Sarah Marshall: Playa Dust in My Soul

In this episode of Lattes & Art, James William Moore sits down with novelist Sarah Marshall to talk about the many worlds that shape a creative life. From Hawaii and the Sierra foothills to global travel, military service, engineering, spiritual practice, movement, and more than twenty years of participation in Burning Man, Sarah brings a deeply layered perspective to art, identity, community, and transformation.

The conversation explores her novel Playa Dust in My Soul, the idea of emotional truth in storytelling, the pull of liminal spaces, chosen family, embodiment, and what it means to live between structure and freedom. Thoughtful, searching, and grounded in lived experience, this episode is a reflection on how creativity can become the place where the many parts of a life finally speak to one another.

Link to Sarah Marshall's Playa Dust in My Soul

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Transcript

00:00:02:12 - 00:00:29:02
James
Welcome to Lattes & Art, presented by J-Squared Atelier. This is the podcast where creativity, process and the beautiful, complicated lives of artists and makers come together over conversation. I'm James William Moore and today's guest is Sarah Marshall, a writer whose life has been moved through landscapes, disciplines and communities that don't always seem that they should belong in the same sentence.

00:00:29:04 - 00:00:58:03
James
And yet in her work, they absolutely do. Sarah is a novelist, traveler, spiritual seeker, former Navy servicemember engineer, and long time participant in the world of Burning Man. Her life has carried her from Hawaii to the Sierra foothills across six continents, through the structures of military and corporate life, and into spaces shaped by ritual, movement, chosen family, and transformation.

00:00:58:05 - 00:01:24:15
James
Those threads all meet in her novel Playa Dust in my Soul, a book borne from decades of lived experience, reflection and a deep interest in what it means to become. In this conversation, we're talking about emotional truth, liminal spaces, community, embodiment, and how writing can become the place where all the seemingly separate parts of a life are finally allowed to speak to one another.

00:01:24:18 - 00:01:35:08
James
So grab your coffee, settle in, and join me for my conversation with Sarah Marshall.

00:01:35:10 - 00:01:51:24
James
Sarah, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm excited to dive into finding out more of the book you've wrote so that our audience understands who you are. Could you give us a quick introduction and kind of explain what you're doing?

00:01:52:01 - 00:02:32:06
Sarah
Yeah. Good morning, James, and thank you for having me here. And I'm happy to talk about this. It's certainly a passion for me. And I could talk about it all day long and be happy for talking about it. Am I at the beginning of the 2000s? I had my first experience at Burning Man, and to give you context for that, I had had a very buttoned down life up to that point, other than a few years before I had transitioned male to female, and I was still in the throes of both being buttoned down, wanting to be wallpaper and not be noticed, and trying to just get through life before I.

00:02:32:08 - 00:02:59:07
Sarah
When I say buttoned down. I had been in the military. I gone to school and got my degree for engineering. I had worked in some fairly conservative industries and I, you know, had the kind of the life, the common life that everybody says I should be aspiring to survive. So I had sorted that out. I had it fixed, and it just came to the point where that didn't work and I had to transition anyway.

00:02:59:09 - 00:03:30:23
Sarah
And then I was still reeling from transitioning, dealing with my own internalized transphobia and working through that. And at the beginning of the 2000, two groups of friends of mine started working on me to go to Burning Man. And I was like, it's on my list, but it's low on my list. And, yeah, maybe someday. But when I had two separate groups of people that that were people that I trusted and cared about started working on me, I thought, well, maybe this is kismet.

00:03:30:23 - 00:03:50:12
Sarah
It's time, you know, whether I think I'm ready or not. Maybe it's time. And they kept saying, this place is for you. Off I went to have my first experience at Burning Man, and for the first three days that I was out there, my jaw was dropped. It was just I was just walked around with my mouth open, looking at everything, and it was so foreign to me in every way.

00:03:50:14 - 00:04:09:22
Sarah
I didn't know how to get my head around it. Ultimately, what I realized was I had come onto the playa with this identity of myself, and I thought I had had trans in the background, and I had all the stuff I was doing in the foreground, but in reality, my identity was, Now I'm trans, nobody's going to love me.

00:04:09:22 - 00:04:38:11
Sarah
I got to keep myself separate. And there was all these people that didn't care that I was trans, and they were very welcoming, and I didn't know how to exist in an environment where I wasn't fighting my own identity. Wow wasn't and was dealing with these people that were open and welcoming, and I didn't have that muscle. I had a fairly miserable experience for a week, and at the end of it I was like, oh, I'm ready to be here now.

00:04:38:13 - 00:04:47:08
Sarah
And that powerful experience eventually turned into this idea of writing a story. And that's that's how how it started.

00:04:47:10 - 00:04:52:00
James
You've been now a part of Burning Man for what? Over 20 years at this point.

00:04:52:02 - 00:04:53:22
Sarah
Almost 25 years. Yeah.

00:04:53:24 - 00:04:57:03
James
And you're not going as a spectator, are you?

00:04:57:05 - 00:05:22:02
Sarah
No. So Burning Man has ten principles. It operates on. One of them is the gift economy, which means there's no buying, selling or bartering. You come prepared to take care of yourself and then have something extra for other people. And everybody has a different idea of what that looks like. Artists, it's usually performance or installations or whatever they want to do.

00:05:22:04 - 00:05:47:14
Sarah
Other people it's handing out trinkets for established camps and villages. It's about doing something that that provides a service or something to the people at Burning Man, to the burners. At some point, I had to come to terms with that and say, okay, what's my contribution going to be? And we eventually built a village around a number of things that we provided to this gifting.

00:05:47:19 - 00:05:51:09
James
Is that what keeps calling you back then?

00:05:51:11 - 00:06:15:04
Sarah
Partially. And the reason is not necessarily the gifting itself. I mean, it's wonderful to, you know, be able to give something to somebody or receive something. What's really interesting about for me about the gift economy is if you're walking down the street in your local town and somebody offers you something for free, I don't know. I'm immediately going to be suspicious.

00:06:15:06 - 00:06:16:04
James
Exactly.

00:06:16:05 - 00:06:38:19
Sarah
And that's, you know, this is guy up or what do you want? Why are you doing this? What are the strings at Burning Man? When you're walking down the street and somebody offers you something for free, that is the normal way of engaging. So it immediately drops the emotional walls that you put up to for self-protection. And it creates an intimacy between people.

00:06:38:19 - 00:06:59:21
Sarah
Somebody gives you something, but what's really happening is you're creating this immediate intimacy with another human being, which allows you to have an incredibly deep and rich engagement with them, whether it's for 30s or the rest of your life. And that is amazing to me. That's something that I that I still marvel at.

00:06:59:23 - 00:07:24:10
James
What a gift that this gives us all if we experience that right, both the giving of the art, the supply, the whatever, but then the receiving of it, there's just something that humanizes us and puts us all in the same thing. And imagine if all of society was that way, we would not be going, wait a minute, why are you trying to give me something free?

00:07:24:13 - 00:07:35:05
James
I don't trust you. And it kind of removes that almost class system of somebody wants something, doesn't it?

00:07:35:07 - 00:07:59:00
Sarah
Yeah, it removes the othering and it removes the othering. And typically when you need something and somebody is giving it to you, and in our world, that puts you on different planes. The receiver is on a, on a subordinate plane and the giver is on a superior plane, whereas a burning man, everybody is at the same level. Whether you're giving a receiving, it's all part of the same thing.

00:07:59:01 - 00:08:25:23
Sarah
So what's kept me going back are two, well, maybe three things. Number one is my chosen family, the people that I love spending time with. And we have that moment every year where we get to spend time with each other. Two is for that the new relationships I'm going to create, because that is a natural state out there, that you're going to connect with people, that you're going to have new experiences, and you just open yourself up to whatever, whatever comes.

00:08:26:00 - 00:08:39:04
Sarah
And three is I love the art out there. It's always so. It always takes me to a different place. I can't sometimes I look at a piece of art out there, and I just can't imagine how the artist conceptualized that and then made it real.

00:08:39:06 - 00:09:09:07
James
I personally have not been to burning Man, but I'm drawn to art, and when I see the imagery that comes back from people that I know or are connected with somehow on social media that have been there to experience, you know, it's that visual for me that I'm starting to attach to. But, you know, this is why I think I was excited about our conversation, because I get more of the personal experience of what's actually behind all that art.

00:09:09:09 - 00:09:29:17
Sarah
While we can't possibly know what was in somebody's head and somebody's right, someone's vision to create those things, we can certainly have our own experience of it. I'll give you an example. One year somebody put, you know, those kids, alphabet blocks that, you know, like when I was a kid or they were little wooden blocks, right?

00:09:29:19 - 00:09:49:22
Sarah
And you can spell things and you can stack them. And so somebody had put a whole slew of them out on the playa, and they ranged from just that size, that block size to 30 by 30ft. They're spread all over. They didn't it was kind of random. Didn't make any sense to me until one day I found this.

00:09:49:22 - 00:10:09:22
Sarah
It was like this, living room chair. And there was a little book next to the chair, and it said, make a wish. And so I sat down on the chair, and when my seat hit the chair, I looked out and all those blocks that looked like they were random, all warmed up to look the same size and same Make-A-Wish.

00:10:09:24 - 00:10:14:08
Sarah
It was I was like, how did anybody think of that? You know.

00:10:14:10 - 00:10:30:23
James
There's so much creativity that comes into this space. You coming into this new in the early 2000s and having experienced all of what you have over the years, do you feel it's opened up more creativity for you?

00:10:31:00 - 00:10:58:06
Sarah
Yeah. So the short answer is absolutely. It has a longer answer is I never saw myself as an artist, and clearly the things I've chosen to do were pretty locked down and rigid and have certain principles and requirements, etc., etc.. I never considered myself very imaginative in a creative way, and in fact I would make jokes about because I had lots of artist friends and in my camp, and I would make jokes that when people would say, what's your art?

00:10:58:08 - 00:11:18:07
Sarah
I would say, my art is being stage manager to all these wonderful artists, but I because I just didn't see it in me. But where it has come up and where it's obviously become a big part of my life is in writing. Even then, I had to learn how to make it art instead of make it structured and information.

00:11:18:09 - 00:11:50:03
James
Does this come out of, you know, your worldview? You started this with you were in this buttoned up space that was very regimented, very rule oriented. And then you go into this, the playa, the world that exists that the rest of the outside doesn't seem to infiltrate. Is that this combination of it allows us to shed all of that, that buttoned down stuff.

00:11:50:05 - 00:12:31:11
Sarah
It's a great question. So the where I would put it is that that's certainly an aspiration of the event. And the invitation is always there, that basically one of the principles is participation. So you're expected to participate in whatever's going on. That said, there's a difference between receiving an invitation and accepting that invitation. And I would say it's taken me years to completely accept that invitation and step into that potential world of possibility and imagination and letting myself try things that I would never have normally tried and and see what experience comes from it.

00:12:31:13 - 00:12:52:11
Sarah
There's kind of two levels to it. To me, there's the intensity of the event, which environmentally it's intense with the heat and the cold and the wind and the dust and the rain and whatever comes up. And, and then the event itself, which is can be very intense as well. There's musical stages and etc., etc.. So yeah, there's always something going on.

00:12:52:11 - 00:13:13:17
Sarah
So there's a certain level of social intensity as well, I think, where it really hit me that I could handle all that. I've been all over the world. I've been in lots of odd places. I can handle all that intensity, the intensity that I struggled with, and I really had to open up myself to. And what was the genesis of me writing the book?

00:13:13:19 - 00:13:24:21
Sarah
Is that a mental emotional exposure that a willingness to, to allow myself be inside that intensity and not fight it. That's been my journey.

00:13:24:23 - 00:13:38:00
James
Then that leads me to this question with burning Man. It's really shaped your understanding of what community and impermanence and who a chosen family is, has in it.

00:13:38:02 - 00:14:06:18
Sarah
Oh, and it's absolutely changed it. So quite literally, I never really emotionally stepped into any community before during and I, I would be on the periphery. I would keep myself kind of separate from everything I'd be. I definitely participate. But it was very tentatively and I found myself doing that, that first year at Burning Man, I would I was camping with one group, I had another group to go visit and I never really landed in any group.

00:14:06:18 - 00:14:32:02
Sarah
I was kind of I was with at that time, like 18,000 people, but I would I felt alone, I felt alone almost all the time. And that's because I wouldn't really step into the circle, so to speak. I would be on the periphery, but I would never step in. Burning man, change that. By the end of that first year, I fully accepted that I could be part of a community and that I would, and that I wanted to do that, that that would enrich me.

00:14:32:04 - 00:14:40:16
Sarah
And that was a that was probably the largest step in my life I've taken to really opening up to who I am and who the world, what the world is for me.

00:14:40:18 - 00:14:53:00
James
I want to now move over because you've had these experiences and that led you to write a book. Can you talk to us about your book, please?

00:14:53:02 - 00:15:09:13
Sarah
So I had this idea for the book by the mid 2000. So I was like, I want to write this book. I think it would be great for people. I didn't really know why I get up, but I just had this urge to tell a story. So I wrote it out. My book is long.

00:15:09:15 - 00:15:31:09
Sarah
But it was four times longer when I wrote everything. I wrote back stories. I wrote stem to stern everything I put everything in the cake that I could possibly think of. And what I realized is I was writing like I was at work. I was I was being very informational. Oh, I was, I was being, I gave a lot of great information.

00:15:31:09 - 00:15:54:11
Sarah
You would you would, you know, that it was rigorous and every treatment, what I didn't do was tell a story. So quite literally, it took me 20 years of writing a draft, giving it to friends, getting feedback, going into despair, putting it down for sometimes a couple years at a time, picking it back up, rewriting it and doing it again.

00:15:54:11 - 00:16:24:05
Sarah
And it fully took 20 years to turn all this mountain of information to sculpt a story out of it. I very much I was talking to a sculptor a couple days ago, and he was talking about looking at a piece of marble and and having that intense anxiety of what it was going to turn into. For me. That's how it was learning how to write the story was looking at this mountain of information and trying to figure out how to make a story out of it.

00:16:24:07 - 00:16:36:22
James
Talk to us about that story. You've got all of this information. You've got all these really incredible characters. How did that spark you into the story you have?

00:16:36:24 - 00:16:56:16
Sarah
Eventually, I got down to one word for what the story is about, and it's boring. And you've already heard it in some of the things I've said in this conversation is that I felt separate when I first started, and then I had to work my way into being part of things. Like I said, the invitation was there from the beginning.

00:16:56:18 - 00:17:24:01
Sarah
I refused to accept it at first, and it took me a long time to accept that invitation. And the community into participation. What I tried to create in the story was characters who had some struggle with belonging, and every one of them has a different strategy, a different way of dealing with it. But each character has a struggle with belonging and has to face that when they come out to this intense event.

00:17:24:04 - 00:17:37:18
Sarah
And I created around seven characters that are archetypes for different things at Burning Man, and then showed a 360 degree view of Burning Man from seven different pairs. My eyes.

00:17:37:20 - 00:18:06:06
James
You and I come from a similar background that we are part of the LGBTQ plus community, and you used a word earlier othering. And I love that word because I teach art history, and I absolutely bring that in as part of how art is seen or created. And now you're talking about these characters that don't feel like they fit in.

00:18:06:08 - 00:18:11:08
James
Have you almost written a story of bringing the other things together?

00:18:11:10 - 00:18:34:21
Sarah
Oh, yes. It's, unabashedly, each of these characters feels outside of something, and they have different versions of that and different ways of dealing with it. But they all have that other sensibility, and they all have to face their own version of that othering and how they're going to address it. And some do well at it and some do not so well at it.

00:18:34:23 - 00:18:55:12
James
Which is the reality of our lives. Some of us come out of that space and feel accepted or feel a part of a community. Finally, and some of us continue to fight that. I think that's beautiful that you don't make this be a picture perfect sort of situation.

00:18:55:14 - 00:19:18:06
Sarah
No. And in fact, the idea is that those faults are the things that emerge and the things that you have to deal with. Burning Man, it's the place where not only is being queer or whatever, whatever other thing you are is accepted, it's encouraged. It's you should be different. You should explore whatever that is. You should be that person.

00:19:18:06 - 00:19:39:04
Sarah
It's, it's a safe place to exist. It's not that safe environmentally, but it's a safe place in which to emotionally explore that and just be yourself. And there's a thriving everything there. A place to really experiment and see if there is this for me, you know, or is it something else? Or do I put on some other version of myself and try that?

00:19:39:06 - 00:19:45:01
Sarah
It's a place where you can do all that, and the only thing that holds anybody back from that is yourself.

00:19:45:03 - 00:19:56:00
James
Which is the reality, right? We are our own worst enemy when we are trying to get ourselves out of that comfort zone to truly experience what life is about.

00:19:56:02 - 00:20:25:05
Sarah
And that's exactly right. And if you spoke with folks that are listening, read the book. You'll see that the queer characters are not treated any differently than the heteronormative characters. They are. They are themselves. They are just as accepted as anybody else. And they all have their own stuff to to work through all the characters pair with another character for something that they're working through, and they work through it differently because of the, you know, they're where they're coming from and that that.

00:20:25:09 - 00:20:49:03
James
And that's the community part of it. That really is. The title of the book is Playa Dust in My Soul. And the more I looked into the book, what we're talking about this morning, there is a reality of this title that hit me that when you're on the playa, that dust gets inside of you.

00:20:49:05 - 00:21:09:22
Sarah
Yeah. So there is a thing about burning Man is on an alkali lake that much like the Great Salt Lake area there, and we're there, but it's a 100 mile expanse of Playa bed that there is nothing new. It's just it's out in the middle and it's so remote. And so you're on this playa bed with this dust and it's so fine.

00:21:09:22 - 00:21:38:24
Sarah
It's like cement dust. It's so fine. It gets into everything. So anything you bring out there is going to have playa dust up. You know, you're going to have that in for most stuff that you take out. It will never not have that fire dust in it. And that really as I was thinking about what the Burning Man has been for me and the plan has been for me to that that has gotten in my soul that, that, that that version is inside me and will never go away, no matter what I do for the rest of my life.

00:21:39:03 - 00:21:44:18
Sarah
It's part of me. And that was how I came up with that. The title for the book.

00:21:44:20 - 00:21:54:24
James
One of the things that I get, the sense is coming through in this is about liminal spaces. Yeah. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

00:21:55:01 - 00:22:14:14
Sarah
The logistics of the event are that there's nothing out there. It is a pristine lake bed. And then about a month before people come out and start building stuff to get prepared for it, lay out the roadmap and, and put up the, the nascent structures that go up out there. And then everybody comes out and populates the city for their neighborhood.

00:22:14:14 - 00:22:40:23
Sarah
They're there particular place with whatever they're doing. So it's at once both structured and open to whatever happens. And so the river is at no point where the city is stable. It grows in the week, and then it starts to decline. Some things start to decline as other things are growing, and eventually after, you know, a week and a day, everything gets stripped down, torn it up and carted off to ply.

00:22:40:23 - 00:23:03:17
Sarah
And over the next month or so, the DPW crew, the Department of Public Works crew out there cleans it up to pristine conditions again. At no point when you are out, Burning Man, do you ever feel like you have a sense of stability. You're always in that liminal space, no matter what. I'm a philosophically Buddhist. I'm not religiously Buddhist.

00:23:03:17 - 00:23:30:24
Sarah
I'm philosophically Buddhist, and that's very much about a practice of letting go all the time. Because if you let go, the next thing comes up. If you resist, you're kind of in misery. And at Burning Man, if you manage to let go of everything and just be in the moment, just be present. Because that's another principle, is that radical presence in the moment is that you have these amazing, deep, rich experiences, and you never have to be sad that it's going away.

00:23:31:03 - 00:23:34:01
Sarah
It's it's just what it is in that moment.

00:23:34:03 - 00:23:36:19
James
This book, it's fiction. Correct?

00:23:36:24 - 00:23:55:17
Sarah
It is fiction. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, and I was saying, you have to read it because you're in the book. And what I mean by that is I didn't take her character explicitly and make that a character in the book. I took pieces of her just like I took pieces of myself and plug them into the book.

00:23:55:19 - 00:24:05:11
Sarah
Each of the character represents somebody I've met out there, or a specific person that I met. However, the story around them is completely fictional.

00:24:05:13 - 00:24:26:23
James
With that, it strikes me about this idea of truth and memory, and as a writer, how are you meeting kind of that emotional piece without really exposing who these characters are? Like in real life?

00:24:27:00 - 00:24:51:01
Sarah
I think there's a couple of things that I would say about that. One is, I would say the way I describe the book is that it's not accurate, but it tells the truth. You know, it's so I don't because these characters are uniquely archetypical. It doesn't point to a particular person that I know. There are some people in the book where a friend of mine might read it and say, oh, I see myself in that.

00:24:51:01 - 00:25:12:07
Sarah
I see this again, and I'll say, yes, you do that. It is partially based on you. It's also idealized in other different ways, or it's formulated in other different ways, like my daughter is in that book and part of the characters just from her personality. And I plugged her personality into one of the characters. But that character is very different than who she is.

00:25:12:09 - 00:25:39:06
Sarah
I would say you wouldn't be able to find any one of those characters, I'd say, with the exception of some of the very peripheral characters which I knew and met on in The player, but played no real part in the central themes of the story. They were peripheral characters. There's a couple of those that are actually people I've met, and I just wanted to capture a moment of them, but the the main characters are definitely creations of fiction.

00:25:39:08 - 00:25:54:04
Sarah
There's a trans character that goes through a journey much like I was describing mine, but her journey, she's much more broken than I was when I got on the player, and her journey is much more dramatic than my first year out there.

00:25:54:06 - 00:26:36:20
James
It's interesting you use that as an example, because right now in the class that I teach in art history, I'm introducing them to Cindy Sherman, who does self-portraiture. But she's the first person that says that these aren't portraits of me. I think there's a connection there. You know, as I'm thinking about what you're saying now, how you have allowed these characters, these personalities that in a real world exist, that you've given all of us a chance to step into this world on the playa, to be exposed to something that connects us more humanly.

00:26:37:01 - 00:26:38:13
James
Am I missing that?

00:26:38:15 - 00:26:58:17
Sarah
No, you're you're absolutely right. That's that's exactly the truth. And I was just thinking about the the trans character in the first when I initially wrote that character, I wrote that character is much more kind of heroic, like just knew what she was doing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And what I realized after I said, after somebody read it and gave me feedback.

00:26:58:17 - 00:27:18:16
Sarah
So I said, what do you think about this character? And she said, well, the character's fine, but doesn't really do anything for me. And I was like, oh, I'm not really being honest about this character. I, I have an agenda to make this character look good, and I need this character to breathe. I need this character to have some real stuff to deal with.

00:27:18:16 - 00:27:32:20
Sarah
And so that's when I say not accurate, but the truth. I had to give that character truth, so I did. I had to get past being afraid of what I was exposing in myself in order to write a character like that.

00:27:32:22 - 00:27:46:10
James
You've been going to the playa over 20 years. It took you almost that long to come up with this whole story. Yeah, that's a big chunk of life span for you, isn't it?

00:27:46:12 - 00:28:08:12
Sarah
It was. Know, I try to talk other peoples into people and they do it doing it first, because I didn't see myself as a fiction writer. And eventually I had to give up and take it on. But for me, being able to tell this story, as we've talked about the event itself, is, is premised on the gift economy, among other things.

00:28:08:14 - 00:28:26:12
Sarah
And I thought if I could get this story to become the story that I wanted it to be a gift to, to two groups of people, burners that have gone there who will see lots of Easter eggs in it and go, oh yeah, I remember that. And I've had people that have been to Burning Man read the book and then give me feedback.

00:28:26:12 - 00:28:46:02
Sarah
I said, wow, you've made me want to go back again. I remember all those things that made me love it in the first place. And other people that had never gone. I wanted to give them a real lived experience of what it would be like being on that playa, doing the stuff out there that you do, and having the experiences you have, whereas they may never go after themselves for whatever reason.

00:28:46:04 - 00:28:53:07
Sarah
But I wanted to give them that experience. So for me, this is my big contribution to hahaha.

00:28:53:09 - 00:29:03:15
James
So okay, my next question. Did the playa give you the novel, or did it give you the language to understand your own transformation?

00:29:03:17 - 00:29:29:13
Sarah
I would say both. Definitely. In the immediate the language to get to my own transformation. Absolutely. And I I've spent, you know, all my years since then continuing to be in that process. That book was born, that book, this story was ready to be told the first time I got on the playa. And it just took me that long to figure out how to do it took me that long to really step into being a writer artist.

00:29:29:15 - 00:29:56:17
James
Well, and that's almost like a transformation for yourself, right? You you mentioned earlier that you are a trans person and that there is a transformation that goes on with that, and you went from a buttoned up personality to now being in this space of creativity that you didn't think existed inside of you.

00:29:56:19 - 00:30:20:14
Sarah
Yes, that is absolutely right. And to I would say, I'm a hard case. I really I really had to crack the shell on the nut in order to get there, whereas other people are more like, peach or nectarine. They're just available right away and they can get to it. But me, I really had to work at crack and the crack in the show off the nut.

00:30:20:16 - 00:30:46:02
James
Well, and this is so beautiful for me to see, because one of the things the class I teach, it's a general ed class. They get credit for taking an art class, and I find that many people coming in have a space where they are in kind of a buttoned up program sciences, math, engineering, etc. and they don't think creativity is inside of them.

00:30:46:04 - 00:31:08:04
James
And moment that all of a sudden it's like this little flame lights up and they're like, wait a minute, I don't have to use a formula, and I can break a few rules to do something that doesn't fit inside what the end dancer has to be.

00:31:08:06 - 00:31:31:23
Sarah
Yes. And what I found is some of the most creative people I know I've met in the verified environments of industry where whereas they they're able to tap into both sides of it, they're able to contribute in this structured environment, and yet they're able to write books or create installation art or do music or, and I know that so many people like that.

00:31:32:01 - 00:31:51:16
Sarah
I've been a little envious of that. As I've worked on my thing and not given a credit for being a piece of art itself in this last year is where I really got to the point. Last six months before I published the book, I got to the point where this, oh, this really is a piece of art, and I can let it be what it is to whoever wants to read it.

00:31:51:18 - 00:32:16:05
Sarah
One of the characters builds an art installation, and at some point he realizes that art installation is no longer his, that it is the city. It is the people that come in, and they each have their own different experience with it. And much like that, that's what this book is. I put it out there as a contribution, but everybody that reads it, it's going to have an utterly different experience or resonate with a different character.

00:32:16:11 - 00:32:31:09
Sarah
Or is or is that clearly resonate most with. And because there's a piece of me in all of my I was going out with the trans character, other people will read it and say, oh, I really saw myself in this, this character or that character, and this one really impacted.

00:32:31:11 - 00:32:56:23
James
This is going to feel like it comes out of a bizarre field out there somewhere. But through the book, is this going to help some understand about the world, like Beyond the Playa? Will this help them open their own eyes up to that giving, sharing sort of society?

00:32:57:00 - 00:33:14:21
Sarah
That's a great question. And that's a super. And beside your question, I don't and I don't think it's really up in left field for this conversation because I remember the first several years I would want to be back at Burning Man because I wanted to be back in that culture. And then at some point I realized, you know, I can take this outside of burning.

00:33:14:22 - 00:33:35:16
Sarah
This doesn't have to stay there. This can be in my life all the time. And I would say that it's even affected my life. And in my work I manage big changes, transformation and companies. That's kind of my my thing. But what I realized at some point is doing that work is really building sandcastles, because there's always going to be another tide going out.

00:33:35:16 - 00:33:57:01
Sarah
And coming back in. The waves will wash away the sandcastle that I built, you know, two years ago, and I'm going to have to build a whole new sandcastle. And when I came to terms with that was that that was part of my existence in my world. I didn't stay attached to things. I stayed attached to the doing the work because that was really all I had control of day to day.

00:33:57:03 - 00:34:13:13
Sarah
And I made a huge difference for me. And I would like to share that in with everybody, every. I mean, if we've had a world that operated like the gift economy today, we would not have any of the struggles that we are witness to. And it's right.

00:34:13:15 - 00:34:31:13
James
Exactly. I'm excited to dive in to reading this gift that you have given to all of us through this book. I can't wait, Sarah. I want to start kind of wrapping this up, but is there anything that we've missed that you want to make sure the audience hears?

00:34:31:15 - 00:35:06:07
Sarah
Well, we've talked, in detail about what the event is and the people that come to it and all that. What I will say is there is this kind of general ethos that emanated from that event that we already partially talked about being generous with people, being inclusive and not being afraid of somebody who is different than you, celebrating the differences, celebrating the the magic and imagination that comes from opening yourself up and not worrying about protecting yourself.

00:35:06:09 - 00:35:17:03
Sarah
You know, there's always a, you know, a risk in opening yourself up, but there's also a great reward. And I think both of those things are covered in the story.

00:35:17:05 - 00:35:39:07
James
That's marvelous. For the audience, please check out the show notes you will see there the link to be able to get Sarah's book. Sarah Marshall is an author and has had a couple of decades of experience on the playa. Not to be missed. I can't wait to read this. It's on my list. Sarah, thank you again for joining me.

00:35:39:07 - 00:35:40:21
James
I appreciate it.

00:35:40:23 - 00:35:45:04
Sarah
Thank you, and I can't wait to hear how you know how it impacts you. And once you read it.

00:35:45:06 - 00:35:50:02
James
I will let you know.

00:35:50:04 - 00:36:22:20
James
Thank you for joining us for this episode with Sarah Marshall. What I love about this discussion is how much it reminds us that transformation rarely happens in one dramatic moment. More often, it happens through patience, through returning, listening, moving, questioning, and allowing ourselves to be changed by the world as we move through. Sarah brings such a thoughtful perspective to the intersections of art, spirituality, discipline, community, and story, and I'm so glad we got to spend some time with her.

00:36:23:00 - 00:36:54:04
James
If this conversation resonated with you, be sure to check out Playa Dust in My Soul and learn more about Sarah's work. You can find links to the work and Sarah's web page in our show notes. And as always, thank you for spending time with us here on Lattes & Art, presented by J-Squared Atelier. I'm James William Moore and if you've enjoyed this conversation, be sure to subscribe, share the episode and if you're looking for an art history lesson, that isn't like those old stuffy lectures from school -

00:36:54:09 - 00:37:15:02
James
be sure to check out our sister podcast, Art Happens: The Divine Mass of Art history, available in all the usual spots for podcasts, with a video version available on YouTube. Until next time, pour another shot of espresso and keep creating, keep questioning and keep finding beauty in the unexpected.