This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Susan Blackwell: The SparkFile 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 my spark files.

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

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

[0:26] Laura Camien: Spark.

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

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

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

[0:43] Laura Camien: No, they don't.

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

[0:45] Susan Blackwell: And I'm Susan Blackwell.

[0:47] Laura Camien: If you're an OG listener, hi.

[0:49] Susan Blackwell: Hi.

[0:49] Laura Camien: Welcome back, Sparkly.

[0:51] Susan Blackwell: If you're joining us for the first time, you should know that all are welcome here.

[0:55] Laura Camien: Whether you've put your creativity on hold during this time or you've clung to it like a lifeline.

[1:00] Susan Blackwell: Either way, we welcome you.

[1:02] Laura Camien: But you may be asking yourself, ladies, what exactly is a spark file?

[1:06] Susan Blackwell: Where do I get one?

[1:07] Laura Camien: What do I file in it?

[1:09] Susan Blackwell: These are such good questions.

[1:10] Laura Camien: And we have an answer for you.

[1:12] Susan Blackwell: We do. A Sparkfile is a place where you consistently collect all your inspirations and all your fascinations.

[1:20] Laura Camien: Here's the deal. Laura and I are makers and we make all kinds of things.

[1:24] Susan Blackwell: 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.

[1:33] Laura Camien: But don't freak out. We are on the lookout for fresh ideas, images, and inspiration that spark creativity and pique curiosity.

[1:40] Susan Blackwell: Things that inspire us to get up off of our asses and make things like this podcast.

[1:47] Laura Camien: Or a trailblazing novel written in your own completely new and singular way.

[1:55] Susan Blackwell: Oh. Every episode, we're gonna reach into the spark file and exchange some sparks.

[2:01] Laura Camien: And from time to time, we're gonna talk to some folks who spark us as well.

[2:05] Susan Blackwell: And if you're not careful, you might just find yourself visiting other realms.

[2:09] Laura Camien: So without further ado, let's open up the Sparks file.

[2:15] Susan Blackwell: Laura Camien.

[2:16] Laura Camien: Blackwell.

[2:17] Susan Blackwell: Laura Camien.

[2:19] Laura Camien: We are still still talking about, still unpacking the spark that is the brain, the work of Dr. Jill Bolty Taylor.

[2:27] Susan Blackwell: I mean, if you have not listened to last week's episode where Sue Sparks made with the whole brain, a whole brain spark, stop what you're doing right now, which is listening to this podcast, and go back to last year.

[2:46] Laura Camien: Please, it's worth it.

[2:47] Susan Blackwell: It's so worth it.

[2:49] Laura Camien: Oh, that was good. I'm just struck by the potential application of her work on our lives, our creativity, our relationships, our entrepreneurial pursuits.

[3:05] Susan Blackwell: I was saying to you recently, I feel like it's going to improve the quality of our lives.

[3:10] Laura Camien: One hundred percent.

[3:11] Susan Blackwell: Like immediately.

[3:12] Laura Camien: Like immediately.

[3:13] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[3:13] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[3:14] Susan Blackwell: And I just want to say out loud, I want to thank the baby Jesus or whoever's responsible for giving us good healthy brains that can ingest that information and implement it.

[3:28] Laura Camien: Because I, as we were talking about it, I was like, oh, I don't know that everyone has a brain makeup that can.

[3:36] Susan Blackwell: I mean, to be honest, it took me a couple passes to really, and I don't fully, fully understand the depths of that work yet.

[3:43] Laura Camien: But after a couple passes, I was able to understand it and begin to weave it into my brain experience.

[3:52] Susan Blackwell: And I'm thankful for that.

[3:54] Laura Camien: I'm thankful for that.

[3:55] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[3:56] Laura Camien: I'm thankful that you have begun to weave it into my brain experience.

[4:00] Susan Blackwell: Right.

[4:01] Laura Camien: Yes.

[4:02] Susan Blackwell: Yes, you and your little knitting needles got in there.

[4:06] Laura Camien: Your little loom.

[4:07] Susan Blackwell: Well, that was a fun one. And I keep thinking about it. And I keep thinking about all of our listeners and our clients and how it might be incorporated into their lives, into their creativity, into their work into their satisfaction.

[4:22] Laura Camien: And it's so good stuff.

[4:25] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. It's really good stuff.

[4:27] Laura Camien: You know what I didn't mention when we were recording that is Dr. JBT, Jill Bolty Taylor says, once you understand those four pieces of the brain, those four characters, character one, two, three, and four, not only can you see when your brain character is taking the wheel and sort of driving, you can see it in other people too.

[4:53] Susan Blackwell: And I think that's absolutely true.

[4:55] Laura Camien: A hundred one hundred percent.

[4:58] Susan Blackwell: And now we have a name for it.

[5:02] Laura Camien: And now you know, we can recognize maybe not just like, oh, she's type A, but right now, so and so is living in character one for the time being.

[5:13] Susan Blackwell: For this moment, or that person maybe got some tough feedback and they've slipped into character two, like they're in a phase.

[5:22] Laura Camien: If you haven't listened to that episode of the podcast, or if you didn't follow along closely, you might be like, or if you didn't take my instructions, like you know, 60 seconds ago when I said go back and listen to that episode first.

[5:36] Susan Blackwell: Anyway, it's just amazing. I'm so into it.

[5:39] Laura Camien: But you know what else I'm into? The spark that you're gonna spark on me today.

[5:44] Susan Blackwell: Oh, you're gonna be into this.

[5:45] Laura Camien: I'm very excited.

[5:46] Susan Blackwell: But I will say, just to wrap that up, of course, I already ordered the book.

[5:51] Laura Camien: And so you may get a spark right back at you.

[5:53] Susan Blackwell: That could be a spark back because I'm gonna dig into that book.

[5:57] Laura Camien: And also, if you're in our creativity group, you should just know that we're probably gonna embrace you'll strap in, because we're probably gonna want to do a whole session on it.

[6:10] Susan Blackwell: I think I just feel like it is so useful for humans and creatives.

[6:16] Laura Camien: Exactly. Just thinking about it in terms of how it will help you to create your life, the life that you want.

[6:23] Susan Blackwell: But also, like we said, a filter you could run, you know, your current creative piece through and be like, yeah, this creative piece is really all character four.

[6:32] Laura Camien: It's peace, love, and you know, it's a dance piece that is all character four.

[6:38] Susan Blackwell: Great, totally great. Character four, you know, character four, again, please just go back and listen, or take a deep dive into the work of Dr. Jill Bolty Taylor.

[6:45] Laura Camien: We have a client whom we adore, Kenyatta Emmanuel, who talks about he always is aiming to capture the rapture.

[6:54] Susan Blackwell: And I was like, oh yeah, Kenyatta, and I think we share this with him, Kenyatta, and we want to make work that proves transcendent for people.

[7:04] Laura Camien: We want to move them through our work.

[7:06] Susan Blackwell: Maybe into character three, and then if we're really doing our jobs well into character four.

[7:13] Laura Camien: Let's light them all up.

[7:15] Susan Blackwell: Light it up.

[7:17] Laura Camien: Woo!

[7:18] Susan Blackwell: Sues.

[7:19] Laura Camien: Cam's what you got for me.

[7:21] Susan Blackwell: Okay. So you know I recently celebrated my birthday.

[7:25] Laura Camien: What birthday did you celebrate, Cam?

[7:28] Susan Blackwell: An important one.

[7:29] Laura Camien: How many is a big one?

[7:31] Susan Blackwell: Oh.

[7:33] Laura Camien: It's the big five.

[7:34] Susan Blackwell: Oh.

[7:35] Laura Camien: I love it.

[7:36] Susan Blackwell: I know you just would never imagine it from my youthful voice.

[7:40] Laura Camien: Um, big five-o, baby.

[7:44] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. I'm so happy you were born.

[7:46] Laura Camien: And I'm so look, I'm so happy you were healthy and alive.

[7:50] Susan Blackwell: And it's a glorious time to be alive.

[7:54] Laura Camien: And I'm grateful.

[7:55] Susan Blackwell: And it's a glorious time to be working on a creative project with Susan Blackwell.

[8:00] Laura Camien: Rocky.

[8:00] Susan Blackwell: Thankful.

[8:01] Laura Camien: I'm very, very thankful.

[8:03] Susan Blackwell: So sorry to interrupt you. You celebrated your life.

[8:05] Laura Camien: I celebrated my birthday, and a beautiful friend sent me a beautiful gift.

[8:10] Susan Blackwell: Thank you, Laura Coward.

[8:12] Laura Camien: Oh, Laura Coward.

[8:13] Susan Blackwell: Laura Coward. It reminds me how I didn't send you your gift.

[8:17] Laura Camien: Um, but I just want to acknowledge I picked out a gift for Laura.

[8:21] Susan Blackwell: I have had it for months, and just when I was starting to wrap it up to send it to her, I was like, wait a second.

[8:29] Laura Camien: Why I don't know if this I I didn't quite think through the size of the gift.

[8:36] Susan Blackwell: And I was like, I don't even know if Laura has room in her home for this.

[8:41] Laura Camien: So, but I do have a I'll I'll just say it, it's a baller gift.

[8:46] Susan Blackwell: But we're we might have to rethink it. We'll see.

[8:50] Laura Camien: Yes, absolutely.

[8:51] Susan Blackwell: We'll see.

[8:52] Laura Camien: TBD, TBD.

[8:53] Susan Blackwell: All right. But somebody sent you a sense of the book.

[8:55] Laura Camien: That's right. My sweet friend Laura Coward sent me a gift, and that gift was a copy of the book, Lincoln in the Bardo.

[9:03] Susan Blackwell: And I like immediately right there when I opened it, I started reading, and I couldn't stop.

[9:11] Laura Camien: Currently, as I write this, I'm about halfway through the book.

[9:14] Susan Blackwell: And let me tell you, just sparks are flying.

[9:19] Laura Camien: Flying, I say. I'm not even done with it, but that's not gonna stop me from being sparked by this book.

[9:26] Susan Blackwell: Can I just pause and say I've not read Lincoln in the Bardo.

[9:29] Laura Camien: It has been on my list for months and months.

[9:33] Susan Blackwell: Somebody suggested it, highly recommended it to me months ago.

[9:38] Laura Camien: And it's one of those things where it's like, if I had a little more downtime, I would love to spend some time with Lincoln in the Bardo.

[9:48] Susan Blackwell: And so I feel like I get to with you today, which is thrilling.

[9:51] Laura Camien: You're gonna get to.

[10:04] Susan Blackwell: But just some examples of how freaking sparkish it is just right from the jump.

[10:11] Laura Camien: So I'm gonna start with something that I knew about this book before Laura even sent me the book.

[10:19] Susan Blackwell: I recall a story that you told me, Suze, about the author George Saunders.

[10:25] Laura Camien: And the original spark of an idea that he had for this book.

[10:30] Susan Blackwell: That's right. I would like to share that with everyone now.

[10:33] Laura Camien: This is exciting.

[10:34] Susan Blackwell: Okay, so the following is George Saunders' description of the spark that led to his novel Lincoln in the Bardo.

[10:43] Laura Camien: He says, Many years ago, during a visit to Washington, DC, my wife's cousin pointed out to us a crypt on a hill and mentioned that in 1862, while Abraham Lincoln was president, his beloved son Willie died and was temporarily interned in that crypt.

[11:05] Susan Blackwell: And that the grief-stricken Lincoln had, according to the newspapers of the day, entered the crypt on several occasions to hold the boy's body.

[11:19] Laura Camien: An image spontaneously leapt into my mind. A melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pieta.

[11:28] Susan Blackwell: I carried that image around for the next 20 odd years.

[11:34] Laura Camien: I'm going to say that again.

[11:40] Susan Blackwell: Wow.

[11:41] Laura Camien: Too scared to try something that seemed so profound.

[11:46] Susan Blackwell: And then finally, in 2012, noticing that I wasn't getting any younger, not wanting to be the guy whose own gravestone would read, Afraid to embark on scary artistic project he desperately longed to attempt.

[12:08] Laura Camien: No commitments.

[12:15] Susan Blackwell: What he does not go on to say, but I will say is this Lincoln in the Bardo received widespread critical acclaim.

[12:25] Laura Camien: It was a New York Times bestseller and won the 2017 Man Booker Prize.

[12:31] Susan Blackwell: How's that for just an experimental? I'm just gonna take a run at it.

[12:37] Susan Blackwell: Wow. Well, he is George Saunders.

[12:39] Laura Camien: He is. He'd never written a novel.

[12:41] Susan Blackwell: He had, you know, short stories. So for him, this was like a bigger project than he could conceive of. I just think it's extraordinary. And as I'm currently reading the book, even more so now, first of all, the image that leapt into his mind, a melding of the Lincoln Memorial and the Pieta.

[13:03] Susan Blackwell: The Lincoln Memorial, many of us know, is that glorious marble statue of Abraham Lincoln on a 10-foot pedestal as he sits in an armchair and gazes downward with a very serious and solemn look. Was sculpted by Daniel Chester French and carved by the Piccarilly brothers. And the work was unveiled in 1922.

[13:27] Laura Camien: Oh, interesting.

[13:28] Susan Blackwell: So it was sculpted by like an artist, but like Star Workers carved it.

[13:34] Laura Camien: Interesting.

[13:35] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Never knew that. Never knew that. And also 1922.

[13:39] Laura Camien: So a good, you know, um, what is that? Uh six coming up on us.

[13:45] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Uh 60 years of like after his presidency.

[13:49] Laura Camien: Got it, got it. But it's also coming up on the anniversary of that monument.

[13:53] Susan Blackwell: That is correct. Yeah. I wonder if they're gonna have a party.

[13:57] Laura Camien: Maybe. And you people could take selfies on his knee, they can cry them up there and be like, huh.

[14:01] Susan Blackwell: I think this isn't the image we're going for right now.

[14:03] Laura Camien: Oh, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

[14:07] Susan Blackwell: A bit more modern image. But so let's picture in our mind the Abraham Lincoln memorial, um, and him in that armchair solemnly looking out. And then combine that with the Pieta, which translates to the pity. If you're not familiar, this is the sculpture that depicts the body of Jesus Christ after the crucifixion on the lap of his mother, Mary.

[14:36] Susan Blackwell: It was created out of a single block of marble by Michelangelo, which is housed in the St. Peter's in the Vatican City.

[14:44] Laura Camien: I never knew that it meant the pity. I never knew that. I just always was like, oh, it's the Pieta.

[14:50] Susan Blackwell: Uh-huh. Ah, the pity. So just sit with that for a minute. This sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding her child's dead body, the idea of Lincoln, a la the Lincoln Memorial, holding his child's dead body. It's an incredibly powerful image. And George Saunders kept that image in his mind for 20 some years until he came face to face with this old idea.

[15:22] Susan Blackwell: He didn't want to be the guy whose own gravestone would read Afraid to embark on scary artistic project he desperately longed to attempt. And Sue's like that alone is just so sparkish. We talk about this a good deal with our clients, this idea that one day the frustration of letting fear beat you down, or the pain of not telling the story becomes so great that you kind of say, Fuck it. I do not want to die, having been too afraid to create this.

[15:55] Laura Camien: Amen.

[15:55] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. And when we talk to makers, you know, on some of our makersodes, we often ask, is there something you know you need to do before you're done? Which is a bit of the same concept. It's trying to get at that. Like, is there a story that is burning in you? Maya Angelou said, There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you. I have always felt that deeply, deeply.

[16:24] Laura Camien: We have a client, Jennifer Rosenfeld, who has a story that she thinks will be her big regret on her deathbed if she doesn't tell it. And Suze, I realize as much as we talk about this, I've never asked you. Do you have a thing you know you need to do before you're done?

[16:42] Susan Blackwell: That's so interesting. I don't know that you and I don't ask each other the questions we ask the guests on our podcast or even our clients. You know, just something that so they don't write afraid to embark on a big, despite, despite all of her teachings about creativity, too afraid to embark on this big scary project. There are sort of things that I feel like are in the shoot. Like I am certain, though I find it that I find the thought of it fairly daunting. That that sort of uh daunting is is lightning up a little bit. But I have a strong feeling you and I will write a book.

[17:19] Laura Camien: Oh, yes.

[17:20] Susan Blackwell: A nonfiction book. Uh-huh. And so I hope that happens before I get hit by a bus. But if it doesn't, please carry the torch, Laura.

[17:31] Laura Camien: Those are the words I'll say to you.

[17:32] Susan Blackwell: I will. I will. On my deathbed, I'll clutch your eyes. Clutch your shirt and pull your face close to mine and say, Laura.

[17:40] Laura Camien: Right.

[17:41] Susan Blackwell: The book. The book. And then Laura.

[17:44] Laura Camien: That's that's the sound uh Nathan and I make around our house when we're watching a movie and it's real sad and somebody's dying. And then right when they die, we both go, um.

[17:55] Susan Blackwell: So if I don't get to it, I hope that you do.

[17:58] Laura Camien: I will. But um, you know, I have like you, I have a big spark file. And there are so many things in addition to my spark file. I'm also looking over in the maker corner of my room, which has my painting easel and my um things that I want to sew and cut and dye and all sorts of paint and all sorts of things. And I hope I get to those too, but I don't know that I have anything. There's paintings that I want to make. I I feel like I think of things and then I get them out into the world.

[18:36] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, if you feel strongly enough, you get them, you get them done.

[18:39] Laura Camien: Yeah. That makes sense.

[18:40] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Especially knowing who you are and what you do.

[18:45] Laura Camien: Yeah. I have one that you I won't talk about it here at length or anything, but I think you know, and it's really one that I have gotten up out into the world, but it still feels like unfinished or not done yet.

[19:01] Susan Blackwell: Not fully realized.

[19:02] Laura Camien: Yeah. And so I'm like, uh huh. Yep. There's more. There's more. But back to George Saunders, after 20 years, he finally gives himself permission to embark on this scary creative project. And what he creates is Lincoln and the Bardo. The Bardo, by the way, if you don't know, refers to the liminal state between two lives on Earth. If you believe in purgatory, you might refer to it as the Bardo.

[19:31] Susan Blackwell: But in Tibetan Buddhism, for example, it refers to the intermediate state between death and reincarnation when the consciousness is not connected to a body.

[19:41] Laura Camien: Interesting. When I first heard the title of it, I didn't know what it meant. I thought it was a Spanish word and it was uh or like a district in some city in Spain.

[19:52] Susan Blackwell: Or New Orleans or something.

[19:53] Laura Camien: Yeah. That's right. Exactly. Exactly. Nope, not at all. Metaphorically speaking, Bardo can also describe times when we feel like our life is suspended, like a period of sickness, or deep, deep, deep meditation. Like if you really in suspension.

[20:14] Susan Blackwell: So a time of suspension, which could be illness or it could be transcendence. It is not a district in New Orleans.

[20:23] Laura Camien: In no way, shape, or form.

[20:24] Susan Blackwell: Nope. No, it's not what that is. But it also refers to just want to make sure I I want to get this in my brain so I can be like a I can sound smarter cocktail party. I don't attend cocktail parties, but um so that it can be witnessed if I did that.

[20:42] Laura Camien: What we know as purgatory, or it's also a liminal space, an intermediate space before reincarnation when a soul is not attached to a body.

[20:55] Susan Blackwell: He said, although he named it after the Tibetan tradition, he did make sure to sort of weave elements of Christian and Egyptian beliefs regarding afterlives so that like he didn't want the reader to bring too many perceptions, preconceptions of what they thought the afterlife meant. So it he wanted it to be just a little like vague enough, but in the general sense of spirits not attached to bodies.

[21:26] Laura Camien: Got it. This is fun.

[21:29] Susan Blackwell: So truth is, as you know, I'm still in the middle of the book, so I'm not gonna give you any spoilers. But I can tell you I'm totally frickin' sparked by it. I was sparked by page one. First of all, I need to mention one thing that is so original about this book. Saunders did a ton, like a shit ton of research for this book, even though it takes place on a single night in Abraham Lincoln's life.

[21:56] Susan Blackwell: Saunders really wanted to know like exactly where Lincoln was in his presidency, when his son died. And there's references to so much more outside of that one night. But one of the most amazing things he does is he puts in some cases entire chapters together with only historical citations.

[22:19] Susan Blackwell: So what I mean is he would take a few sentences from a historical document, cite it, and then a few lines from another document, cite it, and then another document, cite it, and on and on. It might be a line from a newspaper article in 1862, and then a few lines from the personal correspondence of so and so and so and so in 1963. Textbooks, biographies, you name it. It is astonishing.

[22:44] Laura Camien: Wow how much research he did.

[22:47] Susan Blackwell: But let me give you just a quick example. I'm just gonna read like one page. This is a chapter following Willie's death, but this is an example of how of how it goes. Mary Todd Lincoln's mental health had never been good, and the loss of young Willie ended her life as a functional wife and mother in a mother's trial, Mary Todd Lincoln and the Civil War by Jane Coster. Around two in the afternoon, I heard a terrible commotion from the part of the house where the sick child lay. It appeared the moment had come. Mrs. Lincoln rushed past me, head lowered, making a sound I have never heard emitted from a human throat before or since. Hilliard, previously cited account of Sophie Lennox made. While the president's outburst allowed for depiction, his wife's did not.

Epstein, previously cited. Keckley, previously cited. Mary Todd Lincoln collapsed into her bed. Von Dreth, previously cited. An altered woman. Keckley. So, and it goes on. It goes on and on. But it's entire chapters at a time. He didn't write a word of that. But as I'm reading it, of course, I'm like, this has to be 200 hours of research and reading other small passage to pull in, but pull in exactly the right sentences that on their own account do make for a whole paragraph.

[24:18] Laura Camien: Cams, was the, I mean, you love history.

[24:21] Susan Blackwell: Fucking love it.

[24:23] Laura Camien: Were you just like, I was like, oh my God.

[24:31] Susan Blackwell: Okay, the amount of hours, the amount of knowledge, how thoroughly he knows these people, how he's able to illustrate from different sources, people's memory. People's memory is foggy and it's different. There are pages where it's like he's pulling from different sources and it all flows, but one person describes the moon, you know, as a bright white, full white light in the sky. And the next person was like, that night was a grayish silver sliver of a moon. And and all these people, it's the same like historic events that they're describing. And it's like they're not the same. They have different memories of it.

[25:12] Susan Blackwell: So that all that amazed me. I mean, now, listen, I've put sparks together before that are a lot of different sources. And I didn't do a lot but like thread them together and share them. Um, but to write a novel, um, it's extraordinary. It's extraordinary, and it's really deep. And he finds um in just incredibly memorable single lines from sources like close to the Lincolns that make such a difference. And then the next chapter will be all of these extraordinary characters that just came out of his head and onto the piece. Oh, wow. And they are all the people in the Bardo, all the people who are without bodies. I know what that means now. You know what that means. So it is just extraordinary.

I mean, I think some people, and by the way, this is another thing to remember. When embarking on the scary creative project, yes, he ended up winning a, you know, a man booker award. He ended up with a New York Times bestseller. But also, just as many critics and people who are like, I can't read this. Those citations, it's like reading a citation every other line, I can't do it. And so there is no creation without criticism. I'm just reminded of that. And I'm so sparked by it. Like if we have in our minds, like, I'm gonna make the most glorious work of art ever. And no one, it'll be so great, no one will criticize it. I just don't think that is reality. Huh. In my mind. Yeah. So our solution to that, as you know, has been like, so you don't give the measuring stick to other people.

Do you feel it's an extraordinary work of art? Do you feel proud of it? Is it meaningful to you? Put it into the world if you choose to. Great. Um, but let's not make it about like, but what did people say? Because people will say great things and people will say less than great things. Like I just found that to be interesting as well. That like, yes, he was like showered with accolades. And I if you go on Goodreads or if you go on Amazon, there's just as many people going, Wait, what? I was told this was the most amazing book. Yeah. So what if? There you have it. What if is the answer? It just always feels so different when you're on the inside of like when you're the oh your work is the one that's receiving that feedback.

I can sit on the outside of that and hear you talk about that and be like, yeah, nothing's for everyone. And then when it's your work, I I'm just like I just feel uh differently about it. But then I to that, my brain answers with, okay, so we're we can we can create work that we either don't share with anyone or we don't um it's only seen by a safe amount of people, you know, that we can assume will give us accolades. But if you want like quantity, like if you want to scale it up, you want to scale it up, yeah. So anyway, you know, I just hearkening back to Jill Bolty Taylor. She would I think she the little bit that I understand, I think she would be like, um, it doesn't, she really like it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Yeah, I can imagine if we're thinking, if we're in the mindset of we are all one, a person's criticism of my work is just as likely to be a criticism of themselves and their own work. That's right. That's right. Yes. So I was astonished by like how he put these chapters together. He didn't technically in some of the chapters didn't write a single line of it. But he assembled it mistakingly. It's like one paint stroke at a time, it's mind boggling. And and yet, and one paint stroke at a time, except that you had to spend 60 hours finding isolating perfect. Yeah. And then the next one. So I don't know. Then in you know, like I said in the next chapter, he has these gloriously colorful characters, all of whom are in the bardo, presumably, and they're all astonished that a living human being, Abraham Lincoln, comes to the bardo to hold a dead body, and they watch and they are so moved and they crave that being held because they are spirits now and cannot be held.

And they want so desperately to communicate with him. So I won't say any more about what happens in the book, but I just want to marvel at that completely unique format and astonishing exploration of a historical figure through a fictional lens. And when we talk about like trailblazing, following your own guiding sense of what the work wants to be, this I think is what we mean. It doesn't have to follow a structure that you've seen before. Oh my God, I love it. And for my history nerds out there, my God, literally any historical person, any historical event can be viewed through a different lens. You can add fiction to it. You can have like a brand new story as only you can tell it. So speaking of people from history, this book has already, I've been completely sparked, and I'm kind of weaving my what do we make of it ideas throughout the Sparks today, just so you know.

But I am ready for a real juicy deep dive into Mary Todd Lincoln. I think she has, you know, she has appeared in various movies about her husband, but wow, this book sparked me to give a closer look to her, and I want to share a bit of that with you now. According to an article in The Washington Post by Lewis Bayard, Mary Todd Lincoln was an ambitious and polarizing first lady. She was scorned by her enemies as gross, avaricious, a she wolf, cold as a chunk of ice. She was slammed after leaving the White House for basic quote unlovableness. A Smithsonian magazine.com article by Kat Eshner says Abraham Lincoln's wife has been called a wildcat, menstrual, and bipolar among other things. I mean, Suze, when I hear such an effort being made to shun a woman, I always have the inclination to like look deeper.

I usually think, Jesus, why the pylon? Do you know what I mean? Just counterpoint, I have worked with people who are most unpleasant. And and they can be women too that it's just it's not sort of like oh they're just owning their power. It's way past that. It is it they're confrontative and angry. And so I I hear you and I'm also like and you know there are most unpleasant people that do exist. Uh 100% and I think that it is possible she perhaps she was bipolar. But when we look historically and people did not get treatments for it. Now, in today's day and age, the person that you worked with could have the opportunity to get treatment for um you know for anything. But uh, so I'm not saying that Mary Todd Lincoln was um was completely innocent in this, but I think when I hear like that viciousness, I do think why the pylon, and it makes me want to take a closer look.

So in light of this being like 2021, yeah, there's a few things that drew me in, you know, with new context. First of all, Mary Todd Lincoln is typically criticized for her mental health. And I feel defensive on her behalf because there's a few things to know about her before we can assess, you know, and many people have, trust me, but Mary Todd Lincoln was born to a large wealthy family in Kentucky. She was the fourth of seven children. She was well educated. This is early to mid-1800s, so that was not especially common for girls. Sent to finishing school. She learned French, dance, literature, music, drama, of course, social graces. At six years old, Mary's mother died in childbirth. Giving birth often happened at home.

I can't say for sure, but I can imagine a six-year-old child being traumatized by the sounds of childbirth and then her mother dying, subsequently dying. In six months' time, her father announced that he was engaged to someone new. He remarries, and he and his new wife have nine children together. Apparently, the stepmother was not too fond of Mary and the seven children from the previous marriage. So, for those doing the math, that meant her father had a total of 16 children. So I think how much support does a child get when they're when a parent dies, the new one remarries. There are 16 children in the house. So these mental health challenges, such as depression and migraine headaches, Mary experienced throughout her life, supposedly began around the age of six, when her mom dies.

And I read that, and I think, of course. Her mom died. Her mom died. She's six years old. I mean, she began to me showing signs of grief or PTSD, etc. That makes sense. As soon as she was a teenager, she got the hell out of that house. And she went to live with her married older sister. As she came to dating age, she was totally a hit in society. Hey, those etiquette lessons paying off. She had many potential suitors, including Abraham Lincoln's political opponent, Stephen Douglas, which I think is a spark and which is really interesting. Yeah, exactly. But my outcomes. Who's who's she gonna go with? Old Abe or Stephen Douglas. Um who knows? Tune in next week to find out. But much to everyone's surprise, she chose Lincoln, even though he was poor.

And at that time, it didn't really look like he had much of a political career ahead of him. Wow. When she was married to Abe, she had four sons with him. Only their eldest son, Robert Todd Lincoln, lived longer than his parents. Wow. So it's a lot of loss. Edward Baker Lincoln, known as Eddie, died of tuberculosis at four years old. William Wallace Lincoln, known as Willie, died of typhoid fever while Lincoln was president. This is the son who George Saunders writes about in Lincoln and the Bardo. Thomas Lincoln, known as Tad, died at age 18. Either from pneumonia or congestive heart failure or tuberculosis. This is all according to Wikipedia. Robert and Tad survived to adulthood, and then they both survived the death of their father, but only Robert outlived his mother.

So just let me give you like a little timeline. Track with me here. Mary met Abe in 1840. She was 21, he was 31. They fell in love, they got engaged. In early 41, he suddenly and inexplicably breaks off the engagement.

[37:50] Laura Camien: They remain apart for a year, then they get back together and promptly marry. Like, uh, one year later, they promptly marry. A year after that, they have their first son. Three years later, they have their second son. Four years later, Eddie, the second son, Eddie, dies. Mary almost immediately gets pregnant again. And that same year, Willie is born. Three years later, Tad is born. Now she has three children. She's lost one to tuberculosis. Eight years later, her husband becomes president. Amidst a pretty, pretty challenging time in our country.

[38:33] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. A civil war begins. One year into his presidency, their son Willie dies of typhoid fever at 11 years old. One year after that, Mary suffers some kind of head injury from a carriage accident, which increases her migraine headaches.

[38:51] Laura Camien: Yeah, that's not good.

[38:53] Susan Blackwell: Two years later, Mary is sitting next to her husband at the Ford Theater when he was shot and killed. According to Wikipedia, she sat with her husband watching the comic play Our American Cousin at Ford's Theater. During the third act, the president and Mrs. Lincoln drew closer. Mary whispered to her husband, who was holding her hand, "What will Miss Harris think of my hanging on to you?" So the president smiled and replied, "She won't think anything about it." That was the last conversation the Lincolns ever had. Five minutes later, at about 10:15 p.m., President Lincoln was shot by John Wilkes Booth. She was holding Abraham's hand when Booth's bullet struck the back of his head.

[39:42] Laura Camien: I can't imagine.

[39:43] Susan Blackwell: And unlike the outpouring of support for Jackie Kennedy when she was seated next to her husband when he was shot, the world did not burst out with condolences for Mary Todd Lincoln. Now here she is, widowed, two children living, two children she's lost. She has to petition the United States government to give her any kind of pension. She literally fights for it, positioning her husband as a fallen warrior, a victim of the Civil War. Begrudgingly, she eventually gets them to agree. Six years later, her youngest child, Thomas, dies from pneumonia or heart failure at age 18. I mean, is it any wonder this woman struggled?

[40:26] Laura Camien: Eventually, her only surviving son had her committed to a mental institution.

[40:32] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. She was 56 years old. According to Abraham Lincoln Online, Robert Todd Lincoln, the president's eldest son and a practicing attorney, arranged the insanity trial after agonizing over his distressed mother's erratic behavior. He understood Illinois law, which required a jury trial for involuntary commitment to a mental institution. Mary did not realize that a public trial awaited her and was forcibly taken to the courthouse on May 19, 1875, where 17 witnesses testified to her unstable condition, and no witnesses were called in her favor.

[41:13] Laura Camien: Again, would you not lose your mind over that?

[41:18] Susan Blackwell: Uh, the whole thing is so deeply sad.

[41:22] Laura Camien: Well, I mean, yeah. Your cal, you're, you know, of course, we're just sort of like this happened, this happened, this happened. But when you think of the like the events and the like the emotional blows that these things, the it's just extraordinary. And to never heal from a trauma, perhaps the first one at six years old, you know, and just keep layering them on.

[41:47] Susan Blackwell: So three months after being committed into an institution, Mary orchestrated her own escape. She smuggled letters to her lawyer, James B. Bradwell, and his wife, Myra Bradwell, who was not only her friend, but also a feminist lawyer.

[42:06] Laura Camien: Oh.

[42:07] Susan Blackwell: Now, when I read that, I was like, record scratch, feminist lawyer, did you say?

[42:07] Laura Camien: Feminist lawyer.

[42:16] Susan Blackwell: It's amazing. It's 1875. Women aren't even allowed to be lawyers, but Myra Bradwell changes all that. She's a complete badass feminist lawyer. And she is a spark into herself. Please look her up. There are stories galore about this pioneering woman. So James and Myra Bradwell worked to get Mary out of the institution. She's released to her sister until her death in 1882 at the age of 63. She remained estranged from her only living son, Robert, for all that time because he put her into the actual mental, emotional, and physical condition in 1875 is still debated by historians and clinicians and the hosts of the Sparkfile podcast.

[43:09] Laura Camien: I mean, people do not know.

[43:11] Susan Blackwell: And I'm certainly not saying that I know any better.

[43:45] Laura Camien: Odd marble statue, the cracks of which are repeatedly hammered. Mary Todd Lincoln was a victim, battered by personal adversity and trapped by destructive conventions of Victorian domesticity. She may have been the partner of one of America's best known presidents, but after all, she was only human.

[44:05] Susan Blackwell: In an article on Thoughtco.com by Robert McNamara, from today's vantage point, it's honestly impossible to assess her true mental condition. It has been often pointed out that traits she exhibited may have simply indicated eccentric behavior, poor judgment, or the effects of a stressful life, not actual mental illness.

[44:31] Laura Camien: And grief.

[44:33] Susan Blackwell: I mean, I think we know so much more about the power of grief now. And we cannot rule out the effects of the quote unquote solutions she was given. She relied on over-the-counter drugs that contained alcohol and what? Opium, first of all. Historian Jean Baker, again, called her behavior eccentric, said her migraine headaches had been mistakenly diagnosed as hallucinations, and that she had been given large doses of chloral hydrate for insomnia. I mean, I would just really love a more forgiving look at this woman's life. Um, and frankly, how we've treated women throughout history who've been denied any support or help regarding their mental and emotional challenges. That's them's my feelings.

[45:21] Laura Camien: I just think like you cannot take from it when a woman in that period goes to a doctor and they're like, you're hysterical.

[45:29] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[45:29] Laura Camien: You've lost it. And there was no real help for it.

[45:35] Susan Blackwell: Yeah. Um, and we have such a greater awareness of the brain's capabilities, um, and what may be going on in the brain now than they did then, obviously.

[45:45] Laura Camien: Yeah, and it was also a time where if somebody needed a convenient way to remove you from a situation, if you were a male someone, you could say you could claim they're hysterical and have them institutionalized and you know, and later, like um, you know, have a piece of your brain removed, because that was the answer.

[46:07] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, that's true.

[46:08] Laura Camien: So, yeah, so I think there's still more to be to be learned there, and I guess I would just love I think her life is truly a study in grief. Really, you could put the lens on and Lincoln and the Bardo in some ways does that, but in a very, very unique way.

[46:24] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[46:25] Laura Camien: So another fascinating paradox in Mary Todd Lincoln's world, and I have not completely figured this out yet. It doesn't seem logical to me. But if you recall, her family was a wealthy family in Kentucky.

[46:43] Susan Blackwell: And although her family rejected the idea of slavery, according to an article on e-history by Kimberly Largent, they owned one slave for every member of the family, one enslaved person, what we would call an enslaved person now, uh, for every member of the family.

[47:06] Laura Camien: Even though they rejected the idea, the concept of slavery.

[47:10] Susan Blackwell: That is correct, which is very hard to reconcile in my mind. But there's some good news here if you stick with me. Apparently, so Mary's father was very vocal about his anti-slavery stance.

[47:22] Laura Camien: Wow.

[47:23] Susan Blackwell: Pretty confusing because that makes them a slaveholder in an anti-slavery family in a state that allows slavery to exist. So it's very hard to hold that in one's mind.

[47:41] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[47:42] Susan Blackwell: According to the history website, Heathervoyd.com, Mary learned about slavery growing up in Kentucky. Her father's involvement in state politics meant that his children heard political issues debated at home. One of those issues was slavery. One of the enslaved people, they called Aunt Sally, was a mother figure to Mary when Mary's own mother died. When Mary heard a knocking outside one night, Sally explained that she had made a mark on the fence to signal to runaway enslaved people that they could stop here for food.

[48:24] Laura Camien: Mary never told her father.

[48:27] Susan Blackwell: So she sort of worked in cahoots with who she called Aunt Sally. And her relationship with Aunt Sally helped Mary form her very staunch anti-slavery stance. Again, from Heathervoigt.com. Shortly after she became first lady and moved to Washington, Mary struck up a friendship with her African American dressmaker and former enslaved person, Elizabeth Keckly.

[48:58] Laura Camien: When former enslaved people came flocking to the Capitol during the Civil War without food or a place to sleep, Elizabeth made it her mission to help them.

[49:09] Susan Blackwell: Elizabeth, that's the dressmaker.

[49:11] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[49:11] Susan Blackwell: Mary wrote to her husband, then president Abraham Lincoln, asking him to support her friend's charity. She also made contributions herself. In a letter to her husband, she wrote, "Elizabeth says the immense number of contrabands," that's what Elizabeth referred to them as in Washington, referred to the enslaved people.

[49:32] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[49:33] Susan Blackwell: They eventually created a program, I think that even included that name. She says, "The immense number of enslaved people in Washington are suffering intensely, many without bed covering and have to use any bit of carpet to cover themselves, many dying of want. I have given her the privilege of investing $200 here in bed covering. This sum I am sure you will not object to being used in this way. The cause of humanity requires it."

[50:08] Laura Camien: So unaware of Mary's growing anti-slavery feelings, radical abolitionist Jane Swisshelm expected Mary Todd Lincoln to be a Confederate sympathizer. When they met at the White House in 1863, however, Swisshelm believed that Mary was, quote, more radically opposed to slavery than the president.

[50:31] Laura Camien: By listening to her African American friends' descriptions of suffering, Mary took up the cause of helping former enslaved people.

[50:41] Laura Camien: Through this cause, Mary gained a perspective on slavery that most whites, including the president, did not have.

[50:49] Laura Camien: That was all from Heathervoyd.com, but a similar sentiment was shared on history.com.

[50:55] Laura Camien: They said Mary Todd, even more so than her husband, was a staunch abolitionist.

[51:02] Laura Camien: She supported his political career as he rose from the Illinois legislature to become one of the country's most charismatic political orators to speak out against slavery.

[51:13] Laura Camien: His views aroused the ire of Southern slaveholding interests.

[51:18] Laura Camien: Even early on in his career, Lincoln received death threats from pro-slavery Southerners.

[51:25] Laura Camien: And Mary Todd was labeled a traitor to her Southern Kentucky roots.

[51:30] Laura Camien: During the Civil War, she felt a deep sense of estrangement and tragedy.

[51:35] Laura Camien: Most of her male family members fought on the side of the Confederacy.

[51:43] Laura Camien: Whoa.

[51:45] Laura Camien: In fact, several of her half-brothers served in the Confederate Army and were killed in action.

[51:53] Laura Camien: And one served as a surgeon in the Confederacy.

[52:02] Susan Blackwell: Suze, I have seen, as I'm sure you have, I've seen movies and TV shows.

[52:07] Susan Blackwell: I've read stories about families fighting each other during the Civil War, brother to brother on the battlefield.

[52:14] Susan Blackwell: But until recent times in our country, where politics has divided friends and neighbors and families, I did not have a full appreciation and understanding of the pain, I think, as I do now.

[52:32] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[52:32] Laura Camien: And now, like this just floored me.

[52:36] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[52:37] Laura Camien: Imagine being Mary Todd Lincoln.

[52:40] Laura Camien: Your husband is the president.

[52:45] Laura Camien: I just got choked up.

[52:46] Laura Camien: Your husband is the president of the United States.

[52:50] Laura Camien: You are fighting to put an end to the practice of enslaving human beings.

[52:56] Laura Camien: And your family is actively fighting, literally willing to lose their lives to defeat you and to defeat that idea.

[53:07] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[53:08] Susan Blackwell: Um, my heart hurts when I think about that.

[53:11] Susan Blackwell: First, the fact that there's even an argument in favor of the practice of slavery is stomach churning.

[53:18] Susan Blackwell: But that the people in favor of it are her family members.

[53:22] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[53:24] Laura Camien: I don't know.

[53:24] Laura Camien: I don't mean to make it seem trite.

[53:28] Laura Camien: I don't mean to like sum up an enormous topic like this in such a small statement, but it hurts when the values that make so much sense to you, basic human rights, human equality, but the people closest to you don't agree with those values.

[53:48] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[53:48] Susan Blackwell: It can be devastating.

[53:50] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[53:51] Susan Blackwell: I don't know about you, but I have friends and family members who have disconnected from me in the past year.

[54:00] Susan Blackwell: Whether it was when I posted on social media my support for Black Lives Matter, or when Joe Biden won the presidency, or when I chose not to travel due to a pandemic.

[54:11] Susan Blackwell: I don't know.

[54:12] Susan Blackwell: Like I literally don't know what of my actions could have been so in such disagreement with their values.

[54:22] Susan Blackwell: But I have had people unfollow me on social media, which is ironic because I barely even post on social media.

[54:29] Susan Blackwell: But no explanation given.

[54:31] Susan Blackwell: I'm talking actual friends and family members.

[54:34] Susan Blackwell: And I'm not gonna lie, it really hurts.

[54:38] Susan Blackwell: And if the reason is political, as I suspect it is, yeah, it hurts even more.

[54:46] Susan Blackwell: I know I'm not alone in this.

[54:49] Susan Blackwell: I know that families across our country are being torn apart.

[54:56] Susan Blackwell: We're losing important people in our lives because of politics, conspiracy theories, extremism.

[55:06] Susan Blackwell: And maybe they're not dying on battlefields, but they could be at some point.

[55:10] Susan Blackwell: But they're still gone.

[55:12] Susan Blackwell: And I don't know.

[55:13] Susan Blackwell: I will probably likely do an entire spark on this topic because it is a bounty.

[55:19] Susan Blackwell: Um, I think I'll just say this.

[55:21] Susan Blackwell: I mean, I don't care.

[55:22] Susan Blackwell: If someone, you know, I think for a lot of us, it has been important to state our values.

[55:28] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[55:29] Laura Camien: State them clearly.

[55:31] Susan Blackwell: And if these values are not in alignment, like if you not even that we have to align on everything, but that we need to align on basic human rights.

[55:31] Susan Blackwell: We need to align on those things.

[55:43] Susan Blackwell: And if we don't, then if you want to unfollow me, that's okay.

[55:47] Susan Blackwell: Um, but what is that next step?

[55:51] Susan Blackwell: So we unfollow each other.

[55:53] Susan Blackwell: How are we going to, you know, come back together?

[55:57] Susan Blackwell: How do we heal?

[55:58] Susan Blackwell: I don't know.

[56:00] Susan Blackwell: So that will need to be another spark for another day.

[56:03] Susan Blackwell: Um, but I'll just say our country is feeling this pain.

[56:07] Susan Blackwell: I know I'm not alone in losing people.

[56:09] Susan Blackwell: And creatively, I think the world is ripe to look at the story of Mary Todd Lincoln in a new light.

[56:16] Susan Blackwell: And I think her life experience could illuminate a lot for us right now.

[56:23] Susan Blackwell: Now I wanna go back, remember the dressmaker, Elizabeth Keckly, I mentioned.

[56:28] Susan Blackwell: And wasn't Keckley one of the names that's cited in Lincoln in the Bardo?

[56:33] Laura Camien: Yeah, you just said that name.

[56:35] Laura Camien: And it struck my ear.

[56:36] Laura Camien: That is correct.

[56:37] Laura Camien: That was the last name you said.

[56:39] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[56:39] Susan Blackwell: Good listening, Suze.

[56:41] Laura Camien: Hey, I'm not just sitting over here nodding my head in silence.

[56:45] Susan Blackwell: I'm actually listening.

[56:46] Susan Blackwell: Thanks.

[56:46] Susan Blackwell: Thanks for listening.

[56:47] Susan Blackwell: So, Elizabeth Keckly, woman of color, former enslaved person.

[56:53] Susan Blackwell: She bought her own freedom and her son's freedom and became a successful business owner in Washington, DC.

[57:01] Susan Blackwell: She's an astonishing spark.

[57:04] Susan Blackwell: Astonishing spark.

[57:06] Susan Blackwell: Please look her up.

[57:08] Susan Blackwell: She and Mary became close friends for a time, but in 1868, Elizabeth Keckly published a memoir titled Behind the Scenes, or 30 Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House, which I would love to read, and I believe is back in print.

[57:32] Susan Blackwell: According to Wikipedia, although this book provides valuable insight into the character and life of Mary Todd Lincoln, at the time, the former First Lady and much of the public and press regarded it as a breach of friendship and confidentiality.

[57:50] Susan Blackwell: Keckley was widely criticized for her book.

[57:55] Susan Blackwell: Especially as her editor had published letters from Mary Todd Lincoln to her.

[57:59] Susan Blackwell: It has now been gratefully accepted by many historians and biographers and used to flesh out the president and the first lady's personalities behind the scenes in the executive mansion.

[58:11] Susan Blackwell: In a fantastic article in the New York Times by Nancy Wartick, the path that had led Keckley to become a first lady's most trusted friend was almost unimaginable.

[58:24] Susan Blackwell: She survived rape and years of beating, going on to start her own business and eventually buying her way out.

[58:35] Susan Blackwell: Then she earned a place as one of the reigning courtiers of high society in Washington.

[58:43] Susan Blackwell: One of a relatively small number of literate former enslaved people.

[58:48] Laura Camien: Wow.

[58:58] Susan Blackwell: Her memoir is now considered one of the most important narratives of Lincoln's domestic life.

[59:05] Susan Blackwell: She was a historian, and that was really unusual for a black woman to write as a historian of a time and a place and a White House.

[59:14] Susan Blackwell: Jennifer Fleischer, author of the 2003 biography, Mrs. Lincoln and Mrs. Keckley, said in an interview.

[59:42] Susan Blackwell: Readers in her day, white readers, they took it as an audacious tell all, Fleischer said.

[59:51] Susan Blackwell: You know, how dare she?

[59:54] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[59:55] Susan Blackwell: There are to them, there are two categories the faithful servant or the angry servant.

[1:00:04] Susan Blackwell: Keckley was neither servant nor faithful nor angry.

[1:00:10] Susan Blackwell: She presented herself, the White House, and Mary Todd Lincoln as she saw them and knew them, and that didn't work.

[1:00:19] Susan Blackwell: That was all Fleischer.

[1:00:22] Susan Blackwell: Now, ugh.

[1:00:25] Susan Blackwell: There's so much there.

[1:00:27] Susan Blackwell: There's so much there.

[1:00:28] Susan Blackwell: I just want to bring things full circle.

[1:00:31] Susan Blackwell: The book that Keckley wrote, as you so astutely heard, the book that Keckley wrote in the 1800s was one of the resources George Saunders used for Lincoln in the Bardo.

[1:00:43] Susan Blackwell: In that same New York Times article, Saunders says, I don't think my book would exist if I hadn't read her memoir.

[1:00:51] Susan Blackwell: Saunders said of the novel in an email, it was reading her firsthand account that made me feel an anecdote I'd heard about Lincoln entering his son's tomb could support a book.

[1:01:10] Laura Camien: Whoa.

[1:01:11] Susan Blackwell: He goes on to say.

[1:01:12] Susan Blackwell: We've got to get our hands on this book.

[1:01:15] Susan Blackwell: All right.

[1:01:15] Susan Blackwell: He goes on to say, what a life she had.

[1:01:18] Susan Blackwell: George Saunders said in an email to go from slavery to the White House, lose a son in the war, write a book, befriend the Lincolns, fall out of their favor, witness so many historical moments.

[1:01:35] Susan Blackwell: To me, her book is beautiful.

[1:01:37] Susan Blackwell: And I think we are so lucky to have it.

[1:01:41] Susan Blackwell: So this book, Lincoln in the Bardo, which I have not even finished yet, already had a profound impact on my life and led me down so many sparkish paths, discovering more books and more people whose stories are astonishing and need to be heard.

[1:02:02] Susan Blackwell: It's made me think about how we have drastically misjudged mental illness, mental differences, and emotional well-being in so many ways throughout history, and in particular women's mental well-being.

[1:02:15] Susan Blackwell: It's made me think about what crushing grief can do to a person, what feeling responsible for other people's deaths can do to us, how painful it can be to be separated from family while they're still alive or after death.

[1:02:31] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:02:31] Laura Camien: What the consequences are for a woman of color to tell her story, her remarkable triumphant story, until she told her story, until she dared to make it visible to the world, and then was punished once again.

[1:02:48] Susan Blackwell: George Saunders has also written us a permission slip to tell old stories with a new twist and what can come out of a spark just by holding in his mind an image of a parent holding their child's body consumed with grief.

[1:03:06] Susan Blackwell: I'm immensely thankful that Elizabeth Keckly had the courage to publish her book.

[1:03:15] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:03:16] Susan Blackwell: And I'm so immensely thankful that George Saunders faced down the fear of creating his book, that he let the fear of having a regret push him to remove the barriers between him and his own creative self-expression.

[1:03:32] Susan Blackwell: We are all the better for the book and for the reminder that the pain of keeping it inside of us may be greater than any pain we might experience in the creative process itself.

[1:03:45] Susan Blackwell: And if we can push through, we get to freedom.

[1:03:49] Susan Blackwell: True creative freedom.

[1:03:51] Laura Camien: Cammy.

[1:03:55] Susan Blackwell: There's so much.

[1:03:56] Laura Camien: There's so much.

[1:03:56] Susan Blackwell: There's so much.

[1:03:59] Laura Camien: First of all, while you were talking, I did pull up some pictures of Mary Todd Lincoln so that I could just see her face.

[1:04:08] Laura Camien: And I'm so their last exchange when she was holding his hand at the theater and saying, like, what will Mrs. Harris think of and you know, he's saying, I don't know, probably not think anything of it. I was like, that it sounds like I mean, it depends on he how he's if indeed that is what was said. Because I think it came from her. Was it a full moon? Was it a sliver of a moon?

[1:04:36] Susan Blackwell: Yeah, that's right. But it's um memory is fallible.

[1:04:40] Laura Camien: That's right. But it's it seems like they liked each other. His line reading could have been more dismissive or it could have been more affectionate, but it seems like they liked each other enough to hold hands.

[1:04:52] Susan Blackwell: They were also in public though.

[1:04:54] Laura Camien: So they were but it seems like they might have liked each other. But one of the criticisms of her is that she had so much influence over him and his political career.

[1:05:04] Susan Blackwell: I think he respected her intellect. I think you know, we've seen what happens when we have um, you know, vocal um first ladies, but I think they had a mutual respect. I I really do.

[1:05:19] Laura Camien: I mean, there are stories of her temper, and you know, I'm certainly not saying that they didn't have, you know, maybe they had a real up and down. She may have been bipolar. We really don't know. What we know is whatever was going on with her, it was, you know, untreated or poorly treated by any kind of you know, doctors.

[1:05:43] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:05:44] Laura Camien: But I also I think when you started talking about her activism on behalf of enslaved people, yeah. I thought, man, these fighters throughout history. Yeah, we have people uh just the the first person that comes to mind in addition to Mary Todd Lincoln is Larry Kramer, like some somebody who is they are comfortable living in the fight for whatever their cause is.

[1:06:13] Susan Blackwell: So whether it's you know, to get people to pay attention to this AIDS plague that's sweeping through a community. And I think I'm so glad for the Larry Kramers and maybe the Mary Todd Lincoln's in the world who are comfortable in that fight. I know that it's not my natural setting in the slightest, yeah. But if but God bless those people that they are comfortable with it and they are called to, and it made me wonder how much it makes me want to read more about her.

[1:06:33] Laura Camien: It makes me want to read the Keckley book. Because that seems I don't know. It seem based on what I'm hearing from you, it really seems like uh like a peephole into the life, including it sounds like from the correspondence from Mary Todd Lincoln to Keckley to Elizabeth Keckly that like maybe she could be a fucking pain in the ass. You know what I mean?

[1:07:08] Susan Blackwell: Just like on an interpersonal level.

[1:07:10] Laura Camien: 100%.

[1:07:11] Susan Blackwell: But but I can also much more clearly imagine that if she was, I'm using little quoties, problematic for her time. Because, you know, to take a stance like that, an anti-slavery stance, when it's sort of like it goes against your family's position in many ways, it goes, it speaks to financial gain and loss. Her husband's political conversation, all of it, it would be very easy to be, oh, like that is a person who identifies as a woman who is outspoken. And then if you have the legal lever to say she's mentally ill and to have them institutionalized, like that is some risky business to be that forward-footed.

[1:08:01] Laura Camien: And I I'm I don't know. I I I want to learn more, but I'm feeling you, and I'm feeling this.

[1:08:07] Susan Blackwell: Right. The the blame that she took, like I I described all the death that happened um, you know, directly on her life. But while she and Abraham Lincoln, when the Civil War was going on, they felt responsible for every death for, you know, thousands upon thousands of Americans died killing each other. And so you had people who did not support her stance, um, did not support, you know, were did not agree with her being an abolitionist and hated her for her pushing that. You also had people, northerners, who were fighting for the cause, but then when their sons died, she was to blame, you know, even though they agreed in the you know ideology, she was to blame for their son dying. She really didn't have a lot of people who were like um, you know, complete fans.

[1:09:06] Laura Camien: It's fascinating.

[1:09:08] Susan Blackwell: I'm realizing now Elizabeth Keckly, who I think famously made some dresses for Mary Todd Lincoln.

[1:09:18] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:09:18] Susan Blackwell: The inaugural dress.

[1:09:20] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:09:21] Susan Blackwell: I I think I've seen some of these dresses in museums in Washington, and perhaps it didn't register. So she's a fascinating sort of renaissance person because not only is she a creative artist, I mean, she's clearly a designer, craftsperson, but she's also uh by all accounts a wonderful writer and a historian and uh an amazing creative brave risk taker.

[1:09:50] Laura Camien: Yeah, yeah. Incredible, right?

[1:09:53] Susan Blackwell: You know, this was the an old bait and switch spark. Because I thought we were all George Saunders and his spark of inspiration, but we got sparked by his sparks.

[1:10:04] Laura Camien: Oh man.

[1:10:05] Susan Blackwell: Right. I love this. I mean, the fact that he read Elizabeth Keckly's um memoir, and that she like her voice is throughout this book as well.

[1:10:17] Laura Camien: Because literally, yeah, because of how he cites the and also it sounds like he couldn't have written that without her writing her book. Otherwise, like it would be pure fiction in terms of um what we think might have been going on in the White House.

[1:10:37] Susan Blackwell: But thanks to her voice coming to us through time, through 150 years later, her voice is resonating through this book, telling us this is what my eyes saw.

[1:10:51] Laura Camien: You know what it brings up for me too?

[1:10:52] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:10:53] Laura Camien: We have clients, and I know I've had this feeling myself, this fear, there's that fear that if they write from their lived experience, they are going to make people angry. And one of the things, or you know, upset or disappoint, whatever, one of the things that we sometimes say as we're processing through that is you know, write like they're dead, like write as if write like they don't get a vote. And I feel like Elizabeth Keckly is a great person to keep in mind about yeah, you may take some heat. You may take some heat for what you write, but in the long lens of time, if you're an Elizabeth Keckly, it it really matters historically, that's right, creatively on influencing some great uh works of art that are being produced in our lifetimes.

[1:11:50] Susan Blackwell: That's right. It's really sort of like, yeah, it's I guess it can it in some ways it is a high stakes game. But I mean, I think about like so people are still debating to this day what was the truth of Lincoln, what was the truth of Mary Todd Lincoln, what was the truth of their relationship? You know, really like they want to get in there, and no one can say the whole truth of anything, they can only say their truth. And Elizabeth Keckley shared her truth, what she lived through her eyes, through her heart. She put it on the page. That's all one can do.

[1:12:28] Laura Camien: Yeah. Really.

[1:12:29] Susan Blackwell: Well done.

[1:12:30] Laura Camien: Oh.

[1:12:31] Susan Blackwell: This was so surprising.

[1:12:33] Laura Camien: My lord.

[1:12:34] Susan Blackwell: There's so much, you know, there's just so much there and so much more that could be there. But please take it and make it, friends.

[1:12:41] Laura Camien: Get out there and make some stuff.

[1:12:42] Susan Blackwell: There's a lot to be made of it, I think. And you know, when you were talking earlier about is there anything I know that I want to do before I'm done. And one of the great, it's it's just like we'll never have enough time to live all the life we want to live and to read all the books we want to read and to but I'm glad that I have you, Laura, because actually I'm like, oh, well, Laura's um like sharing a bunch of stuff with me so that at least I'll get a little taste of it, even if I don't get to all of it.

[1:13:13] Laura Camien: A little extra.

[1:13:13] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[1:13:14] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:13:15] Susan Blackwell: So keep reporting back to me on Lincoln and the Bardo. Let's get our hands on Elizabeth Keckly's book.

[1:13:20] Laura Camien: Yes, indeed.

[1:13:21] Susan Blackwell: And it makes me want to read more about Mary Todd Lincoln.

[1:13:23] Laura Camien: I want I want some.

[1:13:25] Susan Blackwell: That'd be a good musical.

[1:13:26] Laura Camien: A real, yes.

[1:13:28] Susan Blackwell: I mean, fuck yes.

[1:13:31] Laura Camien: Please, she can be a musical.

[1:13:33] Susan Blackwell: Woo.

[1:13:35] Laura Camien: Oh.

[1:13:35] Susan Blackwell: That woman could be a musical.

[1:13:37] Laura Camien: Hey, I think that's it.

[1:13:39] Susan Blackwell: This episode of The Spark File was made on the lands of the Lenape people and the Seminole people.

[1:13:45] Laura Camien: And as always, we hope that it put another bunch of sparks in your file.

[1:13:50] Susan Blackwell: Listen to me. If there is a spark that you'd like us to explore, or you've taken a spark and fanned it into a creative flame and you'd like to share that with us, you can email us at thesparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website, thesparkfile.com. We'll even happily take your feedback, but you know the price of admission.

[1:14:09] Laura Camien: First, you gotta share a creative risk that you have taken recently.

[1:14:14] Susan Blackwell: You can follow us on social at the Sparkfile and be sure to subscribe, rate, and five-star review this podcast. If you have a chance to do it, it really helps other listeners to find us, especially subscribing. Also, if you like this podcast, we hope you'll share it with people that you love.

[1:14:30] Laura Camien: And if you didn't like it, I don't know. We're all one, so on some level, that means you don't like yourself.

[1:14:30] Susan Blackwell: I don't know.

[1:14:39] Laura Camien: Oh, there's that.

[1:14:40] Susan Blackwell: I was gonna say put it in a book and publish it.

[1:14:42] Laura Camien: Put it in a book.

[1:14:44] 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 has been knocking at your door. It's your turn to take a spark and fan it into a flame.

[1:14:58] Laura Camien: You gotta take it and make it.

[1:15:03] Susan Blackwell: Uh cams.

[1:15:06] Laura Camien: When I bug into something that inspires me, I dump it in the spark files.

[1:15:15] Susan Blackwell: Spark file could be something that I wanna take or how I wanna be.

[1:15:21] Laura Camien: I'll pump it in the spark files.

[1:15:24] Susan Blackwell: Sparkfile.

[1:15:26] Laura Camien: I jump into my spark files.

[1:15:31] Susan Blackwell: Let's open up the spark fire.