Hoorf! Radical Care in a Late-Capitalist Heckscape

The Failure Experiment: cyberpunk and the art of collaboration with Ricki Cummings

• Elle Billing • Season 3 • Episode 8

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 40:40

Send us Fan Mail

Elle Billing and Ricki Cummings discuss their recent experiences and creative work, using this episode to announce their collaborative project: Ricki talks about her new book-length poem, "The Failure Experiment," and Elle reveals her new series of paintings inspired by Ricki’s queer cyberpunk poetry and her own personal experiences of chronic illness. As they grapple with the current political climate, putting finishing touches on their work, they emphasize the importance of patience and trusting the creative process. “The Failure Experiment” drops on March 21, 2025.

Links to join Ricki’s and Elle’s creative newsletters for all the latest on The Failure Experiment, as well as all other resource links, are in the full show notes at hoorfpodcast.com

Subscribe to Hoorf! Radical Care in a Late Capitalist Heckscape wherever you listen to your favorite podcast:

Apple | Spotify | YouTube

Join the Blessed Herd of Saint Winkus: Sign up for our newsletter, get Hoorf! episodes delivered directly to your inbox. What's more, you get invitations to our monthly Coffee and Biscuits Chat, where you get to hang out with Ricki and Elle, talk about the show, and connect on the topics that mean the most to you.

Become a Patron:

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/hoorfpodcast/membership

Connect with Elle Billing:

Support the show

Elle Billing:

Hi. My name is Elle. Billing. I am a chronically ill queer femme, and I'm tired. I'm here this episode and every episode to dig at the roots of our collective fatigue, explore ways to direct our care in compassionate and sustainable ways, and to harness creative expression to heal ourselves and to heal our world. Welcome to Hoorf, radical care in a late capitalist heckscape. okay, so I literally just said, my opening chats with guests are usually off topic, and so I'm just opening by saying that, because I don't know how to open this conversation with you, because we talk all the time.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah.

Elle Billing:

Hi. Ricki,

Ricki Cummings:

hi.

Elle Billing:

It's snowing outside today.

Ricki Cummings:

It snowed a little bit here, but it's mostly just cold.

Elle Billing:

See, we had that really bad cold snap, and it's snowing because it warmed up, because the air can hold moisture again.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

it was like 30 below for several days, and now it's 20 above,

Ricki Cummings:

hooray!

Elle Billing:

and it's snowing. And Winkie's like Snow, Snow. I'm gonna eat the snow! Right now. She's like, Mother, why are you recording? you're supposed to be eating? This is the time when you, this is the time when you eat breakfast, not when you sit on your computer in the office. Tried to give her a chewchew, and she R, U, N, N, O, F, T, with it,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah,

Elle Billing:

and went and tried to bury it in her blanket, instead of sitting and chewing on it. Because this isn't where we chew bones. We chew bones in the other room.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah.

Elle Billing:

So anyway, I am drinking my coffee out of a Hoorf mug. Did you know we have Hoorf branded mugs?

Ricki Cummings:

I knew that. I don't know how many listeners know.

Elle Billing:

I am not great at marketing. They're adorable. This is one of the old Hoorf mugs. It has the old logo on it. We have a new logo that I commissioned an illustrator to draw Winkie, and it's adorable,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah, it's like, actually, our dog instead of a clip art dog,

Elle Billing:

yeah, which was actually, I mean, the clip art dog kind of captured her personality. It had her eyes closed and her tongue out, which is basically what it's like

Ricki Cummings:

to bandana,

Elle Billing:

and the bandana, which is basically what it's like to try to take a picture of her, because she's like, I'm not cooperating. But I did get a really adorable illustration of Winkie, and it's on our stickers and our mug now. So, yeah, that's I got that, I busted, I busted that mug out this morning, like I'm gonna drink coffee out of the Hoorf mug while I'm recording this episode with Ricki. So, oh, how have you received care recently?

Ricki Cummings:

Um, this past weekend, there's a friend of mine that I met in grad school, who happens to live a couple blocks from us, and they came over on Sunday and brought a board game that was our Christmas present called Wyrmspan is what it's called, it's, it's, if you've seen the board game Wingspan that tends to be in, like, Target and stuff like that. It's that game, but with like, uh, like a dragon skin over top of it. It's like, basically the same mechanics, but dragons instead of birds.

Elle Billing:

So not worms.

Ricki Cummings:

Well, wyrm with a Y,

Elle Billing:

oh, okay,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah. So they came over and we played that, and they brought makin's for French onion soup, and, yes, and some French bread with various cheeses upon it that we toasted up. And it was, it was very good. It was a very nice weekend, and it was nice to see other people, because it's been really cold and COVID has been gross out in the land.

Elle Billing:

I mean, really, there's like, four going around. It's like, they're calling it a quademic.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

I had this Christmas crud it lasted--

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

ten days it was like time traveling. I was so sick.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, there's like two different flus, plus COVID plus Norovirus is going around, and now we have bird flu to maybe worry about. So that's rad. I don't get out of the apartment much unless it's for errands and stuff like that. So. Yeah, I just don't spend time with other people very much. And so that was that was nice. It was nice to have a meal and play games and see a friend and do all that stuff, to forget that it's winter

Elle Billing:

and soup is like the ultimate in, like comfort food. And when somebody else brings you soup, that's just like,

Ricki Cummings:

and like, the thing is, is, like, they brought the ingredients and we made it here, so, like, the apartment has smelled like onion, French onion soup for like, three days. It's amazing.

Elle Billing:

Ohhhhh

Ricki Cummings:

like, yeah, it was very it was very pleasant. Yeah,

Elle Billing:

that's really good.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

I dig that.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah. So, like, that's, that's like the external stuff, I suppose internally I have, this isn't really care so much as dissociation, but I've been playing a lot of Pokemon. I don't know what it is about that game, but it just like, it makes me feel relaxed in a way that other games don't, um, not quite as much as Stardew Valley, which is like the warm blanket of video games. But there's just something about the pace of the game. It's not it's not urgent in any way. And trying to slow down is something that I've been trying to do since, well, since Monday, especially, but recently. So, yeah,

Elle Billing:

yeah. I came home from work last night and I walked in the door and I was like, Oh my gosh, it smells like cookies in here.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh, yeah.

Elle Billing:

And you know, my parents always send the dog out to greet me when I get home from work. So I heard these little clicky steps on the, on the laminate floor and her little tails wagging, I'm like, Hi Winkie. Hi Winkie. And I popped my head around the corner and I said, did someone make cookies? And my dad said, No, I farted next to the heater,

Ricki Cummings:

Daniel.

Elle Billing:

I I was like, oh, okay, good job. And so then I go into the kitchen, because I usually fill my water cup, and then go sit with my parents and wind down a little bit after work before I go to bed. And I get into the kitchen, and dad comes in there, and he's like, you can't have Craisins, can you? I said, No, I can't. He goes, Oh well, all three boxes of cookie dough that were in the freezer. He really did make cookies. And one of the clubs at school, at the high school sells cookie dough every year, and he had bought three boxes, and then he baked all three boxes last night. So Dan's been stre-- my dad gets really domestic when he's stressed out. So he had been vacuuming when I left for work. So not only did he got a new vacuum, so not only did he use the new vacuum and vacuum all the carpets, but he also baked all the cookie dough.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh,

Elle Billing:

I couldn't have the oatmeal craisen but there were triple chocolate chip cookies. And I did have some of those, and the house smelled like, it smelled like warm cookies, and cookies were still warm. And so I got to have cookies.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

sit on the couch with my dog. Yeah, it was nice. nice.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, I actually discovered that there are chocolate chips in our cabinet. And so I think somebody had an idea of making chocolate chip cookies and just never told me that. So I'm gonna have to check and see if we have eggs or not. I think we do.

Elle Billing:

They'll be the most expensive chocolate chip cookies ever made.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh, man,

Elle Billing:

except for the chocolate chip cookies that you'll make like next month, because those will also be the most expensive chocolate,

Ricki Cummings:

the most expensive so far, unless

Elle Billing:

unless you get like a goose that lays golden eggs and then, and then those cookies

Ricki Cummings:

are those for eating, though, Like, I guess I've never are the, are the eggs, solid gold.

Elle Billing:

You know, I never really. I never thought about that until just now. But, you know, there are like, really fancy restaurants that like, put, like,

Ricki Cummings:

gold leaf

Elle Billing:

gold leaf on food. So I imagine that in someone's head canon, as of right now, the goose that lays the golden eggs involves some manner of gold leaf with the eggs and really fancy chocolate chip cookies that serve no purpose except to make really rich people in New York. I'm not picking on New York specifically as far as the city, but like people on Wall Street who spend money on things because they can,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah,

Elle Billing:

it's the mentality. There are lots of great people in New York who don't do that.

Ricki Cummings:

Several million in fact,

Elle Billing:

yeah, yeah. But the whole like, I'm gonna eat gold

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah.

Elle Billing:

Thing, it comes from the goose that lays golden eggs as of right now, that is someone's head canon, and by someone, I mean me, yeah, so I was gonna say, speaking of that, no, there-- I have no segue. Speaking of segues, let's talk about failure. (laughter) But seriously, what have you been working like? Let's talk about the project. Let's talk about the project. You finished a book.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, I finished the book. In the book, to be clear, I'm self publishing it because I am personally not a fan of the traditional publishing loop, which requires you to do all of the same work of self publishing a book, as far as proofing and promotion and art

Elle Billing:

and marketing,

Ricki Cummings:

marketing and all of that stuff. Like, you have to do all of that work regardless. But in traditional publishing, somebody takes a big chunk of that

Elle Billing:

Yeah, especially now we're like,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah.

Elle Billing:

I think Before, there used to be some advantages of traditional publishing where, yeah, the publishing house would do your marketing for you.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, they do marketing or the actual physical publishing of the book or distribution, yeah, right. And we don't have to do that anymore. With the advent of the Internet and various print on demand services, printing has gotten very cheap and very easy, and so has book binding. So there are lots of services. Amazon has one, but like Ingram, the book distribution company, they have one. Lulu.com isn't a pretty old one. Wil Wheaton wrote a book with them once. So there are, there are lots of print on demand, sorts of avenues that one can use. And by cutting out that publishing company, more of the money goes to me, which, as a very strange writer, it's very difficult to get someone that understands the work, because so much of publishing is catching the right person at the right time. It's very much a lottery and poetry, especially if you have so many Book Awards and contests and all of that stuff, you have to pay a fee to get in,

Elle Billing:

pay to play.

Ricki Cummings:

I understand that a lot of these are run by small entities that are trying to fairly compensate their time and effort. But like I also need to be fairly compensated. There's a thing that Harlan Ellison said, um, once the like pay the writer, there would be nobody on the the television set, on the studio set, without the writer. All of those people are dependent on the writing, and if the writing's not there, then there's no point. So I would like to be fairly compensated for my time, and the easiest way to do that is to do all of that same work myself that I'd be doing myself, and just keeping all that money for myself,

Elle Billing:

right? Yeah. So all that to say, yes, you spent three years working on a book.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, the initial genesis of it started when you were still in Twin Falls. And like so many things that happen in art, basically it was, it was two ideas that smashed into my head at the same time, which was the Walter Benjamin essay, "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" and Love in the Time of Cholera, and like smashing those two ideas together to become love in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. and then Phil -- like the idea of multiple versions of the same person, and specifically, there's a line in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" by Philip K Dick, which is the book that Blade Runner was based on. One character says to another something along the lines of, do you think you could fall in love again? And he replies, only if she looks like you like, that line itself is very fraught with meaning, and so the book takes those ideas and tries to synthesize something out of it. The title of it is called The Failure Experiment. There's an idea in queer theory that was put forth by Jay Halberstam in the title of their collection of essays called The Queer Art of Failure and, and the thrust of that book is that part of what underpins queerness, quote, unquote, queerness is the idea of failing to conform. So the compilation of various types of failure, the compilation of various versions of the same person trying something over and over and over to somehow reach perfection and always failing. That was the ideological center of it. For genre considerations, I decided to go with science fiction, not only because of the, like, the Philip K Dick side of it, but because the entire sub genre of cyber punk deals with ideas of personhood and failing to conform and bodily autonomy and all of those things and

Elle Billing:

and also like altering the body and hacking the body too, right?

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, and so it seemed like a really good way to investigate not just the queer experience, but the trans experience in a way that hadn't been done that I personally have seen. I'm sure there are other people that have done this, but this is, this is my version, from a like, a technical standpoint, I decided to write it as what's called a serial poem, which was really invented and explored by the California poets, Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, and Robin Blaser, and Jack Spicer in particular. What it is is basically it's this. It's effectively one large book sized poem that is composed effectively sequentially. It starts at the beginning and it ends at the end, and it just goes. What was always interesting to me is that Jack Spicer was roommates with Philip K Dick at one point in time for some period when they were both living in Berkeley, and that connection was something that was always interesting to me, because while they both focus on similar themes, sometimes they don't really overlap that much. Like Jack was much more interested in language and classics and stuff like that, and Jack was always looking kind of backwards to synthesize the future, whereas Philip K Dick was more-- at least at this point in time-- was focused on extrapolating the present into the future. So trying to find a middle ground between those very those two very different personalities, plus taking all those genre conventions of of cyberpunk and trying to do something that wasn't replicating the golden age of cyberpunk, which I would consider being the early 80s through the late 90s. As far as references were concerned, I used 1997 as a cutoff point. Like, I didn't use any sources from after that, with the exception of one, one poem that uses a little bit of The Matrix, which i i basically consider like The Matrix is like the crest of that particular wave. And pretty much everything that's come after that has been trying to replicate that in some way, and I didn't want to do that, like I didn't want to keep rehashing The Matrix. I wanted to go for stuff before that.

Elle Billing:

Yeah,

Ricki Cummings:

it's all one large, complicated, hard to describe project, but like, reading it makes sense,

Elle Billing:

yes, it does.

Ricki Cummings:

I think.

Elle Billing:

I mean, I have a copy of the manuscript,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

For reasons I will get into and, like, it makes sense to me,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

I guess I can get into my reasons.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, that would be great.

Elle Billing:

I'm gonna do one of those, I'm telling you that story to tell you this one things. So you said, you mentioned that you started this project back when I was living in Twin Falls, and so the seeds of my half of this also started when I was still in Idaho. We got a new school librarian,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

who went through our the library collection and was like, Oh my God, this needs to be culled, and she pruned a lot out of the library. Some of the stuff that she pruned out was like old, racist stuff that just needed to go, some of it was books that hadn't been checked out since the 70s or the 80s. She knew that I used books in my artwork, and so a lot of the time she would give me the opportunity to take these books home. There was one set in particular that I was really interested in. And it was the hilariously anachronistic collection of books on computers and technology, how to use the internet, how to get a job as an engineer, um, how does the Internet work? And it was like, all the really old stuff on how the internet works. Like, this is a list serve,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah,

Elle Billing:

and like, like, 80s style stuff,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah yeah, like, but like, cool, but like, funny, like funny in a way, of, like, We are the Oregon Trail generation, and we kind of

Elle Billing:

it's a Vietnam song. So, like, I wanted them remember this. But like, none of this is useful for anybody anymore. I was like, I'm gonna have fun with these. I'm gonna really have fun with these. So I had this box of books, and they came to North Dakota with me. I hadn't used them yet. And so when I was done with my Berenstein Bears collection, I was still feeling very nostalgic, and I was still feeling very much like using 80s and 90s color palettes. And so I started, I started a collection of paintings using, like, collaging pages of those books in there, and, like, with some very neon like, there was a lot of teal and neon orange, or teal to-- I like doing art that looks poppy and fun, but really is and fluorescent pink, and I stalled out. The paintings didn't have any life in them. And usually when I'm painting, it's a conversation with the canvas, and they feel very alive. And I'm talking with them all the time. But these paintings, they weren't going anywhere. Like, I had a good start on them, and then they just sort of, and like I had originally kind of envisioned them as being like a women in STEM but like, also the consequences of technology, like the song"Orange Crush" by REM was one of those songs that was really sticking with me, because the music video is, like, really powerful. I think it's a black and white music video of a young kid with, I think he's wearing dog tags, and he's like, but the song is really, it's about Agent Orange, has, like, a darker underside to it when you look at it, and that's kind of what I was going for, but like, I couldn't make it click. And so these paintings have been sitting in my studio for like, three years. I'm like, I'll get back to them. Like, I'm not. I didn't gesso over them, I didn't get rid of them. I was like, at some point these paintings will start talking. So then you've you finished the book while you were here, yeah, and you were talking about releasing it that this was last summer, releasing it this year. And I was like, what if I finish the paintings, and what if we do, like, a cross promotion? And now the cross promotion has sort of escalated in scope. it's less of a because, for one, we had a bit

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, of a miscommunication. Like, yeah, partly because this is what my brain does. It starts with a small seed, like, what if we cross promote and just like, release them at the same time and share that both projects with our email lists and just sort of feed off each other that way. But my brain kept working on that and for- forgot what the original idea was and turned into, like, this is a joint project, yeah.

Elle Billing:

And then I was like, oh, like, I'm like, how much marketing are you gonna do? Like, and you're like, Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on. I thought we were just like, releasing them at the same time and sharing them with our lists. I was like, oh. so anyway, we potentially have some other stuff planned, but it depends on money, because things are expensive, but the paintings are alive.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah

Elle Billing:

they are very fluorescent right now, but they will be toned down, because reference images for the cyberpunk are, I mean, they do have a lot of that fluorescent, but they're all, like, tempered, right? It's like, pops of fluorescent and like, because it's always raining, yeah? Why is it always dark and raining in cyberpunk movies, I don't know. Probably because they're all on the like, you said, they're all on the coast.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah,

Elle Billing:

there's not a lot of cyberpunk that happens in Fargo. Okay, Now that I've said that, I'm like, what would a cyber cyberpunk combine look like? Actually, we're kind of just living that future right now. Anyway, yeah, it's starting to get into that, yeah. I'm like, Oh, it would look like a John Deere with an iPad in it. We already have that. Okay, that's not interesting to paint. That's just my life. But right now, the paintings are at the stage of being obscenely

Ricki Cummings:

If I can interject-- fluorescent.

Elle Billing:

yeah

Ricki Cummings:

one of the things that helped, I think, kick this idea over in your head, yeah.

Elle Billing:

Did you hear Winkie?

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, I heard a Winkie. One of the things that helped kick this over in your head was I got the cover art back from my my artist, and we spent probably two weeks going back and forth on what color palette we were going to use for that cover. And once it hit, we were like, That's it. And I sent it to you, and you just like you fell in love with it, like having a visual reference on it for you, I think helped too. Instead of just like, the idea, having a direction to move in helped,

Elle Billing:

yes, and what really helped, like, enliven the paintings, was when we were we were texting one night, and I was still feeling a little stuck, because usually my paintings are based on things that I'm really into, right, like Shakespeare, children's literature. I had a series of paintings that were about my caregiving experience with my mother and dementia, migraines, you know, things that I'm like, deeply connected to. Cyber, Cyberpunk is cool, but it's not something that I'm deeply invested in,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

and so it's, I've kind of been getting a crash course on it,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

really, I mean, really, you've been dripping it out over the last three years, but it's just not something that I have done extensive research on the way you have. And what really made it click for me was just the other night when we were texting and you said, well, a huge part of Cyberpunk is institutional bureaucracy and drugs and immediate and, like, we had the con-- I was like, Oh, well, I keep a bunch of, like, my drug packets. Like, not like my medication packets, yeah. And I've been saving them for something because I want to do, I like, doing art related to my illness and my disability. I just, I've only dabbled in it as far as the migraine art, but I keep all of my birth control packets and all my steroid packets, and I have pill bottles, and I have the inserts from my migraine medication, those big fold out ones that have all of like, the information about the drug trials and all of that. And I have all that stuff, and I have all of the paperwork from applying for disability, and all of the paperwork for Medicaid and all of this institutional dreck, and that is like impossible to navigate trying to prove that I'm disabled. And that, combined with... there, I went back through all of those computer books, some really terrifying looking, in that context, terrifying looking old school pictures of, like, old MRI machines and like old school, like laser type setups, like, it's like, oh, oh! Oh oh! like, stuff is really starting to pop

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

and the the paintings are alive. I have gone from, I've told you this too, like my rising sign. If you're into astrology, my rising sign is Gemini, right? So that's kind of what like rules, my rules, my everyday activities, my paintings have gone from, the paintings are dead, they are nothing, to I have more ideas in my brain than I have hours and minutes of energy in the day to put them on the canvas. Like, and I can't sleep at night, partly because of the political situation right now is, like, absolutely terrifying, and that's a good thing to put into the paintings too, because, holy shit. Like, am I even gonna be able to keep, is Medicaid going to exist in three months? I don't know. Like, I can't afford$2,000 worth of medication a month. I don't even make that much money. I make $600 a month doing seed samples at the sunflower plant. Like I am I going to be able to pay my brain bill? No, this is bad. So there's that keeping me up at night. But then there's also, like, I want to be in the studio painting, because 12 paintings sitting there! and I go through a phase where I work on all 12 at the same time, so that the color palettes stay the same and I'm, like, adding under layers all at the same time, and then I have to pare down and focus on one to two at a time,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah.

Elle Billing:

And then I finish them, either individually or in pairs. And I'm almost to the point now where I need to be, like, super focused on one at a time. And I that's what I want to be doing. I don't I don't want to be sleeping. I don't want to be resting. But I also know that, like, my body needs 12 hours of rest a day. That's so much! like, c'mon

Ricki Cummings:

it really is,

Elle Billing:

I want to be painting, you know, and so, like, I'm not sleeping, I'm laying there worried about everything and also wanting to put that energy into the canvas, because that's how I process and like-- I was right, like, these paintings would come alive when I needed them to. And like, this is the perfect time for us to be doing a project on autonomy and personhood and institutional bureaucracy

Ricki Cummings:

and queerness

Elle Billing:

and queerness and living under an oppressive government. And,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

the mood of, it's always raining. That's a mood. It's like,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah, that's a mood.

Elle Billing:

That's a choice. Got it, okay, I get it now, I get it now. I get cyberpunk. Now,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah, So when are we planning on releasing these?

Elle Billing:

March 21

Ricki Cummings:

it is the third Friday, I believe,

Elle Billing:

yes

Ricki Cummings:

third Friday in March. So

Elle Billing:

yeah, you'll be here.

Ricki Cummings:

Theoretically,

Elle Billing:

Theoretically, you'll be here.

Ricki Cummings:

unless North Dakota turns into an anti trans hell hole in which case, yeah,

Elle Billing:

which I mean, like, that's likely,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah, we'll see. Enderlin's nice,

Elle Billing:

yeah, my, I was gonna say my hometown is nice. We have proximity to Fargo. Like, right here could be okay. And that's honestly, speaking of that. That's really what's going to happen across the country. It's going to be very fractured, regionalized. It's,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah

Elle Billing:

it's going to be pockets. Everything is going to be pockets. It's going to be like how there are sundown towns, but like, the whole country is going to be that way for everything.

Ricki Cummings:

Yep. Yeah. So March 21, provided we're all still here, which we should be, yeah, yeah.

Elle Billing:

So what is, what is one true thing? We did an episode right before Christmas where you kind of hit on, like, our one true thing for the podcast, which was, like, awesome, but like, yeah, what is one true thing that you have learned from this project in particular,

Ricki Cummings:

this one is process related, I think, but it also applies to a lot of things in life, But specifically it's letting things come when they come, I consciously decided to work in the serial poem format, because it's not exactly stream of consciousness, but the idea of working on the same piece throughout the entire thing as it comes, not worrying about whether or not things are a cohesive whole, because just being next to each other they are, and trusting myself to know when something is done and when it's not, because I reached, up like for probably almost two and a half years on that project. I thought I knew I had an end in mind, and then I reached that point, and I was like, this isn't quite there. And it turned out what I thought was the end of, like, it's not a narrative poem, exactly, but like the end of the third act was actually the end of the second act, and I had a whole third of the poem left to write, and that part took another six months or so, and then when I got to the end of that section, then I knew I was done, and I wouldn't have gotten the piece that I have now, if I would have stopped at that point,

Elle Billing:

and there's so much good stuff in that third act,

Ricki Cummings:

yeah, I not to toot my own horn or anything, but I thought I was pretty good, yeah, it really makes me think about that idea of art is never finished. It's only abandoned. And I knew at that point that it wasn't worth abandoning. I knew there was more to it than that, and I just had to wait. So I think that's probably what I learned, and that it's there's like a secondary thing of it's okay to be weird, but that's like an entirely different conversation and involves a lot more talk about influences and stuff that I we don't have time for here. So yeah, so I think it's just trusting yourself and trusting the idea, and I feel like that was kind of reflected in yours too, like you didn't just like, oh, this is a terrible idea. It just sat in the closet for a few years and percolated.

Elle Billing:

I was actually gonna say, well, could I share mine? Basically, yeah, is that the art will be made. And like, in the mean, like I wasn't stressing about those paintings when they were sitting there. Yeah, I made two other fabulous, like, two other collections that I'm really proud of in the meantime. Like I wasn't not making art. I didn't let that stop me. I did my Ophelia collection and my Tempest collection in the meantime, and I'm really proud of those.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah

Elle Billing:

and I think now is a really good time for this, for this art.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah

Elle Billing:

I think it's trusting, trusting myself, trusting the art, trusting the process, knowing when to step back. And the more we are doing it, the more we do the work, the more we can trust the work, and trust ourselves to do the work. Because there were, like, I had spent, like, a couple days with those paintings where I was like, trying to force them, and I was like, This isn't working. It was a relief to set them aside like I didn't even feel like I was doing, like, as a recovering perfectionist, there is definitely the risk of feeling like I'm failing. The Failure Experiment is a fabulous title for this entire project, but learning that I can walk away from something, and then it'll-- if it's meant to be, it'll be waiting for me when I come back, or that it will come back to me.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, yeah,

Elle Billing:

like, one direction or the other, like, it will work out.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah.

Elle Billing:

The paintings weren't going anywhere. They were waiting. They just needed to ripen. Like, pineapples, they take two years to grow.

Ricki Cummings:

I was not aware of that, actually,

Elle Billing:

uh huh.

Ricki Cummings:

And I-- part of my Patreon, my personal Patreon, is that at a certain backer level, I will write poems for people based on whatever subject they they want me to.

Elle Billing:

Um, yeah, some of them we would you disown as soon as you send them.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh, my god, yeah.

Elle Billing:

There's been at least two that you've written for me that we can't share.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah, but there's one that I wrote, I can't even remember exactly what the prompt was. I remember who gave it to me, but I can't remember what the specific prompt was, but I ended up effectively, I think it might have been pineapple on pizza, now that I think about it, but it ended up going into a long digression about Dole and the pineapple industry in Hawaii and how completely fucked up It is in all of that work that was probably like two days of work I did on that poem. I did not know how long pineapple took to ripen, like, that wasn't in there.

Elle Billing:

That's how long it takes to grow.

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah. I had no idea, huh? Yeah.

Elle Billing:

Now I need to double check. I'm almost positive. I don't like being wrong when people are like, looking, like listening to us right. How long does it take to for pineapple to grow? Two to three years, sometimes longer, eight-- and then another site says 18 months or longer, depending on the variety and the climate,

Ricki Cummings:

huh!

Elle Billing:

Yeah, for one pineapple.

Ricki Cummings:

Well, now I know. And pineapple is just like poetry and just like painting, they all start with P,

Elle Billing:

yep, and the enzymes make your tongue hurt

Ricki Cummings:

the enzymes in paint.

Elle Billing:

Yeah, yeah,

Ricki Cummings:

don't eat the paint!

Elle Billing:

Oh, okay, so I told my mom about that mug,"Don't talk to me until I've had my paint water"

Ricki Cummings:

Yeah

Elle Billing:

but she was just painting those chairs, and I was like, Ma, don't drink the paint. Like, what? So then I had to tell her the whole thing about how artists are always like accidentally drinking their paint water or putting their paint brushes in their coffee cup. She thought that was pretty funny. She was not in danger of doing that. She did spill half a quart of yellow paint on the hardwood floor, though.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh no

Elle Billing:

that was a that was a fun night to clean up. So anyway, we're going to end on that note. Don't spill paint on your hardwood floors. But she finished her project. The table and chairs are done. She finished them two nights ago.

Ricki Cummings:

Oh, wow. Been working on that a while,

Elle Billing:

yeah, since this summer.

Ricki Cummings:

Just gotta give it time.

Elle Billing:

Yep, just gotta give it time. Watch lots of Perry Mason. well, this was fun. March, 21

Ricki Cummings:

march 21

Elle Billing:

pineapple, paints, and poetry. and people with

Ricki Cummings:

pronouns,

Elle Billing:

palladium prosthetics, I was trying to think of a P, more P words, yeah,

Ricki Cummings:

I got nothing. Thank you for joining us on this episode of Hoorf. To get the

Elle Billing:

Thank you. complete show notes and all the links mentioned on today's episode, or to get a full transcript of the episode, visit hoorfpodcast dot com Join the blessed herd of Saint Winkus. By signing up for our newsletter, you can get Hoorf episodes delivered directly to your inbox. What's more, you get invitations to our monthly Coffee and Biscuits Chat, where you get to hang out with Ricki and Elle, talk about the show, and connect on the topics that mean the most to you. You can sign up for that at hoorfpodcast dot com. If you become a patron, for only $3 a month you can support the creation of this podcast, help pay my editor, and join a community of caregivers out here, just doing our best. Thank you again for joining me Elle Billing, the chronically ill queer femme who is very tired, on this episode of Hoorf. Until next time, be excellent to each other. Hoorf is hosted by Elle Billing @elleandwink, audio editing by Ricki Cummings,@rickiep00h music composed by Ricki Cummings. Hoorf is a production of Elle & Wink Art Studio, LLC, all rights reserved. Hoorf can be found on all social media platforms@hoorfpodcast, at H, O, O, R, F podcast,

Ricki Cummings:

are those for eating, though.

Contributor

Ricki Cummings

Producer