Little Oracles

S02:E05 | The Soapbox Moment: A New Constitution, Creative Biodiversity, & July ABC Picks

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In which I share a new Constitution, discuss the value of creative biodiversity, and get real about vacuums. Plus! A bunch of reading recs that helped me detach my sociocultural blinders, and July's book club picks, themed Bonfires & Bricklayers: The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner; Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley; and How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu. 

Take care, keep creating, and stay divine!

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[Intro music]

Hey everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative. I’m Allison Arth. 

So this episode is dropping July 4th, aka Independence Day here in the United States of America, and so in the spirit of this holiday, and the red-white-and-blue [laughs], and all the rights conferred unto me by the governing documents of this nation, I am going to conflate being on trend with this holiday, and being on brand with myself, and by that I mean: ACAB, among other things. 

Because let me be very clear: I believe that true, unbridled independence manifests in communities that cultivate curiosity, appreciate challenge, practice compassion, and welcome change — so in short, independence depends on interdependence, and creativity is at the big, beating heart of all of that. 

And I’m gonna get into that, uh, in a minute, but here are a few of of my own constitutional tenets — personal constitutional tenets — framed as encouragements for you; and my guess is that I’m preaching to the converted here, but nonetheless, after a week of really massive rights slashing on the part of two-thirds of this country’s effectively unelected Supreme Court, I’m compelled to make my values very plain — so here we go:

  • I encourage you to find out whose ancestral land you’re living on and give back;
  • I encourage you to seek out transgender voices and to really hold to heart the inalienable fact that trans rights are human rights;
  • I encourage you to approach with compassion the immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers who should find care, not walls, not cages, in this so-called, self-styled melting pot of a country;
  • I encourage you to think of abortion as healthcare, because it is, for the physical, the mental, the emotional;
  • I encourage you to recognize that we’re in a climate crisis, right now, and it’s powered by capitalism;
  • and I encourage you, if you occupy any positions of privilege — and especially if you’re white, like I am — to really sit with that privilege which has been conferred onto you because of chance traits, for your entire life: the schools you’ve attended, the jobs you’ve landed, the fact that your movements aren’t tracked by the security guard at the TJ Maxx because of the way you look, or the way you carry yourself, or the way you present on paper. It’s not fun, it’s not easy, it’s not familiar, but that very discomfort that you’re so unused to having is precisely the point, because getting inured to privilege is the smoothest, slipperiest slope we can slide down, and pulling ourselves out of that ravine of undisputed ignorance is in no way simple, but once we recognize the socio-historical, the sociocultural power dynamics at play — the ones that we’ve been party to and, yes, perpetrated — we can start to dismantle them, in ourselves, and around us, too. 


And guess what: it’s never finished; it’s work that we’ll all have to do in perpetuity, at least until society gets reinvented. [laughs] But, you know, when have we ever been afraid of work? Or of challenge? Or of experimentation and mistakes and discovery and divergence — of choosing that new mode, or that method, or that path?

And maybe you see where I’m heading, here; maybe you see how creative thinking, how the spirit of inquiry and the thrill of making and unmaking, and forming and re-forming, of vision and re-vision is tantamount to the open mind, or the open arms, or whatever metaphor you wanna use about considering new ideas and new approaches, and really, actively, wholly valuing diverse experience.

And the reason I think all of this is so crucial — yeah; no, it’s– it’s more than crucial; it’s elemental? It’s– it’s basic, in the way that basalt is basic, you know what I mean? Like, igneous; like, rising from the center of the Earth, disintegratingly hot, and then cooling on contact with the atmosphere, and, like, never going anywhere after that. It’s as real as real can be; it was, it is, and it will be. And so the reason I think all of this is important to share here, and share now, is because homogeneity kills. [chuckles] It’s antithetical to biodiversity; it’s the unrelenting echo chamber; it’s, effectively, a vacuum: it’s voluminous, yeah, but it’s empty of matter, because to matter requires challenge, and critical review, and creative thought, and, yes, diversity, because what does sweet mean in the absence of sour, and salty, and bitter? How do we know what matters if all we have is sameness?

And lemme concede here, all of this is reductive because this is a short podcast, okay? And it’s kind of metaphysical and a little bit hippy-dippy, I will grant you that? But, let’s just cut to the chase, okay? I don’t wanna live in a world that condones one kind of art or craft or path to knowledge or lifestyle or experience. Do you? I mean, isn’t that just hella boring? [laughs] Isn’t that just mundanity waiting in the wings? Isn’t that just facism?

So, to that end, [laughs] if you’re curious about being more curious, and about opening yourself to an array of perspectives and experiences, and, by extension, literal forms and formats of creative expression — because that’s an offshoot of creative biodiversity, too, right? Like, there’s more than one way to tell a story! — then welcome, traveler [laughs]; you’ve come to the right place! I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily dangerous to go alone, like in Zelda, but let me share some written work by folks who’ve been really fundamental for me in detaching some of those, you know, sociocultural blinders I was born with.

So I’d encourage you to check out essays by Mariame Kaba, or Dr. Angela Y. Davis, or speeches by Audre Lorde; or read Black Boy Out of Time by Hari Ziyad, which I listed among my favorite reads of 2022 back in Season One, Episode Two, or some auto-fictive lyric poetry by Claudia Rankine — I’m thinking specifically of her multimedia, kind of genre-bending pieces Citizen: An American Lyric and Just Us: An American Conversation — or more historical poetry by sociologist Eve L. Ewing — the collection, uh, 1919 comes to mind; really, really beautiful collection — or listen to Tommy Pico read his longform spoken word poem Nature Poem; or check out work by transgender poet Torrin A. Greathouse or nonbinary prose poet and essayist Sabrina Imbler — I’m gonna do a Little Review of their latest book, How Far the Light Reaches, which is this glorious hybrid marine-life survey–memoir of queer awakening and found-family building; I’m gonna review that at some point soon; or you can find a copy of Whereas by Layli Long-Soldier, another of my mountain-top reads from last year, and it exposes the cultural erasure implicit in the imposition of language; or you can find Heartberries by Therese Marie Mailhot, just this mind-alteringly poetic memoir that plumbs the intersection of mental healthcare and the systemic disenfranchisement of the people of First Nations.

And this is just a sprinkling, you know? There are so many more ways to experience the diversity of creative work that’s out there, and, you know, if you’ve got recommendations for me, I would love them; please, message me on Instagram (at) little oracles; I’d love to hear about what’s expanding your mind and your world and inspiring your creative biodiversity right now, too.

And speaking of expanding minds and creative biodiversity, I’m really excited about July’s Asynchronous Book Club theme, which I’m calling Bonfires and Bricklayers, and I’m adding three books to the pile this month — and, as always, you know, read as many or as few as you want, whenever you want, or use the theme to curate your own reading list; whatever floats your boat, or tickles your fancy, or burns up your s’mores, you know, whatever they say, so [laughs] — so the reads are The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner, a novel about a young artist in 1970s New York and Italy, kind of subsumed by a radical counterculture; Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley, a novel about a young Black woman who contends with the failures of the American justice system — and a book that received huge accolades last year, so I’m really looking forward to reading it; and How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu, a novel spanning hundreds of years of humanity’s post-climate crisis reconstruction, featuring a cast of characters linked across time. And definitely check out content warnings before you pick up any of these books so you can be sure it’ll be a safe and enjoyable reading experience for you, but those are the three for July: Bonfires and Bricklayers.

And that’s it. Thank you so much for being here — for listening to my soapbox moment, if you will. If you like what you’re hearing, I invite you to share this episode with somebody, or another episode, too, or just the whole pod. [laughs] Whatever you wanna do. [laughs] Uh, leave us a rating or a review — it helps the podcast grow, and it puts a spring in my step, too, and for that I will thank you. You can follow along  on Instagram (at) little oracles and the blog at little oracles dot com for more big book energy and creativity content. And, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine.

[Outro music]