Found Voices with Carolyn Ziel Season 2 Episode 3

Cheryl Montelle and I talked about writing, dancing, acting, and life. Cheryl is a treasure. She operates from a place of open-heartedness and passion. We can all learn something from her brilliance! 

I hope you enjoy this episode as much as I enjoyed recording it for you.

Cheryl Montelle is a Southern California–based writer whose work has appeared in DivineCaroline.com and numerous anthologies, including Travelers’ Tales: A Woman’s World Again, Deliver Me: True Confessions of Motherhood, Raging Gracefully, A Cup of Comfort for Mothers-to-Be, Fresh Yarn, Seven Seas, On The Bus, Rattle, Moth, Spillway, The Desert Writers 2024, Method Writers Speak, and Issued: Stories of Service.

She has performed her work in Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, and New York City. From 2007 to 2019, Cheryl produced, curated, and hosted Desert Stories, an annual spoken word fundraiser for the High Desert Playhouse in Joshua Tree. In 2010, she brought the event—titled Live From Joshua Tree—to boxOFFICE Gallery in New York City and, with artist Diane Best, created Desert Stories, a handmade, limited-edition art book featuring eleven writers and artists.

Since 2020, Cheryl has continued producing Live From Joshua Tree as a fundraiser for Mil-Tree, the veteran arts nonprofit she founded in 2013, dedicated to integrating veterans into the broader community through artistic expression, dialogue, and creative entrepreneurship. She has also collaborated with The Laboratory, an international, multifaceted arts magazine, and created Red Arrow Reads and Mil-Tree Reads. This series brings acclaimed writers to Joshua Tree.

Visit her non-profit at: www.mil-tree.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Welcome to Found Voices, episode three, where I interview Cheryl Montel. Cheryl Montel is a Southern California-based writer whose work has appeared in divinecaroline.com and numerous anthologies, including Traveler's Tales, A Woman's World Again, Deliver Me, True Confessions of Motherhood, Raging Gracefully, A Cup of Comfort for Mothers to Be, Fresh Yarn, Seven C's, On the Bus, Rattle, Moth, Spillway, The Desert Writers 2024, Method Writers Speak, and Issued Stories of Service. She has performed her work in Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, and New York City. From 2007 to 2019, Cheryl produced, curated, and hosted Desert Stories, an annual spoken-word fundraiser for the High Desert Playhouse in Joshua Tree. In 2010, she brought the event under the title Live from Joshua Tree to Box Office Gallery in New York City and, with artist Diane Best, created Desert Stories, a handmade, limited edition art book featuring 11 writers and artists. Since 2020, Cheryl has continued producing Live from Joshua Tree as a fundraiser for Milltree, the veteran arts nonprofit she founded in 2013, dedicated to integrating veterans into the broader community through artistic expression, dialogue, and creative entrepreneurship. She has also collaborated with The Laboratory, an international multifaceted arts magazine, and was the creator of Red Arrow Reads and Mill Tree Reads, author series that bring acclaimed writers to Joshua Tree. And what I know of Cheryl, I've known her for quite a while. She is amazing, she's all heart, and we had so much fun talking on a beautiful Friday afternoon about writing, about life, about movement, about all the things. I hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it for you. How long have you been writing?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

I've actually been writing since I was a kid. I always liked writing and I was always good at English. I'm not a fiction writer. I haven't really delved into that before, but I always kept a journal and um, you know, I did well on my reports in English class. Except the one time uh I went to a boarding school for dancers, and so most of the school was crap, but the English teachers were good. And we had the founder of the the school was a professor at the University of Illinois, and he was doing a semester in Chaucer with the you know AP English people, which I was, and I didn't understand that you had to footnote. So, you know, I remember spending a whole week of vacation working on my Chaucer, you know, paper, and I got it back and it was incomplete because I didn't footnote anybody. And then I didn't get an A when I did footnote because I didn't footnote at the beginning. So wow.

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Anyway, footnote.

SPEAKER_00 3:44

The dance, it was a dancing boarding school. It was in Champaign, Illinois, actually on the campus of the University of Illinois, U of I. And we lived in dorms like college kids, but you know, I went there when I was 14, and that was during the time when uh the college uh kids were streaking. That was a long time ago. How fun, how exciting naked men, you know, you know, uh running through campus. And uh yeah, I I was really focused on dance, and the reason I went to the boarding school is because my mom decided that she was going to move to San Francisco uh when my parents got divorced, and I thought it would be as clicky as it was in St. Louis, and I at least had friends going to this boarding school academy, and I chose not to move with her, wow, but to go to the boarding school, you know, where I could focus on dance. And of course, when I ended up moving to Mill Valley, California for one year, I took a year off from the academy. Everybody was like, You dance? Wow. In St. Louis, it would have been like, you know, and you understand because your experience in Beverly Hills, it's it was kind of like the Beverly Hills of St. Louis where I lived, and um I never fit in. Writers and artists were misfits.

SPEAKER_01 5:09

Yeah, I think we are. I had this conversation with Egan in episode one of this podcast. And oh, listener, if you haven't listened to that, you should. Egan's amazing. Oh, I did, I listened to it. Other people in the world should listen to it too. I had this discussion with Egan about the difference in in put in finding your voice and putting your words on the page. With writing, it's more difficult for people. I'm just curious from a dancer's perspective, the difference in writing and vulnerability, putting yourself out on the page can be really scary. I'm not saying that getting up in front of people and dancing isn't, but there's a difference.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

So I I totally agree. Well, first of all, as a dancer or an actor, normally you're working within a community of people doing the same thing. So when you're dancing, and let's say you get choreography and it makes you feel vulnerable, the the artist, the dancer can um concentrate on the movement that they've been given, right? So you can get into that altered state as you can when you're a writer, but it it's absolutely a somatic, um, movement-oriented modality. And with actors, normally they're working off another person. Um, I mean, obviously there's monologues, but when you are acting and you do become vulnerable, which I've experienced that a couple of times and only a couple of times, it's you're not you, you're the character. You've pulled on something inside of yourself, but you're not necessarily revealing you are revealing yourself, but nobody knows it because they see you as the character. And I think one of the hardest things to do is to sit down and be vulnerable with yourself to sit down and write, because I can think I will clean my house before I will sit down and write, you know, which I hate doing. But, you know, to sit down and do anything on my own. And and that might be the dancer in me, because as a dancer, we go to class. So we tune in because we've shown up and we're accountable because we're in a class, right? You know, and one of the reasons, well, I absolutely adore Jack's classes. I mean, I think he is the most brilliant writing teacher I have ever worked with. And I've worked with some pretty good people, but for me, he's the bomb. But the point is, in order for me to write those 500 words for class, I have to have a class that I've paid for and to show up to, or I won't make the time to write at this point in my life because it's solitary and I'm only accountable to myself. Getting back to your question, I think number one, it's hard to be vulnerable anyway, especially to ourselves. But secondly, um, if we have the choice to do anything but sit down and write and become vulnerable, at least for me, you know, even if we're creating a character on the page and it's fiction, I think so much of ourselves are in it. And uh again, I'm sure it's the same with actors. So even as an actor, to sit down and really learn your lines or to, you know, uh practice the monologue, again, it's you know what it comes down to, in my opinion, is discipline. Yeah, it all has to do with discipline. And as a writer, you have to have the space to write or a goal or a a deadline. When I take the class on a Wednesday morning, around Saturday is when I start thinking about writing. And then I think about it. And if Sunday I have time to write, great, but sometimes I don't. That means that Monday and Tuesday it starts getting anxious in me. And again, I also produce spoken word events. So I have worked with so many different people and not just writers that wait till the last minute because they need that, they need that deadline punch, yeah, to propel them into that vulnerable place of connection to themselves in order to write. I'm about to make a big shift where I won't be the executive director of my nonprofit. I I'm going to um move on from that uh and be on the board or something, which will free up time. And then I'm curious to see if I'll really commit to my writing. Right now, with my writing, it's more process-oriented than being published. And I know we can write pages and pages of writing, but if nobody reads them, you know, you know, I guess you need an audience. But my goal that started at the beginning of 2025 is to create that space so that I can commit more to the writing.

SPEAKER_01 10:22

There's so many writers, people come to my classes, they assume that you have to write every day. And I think you have to find your own practice. You have to find your own, you know, your own groove, your own what works for you. Your own rhythm. And you're all about the rhythm in your writing and your dancing, right? Some people they stop themselves from writing because they say, Oh, well, you know, I can't write every day or whatever. The more I talk to people about writing, the more I'm realizing, and really you're my third person, so it's not like the process of writing reflects anything in life, any practice that we do, like with dancing or with going to the gym or learning anything. It's the difference between looking at the product. Oh, we, you know, it's all about the product, the product, unless, of course, you're getting paid for it or you have some sort of deadline for work, but it's the process that's transformational, I think. And then the product is the bonus. And yes, I believe you should be submitting your work.

SPEAKER_00 11:26

Uh yeah, no, I again that takes time and energy, energy. And of course, again, if I create the space to do this, then I'll join groups that do that so I get it done. You know, left to my own devices. I'm I'm not a lazy person, but um, the way I self-motivate is if I'm accountable to do things, so you're not blown out. No, no, I'm sure I'm not. But for me, the process is also therapeutic. What I'm focusing on is either my present life or my past life. And some of that is to make sense out of it. For example, writing about my friend Danita, I've been carrying her for so many years. What was happening for me as I wrote it is I became clearer about what she meant to me. That, in a sense, as a writer, is in a sense a byproduct because the story is something that I would like to be read or performed. I like to do spoken words. So um, be the actor in me.

SPEAKER_01 12:35

What you said about becoming clear, writing, whether it's memoir or whatever, you know, when I wrote my thriller, part of the process is becoming clear either on the character's arc, you know. I didn't know what was going to happen until I got to the end, or on our own arc, because when we're writing things that are true, we become the character on the page. All the stuff that you've been writing, it's been amazing. Some of the best product that I've ever heard you read.

SPEAKER_00 13:05

I I always think about the truth is on the page. And I always remember that so that you know, if I have to make something up, I'm 66 years old, I don't remember shit, you know, but I remember the feelings. I remember how events and situations made me feel and what how I either transformed or whatever. I mean, one of the first pieces I got published was called Carousel, and it was um doing the roadshow carousel, the musical with Robert Goulet. Oh, wow. I had an event happen, and something happened. I got very close to the conductor, and he was, you know, an older Jewish man, and I'm Jewish, and I was like the youngest one in the cast, and he just took me under his wing. What happened in the course of the weeks that we were on tour, he was married to a chorus uh singer, a singer in the show. And you know, everybody gets drunk when they're on the on tour, but they had a fight and he beat her up. Oh, dear. And this was like my mentor, you know, like like somebody I was really looking up to and feeling really close to, as like a grandfather or as an uncle, and very psychic, very spiritual man, actually. I wrote the story carousel so I could make some sense of it. Right, you know, the arc was not that I had some kind of resolution, the arc was that people are complex, you know. Yeah, but again, most of my writing, it's to figure out what things meant to me.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

Joan Dideon has a quote that I don't remember right now, unfortunately. But that's what she says. How she, you know, it's on my website, how she writes to figure things out, to understand how she feels. When did you start method writing? I think before me.

SPEAKER_00 15:05

Oh my god, in Jack's living room. Yeah, so aging. I think I started with him in the 90s. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:12

Wow. This is found voices. And this is where I feel like your nonprofit might come in, but I could be wrong. There's something that happens to a writer, to a human being when they find their voice. And as a dancer, you have to quote, find your voice as an actor. In writing, it's really powerful. It changes people, how they are in the world. The drive to express yourself and to do in the world and to express your voice out into the world. And I I wonder how writing has affected that in you.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Oh, that that's a that's an interesting question. I I think it's all interrelated, certainly. I think what writing helped me do in relationship to the nonprofit, which I'll explain in a moment, is when you're writing, you have to sort of follow the thread, you know, and even if you think of it in the way of how Jack teaches with the transformation line and then massaging the transformation line and then going deeper. So, in relationship to starting a nonprofit, my nonprofit is called Mill Tree, and it's to bring veterans, you know, military veterans into community, basically through arts and dialogue and um creative entrepreneurship. So I read a book that somebody else wrote, right? A writer wrote a book called War in the Soul, Dr. Ed Tick, and he's a psychologist that worked with a lot of veterans. And it was a readable book because I buy self-help books and then I fall asleep. If I want to get a good night's rest, I read self-help books. Yeah. The self-help book that says how to use this book. I I mean, I just I I don't I am I can read fiction in two days. I can read a not, you know, like I can read really fast, but self-help, forget it. But uh Dr. Tick wrote about veterans and and their wounding of PTSD and how other cultures would take care of their veterans. You know, um, you're initiated into the military, but in you know, Western civilization, you're not initiated out the way you are with indigenous cultures. And I I found this really interesting. And, you know, like I said, I like to produce things, so I would have book readings often out. I'm in Joshua Tree, and even when I didn't live here full time, I do a lot of creative things out here. So um, you know, when the universe opens up, it just opens up. Ed and I both have the same writing teacher. I used to study with Dina Metzger, and and she's amazing, and she is, you know, the wise woman in Topanga Canyon, and she really is really something. I called Ed, I got or I emailed him and I said, we both have the same teacher, and I'd love to have you out for a book reading if you're ever going to be in Southern California. Well, he was. Oh, wow. The doors just kept opening. I just kept following the thread, you know, because he said at the book reading, if you really want to help veterans and start some kind of community group, it just made sense to me. You know, I'm in the art community in Joshua Tree. Why don't I start? You know, let me look at my mailing list from my spoken word show. Who wants to help me start this? And it was just so incredible how the doors kept opening. And I remember doing a spoken word event in Laurel Canyon, and one of the readers could create nonprofits. So I traded with him, Pilates. He did the paperwork for us to have Milltree as a nonprofit. Everything opened up that, you know. I mean, Ed lived in Boston and he was out in California right when I needed him to be to do a book reading. So, in the sense of following the thread and letting my, you know, letting the deeper part of my life dictate where I go in my life and not try to manipulate through my brain or my mind that this has to be done, I've just gotten a little bit more organic and back to your your notion that did writing help? Yes, because when you're writing, if you're gonna write from the deep voice, then you're going to follow the deep voice. So if we if we take what we're calling the deep voice and you know, follow it, or the follow the thread as I like to put it, then they there is a correlation. There is something to following the thread.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

I think people get stuck in wanting to tell a story. It does become boring. Sometimes something else needs to be written. And that comes to the vulnerability place, too. I've had students and they don't want to go deep. They don't want to look because they think it's ugly and they think, you know, I don't want to put myself like this on the page. But the deeper we go, the less we're seen, and the more I think we help others. I love what you're doing with your nonprofit, and I love that you're going to step down and give yourself more time.

SPEAKER_00 20:21

I was the executive director and always the founder. I'll always be the founder. But in terms of being an executive director of a nonprofit, I have absolutely no training and I just learned on my feet. And there are certain things that I can't stand doing, which is budgets and grants. I was just doing QuickBooks today. So yeah, and budgeting the books. You know, I just, it's not my thing. You know, I love doing programming. I get these downloads of what we can do. I mean, we've had singer-songwriting workshops. We we have Milltree actually has a writing workshop every Monday night, and it's free. You know, it's on Zoom. I I don't take it because I don't write at night, I don't even think at night.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

So I try to sleep by 8:30 at night.

SPEAKER_00 21:08

Yeah, I mean, I'm like Netflix and then I zonked out. I mean, so it's the right time for me. However, starting in February, we we got a grant from California Arts Council to do something called Rites of Passage, W-R-I-T-E-S, Rites of Passage, Stories of Service. First, we will have a retreat with um culture bears. Um, uh Miguel Rivera, who is um an advocate for vets and prisoners and all kinds of people, and Dolores Mondragon, who is uh Native American, they are going to lead the retreat so that people can create this community and start sharing their stories through different prompts. But from there we go into writing workshops, from there we go into spoken word and podcasts and you know, possibly chat books and um so yeah, so we we have all kinds of different uh programming that we've done. Um, and if anybody wants to know, it's M I L-T-R-E-E.org. What what made you move out to the to Joshua Tree? Used to be in LA. Yeah, well, I lived in Laurel Canyon for many years when I married my husband Brian Le Tart, who was a food photographer there. I think even before we got married, uh he sold a Ferrari. Yeah, because I didn't get it. So we started dating and wait wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

SPEAKER_01 22:33

What do you mean? Like you're like, why do you have this Ferrari?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

And yeah, it meant nothing to me. And he was now that he got the trophy wife. That was me. I'm the trophy wife. You know, um, I don't know. I think it was kind of a guy thing, and he sold it, and we bought property in um the Morongo Basin, which is where Joshua Tree is, up up past Pioneer Town.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

So he sold a Ferrari and you were able to buy property with what he got for the oh yeah, totally 40 acres, as a matter of fact.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

That's amazing, just from one Ferrari. I mean, yeah, wow, what year was that? That was uh probably '92. Oh, yeah, that wouldn't happen now. Yeah, no. But uh, and that's a longer story. But we started weekending, you know, we used to come out on the weekends, and first we camped for three years, and then we built a solar house, like a glorified cabin. And in 2006, it got burnt down in the sawtooth out here. And we we ended up taking the insurance money and buying a house in Joshua Tree proper. And, you know, we'd come out most weekends, and I started a spoken word show out here after the house burned down called Desert Stories, basically because I wrote a story called Fire Dance about losing my house, and I always like to do spoken word. That was in 2007. By 2008 or nine, it was sold out every year. I would curate it and and I'm still doing that. It's a different name now. It's called Life from Joshua Tree, uh, because it's now um a fundraiser for Mill Tree. I curate it, I pick 10 to 11 people from the community. Some are writers, some are not. They have to write about a desert story. I help them. Um, if they're not writers, I help them create the ark. And then I do a whole page to stage thing where I teach them how not to read like a moron, you know. I mean, you know, there are some great writers that do not know how to speak in the public. And I just, it's so hard to listen. So, you know, I'll, you know, I'm coaching them saying, go up at the end of the line, not down. So I've been doing that show every year since 2007. I didn't move out here till 20 uh 20 full time.

SPEAKER_01 24:54

I'm trying to think when we met because I started in 2008 with with method writing. And I must, I mean, you must have been in the class then.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

You know, I came and went. Yeah. Um honestly. You'd sit in the rocking chair. I'd sit in the rocking chair, but I I was I started at Jack's house when Josh was a wee lad, like two or three. And then I came back, and that's when I met you. And I came back in the early 2000s, and I don't even know when, maybe 2008. I have no idea. Again, was so inspired to be doing it. You know, I I think I I think I got busy in the late 90s with a Pilates. Oh, I had a kid in '98. So I got a little busy.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

The stuff that you're writing about or that you have been writing about New York, what a phenomenal time that you lived in New York, you know, as a as a young dancer. You know, they make movies of it.

SPEAKER_00 25:58

No, it it yeah. I mean, to be in New York from 1977 to 87 was like prime time. It's before it, you know, Reaganism had just started. In fact, I was there before Reaganism started. So theater was funded. I mean, there was so much creativity going on back then. Also, though, AIDS hit. So I was also there when AIDS um really took hold, and that was rough. I must say, dance was just at the zenith between, you know, I mean, the companies that were and the choreography that were coming out were just amazing. And as everything does, it shifts, right? So dance looks different now. It's more athletic, you know. I mean, I I have two hip replacements and I just did musical theater. I mean, I didn't do all the crazy shit people do. And but now dancers are like acrobats and you know, hip-hop artists, but they are also ballerinas. And so it's such a hybrid these days. But back then it was, I I can't explain it. It was um, there was a flow in movement that I really miss. And I'm so glad I was a part of it.

SPEAKER_01 27:12

There is something, maybe it's our age in our 60s, writing about that time, but we were just so free and we weren't attached by cell phones and internet. And exactly. My favorite thing was you could go somewhere with someone and no one knew where you were. Yeah, and that's the greatest thing in the world. You're all about making a difference, I feel like.

SPEAKER_00 27:36

Yeah, and you know, thank you. That's very nice of you to say, you know, this is just who I am. Again, the only way I can really put it is that I follow the thread. Community, I think, is just really important. I don't do anything that I don't feel I want to do. Meaning, you know, um, I I really try to stay away from shoulds.

SPEAKER_01 27:59

So I think you should keep writing because you're so good.

SPEAKER_00 28:03

No, no, no. I that's not that's not even a choice, really. I've always written and I always will. Tell me what you're going to read for us today. This is a bit part of a bigger piece. It doesn't all have a name yet. This is a bigger story about a friend of mine who was my mentor in debauchery, basically, when I got to New York at 17. And she was a very good friend. And and then there was a time after a few years where I'd had enough. So this part, um, this part of the bigger story is just called, Hey, it's me. After they left, in the silent kitchen in the back of the building, away from the street, I washed the cups. I washed their small plates full of toast crumbs and knives coated in butter. I brewed my own cup of coffee. I poured it into my favorite mug. It was huge and white with the words bullshit on the side in big black letters. I sat at the kitchen table, put my mug on the blue check tablecloth. It was plastic coated in New York soot. I looked out the gated window. A small crystal salt shaker laid on its side near a used paper napkin. I poured cream in my coffee, I stared at a lone tree standing tall above broken bricks at its feet, lots of leaves, lots of green. I raised my gaze to the tenement windows across the yard, clothes lines, moor gates, dirt stained windows. I took a sip of coffee, warm. It wasn't the cafe con leche that Danita used to make, but I could buy my own cinnamon and honey. I could sweeten my own coffee. I could orchestrate my own adventures. I could keep my eyes opened. Open, finding my own wonder. I'd crossed, I crossed a threshold. I had my own yeses and no's. I had my own okay's not okay's. I had my own likes and dislikes. No more follow me, do what I do. No more living in someone's shadow. I felt the shift. I felt that door shut. I felt a window open. I felt it deep in my gut. I was grounded. It wasn't really a choice. It was a decision made in some other part of my body. My heart? Maybe. My heart had a long leash. My heart knew love. My heart knew loyalty. My heart was big. My heart also knew enough. I moved on. I moved to LA. I moved in new circles. New York faded as I carved a new life in a new city. I had new adventures. I didn't think about Danita. I didn't dwell on the past. I didn't look back. Fast forward three years. There was a message on my phone machine. Remember phone machines? It sat on my white particle wood desk, an SOS, a message in a bottle. Danita called. The message was short. She said, Hey, it's me. I'm sorry. It was late. I'd just gotten home from work, waitressing till 10 p.m. The moon was bright through my studio window. I played the message again. Hey, it's me. I'm sorry. The windows were open. There was a cool breeze. A fire truck went screaming by. I played it again. Hey, it's me. I'm sorry. I tried to make sense. Why now? How did she get my number? Did I want that door opened? Had enough time gone by? Did I want to reach her? Could I reach her? Could I find her? Hey, it's me, I'm sorry. An amends. She was making an amends. Hey, it's me, I'm sorry. I never looked. I never tried. But there she was still in my head, in my heart. She never really left. And now it's my turn. Hey, it's me. If you can hear me, if you can hear me from wherever you are, I'm sorry. I'm sorry I didn't understand your suffering. I'm sorry I didn't really understand anything. That piece is unbelievable.

SPEAKER_01 32:42

God. The way it starts, I wash the cups, New York soot, lots of leaves, lots of green. And then the turn, you know, the the narrator discovering that she could create her own life. I don't know, the people that we leave in our tracks, in our wake. Such a beautiful, stunning piece. I think it's one of the best things you've ever written. Thank you. After you write something like that, how does it feel when you read it out loud and you get the feedback and then you think, huh, I wrote that?

SPEAKER_00 33:18

It it feels so much bigger than me. I guess I'm proud of, but it's always I'm a little bit in awe that I articulated the way I did.

SPEAKER_01 33:29

What you do in your life and in your world with your words is you're definitely leaving a mark. And it's a good one.

SPEAKER_00 33:39

Lucky us. You know, I'm I'm so grateful to have um the class and the support and even this platform to discuss it. That's really wonderful. Pleasure.

SPEAKER_01 33:54

And you're amazing. Thank you for spending time with me on a Friday afternoon.

SPEAKER_00 34:00

Oh, thank you.