HOME 'ON STAGE': LORI KIRSTEIN Actor | Singer | Author | Entrepreneur

As a child, Lori felt most at home sitting and napping under her mother’s baby grand piano. She says, when her mother played, ‘the notes rained down on me, and became a part of my flesh’.  A multi-talented force herself, Lori experienced a period of homelessness, which has shaped her creative process. When Lori speaks about home, she speaks about the ‘molten lava of truth’, rather than rigid structure. Home, in the most positive and present sense, is not ‘Pleasantville’. We speak about finding and building home.

Transcript

HOME ‘ON STAGE’: Lori Kirstein 
 Actress | Author | Singer | Entrepreneur | Socio-Linguist

S1 EPISODE 11: TRANSCRIPT                      May 16, 2021

Lori

"Here's what's happening. Here's what I've tried. Here's what I'm continuing to try. But the fact is I've got two more weeks till I have to pay rent, and I'm not going to pay my rent, and I don't want to live in my car. Can you help? Can you help me get home?" 

Nina

I'm Nina Friedman. And this is WHEREING. WHEREING explores where we are. It is dedicated to those who believe in the inherent right of belonging, and all the ways we feel we belong, and connect, to ourselves, to each other, and the spaces that hold the stories, where all of this comes alive. Where each experience of belonging is a work of art, created by chance or by design. Dare I ask, is belonging where you are, not what matters most? WHEREING is the spatial story. Welcome.

Lori Kirstein is a multi-talented force, an actress, singer, author, and entrepreneur. She brings these skills to her training programs, which focus on leadership from a place of presence and truth. We discussed the period in her life, when, in the midst of becoming a rising entrepreneur, she became homeless, and how it has informed her work and life, and what it means to find and build a home. 

Lori. Welcome. It's so nice to have you. 

Lori

I'm thrilled to be here. Absolutely thrilled. 

Nina

Lori, to begin, can you tell us about the significant places that you've lived, and a little bit about your journey? 

Lori

Oh, sure. I grew up in Ohio in Cincinnati, so I'm a good old Midwestern child. I grew up with two professor and performing musician parents. So, I got steeped in the arts, from the womb. My parents were always practicing.  My father was in the studio, practicing his cello, and my mother was in the living room on her baby grand Steinway. I woke up to the sound of music. And, when I was a little girl, I would  sit under my mother's piano.  If I was sleepy, I would go take a nap, under the piano. And, it felt like the notes just rained down on me, like, they became just a part of my flesh. 

Nina

Wow. 

Lori

I adored my mother. She was a soloist with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra. I was allowed to run around backstage. She was in her gown and she was going to be going out on stage and all that.  We'd sit in a velvet box. I just felt like royalty. And, when my mother would play for the Cincinnati Ballet, I would turn pages for her. And, my father traveled once a year. For six weeks, he'd go overseas with the LaSalle String Quartet. He was the cellist.   Then when mom got sick, it became a place  in which we were in a lot of fear, because we had no idea what was going to happen. And, sure enough, she did die after 11 years. So, it was an 11 year struggle with cancer. It sent me on a journey to other places, to search for my own place in the world, because I was homeless in a big way then, emotionally.   I lost my sense of self.  

Nina

Why did you go out to California? 

Lori

Oh boy. I had become a professional actor. I'd gotten my SAG actor card,  and I felt erroneously than if I stayed here, I couldn't get any work, that I needed to go out west, but I didn't want to go to LA, because I didn't know anybody there. And, I had fallen in love with San Francisco when I'd visited it. So, I went out.  I did some theater acting,  and I auditioned for a heck of a lot of television, but  it didn't happen. Instead, I ended up in an environment, the Bay area which is in its own peculiar way, very impersonal. Even though when you meet with people, they'll be very nice, where in the mid -western world, if you connect with somebody, you get together instantly for coffee. You start talking a couple of times a week, if you're really like, wow.  I feel a connection with you. Let's talk. Let's  be close.  Out in the Bay area. It's more like, Oh, I like you so much. I feel so close to you, No, I'll see you, when I see you.  The lack of connectivity, it taught me that, that is home for me. Connection with other people, is a huge part of home. 

Nina

I wonder if that's a function of time in an urban environment. I know it's true here in New York as well. People are just too busy. 

Lori

That's part of it. And, it's also part of, I think, of being  in a place where everybody's trying so hard to survive, where the cost is so high.  It causes you to focus almost like  a cornered animal. That leaves so much less emotional and physical time  to really reach out to other people.

Nina

So, while you were in San Francisco, while you were trying to be an actor, you sort of entered the corporate world, and you were there for about 30 years. 

Lori

Yes. 21 was when I started doing the whole corporate thing. And yeah,  it was not a good fit, shall we say? But, I did use it as quite a sociological learning, because I've always learned about interpersonal communication, I did some graduate work in socio-linguistics. My focus was power in language. 

Nina

At some point you left San Francisco. 

Lori

I was not working at the time.  I was furthering my entrepreneurial journey. And, I went looking for work, but the work that I was able to be offered, would just let me survive. None of it was going to let me thrive. I was going broke and going broke until finally I did go broke. So, my option was live in my car,  or find another way. So, necessity really is the mother of invention. For sure. You know,  everything that bolstered up my sense of who I am was going at a very rapid rate. Was gone.  I jumped on Facebook. I said, look, I'm jettisoning my pride. Here's what's happening. Here's what I've tried. Here's what I'm continuing to try. But the fact is I've got two more weeks till I have to pay rent, and I'm not going to pay my rent, and I don't want to live in my car. Can you help? Can you help me get home? And people came out of the woodwork. It was amazing. It was insane. A woman who I'd known in high school, who I hadn't talked to, connected with, thought of, for 40 years, saw my plea on Facebook, literally paid for a plane trip home.   When I got home, I was homeless, except that I was very, very fortunate.  Over the next three years that I was trying to climb out of that situation, there were people who I could live with. One person for this amount of time  then I'd find another place to stay.  I've had people be completely astonished that there were people who invited me into their lives, and I am one of them. I think it's an amazing thing to do. It killed the friendships. It's very hard to live with people you love. To live with people that you are being good to, no matter how much they stay out of your way,  they say, what do you want? Let me do things the way you want them done. No matter how much effort, I'm telling you,  it's just very, very difficult. It's hard for them to be living with somebody who has that title, that label of homeless, because it carries a lot of meaning and a lot of negative connotation. I think depending on the type of person who I was living with, they would either feel very responsible for me, which I wasn't asking them to do,  or else they felt like they didn't know how to say, it's time for you to go.

Nina

This process of being homeless. I know when you talk about home,  it has a much larger meaning. That sense of finding your home, ultimately in yourself,  in contrast to the life that you had been living before, in the corporate world, in San Francisco, that sense of not being at home in that life, to finding your home in yourself, and treating this as almost a sacred experience of becoming.

Lori

Hmm. I love that. I love that. And that's in fact what it has been and what it continues to be. And, I want to say that wasn't entirely just being graced with the experience  of it being sacred. I actually was nurturing that. For most of my adult life, I have been the person who questions everything, because I want the core truth. I want the kernel, the center, the molten lava of the truth. I want that. I do not want the happy answer. I do not want the positive thinking. I want the positive being. I want to be the wholeness, and also the center of who we all are, which is that indescribable, spiritual essence.

Nina

A lot of us are fortunate to have an experience where we go, Oh my God, I get it.  And then the thing is how do you keep it? You have to understand that it's ever present. It is your home. It is invisible. And, then also  the multi-layer part of home. Sadly,  we live in a culture where we're far more interested in home, as a place you fit into, rather than home that you build.

Nina

It's about identity. 

Lori

Exactly. And then what does that mean? When I hear identity, I think of who I want to unfold into, to what kind of human, what kind of woman do I want to be? And, beyond the ‘shoulds’, who do I want to be? I want to be all of my energy, which is huge. I mean, like I have this big, crazy energy, which I've learned to contain, because otherwise, I'll blow down cities.   The environment I want to live in, is  a container that holds me safe, while I am the complete Virago, and a force of creativity and self-expression. I really feel so strongly, if all of us were allowed to tap the parts of us that we keep secret, and we were allowed to just share them, that we would pretty instantly change the entire world. It's just an amazing thing to watch, when I stand on a stage and I'm free to express and I'm looking at different people in the audience, I can see them pop.

Nina

You have a gift. 

Lori

Well, thanks. We keep trying to ‘pleasantville’ our environment, but, what we're doing is we are robbing ourselves of quality of life. We have to become a hospitable environment, a hospitable home, ourselves. Right? 

Nina

Exactly.  I want to read something to you. I think you'll  enjoy this. 

Lori

Okay.

Nina

I am reading from David Whyte's book. He's a poet.  And, the book is called the House of Belonging. 

Lori

Oh, what a title? Oh my God. 

Nina

So, the whole theme of the book is around this. 

Lori

Awesome.

Nina

This is  part of poem called 'Sweet Darkness'.

" When your vision has gone, no part of the world can find you. Time to go into the dark, where the night has  eyes to recognize its own. There, you can be sure you are not beyond love. The dark will be your womb tonight. The night will give you a horizon, further than you can see. You must learn one thing. The world was made to be free in. Give up all the outer worlds except, the one to which you belong. Sometimes it takes darkness to learn, anything or anyone that does not bring you alive, is too small for you."

Lori

I love that, that presupposes a truth, that we are all so much. We are all so big. We're all ready! It's not something we're striving for. It's who we are. Now.

Nina

And, it also speaks to the value of darkness. And, it's so tied to what you were just talking about.

Lori

It is a womb. The darkness is a womb.

Nina

But I mean, this period that you went through, the desert, the darkness, right? 

Lori

Yes, I guess it was a hell of a womb. I mean, honestly, I've been out of it now for three and a half years and I've challenged myself every day to redecorate my home, my mental home.

Nina

I love that. 

Do you want to hear one more? 

Lori

Yes, please. 

Nina

This one is called 'The Journey'.  (Also from David Whyte)

"Everything has to be inscribed across the heavens, so you can find the one line already written inside you. Sometimes, it takes a great sky to find that first, bright, and indescribable wedge of freedom in your own heart. Sometimes, with the bones of the black sticks left, when the fire has gone out, someone has written something new in the ashes of your life. You are not leaving, even as the light fades quickly now. You are arriving.”

Lori

You know, it's gorgeous. It's also something that you can realize perhaps after you've gone through it, not when you're in the middle of it. Here's my deal. I deeply love and feel honestly for us humans, because we're sort of trying to find land, trying to find home. That appreciation for our shared plight, does allow me to really see so much more beauty.

 I was always looking for home.  I don't think until I met you to talk about this, I don't think I actually would have called it that. So, thank you for the framing. You know, when my mother died, I was always looking for home.

And so of course, as a young woman, I thought it was a man.

Nina

And for a while, work was home too, I guess.

Lori

Oh, God, no. It was the place that kept me in a structural home, but it was never home. 

Nina

So, it's been this search for an authentic way of living, that's more relational. 

Lori

We all  need to find the places that will allow us to be real, because that's where home begins. You want to build your home from there. 

Nina

Now that you have this understanding and have traveled all the way from working in a certain way, to being homeless, to building your own business. How does this sense of home unfold in your current  business?

Lori

Thanks for asking that.  It's actually central. I spent so many years going through what a lot of us go through, who are multitalented. We're told, choose one thing and do that. I can't. I'm an author. I'm a singer. I'm a speaker. I'm an actor. I'm a teacher. I'm a socio-linguist. I could not make a choice. I tried. If I don't feel that flow coming from inside of my heart, I'm not interested. I follow a creative process, as a way of living. I learned that my business as a completely, rigidly structured thing, doesn't work. And, I want to be a force, that helps us to come home to ourselves.   In my experience, we have got to be all that we are. So, we have to find ways to make peace with this home, this physical home, that we carry with us everywhere we go. Not only to come to peace, but to come to peace with the fact that we are going to have to decorate, we're going to have to un-decorate, we're going to have to take certain pieces of luggage, and chairs and tables out of this place, that no longer work for us. We have to come into an experience of self creating. My business is The Goodbye, Good Girl Project. We question any rule, that keeps you feeling that you have to be rigidified.  I love it. 

Nina

Lori, it's been magical talking to you.

Lori

Sacred.

Nina

Sacred.  The way you talk about home is deep, and authentic, and so creative. I really want to thank you for your time, and for your generosity in being here.

Lori

It's been amazing. This has been the most amazing interview. Thank you very much. 

Nina

Oh, thank you so much. It's been my pleasure.

Nina

Dear listeners, thank you for being here. I invite you to reflect on what you've heard today and send your thoughts or stories. We would love to hear from you. Stay in touch on Facebook, Instagram, or on our website  thewhereing.com. Subscribe free to WHEREING wherever you get your podcasts, so that you are alerted when the next episode airs. WHEREING is a pro bono initiative of Dreamland Creative Projects, which provides architectural and interior design services, for the places where we live, heal, age and inspire. If you wish to have a design consultation, visit dreamlandcreativeprojects.com, or email me nina@dreamlandcreativeprojects.com. Until we meet again, goodbye from WHEREING.