.

Well, it has changed my life in significant ways. I always, up until this point, have worked a full-time job and then freelance jobs on the side, and the pressures, at least for now, to work full-time, have been alleviated by selling a book. So, that has meaningfully changed my life, in terms of how I feel about myself.

I’m curious to hear more about your life prior to writing the book. What was it like having a full-time job while also juggling a bunch of freelance responsibilities? I feel like this is something that a lot of writers, journalists, and artists of all kinds have to contend with. What was your experience with that like?

It was really difficult. Initially, I started working in the fields of publishing and writing when I was in my early 20s, I worked a full-time job that did not pay very well and also did not satisfy my creative or intellectual interests. So, I sought that satisfaction in other kinds of work, some of which were paid and some of which only satisfied my need for extra income. I tutored on the side. I had a ghostwriting gig for a bit. I also taught as an adjunct for a while, and I took on things that were not paid.

It was always difficult; the need for a full-time job, and then to work multiple jobs on top of that was very taxing. I certainly had more energy for it when I was greener. I don’t know if it was because I was younger or because I was more naïve or wide-eyed. I don’t think I had a sense of how hard I was working, and how that hard work was also detrimental to other things I cared about in my life, like, I don’t know, my friendships.

It wasn’t just taxing physically; it also really structured my life around work in a way that didn’t allow my world to flourish in the way that I wanted it to. But I don’t know, I’m ultimately grateful that I did seek things out outside of my day-to-day professional life because I think it was those connections—with other people who were also working full-time jobs—that gave me a sense of hope. I wish it hadn’t been the case that I had to do that. And I still have that mentality, not just that mentality, but my reality is still that I have to cobble a bunch of different kinds of things together in order to ensure I’m making ends meet.

You said you’re not really sure how you were able to muster the energy at the time, and I wonder if that’s because everyone else was doing it. I feel like a few years ago, it was the norm to have a full-time job and then work after work, and juggle a bunch of things. I mean, people still do it now, but I think there’s more awareness of how we shouldn’t be doing that. Whereas in, like, 2015, the “in” mentality was that everyone should hustle and hustle and hustle.

Totally. Also, the revitalization of the labor movement in [the media] industry had not taken hold yet. And I don’t mean to paint a totally naive retrospective image of myself, but I do think I emerged from college and knew that I needed a job, and any amount of money basically sounded okay to me, even if it wasn’t right, even if I had some burgeoning sense of the ways in which my labor was being exploited. I wasn’t angry yet, and if I was angry, I didn’t feel like there was a structure, at least in my workplace, to enable that anger to connect me to other people. I felt isolated in that anger initially, and I hope now that in the industry, people don’t feel so alone, even if their workplace isn’t unionized.

I do think what you’re saying is true. There’s some sense that not only are the labor conditions fucked up, but there are things that can be done about it. Whereas when I entered the workforce, bosses were telling me, “In this job, you’re going to have to work overtime, and you’re not going to be able to bill for overtime, even though that’s illegal. That’s just the culture here.” And sure, it’s still happening, but I hope that people aren’t buying into that lie so easily, as it seemed like my peers were at that time.

I don’t think as many people are. There are memes about bosses being bad bosses, and corporations and capitalism. Even people who may not have a very good analysis of labor or capitalism, they’re engaging with those ideas about how capitalism sucks. So, that makes me feel a little hopeful. Does it make you feel hopeful?

Yeah, it does make me feel hopeful. The popularization of an anti-capitalist analysis of work has been really exciting. I wasn’t without that analysis, but I didn’t feel like I had the means to do anything.

Maybe it felt a little bit more abstract?

It’s not that it felt abstract. I think that for a long time, people in the industry had been encouraged to fend for themselves. That’s still the case, obviously, and people are starting to counteract that narrative, that individuals within the workplace are atomized by modeling the ways in which they can actually come together. But I really felt the entrenchment of that narrative. A lot of the people in my particular workplace were more self-protecting, and I understand that, of course. But without any communal structure, there are individuals who are going to be headstrong and outspoken, and there are going to be individuals who take a different tactic.

It’s tricky. Everyone has different reactions to it, to their working conditions.

Yeah, and they’re all valid.

You’ve worked with a lot of indie presses and outlets like Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry. What was it like working with a Big Five for your book?

It was a really pleasant experience as the writer. It was really wonderful. My editor, Mitzi, is a brilliant editor. She provided notes on the manuscript that were very smart and helped the manuscript become more robustly what it was always trying to become. And that type of editing, I know from working as an editor, can be the most pleasurable editing, and it’s also very difficult. She offered notes on the manuscript that I found almost undetectable, and yet they played a big role in helping to shape it. So, it was genuinely a very, very pleasurable experience. I found at every step, people seemed to understand my work and were able to position it in a way that helped it get into the hands of people who would likewise understand it. So, there was seamlessness there, at least from my perspective, that I was really surprised by and delighted by. I also used to work at FSG as an editorial assistant.

Oh, funny.

It was fascinating to be on the other side of that. Things that may seem as if they happen on their own are, in fact, happening because oftentimes, assistants—people who are at the bottom of the publishing hierarchy—are working very long hours and working tasks that can be thankless. When I was doing that work, I found it very frustrating. I loved working with authors but doing the various project management things that are necessary for a book to get made, I found very difficult. And I think I survived in that job because—well, I don’t want to indict myself, but I did survive that job, in part because I was able to steal time away from it and work on the things that I found nourishing. I guess it worked out for everyone in the end because I sold the novel. [laughts]

But there can be a huge discrepancy between the experience of working at these places as an assistant and producing work for them as an author. I wish that discrepancy didn’t exist, and I wish that more authors were aware of the behind-the-scenes and the undervalued work that’s going into producing their books, which wind up looking to the public like a singly authored work when in fact, it’s not. It’s intensely collaborative, and oftentimes the collaborators aren’t credited in the way that they should be.

I haven’t personally worked in book publishing, but I have a lot of friends who are currently working in it, or who have recently left because of the working conditions. And that’s a big grievance I hear from my friends. Even the authors who claim to be the most, I don’t know, politically righteous, have no awareness of how to treat workers, specifically assistants. And it’s really surprising that some really talented writers can be really shitty to assistants.

They’re probably conditioned to believe that they’re the centers of the universe when it comes to the production of their own work. But it is just really unfortunate. I remember when I was an assistant, I was a horrible assistant. It was difficult work and thankless work, but I was also bad at it, in part because I didn’t care about a lot of the things that I had to do, like filing my boss’s expenses or whatever. I was like, “I can’t believe I have to spend my time doing this.” Not necessarily because I thought I was above it, but because I couldn’t believe a world in which someone couldn’t file their own expenses.

How do you go about defining the creative and writing community in these very precarious times and navigating it? I know you used to live in New York, and now you live in LA, and both of those places are notorious for having very sceney, exclusive creative communities, especially New York with the writing scene. How do you go about navigating the ickiness?

Yeah, it’s tricky. I haven’t been particularly invested in the social circles that crop up by virtue of the fact that people are invested in having the same kind of career. I assume that people want to be around other writers or editors because they’re schooled in the same kind of professional culture, but I’ve never really cared about that. I actually have found it very unhelpful. And I feel like that’s often where a kind of exclusivity gets germinated. That’s also where the hierarchical structures of professional life get reproduced socially. I’ve always been allergic to that, but I have sought out a creative community that relies on not necessarily stylistic similarity or even genre overlap, but a willingness to produce hope in each other, and I found that mostly in spaces where money doesn’t really have a role to play in things.

You articulated something really poignant, especially when you said that the professional hierarchy can duplicate itself in non-professional circles. I guess that’s what is so icky about creative community, and I never really thought about it that way.

I think people develop a shallow attachment to those professional connections, just because, in the short-term, they can boost your ego, but they’re empty and take meaning out of life. So, ultimately, I don’t think it’s particularly helpful to rely on them. I’m always confused when people start new magazines, for example, why they have assistant editors and why they have interns.

That’s so true. I never thought about that. What do you consider a meaningful way of making friends or thinking about art in a world full of such vapidness? What is meaningful and nourishing to you?

Oh, I don’t know. I guess it’s true for me that, whether I’m trying to forge new friendships or forge community around art making, what feels important to me are connections that yield new thinking and new challenges. A lot of people seek out relationships with others that confirm their social position in the world. That can be incredibly helpful if you are someone who is oppressed and is seeking out solidarity. I don’t mean to argue against that, but even within networks of solidarity, new and deeper thinking has to be produced. And it’s so hard to articulate because I certainly don’t mean to make a trite statement about how people should be seeking out the opinions of people across the political divide. I don’t find that nourishing or helpful in my day-to-day life. I find it incredibly frustrating. But I don’t know, it’s hard to find people, I think, that dare you to act on impulses that might seem marginal or unimportant in the dominant political or creative climate. And yet, that feels very important to me, and that does feel like it produces meaning.

I think there are relationships that people have that actually repress a desire to create or that produce anxiety or competitiveness or whatever. I think almost everyone knows what it feels like when you have a friend or collaborator who enables you to express yourself and just create something new in the world.

People often talk about networking with people who hold some kind of social or professional power, but the most productive, and I mean productive not in the sinister sense, but in the literal sense, the most productive connections I’ve made with people are with people who I’m inspired by, and who enable the creative impulse in me. And not all relationships are like that.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Lore Yessuff.

I was a preteen and I got into witchcraft, as girls do. When you’re like, “that’s right, I’m going to do this. Let me take myself to the local witch store”–every town has one. And you buy a little book called the Silver Broomstick or whatever and get into it. Since then, I was always interested in the esoteric. I like it too because it’s for girls.

Speaking of your childhood, I remember you spoke about first loving “Give It Away” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers when you were nine, and becoming obsessed with the Replacements not long after; how did you get into music so young?

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t super into music, even pre-“Give It Away.” I always remember being so into Madonna because of my mom. It was the music, but it was also everything else. The first artist that I was exposed to had the whole package: the persona, the presentation, interesting things to say. Since then, I was just so captivated. It’s so multidimensional, and the artists I’m always drawn to are still like that.

You have an archivist spirit and have said that an obsessive mindset requires intention; do you ever feel drained by the sheer amount of the history and cultural context out there?

I actually find it so energizing, and in a way it’s like talking to people. If you have a really vulnerable, heart-to-heart conversation with anyone, you’re probably going to feel an empathy and a connection with them. I feel that way about every artist that I deep dive into because even if I go into it being a little sus, that it’s probably not my cup of tea–I might not come out the other side listening to the music, but I have a newfound appreciation for the artist. You can’t look deep into someone’s whole creative process and everything they’ve done and not be really touched and blown away by the work they’ve put in. Does that make sense?

Definitely. I wish I had more of that attitude. I find myself becoming exhausted by the expectation of having to know everything–

Going wrong, babe. You don’t have to “should” anything. You just do what you like, just follow what interests you.

It sucks because I think the feeling that you should already know about things makes people stay away from them. And that’s sad, because then you don’t get to experience it instead of just being like, “Oh, I don’t know. Let me see what this is about.”

I guess it’s a self-imposed obligation when I write anything: this pressure of having to be constantly right about things, especially the more I learn about them. How do you manage feeling like you have to cater to an audience?

I don’t care–it’s been a journey. I’ve been making this show for two and a half years now. At first, I was really preoccupied with wanting to get it right, for sure; I want to honor the artist. But over time I was just like, this is my experience of the artist, this is my lens. I’m not Wikipedia, I’m not a dictionary. I’m just a person with my own opinions interpreting something. And if you don’t like it, bitch, you’re not legally obligated to listen. When people complain, it’s super funny to me. I’m like, “Nobody put a gun to your head. There are many other podcasts.”

I don’t want to talk about criticism as an art form, but I don’t consider what I do criticism at all. So when people online are like, “This sucks, this album sucks,” it’s like, okay, don’t listen to it then. You have one wild and precious life and whatever amount of energy in a day; you want to focus it on hating some record? Who cares? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

That’s a great way of looking at it–criticism was actually my entryway into writing. It’s been hard and weird, acknowledging how negativity tends to really thrive and go viral. I’ve honestly felt super jaded about it: as if liking something publicly is essentially yelling into a void. How do you move towards wanting to continually share that passion for the things that interest you?

I don’t think about it that way. I feel like I’m most drawn to people expressing love for something, or fandom for something. At its core, that’s what the show is about. It’s about fandom, and fandom is really beautiful and pure. I know the negativity gets more traction, but that’s because people are literally so ill and their dopamine receptors are so fucked up that they need to engage in whatever makes them feel alive. I wish them the best, but I think you can’t help but be moved by pure fandom. That’s just how I feel; I’m super uninterested in negativity online. I’ll just be like, okay, whatever. Godspeed to you and your take.

That’s actually what drew me into the podcast–it was just such a nice vibe. It’s how I feel when my friends and I sit around listening to an album just being like, this rocks. Was the original ethos creating this kind of communal feeling?

There’s so many iconic artists that people have maybe heard of, but are overwhelmed by the thought of getting into them: college dorm room, Led Zeppelin shit where you’re like, “Yeah, I know ‘Stairway to Heaven,’ but I’m not doing all that.” So it was to create an easy entry point for anyone interested. And especially because of what you were saying about putting forth this idea that we should already know everything, I think people are too embarrassed or shy to even try and learn. So it was like, “Oh, well, you can just listen to this podcast.” That was the original ethos, and then I just got too deep into it and fell into a fucking well. Then it just became like, I need to know everything and I need to tell you all about it.

I really appreciate that. I think that in beginning to investigate something, really doing research and adopting a more contextual mindset, it’s hard to untangle genuine curiosity from expectations of,“I should know this.” How do you maintain that drive towards purely doing the work for what it means to you?

I mean, I have the best job in the whole world. I get to be a professional teenager. It’s something that I’m naturally predisposed to, and I get to spend my days reading about artists and thinking about their music. What a fucking cool job. Sometimes it’s hard and it feels like work: like, “Oh, cool, there’s 20 books about this band. How am I going to finish?” But even that’s part of it. I like the challenge.

On that note, I really admire that you do all your research yourself. Because no one else can learn it for you, in terms of how you yourself put those pieces together.

You nailed it. People always assume I have someone else do the research for me. My producers help find some of the articles and prep like that, but I have to read everything. And I still end up having to look for more because again, it’s my perspective and my lens. I can’t have someone else read the article and pull out what they think is important, because that’s what they think is important.

I love connecting the dots that emerge as this magic eye in the end where I’m like, “Oh, this is the thing.” And it’s always reflective of something I’m personally going through, because you see what you project. But I can’t see it if I don’t go through everything myself.

I feel like that also puts what we discussed earlier into perspective: the good in doing the work. How did you get involved with music writing in the first place?

Well, we used to be a proper country and have the alt weekly, where I interned in college and wrote about music. After that, I interned at XLR8R, which doesn’t exist in print anymore. Then I wrote for Vapors, which was a graffiti and skateboarding magazine, then moved to New York and wrote for Complex and Misbehave, which also doesn’t exist anymore–great magazine. None of these magazines exist anymore. Then, it just wasn’t a job; it got narrower and narrower.

When I first wanted to do it, I was thinking of something else that stopped existing. I wanted to do 90’s-style, SPIN magazine or British press-style journalism, like NME or Melody Maker. Music journalism stopped being like that by the time I was writing. I didn’t find it fun anymore; they didn’t let you put your personality into it anymore. You know what I mean?

For sure. I also grew up admiring a very specific sort of pop culture-related writing, and while I’ll always have a lot of love for that sort of media, I also have anxieties about the way it’s going right now. It feels harder to write for writing’s sake. Do you maintain a practice for remaining positive in or beyond your writing? Sorry, I’m clearly very neurotic.

I’m the chillest person. You don’t have to be nervous for me, I’m just a podcast clown.

That’s a great question. I think it’s really important to have a practice; you have to try. I do morning pages every morning. I go on really long walks and I concentrate on things that bring me joy. That will always create more joy. And that’s what makes me sad about the fixation around negativity; I don’t think people realize it just breeds more and more. Again, you have one life and you’re going to create within it what you focus on.

In my opinion, that’s what life is about. We’re here to experience joy and love things, even if it’s just going outside to look at a tree and being like, “fuck, that’s cool.” You know what I mean? I know it sounds hippie or whatever, woo-woo. But who cares? I make it a priority to experience joy and to love things.

Even calling yourself a podcast clown–it’s like that “jester’s privilege” meme. I wish there was more acceptance of writing like a silly, goofy girl. The music scene can feel like a boys’ club at times, where it’s hard to be taken seriously unless I present my thoughts very seriously.

Listen, babe, no one has to accept it but you.

I often like to say that “the feminism has left my body,” but lately it’s reentered. Even though this was not my intention, I like the idea that women can listen to the show and feel a little less talked-at and a little more talked-to. The name of the show is obviously a play on “mansplaining”–we all know, even though I think the audience of the show is still largely men. Which is fine. Happy to do it, happy to serve. They suffer through the vocal fry and the astrology; perhaps that’s part of what they like about it. I have no idea.

But I love when college-age girls message me that they’re into it. It’s so cool, because it happened to me. I’ve talked about this a lot, but I take every opportunity to because I’m so grateful. When I was 11 or 12, I got this book by Gina Arnold, a music critic, and I think a professor now. It’s called Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana. I was obsessed with Nirvana. That was my favorite band when I was 11 years old. So I bought the book.

It wasn’t criticism; she wrote about music in a way that was totally personal. She told her own stories about fandom, and I learned about so many bands. You brought up the Replacements earlier–I learned about them from that book. I was 11, so I just took my allowance and bought whatever tapes or CDs she mentioned. She’s why I do what I do; I never knew I could talk about music through a personal lens as a woman. It was just really eye-opening. If I can do that for anyone else, that would be huge.

That really beautifully knocks down the feeling that my writing has to be straight-laced; I really struggle with that. The way you speak about writing makes me a lot more hopeful.

Yeah, if you can ask yourself, “Well, how do I want it to be?” And then see how you can do it that way–I know that’s a little easier said than done, but eventually it will become a thing. You can make it a thing.

I mean, really, the magic of life is in the mundane: what you do, your work, your daily activities. But there’s magic there. So if you can see and find the magic in the mundane, then you get to have a really beautiful life, no matter what your circumstances are.

True. I did see the T-shirt in your shop that says “Never for money, all for love.”

Love, yeah. It’s actually a lyric from a Wire song, and also a Talking Heads song. The Talking Heads song is “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).” The Wire song, I can’t remember. Hold on–see, now I’m going to be the one that doesn’t get things right. “Practice Makes Perfect.”

I feel people are going to be like, “Wow, this woman is extremely woo-woo.” And I’ll be like, “Yes, I am. And what?”

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Sue Park.

A new report released today by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, shows that many nonprofit hospital systems across the country are failing to provide low-income Americans with the affordable medical care required by their nonprofit status – despite receiving billions in tax benefits and providing exorbitant compensation packages to their senior executives.

“In 2020, nonprofit hospitals received $28 billion in tax breaks for the purpose of providing affordable health care for low-income Americans,” said Chairman Sanders. “And yet, despite these massive tax breaks, most nonprofit hospitals are actually reducing the amount of charity care they provide to low-income families even as CEO pay is soaring. That is absolutely unacceptable. At a time when 85 million Americans are uninsured or underinsured, over 500,000 people go bankrupt because of medically-related debt, and over 60,000 Americans die each year because they cannot afford to go to a doctor when they need to, nonprofit hospitals should be providing more charity care to those who desperately need it, not less. And if they refuse to do so, they should lose their tax exempt status.”

Nearly half of American hospitals enjoy nonprofit status, which exempts them from federal, state, and local taxation. In 2020, the country’s 2,978 nonprofit hospitals received an estimated $28 billion in federal, state, and local tax benefits – an average of $9.4 million per hospital. In return for nonprofit status and millions in tax breaks each year, federal law requires nonprofit hospitals to operate for the public benefit, which includes ensuring low-income individuals receive medical care for free or at significantly reduced rates – a practice known as “charity care.”

However, the HELP Committee Majority’s report shows many nonprofit hospitals have gladly accepted the tax benefits that come with nonprofit status, while failing to provide affordable care to those who need it most. The report examines 16 of the largest nonprofit hospital systems in the U.S. While each makes more than $3 billion in revenue annually, 12 of the 16 dedicate less than two percent of their total revenue to charity care, including three of the nation’s five largest nonprofit hospital chains. Of those twelve, six dedicate less than one percent of their total revenue to charity care. Meanwhile, in 2021, the most recent year for which data is available for all 16 of the hospital chains, those companies’ CEOs averaged more than $8 million in compensation and collectively made over $140 million.

In recent years, the amount of charity care provided by nonprofit hospitals has actually declined, despite the fact that patient need, revenue, and operating profits have all increased. One study found 86 percent of nonprofit hospitals spent less on charity care than they received in tax benefits between 2011 and 2018. Those additional operating profits and reserve funds were not used to help those most in need. In fact, in the same time period, average charity care spending dropped from just $6.7 million to $6.4 million.

According to the report, many of these nonprofit hospital systems also make information about their charity care programs difficult to access, leaving many patients unaware that they may qualify for free or discounted care. Some hospitals also aggressively try to collect from charity care patients through practices that verge on extraordinary collection practices banned under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. One recent study found that nonprofit hospitals in 2017 sent $2.7 billion in bills to patients who were likely eligible for charity care.

Some states have already taken steps to hold nonprofit hospital systems more accountable to their communities and patients. For example, in Texas, the state’s tax exemption for nonprofit hospitals includes a requirement that at least five percent of the hospitals’ net revenues must go to community benefits, including at least four percent dedicated to free or reduced cost care. Oregon state law requires hospitals to provide reduced cost care to anyone whose income is under 400 percent of the federal poverty line and free care to anyone making under 200 percent of the poverty line. In 2023, that means individuals making less than $60,000 would not be forced to pay for the full cost of their care, while those making under $30,000 would pay nothing.

The report calls on Congress and the IRS to take action to hold nonprofit hospitals accountable to providing quality, affordable care to low-income patients across the country.

Read the full report here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The post Prioritizing Human Rights in Relations with Saudi Arabia appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

The Saudis picked us up from the detention center in Daer and put us in a minibus going back to the Yemen border. When they released us, they created a kind of chaos; they screamed at us to “get out of the car and get away.” … this is when they started to fire mortars – to keep us into the mountain line, they fired the mortar from left and right. When we were one kilometer away, … We were resting together after running a lot…and that’s when they fired mortars on our group. Directly at us. There were 20 in our group and only ten survived. Some of the mortars hit the rocks and then the [fragments of the] rock hit us… They fired on us like rain.

— Munira, 20 years old

“Rather than assist people afflicted by droughts, impoverishment and intensifying wars, the United States is acting in its own perceived self-interests and entertaining Saudi demands for even more military power.”

There’s a refugee trail from the Sahel drought region in Africa, into war-ravaged Yemen, and up through Saudi Arabia towards Iraq and Turkey. It’s known as “the Eastern route,” or sometimes “the Yemeni route.”  The Saudi monarchy, already leading an eight-year starvation and bombardment campaign against Iran-aligned, rebel-governed Yemen, has been massacring Ethiopian (and other African) refugees, allegedly in the thousands, to send a message that drought-stricken Africans should choose to die at home and not risk their lives to die in Yemen. It’s a chilling, cruel message.

U.S. imperial policies in the region, which have propped up the brutal Saudi monarchy, ensure continued bloodshed, hunger, division and destabilization. These degenerate policies undermine desperately needed collaboration in the face of ecological collapse. Rather than assist people afflicted by droughts, impoverishment and intensifying wars, the United States is acting in its own perceived self-interests and entertaining Saudi demands for even more military power. The purpose of wooing Saudi Arabia with military contracts is, apparently, to head off a further economic integration of Saudi Arabia with China and Russia, global rivals of the United States.

Sometime during the week of September 3, two U.S. State department representatives will arrive in Saudi Arabia’s capital city, Riyadh, to resume negotiations with the Saudi royals. A recent report suggests that the meetings will discuss a NATO-like agreement between Saudi Arabia and the United States, a measure which might then move Saudi Arabia closer toward normalizing relations with Israel. What does Riyadh seek in return? “Riyadh has been seeking a NATO-like mutual security treaty that would obligate the US to come to Saudi Arabia’s defense if the latter is attacked,” according to The Times of Israel. The Saudis also seek to strengthen a US-backed civilian nuclear program in Saudi Arabia and they want assurance about acquiring more advanced weaponry from U.S. military contractors.

At the recent summit of the BRICS+ coalition led by U.S. rival, China, Saudi Arabia was announced as a new member to join in January 2024. Earlier this year China had brokered a resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and its (and the U.S.’) chief regional rival, Iran, which has also been invited to join BRICS+ early next year.  The U.S. State Department’s Brett McGurk and Barbara Leaf, in their Riyadh  trip, will be working to counter integration of the oil-rich Saudi nation into a coalition of nations the U.S. fears as threats to U.S. unipolar hegemony. Routinely, the United States condemns China and Russia for human rights abuses,  – abuses paling beside the worst of Saudi Arabia’s.

Since 2015, Saudi Arabia has bombed, starved, blockaded and tortured Yemeni civilians. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia continues to persecute and execute its own civilians for speaking out about cruel wrongdoings.

Human Rights Watch, in their 73-page report, “‘They Fired on Us Like Rain’: Saudi Arabian Mass Killings of Ethiopian Migrants at the Yemen-Saudi Border,” alleges that Saudi Arabian border guards have fired machine guns and launched mortars at Ethiopians trying to cross into the kingdom from Yemen, likely killing hundreds of the unarmed migrants in recent years. This widespread and systematic pattern of attacks featured incidents, the report states, when “Saudi border guards asked migrants what limb to shoot, and then shot them at close range. Saudi border guards also fired explosive weapons at migrants who were attempting to flee back to Yemen.” The rights group cited eyewitness reports of attacks by troops and images that showed dead bodies and burial sites on migrant routes, saying the death toll could amount to “possibly thousands”.

Also of interest to the two U.S. envoys should be a report from the Guardian which says the U.S. and German militaries have trained and equipped Saudi border guards.

There is a reason for the massive migrant flight from the Sahel into the killing zone that Saudi Arabia, with its international partners, has made of Yemen: The planet is boiling.

Collaboration is surely needed among all peoples in order to cope with and solve the tragic problems, including horrific human rights abuses, certain to escalate because of intensifying climate catastrophes. But military agreements with Saudi Arabia will increase the readiness of Saudi Arabia to attack weaker countries and persecute its own citizenry. Green lighting development of nuclear technology will exacerbate the environmental assaults caused by war. The United States’ policy of confrontation to beat down economic rivals can only worsen these crises.

During years when the United States collaborated with and armed dictators, militaries and paramilitaries in Central and South America, several notable leaders demanded an end to the violence. El Salvador’s Archbishop Oscar Romero, now canonized as a saint, spoke up:

I would like to appeal in a special way to the men of the army, and in particular to the troops of the National Guard, the police, and the garrisons. Brothers, you belong to our own people. You kill your own brother peasants; and in the face of an order to kill that is given by a man, the law of God that says ‘Do not kill!’ should prevail.

No soldier is obliged to obey an order counter to the law of God. No one has to comply with an immoral law. It is the time now that you recover your conscience and obey its dictates rather than the command of sin. . . . Therefore, in the name of God, and in the name of this long-suffering people, whose laments rise to heaven every day more tumultuous, I beseech you, I beg you, I command you! In the name of God: ‘Cease the repression!’

In a sense, he signed his own death warrant when he signed this statement. On March 24, 1980, Romero was assassinated for his courageous words and deeds.

President Joe Biden would do well to heed this Catholic saint, revise the mandate he gives to diplomats working in Saudi Arabia, and rely on Archbishop Romero’s words: Recover your conscience! Stop the repression, stop the killing.

Rather than normalize militarism and human rights abuses, the United States should seek, always and everywhere, to salvage the planet and respect human rights.

The Bombing of a Neighborhood in Yemen, December 28, 2017 (Photo Credit:  Aida Fallace)

• This article first appeared in The Progressive

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Kathy Kelly.

What is exciting me creatively? I think first of all, it’s just recognizing that I have the agency to make the space to delve deeper creatively, and honoring that agency. So in some way I’m answering this question by starting with me. We get to act upon life as well as being acted upon and we can intentionally be making space for creativity to blossom, making space to think, to look, to pay attention. All of those things require active decisions on our part and I don’t think we always remember that. But when we make that kind of space, I really think it opens up the creative process in a way that can surprise us.

I’m not sure any writer likes the common question, “Where do you get your ideas from?” But when you’re a full-time writer, ideas are your bread and butter. You have to generate a lot of them to keep working. So, since you are a full-time writer, who writes for and pitches multiple outlets, I was really curious about where you get your ideas from.

I primarily just write for the Financial Times. And besides doing the column, I’m trying to finish a manuscript, and there are other writing adjacent creative projects I’m involved in right now. But where do I get my ideas from? From life. From all over the place. From reading. I read a ton. From conversations. From when I go on walks and pay attention to the world. From the way I see dogs interact. Walking is an exercise that really spurs ideas for me. I don’t understand the process of how that works, but whenever I feel stuck in writing or whenever I need to clear my head, I go on a walk and I’ll take notes in my iPhone. I try to walk every day.

My mind is always open and alert because I know that ideas can come from anywhere. I could be in the middle of watching a play and someone says a line and it triggers something in me and I’ll stop and make a note in my iPhone. I’m really someone who has learned that when an idea comes to you, even if it’s just a snippet, you write it down. Because you always think, “Oh, I’m going to remember this,” and you don’t. At least I don’t.

Sometimes I get ideas from my dreams. There’s this liminal space when we first wake up in the morning where we’re sort of on the cusp of our waking life and our dream life, where our spirit is really open to receiving in a way that we’re not when we’re fully awake. And I love that space in the morning. It maybe lasts 15 minutes, but I’m aware when I’m in it. And so sometimes as soon as I get out of it, I will write down the last words I remember from that space, or the last image I had from that space.

I can’t think of anything that is not capable of generating ideas. Yeah, so unfortunately my problem is not lack of ideas. It’s time. But also I believe that not every idea will prove to be worthy. Sometimes I’ll have ideas and I’ll write them through, then I realize I can’t get any further with them, and I’ll sit on them. Then two years will go by and I will realize, “Oh, wait a minute. Okay, now I see that thread.” So I have come back to things like two to three years later and then finished them.

I think you can have the seed of an idea, but I also think you can give that seed time to grow. And that could be anywhere from two weeks to years.

That’s good to keep in mind. Sometimes I get frustrated when I have a good idea but some part of it isn’t working yet.

The more we experience life, the more we find overlaps, and the more we find connections where maybe we didn’t think there could be. And I think that’s one of the things I know I try to do with my own work—expose that space where we see more things are connected and affect one another than we had the imagination to see before.

One theme I saw emerge in your Financial Times column was the importance of rest. How do you know when you need rest from your work, and what do you do to take that rest?

One thing is when I can’t think clearly anymore. So first there’s the physical, when your body feels exhausted, there’s that. But another way is when I can’t make connections anymore that are clear. My brain just slows down, or it feels like there’s so much happening in there that I can’t pull one thread. I will stop and I’ll go on a walk, or sometimes I’ll stop and sit on my couch and kind of look into space, or stare outside for a while. I do a lot of staring at the sky. I love watching the clouds move at their snail pace. And as I move through different cities in the world, I love watching the sky, because it looks different in different cities, and the light looks different, and the clouds move differently and they have different shapes. And so staring out into the sky is really restful for me.

Sometimes I’ll take a nap. But something I’ve realized also about rest is rest isn’t always about being motionless or being still, or sleeping. I think rest can be whatever it is that recharges you. So rest could be going to a museum and looking at paintings. Rest could be going for a walk. Rest could be having a conversation with that one friend who really re-energizes you, or makes you laugh.

In different seasons of my life I have a practice where I will wake up in the morning—especially when I feel like there’s so much going on in my life or I have a zillion deadlines or whatever it is—I’ll wake up in the morning, or I’ll stop at my desk when I’m in the middle of working on something, and I’ll put my hand on my heart and I’ll take a deep breath and I will ask myself, “What do you need? What do you need right now?” And then I’m quiet and I try to listen. I try to listen to my body, and I try to listen to my spirit. And then if I’m able to, I give myself what I need.

I love that. You mentioned travel and different cities, and I saw an Instagram post of yours where you wrote, “Travel is its own art.” That quote could be a jumping off point for a million different questions, but I’ll just start with what does that mean to you, travel is its own art?

Oh, it means a lot of things. One of the things that it means to me is giving yourself the freedom to rediscover or discover new parts of yourself. For me, different cities have always had the ability to tap into different parts of who I am. And as I learn to pay attention to that, it also means I’m learning to pay attention to how space and place affects the way that I think, affects the way I imagine myself in the world, and affects the way I engage with others. Physical space has a deep effect on psychic space. And I think there’s certain spaces that we can find ourselves psychically limited, and there’s certain spaces that we can find more of a psychic freedom. I have learned, and I’m continuing to learn, to tap into what that means for me as a creative person, what that means as a thinking person, what that means as a woman, what that means as a Black woman moving through the world.

And that doesn’t always mean getting up and getting on a plane and going to a different city. There are places even in the city we live in where we can figure out, “Okay, wow. This is interesting. This is a physical space in which my imagination feels like it has more space to think and to expand.” Or this is a space in which I feel, “Oh my goodness, I can breathe a little better, or wider here.” “This is a space where if I’m here for 15 minutes, I have the opportunity to gather pieces of myself back together.”

So travel to me doesn’t have to mean traveling long distance. Traveling is just going from one place to another. But I am really interested in how physical movement affects psychic movement and creativity.

You’ve written for esteemed publications and traveled to amazing places. Some people might see that and be like, “Oh wow, she’s really made it.” But the reality is that almost all writers, no matter how big, are facing rejections and disappointments. How do you deal with rejection?

That’s a really good question for me to think about. There’s some rejections where it’s like, “Oh, I was just throwing my name in the hat anyway.” And sometimes there’s the relief, “Oh, actually thanks. Because I don’t know if I would’ve even had the time to write that piece.” So it depends on where the rejection is coming from. But for the rejections where my heart was in it, there’s definitely that moment of disappointment and sadness.

Who likes rejection? Nobody likes rejection, but I don’t sit on rejection, because to me that takes energy away from continuing to be creative. If we sit with rejection too long, we have the tendency to then make it about ourselves and not about the work. And that’s an important thing to remember as well, that as a writer, as a creative, these rejections that we receive, they’re not rejections of us. We have to constantly find a way to separate the work that we do and how we create from a sense of self.

I do think that’s important, no matter how much we love being writers, or artists, or creatives, or doctors, or whatever it is that we do, and I think for artists, at least I can say for myself, as a creative, so much of the work that we do is really wrapped up in who we are. But I cannot put all my worth or all my sense of self in the work that I do, no matter how much I love being a writer, or how intrinsic it is to who I am. As Enuma, as a spiritual being embodied in this beautiful body, there’s so much more to me.

And so with rejection, it’s normal and healthy to be disappointed and be sad and to think, “Oh, I wonder if I could have done this better?” But then I also think it’s really important to keep it moving and to realize you can try again, and to also trust the unfolding of your life. That’s another thing, too. Sometimes rejections are a blessing and you don’t even know it.

You’re also working on a novel. That’s such a different type of writing than journalism or writing for a speaking gig. When most of your day is writing, how do you pivot to that different type of writing?

It’s so hard. As you know, writing a novel is so all-consuming. Because first of all, you’re creating a world from scratch in some respects, and you have to enter that world and live in that world. And it’s really hard to do that while also trying to move around in* this* world. Ideally I would have large expanses of undisturbed space and time. Weeks at a time or months at a time. But the nature of my life, that isn’t realistic.

I try to just grab pockets of time. It could be that I’m working on fiction for two hours in the morning, right before the world wakes up. Because I think that writing fiction, in my experience, it taps into a different part of my interiority than writing non-fiction. So writing fiction when the world is still asleep in the early morning, I feel like I have more access to deeper layers. But sometimes I will snatch an hour wherever I can find it. I’ll be aware of the kind of writing I’m doing on the novel. It could be that I’m reviewing a chapter, and I know I can do that within an hour between other things.

I am learning now that we rarely have our ideal conditions. We just learn how to make the best use of the time and the space we have. And so I recognize that, but I’m also learning to look at the months ahead and think, “Okay, based on the decisions I make now, the things I say yes or no to, where can I block off larger stints of time in order to do this?” And it also means putting some of your other life on hold. It means being less social, and it means not having those phone conversations with a friend, because that takes me out of the head space I’m in, or it means not going to those dinners.

Because so much of my… not so much, all of my working life is essentially writing. I’ve learned that there’s so many other side things that on the outside you may not think are related to the writing process, but they are. So knowing that if this is a week in which I have to finish a big essay or a chapter, I cannot go out in the evenings and come back late at night and go straight to bed and wake up the next day. Even the evenings when I’m not working, I recognize I really need to get to bed on a certain time to have a clear head in the morning in order to do this.

That totally resonates with me. When you’re an artist or a writer, you need to have both the time to make the work and the mental space for it. And sometimes that really means you have to say no to some things in a way that maybe people that don’t do that stuff don’t 100% understand.

Yeah, and I’ve stopped apologizing for that too, or explaining myself. Because I used to really feel like I had to explain, “No, I can’t get together because I’m doing this.” And now sometimes I just say, “I’m busy. I already have other plans,” because my other plans are me. And that is just as valid. Or my other plans are making sure I get enough sleep so I can write in the morning.

I don’t know if we ever feel like our work is good, regardless of how it’s received, but I know that to try to make good work there are ways in which I have to put myself first and to put the work first. And like you said, not everyone will understand that, especially people who don’t work the same way. But I know that for me, there are ways that I try to politely communicate what I’m capable of and what I’m not capable of, without feeling I need to apologize or explain myself, and I can’t always stop to think how people will respond to that. We’re all funny people, and we all walk around with our triggers and our wounds and our baggage, and there are things that I may say to you that would trigger you that I have no idea about because I don’t share your history.

So I think the important thing is just always knowing that the people who care about you and who you care about in your life, that space can be made to have these conversations. But I’m going off a little bit. Basically just honor what the work needs and what you need.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Kristen Felicetti.

According to the international team of 35 scientists who conducted the study, the four most consequential sources of disruption are "edge effects" (forest changes caused by nearby deforestation and the ensuing habitat fragmentation); "selective logging"; and forest fires and extreme droughts intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.

Based on their analysis of existing data on the extent of edge effects, timber extraction, and fires from 2001 to 2018, researchers found that 5.5% of Amazonian forests are degraded. When data on extreme droughts was considered, their estimate of the total degraded area grew to 38%.

The Guardian, which had early access to the full paper, summarized the scholars' findings as follows on Thursday: "Fires, land conversion, logging, and water shortages have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5 million square kilometers of the forest, an area 10 times the size of the U.K. This area is now drier, more flammable, and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of 'megafires' in the future."

A substantial chunk of the world's largest tropical rainforest—nicknamed the "lungs of the Earth" due to its unparalleled capacity to provide oxygen and absorb planet-heating pollution—is "less able to regulate the climate, generate rainfall, store carbon, provide a habitat to other species, offer a livelihood to local people, and sustain itself as a viable ecosystem," The Guardian noted.

Degradation, defined as human-induced changes in forest conditions, has led to carbon emissions equivalent to or greater than those from deforestation, the authors note. As an accompanying statement explains: "Degradation is different from deforestation, where the forest is removed altogether and a new land use, such as agriculture, is established in its place. Although highly degraded forests can lose almost all of the trees, the land use itself does not change."

Co-author Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster Univerity, said that the cumulative impact of the key degradation factors examined "can be as important as deforestation for carbon emissions and biodiversity loss."

In addition, the paper makes clear that Amazon forest degradation is associated with significant socioeconomic harms that require further investigation.

"Degradation benefits the few, but places important burdens on many," said co-author Rachel Carmenta from the University of East Anglia. "Few people profit from the degradation processes, yet many lose out across all dimensions of human well-being— including health, nutrition, and the place attachments held for the forest landscapes where they live."

"Many of these burdens are hidden at present," Carmenta added. "Recognizing them will help enable better governance with social justice at the center."

"Preventing the advance of deforestation remains vital, and could also allow more attention to be directed to other drivers of forest degradation."

Looking ahead to 2050, the paper projects that the four main drivers of Amazon forest degradation "will remain a major threat and source of carbon fluxes to the atmosphere" regardless of whether deforestation is halted.

"Even in an optimistic scenario, when there is no more deforestation, the effects of climate change will see degradation of the forest continue, leading to further carbon emissions," said lead author David Lapola, a researcher at the Centre for Meteorological and Climatic Research Applied to Agriculture at the University of Campinas. However, "preventing the advance of deforestation remains vital, and could also allow more attention to be directed to other drivers of forest degradation."

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the recently inaugurated leftist president of Brazil—home to roughly 60% of the Amazon—has vowed to make "this devastation" of the forest "a thing of the past."

"There's no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon," Lula said during a mid-November speech at the United Nations COP27 summit—the first he made on the international stage after defeating Brazil's far-right ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro.

The Amazon passed a key tipping point at the tail end of Bolsonaro's four-year reign, during which ecological destruction accelerated as logging, mining, and agribusiness companies routinely violated the rights of Indigenous forest dwellers.

Last week, Lula accused Bolsonaro of committing genocide against the Yanomami people, who are enduring a deadly rise in hunger and disease due to a surge in illegal gold mining.

Lula, who drastically reduced deforestation and curbed inequality when he governed Brazil earlier this century, recently launched the first anti-deforestation raids of his new administration.

"There is hope now, but our paper shows it is not enough to resolve deforestation," Barlow told The Guardian. "There is much more work to be done."

As the new paper notes: "Whereas some disturbances such as edge effects can be tackled by curbing deforestation, others, like constraining the increase in extreme droughts, require additional measures, including global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Curbing degradation will also require engaging with the diverse set of actors that promote it, operationalizing effective monitoring of different disturbances, and refining policy frameworks."

The authors propose creating high-tech systems to monitor forest degradation and implementing policies to prevent illegal logging and better manage the use of fire.

"Public and private actions and policies to curb deforestation will not necessarily address degradation as well," said Lapola. "It is necessary to invest in innovative strategies."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

I wouldn’t be making the work that I’m making now if it wasn’t for this community. They requested—they demanded of me that I do this show every month, Peach. Doing that show every month demanded that I bring the different musicians and connect these different communities here. The way that we are in this space not only welcomes but requires the combining of different communities. I’ve grown since then and taken this way of being out to other places. I’m delivering it further afield.

Peach was an album, and I put on an album launch—I was just going to do it once. Then Lex [Blondin] was like, “You need to do this every month.” And I’m like, “No, I’m not a fucking promoter.” I thought, “I can’t do this.” And I was right, I couldn’t do that every month. But then I thought, “Oh, but maybe we could do it. We.”

How do we bring together different communities? People wonder about this. People work on this. So, if you see that your project is only really engaging with one type of person, the only thing that I’ve come across that we might do about that is giving people jobs, giving ownership of the work to members of different communities. How do I know that I’m not contributing to the division between us? I only know that I’m not working on the division between us when I know that I’m doing something about bringing us together, bringing different people, people who disagree even, preferably. How do I bring different people together? By employing them.

And so I used this thing, “I’ve got to put a show on every month. Oh no, it is hard for me. There is not enough money.” Is it a lack, or is it an abundance? I used it as an excuse to bring different people from different parts of music stuff in London together. Then I was like, “Oh, I am glad that I chose this situation because it means that the best thing we’ll make will be something that no one could have planned!” And that happened because we responded to each other. We ended up connecting my work with lots of people from different communities, and they all came to know each other and be glad of each other and work with each other through this role, and through enjoying playing and interpreting my work. And I ended up making lots of fresh material because people aren’t going to watch the same thing twice. It was a lot of fun.

Why is it important to me and how it got me to where I am now? I’m less seeing it as “where I am now” as a place, and less seeing this community as some sort of vehicle, some sort of car that has driven me to a place where I now am, and more like there’s a way of being that I have that was required here. And I allowed it. I allowed myself to be that way in response to this community. It’s like it already was there. Like when you make a sculpture and the sculpture already was there, you got rid of some stuff, there’s less of it, but it’s more itself. Yes? I think I got that from Rambo. So you can quote Rambo in your piece.

How do you go about touring this way, internationally, playing with different musicians in every city without getting to rehearse?

When people ask me, “How do I do this show?” I’ll say to them, “I don’t know. If I knew how to do it, then it wouldn’t matter who was there.” How we do it depends on who. Maybe someone is suffering a loss in their life. Maybe someone is really big right now. How do we do the show? And I love to respond to them. I will tend to have one player who’s got their hands on the material really well so that between me and that player, we’ve got access to a lot of tunes.

Is it true you play games to get in sync?

Yeah, the games. We’re going to go, “Hi-ya,” [with a karate-chop hand movement], but we’re going to do it when I do it. You ready?

Yeah.

Hi-ya! Come on.

Hi-ya!

Hi-ya. Hi-ya!

Hi-ya!

Now you lead.

Hiiiiiiiiii…yaaaaaaa.

You’re very good at this.

Thanks. I think that encouragement to be playful is important for anyone trying to do any kind of creative practice. We all have to get past that controlling mindset of, “I have to be good.”

If I demonstrate by loving my players, by encouraging my players—I’ll stay on the mic, “If in doubt, yes. I love that you are here. Play like a child plays with a toy,” and it gives them authentic encouragement—then that demonstrates to the audience that this is a place of encouragement. Whereas to say to the audience, “Now, this is a place of encouragement, okay?” This doesn’t really work. But if we encourage one another, then that just demonstrates that this is.

That’s perhaps the role of a place like this, the TRC, where we come together and support one another and challenge each other in our work and are striving for the success of our work and yet we’re attuned with one another. That’s the role that it plays in our society, that leadership is leading on that front. Those who experience it or are affected by it, maybe people who’ve never set foot in this place are touched by that influence that we are working on here. If there were not places like this, there would be less of that in this life that we are making.

When I say to them, “Play with my show the way that a child plays with a toy,” for one thing, it demonstrates that I am bold, and that this is unusual, and it says to me that I trust you, and that I can take care of this. “I will be responsible for this situation, and you are liberated.”

There is a child in you. And you might not have been talking to them, and you might not have been treating them right. They might have had a hard time. And I welcome them if they want to be there. If they don’t want to be there, that’s their choice. That’s fine. But, they are there, and I’ve got one too. And we can find our way to other feelings that are there that are less celebratory. Some things that are darker can come because the child was allowed. Whatever you do, they have come anyway. How shall we make them welcome?

But I don’t need to make it, “Now look, this is going to be therapy. There are some things that you may have suffered when you were young. And I want you to…” I’m not going to do that, but I can say, “Play like a child plays with a toy. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Give it a try next time you work with someone. I didn’t just bring someone, I brought you. Show me what that means. How could I know what that means? Show me what that means, and we will have everything we need. I am here to respond to you. I didn’t come here and just want, “Oh, get somebody to do this in a particular way.” No, I want you. Just think of all the faff that went into you being you. So much had to happen for you to be yourself. How am I going to find anything that compares to the enormous effort that has delivered your personality to this moment? I need it to be you. You brought yourself, which is an immense thing, a divine thing.

I understand this philosophy also informed the process of your album, Gold – Go Forward In The Courage of Your Love. Can you explain how you carried this approach into your recording process?

For some people, it’s more important that we can capture the thing than it happens. For me, it’s more important that it happens than we capture it. There are some things that people prioritize that I don’t prioritize as much. And there are some things that I prioritize that other people often seem to just throw away. The things that I prioritize are more basically fun, childish creativity, and response to each other. I put lots of work into setting it up so that our priority could be the joy in the moments that we had.

And there’s rules in there.

Like what?

“We’re not going to listen to this music.” I didn’t have to say it, I just kept everyone too busy. Typically, in a recording studio, you play the song, and then you go into the other room, and everyone listens to themselves, and checks, “Was I good enough?” We don’t do that shit in my session. My session is not about, “Am I good enough?” My song is not about, “Am I good enough?” But I didn’t tell the players this. I just kept us too busy playing and enjoying each other.

There’s another rule that I didn’t say, but I just had: We don’t talk about whether or not the tape is running. My songs are not about a tape machine. It could be running. I don’t care. That’s not my job in this room. I’ve employed somebody in the other room to take care of that. I trust him. Kristian, capital K. He will decide what needs recording or not. That’s none of my business and that’s none of the business of my musicians. We are all right in here. We’ve got each other to enjoy, thank you very much.

I had planned in advance that every time we play those pieces of material, even though we’re playing them in a completely different way each time with different bands, developing them according to their own feelings—even though we did that, we still, at the same time, played them each time at the same speed. That means I can play back all those bands at the same time, I can put them on top of each other and mix them into each other. I had done a lot of preparation for it to be chaotic, for it to be human. I put work into allowing it to belong to the people who were there.

What does your curiosity look like? How do you explore things?

I think the way from fear to excitement is curiosity. Things changed for me when I started going towards the fear. The first thing I came up against was, “I’m not afraid of anything,” but I thought I must be afraid of some things—maybe the things I’m afraid of are invisible to me because I’m so automatically drawn away from them. If I find myself responding to something really automatically, really reflexively, like, “Oh, obviously I’m not going to do that.” Now I go, “Oh, is that what I’m afraid of? Okay, I’ve got to do that thing because I’m afraid of it.” Can I be curious about any aspect of this thing that I’m afraid of?

I do depend on the humanity of others because if I can be curious about them, then I can advocate by that action of going towards them for empathy. And I can welcome them and demand of myself that I am vulnerable and incomplete, that there’s a space in this work for them because I want there to be space for that person. And I want there to be space for you, whoever you are, who’s reading.

I don’t know what I’m doing and I am incomplete, and I can be sound, solid and cool with myself while being incomplete. I can forgive myself for not being enough and present myself that way. And there’s room for you, whoever you are. I’m very happy that you’re there and I’m very happy that you’re anywhere. I admire you that you’re there because it is tricky being alive. And they are doing it, aren’t they? Whoever they are. And they’re passing their eyes over your page and breathing and striving to exist and it’s noble. And it helps the rest of us. The more you are yourself, whoever you are, you make me more myself, too. And the longer you succeed in this striving, you inspire me to do the same thing.

How did you learn to have this perspective on the world and on people?

I don’t know if I’ve finished learning it.

You go about your daily life with an encouraging, spirited way of engaging with others. Have you encountered people who don’t believe you to be sincere? There’s so much cynicism in our culture, sadly, many people aren’t used to hearing these things, or maybe they just don’t know how to receive them.

If I’m not all right with myself, then whoever’s experiencing that thing, they’re not stupid. They can tell. And it doesn’t reach, they receive it in a bitter way. Sometimes, to reach someone, I need to go even bigger, give them even more love, for them to receive it. And if not, I just leave them, give them respect, and accept that if they’ve taken me in a negative way. I look at myself: Well, what’s going on? And what have they seen? Everyone’s up for connecting with someone’s genuine love. It’s just a question of, did I deliver that? Was it genuine? Or it was genuine, but I failed to deliver it to them? And the way to love someone is everybody’s got their own way to be loved, to be reached.

I think people who haven’t spent time with you may not understand at first that Alabaster dePlume isn’t exactly a character or performative persona. I don’t sense there is a gap between Gus and Alabaster.

Yeah, they’re both me. They’re both real, but it’s only particular parts. And so, when you get on the stage, it’s not like I’ve invented a person, and I’m pretending to be them. It’s just certain bits that are more responsible in the situation.

From that, I’m interested in your sense of responsibility for joy. Why is joy so important in your work?

I don’t know what we’re doing, and when I say we, I mean the human race, but if we’re not prioritizing joy, then we might be prioritizing something unfortunate. In our society, we see it as silly, as frivolous, as decorative to prioritize joy. But if we are not prioritizing that, we’re prioritizing something else. What is that? It’s not my place to ask someone else that question before I’ve asked myself. And if I want us to consider prioritizing joy, and you see harm happening every day… I could go to the IDF and say, “You should be prioritizing joy.” Would I be prioritizing joy then? I can lead by example.

The way I see my work, I’m not just decorating this world. And I used to think it was sad that people would see it that way. That this work is frivolous. But I don’t think it’s sad anymore, I think it’s actually dangerous. I think it’s an attack.

It’s not for me to say what other artists are, and what their responsibility is. But as far as I’m concerned with my stuff, people pay attention to what I’m doing, and I’ve got a responsibility towards them to be true. For my own sake just as a human, I’m going to prioritize joy, because I feel like it, I enjoy the idea of it. It’s not the only thing I’ll prioritize, but I have a responsibility to be true with those who come with respect. To treat them equally with respect. Some are coming to me authentically to listen, and it would be rude not to respect them with a true thing.

What is something that you wish someone had told you when you were starting out making art?

I think I am starting out. And if somebody had told me not to do something, I would’ve done it. And if they had told me to do something, then I would’ve not done it. But I remember realizing that no one was ever going to ask me for the best thing that I’ve got. I was an accompanist, and I was like, “I’ve got my amazing things I could do, but I’ll wait until someone asks. Someone should ask me for that.” And I remember realizing that they never would. They never will. I realized that it’s not because they don’t want me to, it’s because they don’t know what it is.

We will never ask you, whoever you are, I don’t know who you are, but I will never ask you for your awesome shit. But it’s not because I don’t need it. I do need it. I will never ask you for it because I don’t know what it is. Do it now before we are ready. Do it even if we’re telling you not to. Do it because we’re telling you not to. How could we know what it is? You’ve got to do it first. There are 7 billion people in the world. Don’t tell me that your shit is so special that none of them need it. Get over yourself, get out of the way, the song wants to come through. The great thing wants to happen. Let us allow it to happen.

How do you get out of your own way? Or how does one get out of the way of the song, or the writing, or whatever?

We can get out of that by going through it. It becomes so crushing, this idea of myself, “Oh, I better do something good.” Eventually, it’s so crushing that you give up, you give up on yourself as an artist, and then after that, you can get on with your fucking work.

I play in the show and everyone stands and listens to me. I am invited to think that this situation is about me being good at something or not, but it’s not. No one gives a shit if you’re good at it. We’ve not come for that. We’ve come for something more important. It is very impressive when someone is skillful at producing blah, but I don’t care about it. I’m selfish. I want their soul. So, what do you need in order for me to enjoy your soul? Well, you just need a soul. Have you got a soul? Yes. You’ve got a soul. Give up trying. Allow.

But it’s easy for me to just say these things. Could I produce a poem from this perspective right now? I don’t know. It’s a moment that chooses you. It’s a moment that you can enjoy. Enjoy the song because you enjoy songs. Enjoy the writing because you enjoy writing… I mean, is that such a strange thing?

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Tasha Young.

I wouldn’t be making the work that I’m making now if it wasn’t for this community. They requested—they demanded of me that I do this show every month, Peach. Doing that show every month demanded that I bring the different musicians and connect these different communities here. The way that we are in this space not only welcomes but requires the combining of different communities. I’ve grown since then and taken this way of being out to other places. I’m delivering it further afield.

Peach was an album, and I put on an album launch—I was just going to do it once. Then Lex [Blondin] was like, “You need to do this every month.” And I’m like, “No, I’m not a fucking promoter.” I thought, “I can’t do this.” And I was right, I couldn’t do that every month. But then I thought, “Oh, but maybe we could do it. We.”

How do we bring together different communities? People wonder about this. People work on this. So, if you see that your project is only really engaging with one type of person, the only thing that I’ve come across that we might do about that is giving people jobs, giving ownership of the work to members of different communities. How do I know that I’m not contributing to the division between us? I only know that I’m not working on the division between us when I know that I’m doing something about bringing us together, bringing different people, people who disagree even, preferably. How do I bring different people together? By employing them.

And so I used this thing, “I’ve got to put a show on every month. Oh no, it is hard for me. There is not enough money.” Is it a lack, or is it an abundance? I used it as an excuse to bring different people from different parts of music stuff in London together. Then I was like, “Oh, I am glad that I chose this situation because it means that the best thing we’ll make will be something that no one could have planned!” And that happened because we responded to each other. We ended up connecting my work with lots of people from different communities, and they all came to know each other and be glad of each other and work with each other through this role, and through enjoying playing and interpreting my work. And I ended up making lots of fresh material because people aren’t going to watch the same thing twice. It was a lot of fun.

Why is it important to me and how it got me to where I am now? I’m less seeing it as “where I am now” as a place, and less seeing this community as some sort of vehicle, some sort of car that has driven me to a place where I now am, and more like there’s a way of being that I have that was required here. And I allowed it. I allowed myself to be that way in response to this community. It’s like it already was there. Like when you make a sculpture and the sculpture already was there, you got rid of some stuff, there’s less of it, but it’s more itself. Yes? I think I got that from Rambo. So you can quote Rambo in your piece.

How do you go about touring this way, internationally, playing with different musicians in every city without getting to rehearse?

When people ask me, “How do I do this show?” I’ll say to them, “I don’t know. If I knew how to do it, then it wouldn’t matter who was there.” How we do it depends on who. Maybe someone is suffering a loss in their life. Maybe someone is really big right now. How do we do the show? And I love to respond to them. I will tend to have one player who’s got their hands on the material really well so that between me and that player, we’ve got access to a lot of tunes.

Is it true you play games to get in sync?

Yeah, the games. We’re going to go, “Hi-ya,” [with a karate-chop hand movement], but we’re going to do it when I do it. You ready?

Yeah.

Hi-ya! Come on.

Hi-ya!

Hi-ya. Hi-ya!

Hi-ya!

Now you lead.

Hiiiiiiiiii…yaaaaaaa.

You’re very good at this.

Thanks. I think that encouragement to be playful is important for anyone trying to do any kind of creative practice. We all have to get past that controlling mindset of, “I have to be good.”

If I demonstrate by loving my players, by encouraging my players—I’ll stay on the mic, “If in doubt, yes. I love that you are here. Play like a child plays with a toy,” and it gives them authentic encouragement—then that demonstrates to the audience that this is a place of encouragement. Whereas to say to the audience, “Now, this is a place of encouragement, okay?” This doesn’t really work. But if we encourage one another, then that just demonstrates that this is.

That’s perhaps the role of a place like this, the TRC, where we come together and support one another and challenge each other in our work and are striving for the success of our work and yet we’re attuned with one another. That’s the role that it plays in our society, that leadership is leading on that front. Those who experience it or are affected by it, maybe people who’ve never set foot in this place are touched by that influence that we are working on here. If there were not places like this, there would be less of that in this life that we are making.

When I say to them, “Play with my show the way that a child plays with a toy,” for one thing, it demonstrates that I am bold, and that this is unusual, and it says to me that I trust you, and that I can take care of this. “I will be responsible for this situation, and you are liberated.”

There is a child in you. And you might not have been talking to them, and you might not have been treating them right. They might have had a hard time. And I welcome them if they want to be there. If they don’t want to be there, that’s their choice. That’s fine. But, they are there, and I’ve got one too. And we can find our way to other feelings that are there that are less celebratory. Some things that are darker can come because the child was allowed. Whatever you do, they have come anyway. How shall we make them welcome?

But I don’t need to make it, “Now look, this is going to be therapy. There are some things that you may have suffered when you were young. And I want you to…” I’m not going to do that, but I can say, “Play like a child plays with a toy. Ha, ha, ha, ha.”

Give it a try next time you work with someone. I didn’t just bring someone, I brought you. Show me what that means. How could I know what that means? Show me what that means, and we will have everything we need. I am here to respond to you. I didn’t come here and just want, “Oh, get somebody to do this in a particular way.” No, I want you. Just think of all the faff that went into you being you. So much had to happen for you to be yourself. How am I going to find anything that compares to the enormous effort that has delivered your personality to this moment? I need it to be you. You brought yourself, which is an immense thing, a divine thing.

I understand this philosophy also informed the process of your album, Gold – Go Forward In The Courage of Your Love. Can you explain how you carried this approach into your recording process?

For some people, it’s more important that we can capture the thing than it happens. For me, it’s more important that it happens than we capture it. There are some things that people prioritize that I don’t prioritize as much. And there are some things that I prioritize that other people often seem to just throw away. The things that I prioritize are more basically fun, childish creativity, and response to each other. I put lots of work into setting it up so that our priority could be the joy in the moments that we had.

And there’s rules in there.

Like what?

“We’re not going to listen to this music.” I didn’t have to say it, I just kept everyone too busy. Typically, in a recording studio, you play the song, and then you go into the other room, and everyone listens to themselves, and checks, “Was I good enough?” We don’t do that shit in my session. My session is not about, “Am I good enough?” My song is not about, “Am I good enough?” But I didn’t tell the players this. I just kept us too busy playing and enjoying each other.

There’s another rule that I didn’t say, but I just had: We don’t talk about whether or not the tape is running. My songs are not about a tape machine. It could be running. I don’t care. That’s not my job in this room. I’ve employed somebody in the other room to take care of that. I trust him. Kristian, capital K. He will decide what needs recording or not. That’s none of my business and that’s none of the business of my musicians. We are all right in here. We’ve got each other to enjoy, thank you very much.

I had planned in advance that every time we play those pieces of material, even though we’re playing them in a completely different way each time with different bands, developing them according to their own feelings—even though we did that, we still, at the same time, played them each time at the same speed. That means I can play back all those bands at the same time, I can put them on top of each other and mix them into each other. I had done a lot of preparation for it to be chaotic, for it to be human. I put work into allowing it to belong to the people who were there.

What does your curiosity look like? How do you explore things?

I think the way from fear to excitement is curiosity. Things changed for me when I started going towards the fear. The first thing I came up against was, “I’m not afraid of anything,” but I thought I must be afraid of some things—maybe the things I’m afraid of are invisible to me because I’m so automatically drawn away from them. If I find myself responding to something really automatically, really reflexively, like, “Oh, obviously I’m not going to do that.” Now I go, “Oh, is that what I’m afraid of? Okay, I’ve got to do that thing because I’m afraid of it.” Can I be curious about any aspect of this thing that I’m afraid of?

I do depend on the humanity of others because if I can be curious about them, then I can advocate by that action of going towards them for empathy. And I can welcome them and demand of myself that I am vulnerable and incomplete, that there’s a space in this work for them because I want there to be space for that person. And I want there to be space for you, whoever you are, who’s reading.

I don’t know what I’m doing and I am incomplete, and I can be sound, solid and cool with myself while being incomplete. I can forgive myself for not being enough and present myself that way. And there’s room for you, whoever you are. I’m very happy that you’re there and I’m very happy that you’re anywhere. I admire you that you’re there because it is tricky being alive. And they are doing it, aren’t they? Whoever they are. And they’re passing their eyes over your page and breathing and striving to exist and it’s noble. And it helps the rest of us. The more you are yourself, whoever you are, you make me more myself, too. And the longer you succeed in this striving, you inspire me to do the same thing.

How did you learn to have this perspective on the world and on people?

I don’t know if I’ve finished learning it.

You go about your daily life with an encouraging, spirited way of engaging with others. Have you encountered people who don’t believe you to be sincere? There’s so much cynicism in our culture, sadly, many people aren’t used to hearing these things, or maybe they just don’t know how to receive them.

If I’m not all right with myself, then whoever’s experiencing that thing, they’re not stupid. They can tell. And it doesn’t reach, they receive it in a bitter way. Sometimes, to reach someone, I need to go even bigger, give them even more love, for them to receive it. And if not, I just leave them, give them respect, and accept that if they’ve taken me in a negative way. I look at myself: Well, what’s going on? And what have they seen? Everyone’s up for connecting with someone’s genuine love. It’s just a question of, did I deliver that? Was it genuine? Or it was genuine, but I failed to deliver it to them? And the way to love someone is everybody’s got their own way to be loved, to be reached.

I think people who haven’t spent time with you may not understand at first that Alabaster dePlume isn’t exactly a character or performative persona. I don’t sense there is a gap between Gus and Alabaster.

Yeah, they’re both me. They’re both real, but it’s only particular parts. And so, when you get on the stage, it’s not like I’ve invented a person, and I’m pretending to be them. It’s just certain bits that are more responsible in the situation.

From that, I’m interested in your sense of responsibility for joy. Why is joy so important in your work?

I don’t know what we’re doing, and when I say we, I mean the human race, but if we’re not prioritizing joy, then we might be prioritizing something unfortunate. In our society, we see it as silly, as frivolous, as decorative to prioritize joy. But if we are not prioritizing that, we’re prioritizing something else. What is that? It’s not my place to ask someone else that question before I’ve asked myself. And if I want us to consider prioritizing joy, and you see harm happening every day… I could go to the IDF and say, “You should be prioritizing joy.” Would I be prioritizing joy then? I can lead by example.

The way I see my work, I’m not just decorating this world. And I used to think it was sad that people would see it that way. That this work is frivolous. But I don’t think it’s sad anymore, I think it’s actually dangerous. I think it’s an attack.

It’s not for me to say what other artists are, and what their responsibility is. But as far as I’m concerned with my stuff, people pay attention to what I’m doing, and I’ve got a responsibility towards them to be true. For my own sake just as a human, I’m going to prioritize joy, because I feel like it, I enjoy the idea of it. It’s not the only thing I’ll prioritize, but I have a responsibility to be true with those who come with respect. To treat them equally with respect. Some are coming to me authentically to listen, and it would be rude not to respect them with a true thing.

What is something that you wish someone had told you when you were starting out making art?

I think I am starting out. And if somebody had told me not to do something, I would’ve done it. And if they had told me to do something, then I would’ve not done it. But I remember realizing that no one was ever going to ask me for the best thing that I’ve got. I was an accompanist, and I was like, “I’ve got my amazing things I could do, but I’ll wait until someone asks. Someone should ask me for that.” And I remember realizing that they never would. They never will. I realized that it’s not because they don’t want me to, it’s because they don’t know what it is.

We will never ask you, whoever you are, I don’t know who you are, but I will never ask you for your awesome shit. But it’s not because I don’t need it. I do need it. I will never ask you for it because I don’t know what it is. Do it now before we are ready. Do it even if we’re telling you not to. Do it because we’re telling you not to. How could we know what it is? You’ve got to do it first. There are 7 billion people in the world. Don’t tell me that your shit is so special that none of them need it. Get over yourself, get out of the way, the song wants to come through. The great thing wants to happen. Let us allow it to happen.

How do you get out of your own way? Or how does one get out of the way of the song, or the writing, or whatever?

We can get out of that by going through it. It becomes so crushing, this idea of myself, “Oh, I better do something good.” Eventually, it’s so crushing that you give up, you give up on yourself as an artist, and then after that, you can get on with your fucking work.

I play in the show and everyone stands and listens to me. I am invited to think that this situation is about me being good at something or not, but it’s not. No one gives a shit if you’re good at it. We’ve not come for that. We’ve come for something more important. It is very impressive when someone is skillful at producing blah, but I don’t care about it. I’m selfish. I want their soul. So, what do you need in order for me to enjoy your soul? Well, you just need a soul. Have you got a soul? Yes. You’ve got a soul. Give up trying. Allow.

But it’s easy for me to just say these things. Could I produce a poem from this perspective right now? I don’t know. It’s a moment that chooses you. It’s a moment that you can enjoy. Enjoy the song because you enjoy songs. Enjoy the writing because you enjoy writing… I mean, is that such a strange thing?

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Tasha Young.

Most people who follow corporate news were probably surprised by the midterm election outcomes, which saw Democrats hold far more seats than predicted.

“Expected Republican Red Wave Now a Ripple,” announced USA Today (11/8/22). “Biden Touts Midterm Results as Democrats Defy Expectations, Avoid GOP Blowout,” was ABCNews.com‘s headline (11/9/22). The Washington Post (11/9/22) reported that “few foresaw that Democrats would defy expectations of a ‘Red Wave.'”

But whose expectations, exactly, did Democrats defy? It’s true that few in the media foresaw these results, despite the extraordinary amount of time and energy they put into prognostications.

Contrary to CNN‘s Chris Cillizza (10/26/22), the midterms were not so great for Donald Trump.

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank (11/9/22) compiled an illustrative sampling of headlines in the lead up to Election Day that voiced the media consensus, including:

• “Red Tsunami Watch” (Axios, 10/23/22)
• “Why the Midterms Are Going to Be Great for Donald Trump” (CNN.com, 10/26/22)
• “Breaking Down the GOP’s Midterm Momentum” (Politico, 10/19/22)
• “Democrats, on Defense in Blue States, Brace for a Red Wave in the House” (New York Times, 10/25/22)

How did the pundits and journalists get it so wrong? Both Milbank and Judd Legum (Popular Information, 11/10/22) point out that, in the wake of Trump’s 2016 victory, his overperformance relative to most polls meant conservative polling firms that forecast stronger GOP performance ended up with more accurate predictions. Those firms, including Trafalgar and Rasmussen, aren’t fully transparent and don’t follow industry standards for data collection. (Nor do they hide their biases: After the 2020 election, Rasmussen invoked Stalin to suggest that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn Biden’s victory.) Yet respected aggregation sites like 538 include and rank them quite highly (Trafalgar an A-, Rasmussen a B). The weight given to these outfits was skewing polling averages in the GOP’s favor.

Whose expectations, exactly, did Democrats defy (ABC, 11/9/22)?

But as Legum notes, even if they had gotten it right, prognostication-as-reporting is utterly dysfunctional. Polling is ultimately a guessing game, which means it’s often wrong (see FAIR.org, 10/3/22), and it takes space and resources away from the kinds of substantive coverage that would be actually useful:

Prediction-based coverage comes at a high cost because it crowds out the coverage that voters actually need. To make an informed decision, voters need to know the practical impact of voting for each candidate.

In the case of the 2022 midterms, if Republicans regain control of the House, they will use the threat of a global economic collapse to try to force benefit cuts to Social Security and Medicare. We don’t have to speculate about this. We know it is true because Republican leaders have said it publicly. But, as Popular Information previously reported, major publications almost completely ignored the potential impact of the election on Social Security and Medicare.

The political media has substituted polling analysis, which is something only people managing campaigns really need, for substantive analysis of the positions of the candidates, something that voters need.

Horse race election coverage is nothing new, of course; reporting on polls and tactics in place of substantive issues is corporate media’s bread and butter (see, e.g., FAIR.org, 10/14/08; Extra!, 11/14). It generates clicks from anxious election watchers without risking charges of bias, whereas seriously talking about the issues would almost inevitably expose how far candidates are from truly representing most people’s interests—and some more so than others.

Prediction coverage takes political journalism and flips it on its head: Rather than informing voters so they can make decisions in their best interests at the ballot box, it obscures the most important issues with its endless guessing games about what those voters want.

It’s worse than useless; this kind of journalism works to shield politicians from accountability. And in this political moment, it’s even more dangerous than that: Setting false expectations is part of the GOP strategy for credibly claiming election fraud. When Republican pollsters release results that suggest they can’t lose, Republican voters are primed to disbelieve any losses that happen. And when even “liberal” media enable those false expectations, it lends credibility to those election fraud claims.

While in the vast majority of races this year, GOP candidates appear to be conceding without a fight, in 2024, with a presidential race on the line and hundreds of deniers firmly ensconced in Congress, results that don’t go the GOP’s way could come under a much stronger challenge. And news outlets’ substitution of fortunetelling for substantive reporting could become more consequential than ever.

The post Prioritizing Fortunetelling Over Reporting Poses a Danger to Democracy appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

I think beeswax is truly incredible. I fell in love with beeswax about six years ago when I was living in Prince Edward County, and I started visiting an apiary there called Honey Pie Hives. I don’t even know if I bought candles from them, but I was definitely buying honey. Eventually, I was like, “I want to try making candles,” because a friend was getting married, and I wanted to make her something special. So, I bought beeswax, melted it down in my kitchen, and here we are.

You use both silicone moulds and do free-form candle making. Can you explain the difference?

I got into silicone mould-making shortly after I started making candles because I had this fantasy of a perfectly spherical candle. Well, not perfectly spherical—a little flat part on the bottom so that it could stand freely. I went looking for a mould and couldn’t find anything so decided to make it myself, and ever since I’ve been making all of my own moulds and experimenting with different shapes. For the other methods, I guess there’s kind of three ways that I do it. I make tapers, which don’t require a mould and are instead dipped over and over again in a pot of hot wax. I have another method where I pour layers of wax onto a wick that’s attached to a rig hanging from the ceiling. And then sometimes I’ll sculpt a candle just using wax that’s kind of half hardened, and then I can kind of make any form at all.

I feel like, over the years, your creative process has changed quite drastically. Can you explain what that process is like when you’re developing a new candle?

It happens spontaneously, and kind of randomly, I would say. I think in the beginning I was just really learning the technicalities of making candles, watching YouTube videos, and reading books, and was quite focused on the technical side of things. And then, as I gained a better understanding of the nature of beeswax, how candles burn, and all of that, I felt more able to experiment. I experience random, uncontrolled bursts of creativity that feel like an energy rising up in me, and then I go to the studio, and get into a zone and just make things.

Have you ever felt like you want to create something different, but you can’t harness that spontaneity?

Yeah, definitely. My creativity is sometimes squashed by the fact that my wax-related creative output is also how I support myself financially. A lot of the time, the logistical business side of things really feels like a hindrance. Sometimes I’m just rushing to keep up with orders and I’m like, “I would like to make something new, or experiment,” but then all of my energy is consumed by the backend. That I would say is an ongoing challenge.

You do everything yourself, from candle making to shipping, to doing home deliveries. How do you feel running this business solo?

I like it. I’m quite a solitary person, and especially with this creative process, I think I work well alone. I do get overwhelmed sometimes though, balancing all of the tasks required to make Waxmaya work. I think collaboration is really important and that it’s a good practice to open up my workspace to people because I think I’m scared of that a little bit.

Where do you find support when trying to find a balance between creativity and business?

I should probably seek that out more, actually. An upcoming goal of mine is to have somebody to help me with the business side so that it doesn’t feel so overwhelming and consuming and so that I can focus a little bit more on the creation. It feels like a little bit of a luxury, in that I’ll have to pay somebody or offer them something but I’m at a point now where that feels like an important next step. I’m excited about that.

A lot of people share photos of your candles in their homes, either taking a bath or having it lit with dinner. How does it make you feel to see your candles in strangers’ homes?

Oh my gosh, it makes me so happy. I obviously have no control over what happens with what I make after it leaves my hands, so people it’s very fun to see the different roles that candles play in people’s lives. For me, candles can be so many different things depending on the context, most often grounding and meditative or celebratory. And so, when I see people in their bath or home with a beeswax candle lit, it fills me with joy, to know that a candle that I have made could be part of someone taking care of themselves or others in some way.

You mentioned the first apiary that you worked with was in Ontario, and now you’ve switched to one that is more local in Quebec. How did you find that?

When I moved the candle-making operation back to Montreal, I was wanting to diversify my wax sourcing, and work with smaller farms, so I reached out to friends who work with bees and made connections with beekeepers that way. There’s this older couple in Freighlighsburg in the Eastern Townships that I work with very often. And then this lovely beekeeper, Martin, near Shawville. I’m always looking for beekeepers who want to sell wax, if you’re out there get in touch!

I feel like, from my perspective, your business is very local and you’ve kept it that way intentionally. I know that you’ve had some offers to kind of expand, but you’ve kept it small. Can you explain that choice?

Yeah. I think because this all started for me with the bees, and beeswax, that’s the most important part of all of this, the material. I really care about bees, and I don’t want to be using materials from bees who are exploited, or who are being tended to by farmers who don’t care and engage in exploitative practices. Basically, the bees and the beekeepers fully dictate how big or small my business can be. I think inevitably when you grow a business to a certain size, you have to start compromising your values, and I don’t want to do that.

I feel like you’re really involved in Montreal’s community, with selling to local businesses and being in local pop-ups, et cetera. How do you feel working in Montreal? Do you feel like the city reflects your art practice at all?

I’ve been able to establish a stronger sense of community here in Montreal through Waxmaya. I get to meet and be inspired and mutually supported by a lot of people that I wouldn’t have otherwise met were I not doing the waxwork. People who buy candles, other craftspeople and artists, or beekeepers in the city. And that feels really nice. I’ve been here for a very long time and sometimes feel like I want to escape, but generally, I feel very supported here, my studio is here, it works.

What is your relationship with your studio?

I love my studio. Up until a year and a half ago, I was working out of my apartment and was forced to leave by the landlords, but ultimately glad it happened because it’s very good for me to have a separation between home and work. I tend to work too much so the separation is helpful, and being around other people who are doing tactile creative stuff is really inspiring to me. I am now able to make a huge mess in my workspace too which is helpful and have different people come through for visits. It’s a special place for me.

Do you have a set schedule for yourself?

I do. I mean, it’s loose, but yeah, I do. I try to create a little structure for myself. And I really try not to work on Sundays. That’s sometimes hard to enforce, but I have a Sunday rest policy that I try to stick to. So, that’s something.

I feel like your work involves your body so much. How do you care for your body?

Oh my gosh, it’s hard. My back and wrists are often aching, so I take warm baths and stretch a lot. I also try to get a massage maybe twice a year as a little check-in, a refresher. I’ve been told by bodyworkers that with the repetitive movements that I do, I need to be very careful to stretch and tend to my body so, I’m trying.

Apart from Maya care, on your website, and through your Instagram, you talk a lot about candle care. Can you explain what candle hugging is?

After you’ve burned your candle, and there’s a little bit of warm wax on the outside, you just take both hands and kind of do a mini hand hug. Caressing the outside of the candle pushes the melted wax a little bit into the center, and that creates a much more even burn. It will make your candle last much longer. I didn’t know about this for so long, and now that I do, I highly recommend it. And it’s also just a nice way to be more intentional, and really build a relationship with these special objects.

Can you tell me one thing that you learned through your practice, and also one thing you’re currently learning?

When I first started making candles, I was really concerned with making sure that every candle was perfect. I’ve tried to let go of that which has been a huge process that I think ripples out into other parts of my life in a really nice way. I remind myself that nothing is perfect and these candles are just little manifestations of the earth in some way and that thought is really freeing. Something that I’m currently learning is how to balance business and creativity. I think that that’s my biggest ongoing challenge.

What advice would you give either to other people or to yourself?

Stay connected to yourself and your community. If you prioritize what you actually care about, and your authenticity, then everything will be okay. That’s kind of a guiding principle for me in all of this because Waxmaya just evolved really organically and I just kind of did, and continue to do what feels right to me whether people like it or not. Try to tap into your truest self and follow that, instead of trying to appeal to what you think others want you to be. Maintain connection and care for yourself and others. Maybe that’s it.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Lauren Spear.

It is kind of a complicated process with many steps. But basically, I mix a viscous water solution that I’m able to float paint on top of. Then I mix all of my paints to lighten them a little bit and help with their spreadability. Then I take that paint and I apply it to the surface of this buoyant liquid. Then I manipulate the paint to create patterns and imagery. Then I can take paper or wood or fabric, and lay it on top of the surface of the water and it transfers onto whatever material I’m printing. I take that material and turn it into all sorts of products and designs and artworks, from wearable clothing to home goods to prints on paper. My whole practice, pretty much, is rooted in that certain technique.

How did you arrive at that method?

I originally studied sculpture, but I’ve always made my own clothing and I’ve always manipulated clothes and done tie-dyeing or applique or…

Are you self-taught with sewing?

Totally self-taught, but I’ve always been really into clothing as a form of self-expression, and cutting things up from the thrift store and putting things back together. I was on this deep exploration of textile techniques and I tried marbling, I just fell in love with it. Because it’s so fluid and you don’t have that much control. So, it feels like this really nice push and pull of you manipulating it, and it sort of pushing back. It’s very freeing in that way.

I think I’d been looking for a technique that was freeing for me, because I was always living in these tiny, tricky little spaces and making work that felt really constricted and small, like tiny drawings. To be able to feel really open and expressive with the material that I couldn’t control too much was this ‘aha!’ moment for me.

What parts of your upbringing or your early adulthood do you think were key in preparing you to do the things you’re doing now?

This is a funny question, because I had a pretty intense upbringing and have an extremely high level of endurance because of it. So, I think that has helped me be very committed and really work hard. Also, not having a lot of support or money or anything. It’s like, “I am doing this and no one else is going to do this for me, so I have to just make this work on my own.”

But I also grew up with creative parents and we lived completely off the grid in rural Maine and we would just make everything. My parents’ approach to life was like, “We can make whatever we need.” They didn’t want to rely on anyone or anything. So, there was no electricity, no running water, build your own shelter, grow your own food, make your own clothes, that kind of mentality. I think that also has its pros and cons. But being raised with the idea that you can make something from nothing, and you can make something beautiful out of something hard or ugly or raw, is something that just continues to inspire me. It keeps me going to this day and I’m very grateful for that part of my childhood, for sure.

In terms of running your business and making the work that you make, what are some of the things you feel like you’ve had to unlearn from whatever you were taught in school or from family?

I think, connecting to what I just said, [the idea that] you can do anything. Unlearning that and actually asking for help with things that don’t come naturally to you has been something I’ve really struggled with. I’m getting so much better at reaching out and saying, “Actually, this would be more efficient if I reach out to someone who’s really good at this and ask for help and bring them in.” That has been a pivotal change in my practice.

Would you mind giving a specific example of a time you’ve done that?

I had my friend Jackie come in and help organize my studio, because I am extremely messy and disorganized. She loves organizing spaces and is so thoughtful and enjoys that. That was absolutely a game-changer. I had my friend Ariel help me—she just got a master’s in graphic design and helped me with website rebranding stuff. I am very analog, I’ll be there getting so frustrated and irritated. Then I’m like, “This doesn’t need to be what I’m putting energy into.” She needed the work and is really good at it. Then I just had all that space in my mind free up for other work. Even having my friend Perry who works with me part-time, having her come in and help me do shipping and stuff. I don’t need to be doing everything.

Reminding yourself that things can get done if you don’t touch every single thing.

Yes. And it’s okay. And it doesn’t mean that I’m incapable or whatever. The myth of the one woman show, that’s based in ego and it’s unrealistic. I think growing up being so endurant and doing so much on my own made me feel like that was part of my identity. Then, as an artist and a business owner, wanting to uphold that in some way, because that’s how I felt proud, and needing to really shift that narrative, because it was actually stopping me from growing.

What does success look like to you now?

This is a question I ask myself a lot, actually, because I’ve grown up with this narrative that I’m going to be the one to make it. One of the first people to go to school in my family or have a career that’s actually with my creative work. This idea of “making it” is just so abstract. Have I made it because I have my own studio? And I’m selling work and I’m making a living just on my work, is that making it? Or can you ever make it, really? I don’t know. It’s just like, what is success really? For me, I think it’s being happy and fulfilled, and it’s not about money or space or acknowledgement. So, I think my goal when I will feel successful is when I’ve tamed my mind to a point where I’m not being bogged down with other little mental distractions or where I feel secure in myself.

Something that I think we maybe have in common to some degree is from existing in kind of a chaotic environment in early life, we’re maybe too comfortable with chaos sometimes. But I think it’s really interesting to talk about chaos and control in how it relates to creative work. I wonder if you could share a little bit of your thoughts on the utility of chaos or the pitfalls of it.

Yeah. My process is extremely messy and I get paint on everything and water all over the floor. I love being able to create in a space of chaos, because I think it has energy and electricity and there’s no part of your brain that’s like, ‘Oh, careful!’ You’re just going for it and you’re able to get in the flow and let go. That’s when I make my best work, when I access the flow, which is my favorite state of being.

It’s like a form of surrender.

Completely. I mean, it’s kind of like a disassociation also. It’s like therapy. You’re floating and it’s just pouring through you and you’re not overthinking it. I think it really helps me to be in a chaotic, messy environment, because I’m not worried about anything. It’s okay to get super messy.

Do you have any rules that you’ve made for yourself as a creative person or as a business owner?

Yes. In the last year and a half, I have been really trying to be disciplined and have a good work-life balance, because I’m a total night owl and I would be coming to the studio and I would forget to eat, I would forget to drink water, I would be here till 3:00 AM. I wasn’t making time for anything else in my life. So consumed by my work, to the point of severe burnout, which is super real. I went through that and it was really hard to bounce back from and I never want to go there again.

Now I try to do nine to five, and I try not to work weekends and I try to always have snacks here. Getting my dog, Wanda, has been really helpful, because she reminds me to take breaks and go for walks. My boyfriend is like, ‘I’m picking you up at 5:00 and you’re coming home with me. You can go out, do whatever, see your friends, whatever, but you’re done at 5:00.’

When you are working how do you approach structuring your time?

I try to get here early and have some quiet time to look at books or write ideas down, and get myself centered and organized, so I’m coming into the day with calm energy instead of feeling frantic. I often feel like I never have enough time. Trying to create a calm start to the day, where I’m not entering the work in frantic energy has been helpful.

But I still work in a very abstract way and I still jump from one thing to the next. I am trying to have more of a structured day, where I have a task and I try to complete it and not get too distracted. I hide my phone when I come to the studio. I put it somewhere that I can’t reach, take my ladder and put it up there [points to a high shelf] and then move the ladder. Because I do not want to waste my time. If I’m only here from nine to five, I need to make the most of this day. I can’t spend an hour on Instagram.

So, part of work-life balance is being very protective of your work time.

That is so true. I am so protective. I am like a mother lion when it comes to my studio practice, extremely protective. That can be tricky with friendships or wanting to go visit super old friends. But I really do think that I am where I’m at now because I’ve been so committed and I’ve been prioritizing my work above anything else really in my life. I think it pays off when you really commit.

Can you talk about some of your priorities as a business owner, or some of the challenges you’ve had in how to structure this as a viable business?

As someone that studied fine art and conceptual sculpture, and then wanted to make a living off my creative work for a long time, I felt guilt and shame around making functional objects, because it wasn’t living in the fine art world. It took me a long time to let go of these rules of what deserves this sort of a claim and what doesn’t.

I think the more potential I saw in creating a living for myself with my work, and the more joy that I saw people having by being able to wear my work, those divisions started fading away more. But that has definitely been something I used to struggle with and a boundary that I still want to work on smudging out. I want these things to be able to coexist and I’m really excited that I’m making more work that lives on a wall. That feels exciting to me. I would love to have a show of my prints, but I’m also excited by having wearables coexist in that space.

This is something that I think a lot of small businesses toeing the line of art and design are confronted by, because there’s such a division still between those spaces. But it’s exciting to be existing on the edge of both. I feel like I’m inspired by the potential that can come out of merging them.

Can we talk a little bit about the way you use color and what sort of feelings you hope people have when they wear or experience the things you make?

It’s funny because I feel like I’ve been saying for a number of years now, “I’m going to do a tan and ochre collection.” I really want to try that and I just can’t. I am just obsessed and in love with color, I love all color. It makes me feel excited and happy. I love combining tons of colors. It feels energetic and alive. I think if there’s one thing I’m trying to bring is fun and confidence, because they’re really bold and bright, the things that I make.

There’s also a childlike sort of thing going on, because they’re like how a child would just throw every color on the page. I love that feeling of being really free with it. I think that there’s just energy that happens with bright colors and colors mixing. There’s that kind of optical illusion that happens with certain colors and you put them next to each other. And also nature is full of neon color. I want to draw from the extreme and extroverted and eccentric parts of nature that are just like, “What is this crazy frog that is covered in neon dots or this wild flower that’s blooming out of a cactus.” That’s the feeling that I’m trying to evoke.

Yeah, my suspicion is that you make a lot of people really happy when they wear your stuff, because how can you be a grouch and wear a smiley face with heart cheeks in ten shades of neon?

Even when I’m approaching a trickier emotion, with the mixed emotion faces that I do, I’m injecting humor into it, because it’s done with super bright colors and it gets goofy. I think that feels really therapeutic to me. It’s like you can be sad, but there’s still this feeling of joy lurking within it. Or saying it’s okay to have these feelings, but also here’s something that’s going to make you feel happy.

What advice would you give to other artists on how to have more joy in their lives?

I think I would say, make a list of things that make you happy and prioritize those. Try to make time to prioritize them. If you feel nourished by going into nature, try to make time to do that once a week or once a month. And be kind to yourself. And find time to play. And nourish your inner creative child, because I think that’s where the source is for all of us. If that child is being neglected, then it’s harder to access joy. So, play.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Rene Kladzyk.

Noam Chomsky Interviewed by C.J. Polychroniou

May 4, 2022. Truthout.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is an utter disaster for Ukraine, and the war is not going well for the Russian forces who are experiencing heavy losses and may be running low on both supplies and morale. Perhaps this is the reason why Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, also encouraged by the support that Ukraine has received from Western countries, claimed a few days ago on the Greek state-run broadcaster ERT that “the war will end when Ukraine wins.”

In this exclusive interview, world-renowned scholar and leading dissident Noam Chomsky considers the implications of Ukraine’s heroic stance to fight the Russian invaders till the end, and why the U.S. is not eager to see an end to the conflict.

Chomsky, who is internationally recognized as one of the most important intellectuals alive, is the author of some 150 books and the recipient of scores of highly prestigious awards, including the Sydney Peace Prize and the Kyoto Prize (Japan’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize), and of dozens of honorary doctorate degrees from the world’s most renowned universities. Chomsky is Institute Professor Emeritus at MIT and currently Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.

C.J. Polychroniou: After months of fighting, it’s obvious that the invasion is not going according to the Kremlin’s plans, hopes and expectations. NATO figures have claimed that Russian forces have already suffered as many deaths as they did during the entire duration of the Afghan war, and the position of the Zelenskyy government now seems to be “peace with victory.” Obviously, the West’s support for Ukraine is key to what’s happening on the ground, both militarily and in terms of diplomatic solutions. Indeed, there is no clear path to peace, and the Kremlin has stated that it is not seeking to end the war by May 9 (known as Victory Day, which marks the Soviets’ role in defeating Nazi Germany). Don’t Ukrainians have the right to fight to death before surrendering any territory to Russia, if they choose to do so?

Noam Chomsky: To my knowledge, no one has suggested that Ukrainians don’t have that right. Islamic Jihad also has the abstract right to fight to the death before surrendering any territory to Israel. I wouldn’t recommend it, but it’s their right.

Do Ukrainians want that? Perhaps now in the midst of a devastating war, but not in the recent past.

President Zelenskyy was elected in 2019 with an overwhelming mandate for peace. He immediately moved to carry it out, with great courage. He had to confront violent right-wing militias who threatened to kill him if he tried to reach a peaceful settlement along the lines of the Minsk II formula. Historian of Russia Stephen Cohen points out that if Zelenskyy had been backed by the U.S., he could have persisted, perhaps solving the problem with no horrendous invasion. The U.S. refused, preferring its policy of integrating Ukraine within NATO. Washington continued to dismiss Russia’s red lines and the warnings of a host of top-level U.S. diplomats and government advisers as it has been doing since Clinton’s abrogation of Bush’s firm and unambiguous promise to Gorbachev that in return for German reunification within NATO, NATO would not expand one inch beyond Germany.

Zelenskyy also sensibly proposed putting the very different Crimea issue on a back burner, to be addressed later, after the war ends.

Minsk II would have meant some kind of federal arrangement, with considerable autonomy for the Donbass region, optimally in a manner to be determined by an internationally supervised referendum. Prospects have of course diminished after the Russian invasion. How much we don’t know. There is only one way to find out: to agree to facilitate diplomacy instead of undermining it, as the U.S. continues to do.

It’s true that “the West’s support for Ukraine is key to what’s happening on the ground, both militarily and in terms of diplomatic solutions,” though I would suggest a slight rephrasing: The West’s support for Ukraine is key to what’s happening on the ground, both militarily and in terms of undermining instead of facilitating diplomatic solutions that might end the horror.

Congress, including congressional Democrats, are acting as if they prefer the exhortation by Democratic Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee of Intelligence Adam Schiff that we have to aid Ukraine “so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”

Schiff’s warning is nothing new. It is reminiscent of Reagan’s calling a national emergency because the Nicaraguan army is only two days marching time from Harlingen, Texas, about to overwhelm us. Or LBJ’s plaintive plea that we have to stop them in Vietnam or they will “sweep over the United States and take what we have.”

That’s been the permanent plight of the U.S., constantly threatened with annihilation. Best to stop them over there.

The U.S. has been a leading provider of security assistance to Ukraine since 2014. And last week, President Biden asked Congress to approve $33 billion to Ukraine, which is more than double what Washington has already committed since the start of the war. Isn’t it therefore safe to conclude that Washington has a lot riding on the way the war ends in Ukraine?

Since the relevant facts are virtually unspeakable here, it’s worth reviewing them.

Since the Maidan uprising in 2014, NATO (meaning basically the U.S.) has “provided significant support with equipment, with training, 10s of 1000s of Ukrainian soldiers have been trained, and then when we saw the intelligence indicating a highly likely invasion Allies stepped up last autumn and this winter,” before the invasion, according to NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg).

I’ve already mentioned Washington’s refusal to back newly elected President Zelenskyy when his courageous effort to implement his mandate to pursue peace was blocked by right-wing militias, and the U.S. refused to back him, preferring to continue its policy of integrating Ukraine into NATO, dismissing Russia’s red lines.

As we’ve discussed earlier, that commitment was stepped up with the official U.S. policy statement of September 2021 calling for sending more advanced military equipment to Ukraine while continuing “our robust training and exercise program in keeping with Ukraine’s status as a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner.” The policy was given further formal status in the November 10 U.S.-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership signed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The State Department has acknowledged that “prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the United States made no effort to address one of Vladimir Putin’s most often stated top security concerns — the possibility of Ukraine’s membership into NATO.”

So matters continued after Putin’s criminal aggression. Once again, what happened has been reviewed accurately by Anatol Lieven:

A U.S. strategy of using the war in Ukraine to weaken Russia is also of course completely incompatible with the search for a ceasefire and even a provisional peace settlement. It would require Washington to oppose any such settlement and to keep the war going. And indeed, when in late March the Ukrainian government put forward a very reasonable set of peace proposals, the lack of public U.S. support for them was extremely striking.

Apart from anything else, a Ukrainian treaty of neutrality (as proposed by President Zelensky) is an absolutely inescapable part of any settlement — but weakening Russia involves maintaining Ukraine as a de facto U.S. ally. U.S. strategy as indicated by [Defense Secretary] Lloyd Austin would risk Washington becoming involved in backing Ukrainian nationalist hardliners against President Zelensky himself.

With this in mind, we can turn to the question. The answer seems plain: judging by U.S. actions and formal pronouncements, it is “safe to conclude that Washington has a lot riding on the way the war ends in Ukraine.” More specifically, it is fair to conclude that in order to “weaken Russia,” the U.S. is dedicated to the grotesque experiment that we have discussed earlier; avoid any way of ending the conflict through diplomacy and see whether Putin will slink away quietly in defeat or will use the capacity, which of course he has, to destroy Ukraine and set the stage for terminal war.

We learn a lot about the reigning culture from the fact that the grotesque experiment is considered highly praiseworthy, and that any effort to question it is either relegated to the margins or bitterly castigated with an impressive flow of lies and deceit.

This content originally appeared on chomsky.info: The Noam Chomsky Website and was authored by anthony.

I really like turning interior thoughts into something tangible. I like being forced to turn thoughts or observations or critical ideas into language. It would be amazing to be an incredible painter and turn this interiority into something that feels real and touchable. But given what I’m capable of, it ended up being words. I love language. I think language is an amazing thing to play with and I feel really lucky I get to work in this medium. But I do think it’s a very common thing for writers to wish they were painters.

I love this idea of writing being about translating one’s interiority into language. Where does your interiority, or your interests, tend to lie?

Things that interest me are often the very ordinary features of everyday life. Someone once told me—and they meant it as a compliment, and I took it as one—that I write the mundane. What is the significance of lost pet signs? Why does the subway sound the way it does? Those questions are a lot more interesting to me than encountering culture in the often prepackaged ways it is presented to us. I do write about art exhibitions, and I love attending them. But as material for a writer, I think they often prove less fruitful because you’re encountering something in an expected form.

What draws you towards finding meaning in the mundane? And what is your own perception of the work you create?

I started my career as a metro newspaper reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle, so I became very attuned to the basic metro feature stories about normal people who do something that’s randomly interesting. Then as I moved into culture writing I just kept my eye on those sorts of things. I’m drawn towards things that form part of the backdrop of our everyday, things we get accustomed to and don’t interrogate in any way.

I write critical essays or reported features with a critical lens. I often start with something hyper-specific—that might be something hyper-specific and weird like crypto bros buying Tungsten cubes, or hyper-specific and totally average, like lost pet signs. I’m always trying to ask the question, what does this actually mean? Why is this happening? Where can this observation take us?

You’re also one of the most prolific writers that I know of. How do you manage to consistently produce such incredible work at an intense rate?

When I worked at the San Francisco Chronicle, I wrote an average of four stories a day, sometimes up to 11. They were really short stories, as opposed to what I write now, but I learned to construct my life around intense deadlines. It also helped me to become less precious about things. A piece of writing is only a piece of writing. You’re always going to look back at it and wish there are things you could change or that you would have taken it in a totally different direction. For me it’s all really iterative.

That’s one answer. The other answer is that it feels like I have to keep working in order to have money. I also think I work well when I have multiple things on the go. Some of my worst creative periods have been when I’ve been trying too hard to focus on one long project. I think dipping in and out of things is a weirdly fruitful mode for me.

It’s relieving to hear that you’re not a perfectionist because often people can get very bogged down in finding the exact right word or form of expression.

Sometimes I feel bad about it or I end up feeling like a little bit of a hack because I will take almost every assignment I am given. But I also think that’s been really useful to me because you can learn a lot from doing all kinds of wildly different assignments. Being open to different forms of stories and different subject matter has helped me a lot in my career.

Tell me a little bit more about why focusing on multiple projects at a time is a productive way for you to work.

Part of it is I can’t really focus on a piece of writing for more than a couple hours at a time. I’m impressed by people who can sit down and do a full day of work on one thing. Unless I have a crazy deadline, I can probably do two hours of good work on a project at a time. I actually think a lot of people are like that. When I’ve worked in offices before, I’ve observed that the actual work of writing can’t happen for that many hours at a time. I also read an interview with Deborah Eisenberg where she said she writes for three hours a day. Somebody asked her where the rest of the time went and she said, “I can’t really say.” It made me feel a lot better, because she’s amazing. That’s kind of how I feel. I can work on different things, like a book review and a reported feature. It’s easy to move between those two modes and not burn out on any one thing. I also think different forms of work can inform each other. It’s not always totally straightforward but if I’m writing a book review on extinct objects, I might get ideas from it for other possible pieces in the future.

Speaking of creative burnout, is that something you ever struggle with?

I guess periodically. I definitely feel like after long periods of intense work I need a break. I also feel like, frankly, I don’t work that many hours in a day. I’ll work for a couple hours, then go do something else and that’s my time to re-energize and then I’ll come back to working on something. I’ve definitely gone through professional periods where I feel exhausted and I can’t keep freelancing. But it comes and goes in waves. It’s never felt so severe that I wanted to stop doing what I am doing now, or that I wanted to get a full-time job. Actually, I think one of the main ways I’ve avoided having really severe burnout is by not having a full-time job.

When you say you don’t work that many hours—what does an average day look like for you?

I tend to wake up early, especially if I have a lot of work to do. I think of myself as being very alert in the morning. On an ideal day, which has not been happening lately because I find winter very hard, I will be working by 7:30 or 8am, drinking my coffee, excited about the prospect of the day. As soon as I break for lunch, which is maybe at 11:30, my day shifts a little bit and that’s when I do more administrative work like responding to emails. In the afternoon I go for a run or a walk then come back and finish doing a little bit more.

What are some activities you find creatively refresh you?

Definitely running. I’ve had various running injuries in the last few years and have noticed that I work a lot less when I’m not leaving the house and exercising. Reading can be part of my work, too. If I’m having a day where I can’t get anything done, I will sit down and read for a little bit and I find that resets me. It helps bring me back to a place where my mind is clear. I feel like it’s really important for me to see friends, because I spend so much time working alone. I enjoy having plans in the evening. Days when I don’t leave the house or talk to anyone can feel bleak. I’ve had a lot of them during the pandemic, but I also had a lot of days like that pre-pandemic and I know those days were hard on my creative life.

Earlier on you mentioned being envious of painters. Do you have any other creative outlets besides writing?

Sadly, no. I wish I did. I always toy with the idea of taking a woodworking class. I have a close friend who is an amazing writer and she also does a lot of weaving. There is something really beautiful and balanced about pouring your creative energies into multiple things even if it isn’t your profession or even something you’re particularly good at. But that’s not me.

Which is totally okay!

One thing I do periodically is take beginner Italian. I’ve just had this long-running desire to speak and read Italian. But I have also learned from this experience that it’s difficult to learn Italian if you’re not really committed to learning.

This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Isabel Slone.