This transcript was automatically generated and might contain errors.

[0:00] Susan Blackwell: Hi, this is part two of our conversation with Meta Wagner.

[0:02] Laura Camien: If you haven't listened to part one, you might want to go back and listen to it or not.

[0:06] Susan Blackwell: However, you're doing it, you're doing it right. Also, if you're enjoying this conversation, be sure to visit thesparkfile.com/slash five types.

[0:13] Laura Camien: That's thesparkfile.com slash the number five, T Y P E S, to take the quiz and learn what creative type you are.

[0:21] Susan Blackwell: Enjoy the show. The Spark File podcast may contain profanity and other adult content.

[0:26] Laura Camien: Please use your discretion.

[0:32] Meta Wagner: When I bump into something that inspires me, I jump in my spark file.

[0:37] Susan Blackwell: Spark file.

[0:40] Meta Wagner: To be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be. I pump it in my spark.

[0:46] Susan Blackwell: Spark.

[0:49] Meta Wagner: I jump into my sparks.

[0:54] Susan Blackwell: Let's open up the spark file.

[0:59] Meta Wagner: Third type.

[1:01] Laura Camien: Third type.

[1:01] Meta Wagner: Third type.

[1:03] Laura Camien: Is this a drinking game?

[1:05] Meta Wagner: Should be.

[1:06] Laura Camien: When you hear your type, just take a shot.

[1:06] Meta Wagner: Take a shot.

[1:11] Laura Camien: When you relate to any of this.

[1:14] Meta Wagner: We're gonna be doing a lot of drinking then.

[1:18] Laura Camien: The third type is the sensitive soul.

[1:22] Meta Wagner: Sensitive soul is someone who's sensitive, you know, has maybe was called oversensitive as a kid.

[1:30] Laura Camien: Has a lot of feeling.

[1:32] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[1:33] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[1:33] Meta Wagner: Everybody in the room just raise their hand.

[1:37] Laura Camien: Has a lot of feeling, you know, wants to get it out.

[1:39] Meta Wagner: A lot of songwriters, a lot of singers are like this. A lot of actors are like this.

[1:44] Laura Camien: Memoir writers who maybe want to go back to their childhood and figure out how did I survive?

[1:50] Meta Wagner: Yeah, yeah. This trauma to order it.

[1:52] Laura Camien: Yes.

[1:53] Meta Wagner: Put it in order, make meaning of it. All those sorts of things.

[1:56] Laura Camien: So this is when you were talking yesterday, and just the top of my head lifted up.

[2:02] Meta Wagner: And great big Phoenix flew out.

[2:06] Laura Camien: I wish I had seen that from the stage.

[2:08] Meta Wagner: I didn't want to distract.

[2:09] Laura Camien: Slightly distracting.

[2:10] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[2:11] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[2:12] Meta Wagner: So feeling, you know, just feeling meaning, making meaning.

[2:16] Laura Camien: Um sometimes also uh Mary J.

[2:20] Meta Wagner: Blige had said, you know, she heard a song.

[2:23] Laura Camien: I love you right now.

[2:24] Meta Wagner: I'm I love me too, but I'm a name in the surface.

[2:29] Laura Camien: Just a casual Mary J. Blige reference.

[2:31] Meta Wagner: Mary J reference. This is it. You've done your homework.

[2:34] Laura Camien: I've done the homework.

[2:37] Meta Wagner: I wish I could remember off the top of my head the song she heard, but she heard a song that made and she had a, you know, tough child, tough upbringing.

[2:44] Laura Camien: She heard this song, and it felt so uplifting to her and so inspiring to her that she thought, that's what I want to do.

[2:53] Meta Wagner: I want to sing, and I want to be able to do that for other people too.

[2:57] Laura Camien: Wow.

[2:57] Meta Wagner: And that's part of a sensitive soul's kind of way into creativity and part of their drive is to help other people.

[3:05] Laura Camien: Expressing myself, I may help others express as well.

[3:09] Meta Wagner: And together we can feel exactly and have permission to feel the things.

[3:14] Laura Camien: Yeah, good permission, I think is part of that too.

[3:16] Meta Wagner: So, in addition to Mary J. Who else?

[3:19] Laura Camien: Oh my goodness, you know, one of my favorite stories is you know, the painting, the scream.

[3:24] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[3:24] Laura Camien: So iconic painting.

[3:27] Meta Wagner: He uh told the story of how he was very filled with anxiety, and he was I love the story.

[3:35] Laura Camien: He was standing on the edge of a fjord.

[3:37] Meta Wagner: Half the time we don't know if these stories are true, but let's go with that.

[3:41] Laura Camien: Storytelling and it's bad.

[3:43] Meta Wagner: Storytelling and it was sunset, and he said the sky turned a blood red, and he heard an endless scream pass through nature.

[3:53] Laura Camien: Edvard.

[3:54] Meta Wagner: Edvard, he went and captured that on the canvas.

[3:58] Laura Camien: And that was the spark for that.

[4:00] Meta Wagner: That for that painting sparked that painting.

[4:02] Laura Camien: That makes me feel even more when I think about that painting.

[4:06] Meta Wagner: Knowing the spark behind it.

[4:08] Laura Camien: Right.

[4:10] Meta Wagner: Even it just strengthens that resonance.

[4:13] Laura Camien: I know it is not for everybody, but Sidebark.

[4:15] Meta Wagner: I've for me when I understand a spark behind a creative act.

[4:22] Laura Camien: I and it gives me some context for it.

[4:25] Meta Wagner: Maybe it isn't just me.

[4:27] Laura Camien: I feel like I can understand the work more.

[4:30] Meta Wagner: And I feel like I can sort of um I don't know.

[4:33] Laura Camien: I think our friends at Story did um a podcast recently called something about um The Work Doesn't Speak for Itself.

[4:42] Meta Wagner: Interesting.

[4:43] Laura Camien: And it was, in fact, how you strengthen your audience experience of it by sharing the source spark.

[4:51] Meta Wagner: What led you there?

[4:52] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[4:52] Meta Wagner: How you got there.

[4:53] Laura Camien: I mean, they didn't say the source spark, but we'll say the source spark.

[4:57] Meta Wagner: TM.

[4:57] Laura Camien: Um, yeah.

[5:00] Meta Wagner: Copyright.

[5:01] Laura Camien: Now they can't say it.

[5:01] Meta Wagner: So we'll sue you.

[5:05] Laura Camien: I'm afraid.

[5:06] Meta Wagner: I'm very afraid.

[5:08] Laura Camien: But I thought it was really interesting.

[5:09] Meta Wagner: I'm sure that's not true for everyone.

[5:10] Laura Camien: Some people like the mystery.

[5:10] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[5:10] Laura Camien: But or they just want they don't need all the shamsham.

[5:14] Meta Wagner: But I do enjoy it.

[5:16] Laura Camien: Well, Orwell said, talking or well.

[5:21] Meta Wagner: We like it, John.

[5:22] Laura Camien: Or well to Mary J.

[5:23] Meta Wagner: Blige.

[5:24] Laura Camien: Drop the name.

[5:25] Meta Wagner: He said that you really needed to understand something about an artist's upbringing to understand their motives for doing creative work.

[5:34] Laura Camien: I agree with that.

[5:35] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[5:35] Laura Camien: He was talking specifically about writers, but I've, you know, trampled on him and decided this applies to all artists.

[5:41] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[5:42] Laura Camien: But I I do think there's um I talk about this with my students sometimes.

[5:46] Meta Wagner: Sometimes, you know, a lot of artists were not great nice people.

[5:51] Laura Camien: So you look at like Picasso and Hemingway, lots of drama and mistreatment sometimes of women and all that kind of stuff.

[5:59] Meta Wagner: And it can skew your way of looking at their work in a way that they certainly would not have wanted, but that we have the curiosity to find out.

[6:09] Laura Camien: Right.

[6:10] Meta Wagner: When Picasso painted Guernica, which is one of the great anti-war works of art of all time, he allegedly, this is what I read, had two women mud wrestling in front of him as his little inspiration.

[6:27] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[6:27] Meta Wagner: Maybe I misquoted mud wrestling, but they were fighting with each other.

[6:30] Laura Camien: And he was like, come on, I'm working on an anti-war painting.

[6:34] Meta Wagner: Sure.

[6:36] Laura Camien: So that sort of gives you a feeling like that.

[6:38] Meta Wagner: Yeah, that's a different feeling.

[6:40] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[6:40] Meta Wagner: So sometimes it can kind of distract from your pure appreciation.

[6:44] Laura Camien: I think for myself, I like to see the art not knowing and then go back and see it knowing more.

[6:49] Meta Wagner: Just point counterpoint.

[6:51] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[6:51] Meta Wagner: Um I moderate a conference at the Metropolitan Opera each year.

[6:58] Laura Camien: And I need some context.

[7:02] Meta Wagner: I need some just to be able to get inside and start a burgeoning enjoyment of the opera.

[7:10] Laura Camien: Um, a little bit of information and context is very helpful to me.

[7:14] Meta Wagner: But I also have had experiences where I'm like, I don't want to know anything about the movie.

[7:14] Laura Camien: I don't want to know anything about the actors in the movie.

[7:21] Meta Wagner: I don't want to know about their romantic personal lives.

[7:25] Laura Camien: I just my my purest sometimes my purest experience of a piece of art is when none of that has been presented.

[7:34] Meta Wagner: Right.

[7:34] Laura Camien: Isn't that why, you know, I saw a panel at the New Yorker festival once with character actors and was like, I recognized all of them.

[7:41] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[7:41] Laura Camien: But when I see them in something, I don't bring all that baggage.

[7:44] Meta Wagner: That's right.

[7:45] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[7:45] Meta Wagner: Because they managed to like artisans.

[7:47] Laura Camien: Did you just get up in the middle of that and march right on out the door?

[7:50] Meta Wagner: She's like, You're ruining my film growing experience.

[7:53] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[7:54] Meta Wagner: Protest right at the New Yorker festival.

[7:56] Laura Camien: Okay.

[7:56] Meta Wagner: So so far, to recap, let's recap.

[7:58] Laura Camien: We have the A-lister, we have the artisan, we have the sensitive soul.

[8:05] Meta Wagner: Laura and I are feeling that.

[8:07] Laura Camien: And then we have the game changer.

[8:09] Meta Wagner: Game changer.

[8:11] Laura Camien: So the game changer.

[8:12] Meta Wagner: The minute you said this, a name popped into my head, and then two minutes later the name popped out of your mouth.

[8:17] Laura Camien: Oh, excellent.

[8:18] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[8:19] Laura Camien: Lynn Manuel Miranda.

[8:21] Meta Wagner: That's right.

[8:21] Laura Camien: Yes.

[8:22] Meta Wagner: I'll give you the broad overview, which is somebody who's, you know, visionary.

[8:27] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[8:28] Meta Wagner: Somebody who because when you look at different forms of art, you know, a lot of rock songs, they've been following the same form basically for years, right?

[8:38] Laura Camien: You do different things within the form, but still the same form more or less.

[8:43] Meta Wagner: You look at dance, it's like, why does classical dance have to have these certain steps that were developed a century ago?

[8:50] Laura Camien: So it's somebody who looks at all this and says, Yes, I've learned this, but I want to know a break out of the form.

[8:58] Meta Wagner: I want to bring it's not so much that they're looking to change the world, which we'll get to with the activists, but change a certain field of art.

[9:06] Laura Camien: Mm-hmm.

[9:07] Meta Wagner: Might change the culture and get people to look at things a little bit differently, right?

[9:11] Laura Camien: Is it change for change sake, or are they changing because what they want to express needs a new form to be expressed?

[9:20] Meta Wagner: That's a great question.

[9:21] Laura Camien: Because I have a section in the book in that chapter called Rebel Without a Cause.

[9:27] Meta Wagner: So sometimes it's just like the bad boys of rock and roll something.

[9:32] Laura Camien: I want the attention, you know.

[9:33] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[9:34] Laura Camien: Sometimes it's um just they really see things differently.

[9:39] Meta Wagner: You know, tell a story about Frank Lloyd Wright.

[9:42] Laura Camien: He got the commission to do the Guggenheim Museum, um, which he did not get to live to see.

[9:48] Meta Wagner: But he said he looked up at the sky in New York and all he saw were skyscrapers and he called them vertical coffins.

[9:55] Laura Camien: All these people scurrying around their offices in these vertical coffins.

[9:59] Meta Wagner: And he thought, why can't we do a museum in the shape of a spiral?

[10:03] Laura Camien: Yep.

[10:03] Meta Wagner: And I think the spirit of Hilma of Clint sent a spark through time and space.

[10:08] Laura Camien: She did Frank Lloyd Right.

[10:09] Meta Wagner: Yes, she did.

[10:10] Laura Camien: Yeah, yeah.

[10:11] Meta Wagner: I love that.

[10:12] Laura Camien: So he did in the shape of a spiral.

[10:15] Meta Wagner: Painters objected to it because they were like, How are we gonna have the paintings hung properly?

[10:22] Laura Camien: It's not a rectilinear structure.

[10:25] Meta Wagner: And then critics after the fact, uh, they did not accept it right away.

[10:29] Laura Camien: Some did.

[10:30] Meta Wagner: Some thought it looked like a bun, like a cinnamon bun.

[10:34] Laura Camien: Yeah, I have described it as the most stylish parking garage you have ever seen.

[10:39] Meta Wagner: That is so true.

[10:40] Laura Camien: That is so true.

[10:42] Meta Wagner: So, but he did it, you know, he did it.

[10:44] Laura Camien: Now, sometimes you have to be at a certain point in your career to pull these moves off.

[10:48] Meta Wagner: That's right.

[10:49] Laura Camien: Especially when you're an artist who works on commissions, right?

[10:52] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[10:52] Laura Camien: But in the case of Lin-Manuel Miranda, who I spoke about yesterday, I think, you know, he's the game changer of our times, right?

[11:01] Meta Wagner: The idea of doing fun.

[11:03] Laura Camien: I love hearing it.

[11:04] Meta Wagner: It's so fun to have because he is a walking, talking human person.

[11:09] Laura Camien: Right.

[11:10] Meta Wagner: And he is also a game changer.

[11:12] Laura Camien: I know we think of a lot, and I love all the historical figures, but it's nice to kind of know that we can talk about people right here, right now.

[11:20] Meta Wagner: And the way he did Hamilton and bringing in people of color to play the Founding Fathers and infusing hip hop into it.

[11:28] Laura Camien: But what was different about him, so many game changers received nothing but rejection in their lifetimes.

[11:37] Meta Wagner: Um Herman Melville received a letter of rejection for the novel Moby Dick, where the editor actually said, Does it have to be a whale?

[11:49] Laura Camien: Oh my gosh.

[11:51] Meta Wagner: Listeners, take note, take note.

[11:55] Laura Camien: I hope that Herman Melville was like, editor, do respect to go fuck yourself.

[12:00] Meta Wagner: Exactly.

[12:01] Laura Camien: And I'm sure he said it just like that.

[12:03] Meta Wagner: You've got to go like Mr. Howell, like Thurston Halbert.

[12:07] Laura Camien: You've gotta go fuck yourself.

[12:09] Meta Wagner: Stephen King, the most prolific writer of our time.

[12:12] Laura Camien: Yeah, his first novel, Carrie, rejected so many times that he took one of those spears that they use in restaurants to put receipts on.

[12:20] Meta Wagner: And he speared all his rejection letters.

[12:23] Laura Camien: So I love that story.

[12:24] Meta Wagner: That's a beautiful piece of sculpture now, isn't it?

[12:28] Laura Camien: Real nice.

[12:31] Meta Wagner: Right, right.

[12:32] Laura Camien: But in the case of Lin-Manuel Miranda, he did not, I don't know if he did earlier on in his career.

[12:37] Meta Wagner: I don't think so.

[12:38] Laura Camien: Not that I'm aware of to too great an extent.

[12:41] Meta Wagner: He saw something, and the culture was ready for it.

[12:47] Meta Wagner: Yeah, right. They were ready for it. He was ahead of the culture, right place, right time. He was able to bring them along and then have the most successful show of all time.

[12:55] Susan Blackwell: Right.

[12:56] Meta Wagner: So he was on to something that wasn't if you're too far ahead, that can be a very lonely life.

[13:02] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[13:03] Meta Wagner: Hilma, I feel like so. Do you know Hilma?

[13:05] Laura Camien: Yes.

[13:06] Meta Wagner: So I feel like, well, not personally. I wish I did. Five foot one inches of fun.

[13:11] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[13:11] Meta Wagner: I just, as you, I'm like thinking, which one is Hilma here? And I was like, I think Hilma is a game changer. The how she fell, she was making abstract work before the big boys, independently of the big boys, and is a real disruptor, but had the presence of mind to know that the world would not be able to receive that work in her lifetime. So there was a mandate that it couldn't be released till 20 years later. I feel like she's a game changer.

[13:45] Laura Camien: I didn't know that. That's a very cool story.

[13:47] Meta Wagner: That sounds like a lot of things. Is it possible she's an artisan?

[13:51] Laura Camien: Well, when you were saying telling about artisan art for art's sake, I was like, is that Hilma? And there was something about me that I was like, it's not, it doesn't feel right in the money, it doesn't feel like she slots into that.

[14:04] Meta Wagner: Yeah.

[14:04] Laura Camien: But this game changer.

[14:06] Meta Wagner: Mm-hmm.

[14:07] Laura Camien: I don't know if she knew she was though. But tell me, what is the game changer driven by? Does the world need to see their game having been changed?

[14:19] Meta Wagner: Good question. I'm curious. I think there's a, I think of it as some combination of the ego and the artisan. They're very devoted to their art in a particular craft. But they have that ego of thinking, I'm not gonna be among you little people, you know, doing, I don't know, I don't want to put anything down, but they would see like, let's say typical portraiture or landscape painting as being not different enough, not newly. She was classically trained, yeah, and had a whole body of work, especially from when she was at school that was all, you know, flowers and portraits and things like that. And then when she got the mandate from, you know, she got the commission from the spirit guides, she went balls to the wall.

[15:05] Laura Camien: Like I think Hilma's been a researcher more. Please enjoy the first episode of the Sparkfile podcast.

[15:13] Meta Wagner: Yeah, featuring our home girl, Hilma Offklin. I just wanted to say that sometimes game changers become so acceptable it doesn't look like game changing anymore.

[15:24] Laura Camien: So if you think of the impressionists, right? And we say, oh, what pretty paintings, beautiful, you know, I personally love them. Like you could get that at Target and put it in a sweet frame. You got it, IKEA, and that would look so good in your college apartment. But when they started out, it wasn't accepted to think of poppy, you know, a red poppy flower could be worthy of art.

[15:47] Meta Wagner: Right.

[15:48] Laura Camien: So art subjects had to be, you know, the monarchy or people of position of money. So to say it had to be, you know, sitting still and that kind of thing, to so to say, nature, not just nature, but fleeting nature, a moment fleeting in time could be worthy putting down on campus was revolutionary.

[16:09] Meta Wagner: And what about the style of painting as well?

[16:12] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[16:12] Meta Wagner: Those things that are game changers like the subject matter or the way that it is portrayed, you change the game, and then the game catches up with that, and that becomes the David Gird, right?

[16:28] Laura Camien: Yeah, yeah.

[16:28] Meta Wagner: Until the game gets changed again. So again, we need context. So the more we learn about it, like you would appreciate that piece of art perhaps more knowing in the time that it was made.

[16:42] Laura Camien: Right.

[16:42] Meta Wagner: It was so inside of it. Here's a side spark. So we had a student in our workshop the other day who I believe was a game changer. And this student, I can't, because we have a confidentiality agreement and we respect the things that people can do in the class. Say it. I'm not gonna say exactly what they were proposing, but they had a vision about a piece of art that they wanted to make, and in order to make it, they could barely find the language to talk about what they wanted to do. And I was like, this is slippery, but this is real, there's some real art that is on the verge of being born. And I was like, game changer. And to understand this as teachers and as creative Sherpas for people, I think is very helpful to not.

There was a moment where I was, I got, if I'm honest, I got a little scared in the class because I was like, how can I help this person with this game changing vision bring it to life? But I was like, it's the same creative steps, it's the same deadlines and making an experimentation. It's just that what they're doing, maybe we haven't seen before because they're game changers.

[18:04] Laura Camien: Right, right.

[18:05] Meta Wagner: So to prop that up. We want to encourage that, hang in, hang in, even if you don't completely have all the answers, if it's never been modeled before, if the game hasn't changed and pivoted in this direction yet.

[18:18] Laura Camien: That's right.

[18:18] Meta Wagner: To some and maybe sometimes it's just like compassionate support. They really need support because of this level of rejection. Truman Capote, he had the idea for something like In Cold Blood for 20 years.

[18:34] Laura Camien: Yes.

[18:35] Meta Wagner: He wanted to take something that happened in real life, yeah, but write about it with all the techniques and tools of a fiction writer, you know, real characterization, real description. And he just, he saw a little clip. Hello, viewers, you can't, listeners, you can't see that. But a little clip in a newspaper about this horrific killing of an entire family in Kansas. Dark spark sparked, yeah. Dark spark, something in him. The New Yorker fortunately supported him on this crazy mission. And oh my God, years of his life he devoted to it, actually. And then it's sort of like, oh, sure, creative nonfiction. As if at all just being true crime, and bringing true crime really truly into the mainstream. But he had to have that patience, you know. You know, he's sitting there going, like, oh, I'll be doing that sometime. I'm waiting for the right moment.

[19:28] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[19:29] Meta Wagner: So people actually said to him, oh, um, to do that shows a lack of imagination.

[19:33] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[19:34] Meta Wagner: Because it doesn't stem, you know, entirely from your mind. You're basing it on real life situation. And I love his retort. He said, I think that comment shows a lack of imagination.

[19:44] Laura Camien: It's true.

[19:45] Meta Wagner: Boom. But Meta, now you have to say it in the Truman Capote voice.

[19:49] Laura Camien: My husband does it really well.

[19:51] Meta Wagner: Can we get your husband in here?

[19:53] Laura Camien: Matt, you've got to do the composite frightening the way he does it.

[19:57] Meta Wagner: We'll edit it in in post.

[19:58] Laura Camien: There you go. Fifth type.

[20:00] Meta Wagner: Fifth type. Fifth type. Fifth type. Well, I'll throw in a little editorial comment. I think they're so needed today, especially, which is the activist artist, which Orwell described as political purpose, which was the desire to push the world in a certain direction.

[20:18] Laura Camien: Love this.

[20:19] Meta Wagner: So in the case of Orwell, you can say I'm a little consumed by him, not even by his book so much as his thinking, is he lived through the Spanish Civil War, World War One, World War II, Fascism, Nazism. Wow. And to live in Europe during that time, not in the United States, meant you're just surrounded by death and destruction and millions upon millions of deaths. And like, what are we going to do about this world? You know, he actually participated in the Spanish Civil War, which a lot of artists did. I'm kind of studying that period in history a little bit now. But he felt like he said from one point on, he felt like every sentence he wrote had to be for social democracy and against fascism. And that's when he wrote 1984.

[21:09] Laura Camien: Wow.

[21:10] Meta Wagner: Now I'm thinking not every single sentence. But he, it wasn't his first love. His first love was more the aesthetic quality of writing itself of the beauty of it.

[21:23] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[21:23] Meta Wagner: So he felt compelled.

[21:25] Laura Camien: Touch of the artisan.

[21:26] Meta Wagner: Yeah. But then really compelled by activism.

[21:27] Laura Camien: Compelled by activism.

[21:31] Meta Wagner: So again, it's sort of like what drives you the most, not that you couldn't have those other qualities within you. So the activist, like Orwell, feels like, you know, we've got to change the world. We've got to do something about climate change and sexual assault and injustice everywhere. And we can only do that if we can make people feel things first.

[21:52] Laura Camien: Right.

[21:52] Meta Wagner: Feel it and then take action.

[21:54] Laura Camien: That's right.

[21:55] Meta Wagner: So the artist's role is to, you know, Howard's in described it as kind of a slow process like water eroding rock. You know, you're not gonna read a novel and tomorrow you're like ending a war necessarily, unfortunately. But little by little. And I talk with my students. Sometimes it's a little sad to think, you know, Bob Dylan's anti-war songs were in 63. We didn't get out of Vietnam until I think 73, 74. So you could say, okay, well, was that a failure? No, it was, it's just a part of the consciousness.

[22:26] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[22:27] Meta Wagner: But now with social media and the internet, these things are getting sped up and you can actually see some action faster. I think just to reflect again on our friend Bono A Lister, also an activist.

[22:39] Laura Camien: Yes, absolutely.

[22:40] Meta Wagner: You know, there it again, it's we're not all clear-cut. There are these absolutely accommodations. And I actually call them, I think I call them the converted, which is somebody like Bono or like Beyoncé start out, it strikes me as very ego-driven. But you know what? He absolutely has become an activist. And I probably would correct myself and say he most fits into that category now. When Beyoncé did her thing at the 2016 Super Bowl, did formation, lots of black lives matter themes, lots of controversy. I was like, I know she had done some kind of like feminist messaging before, but this was like risk taking. Do you feel like in a life in a in the life of an artist, there can be this shift potentially as one type is fully achieved and expressed and some healing that and feeling there can be a transformation where an artist will really start to fill out the form of a different type?

[23:46] Meta Wagner: Absolutely. Because if your drive when you're young is ego, that makes a lot of sense. You haven't achieved yet. So you're being achievement oriented, want to make your mark on the world, all those things. It's almost, you know, if you're 70 and 80 and still only driven by kind of like me, me, me. That's almost, I don't know if I want to say it's sad, but it just feels like can you expand your worldview a little bit more? And can you do things to kind of change the world a little bit more? And so you see this progression sometimes over a lifetime, very much from A-lister to activist or maybe more into the sensitive soul category where you're trying to still have an impact on someone.

[24:29] Laura Camien: I'm curious if that happens most for people who can check that box of like, okay, I achieve success.

[24:36] Meta Wagner: Yeah, versus the people who are like, no, I can't, I'm not, I'm not gonna look at these other ways to create until I get this. There's definitely something to that because in an interview with Tom York of Radiohead, you know, he doesn't want, he doesn't want that pressure of having to be the activist. But then you see it in the lyrics, you know, he maybe protests too much. But that notion of, you know, you evolve as a person and you should evolve, I would think, within what drives you the most, also.

[25:12] Meta Wagner: I've been talking with someone who's also a writer. He says, my book is kind of looking at it horizontally almost, the five types. And he's been doing some writing about more like vertical and he thinks they mesh well together, like how do you kind of evolve over the course of a lifetime.

[25:30] Meta Wagner: Yeah, that's interesting. But the ego part about remaining relevant might still keep you in the A-lister category as you grow older. I love, I love this work. I'm getting re-excited about it. It's so good. It's so we we love it. Keep going. It's it's so good. And I want to take one of your workshops.

[25:50] Laura Camien: Sweet.

[25:50] Meta Wagner: Oh, what an honor to be a kid. Oh my god, that would be amazing. I love that, yeah. I just keep thinking of layers like historical context, gender roles, and I noticed the two examples that we gave in artisans who don't try to get their work out there were female.

[26:08] Susan Blackwell: Very important part.

[26:09] Meta Wagner: And I'm just curious about like, you know, how can we also look at what role, you know, what permissions some of those artisans may not feel like they had.

[26:23] Laura Camien: Very good question.

[26:25] Meta Wagner: I have a section under the artisan chapter about anonymous, you know. So Jane Austen wrote, I think she signed Pride and Prejudice as the lady. Wow. And then she signed Sense and Sensibility as you know, the lady who wrote Pride and Prejudice, something like that. The idea of yes, women, people of color. You know, you go to a museum, you see quilts signed anonymous.

[26:55] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[26:55] Meta Wagner: Not necessarily because the person wanted to be anonymous. So that's right. To me, the true artist and personality doesn't seek fame and fortune necessarily, but then there are issues of gender, race, all the sorts of things of were you allowed to have your name out there. You know, women who in history writers who took men's names, like George Elliott. So they either went out as anonymous, they went out under a man's name sometimes. The writer Colette, her husband put his name on her books.

[27:28] Laura Camien: Yep.

[27:29] Meta Wagner: So there's lots of those issues. So that was a little bit of my struggle with the artisan chapter. Is it a choice you're making? Is it your natural personality and inclination? So I wanted to acknowledge, nope, just as you're saying some of the historical factors.

[27:44] Susan Blackwell: Yeah.

[27:45] Meta Wagner: Absolutely. I would be fascinated by just all of the historical characters that you know, artists that you researched and what we don't know about what box they might fit into absolutely because of what they were up against.

[28:04] Laura Camien: Yeah, yeah.

[28:05] Meta Wagner: That was a challenge in writing this. You know, that was it was an interesting challenge in doing it because I didn't want to make too many assumptions about anybody.

[28:13] Laura Camien: Um side spark.

[28:15] Meta Wagner: Yeah. Do you have boxes and boxes and boxes of research? What does it look like? All this research that went into this book.

[28:22] Meta Wagner: So the research went into the course that I teach first at Emerson College.

[28:27] Laura Camien: Okay.

[28:27] Meta Wagner: That must be a barn burner. You know, it's a lot of psychology studies, a lot of journals, Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf. People used to be such inveterate letter writers. Yeah. Which thank God and we're not going to have that really anymore, I don't think. We won't know the thoughts unless we check their Instagram feed. Facebook status is fine. I know a diary. But these letters and diaries were so fantastic because it really gave insight into what someone thought slightly differently from what their public face might be.

[29:06] Susan Blackwell: That's right.

[29:07] Meta Wagner: Because they actually wrote it down. Which was so amazing. Virginia Woolf's diaries are all about not all about a lot of it is about the writing of Mrs. Dalloway. And so it's not like these people keep diaries most of them with the intention that they're going to be published. Right. And some of them would not have wanted them to be published.

[29:25] Laura Camien: That's right.

[29:26] Meta Wagner: So it really, you know, Sylvia Plath, first of all, these writers write in their diaries beautifully. It's not like hashtag emoji. They're writing works of art in their diaries of works of art. Sometimes I have like a nightmare of morning pages being discovered later and being interpreted as a diary. And I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Those are morning pages.

[29:53] Laura Camien: That's really funny.

[29:55] Meta Wagner: So the research was wonderful because I got the chance to propose a course at Emerson College. And I do have a marketing background. So the marketing side of my brain was what's a class? What's a topic that would could interest any creative student here across all fields? That's right. And then I thought I was very interested in the activist artists primarily. And when I read Orwell's Why I Write essay, it just sent me down that whole path thinking because he lists four motives. That was very inspiring to me. This whole motive-driven thing. So one spark was the opportunity for the course.

[30:34] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[30:36] Meta Wagner: Can I do a humble brag?

[30:38] Laura Camien: Yes, please.

[30:39] Meta Wagner: I've been told the students, the incoming freshmen, get to put down like three out of maybe 40 course possibilities of what they want to take freshman year for their liberal arts class. And mine has been in the top like number one of their choice. Some semesters, maybe not all.

[30:55] Laura Camien: Yes.

[30:58] Meta Wagner: I believe it. I believe it. And I will tell you when I saw you on that stage yesterday sharing this body of thought that you have developed, I wanted to take that course.

[31:09] Susan Blackwell: And come to Boston.

[31:10] Meta Wagner: What a great work.

[31:11] Laura Camien: Come to Boston.

[31:12] Meta Wagner: I'll go back to the Bible.

[31:13] Laura Camien: But you have to say it in a Boston accent.

[31:15] Meta Wagner: We'll come to when I think about that. Um been like had I taken that in my freshman year. Yeah. Just because I think I learned about myself over the course of those years. You know, I have no regrets and loved my time there. But had I had this framework in my mind in year one.

[31:39] Laura Camien: Yeah.

[31:40] Meta Wagner: It's great stuff. It's really good stuff. CA listener in me does love when former students say, you know, that's the class I remembered from freshman year.

[31:48] Laura Camien: That's wonderful.

[31:49] Meta Wagner: You know? So that's that's very gratifying. Um jumping towards the end. Yes, the question is incredible. What's it all for? Life or art or all this work you've been doing.

[32:02] Laura Camien: That's right.

[32:03] Meta Wagner: All this living you've been living. What's it all for?

[32:06] Laura Camien: Oh my God. That's a huge question.

[32:07] Meta Wagner: Isn't it just big? You know what? The impetus for me was I had wanted to write a book for years.

[32:15] Laura Camien: Okay.

[32:16] Meta Wagner: I think my higher goal still is to write a novel. But I was, you know, I'm sitting there teaching a class about creative motivation, and I'm like, but I don't, I haven't pinpointed my own yet, or I know it, but I get stuck, and yes, I can do the shorter pieces. One of my hangups was it sounds foolish. I just didn't know if I had this stick-to-it. You know what I mean? Now I think for I think that's very relatable for a lot of people. We can put that question to rest though now. Now look at the research thing to learn about oneself. Yeah, you didn't that I could do that, and um I saw, you know, my students super creative, but everybody gets kind of lost along the way. My friends, so many of them wanting to write novels, wanting to do that, wanting to be a stand-up comic.

I thought, wow, we're all kind of stuck, and then we have moments, and then we go back to being stuck. And when I started researching and as I said, seeing this clarity of vision, I thought maybe we could all have that, and maybe the five types is a way into that. Can you figure out your so is it to be of service to others? Absolutely. You know, there's the ego part. Hey, I did a book with the I get to be interviewed with a whole lot of areas with this one project. Yeah, yeah. Amazing. It means a lot to me because of the satisfaction, the self-satisfaction, but hoping that it's helping other people achieve their creative potential. Really? You have built you have laid the foundation to grow a number of additional creative projects out of it.

[33:55] Meta Wagner: Yeah, yeah. Creativity begets creativity. Absolutely. Sparks beget sparks. So last question: who or what is sparking you these days?

[34:05] Meta Wagner: Ooh. I well, I will give you the honest answer. Um, can we get a little political here?

[34:12] Laura Camien: Sure.

[34:13] Meta Wagner: I had been doing a lot of writing for the Boston Globe opinion pages. Funny kind of stuff, pop culture type of stuff and relating it to politics. Loved doing that kind of writing. And then Trump came into office and everything felt very dark. And the opinion pages could only about be about very serious heavy things. That's right. And I felt Trump made me stuck in my creative process. Isn't that interesting? Isn't that hilarious? Interesting. And the most recent one I wrote, I got back into writing. I did do something more serious, but I really before that I had been a columnist for a magazine, online magazine called Pop Matters. Uh-huh. And I love thinking about the intersection of pop culture and politics and all of that. So I think I have to say, forget about Trump. And that's the most polite way I can put that. Get back to doing the writing I love. And possibly I do have ideas brewing for another book as well.

[35:15] Laura Camien: Wonderful.

[35:16] Meta Wagner: Yes. What's that book called again?

[35:17] Laura Camien: All artists are crazy.

[35:19] Meta Wagner: All creative people. Creatives are crazy. Creative stuff. What was our subtitle? We had a good one. We'll have to roll tape to figure out what I want.

[35:29] Laura Camien: Oh, that's right.

[35:30] Meta Wagner: Exactly. Thank you so much to our guest, Meta Wagner. Check out our book, What's Your Creative Type? Harness the Power of Your Artistic Personality. I feel like we both learned so much.

[35:43] Laura Camien: Oh my god.

[35:47] Meta Wagner: Because it was fun, too. I feel like our work and hopefully the listeners' work will only be expanded by what you have shared with the world. And speaking on behalf of Laura and myself, we cannot thank you enough.

[36:02] Laura Camien: So much.

[36:02] Meta Wagner: Thank you.

[36:03] Laura Camien: Can you tell us all where can we get your book? I forgot to ask you that earlier.

[36:06] Meta Wagner: Bookstores everywhere.

[36:08] Laura Camien: Everywhere.

[36:09] Meta Wagner: Amazon, it's already it's Amazon. Mostly finding it online now.

[36:14] Laura Camien: Great.

[36:14] Meta Wagner: Maybe a little of this talking about it will get it popping up in all stores. You can also find it on my coffee table.

[36:21] Laura Camien: All right.

[36:22] Meta Wagner: Okay. That's it. I hope that this put another bunch of sparks in your file. Listen, if there's a spark you'd like us to explore, or if you've taken a spark and fanned it into a creative flame and you'd like to share that, won't you please email us at thesparkfile at gmail.com or submit it through our website. Smell me. We got a website, thesparkfile.com. We'll even take your feedback, but you know the price of admission. First, you've got to share a creative risk that you've taken recently. No joking about that. And be sure to subscribe to this podcast wherever you get your podcast. Subscribe, rate, five-star review it. If you like this podcast, share it with people that you love. If you didn't like it, share it with Beth, your cool coworker.

She is going to flip her shit over this podcast. Beth's gonna love us. 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. It's your turn to take a spark and fan it into a flame. You gotta sing it. You gotta wing it you gotta Evelyn Nesbitt and full on velvet swing it. You gotta take it and make it bye.

[37:28] Laura Camien: Thank you so much for we love you. When I bump into something that inspires me I dump it in the spark files. Spark could be something that I wanna make or how I wanna be I'll pump it in the spark files. Sparfies I jump into my sparkfile. Let's open up the spark we hope you enjoy this conversation with Meta Wagner. Now be sure to visit the Sparkfile.com slash five types that's thesparkfile.com slash the number five T Y P E S to take the quiz and learn what creative type you are.