This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Susan Blackwell: The Sparks File podcast may contain profanity and other adult content.

[0:04] Laura Camien: Please use your discretion.

[0:09] Susan Blackwell: When I bump into something that inspires me, I jump in in my spark files.

[0:18] Laura Camien: Spark file will be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be.

[0:23] Susan Blackwell: I pump it in my spark file.

[0:23] Laura Camien: Spark file.

[0:28] Susan Blackwell: I jump into my spark side.

[0:32] Laura Camien: Let's open up the spark file.

[0:36] Laura Camien: Welcome to the Sparks File where we believe that everyone is creative, but smart creative people know they don't have to go it alone.

[0:44] Susan Blackwell: I'm Susan Blackwell.

[0:45] Laura Camien: And I'm Laura Camien. If you're an OG listener, welcome back, Sparkler. If you're joining us for the first time, you should know that all are welcome here.

[0:53] Susan Blackwell: Mm-hmm. Whether your creativity has been on pause during this time or you've clung to it like a lifeline. Welcome.

[1:00] Laura Camien: But you might be asking yourself, what exactly is a spark file? Where do I get one? What do I file in it? These are such good questions, and we have answers.

[1:08] Susan Blackwell: A spark file is a place where you consistently collect all your inspirations and fascinations. Here's the deal. We are makers who make all kinds of things. If you're like us and you're making stuff all the time, or want to be making stuff all the time, you know the wellspring of inspiration can run a little dry, especially now.

[1:26] Laura Camien: But don't despair. We're here for you, and we are on the lookout for fresh ideas, images, and inspiration that spark our creativity and pique our curiosity. Things that inspire us all to get up off of our asses and make things like this podcast.

[1:41] Susan Blackwell: Or a frolicking good time that combines everyone's creativity. Or some bite-sized writing that contains so much in so little. Every episode, we're gonna reach into the spark file and exchange some sparks. And from time to time, we're gonna talk to some folks who spark us too.

[2:01] Laura Camien: And if you're not careful, we might just slide into 2021 in creative style. So without further ado, let's open up the Sparks File.

[2:12] Susan Blackwell: Hey, happy New Year!

[2:15] Laura Camien: New Year.

[2:17] Susan Blackwell: I guess technically last week we gave you the gift of Sutton Foster.

[2:20] Laura Camien: We did. We gave the gift of Sutton Foster for the New Year. Hope everyone enjoyed that as much as we did.

[2:26] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh. That was an amazing conversation. It was like one of those where you're like, we could talk for four more hours.

[2:32] Laura Camien: Uh, that was one we always we tell our guests it's gonna be this much time. And we get into it, and I'm like, I don't think they want to leave.

[2:40] Susan Blackwell: And we don't want to leave.

[2:42] Laura Camien: And we don't want to leave. But I'm always like, we've gotta go, we gotta push you out the door because you're, you know, she's painfully aware that they wanted to watch a movie later that evening.

[2:51] Susan Blackwell: That's right. Remember, you had plans. You gotta go.

[2:54] Laura Camien: Or sometimes people have like other interviews and things that they've set up, and we're like, no, really, you have to go.

[2:56] Susan Blackwell: You have to go. We know your schedule, and you have to go. But this technically, this is the first episode where I feel like we're officially saying happy new year.

[3:09] Laura Camien: That's right to gentle sparklers.

[3:11] Susan Blackwell: That's right, straight from us. We're saying happy new year. And I'll I want to just admit, like it feels like it was sort of a weird new year, right?

[3:20] Laura Camien: It was like, um, just a strange thing. It was like, okay, it's New Year's, but it does, you know, it doesn't feel, you know, like New Year's, but it is.

[3:30] Susan Blackwell: Gone are the days when I am like, we must stay up and watch the ball drop. I mean, I thought I used to be that person when I was younger, and now I'm just like in bed by 9:30.

[3:41] Laura Camien: Hey, that's impressive. That's my tradition. In bed by 9:30.

[3:47] Susan Blackwell: Usually we will like, if we're in Florida, we'll light a fire and sit out, you know, and try to make it to midnight. And people here, like, you know, fireworks are legal, so people will do their own fireworks and whatnot, you know.

[4:01] Laura Camien: So we'll stay up and enjoy that. But we didn't this year. We just, I think I had a sort of a morbid like, I gotta stick with Anderson Cooper in Times Square there and just, you know, like give him my support because what a weird year.

[4:18] Susan Blackwell: I was so strange. I was like, I never watched the ball drop, but why do I feel compelled? Like, no, I've gotta, I've really got to stick with he needs my energy right now.

[4:27] Laura Camien: I did visit that Times Square broadcast for just a moment, and I was like, this is so weird because of the pandemic. There were like they had hired like a little cluster of three people and then two clusters of two people, and they kept cutting back and forth between the host and then the little cluster of three and the little cluster of two.

[4:48] Susan Blackwell: And then in the background, they had put those just to have movement on the screen, they'd put those inflatable used car and like wiggly dudes.

[4:59] Laura Camien: Squiggly guys, yeah.

[5:00] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. And I was, I was like, this is, I just wanted to, I guess culturally just wanted to check in and be like, what's happening in the site, guys? And then I was like, well, that's weird.

[5:09] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[5:09] Susan Blackwell: And uh then, but we also we were preparing for what has become a real annual tradition for us, right? Which is our annual creativity kickoff.

[5:21] Laura Camien: Yeah. We were, I feel like we were busy working on that too a little bit more.

[5:29] Susan Blackwell: We definitely were. We definitely were working on that. And you know, just getting all the buttoning up, all the details the night before, um, which is uh also an exciting way to kind of ring in the new year for us.

[5:43] Laura Camien: I think it helps us to like really focus our energies on you know what we want to accomplish and how we want to tee ourselves up for the coming year, which is absolutely this time has been so challenging.

[5:59] Susan Blackwell: But as Sutton Foster, you know, was saying, there are so many silver linings.

[6:05] Laura Camien: Yeah. And I love that we did uphold our annual tradition of hosting this creativity retreat. But our that we had the technology in place to make it virtual, and also I feel like we took it to a next level.

[6:25] Susan Blackwell: Oh my God, yes. Yes. I was really, really excited about and really proud of.

[6:31] Laura Camien: We tasked ourselves with the challenge of creating a bunch of like just like new curriculum. And it was make new friends, but keep the old. One is silver, the other is gold. And we kept some old friends and some just like core things that we know we love to do, but there was so much freshness, and in itself, creating that was such a fun creative act.

[6:55] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh, yeah. And we expanded it because, you know, so a couple of things. We expanded it to two and a half days, which you know, when we were in person, it's a lot to ask people if they're traveling in, you know, um, and it just adds to the expense.

[7:10] Laura Camien: So we've kept it to two days in the past. This was two and a half days, and then really also I would say besides the additional curriculum, really looking at everything with an eye towards how can this work in this new medium? How can this work virtually?

[7:26] Susan Blackwell: And everything has to serve the purpose of creating a community of people and an experience for them that will literally bring us all together and lift our spirits and set us up, reconnect us with our creativity and uh set us up for the new year.

[7:48] Laura Camien: So it was kind of fun to you know look at our content from that perspective as well and see you know what could still be of service through Zoom and which things needed to be updated for the platform.

[8:03] Susan Blackwell: Uh another silver lining, we had folks who were able to join us from all over the globe.

[8:11] Laura Camien: Oh my god. It was amazing. Again, if they had to buy a plane ticket and book a hotel, it may, you know, they may not be able to do that and take that time.

[8:21] Susan Blackwell: But because they could just zoom on in, we had people from everywhere.

[8:27] Laura Camien: We have like, like um Scotland to Seattle, we had Madrid, um Marina Del Rey, right? We had Orlando and Ottawa, we had Oklahoma.

[8:42] Susan Blackwell: I mean, it's nuts, and Los Angeles and New York, of course, and um, although we don't take that for granted, um, but a lot of uh our friends are in New York and LA. So it's a lot of people.

[8:54] Laura Camien: Yes, but also people from like national the Carolinas and Nebraska and like uh it's you know what we should we should put a big map on the wall and we should start putting pins on where all of our participants join us from.

[9:10] Susan Blackwell: I totally want to do that. We're gonna do that. Also, the thing is so there this like um geographical uh diversity, but also this wide, wide, wide array of creatives, yeah, you know, like we had actors and writers and authors and educators, we had people building empires, um we had coaches and a YouTube chef and um monologuists, directors, artistic directors, yes, uh voiceover artists, farmers, violence, farmers.

[9:46] Laura Camien: I mean, come on, it's amazing. Farmers and crafters and novelists and playwrights and uh you know musicians. It was really a great, great group.

[9:58] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, it was super super fun, super sparkish, very just speaking for myself. Very I felt very um I know that we we were supposed to be providing the service, but I felt my that my little creative fish pond was really restocked.

[10:14] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh, just being in the presence of everyone, and they were so you know, caring and giving and supportive, just a great group of human beings, a really great group.

[10:23] Susan Blackwell: What were some of your favorite moments? Like when you think back on this, what will you...

[10:25] Laura Camien: Well, I will say that we had a special guest named Jenny Clift County.

[10:35] Susan Blackwell: Oh, and that session was Jenny Clift has to be on the podcast.

[10:40] Laura Camien: She has to be on the podcast. I hope she's listening right now and saying, yes, I will do it. Hi Jenny.

[10:46] Susan Blackwell: But she does uh EFT, this tapping exercise, which really helps you to like disrupt the neural pathways that have been established in your brain for you know for years and disrupt them with limited messaging that may be limiting you.

[11:03] Laura Camien: And um it's so what's so amazing is that you can feel viscerally after you know just a 20 minute session, you can feel the benefits of it.

[11:17] Susan Blackwell: So um just it's the kind of thing where you know, I don't know, you might potentially feel resistance to like, well, this seems too simple to solve my very complicated problems.

[11:31] Laura Camien: Um but in actuality, like you do it for 20 minutes and you're like, oh this changes everything.

[11:39] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. She was amazing, and it was amazing to see people, especially it's called the EFT or emotional freedom technique, which just I love those words. Don't we all want that?

[11:50] Laura Camien: Yes.

[11:50] Susan Blackwell: But just to see people who had never experienced EFT tapping before to see their eyes light up with the possibility of it was amazing.

[12:00] Laura Camien: It was incredible. And again, just like people, the way people supported each other and care for each other. That was a highlight.

[12:09] Susan Blackwell: You know, something that I found really to that to that point, something that I was really impressed by with this group of people, is at the beginning we set this this principle in place, which is the idea of step forward, step back, which is it's to say if you're the kind of person who in groups you're very forward-footed, you talk a lot, your hand is always the first hand raised to just play around with stepping back to make space for others.

[12:37] Laura Camien: And if you're the kind of person who, like me, frankly, who in groups you tend to, I know, I know I say these things and people are like really. You always like answer the two. I've overtrained.

[12:48] Susan Blackwell: I've overtrained.

[12:52] Laura Camien: That's a practice that I've forced myself to do since I was in high school to step forward. And the idea is to create a space where there's balanced conversational turntaking. And the idea when you hear more voices in the in the even the virtual space, the collective intelligence of the room is lifted up because of that.

[13:14] Susan Blackwell: And people really took that to heart.

[13:16] Laura Camien: Yeah, they did. People made space for each other, people who I know for a fact would not be inclined to step forward, totally stepped forward in this way.

[13:28] Susan Blackwell: I have to say that is that's kind of like a it seems a little esoteric, but you could see it in action.

[13:34] Laura Camien: Yes.

[13:35] Susan Blackwell: And it was a thing of beauty. It was really it really, really was.

[13:39] Laura Camien: And I'm sorry to like focus it on us, but I we've never talked about this in regards to us before.

[13:45] Susan Blackwell: And I'm finding it fascinating that you just said like you overtrained yourself to step forward because I've overtrained myself to step back.

[13:55] Laura Camien: Because when I was, I was daughter of a teacher.

[13:59] Susan Blackwell: So first hand in the air, I've got the answer.

[14:03] Laura Camien: I like I like good student, good girl, good ever, you know, like this is how you're supposed to do it.

[14:09] Susan Blackwell: And only later in life, learned, like, you know what, maybe you don't have you like you don't have anything to prove. You don't have to be like, um, pick me, I know what to say. I've got the thing here.

[14:22] Laura Camien: And did the and trained the other way.

[14:25] Susan Blackwell: I saw I'm really fascinated by this now. This is, I mean, I've been fascinated, but but you and I like we talk about it, but we've never talked about it in that way because I would never have said, like, yeah, because when because we take classes together, we take classes together, and all and you'll be like, I have a uh if if like the teacher says, Does anyone have a thing? Susan will be like, I'm happy to share.

[14:49] Laura Camien: And I'll I'll I'll usually go, I'll wait a bit.

[14:52] Susan Blackwell: You'll wait a beat, yeah.

[14:53] Laura Camien: And then wait a beat, and then I'll say, I will share.

[14:56] Susan Blackwell: Uh-huh. Exactly. I remember when we would have like guest artists visit in college, and I would I remember being asked by teachers to put my hand up for like, can Susan, will you kick it off?

[15:11] Laura Camien: And I also remember because I was so scared training myself to just be like, even I would just like punch my hand into the air, even if I was like, I'm not ready.

[15:22] Susan Blackwell: I but it was I've I think I've overtrained.

[15:25] Laura Camien: And now you no, no, no, it's true.

[15:28] Susan Blackwell: No, it's it's just something to just it's all just a game that we can play with this awareness, but it's um I just think about now, I don't know, just in terms of balance in a room that we're facilitating, balance amongst us talking.

[15:48] Laura Camien: Uh it's just some, it's good to keep in mind.

[15:50] Susan Blackwell: It is, and you can it just keeping in mind, like you can be both of these things in the same session. You know, the first time some the teacher asks a question, you can be the I'm stepping forward person.

[16:01] Laura Camien: And the next time you can be like I'm stepping back because I because I spoke last time.

[16:05] Susan Blackwell: I mean it it really is just about awareness. It's not like a defining feature of us as human beings.

[16:10] Laura Camien: It's just something you know to think about.

[16:14] Susan Blackwell: It might have become a defining feature of that I don't think so.

[16:18] Laura Camien: Other thing what else what what else did we love?

[16:20] Susan Blackwell: Well um I think this is along the lines of the sort of the the community that was built the we did this thing where we had the Sparkfile lounge which was you know during breaks or during lunch we would have literally breakout rooms that would be like I was imagining like I've been at many many conferences in person and workshops and different things.

[16:41] Laura Camien: And half of the time like it's in the margins you meet wonderful people and then you're like let's get a coffee or you know where are you having lunch today?

[16:50] Susan Blackwell: We could all have lunch in the same place. And so we I think managed to to recreate that sort of dynamic um in a virtual space because we you know that we just speaking vulnerably we were not sure we're like well is this going to work we don't know but we'll set it up just in case and every time we'd get a break and you know we'd we'd go get some water and a snack I'd come back and be like oh my gosh there's 15 people in breakout rooms chatting with each other having a great time sharing stories and that just warmed my heart so much.

[17:28] Laura Camien: Also as an extension of those relationships, it was really great to see accountability partnerships emerging.

[17:35] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh, between people who had met at the met at the retreat.

[17:39] Laura Camien: And it also it excites me because something that we haven't announced yet, but we will soon is going to be a way for people to do that even more readily.

[17:52] Susan Blackwell: Those accountability partnerships in a way that we can also help facilitate and support.

[17:57] Laura Camien: So that was really fun.

[17:58] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh. Also, sorry to interrupt.

[18:01] Laura Camien: I got so excited. Laura Benanti and Fisher Barnett joined us.

[18:05] Susan Blackwell: And it was almost like a like for dessert because we had them come in like the very like the last thing on the last day.

[18:13] Laura Camien: And it was, you know, we had done all of this creative, um, oh, this creative, like bringing things to the surface and and committing, you know, to things, and all of it felt amazing.

[18:26] Susan Blackwell: And then we got to sit back and relax and listen to two people who have made something special together, this HBO Max special called Homeschool Musical.

[18:36] Laura Camien: And of course, Laura Benanti has done a million things that we got to talk to her about as well.

[18:42] Susan Blackwell: And it was such a treat. It was such a treat to talk to people who are out there doing it.

[18:49] Laura Camien: They're in the arena and um making it happen.

[18:55] Susan Blackwell: Taking big risks, making it happen. And I I loved hearing Laura Benanti has such a clarity that I always enjoy.

[19:04] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[19:04] Susan Blackwell: And then Fisher Barnett is a light.

[19:09] Laura Camien: From the first time I met her, I yeah, and I said it to her.

[19:13] Susan Blackwell: I saw this light in her.

[19:15] Laura Camien: And I'm very inspired by what Fisher is doing me too with her work and with her life.

[19:22] Susan Blackwell: And it was just so wonderful to get to be in conversation with them.

[19:27] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[19:28] Susan Blackwell: And interesting, like the project that they did together too was one of these incredible projects that have that grew out of Instagram during the pandemic, essentially.

[19:39] Laura Camien: Um, so you know, musicals and TV shows, things are things are happening from people's creative use of that platform.

[19:49] Susan Blackwell: It was it was just a thing of beauty. I felt very filled up after all of it.

[19:53] Laura Camien: Cammy, and I was very proud.

[19:55] Susan Blackwell: You and I worked so hard on it.

[19:58] Laura Camien: And I was really proud.

[20:00] Susan Blackwell: Austin Sargent was there with us all the way.

[20:04] Laura Camien: Austin Sargent is amazing, teaching artists.

[20:08] Susan Blackwell: But if you if you ever join us, this this virtual retreat culminates in such an exciting way.

[20:14] Laura Camien: The creative risks that people took were so unbelievable.

[20:17] Susan Blackwell: And it it was and jumping back to us, not to make it all about us, but it really was a risk for us too.

[20:23] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[20:24] Susan Blackwell: Like we were trying to make something, as we said, like bigger and better.

[20:29] Laura Camien: And we were writing a lot of new curriculum and trying to create this community, like you were saying, Cam's.

[20:35] Susan Blackwell: And I will tell you, Camille, there were moments when I had to take my own medicine and just I was so nervous.

[20:35] Laura Camien: I was so nervous about some new thing that we were doing.

[20:47] Susan Blackwell: It was an it felt like a huge risk.

[20:49] Laura Camien: And I I don't know if anybody noticed, like I was fully on camera, but I wasn't the person who was spotlit at the moment, but I was on camera.

[20:57] Susan Blackwell: I didn't turn my camera off. And I was just fully like doing box breathing, which is a a method of breathing to like de-excite the nervous system.

[21:05] Laura Camien: Because I what there were moments when Laura had to talk me down when I was, I would text you and I would be like, I'm so nervous.

[21:11] Susan Blackwell: And you would be like, We've got this, we've got this, we've got this, we have prepared, we have done our work, and now we just have to roll it out.

[21:18] Laura Camien: And you know, and we've got this.

[21:21] Susan Blackwell: So I people participating were taking risks, and we were doing that.

[21:26] Laura Camien: We were taking risks.

[21:27] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, it really felt incredible to be in that together.

[21:31] Laura Camien: And I had no doubt, I had no doubt in you, Suze.

[21:34] Susan Blackwell: I saw you breathing.

[21:35] Laura Camien: I was breathing a little as well.

[21:37] Susan Blackwell: Um, but yeah, it was it was also exciting.

[21:41] Laura Camien: You know, when you're taking the right kind of risk and you're like, okay, it feels scary and risky, but I know I can do it.

[21:48] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, I can do it.

[21:49] Laura Camien: And we did.

[21:49] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[21:50] Laura Camien: And also, also, we were really excited because we announced some new things that we're working on at, you know, at the workshop, and and ways we announced new ways that we're working to support our clients in this new year.

[22:06] Susan Blackwell: So that was really thrilling and kind of a big deal for us.

[22:10] Laura Camien: Um I mean, I I guess we should probably mention that here too.

[22:15] Susan Blackwell: Sue, sorry.

[22:16] Laura Camien: I guess we'll say it here too.

[22:19] Susan Blackwell: We're so this year, we're still doing individual private creativity coaching, but we're also kicking off the SparkFile Select Group Creativity Coaching program, um, which is this six-month group coaching program led by us, and it's a select cohort of I would say high functioning creatives, right?

[22:42] Laura Camien: Right, high functioning creatives who are ready to work, who want to feel like they're part of a team that's you know, collaborating and supporting each other.

[22:52] Susan Blackwell: Um yeah, I think it's it's for people who want to feel like there's a group of people that are invested in their success.

[22:59] Laura Camien: You know, you don't have to walk the path alone.

[23:02] Susan Blackwell: And you know, maybe you have a specific project in mind that you want to create a roadmap for and uh, you know, get yourself across that finish line in six months, or you might just want a healthy, productive group of people to engage with in a regular creative practice.

[23:20] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[23:20] Susan Blackwell: So you don't have to, when we say collaborate, it doesn't mean that you have to come in and collaborate with these people on the thing that you're doing.

[23:27] Laura Camien: That's right.

[23:28] Susan Blackwell: It'll just be a group that we can check in with each other, we can support each other, we can learn new creative concepts to help fuel our work.

[23:36] Laura Camien: We can meet with amazing, you know, experts and makers.

[23:40] Susan Blackwell: And uh it's I was saying at the retreat, it's sort of like the retreat.

[23:44] Laura Camien: If you weren't there, hopefully you're getting a sense of what it was like, but it was sort of like the retreat that we had.

[23:50] Susan Blackwell: It's just gonna be stretched out over the course of six months so people can really get into the work that they're doing, and you can walk side by side with other people who are also doing their work.

[24:03] Laura Camien: Exactly.

[24:04] Susan Blackwell: This is what I picture, you know, when you've been um when you surround yourself with a group of people who really stimulate your mind and to inspire and engage and and and really propel your ideas forward because of the engagement that you're having.

[24:21] Laura Camien: And um, that excites me.

[24:23] Susan Blackwell: Like when I'm in a room with people like that, I want to like learn and absorb and and let the ideas bounce around in my mind and know that when I emerge from that, I'm gonna be, you know, up a level.

[24:35] Laura Camien: I'm gonna level up.

[24:36] Susan Blackwell: I will say, you know, Laura, and we've talked about it on the on this podcast before, but Laura and I have been taking classes all last year.

[24:36] Laura Camien: Laura and I have been taking all sorts of classes together to um improve uh minds and improve our work, and working with a group of high functioning creative peers, and then like going into breakout rooms with them, sometimes establishing accountability partnerships with them under the guidance of a great teacher has been.

[25:12] Susan Blackwell: It's been life-changing.

[25:13] Laura Camien: And I think we're really interested in creating something like that for others in the way that it has been created for us.

[25:21] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[25:24] Laura Camien: That's too much.

[25:26] Susan Blackwell: I think it does bear mentioning that this isn't the model for everyone.

[25:30] Laura Camien: If you know that you prefer the solo path, or if you are somebody who has no trouble sort of getting your own stuff done and establishing these structures on your own, rock nether.

[25:42] Susan Blackwell: This would not be for you.

[25:44] Laura Camien: And you say something, Cam.

[25:46] Susan Blackwell: And we actually talked about this at the uh virtual retreat.

[25:50] Laura Camien: Uh something the the way that this clicked into my mind and made so much sense to me is I used to go to a gym that I loved in New York City.

[26:01] Susan Blackwell: It totally changed my life.

[26:03] Laura Camien: Shout out to Mark Vegaven.

[26:06] Susan Blackwell: But seriously, these folks, this gym educated me about health and fitness and nutrition, and they provided tremendous this tremendous support in community when I was trying to do something that I'd never done before, and it was amazing.

[26:22] Laura Camien: Then I moved away from New York City, and for three years, I really struggled because I found that I wasn't inclined to do it on my own.

[26:33] Susan Blackwell: I went to a CrossFit gym, a local CrossFit gym for a short period of time.

[26:39] Laura Camien: I really did give it a try.

[26:41] Susan Blackwell: I think I went for two months.

[26:42] Laura Camien: It wasn't a culture fit for me.

[26:44] Susan Blackwell: And the actual exercises felt like I was going to injure myself, but I digress.

[26:49] Laura Camien: But at home, I had the equipment, I had the knowledge because I had been taught it at this gym, but I found that I just wouldn't show up and do the work unless I had that supportive community and some guidance and great teachers.

[27:04] Susan Blackwell: So the end of that story, I'm happy to report that that beloved gym began offering virtual fitness classes during the pandemic. But just like that, I was back on track with my fitness. So all of that is to say some of us need coaches and trainers and support and teachers who keep us moving forward. And there's no shame in that. It's one of the things that you and I know about ourselves, Cam, that we thrive under the guidance of folks like that. Uh when it with this caveat, when it's a good fit, when it's a good fit.

[27:32] Laura Camien: 100%.

[27:32] Susan Blackwell: When it's a good fit. That was a long way to grandma's house, but that's the way I feel about this select group creativity coaching program for the right person at the right stage in their creativity who we vibe with and they vibe with us and they vibe with the group. It's a really, really great way to advance your creativity. It it it is. I'm I'm super excited about it. I think I selfishly, I think it's gonna fuel us as much as it's gonna fuel any of our participants.

[28:11] Laura Camien: God, yes.

[28:12] Susan Blackwell: Um it's gonna be it's gonna be really, really exciting. And listeners, there's no doubt. I'm sure we'll be talking about it along the way as we make discoveries and as we figure out like, oh, that really worked, or oh, that maybe didn't work. Um, I'm sure we'll be talking about it. There's no doubt about it. Oh, but if you are hearing this and you're like, oh, I'm interested, tell me more. Um tell me more. You can visit thesparkfile.com and go to our coaching page, and there's a lot more information there. Even fill out a little, you know, click the button to to get a call and um and we'll get you flowing in the right direction.

[28:54] Laura Camien: I want to just stress we're accepting applications for this. This is a select group coaching program. We'll only accept people who we feel like are a real fit in terms of where they're at in their creative lives and uh good fit for the group.

[29:09] Susan Blackwell: So this is an application process.

[29:12] Laura Camien: That's that is so true, um, Suze. But another thing that that you know, I'd like to clarify is that we are still going to be doing a number of things, even some things we haven't announced yet, that are going to ensure that the ways in which you want to engage or need to engage are there for you. So obviously we're still gonna be doing the podcast. We do these free creativity, like long weekend mini challenges. We'll be doing those. We'll do uh creativity kickoff workshops, um, and you know, group coaching and private coaching and a few other little things that we haven't announced yet. So there's many, many ways to engage. This may be the right one for you, or we might have that phone call and determine that there's some other uh right way that we can support you, um, you know, or uh a right way that you can engage.

[30:08] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[30:09] Laura Camien: Yeah. There's something for everyone, even if this thing isn't the exact right thing for you. So um the workshop was a joy. The workshop was a high. The workshop was a high. That's where you're getting us right now. But we uh there's something that we do want to acknowledge. We're recording this on Friday, January 8th. So as you may recall, on January 6th, we had a I don't even know how to characterize this a dark day. We had an incredibly dark day in our country, and insurrectionists breached our capital. Um and we watched uh security failure, and we watched our lawmakers of our country cower behind their seats like a lockdown drill. If you've, you know, been in a school recently, that's what the students get trained to do. And the training is scary enough, but when you know that there actually are people in the hallway outside with guns and and pipe bombs, etc. How terrifying.

[31:22] Susan Blackwell: And the rest of the world saw the rest of the world saw people climbing the walls of our capital. It looks like um it uh it genuinely looks like a uh another country and it was horrifying. And I know this point has been made in like so many ways. It's been made in sincere ways, it's been made in funny ways. But if those insurrectionists had been anything but white, no, they would have been either dead or I mean it that I I it's when you say the failure of security, the implications of that are so shocking and upsetting and racist and and it felt intentional, and I'm really treading carefully here because I don't want to sound like the equivalent of a conspiracy theorist, you know, but just the flipped perspective.

So I don't want to say a lot of things, you know, that I don't have evidence for, but that is what it felt like. It felt intentional, it felt like somewhere, somehow, people had gotten word that it's okay if you step aside and let things happen. It's okay if you don't push someone to the ground and get their plastic handcuffs on them because I didn't see any of that happening. And I kept yelling at the I was literally yelling at the not my proudest moment, so please don't judge me. But I was yelling at the television like, where are the fucking police? Where are security? Where's the National Guard? Where are all those people? Where's that show of military strength that we saw in the summer?

[32:17] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[33:18] Susan Blackwell: And they were nowhere to be found. And and when people started leaving the Capitol, they wandered around. I guess it's time to go. I guess nothing else is going to happen today. I guess I'll go. Not round it up. Taken to God knows where I'm going to be able to do it. Not put on the bus and taken to the jail. I was watching Van Jones and you know, crying. And he was just like every single person of color in this country knows that if you go to a protest, the price, the minimum price that you can expect to pay is that you'll spend a night in jail. For civil disobedience, you may that is that is the price that you'll pay for walking into the Capitol, taking a knee, and praying as an act of civil disobedience.

You will be escorted out and pay, you know, a price for for that simple act to watch what transpired this week and see no one ran, no one ran from the Capitol to try not to get arrested. Why I can't believe it. I just was like, you're not even running away from the police.

[34:37] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[34:38] Susan Blackwell: Because you have no, why do you have no fear of anything happening? That's where I get, I gotta stop my mind from from going down a path without evidence. But I'm just like, how did you so confidently know you would not pay any consequence for this?

[34:56] Laura Camien: Yeah, yeah.

[34:57] Susan Blackwell: Even within this situation, I feel like there are sparks. And I just want to highlight I want to cast some light onto some of those things. I want to talk about Stacey Abrams. I want to talk about what a beacon, Stacey Abrams is. Stacey Abrams is a beautiful example of somebody who like just I guess gracefully accepted a defeat and then set to work creating the reality that she wanted to step into. And she just put her head down and got to work. And I want to celebrate her. I want to, as enraged and as upsetting as the things that happened on the 6th, and frankly, the things that have been leading up and inciting the things that happened on the 6th, there's also, I feel like amazing work that's being done. And so I want to just shine some good light on that.

[36:04] Laura Camien: 100%.

[36:05] Susan Blackwell: The only like the only thing that can that I can say for me that sort of kept me from maybe going off the deep end was what happened in Georgia, the work that was done in Georgia and the results that we learned. So even as we're watching this, we could feel like there is hope. It will take a few weeks in order for things to change, but they will.

[36:45] Laura Camien: He's not a Democrat.

[36:46] Susan Blackwell: Um, I've not felt this hopeful about the future in a long time, despite the darkness of this week and what has transpired. There is on the horizon an administration that wants to be inclusive of everyone. Um, the people that Joe Biden is choosing for his cabinet and for key positions is very, very exciting and shows a starkly different intention and sends very different messages to all different groups of people in our country. And I, you know, I just hope my hope is that he's able to reach some of the people who feel unreachable right now. But I believe in the intent to bring us together to bring us back to some level of sanity. Let's disagree on policy, let's disagree on the specifics of how we solve a problem, but let's agree that we want to solve the problem together.

[37:50] Laura Camien: I also there's there's I've I've thought about sharing this. I just want to share it right now as a timely mini spark. This could be a whole spark episode for me, but um just because I feel like it's right on time. As it's been made clear on this podcast, history and there are certain subjects that it's not super easy for me to wrap my mind around. They seem so vast that it's hard for me to. So CamS has been very patient with me. I don't think for that, Cam. But someone who has really helped me to understand and digest a lot of the things that have been happening is a historian, actually, named Heather Cox Richardson. Heather Cox Richardson is uh she's an American historian. She's a professor of history at Boston College, and she has also taught at MIT and the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Heather Cox Richardson puts out this free um email. You can subscribe to it for free. And about once a day, sometimes she takes the day off, but uh not lately. About once a day, she sends out this thing called Letters from an American. And she does a great job at distilling the news down into something that is very readily understandable, even for my brain. Because at that, the news in and of itself is so overwhelming. So she sort of distills it down and also provides historical context. And that historical context can take the form of the reason why we're experiencing this now is because of this thing that Ronald Reagan implemented decades ago. This rhymes with this moment in history in the 1800s, and here's how.

And it really has also gone a long way into providing me with a forum to take in news that isn't so energetically overwhelming, that isn't hours and hours of me like sitting in front of a screen, taking in a lot of stuff that can send me into like a spin.

[40:23] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[40:24] ⚠ About 4 minutes of audio could not be automatically transcribed.

[43:59] Susan Blackwell: In this country, and to exercise and express this sort of um grace and positivity.

[44:11] Laura Camien: I I I the system, it is so unfair.

[44:11] Susan Blackwell: It is so unfair as that word is too pale.

[44:18] Laura Camien: Like it is so fucked.

[44:20] Susan Blackwell: I mean, yeah that it's it's really hard for me to wrap my mind around John Lewis said those words, wrote those words, and believed and embodied those words, and I can't get my mind around how.

[44:35] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[44:36] Susan Blackwell: It really is something for me to meditate on.

[44:39] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[44:39] Susan Blackwell: It is.

[44:41] Laura Camien: Because I mean, oh my God.

[44:44] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[44:45] Laura Camien: Just the injustice and the violence and the indignity that has been visited on black people, people of color, indigenous people for centuries in this country.

[45:04] Susan Blackwell: It's so I look at these words that you just shared.

[45:09] Laura Camien: Release all bitterness, hold only love, only peace in your heart.

[45:13] Susan Blackwell: And I'm like, John Lewis, I'll I'll pray on it.

[45:17] Laura Camien: Like how I'm not sure how you got to that place, but I'll I'm gonna I'll work on it.

[45:24] Susan Blackwell: But if he can, can't the rest of the case.

[45:26] Laura Camien: I'm not even a person of color.

[45:28] Susan Blackwell: I know, but like if he can get to that place, can't the rest of us?

[45:34] Laura Camien: And and I mean all of us, the people who hate liberals and progressives and the people who hate Republicans and conservatives.

[45:44] Susan Blackwell: Like, like can't we all can we all release the bitterness?

[45:48] Laura Camien: I just feel like we have to also look to people like Stacey Abrams, who was like, okay, okay.

[45:54] Susan Blackwell: And then let's get to work.

[45:56] Laura Camien: Really, eyes on the prize focused on a vision of something that she wanted to make, like a reality that she wanted to make, and then just strategically got to work.

[46:10] Susan Blackwell: What I'm saying is, I want to be like John Lewis.

[46:13] Laura Camien: I want to channel whatever energies are coming up.

[46:17] Susan Blackwell: It's supporting people like this who are doing great, great work.

[46:23] Laura Camien: I really think that's the key because we can't take these words and gloss over to um Pollyanna, you know, I'm a light, and I that's right.

[46:34] Susan Blackwell: And uh, you know, all I need to do is have a great attitude and see the best.

[46:39] Laura Camien: And it's not, it's not that.

[46:41] Susan Blackwell: Exactly what you said is what's important.

[46:44] Laura Camien: Like, can we hold this grace, this love and this peace in our heart while we fight against the injustices, while we get to work, while we roll up our sleeves and say, all right, what do you need me to do?

[46:59] Susan Blackwell: So much to process, so much to think about.

[47:02] Laura Camien: And also, we don't know, by the way, another caveat, we have no idea what's gonna happen by the time this episode airs on Monday.

[47:08] Susan Blackwell: Oh, yes.

[47:09] Laura Camien: All of this might feel like, oh, that was so two years ago.

[47:13] Susan Blackwell: You know what's happened now.

[47:15] Laura Camien: And I personally, I hope that some big news does happen that there are some, you know, big consequences coming, but we shall see.

[47:25] Susan Blackwell: And um either way, we're marking this moment in time with how we felt when we watched the events of um of Wednesday, January 6th.

[47:39] Laura Camien: Yeah, 2021.

[47:41] Susan Blackwell: It makes me think to look to John Lewis to look to Stacey Abrams.

[47:45] Laura Camien: What can I do?

[47:47] Susan Blackwell: What can I do, even in my own small part to contribute to the good?

[47:51] Laura Camien: 100%.

[47:52] Susan Blackwell: And I do believe like the first step is to we cannot accept what happened.

[48:00] Laura Camien: We can't accept it.

[48:01] Susan Blackwell: And even if that feels like not a positive, I think that's the place to start.

[48:05] Laura Camien: Well, you know, whatever we need to do to say this can't happen.

[48:10] Susan Blackwell: This can't be the world we live in.

[48:12] Laura Camien: While we're here, before we I don't know, we're gonna spark any second.

[48:15] Susan Blackwell: We've been sparking this whole time, actually.

[48:18] Laura Camien: I was sparking this whole time.

[48:20] Susan Blackwell: There were a lot of people who worked really hard with Stacey Abrams and her team's leadership to get that vote out in Georgia.

[48:31] Laura Camien: And so to the people that we know who did work along those lines, really great creative work, you know, people boots on the ground, hi Greg Bonsignor, canvassing to turn the vote out.

[48:43] Susan Blackwell: Hi Mike Jackson.

[48:44] Laura Camien: Yes, yes.

[48:46] Susan Blackwell: And then you had people like um Rory O'Malley and Celia Keenan-Bolger putting together Stacey's Drama Club and just phone banking, getting Mandy Patinkin to phone bank, like really, really creative ways that these uh artists are using their energy and talents and putting it behind these causes that will change the course of our lives and change history.

[49:12] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[49:13] Susan Blackwell: So I just want to also thank those folks too.

[49:17] Laura Camien: 100%.

[49:18] Susan Blackwell: What a time.

[49:19] Laura Camien: What a time to be alive.

[49:22] Susan Blackwell: Um, but Cam's, I'm gonna turn a page.

[49:25] Laura Camien: Okay.

[49:26] Susan Blackwell: And uh as you know, Cams, and as you know, if you were there, we shared some sparks at the creativity retreat recently.

[49:36] Laura Camien: They were so fun, they were so sparky, they were so tip of the iceberg, and we thought it would be fun to flesh them out more.

[49:44] Susan Blackwell: And that Cam's and I are gonna surprise each other with some new info and share them out with y'all.

[49:50] Laura Camien: So if you attended the retreat, some of this will sound familiar, but some of it will be freshity, fresh, fresh, fresh.

[49:56] Susan Blackwell: Brand thank you.

[49:58] Laura Camien: So, Cam's, shall I go first?

[50:00] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[50:01] Susan Blackwell: All right. Without further ado, I would like to present to you and to all of you listeners and sparklers the spark.

[50:08] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh, there's one more thing I wanted to say.

[50:10] Susan Blackwell: Sorry, you thought I was about to launch.

[50:12] Susan Blackwell: My parents sent me a Christmas card.

[50:15] Laura Camien: Thank you, mom, thank you, dad.

[50:17] Susan Blackwell: I don't know if you figured out how to listen to this podcast yet, but thank you for the Christmas card.

[50:21] Susan Blackwell: And inside the Christmas card, they sent a Christmas card.

[50:25] Susan Blackwell: I was obsessed when I was little.

[50:27] Susan Blackwell: I don't know what grade I was.

[50:29] Susan Blackwell: Uh I had a vision for a Christmas card that I wanted to make.

[50:34] Susan Blackwell: And I drafted it.

[50:36] Susan Blackwell: Maybe we'll post a picture of it.

[50:38] Susan Blackwell: It is very mid-centered, it looks very mid-century modern.

[50:42] Susan Blackwell: It's a very stylized drawing of um the little baby Jesus in a crush.

[50:48] Susan Blackwell: It's very maud.

[50:49] Susan Blackwell: It's got a circle around it with an orange backdrop and sort of it's behind there's a cross, and sort of like it's very stylized.

[50:57] Susan Blackwell: When I showed it to Nathan, he said, it looks like what I'm looking at is the baby Jesus in the crosshairs of the rifle site.

[51:06] Laura Camien: Oh.

[51:07] Susan Blackwell: But I've signed it.

[51:09] Susan Blackwell: I don't know how I hand colored.

[51:11] Susan Blackwell: I and I remember I was really, I thought this was a really cool design idea.

[51:17] Susan Blackwell: And my, it must have been my mom or my dad helped me get it copied on a copy machine.

[51:23] Susan Blackwell: So I made several of them.

[51:25] Susan Blackwell: Uh, then I full I figured out how to place the image on it so I could fold it in, fold the piece of which is essentially just standard copy paper, fold it in quarters so that the image would land on the front.

[51:40] Susan Blackwell: And so they sent me a copy that not they sent me one of the ones that I made when I was little, and my dad wrote, I enclosed the classic baby in the manger card, wish it was dated, share it with your sparkies.

[51:53] Susan Blackwell: So my father has dubbed you all sparkies.

[51:58] Laura Camien: So sparkies, without further ado, I'd like to present to you and to baby cams a spark that is haiku.

[52:08] Susan Blackwell: Haiku.

[52:09] Laura Camien: Hi.

[52:10] Susan Blackwell: So Cam, some of this will be uh, some of this will be familiar, and some will be a surprise for you.

[52:15] Laura Camien: Lovely.

[52:16] Susan Blackwell: Sit back and relax.

[52:18] Susan Blackwell: Enjoy it.

[52:18] Susan Blackwell: Did you all write haiku back in school?

[52:21] Susan Blackwell: If so, you might be familiar with the common structure that most haiku poems follow.

[52:25] Susan Blackwell: It is the five seven five structure.

[52:28] Susan Blackwell: The entire poem consists of three lines, 17 syllables in total.

[52:33] Susan Blackwell: The first line is five syllables, the second line is seven syllables, and the third line is five syllables.

[52:39] Susan Blackwell: But hold the haiku phone right there.

[52:41] Laura Camien: Cams.

[52:42] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[52:42] Susan Blackwell: On a website called GraceGuts.com, I found the following, which was written by Michael Dylan Welch.

[52:49] Susan Blackwell: Who is Michael Dylan Welch, you might be asking yourself?

[52:51] Susan Blackwell: I'm gonna tell you, Camps.

[52:52] Susan Blackwell: Michael Dylan Welch is the vice president of the Haiku Society of America, co-founder of the American Haiku Archives at the California State Library in Sacramento, and also the co-founder and director of the Haiku North America Conference.

[53:07] Susan Blackwell: And in addition to that, Michael has been publishing and teaching haiku for about 25 years, and all of this is to say Michael knows a little bit about haiku.

[53:15] Susan Blackwell: So I think he gets as close to haiku expert as I've ever heard.

[53:20] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[53:20] Susan Blackwell: So this is this is a piece of writing from uh from Michael.

[53:25] Susan Blackwell: Many people have been taught in schools that haiku is a five, seven, five syllable form of poetry.

[53:30] Susan Blackwell: In Japan, they don't actually count syllables at all, but sounds and it's sort of an urban myth that haiku should be five, seven, five syllables in English.

[53:40] Susan Blackwell: Yes, despite how widespread that belief is.

[53:44] Susan Blackwell: The word haiku itself, for example, counts as two syllables in English, but three sounds in Japanese counted as ha eiku, even if that's not how the Japanese say it.

[53:57] Susan Blackwell: Consequently, despite how haiku has been widely mist taught in schools for decades, roughly 10 to 14 syllables in English in length is equivalent in length to a haiku in Japanese.

[54:10] Laura Camien: So, right off the bat, everything we know about haiku has been shot to hell.

[54:14] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[54:15] Laura Camien: We journey forward.

[54:17] Susan Blackwell: And yet, I can't see the path.

[54:19] Laura Camien: Show me the path forward.

[54:21] Susan Blackwell: I'm really wondering.

[54:23] Laura Camien: It's interesting.

[54:23] Susan Blackwell: I'm floored by this.

[54:24] Laura Camien: I think you could sum up this whole spark I'm gonna share with you with like number one, we thought we knew, we don't know.

[54:31] Susan Blackwell: And also that haiku is it's in some ways, I'm like, oh, it's easier than we thought, and it's harder than we thought.

[54:41] Laura Camien: That's right.

[54:42] Susan Blackwell: Also, that it's it's it's sort of it, I there's a haiku paradox theme happening. The history of haiku is deep and seemingly simple structures are actually deceptively complex.

[54:55] Laura Camien: So the more I read, the more guiding principles I discovered about haiku. You know this, Camps, but haiku can use the karegi or the cutting word, which creates a pause or a break in the rhythm of the poem.

[55:09] Susan Blackwell: Also, haiku frequently employ what is called a kigo or a seasonal reference. And there's some other guiding principles that we're gonna get into in a moment.

[55:18] Laura Camien: But um, before I get ahead of myself, let's just look back a little haiku history. A lot of this history is from an essay by Alan Summers on the website for the International Academic Forum's Haiku Award, which recognizes excellence in haiku.

[55:32] Susan Blackwell: There is so I did not realize how much haiku scholarship, haiku love, haiku practicing is happening around the world.

[55:44] Laura Camien: It's awesome because it really, it's a it's an incredible art form.

[55:49] Susan Blackwell: It doesn't surprise me that it has you know survives.

[56:03] Laura Camien: Oh yeah, I I can make this curriculum suitable for this age group.

[56:06] Susan Blackwell: And I get it. And the more I read, the more I was like, oh no. This is like, there are people who devote their obviously devote their lives to this art form, this poetic form, and are working towards a mastery of it that I don't know.

[56:24] Laura Camien: It was just really inspiring to me.

[56:26] Susan Blackwell: So according to Alan Summers, haiku is one of the world's oldest, regularly written forms of poetry.

[56:34] Laura Camien: So deep, rich, old art form.

[56:37] Susan Blackwell: And there was a poet named Basho who lived from 1644 to 1694.

[56:44] Laura Camien: And Basho is recognized as haiku's foremost poet.

[56:49] Susan Blackwell: So this is one of Bashu's uh most famous haiku. Again, you may recognize it if you ever attended middle school. It goes like this an old silent pond, a frog jumps into the pond, splash, silence again.

[57:06] Laura Camien: So that is a that's a basho haiku, and it is employing you've got the seasonal reference, you've got the natural reference, you've got your uh Karegi, your cutting word with that splash.

[57:21] Susan Blackwell: So this is this is another haiku. This was written by Katsushika Hokusai, who was a disciple of Basho.

[57:29] Laura Camien: And this is a haiku that Hoku Sai writes that shares the imagery of spring, and it also describes the poet's writing process.

[57:41] Susan Blackwell: I write, erase, rewrite, erase again, and then a poppy blooms.

[57:50] Laura Camien: I actually that is one of the uh few haiku. I mean, obviously, I have not read every there are there are so many haiku swimming around in the world. I have not read them all, but I loved that one because it it speaks directly to the creative process.

[58:07] Susan Blackwell: So of course I love that one.

[58:09] Laura Camien: And we haven't we all been there. I write rewritten again, and then thank God a poppy blooms.

[58:17] Susan Blackwell: It's so true.

[58:18] Laura Camien: It's so simple, and yet it captures so much.

[58:23] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, you know, in in those 17 syllables or three lines, it captures a process that lives for us in perhaps days, weeks, months, you know, of crafting something.

[58:37] Laura Camien: Yes.

[58:38] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[58:38] Laura Camien: And I love how haiku does a beautiful what it's done well. It does this amazing job of taking either an entire moment or an entire season or an entire, in this case, creative uh event, and it distills it down to those syllables.

[58:55] Susan Blackwell: It's amazing.

[58:56] Laura Camien: It's it's amazing distillation.

[58:57] Susan Blackwell: So this is a haiku written by Gozan, who I believe was also another haiku master. This was written by Gauzanne at the age of 71 in the year 1789.

[59:11] Laura Camien: And here I am reading it on this podcast in 2021.

[59:15] Susan Blackwell: The snow of yesterday that fell like cherry blossoms is water once again.

[59:21] Laura Camien: What?

[59:23] Susan Blackwell: The snow of yesterday that fell like cherry blossoms is water once again.

[59:28] Laura Camien: So in those syllables, Gozanne has captured multiple seasons, nature, the water cycle, and the circle of life.

[59:36] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[59:36] Laura Camien: In just those syllables.

[59:37] Susan Blackwell: Yep.

[59:38] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[59:40] Susan Blackwell: Crazy.

[59:41] Laura Camien: Like, and I'm sure there are 17 layers that I'm missing because I'm not an English teacher.

[59:46] Susan Blackwell: It's amazing how, with careful reading of this work, how much springs forth.

[59:50] Laura Camien: And what a clear picture in your mind, you know, of the process he's describing.

[59:56] Susan Blackwell: It's very vivid.

[59:58] Laura Camien: Yes.

[59:58] Susan Blackwell: So in the early 1850s, Western cultures learned of Japan's poetic art forms.

[1:00:04] Laura Camien: And by the 1900s, haiku influenced writers like James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Amy Lowell as repound, and William Carlos Williams.

[1:00:14] Susan Blackwell: Then there's an author named R.H. Blythe.

[1:00:18] Laura Camien: And R. H. Blythe created four volumes of haiku that became popular in the 1940s and attracted the attention of beat poets Alan Ginsburg, Gary Snyder, and Jack Kerouac.

[1:00:31] Susan Blackwell: And Jack Kerouac said a Western haiku.

[1:00:36] Laura Camien: So Jack Kerouac westernized this and said, a Western haiku need not concern itself with 17 syllables, since Western languages cannot adapt themselves to the fluid syllabic Japanese.

[1:00:48] Susan Blackwell: I propose that Western haiku simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language.

[1:00:56] Laura Camien: So take comfort in that, haiku writers.

[1:00:59] Susan Blackwell: I'm still in like, you know what, Kerouac. That just sounds to me like, you know what, rules don't apply to us.

[1:01:05] Laura Camien: You know, we will make up our own rules.

[1:01:07] Susan Blackwell: And I feel like, you know, with that sentence, I propose that Western haiku simply say a lot in three short lines in any Western language. Jack Kerouac has written all of y'all a permission slip for more haiku flexibility.

[1:01:20] Laura Camien: So I wanted to just share a little Kerouak haiku with you.

[1:01:25] Susan Blackwell: Useless, useless the heavy rain driving into the sea.

[1:01:30] Laura Camien: I actually love that.

[1:01:31] Susan Blackwell: Useless, useless the heavy rain driving into the sea.

[1:01:35] Laura Camien: Because I when I read it, I could immediately picture just all that water falling into more water and sort of the uselessness of it.

[1:01:44] Susan Blackwell: But I immediately I saw like the gray and the rain and I felt it.

[1:01:49] Laura Camien: I thought it was very evocative.

[1:01:51] Susan Blackwell: It was, yeah, for me, I just pictured um erosion on the you know on the California coast.

[1:01:58] Laura Camien: On the shoreline.

[1:01:59] Susan Blackwell: Um here's another Kerouac haiku.

[1:02:02] Laura Camien: The bottom of my shoes are clean from walking in the rain.

[1:02:07] Susan Blackwell: A lot of rain imagery in Kerouac Haiku.

[1:02:10] Laura Camien: A lot of rain, a lot of rain.

[1:02:12] Susan Blackwell: Um, but Kerouac wasn't the only one who was taken with haiku. Richard Wright, the novelist and poet who wrote Native Sun, um, near the end of his life had contracted amoebic dysentery on a visit to Africa in around 1957.

[1:02:27] Laura Camien: And despite various treatments, his health deteriorated over the next three years.

[1:02:31] Susan Blackwell: In addition to fighting those health battles, over a short period of time, Richard Wright lost his mom and a couple of close friends, and he was also deeply affected by the death of Albert Camus, who he admired greatly.

[1:02:46] Laura Camien: So Wright was sick and heartbroken and bedridden in Paris in 1959 when he was introduced to R. H Blythe's four volumes of the haiku, which I was enormously influential, it sounds like.

[1:03:00] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:03:00] Laura Camien: Um, so Richard Wright borrowed the this RH Blythe, four volumes of haiku from a young South African.

[1:03:08] Susan Blackwell: And this is how Wright began his intensive research of the Japanese masters.

[1:03:14] Laura Camien: And haiku seemed to have become this calm eye within this very stormy period of grief and suffering and chaos.

[1:03:23] Susan Blackwell: In addition to the, you know, the loss and the illness, it I think that Richard Wright, because of the work he was making, was also being surveilled by like the FBI.

[1:03:34] Laura Camien: And he so it was a really like it was a intense time.

[1:03:41] Susan Blackwell: And why sorry, I'm like, why was he being surveilled?

[1:03:44] Laura Camien: That that's new.

[1:03:45] Susan Blackwell: Because of what?

[1:03:46] Laura Camien: Because of his he's his writing.

[1:03:49] Susan Blackwell: This is a black man who is writing in ways that, you know, because of the haikus.

[1:03:55] Laura Camien: No, no, not because of the haiku in his other work, like Native Sun.

[1:03:59] Susan Blackwell: Ah gosh.

[1:04:00] Laura Camien: Writing about things that are, you know.

[1:04:02] Susan Blackwell: Oh, I'm so sorry.

[1:04:04] Laura Camien: I connected it to the haikus, and I was like, no, what?

[1:04:07] Susan Blackwell: Uh the haikus are very are dangerous.

[1:04:10] Laura Camien: It's it's so interesting that you say that because uh I'm gonna share something that uh in a minute that I think will shed some light on this.

[1:04:18] Susan Blackwell: But um it was said that during the final months of his life, Wright practically lived and breathed haiku.

[1:04:27] Laura Camien: And sparked by R. H. Blythe's four volumes of haiku, sick in bed. Richard Wright wrote four thousand haiku.

[1:04:35] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh.

[1:04:36] Laura Camien: And you know this camps, but his daughter Julia said they were self developed antidotes against illness, and that breaking down words into syllables matched the shortness of his breath.

[1:04:48] Susan Blackwell: And he continued, she said, to spin these poems of light out of the gathering darkness.

[1:04:54] Laura Camien: It is very inspiring to me.

[1:04:56] Susan Blackwell: It's very inspiring to me.

[1:04:58] Laura Camien: Yeah, very inspiring.

[1:05:00] Susan Blackwell: I just want to the point that you just made, I want to share a lot of this that I'm sharing with you now, comes from a website called Living Haiku Anthology.com, which I really, really loved this website for a number of reasons I don't want to talk about, but uh this is from that website.

[1:05:16] Laura Camien: It is now commonplace to claim that Wright's experiments with the Japanese poetic genre were therapeutic, but there must have been something beyond therapy that motivated his deep involvement with haiku.

[1:05:27] Susan Blackwell: Wright's haiku began to fill in the missing part of his legacy.

[1:05:32] Laura Camien: They reveal a side of right the public never saw.

[1:05:35] Susan Blackwell: The poems reflected Wright's emotions, not what the publishing world with its preset categories thought of what a black man is capable of thinking or writing.

[1:05:46] Laura Camien: So Richard Wright was writing things that were, you know, about the experience of the black man.

[1:05:54] Susan Blackwell: And you can see why that's why.

[1:05:56] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:05:58] Susan Blackwell: This is why the FBI was and other and uh other factions had their eye on him.

[1:06:05] Laura Camien: And this haiku gave Richard Wright a place to fill in with his own emotions and some it I love the idea of it filling in uh his legacy.

[1:06:17] Susan Blackwell: So the essay featured a quote from Anthony Walton from the Oxford American. This is 19 syllables, and I love these 19 syllables.

[1:06:27] Laura Camien: Typecast as the voice of blackness, he found freedom in 17 syllables.

[1:06:34] Susan Blackwell: And I was like, way to distill it down, Anthony Walton.

[1:06:38] Laura Camien: That's right.

[1:06:39] Susan Blackwell: Typecast as the voice of blackness, he found freedom in 17 syllables.

[1:06:44] Laura Camien: So on the internet, you can find great photos of Richard Wright's haiku.

[1:06:48] Susan Blackwell: And they are these haiku are archived in the Richard Wright papers at Yale.

[1:06:54] Laura Camien: And they are these yellowing sheets of paper, and adhesed to them are type written haiku that have then been cut out and then affixed to these sheets of paper.

[1:07:08] Susan Blackwell: And the papers are titled, they say things or command. So I think that was an organizational system.

[1:07:16] Laura Camien: Maybe I'm not sure if Richard Wright did that or if somebody else helped him to do that.

[1:07:20] Susan Blackwell: But uh, here's a Richard Wright haiku.

[1:07:24] Laura Camien: It was so silent that the silence protested with one lone bird cry.

[1:07:30] Susan Blackwell: Ah.

[1:07:31] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh.

[1:07:33] Susan Blackwell: So by the late 1960s, the interest in haiku could no longer be considered as a fad, as you well know if you have ever been a student who has written haiku in class. Haiku is still written and enjoyed by a whole host of contemporary writers.

[1:07:48] Laura Camien: And again, that website, living haiku anthology.com, is a really great resource. And one of the things that it features is notable contemporary haiku poets writing about their personal relationship to haiku.

[1:08:00] Susan Blackwell: So one essay, one essay that I read was titled The Personal in Haiku, written by Roberta Beery, an award winning American poet who lives near Washington, DC. Roberta followed in the 90s, she followed her then husband to a new job in Tokyo, and she was invited to join a haiku group that accepted people from outside of the Japanese culture.

[1:08:21] Laura Camien: And according to Roberta, in their weekly session, she learned that haiku must be impersonal.

[1:08:26] Susan Blackwell: So add that to the mix and must include a seasonal element. So she was also strongly advised to write in the 575 three-line haiku form and learned not to use initial caps or punctuation.

[1:08:41] Laura Camien: So again, our learning continues. So Roberta said that for a long time she tried to write a haiku that followed those requirements. She was not successful.

[1:08:49] Susan Blackwell: But after a few years of living in Japan and studying, she decided to go out on a limb and write something personal while still adhering to the traditional form. And this is the poem she wrote.

[1:09:01] Laura Camien: Picking strawberries, grandma's rolled up sleeves reveal pale tattooed numbers.

[1:09:12] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:09:15] Laura Camien: Picking strawberries, grandma's rolled up sleeves reveal pale tattooed numbers, which of course is based on her friend's mother, who is a Holocaust survivor.

[1:09:25] Susan Blackwell: That one got me. You can pack a lot in this form. It's amazing.

[1:09:30] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:09:31] Susan Blackwell: It's at first it takes a second, and then you're like, oh my God. Okay.

[1:09:35] Laura Camien: Another haiku of Roberta's that I really loved is one she wrote about her childhood longing for her mother's red hat, juxtaposed to her adult inheritance of the same hat.

[1:09:47] Susan Blackwell: Mother's red hat, short years of wanting it, long years of having it.

[1:09:54] Laura Camien: Oh.

[1:09:55] Susan Blackwell: Which I thought was so moving because it's sort of like.

[1:09:59] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:10:00] Susan Blackwell: I'd rather have wanted it for longer and have, you know, and um, along the similar lines, a writer named Charlotte DeGregorio wrote at the thrift shop, a young man tries on my father's shoes.

[1:10:17] Laura Camien: It's just they're so distilled, they're so potent. Um, on the same site, a haiku poet named Ernesto P. Santiago wrote, to be honest, I prefer haiku because it is it is written in the present tense, the way I want to live and see my earthly life.

[1:10:31] Susan Blackwell: Ah, life is too short to live in the past. And I love the present moment. Now hear this of it all, but I also love that it provides another guideline writing in the present tense.

[1:10:42] Laura Camien: There's a writer named Anna Maris who noted on the same website.

[1:10:46] Susan Blackwell: Haiku often comes to her when she's in some sort of state of heightened emotion. Here's one of Anna Maris's haiku.

[1:10:53] Laura Camien: First frost, I give a beggar nothing.

[1:10:56] Susan Blackwell: Whoa.

[1:10:57] Laura Camien: It just so potent.

[1:10:59] Susan Blackwell: So Anna's uh essay that she wrote concludes. She says, Often my work is a reflection of anger, passion, or wonder about the world. I will become a full-time writer when my children leave home, and my time is only mine again.

[1:11:12] Laura Camien: And the last line of Anna Maris's essay, it this is the one that really got me.

[1:11:16] Susan Blackwell: This is 18 syllables. Until such time, I write haiku as there is no time for anything more.

[1:11:23] Laura Camien: And I was like, you can write a lot in a few syllables.

[1:11:26] Susan Blackwell: So what do we make of it? At the retreat, haiku was such a fun spark of departure.

[1:11:32] Laura Camien: And in fact, Cam's and I surprised each other by introducing each other in haiku.

[1:11:36] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[1:11:36] Laura Camien: That's right.

[1:11:38] Susan Blackwell: I'm gonna read this.

[1:11:39] Laura Camien: Is my introduction of Cammy.

[1:11:40] Susan Blackwell: Okay.

[1:11:41] Susan Blackwell: It's titled Laura Cambian. Here we go. Renaissance woman, writer, actor, producer, Shablaim, the spark file.

[1:11:51] Laura Camien: Get my Karegie in there.

[1:11:54] Susan Blackwell: I love it so much. I need to actually flip that up somewhere.

[1:11:58] Laura Camien: You wrote a haiku for me that I'm gonna read.

[1:12:01] Susan Blackwell: I love it's entitled Susan P. Blackwell, please enjoy.

[1:12:03] Laura Camien: Okay.

[1:12:05] Laura Camien: Vampire Slayer speaking like a sailor would. Her heart, purely good.

[1:12:11] Susan Blackwell: So not only within the forum, but rhyming, which I love.

[1:12:15] Laura Camien: Little rhyme in there.

[1:12:16] Susan Blackwell: Little rhyme in there.

[1:12:17] Laura Camien: So here's a personal favorite.

[1:12:19] Susan Blackwell: What do we make of it? Our friend Chris Cruthers writes one haiku every day.

[1:12:24] Laura Camien: He began this practice on February 4th, 2011. The first haiku he wrote was a post for his friend's birthday.

[1:12:30] Susan Blackwell: He's written one every single day since, which he posts as his Facebook status.

[1:12:34] Laura Camien: And at first he thought it was this silly, weird creative way to post, being of the structural limitations.

[1:12:41] Susan Blackwell: But he it has become so much more.

[1:12:44] Laura Camien: So he typically writes these before he goes to bed. And the theme of the haiku, it really depends on what's happening in the day, how he's feeling in the moment.

[1:12:52] Susan Blackwell: And sometimes it's literally about writing the haiku. He said, There are definitely days when he gets stuck, but then he writes about being stuck, and a haiku is born, which reminded me of Katsushika Hokusai's and then a poppy blue.

[1:13:07] Laura Camien: Yes.

[1:13:07] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. He has literally not missed a single day since February 2011.

[1:13:13] Laura Camien: And by my calculation, this February 4th, 2021, just by writing for a few moments every day for the past 10 years, Chris will have documented his life in approximately 3,650 haiku or 62,050 syllables.

[1:13:29] Susan Blackwell: And I love this spark because it is like capturing it's sort of a twist on a one-line-a-day journal, diary entry.

[1:13:38] Laura Camien: And he said it's so evocative. He can look at a haiku that he's written seven years ago and be like, bam, he's transported to where he was and what was happening in it in his life.

[1:13:48] Susan Blackwell: I love that. This I actually think this could be a great way to capture snapshots of like when you're on vacation.

[1:13:55] Laura Camien: Or when you're if you are a person who likes takes a walk every day, you could capture that something that you experienced or saw in that walk in a haiku.

[1:14:04] Susan Blackwell: So I experienced something the other day, and I wrote this.

[1:14:13] Laura Camien: Whoa, look at that tail.

[1:14:15] Susan Blackwell: Oh, that's awesome.

[1:14:20] Laura Camien: And you'll remember that moment.

[1:14:22] Susan Blackwell: You'll remember that.

[1:14:23] Laura Camien: I will remember that moment forever. That fox, that fox was healthy and that tail was bougie.

[1:14:28] Susan Blackwell: So one of our retreat participants, Laura Coward, after the retreat began writing a haiku for each episode of the West Wing, which is a show that she adores.

[1:14:39] Laura Camien: Fucking amazing.

[1:14:41] Susan Blackwell: Here are a few. Um, one is called Celestial Navigation.

[1:14:45] Laura Camien: That's the name of the Sorkin episode, Celestial Navigation.

[1:14:48] Susan Blackwell: If you don't know West Wing, this might not make any sense to you.

[1:14:50] Laura Camien: But if you do, but if you do, delish.

[1:14:53] Susan Blackwell: Here we go. A secret plan to fight and guiding stars at night. Root canal, she's had it.

[1:15:02] Laura Camien: Laura.

[1:15:04] Susan Blackwell: This is the episode entitled What Kind of Day Has It Been.

[1:15:07] Laura Camien: This is if you're familiar with the West Wing, this is the season one finale.

[1:15:11] Susan Blackwell: So this may ring a bell. Orbiting, crashing, signals seen, and signals missed. Get down. Blue's been hit.

[1:15:18] Laura Camien: Oh.

[1:15:20] Susan Blackwell: It's very evocative.

[1:15:21] Laura Camien: Wow.

[1:15:23] Susan Blackwell: In addition, and in conclusion, I love this project, Laura Coward.

[1:15:27] Laura Camien: Yes, Laura Coward has also written a haiku for every day since our workshop beginning on January 1st, summing up each of her days thus far in 2021.

[1:15:38] Susan Blackwell: And for January 6th, 2021, she wrote, National Disgrace, Rieters Coup in DC.

[1:15:46] Laura Camien: Invoke 25.

[1:15:48] Susan Blackwell: And with that, I conclude the spark. That is haiku.

[1:15:52] Laura Camien: You can't now because that just made me crack.

[1:15:56] Susan Blackwell: You can get a lot done in those 17 syllables.

[1:16:00] Laura Camien: Yeah, you really can.

[1:16:02] Susan Blackwell: Well, I was just flying high on the West Wing once.

[1:16:08] Laura Camien: Just like, whoa!

[1:16:10] Susan Blackwell: It's like you like swung me on a string towards a wall.

[1:16:15] Laura Camien: I just hit it.

[1:16:16] Susan Blackwell: Oh my God.

[1:16:16] Laura Camien: Don't blame B.

[1:16:17] Susan Blackwell: Blame Laura Coward.

[1:16:18] Laura Camien: Laura Coward.

[1:16:20] Susan Blackwell: Oh my gosh.

[1:16:22] Laura Camien: Let's take a little break.

[1:16:23] Susan Blackwell: We'll get you dried up.

[1:16:25] Laura Camien: Thanks.

[1:16:25] Susan Blackwell: And we'll be right back.

[1:16:28] Laura Camien: Hi friends, I'm Laura Cammian.

[1:16:30] Susan Blackwell: And I'm Susan Blackwell.

[1:16:31] Laura Camien: And we're the host of the Sparkbile Creativity Podcast.

[1:16:34] Susan Blackwell: We are excited to report that we're accepting applications for the Sparks File Select Group Creativity Coaching Program, a guided six-month creative adventure.

[1:16:43] Laura Camien: This program is like a live interactive episode of the Sparks Bile Podcast. Facilitated by the two of us, and of course, the occasional inspiring expert or guest maker will investigate topics that directly impact your creativity and productivity.

[1:16:59] Susan Blackwell: A select group of participants will design and navigate their own creative roadmaps and support each other to get the work done.

[1:17:07] Laura Camien: Now you might have a specific project you want to tackle, or you might just want a healthy, productive group to engage with in a regular creative practice.

[1:17:17] Susan Blackwell: At each week's virtual meetup through activities, accountability, and interaction with a community of peers, we'll lay the groundwork for your creativity to thrive.

[1:17:26] Laura Camien: Show up and do the work, and in six months' time, your creative practice will be on point and your creative project will be well on its way.

[1:17:34] Susan Blackwell: As you know, we believe every single person is innately creative.

[1:17:38] Laura Camien: But smart creative people don't go it alone.

[1:17:41] Susan Blackwell: If you want to be surrounded by a group of like-minded creatives who are invested in your success, the Sparkfile Select Group Creativity Coaching Program might be just right for you.

[1:17:53] Laura Camien: If this creative mixtape sounds appealing to you, go to thesparkfile.com, click on coaching, and apply.

[1:17:59] Susan Blackwell: But do it soon because spots are limited.

[1:18:03] Laura Camien: I hope there were enough surprises in there for you, can there were so many delicious surprises about Haiku, and I feel like we could do like 10 more Sparks episodes about them.

[1:18:15] Susan Blackwell: They're amazing.

[1:18:17] Laura Camien: It is so sparkish to me.

[1:18:19] Susan Blackwell: That thing that Chris Cruthers has done is it's incredible.

[1:18:23] Laura Camien: And the art form has, you know, any of the art forms I think that have existed for centuries. There's there's obviously a reason.

[1:18:31] Susan Blackwell: There's something very, very special about it.

[1:18:33] Laura Camien: And I love that it lives on in big strong ways right now.

[1:18:38] Susan Blackwell: The thing that blows my mind about haiku is again deceptively simple.

[1:18:42] Laura Camien: You could keep peeling that onion and keep learning.

[1:18:46] Susan Blackwell: And it makes sense to me that these scholars and poets uh keep diving deeper and deeper and deeper.

[1:18:55] Laura Camien: And I couldn't help but think about like creative limitations because we um we've talked about that before, but even within your spark today, you'd see the people who thrive on and are inspired by the more limitations like you add you layer on, like, and it needs to be about nature and it needs to be impersonal, and you like layer, layer, layer, and they go deeper.

[1:19:23] Susan Blackwell: And then the other creatives also completely justified and inspiring the Kerouacs of the world who are like, you know what? I want to free just free myself a little bit of those limitations and give myself a little more wiggle room.

[1:19:37] Laura Camien: And um, and it's all valid.

[1:19:39] Susan Blackwell: It's so interesting to me to see how some people like thrive under one structure and some people thrive under another.

[1:19:45] Laura Camien: Camps, there are very famous haiku that are a single word.

[1:19:52] Susan Blackwell: One of them is Tundra.

[1:19:57] Laura Camien: And another, there's another haiku that is shark.

[1:20:04] Susan Blackwell: Okay. I'm just saying, I don't make the news, I just report it.

[1:20:08] Laura Camien: Okay.

[1:20:09] Susan Blackwell: All right. That's that's to be explored further.

[1:20:12] Laura Camien: There you go.

[1:20:12] Susan Blackwell: Put a pin in that another spark for another day.

[1:20:15] Laura Camien: Yeah, but that's amazing, Suze. Thank you for that.

[1:20:17] Susan Blackwell: I enjoyed that.

[1:20:18] Laura Camien: I hope I've got a few surprises for you in mind.

[1:20:22] Susan Blackwell: I can't wait.

[1:20:23] Laura Camien: So, one of the other ideas we explored over the weekend was the power of collective creativity or ways that we create together.

[1:20:32] Susan Blackwell: And the really cool thing about this topic is that we shared a spark about it over the weekend, and then we lived it.

[1:20:40] Laura Camien: Like, oh my god, yes, Cammy and created together over the weekend.

[1:20:45] Susan Blackwell: So that idea really resonated for me on multiple levels.

[1:20:49] Laura Camien: And speaking of levels, I thought, so why don't I just next level this spark? So here we go. Okay. Um, first, of course, I have to acknowledge what um while I was writing it. Um, you know, this while I was writing this spark about the power of what we can create when we create together, and that very moment was uh, you know, shit was going down, as we've talked about in our capital. And as our Congress people were in lockdown and sheltering in place, I was reminded that the power that I'm about to discuss can be used for evil, and that would be a very dark spark indeed. And those are roads that I am not interested in traveling down, Suze. I know you're not interested in traveling down.

[1:21:40] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:21:43] Laura Camien: So we're gonna focus on the positive as we do, using our creativity for the powers of good. But I just couldn't record today without just acknowledging what was happening in the world as I wrote this. Of course, and you know, the dangers of using these powers for ill will. So, in fact, I guess if you've spent time with us, you're probably very likely to know that we define creativity itself with a variation on Sir Ken Robinson's definition. He said creativity is applied imagination, and we often add that fights for the power of good. That fights for the powers of good. That fights for the powers of good. So applied imagination that fights for the power of good, and as you know, we also believe that everyone is creative, but smart creative people don't go it alone. So there's so much creative potential in support and accountability and community.

[1:22:38] Laura Camien: So at the workshop this weekend, we dug into the idea of bees. Not honey bees, not queen bees, not wannabees, but cooperative creativity gatherings. Not wallabies, came wallabies, but quilting bees, crafting bees, spinning bees, weaving bees, sewing bees, and raising bees, aka barn raisings, where whole barns are constructed by a community in a day or two. Fun fact, Suze. According to word histories, the word bee has been used in this context in conjunction with and preceded by a word defining the purpose of the meeting, such as sewing or quilting. The word bee has been used since the late 18th century in the United States to Which is the 1700s.

[1:23:31] Susan Blackwell: That is so correct. I'm so proud of you.

[1:23:34] Laura Camien: The 1700s. It's been used since the 1700s to describe a meeting of neighbors to unite their labors for the benefit of one. Cammy, can I tell you? I just put together the idea of why they call it a bee. Thank you. I didn't picture it before, but like I'm now picturing like a whole like five of bees, just like busily working on something, and then they step away, and it's just like, look, we put all this honey away. What is so interesting, Suze, that you say that is that the history of the word might be that it might be or might be influenced by that, but there's also speculation that it's from basically a word um coming from people who came from England and settled here. The dialect, like um, it went from like boon.

There's a word called boon that sort of describes the same thing. And they think like um in the dialect of the pro the people who came here, it kind of got shortened to like bean and then be. So there's some evidence of that. I didn't put that in here because I did not anticipate that we would go down this road. But I but I'm happy to say that.

[1:24:57] Susan Blackwell: I had no idea we'd go into that.

[1:24:59] Laura Camien: But I think that that, you know, the the stronger image, obviously, is the idea of bees who work literally in a colony of bees to doing that collectively.

[1:25:13] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[1:25:14] Laura Camien: Yeah. So this definition was, you know, to denote a meeting of neighbors to unite their labors for the benefit of one, which I found interesting because I would contest that maybe perhaps only one person will leave with the quilt that got made, or only one person will get a new barn at the end of the day. But the entire collective will benefit from the experience of working together in cooperative creativity. As you know, all of these things fall into the category of activity known as a frolic, a combination of group labor and social mixing, which builds and solidifies community. I feel like we should call our next virtual retreat of the Sparkfile Summer Frolic.

[1:25:59] Susan Blackwell: Oh my God.

[1:26:01] Laura Camien: Summer creativity frolic.

[1:26:05] Susan Blackwell: Totally do that.

[1:26:06] Laura Camien: I love it.

[1:26:07] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:26:08] Laura Camien: Awesome. So the earliest recorded instance of B, in the sense of a meeting for communal work, is from the Boston Gazette. And it is dated Monday, October 16th, 1769. And here is the entry in the Boston Gazette. Last Thursday, about 20 young ladies met at the house of Mr. Nehemiah Liscombe here on purpose for a spinning match, or what it's called in the country, a bee. They met at six o'clock in the morning and continued diligently at work till six at night. They spun in general from three to four yards apiece and generously gave their cotton and linen yarn to Mrs. Liscombe. It was a very agreeable procession to see them all walk over the green in the evening. And then here in the newspaper, they inserted a poem. This is the boom. Twice 10 young blooming virgins trod our green with all their native beauties of 16. Beauty, when joined with such superior charms, might draw a dessert to their arms.

[1:27:35] Laura Camien: So there's a lot of creative work, but there is also food. So the focus on you know this poem, including the fact that they had dessert together at the end really made me giggle. Since the 1700s, people have been crafting and snacking.

[1:27:50] Susan Blackwell: I love it.

[1:27:50] Laura Camien: I love it.

[1:27:51] Susan Blackwell: The snacks.

[1:27:53] Laura Camien: So one of the other things we noted, just to put it out there, is how gendered all of these bees are. All the women had the sewing, quilting, weaving, etc., and the men had the barn raising or the raising bee. Lord, I really hope we can now declare that we've got all genders doing all the things, whatever strikes their fancy. But historically, you'll see that these were. You know what strikes me as you're talking about this, Cammy and our friend Kate Kayan, we quote all the time as saying, and I'm not sure if Kate is quoting somebody else. What would this look like if it was easy? Uh-huh. What would this feel like if it was easy? And I'm like, it would look like a bee. Having your friends. Putting up a barn looking easy, finishing 12 quilts, looking and feeling easy, spinning all of that spinning, looking easy. It would look like a bee. It'd look like a party where you get a lot of creative work done in community.

[1:28:48] Laura Camien: It it really would. You without a doubt, you would get work done. But what's really interesting, I think, is that, you know, back in the day, many of these events really served to solidify female friendships and hand down family traditions from generation to generation. In a blog by Sherwin Smith on Book Cafe entitled The Quilting Bee, Then and Now, we read this. The importance of the quilting bee cannot be stressed enough. For this was not merely an opportunity to make a long, tedious task go quicker. Women walked miles and miles across rough country in Midwestern weather, lugging a basket of carefully hoarded scraps. The socialization aspect was at least as important as the material. Most of the quilters lived such isolated lives, and the quilting bee gave them the opportunity to exchange vital information, not only how to doctor your family, but what amounted to psychological advice as well as tips and tricks in household management and cookery. So you can imagine how like you might look forward to this quilting bee for months and months, you know?

[1:30:01] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:30:01] Laura Camien: Suze, do you remember the movie or the book, How to Make an American Quilt?

[1:30:06] Susan Blackwell: I think it's one of those, I'm aware of it. I don't believe I've ever seen it.

[1:30:09] Laura Camien: Oh my God. Okay. I remember being so excited about this film. Like I remember waiting and waiting for this film to come out. Wow. It was mid-90s, and Winona Ryder was in it, and Anne Bancroft and Maya Angelou. And it was based on the book by Whitney Otto. And I I don't know that the movie ultimately lived up to the book, but it really was an early film that I can remember that really celebrated female friendships and multi-generational wisdom being shared. And it was kind of revolutionary in that way. Like that's all people talked about is like, well, people want to see this. It's a bunch of women connecting to each other. And which was annoying at the time. But the thing was like it all centered around their quilting bee or their weekly stitch and Bitch, where they would share the events of their lives and pass on stories and family histories.

I think somehow the movie stayed with me for that reason. I don't think I had experienced enough of that in my own life. I didn't know that it was something that I longed for until I saw the film. And of course, now and years since, like I definitely crave a semi-regular date with friends coming together for storytelling and snacks, of course.

[1:31:37] Susan Blackwell: Oh, I'm bringing snacks to that too.

[1:31:41] Laura Camien: So this got me thinking about another really powerful quilting story. And that is the story of the AIDS Memorial quilt. Oh. This enormous effort really took the idea of a quilting bee, but broke the boundaries. Oh, cameo. They found a way to bring people together from all over the world in an act of collective creation to honor the people we lost to AIDS. And here's just a quick, my God, this is a quick story of how it was formed and how it began. But in November of 1985, Cleve Jones, who was a longtime gay rights activist in San Francisco, got the idea for the quilt. He had learned at that time, in that moment, over 1,000 San Franciscans had died from AIDS. And he was or organizing this like candlelight march.

And for that march, he asked every person who was participating to write on a placard the names of people they knew and loved who had died of AIDS. And at the end of the march, they taped the placards together, filling an entire wall on the San Francisco federal building. And it looked like a glorious patchwork quilt, which is where he got the idea. What a spark. And he said, um, according to an NPR interview in 2016, Cleve said this it was gentle rain, no speeches or music, just thousands of people reading these names on this patchwork of placards up on the wall. And I thought to myself, it looks like some kind of quilt. And when I said the word quilt, I thought of my great grandma. And it was such a warm and comforting and middle American traditional family values sort of symbol. And I thought this is the symbol we should take.

[1:33:43] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[1:33:43] Laura Camien: What a spark. What a spark. And then he acted on it. So he created personally the first panel for the AIDS Memorial Quilt the next year. And they organized the Names Project Foundation with the hopes to educate more people to understand the impact of the disease and really try to keep their loved ones' memories alive. So at that moment, people from all over the country sent in panels. And in 1987, the quilt was displayed at the National Mall in DC. And it included 1,920 panels.

[1:34:17] Laura Camien: So less than 2,000 panels, but half a million people visited the quilt that weekend.

[1:34:24] Susan Blackwell: Then that was the first time it was displayed at the National Mall, but not the last time.

[1:34:28] Laura Camien: The quilt toured the country, and as it did, 6,000 more panels were submitted.

[1:34:35] Susan Blackwell: Then I saw I remember going and seeing the quilt and also uh reading names because the only sound in the space, and you may talk about this, but was the it was silent, except you could hear the names of the people saying the names out loud.

[1:34:55] Laura Camien: Yeah, so I was a name reader of movie.

[1:34:58] Susan Blackwell: Oh, that's amazing.

[1:35:01] Laura Camien: Well, it went the quilt went around the world, and today the AIDS Memorial Quilt is an epic 54-ton tapestry that includes it includes more than 48,000 panels.

[1:35:20] Susan Blackwell: Millions of people have visited it.

[1:35:23] Laura Camien: I know millions of people have learned from it.

[1:35:26] Susan Blackwell: It's such a powerful work of art, and it was co-created by thousands and thousands of people.

[1:35:35] Laura Camien: Where is it?

[1:35:37] Susan Blackwell: It's not on display right now, but it, you know, it still has a life, obviously.

[1:35:43] Laura Camien: Um, but it isn't currently on display.

[1:35:45] Susan Blackwell: It's obviously it's difficult to display it.

[1:35:47] Laura Camien: It's really big, but oh my God.

[1:35:50] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:35:50] Laura Camien: And it really occurs to me that while like so many of us are craving the opportunity to gather together on a regular basis in a pandemic, it may just not be possible.

[1:36:02] Susan Blackwell: But the AIDS Memorial quilt brought people together from around the world with their creativity, with their love, and with their shared purpose, even though they were not literally in a room together.

[1:36:14] Laura Camien: So I think it also represents like the possibility of, you know, if if you're thinking like, well, bees are great, but I just can't, you know, we can't have them right now.

[1:36:24] Susan Blackwell: I think it we can find other ways.

[1:36:27] Laura Camien: I think it's evidence of uh finding other ways.

[1:36:30] Susan Blackwell: And we have the privilege of this technology.

[1:36:32] Laura Camien: And I think that we felt it this not to harp on this, but I think we felt it at our retreat.

[1:36:38] Susan Blackwell: The way I genuinely felt like I was in community with that amazing group of people.

[1:36:45] Laura Camien: It's totally possible.

[1:36:46] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:36:47] Laura Camien: Bees are totally possible even during a pandemic.

[1:36:49] Susan Blackwell: Yep, agreed.

[1:36:50] Laura Camien: Agreed.

[1:36:51] Susan Blackwell: And at the workshop, Suze, we also spent a little time digging into the idea of the raising bee, aka barn raising.

[1:36:59] Laura Camien: And this is when the whole community comes together to literally raise a barn in one day.

[1:37:05] Susan Blackwell: Um were very common in the 18th and 19th century in North America, but they still take place today in Amish communities.

[1:37:14] Laura Camien: I have a fresh take on the raising bee right here, Suze, and I want to share it with you now.

[1:37:20] Susan Blackwell: I'm excited.

[1:37:21] Laura Camien: It's called the Edible Hut.

[1:37:24] Laura Camien: And it is like a barn raising that just keeps on giving and giving and giving to the community.

[1:37:31] Laura Camien: Here's the deal.

[1:37:33] Laura Camien: I took this from the Edible Hut, Detroit.com.

[1:37:38] Laura Camien: The Edible Hut is a community gathering space in Calamira Park on the east side of Detroit with a living edible roof and oculus to the sky.

[1:37:50] Laura Camien: The edible hut combines elements of a traditional hut, an outdoor sculpture, a neighborhood garage, and an edible garden.

[1:37:58] Laura Camien: The roof is a garden of edible perennial plants such as sage, thyme, lavender, and oregano.

[1:38:05] Laura Camien: The inside of the space incorporates peaceful colors to create an enchanting space for gathering, rest, and pleasure.

[1:38:13] Laura Camien: The Edible Hut offers a location for community activities to find shade while gardening, service summer lunches, hold outdoor classes, sell vegetables from the garden, and come together for meals, meetings, music, and shared activities.

[1:38:28] Laura Camien: Creating the hut.

[1:38:31] Laura Camien: This is our B.

[1:38:32] Laura Camien: Creating the Hunt is a collaborative process that includes teams of artists, architects, community members, youth from the neighborhood, and teachers and students from the Sorama Institute and Osborne High School.

[1:38:47] Susan Blackwell: Seuss, I'm going to share some pictures of this amazing project.

[1:38:52] Laura Camien: But they say that the process of working together with the whole community is activating that park.

[1:38:59] Laura Camien: It's building relationships and it's bringing people together.

[1:39:04] Susan Blackwell: And I just think, well, this project has it all collective creativity, community, and you can snack right off the roof, Suze.

[1:39:12] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[1:39:12] Laura Camien: The food element is built right in.

[1:39:14] Susan Blackwell: Yes.

[1:39:15] Laura Camien: There's still snacks.

[1:39:16] Susan Blackwell: There's your bees.

[1:39:17] Laura Camien: There's your bees.

[1:39:18] Susan Blackwell: But it, you know, but it keeps going.

[1:39:19] Laura Camien: It's always a big thing.

[1:39:21] Susan Blackwell: May there always be snacks, but it's um, you know, communal creativity.

[1:39:26] Laura Camien: And finally, I got to thinking about the bees of your and how many of them were centered around work that truly needed to get done.

[1:39:34] Laura Camien: I mean, socks and clothing needed to be mended or sewn from scratch, blankets for newborns or honeymooners needed to be made, barns need to be raised.

[1:39:43] Susan Blackwell: Yes, there was fun and frolicking happening, but there was also real work, as you mentioned earlier.

[1:39:48] Laura Camien: Like there was real work, creative work and otherwise getting done.

[1:39:52] Susan Blackwell: So I have a modern day version of this as well.

[1:39:56] Laura Camien: According to Social Work Degree guide, a laundromat is a neighborhood's meeting place.

[1:40:03] Laura Camien: It is a place where community members gather weekly.

[1:40:06] Laura Camien: And in 1999, Rise Wilson decided to help bring art education to her Harlem neighborhood laundromat.

[1:40:15] Laura Camien: Setting up folding tables in front of the storefront, she extended passerby with a unique opportunity to make a piece of art.

[1:40:22] Laura Camien: Now, the laundromat project has served a number of communities throughout New York City.

[1:40:28] Laura Camien: According to Urban Omnibus, Rise Wilson wanted to exercise communities' existing beauty and creativity to challenge a wide range of social inequities with regard to race, class, gender, and environmental justice in the service of community development.

[1:40:44] Laura Camien: So, to do so, the project relies on places like the laundromat, a unique everyday space that caters to a diverse cross-section of New Yorkers.

[1:40:54] Laura Camien: By embedding art practice into these spaces, the project aims to generate a new level of pride of place among residents and increase public understanding and engagement with relevant issues.

[1:41:08] Laura Camien: What this looks like among the washers and dryers is as varied as the laundromat's clientele.

[1:41:14] Laura Camien: So, Suze, there are guest artists who like collect the histories of the Filipino or Filipino American community in Queens.

[1:41:24] Laura Camien: There are projects that take on the effects of gentrification where neighbors share their perspectives on the transformation of Harlem through video documentary and prose.

[1:41:36] Laura Camien: There's yoga, there's printmaking, there's weaving, yeah, and so much more.

[1:41:41] Susan Blackwell: And I just can't help but think like think about like what a freaking genius idea this is.

[1:41:48] Laura Camien: Again, it's centered around work that needs to get done, laundry.

[1:41:53] Laura Camien: But as long as we're all together, can we engage in a collective activity that unites us in purpose?

[1:42:01] Laura Camien: Maybe it entertains, maybe it educates, but it certainly celebrates the coming together to create.

[1:42:09] Susan Blackwell: So if we're feeling inspired to make something of this, there are literally endless ways to bring people together with acts of communal creativity.

[1:42:18] Laura Camien: And as we proved this weekend, you can even do it over Zoom.

[1:42:23] Susan Blackwell: When we put our minds to it, we can create a warm, safe space for our collective creativity to thrive, to grow, and to build on the energy of each other's presence, just like they did in the old-fashioned bees.

[1:42:38] Laura Camien: Oh, Camion, that was full of fresh spark.

[1:42:42] Susan Blackwell: Freshy, fresh, because you know what?

[1:42:44] Susan Blackwell: Bees are happening all around us.

[1:42:46] Laura Camien: Like when you think, when you go with this definition of collective creativity, you look around and you're like, you know, this art form, yes, it has continued on in traditional, like quilting bees.

[1:42:59] Susan Blackwell: You still see those happening and crafting bees, and thank goodness for that.

[1:43:04] Laura Camien: But you also see an evolution of the idea of bees and like the laundromat.

[1:43:12] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:43:13] Laura Camien: As you were talking, I was also thinking this work that uh, you know, the phone banking and the canvassing and getting the vote out.

[1:43:21] Susan Blackwell: I feel like that was Stacey Abrams organized and Stacey Abrams team community creativity to get the vote out and to do it in all of these creative, bee like ways.

[1:43:34] Laura Camien: That is correct.

[1:43:36] Susan Blackwell: It's also another spark that just jumps out at me is you cannot swing a dead cat in this in this bee sparks without running into somebody named Nehemiah.

[1:43:47] Laura Camien: So Nehemiah is perhaps responsible for it all.

[1:43:51] Susan Blackwell: But my spark with that is I feel like that's a great baby name.

[1:43:56] Laura Camien: Let's bring it back.

[1:43:57] Susan Blackwell: I need some Brooklyn babies, some hipster babies to be called Nehemiah.

[1:44:02] Laura Camien: This might be way ahead of you.

[1:44:04] Susan Blackwell: We should look up it's true.

[1:44:06] Laura Camien: It could be happening already.

[1:44:08] Susan Blackwell: 2020's hottest baby names.

[1:44:10] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh.

[1:44:12] Susan Blackwell: I think that's it, Cam.

[1:44:14] Laura Camien: It is.

[1:44:15] Susan Blackwell: It is.

[1:44:16] Laura Camien: And we're off and running in our in the new world.

[1:44:21] Susan Blackwell: This episode of The Spark File was made on Muncy Lenape and Seminole Land.

[1:44:25] Laura Camien: And as always, we hope this put another bunch of sparks in your file.

[1:44:29] Susan Blackwell: If there's a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you've taken a spark and fanned into a creative flame, we have some good ones that we're gonna share out with you.

[1:44:36] Laura Camien: If you would like to share that with us, we hope you'll email us at the sparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website, thesparkfile.com.

[1:44:44] Susan Blackwell: We will even happily take your feedback, but you know the price of admission.

[1:44:49] Laura Camien: First, you have to share a creative risk that you've taken recently.

[1:44:52] Susan Blackwell: Follow us on social media at the Sparkfile and be sure to subscribe, rate, and five star review this podcast.

[1:44:59] Laura Camien: It really does help other listeners to find us.

[1:45:02] Susan Blackwell: If you like this podcast, we hope you share it with people that you love.

[1:45:05] Laura Camien: If you didn't like it, it doesn't matter because you don't hold the measuring stick.

[1:45:09] Susan Blackwell: Go!

[1:45:10] Laura Camien: Boom, Suze.

[1:45:13] Susan Blackwell: If something tickles your fancy and gets your creative juices flowing, we're writing you a forever permission slip to make that thing that's been knocking at your door.

[1:45:22] Laura Camien: It's your turn to take a spark and fan it into a flame.

[1:45:26] Susan Blackwell: My sparkies, you know you gotta take it and make it.

[1:45:33] Laura Camien: Bye!

[1:45:34] Susan Blackwell: Bye!

[1:45:35] Laura Camien: Happy New Year!

[1:45:36] Susan Blackwell: New Year!

[1:45:37] Laura Camien: When I bump into something that inspires me, I dump it in the SparkFile.

[1:45:46] Susan Blackwell: Spark could be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be.

[1:45:52] Laura Camien: I'll pump it in the SparkFile.

[1:45:55] Susan Blackwell: Spark.

[1:45:57] Laura Camien: I jump into my SparkFest.

[1:46:02] Susan Blackwell: Let's open up the Sparkfile.

[1:46:08] Laura Camien: Hi friends, I'm Laura Cammian.

[1:46:10] Susan Blackwell: And I'm Susan Blackwell.

[1:46:12] Laura Camien: And we're the host of the Sparkpile Creativity Podcast.

[1:46:15] Susan Blackwell: We are excited to report that we're accepting applications for the Sparkfile Select Group Creativity Coaching Program, a guided six-month creative adventure.

[1:46:24] Laura Camien: This program is like a live interactive episode of the Sparkpile podcast.

[1:46:29] Susan Blackwell: Facilitated by the two of us and of course the occasional inspiring expert or guest maker, we'll investigate topics that directly impact your creativity and productivity.

[1:46:40] Laura Camien: A select group of participants will design and navigate their own creative roadmaps and support each other to get the work done.

[1:46:48] Susan Blackwell: Now, you might have a specific project you want to tackle, or you might just want a healthy, productive group to engage with in a regular creative practice.

[1:46:58] Laura Camien: At each week's virtual meetup through activities, accountability, and interaction with a community of peers, we'll lay the groundwork for your creativity to thrive.

[1:47:07] Susan Blackwell: Show up and do the work, and in six months' time, your creative practice will be on point and your creative project will be well on its way.

[1:47:14] Laura Camien: As you know, we believe every single person is innately creative.

[1:47:19] Susan Blackwell: But smart creative people don't go it alone.

[1:47:22] Laura Camien: If you want to be surrounded by a group of like-minded creatives who are invested in your success, the Sparkfile Select Group Creativity Coaching Program might be just right for you.

[1:47:34] Susan Blackwell: If this creative mixtape sounds appealing to you, go to thesparkfile.com, click on coaching, and apply.

[1:47:40] Laura Camien: But do it soon because spots are limited.