← Creative Pep Talk
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- [00:03]
A
On the creative journey, it's easy to get lost, but don't worry, you'll lift off. Sometimes you just need a creative pep talk. What do you do when you end up in a place in your creative journey that you never, never expected to be, where everything you knew about being creative and what you loved about it and what it looked like and how it worked dramatically changes? I didn't ever see that coming in my own creative practice. But over the past four years, so much has changed in the world and also in my life that I've had to change my relationship to creativity and even to how I saw myself. Today on the show, I have a chat with Alice Fraser. Alice is an incredible stand up comic who weaves in storytelling. I would probably put it in that category of lay down tragedy, which is the opposite of stand up comedy. But she's also just a great stand up comic. She has a incredible special on Amazon prime called Savage where she talks a lot about her mother who had Ms. Before she was even born, and her relationship to that. And it's really moving, powerful. You can also check out that as part of this trilogy that is a free podcast series. If you just go search Alice Fraser trilogy, you can find it wherever podcasts are. You can check it out in link in the show notes. Highly recommend all six of those parts. She also has. You can go buy the digital download of her latest special. It's called Twist and it's about becoming a mother. It's. It's an incredible, incredible show. I, I said this at the start of our conversation together, but it was a gift that this kind of landed where we're doing this conversation. It's going to appear on my podcast. Also on her podcast called Tea with Alice. It was just a thrill to talk to somebody as talented as she is at this art form that I respect so much, which is storytelling. This was a blast. And we get into these key moments where we change as people and how that changes our relationship to our creative practice and what do you do with that? And I think we got to some really, really interesting conclusions and places and I'll come back at the end of this episode with your creative call to adventure, your way of putting this stuff to practice. I'm calling it Midlife Lysis and I don't know if that means anything to you, but it's about when you experience a death of who you used to be and how that can be the birth of a new creative season. I'll get to that at the end, but for now, enjoy this conversation I had with Alice Fraser. It was a blast. I hope to have her on again sometime. Yeah, hope you enjoy it. I'm a believer in the idea of dressing for the job you want, not the job you have. And I have applied this to my creative practice too, which means if you want professional results, you need to present online like a pro. And that means going beyond social media and having a professional website that reflects your style and looks legit. I rebuilt my site this year with Squarespace's Fluid engine and was so happy with how easily I could build my vision without coding, that when they approached me to support the show, I jumped at the chance because I love and use this product. So go check it out. Squarespace.com Pep talk to test it out for yourself. And when you're ready to launch your site, use promo code PEP talk all one word, all caps for 10% off your first purchase. Thanks goes out to Squarespace for supporting the show and supporting creators all over the world. First of all, I wanted to say that I love. I love your work. I so enjoyed the trilogy of your specials. And then your latest special is Twist, correct?
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B
Yes.
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A
Yeah, I absolutely loved it. It was so good. And like, this isn't my favorite part of the special, but the thing that made me laugh out loud the most was your line about paddable bats. It's one of the weirdest things. I love, like, really weird stuff, but that. That was so weird. And cats being the paddable lap bat, which nobody knows what that means. I'm not sure people knew there what it meant. I was like, that is amazing. Can you explain that real quick, just so it makes some kind of sense?
- [05:30]
B
I mean, it just. I just. They both have weird little faces. They both have those kind of squished in little sort of insect faces. Bats and cats. I needed those jokes in there as it was sort of quite mechanical, having those very hard cuts to the ad section in that show because it's dealing with a lot of heavy, heavy stuff. And there's ways that you can kind of integrate light and heaviness more sort of smoothly. But for that show specifically, I kind of wanted that abruptness for the. For the rhythm. And it just was a funny thing to say. Sometimes things are just fun in your mouth and you write them down and you're like, that's stupid. I shouldn't say that. Then you're like, what if I did say it just once? And then. And then it becomes like one of your favorite jokes in the show because it's so. It's Just. It's just silly.
- [06:22]
A
And, yeah, I was thinking all these ads, they're. They're fake ads, and they cut into the special, and one of them is for cats, because they're the paddable, lap version of a bat.
- [06:34]
B
Yeah. That we all secretly. The idea that we all secretly want a pet bat, but we can't have one, so we have to settle for cats.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Yeah. It's funny. That show was sort of about why. And why not to be a mother as a creative and, you know, sort of the ways in which business and capitalism treat the labor of motherhood. And so the. I put those ads in as a kind of a meta commentary on the ways in which these kind of jump in on our life. But also, they were just a bunch of jokes that I liked and was like, I can't. I don't know how else I can fit them in the show.
- [07:20]
A
And funny. You should segue right into it. The other other line that really stood out to me was, I love what you said about what motherhood and being an artist has in common. I don't know if you have that line offhand, but I can tee it up. If not, it's. You say that everyone agrees.
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B
Yes. Everyone agrees that they're priceless and no one's willing to pay for them. Yeah, Something like. Something along those lines.
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A
Like, this is like, yeah, motherhood and artistry is this labor and this work that every person values on some level. And yet. Yeah, we're not. We're. We're not really willing to pay for it. I thought that was.
- [08:01]
B
Speaking of. Of motherhood. I found your work incredible. Your Right side Out. It's a series on your podcast. It was a really interesting thing. It was an interesting way to do it as well, to sort of not offset it from the body of your work, but integrate it in to some degree and have it be part of your work. Yeah, was that.
- [08:22]
A
And we might pull it out. We might pull it out and do its own thing at some point. But, yeah, I think. I think the reason we did it. So it's just a series about adhd, and my mom and I, there was a bunch of reasons why we decided to release it that way, but one of them was, I've been doing this podcast for 10 years. The people that have listened for a long time have heard lots of bits of it, and there was just something about when I would talk to listeners of the show and I would talk to them about the project and whatever, I just wanted to give it to them. That's Because I just felt like it was. It just made sense. It made sense to do it that way, but it was. It's also, like I said, we might, like, break it out and do something else with it, too.
- [09:10]
B
Well, it's also in light of you saying that the last few years of your creative life have felt like just one step up, another after another, trudging uphill. You're providing the momentum for everything. It's sometimes good just to do the easiest thing. You've already got an audience, you've already built a platform. You've already. These. You know that these people are going to be interested in you and your work and this thing. So then, of course, you can do more with it afterwards. But just. I'm a big believer in just getting something done, getting something out of you and into the world. And then. And then you can see what you've actually got. Particularly with stuff that's, like, deep in you, just feelings deep. You kind of cannot see what you have when it's just an idea. If it's in your head, it's just sort of inchoate and squishy, swashy, and it's sort of filling all. It's all. It's not until you, like, haul it all together and then you put it on the page that you can actually see what it is as art. And then you can, you know, adjust it both as a piece of art that is not inside you and therefore not affecting you. And somehow sometimes that can really shine light on what's going on on the inside. I think, you know, the whole process of art is like you've got a vision and it's like a projection onto the wall, onto a white wall. You see the picture and then your job is to, like, outline it and sketch it and fill it in all as quickly as you possibly can before the vision disappears.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And then the vision is still sort of in your eyes and someone else will walk in and be like, you've got nothing and say, well, what is this? You can't see what you've. What you haven't got because you're filling it in with the projection from your mind. And like, so much of the practice of art, for me at least, is like turning off the projection and seeing what I actually have and then being able to turn it back on again.
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A
Yeah, like, that's really good.
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B
The hardest. The hardest work for me, that makes so much sense.
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A
It's one of the reasons why, speaking of wives, why I do so much work with my wife is because Sophie And I just. She's so good at showing me what I'm missing and also adding her own stuff. And, you know, she was really involved in that project, but I. That's exactly right in that you can't see what part of it's. It's like doing a mural, and you're working on it with this projection, and you can't see what parts you've inked in and what part you haven't because it's all in you. I think that's such a good. That's a great image.
- [11:33]
B
And then you can. Then you turn it off and you're like, oh, it's like hearing your phone voice on an answering machine the first time. Like, oh, no, that's. That's what it looks like to other people because you haven't got the resonance echoing around in your own head.
- [11:44]
A
Yeah. And, you know, the other thing that comes to mind with that is. And I feel like I don't hear a lot of. Maybe I'm blanking on this, but I don't feel. Feel like I hear artists that have created a body of work, books or shows or what gallery shows, whatever. You know, I feel particularly familiar with the struggle because of. I have to assume it's an ADHD thing of just getting done, just doing it. I have to. And that. So that's another way with putting it on the show. That was another. It was just almost like a hack of, like, I already have to make this. I already, like, I already have this up and running. I already have this commitment to doing it every week. I've done it for years. And I. Oh. And I feel like sometimes I'll hear an artist, and my wife is a little bit more like this, where she is a bit more like, what should it be? How should it be done? And I'm, you know, I have to, you know, do whatever the vision wants it to be. And I just feel like I always think about, like, no matter what, my to do list is the hardest part of. The hardest point on that to do list is how do I get myself to do it? How do I like it? That one is very difficult. So I always. I just feel like I'm a bit of a slave to just however I can get myself to do it.
- [13:18]
B
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Deal. Deal with the monkey brain you have. You can, as a side project, work on healing the hole in your soul. Like, that's. That's a lifelong work.
- [13:29]
A
Yeah.
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B
But meantime, what, like, ridiculous concoction of motivations are you going to cobble together to Just get you to the, to the rock face and make you start swinging, like. Yeah. Whatever it is, Trick yourself, bully yourself. Ideally, don't bully yourself. But if it works, you gotta do.
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A
What you got to do to get it done.
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B
Yeah.
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A
You know, and I've got, you know, I feel like over time, I've been doing this for over 15 years, different creative practice, and I've gotten what I'm capable of finishing now is so much larger than I ever could have imagined. But it's still, you know, comparatively to other artists or like a filmmaker or whatever, I still. I still feel like I have ages and ages to go.
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B
Here's the thing that sometimes. Because of course you do. Of course you do. No matter what milestone you achieve. Okay, okay. Like, straight out of the gate.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Whatever it is, the, The. The comedy gala, the Sydney Opera House, just for laughs, you. You put these things up on a pedestal, and the moment you achieve them, you're like, well, they can't be that big a deal. They let me do it.
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A
Yeah, very true.
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B
So you immediately discount the thing that you've achieved. So, like, one of the things that I will very occasionally do, but often remember and have it make me feel better is write down not a to do list, but the things I have done list, and you suddenly realize, actually, you've done heaps. You've done heaps. And writing that down, you're like, oh, yeah, it's not that hard to do things. I've done all of this stuff. And that can help me kind of move forward on the whole thing. But how did you feel? Like, just as a. Like a sideline with your. With your. Your show was about your mum and a really difficult relationship. With my mum. With your mum. My show, which is savage, and all my shows, to some degree, they were easy for two reasons. First, that I had my mom's consent to talk about her. Second, that in our family, the dynamic was that the illness was the enemy. So the ways in which my mum couldn't be mum, like, were all due to her illness and not due to her self.
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A
Right.
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B
And I know that really was hard for her when it came to. She probably had ADHD and couldn't get stuff done. She didn't ever know whether she couldn't get stuff. Stuff done because she was lazy or because of the disease or. I don't think she even had a conception of ADHD as something that she might have. You know, she never knew.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And. And so for me, it was quite uncomplicated to do a show about her because she was so wonderful, at least according to the narrative in my head. Your show is about the ways in which your mum was sort of not wonderful.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And the ways in which she was wonderful. But that's a much more complicated story to tell.
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A
Yeah.
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B
How did you navigate it? How did you come at that?
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A
Yeah. So just. Just for context, for both audiences that might hear this, you have done shows about your mom who had ms, and this, you know, how. How that affected you and what that relationship was like. And you have recordings of her in. In your shows. And so there's a lot of overlap in that it's about shows about our moms. And then I did a. A series that was all about my relationship to my mom, who wasn't super present in my life growing up or ever. And. And that. But I was also. I also love my mom and. And I am a lot like her in a lot of ways. And found out that one of the ways that I'm probably most like her is that I have adhd. Usually get it from a parent, and it's definitely not my accountant father. And so anyway, that's the context for that. But I. In terms of the complexity of doing. Doing work around, you know, there's a lot. Whenever, every time you get into, like, memoir esque stuff, this is a big topic. So, you know, how do you tell stories? What part of it's your story?
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B
My brother hates Savage.
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A
Really?
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B
Yeah.
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A
Why?
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B
Because my dad liked it and he saw it as a piece of art. And it's a very specific, very thin slice through the experience. I don't talk about, for example, my twin brother or my dad. Like, I remind myself that it's art by carving out huge parts of it to make it very clear that I'm using it to do something. My dad liked it. I think for my brother, it was too close to his own experience in a way that, you know, dad had a different relationship with Mum, but it was me telling it felt to him to some degree like me telling his story for him and distorting it to suit me.
- [18:47]
A
Yeah.
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B
And then secondly, he doesn't respect comedy as an art form and thinks it's inherently degrading. And so to put it in proximity with the tragedy of our mother's life and death would. Was sort of in. Sort of a. An insult.
- [18:58]
A
Wow. Whoa. That's. I mean, I can't relate to that because to me, it's like. It really is like the highest form of art. I just love it. It's. I'm just Such a huge fan, but. So I can't imagine, especially what you do is. So. It's such an artistic take on comedy with its mixture of storytelling, and it's so poignant. I can't. I can't relate. Sorry. Can't relate, brother. But.
- [19:24]
B
Well, unfortunately, he can't help but relate because we're related, but. Right.
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A
Yeah. Yeah, true. But, yeah, I think that. That. Because I've had a lot of people ask me about it in terms of, like, they, you know, inspiring them to explore relationships in their work, whatever their work might be. And I'm always like, well, I had the benefit of barely having a relationship with her and knowing that even if, like, whenever I started to do talks that incorporated stories that involved her pretty early on, I let her know that I was doing that. She. And I also knew that I felt I have, like, a crippling amount of empathy, like, in relationships. Like, I don't really know how to explain that any better than what it is. But, like, I. I am very, like, I don't. I'm, like, almost uncomfortable with Justice. It's taken me a long time to, like, build that part of myself up. So I would say it's rare that I felt so clear that I had the right to tell the story, but I just knew I did. I just knew, like, the least that she could give me was to tell my story, because she didn't. She wasn't able to give me a lot other than that. And so I think I just felt like, you know, I'm going to tell her. I don't know what she's going to respond, like. But also, if. Even if she doesn't like it, I'm still going to talk about it because it's such a defining story, and it. And it matters so much to me. And, you know, to her credit, one of the things that I do love about her is that she's. She is a sweet, generous person. And so when I first told her, hey, by the way, you know, I'm talking about you on stage, her reaction to that was, oh, brother. Because she. She knew what the stories were. You know, she lived them, but that was it. And I think she was kind of like, yeah, she. I don't think she ever thought about it beyond that. And that, you know, I think that says something about who she is. But, yeah, other, you know, that's the benefit of not having a mom is that you can talk that, you know, growing up without a mother is that you don't feel so delicate about talking about it.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Whereas most people don't have that. And there's a lot of people in my life that I have tons of stories for about that I don't feel okay sharing or talking about even my own side of it.
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B
That's really. Yeah, that's really interesting. I was. I was wondering about that and how. How you negotiated that. Yeah, it's. It's so tricky, man. It really is. But then you get the work out there and people connect to it and it's sort of an incredible. An incredible thing. I get people still now, like, emailing me about, you know, about the, the particularly about Savage, because that's on Amazon Prime.
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A
Yeah.
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B
But about all the shows. And you just think, well, it's worthwhile making these stories. And for me it's worthwhile remembering that they are constructs.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And they're not the whole truth.
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A
Yeah, yeah, that. That's true. And I also, you know, this feels trite. This would have felt trite to me before I ever went through any of this storytelling process. But it's really true is the process of creating that project really did do something for me. Like, it really did transform something that I carried my whole life into something lighter. Like, I feel that way.
- [23:47]
B
So this is. This is something that I have struggled with, which is. I could hear the discomfort in your voice when you were saying essentially that you performed some sort of shamanic ritual, some sort of journey through a process. And it's like, it's super cringe. You know, I'm one of those people who was always like, oh, you know, Valentine's Day is just commercialism and all these, like, stories that people tell to make themselves feel better and all this woo, wishy washy kind of with the language of spiritualism. It just doesn't really give you a handle on. On reality. And then you're like. But it is sort of. It's the best handle we've got. Like metaphors. So metaphors are like the, the. Do you know about coding at all?
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A
A little bit, yeah. Not.
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B
So you have these different layers of code that come closer and closer. This is very, very crude and any coders will be infuriated, but they come closer and closer, just talking in normal language right to the computer. And each of them is sort of like a handle on the deep code. And I feel like these metaphors and these stories and like these kind of operatic, grand, sweeping narratives are the language that gives us a handle on this deep shit that's actually happening that we just don't have good ways of describing. I've just written a book about romance novels, and that's the kind of gave me the key in. Right. Because people like romance novels are so unrealistic. I'm like, no, no, they're not unrealistic. They're opera. You know, she gets kidnapped by highwaymen and he has to chase her down. That is a big handle to a metaphor, a gestural interpretation of, you know, he's not looking after her and she becomes a bit distant and he has to come to her. You know, these convict, these conversations that happen in miniature inside relationships at like, in half an hour after dinner that are like, pivotal to the health of the relationship. The romance novel draws them out vastly into these big easy foam handles so that you can actually get. Get a grip on the things that are going on in the dynamics of interpersonal relationships, whether they're sexual relationships or not.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And. And that I was like, ah. So, yes, yes. My friend who is having a divorce is walking through the valley of death and she is Orpheus. And. And the moment she lets him know that she wants him back, he'll slip back into death. And the only way that she can get through this is to come without looking behind her into the land of the living. And if he follows her, he follows her. And if she looks back, she'll lose him. And either way, she can't look back like that. You have these grand things that describe a reality that's so sort of delicate and convoluted and tricky and internal that it sort of can't be managed or handled.
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A
Yeah.
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B
And so, like, use the meta metaphor, man. Lean in, you know?
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A
Yeah, Okay. I. I just wrote three things down because I. There's so many things I want to pull out with what you just said. Okay. So I'm going to bullet point them just so I don't lose track. And. And maybe just. I don't know why, but I just feel like it's the right thing to do. First thing is I wanted to address just that I'm a picture bookmaker and you're a comedian, and that's a funny combination. Even though I do storytelling and stuff like that. Still funny because these are just different, such different dispositions in creative world. And I feel I didn't bullet point at all. So that's the first thing. I want to just say something about that real quick. Just. And then I want to talk about. About the symbolic kind of thing that you're talking about with, like, romance novels and storytelling and this thing and then another bit. But we don't have to get to all of it. First thing I would say, you know, as I'm saying that I did something with my grief and it's. And it. You know, and I've said, oh, it could feel trite or something. Like, I could go into that a bit in a. In a minute perhaps, but I just wanted to give you permission to just let me have it. Like, I am a. I. Like, I. You're so smart and have such an interesting perspective. I don't even. I don't care if it's even, like, contradictory to me. Like, just go. Just let it happen. Because I get that, you know, it's the idea of, like, oh, taking an absent mother and turning that into art and it being this. I get what's, like, maybe wishful thinking to. To be like, oh, and I. I transformed it into art. And it feels trite and it feels. I don't know if I. I don't know if I'm making sense. Am I making sense?
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B
No, you. You absolutely are making sense. So there's, like, a couple of things that I can. Like, that sort of.
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A
First of all, like, I want to hear your take. I want to hear your take, But I also. Because I feel. I know I feel good about my take, but I also like other takes.
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B
You know, So I think, you know, your fear that it's sort of tried or cliched or hackneyed to have healed something in yourself through the process of art makes me want to go, who the fuck do you think you are that you're better than healing yourself through art? Like, you're not more complicated than.
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A
I mean, I'm not.
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B
You're not more complicated than going deep into your soul and transforming something from inchoate grief into something that connects to other people and therefore feels in some minuscule degree like it was worth it in some way. You've made something of it. You know, you've turned it into something. And that, you know, that's such a powerful experience. You.
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A
You.
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B
This is kind of. Again, this is like. This is like a pun, but it's a really functional pun.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Which is. You did something about it. This thing that you could do nothing.
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A
Yes.
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B
You couldn't do anything about. You couldn't fix the thing itself, but you did something about it. Yeah, and that's like a stupid metaphor, but it works for your brain. Your brain thinks, okay, I've done something about it. I've solved something about that problem that was, yes, possible to solve. You cannot go back in time. You cannot fix your Mother. You cannot fix your relationship with her. You can only repair or rebuild something going forward. That's all in the past. But if you do something, you know about it in the terms of a roundabout, it feels to your soul.
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A
Yeah.
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B
Even though I don't believe in souls, that you've done something functional with this thing.
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A
I. That's the. I. Literally, the one of the things I wrote down was doing something. That's what I wrote is that I when I start. And what I meant was. I don't think it was like. I don't know if it was like, oh, I'm a. I'm like, complex to the degree in which I can't heal myself through art. It was more like, I don't know if I'm good enough at art to do that. You know, I don't know if I like. And so.
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B
Well, also, you sort of want to reassure everyone that, you know, that it's. That the art is actually going to, like, go back in time and heal all wounds. You want to be like, yeah, I understand that this is like a tiny, tiny thing, but it's something, you know.
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A
Yes.
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B
And something is 1 million times more than nothing. You know, people always talk about the vastness of the universe and how small it makes you feel. You don't stand around going, I am a giant compared to atoms, though. I'm so. I am cosmically big compared to atoms. And so in the same way, doing anything, any kind of art, no matter how I'm shaking the table in my life. Sorry. Doing anything is so much more than doing nothing. And of course, it feels incredible, right, because there's nothing you can do about your mother and how she was. There's nothing any of us can do about our mothers and how they were and the ways that. That built the foundation of our selfhood. So you can only work with what you got now, right?
- [32:19]
A
Yeah. And I think, you know, it came also from being a working artist, a working illustrator for a long time before I started. Like, one of the things that's become a really big theme on the show is encouraging people to create their own substance and their work. Like, you know, no matter what you do. Like, I like this idea that illustrators are kind of like actors in that. In a very unglamorous version of that. But. But. But similar in that they're taking that. They're the last person in the chain to, like, here, this is the art. You are going to produce it. You're going to, like, illuminate it, give it emotion, whatever, be the Face of it. And I love, I think it's. For me, it's been so important to write my own scripts, so to speak. Learn to do that, even if poorly, you know what, all the way through. Just like, learn to produce your own material. And I think as I was going in and I've been, you know, working on that for a long time and I. But as I was going into this, I just didn't realize, you know, it's funny, like, I don't know Ted that well. I know Ted is, you know, our connective tissue. I've had.
- [33:34]
B
He came to my writers meetings a bit and we did a one on one consultation. So I do writers meetings every Sunday, twice every Sunday to catch UK and US time zones just for my Patreon people. And he came along and clearly, like he only came to a few because he prefers one on ones to the group writing thing. Yeah. But yeah, he just reached out and was like, hey, let's organize a thing where I put the four most interesting people I know in a room together. And then I get to sit and watch them. And it was like, it was so great.
- [34:04]
A
It was great. It was great. And I, And I really like Ted. I just, you know, I don't know him that well, but I like his sensibility and I like a lot of that. We have a very similar taste in a lot of, in a lot of stand up.
- [34:16]
B
And he's a fucking delight.
- [34:18]
A
He is a delight. But I don't remember. I was gonna, I was gonna go somewhere with that and I can't remember.
- [34:27]
B
What it is, but you don't know him very well.
- [34:29]
A
But that's adhd, baby. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know him, but. Oh. Oh, I know what it was. One of my. I was gonna. The context was I've only had probably five conversations with Ted.
- [34:43]
B
Yes.
- [34:43]
A
But one of the early ones that I had three or four years ago was when I was starting to consider making this special, this right side out special. And it was in a conversation with him where I felt like that for the first time I felt that feeling of, oh my God, I'm doing something with this burden of grief that I've had my entire life. I've had this in its always present. And I'm like, this is the first time I've ever done something with it. And it was. And I could feel like, oh, I have to do it now. And so now that's such a huge part of what I want to do at the show in the future. And Just what. Whatever I do is just encourage people to take those things and do something creative with them.
- [35:39]
B
You've been carrying them around like you might as well use them. You've got them in your backpack and they're, like, weighing you down. You've.
- [35:45]
A
Yeah, you.
- [35:46]
B
You can't unpack them, so you might as well use them. I guess.
- [35:49]
A
Yeah. And I. I just couldn't believe that it. It. I don't know that it was. I. I don't know. I don't know why it felt so unique to me. It really felt like a bad metaphor, but an alchemy thing. If you're taking something so. And you're taking. Turning some. You're turning it into something that is not. One thing I wanted to ask you about in your shows. You. Your latest special is very much related to being a mom. A lot of the show, you're talking about not wanting to do a show about being a mom. And I just thought, you know, you had. You felt like, oh, you had to work through a lot of baggage for that, but you'd also done a lot of work about being a daughter.
- [36:57]
B
Yeah.
- [36:57]
A
I just wondered if you. How you wrestled with, like, why. Why would being. Why would doing work about being a mom be so different than doing work about being a daughter? Like, when they. When they're. They have a connection.
- [37:13]
B
Well, because everyone's a daughter. Right. But being a daughter isn't a translation of self in the way that being a mother is being. So there's this kind of pressure in the arts, particularly in comedy, but also generally on educated women.
- [37:41]
A
Right.
- [37:42]
B
To be successful. And we define success as against the masculine. So you want to be successful in the way that men can be successful and are successful. And so when you talk about women who are successful and mothers, it's about how they maintain their careers in the face of motherhood. Often. Not always, but often means being less good mothers or less holistic mothers or sharing the burden of motherhood with a supportive partner or a number of other people or nannies or whatever it happens to be. And that there is this. This way in which. And I don't know where I got this impression, which is why it's fascinating, but it's. It's an impression that I have and that I. I've encountered in a lot of other women, which is that essentially being a mother is surrendering to the base, animalistic side of yourself. And the admirable thing about success or being human or what's good about people is that they rise above that. And you Live in the intellectual sphere and you are not of your body. We're above, above the body. We're better than that. And that is, you know, that's why Greek statues have tiny penises, because you're not meant to be basically controlled by the lusts and urges of your, of your reproductive organs. Right. And, and you, obviously, it's nonsense. We're all embodied. You know, you need sleep to work. You need, you know, all of this stuff. But the idea essentially that I had received was that becoming a mother makes you less an artist or, you know, you won't care about the things that you care about anymore because this priority shift comes in and that's bad. It's bad to change what you care about because what you care about is the highest and greatest thing, which is artistic success. And so I had sort of absorbed this idea to the extent that I thought, not that I didn't want to become a mother, but that I didn't want to tell people I didn't announce my first pregnancy until I was eight and a half months pregnant because I wanted to put it off, put off the shift in attitude to me and put off the shift in identity until I absolutely could no longer deny that this had happened and that this was happening and that it's immensely fruitful and interesting and fascinating and intellectual. You know, if you are paying attention to what you're doing, it's incredible and artistic and all of those things. And that, that, you know, the, that your body is doing something extraordinary that involves all of you and that it changes the way you think about everything you do. Like, I got the insight, like, if you've got the ADHD type brain. I've never been diagnosed with adhd. I just, I, I sort of, it's not sufficiently a problem for me, except that I, I find it useful to think of like brains in sort of vague camps.
- [40:50]
A
Same. That's the main reason I, it's useful to me as well. But.
- [40:54]
B
Yeah, but like the idea, it was the first time when you're pregnant you go, oh, actually part of the work of being pregnant is going, do I need a little snack? I should probably have a bit of a sit, right? It is being tuned into your body and paying attention to your body and to your needs rather than rising above and driving through and staying up late and pushing on. Actually, incredibly important, important part of this work that you're doing and it is work is, is, is the, is the surrender part of the equation is the, is the taking your foot off the accelerator part of you and this. I was pregnant during COVID And so at the same time, I was suddenly confronted with the fact that my work schedule, which I'd always sort of constructed in this really haphazard way that I felt guilty about, I was always bouncing from one thing to another and writing my stuff on the bus on the way in and all, you know, sort of piling up things. Or I'd work in a cafe, but my computer wouldn't have charge, so I could only work for 40 minutes. And then I'd go to the next cafe. All of that stuff went away. And I was confronted with the reality that actually it's not chaos that I need. It's just really hard on time, and then I need to go for a walk. And that's. And the walk is essential to the process. It's not failing at the process, it's not stopping the process. It's not stepping away from the process. It is the process. Yeah, it's the work. The work is taking your brain off the task and going for a walk and letting the team in the back of. In the back rooms sort it out so that when you come back to the page, the, The. The. The will guy at the front can apply himself back to the page. But the will guy is not the boss.
- [42:44]
A
Yes, he's.
- [42:46]
B
He's. He's just one of many equally important parts of this process. And I kind of had to really just, you know, sit with that for. For 10 months and just go, oh. Everything that I've thought about what work is, for me, what this kind of work is, has been wrong. And I've been beating myself up for doing something that was actually not just necessary. Oh, I got to do it, but, like, important and valuable and as valuable as the other parts of the work that. So I got diverted from your question.
- [43:24]
A
But, yeah, I. This is what I wanted to talk to you about, actually. This is the number one thing, which was when you talked about in your latest special twist about being a mom, and you were talking about how you. You were saying earlier about how, well, everybody has a daughter or everybody's a son, everybody's a child of somebody, whereas not everybody has kids. And, and even if they do, not everybody pushes a kid out, right? That's a whole. That's a subset of people. And yet, you know, this is a cliche, but I think for a reason, the idea that in the specific lies the universal, you know, things like Hannah Gadsby, her specials are about several things that are. There's no part of the Scantron Where I fill in the same things that they fill in. Right. Like, they're totally, totally different, and yet it doesn't matter. It's that specificity does something. It really hits home. And as you're telling your story, the thing I wanted to ask you about, which I deeply relate to, is the. The Jungian way of talking about it as the second half of life, like two parts of life. And actually, they think there's probably more than that. I think everybody. A huge theme on my show, I imagine, over the next year is going to be this second half of life because things like Covid created this bookend thing for lots of people. And it's similar to what you have gone through and how it's closed certain doors and opened other doors, and you're in this totally different time. And I am. I'm in this zone right now where I went, like, I was getting, like, stuck in my. How do. I wanted to build more, like, joy into my life because I'd gotten. It's just, you know, it's been hit a rough patch on a couple levels and really needed to prioritize that. And the way I started doing that was listing out all of the seasons of my life where I'd had a ton of joy. Right. And thought, these are the things I need. I need, like, you know, these kind of meetups with some friends at the bar, like I had in college. I need this thing and that thing and all. And I was making this huge list. I made a list of 10 things. Like, these are the 10 things that I know make me joyful. And. But I also, like, as I'm doing it, I'm like, this is wrong. I know this is wrong. I don't know why, but I know this is wrong. And I. And I think it's because the. Those things weren't what gave me joy. Those were me leaning into the joyful things of those seasons. And now I can feel my kids are all older than nine and I've got a teenager. And, like, I can feel life is like. And my life right now is unlike any other time in my life.
- [46:41]
B
Yeah.
- [46:42]
A
Like. And it's one of the reasons why I'm struggling. But also that all of those things, the joyful things about those were learning to really, like, lean into the what. What's cool about right now. And it's not the same stuff that it used to be. And so I don't know if I went on a giant thing because it was hard to explain, but that's the thing I really was like tapped into at the end, after I'd experienced that show was like, yeah, you do these things in your life and it changes who you thought you were. And it's a to and, and yeah, at some point in your life you start realizing that, that, oh, you're not just this cohesive thing and it's from start to finish and it's going to stay that way. Does that. Okay, that was a huge mess of stuff.
- [47:32]
B
But no, that made so much sense. And, and, and it's that thing of, of also when you're doing a show about motherhood. I was very conscious that there are people who take parenthood and they get really smug about it. Like it makes you a better person.
- [47:44]
A
Right.
- [47:45]
B
Which is not entirely. I can see where they get that idea, but it's not entirely true. It forces you to do difficult things. And doing difficult things is a really good way to become a better person. Yeah, it can be. Some people use it as an excuse to become a worse person. But you cannot have children and decide to do difficult things and become a better person and, and be beyond generous and stretch yourself. And it's just with children you have.
- [48:17]
A
To, you know, present you with serious challenges. If you take those challenges, it will make you a better person. But that's, yeah, there's a lot of ifs in there.
- [48:27]
B
Well, you're just signing up for like, this is the thing. You're just signing up for more life, right? Children. More grief, more joy, more everything. More, less sleep. More, more everything. And it's like anything in life where you go through a massive change or a massive transition. It's like, it's like puberty. If you were as a child, and I remember being a child and like a precocious little child and looking at teenagers and, and thinking, oh my God, why would you be a teenager? Like, why would you go through that? Like what?
- [48:59]
A
And I see.
- [48:59]
B
Why are they being so stupid? Like, why are they being so emotional? You know, as, as a, you know, 10 year old, you're like, what is. I, I don't want to do that. I don't want to. Why would I go through that? And then you suddenly realize, oh yeah, you know, hormones and sex and being attracted to people and the incredible value of like, you know, that just like the generative crush where you have a crush on some idiot and they like something and then you find out that thing. There are things that I found out that purely because I wanted to impress someone and I've forgotten who they were, but that thing is still like Vitally important to my life.
- [49:33]
A
Yeah.
- [49:33]
B
And the way in which that drives growth and change. And then, you know, this is the kind of person I want to be. And, and the ways in which that's good and bad and everything those big changes are, you know, but from, from before the change, you're looking at it with some skepticism because someone goes, oh, here, take this pill. It'll turn the universe inside out. And you go, oh, actually, no, I'm quite happy with the universe the way it is, you know. Yeah, that. You know, I remember in, in Twist, I say that everyone says, oh, you know, there are two people born that day, the mother and the child.
- [50:12]
A
Yeah.
- [50:12]
B
And you go, fuck. You know, it's taken me so long to like this. You tell me I just have to bin it and get a new self. That's quite a daunting thing. And I think now, particularly where people are becoming mothers later in life, where they've built an identity and they fought through all of these hardships and they've got this really strongly defended sense of self and they've got an established Persona in the world, in their business, in their friendships, who they are. They know who they are and they are proud of who they are. And then the idea of having children is like, hey, the process is going to eat 20 of your brain. It'll grow back different. Like, yeah, roll that dice, you know.
- [50:55]
A
Yep, yep. And.
- [50:56]
B
And the daunting.
- [50:58]
A
Yes, it is. And I. That bit that you said about teenage years, I realized, like, oh, I did the same thing watching my family members, you know, aunts, uncles, etc. Some of them went through extreme midlife crisis. And I remember thinking exactly what the kid thinks about the teenager, which is, I'm never doing that. Like, I, I am never. I'm going to make sure all of my decisions are such. Where I will not lose it half in my, you know, when I turn 40 and, you know, I don't think I'm going to lose it, but I am different. Like, I am. I. And, and I didn't. I did not see that coming. And I. And the reason I bring it up is because it is deeply related to how I am doing my creative practice. I got. It has changed my relationship. And I know from. I don't know how much you want to give away about your. You're special, but I know it's also changed your creative practice and what your priorities are. And it's interesting in the exact way.
- [52:07]
B
That I didn't want it to. And I'm delighted.
- [52:10]
A
Yes. Right. And you're delighted. Yeah. And you're glad about it. And I. And that, you know, and I mean, it changed mine in all kinds of ways. And some of them are, as I imagine, just knowing your trajectory, a little bit of, you know, doing this book and have. Doing all these different podcasts, etc, that, you know, some of the ways that my relationship to my creativity has changed in ways I didn't want it to before I got here. And now I'm like, yeah, but now I'm doing. I. It actually has made my creativity better in a bunch of ways too. That's a lot of vagueness. But, yeah, I know.
- [52:52]
B
It really, really, you know, it really has. And you say in your, in one of your creative pep talks, I can't remember which, but like, the obstacle is the prompt.
- [53:02]
A
Yeah, right. Yes, true. Yeah, exactly.
- [53:04]
B
That figuring out what about what you do is important to you. If you can't do it the way you've been doing it and the way I had been doing my creative practice, stand up comedy is in many ways the minimum viable product for the ideas that I have. Because you have the idea and you can try it that night in a comedy club and it works or it doesn't work and there's a really swift feedback loop and you know immediately if it's working or it's not working. And you can hone a show and you've got the festivals, so you've got deadlines and applications that are due and you know when you're meant to be doing things. And I would know at this time of year, I would know where on what stage I would be standing at 8pm on 6 August for the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And I would have to have a show by then. It would have to be of a certain quality. And like, all of those things sort of crowded out any choices in my life because it was just the next thing and the next thing and the next thing, and I was happy and I was doing this work, but actually, if I can't do this work in this way for the reasons that I describe in the show, what am I trying to do with the work? What's the function of the work? What's important to me about it, and how can I do that in other ways? And now the stuff that I'm doing, I'm running these writers meetings, I'm running a writer's writers retreat in Switzerland in September. Like, and then that kind of the part of me that wanted to be an academic, I get to, like, teach and cultivate and help People do their work and then that prompts me to think more interesting things about my own work. And, and I've got a book and I'm doing a show with the book because doing, you know, before I couldn't justify doing a show. But if it's the book and the show, then I can afford to bring my children along with me, which means that I'm not, you know, I can. And I can do. I, you know, I can do this balance of podcasting in, in the morning or in the evening when they're asleep and doing the right, you know, my. The whole of Twist was written over the shoulder of my infant while I was breastfeeding.
- [55:08]
A
Yeah.
- [55:08]
B
Like that's in the middle of the night at 3 o'clock in the morning.
- [55:12]
A
I was gonna ask you.
- [55:13]
B
I would either listen to Jack Reacher. Yeah.
- [55:17]
A
I was gonna ask you how you wrote it. If you, it seemed like you weren't workshopping that stuff on stage. Right. So this was like, you were just like writing it and then were you, did you practice it?
- [55:32]
B
I did it in Melbourne, badly, at the Melbourne Comedy Festival. I was just like, I'm just gonna, I'm gonna hit Melbourne, Melbourne under, under prepared and it's gonna be a trial by fire and I'm gonna have a slightly longer preview, you know, half price tickets so that I'm not feeling like I. Which is sort of. That's a really hard thing to do to comedy. You have to kind of get good by failing and just being like, okay, I don't have three months to run this show in. I've got to do it in a week. I've got to pack in all the failure as quickly as I possibly, possibly can. And, you know, yeah, the show has to be entertaining enough while it's failing that the audience feel like they've got what they came for.
- [56:16]
A
Right.
- [56:17]
B
But for me, it's very important that the show do what I want it to do, which is usually not just being funny. And so I was like, am I, am I okay with it just being funny and chaotic for a week? Not really. Do I have any other options? No. So, for example, the ad sections there in the show, which we mentioned before, which are just, just three minutes of one liners that I'm going to drop in every time the show sags so that the audience is getting some jokes every five to seven minutes. And then of course on the stage with the stuff that doesn't work, you inevitably, every sentence or two, find a laugh line because you've got your fucking survival Instincts on. On the stage. And then you. And you. You put the audio into Rev.com because you can't stand to listen to your own voice. And then you edit the text and then you go back in the next day and do it again. But, yeah, that was a very, very painful process. Just, you know, just painful.
- [57:20]
A
You know, I couldn't, honestly. I mean, it kind of blew my mind because the. It's a great special. And I thought, thank you. And it feels. It does. It feels like a special. It feels like something that you have workshop for years. You know, a lot I don't have the same experience, but all the stuff from Right side Out is stuff that I have done in talks, done in front of people for 10 years. Like, it's stuff that. And I know that some of the best stuff came from stuff that I made up on the spot because I could see either the survival instinct or. Or you can just read off how it should go when you're in person. And so once I realized, like, you probably didn't do that for that, I was like, man, damn, that's. I can't. I don't even know how you did that.
- [58:06]
B
Yeah.
- [58:07]
A
So it's.
- [58:07]
B
Well, by walking through the fire. Yeah. The answer. It was that to thinking. Thinking of the metaphor that's, you know, Odin carving his eye out for knowledge. Like, okay, there's a shortcut, but it's gonna fucking hurt, man. Yeah.
- [58:19]
A
And. And I think. Think, you know, for me, as I'm seeing, like, the. The. The focus of this episode for me, or what I'm taking away from this chat is this thing of being all in. In the season that you're in. You were talking about the obstacle is the way thing like you. I could easily. I could sit in the season I'm in right now and say, well, this is all the reasons I can't be happy is I can't do any of the things that I used to do. All the things that used to make me happy when I had to realize, like, oh, what made me happy was doing what the season afforded me. And the same goes for, you know, developing that special. You couldn't do it the way that you used to do it, so you figured out a different way of doing it. It produced a different type of special.
- [59:05]
B
Well, and doing the thing that is appropriate to the season is like, you know, like seasonal vegetables. The thing that is ripe right now, you eat the thing that's ripe right now, and you see so many. I'm gonna. I'm gonna say men, particularly who hit their 40s, hit their midlife crisis and go, why? I wanna do the things I used to be allowed to do? I used to. Well, I'm not allowed to do those things anymore. They used to make me happy. And then they fuck their lives down the shitter. Sorry to be crude. And then they go and do those things and it's pathetic. And it doesn't make them happy. And, and because they're not the same person, you can't, you can't be the same person that you were. That's like saying you, you know, all that will make me happy is being able to like my pants. Like when I was a baby. Like, that's, don't be, don't be stupid. You're not the same person that you were. Yeah, like, even if that was a really fun thing to do when you were eight months old, I guarantee you it'll be a different thrill now.
- [60:03]
A
And it's totally, as you're saying it, it's like, duh, what the heck? How do you not know this? But it took me at least, I mean, I didn't have to go do that. I didn't have to spend years of my life doing that. So that, to my credit, I didn't do that. But I did write it all out and thought, you know, like, I can be in a depressive state and walk downstairs and see my 12 year old son doing Perler beads and be like, yes, this is awesome. I love this. And it, and it's like, and I, and I think part of this, I couldn't imagine myself being that dad. I couldn't imagine that being like. I don't know why, but my point, but my point is because I started thinking about, why does this matter to somebody as a creator who is 22? I think that's what I was trying to get at is what matters about it is take advantage of that season regardless of the obstacles and regardless of the opportunities. Because when I was 22, I was thinking, well, I wish I had a book deal. I wish I had this thing I wish I had now. I have some of those things, but I don't have what I had when I was 22. Maybe. Yeah, I don't know it for some reason. It's just, it's working on me now. Mainly because I didn't know that I'd be such a different person at 38.
- [61:21]
B
Well, it's this thing where I think we are robbed by the fact that people who are happy in their middle and older years don't have the urge to talk about it in the way that people who are happy in their 20s are. So like when you're happy, you're so showy. You like, you're, you're performing selfhood so hard at that age because you're trying to figure out who you are and you're asking everyone is this an okay person to be? And you, you kind of, that kind of. So youthful joy looks bigger and glitzier and more exciting and so culture focuses in on it's more photogenic and then as you get older you can be equally happy and satisfied but you have less of an urge to show it off and tell people about it as well as maybe the things that make you happy are quieter things and, and as well as you know, the fact that, that you know, beauty is, is something more specific as you get older and it's more personal and it's less sort of universalizable. I think maybe the analogy is, you know how young people who are beautiful are beautiful to everyone, but old people are beautiful are usually mostly beautiful to the people who love them. And so the way to stay beautiful as you age is to have people love you not to like get plastic surgery because getting plastic surgery is trying to be beautiful in the way that young people are beautiful, right?
- [62:42]
A
Yeah.
- [62:42]
B
But if you're beautiful in the way that old people are beautiful, that's just making people love you. Right?
- [62:48]
A
Is that a thing? I don't think I've ever heard that. It's really good.
- [62:52]
B
Just made it up. Sorry.
- [62:54]
A
It's so good. Turn it into something that is. I love that. It's so true.
- [63:00]
B
Yeah. I wonder what, what it ought to be. But yeah, we need to, we need to romanticize these different periods of life in a way that we, I think we heavily romanticize one period of life. But where can people find you online? Andy J.
- [63:15]
A
Pizza Miller Creative Pep Talk and Anna.
- [63:19]
B
JP Pizza.com what about you Patreon.com Alice Fraser that's a one stop shop for all of my style specials, podcasts, blogs, my weekly tea with Alice, salons where we sit in a room and have a chat like this or my twice weekly writers meetings. The expression of interest form is open for the Swiss retreat. I've got a book. I've got a book. It's called A Passion for Passion. It's available online@unbound.com and we'll be in bookshops in the UK on the 6th of February and in the US on the 5th of May.
- [63:52]
A
Great. Awesome. This was a blast. I hope we get to do it again.
- [63:55]
B
I also, I feel like we could do six of these. Thank you so much.
- [64:14]
A
Absolutely massive thanks to Alice for joining me on this episode. Go check out her specials. Highly recommend it. I would start with the Alice Fraser trilogy and then work your way up to her latest special twist, which made me cry. It hit me in a bunch of different ways and made me laugh out loud even though I was watching it alone. Really, really recommend it. She's extremely talented at what she does and very poignant thinker and very funny comic. I told you I'd be back with the cta. The call to adventure today is midlife lysis. If you're not familiar with this word, lysis, this is a play on midlife crisis. Lysis is a word that they use a lot in dream interpretation. And they talk about the lysis of the dream, which is kind of the transformation that happens in the dream, the moment in the dream where everything changes and there's a kind of resolution. And I was thinking about how I don't want to have a midlife crisis, but I do want to have a midlife lysis. And I'm having one whether I like it or not, which is halfway through this life. I'm just having this moment where I'm not the person that I used to be. So I'm in a place in my life that I never saw coming, and it's changed my relationship to my creativity. And instead of trying to go back and cling to the good things that my creative practice used to be or what it used to mean to me, I'm trying to acknowledge the things that are great and unique about where I'm at now. So while back in the day, it used to be so motivating to me to figure out a goal and work my way towards it and look at the progress and let that really fuel my tank. These days, I'm much more motivated by just the work itself and the goals within the creativity of what I'm trying to achieve. And just trying to do another crack, another story break another story or analogy or metaphor or illustration. And I'm trying to learn how to live into the life, the creative life that's possible if I will accept certain creative deaths in my journey. And so that's my creative call to adventure for you today, is to think about, you know, what are maybe some of the things that you are desperately clinging to because they used to give you so much life, but now there's just not a lot of life left in those parts of your practice. And allow yourself to evolve. Allow yourself to take joy in what's bringing you joy and your creativity today, even if that means taking on a different title or letting go of an old title or something that you just thought would always be true. It just occurred to me that this is something that Sophie Miller, my wife, talked about in her Creative Mornings talk, which I don't know if it's live or not, but there will be a recording of that. And she talks about this in thinking that she would always be this particular type of artist and letting go of that. And that's really inspiring to me too. Massive thanks to Sophie for supporting the show, being an editor and producer on the show. Huge thanks to Connor Jones for the audio editing and video editing and sound design of the show. Huge thanks to Yoni Wolf and the band Y for our theme music and soundtrack. And thanks to you for listening. I hope you really enjoyed it. And until we speak again, stay pepped up Foreign hey, it's Dan Cummins. If you're into the weird, the wild, and the downright bizarre, check out my podcast, Time Suck. Each week I dive into shocking stories like the rise of the Nexium cult, the origins of conspiracies like QAnon and the San Francisco Witch Killer murders with deep dives and dark humor, Time Suck brings you the stories that'll fascinate you, make you laugh, and fill your head with lots of strange facts. New episodes drop every Monday. Join the Cult of the Curious. Follow Time Suck wherever you get your podcasts.
- [68:44]
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What role do books play in shaping who we are? Find out on the Five Books, the brand new podcast hosted by me, Tali Rosenblatt Cohen. Each week I sit down with acclaimed Jewish authors to discuss the top five books that have shaped them. Hear from notable guests like Booker Prize finalist Yael van der Vowden, literary influencer Zibby Owens, as we delve deep into what it means to live as a Jewish American today. Join me and listen to the Five Books wherever you get your podcasts.