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Hey everybody, and welcome to the Little Oracles podcast, an oracle for the everyday creative. I’m Allison Arth.
How y’all doing? It’s October, which I know this a hallowed time of year for some folks, especially those who lean a little bit cozy, or a little bit witchy, or a little bit ghastly. And we all know that our Season 2 theme is Play as Practice, and since we established back in the Finale of Season 1 that this podcast is, effectively, an expression of both play and practice at work before your very ears — and I’ll link that episode in the show notes if you want to hear more on that topic — as I was turning all this over in my mind, I started forming up this idea for a playful, experimental micro-series — kind of this reticulated little net of connected episodes nestled within the larger context of the season. And what better season within a season than this, our present season, of pumpkin spice and everything nice, [laughs] juxtaposed with the ghosties and the ghoulies that creep in toward the end of the month?
So today I’m kicking off this micro-series, simply titled Hauntings: and what I love about this word and this idea is that haunting doesn’t have to be scary, right? It doesn’t have to be suspenseful or terrifying; there can be good hauntings, [chuckles] and wholesome hauntings, too — just think of some incredible performance you saw that stayed with you, or a book you read that you just can’t get out of your head, or a meal you had at your Grandmother’s table when you were seven years old — you know, something that sticks with you, or sticks you to it; you know, something that tethers you to a past experience: nostalgic, inspiring, fascinating — whatever the nature of that experience is.
So for the rest of October, we’ll have episodes that circle this idea of haunting and, yes, horror and Halloween-y things as we get closer to the end of the month, but today, I wanna lean into this idea of “good” haunting, and share three things that haunt me — and by that I mean, they’re kind of squatting in the corners of my mind, like these little lumps sweet of potential; these golden ghouls, if you will (and you probably won’t) [laughs], but these things are just waiting to wend their way into something I’ll make in the future. And I was thinking if I shared these variegated visitations with you, you might find something that you can pull out and apply to your creative practice, too. So let’s get into it.
First, and this is classic Little Oracles, I think: I’m haunted by my medium. [laughs] Like, not a clairvoyant [laughs] — I’m talking about words in this case. So, I write poems, and other types of fiction, which, as you know, are usually comprised of words, and I’ve found that I’m a bit of a magpie when it comes to finding and stockpiling these collections of words that intrigue me, and that seem to have whole worlds hidden inside them: words like anneal, and ricasso, and pentimento, and sibyl.
And I don’t think you’re here to listen to me rattle off a list of cool-sounding words — maybe you are, I don’t know [chuckles] — but all this is to say that the reason I collect words is because they’re my medium, in the literal sense, as in, I work with words every day, and possibly in the spiritualist sense, too, in that they serve as an intermediary between my brain and yours (but maybe that’s another episode [laughs]). And so, I collect a lot of words, and the note-taking app on my phone gets a lot of use as this very disorganized dictionary [laughs] — basically, my toolbox. And the toolbox is gonna look different for everybody, right? Maybe your medium is visual art, or fashion photography, or interior design, so your toolbox might be a Pinterest board. Or maybe it’s food, so your toolbox might be a well-loved recipe book. Or maybe it’s carpentry, so your toolbox is, like, literally a toolbox. [laughs] Whatever your medium, and whatever the manifestation of that collection mechanism, my point is that keeping some kind of cache of inspiration, or ideas, or things that just made you pause for a second in your day, because they surprised or delighted or fascinated you, can be a great way to set yourself up for creative success, because you’ll always have that repository of shiny, sparkly fodder at the ready.
So, second, I’m haunted by skeletons. [laughs] I’m really going for this haunted thing, here. [laughs] What I mean by skeletons is more like “structures,” or even like “maps,” because I’m talking about this recent dip I’ve taken into meta nonfiction, specifically writing about the process of writing. And of particular note for me is Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts, but I also wanna shout out One Writer’s Beginnings, a collection of lectures Eudora Welty delivered at Harvard in the early ‘80s; Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison, which is about different structures that narrative can take, not just the classic rising tension, climax, denouement that we are so used to in most fiction; and, of course, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose by Flannery O’Connor, which is an oldie but a goodie for me — great essays and lectures in that little book.
But irrespective of these particulars, I’m interested in the framing, and in thinking in a very big and broad and overarching way about the way writing happens, and the multifarious ways and means and roads and modes of engaging in the craft. So, Matt Bell, in Refuse to Be Done, has this concept of an “art life” that every creator has, and it’s made up of all the inputs that that creator experiences — things like the books they read, or the music they listen to, or the exhibits they see; that kind of thing — and he contends that “the bigger you make your art life, the more possibilities your imagination will generate,” which is something I totally agree with (and something I’ll probably do a Hot Takes episode about in the future, actually), but I think this contention that he has about the breadth of one’s art life influencing one’s creative work can be extended to the practice of making that work, too, so, the bigger you make your creator circle, the more possibilities your process will have, in effect.
So for me, that looks like writing about writing, but for you — and this is like the words, here — for you, it might look like a TV show about another vintage car restorer, if that’s what you do; or it might look like a podcast about trance beats produced by another synth musician, if that’s what you do; or it might look like a YouTube channel run by another textile artist, if that’s what you do. Do you see what I mean, here? By bringing other creators in your field into your process, it can expose you to new approaches and techniques, and even stoke your creative fire a little bit: I know I definitely get antsy to write after I finish reading a book about writing, because all these methods and perspectives and angles are so fresh in my head.
And, if you wanna expand your mind and your practice even further, maybe consider bringing other creators outside your field into your process — maybe in tangentially related fields, or even further afield than your field, and see what happens. Sometimes, all you need is some kind of diametric to help you see your work in a totally new way.
And, finally, I’m haunted by friendship. [laughs] I know that sounds very Frog and Toad, doesn’t it? [laughs] But what I mean by this is very specific: it’s friendship tempered by and even augmented by creative collaboration. So I’ve been working on a few projects with other creators — and you’ll hear more about them in the coming months — and it’s just been so energizing. Like, I’m just full up to bursting with excitement for these projects; like, jazz-handing my way through every day, you know what I mean? [laughs] Maybe you don’t, [laughs] but I’m excited.
And what’s doubly exciting about these projects is that I don’t know that I would’ve had the motivation to put them in motion were it not for this podcast, and were it not for all of you, listening as you do every week. I’ve been so inspired to find new ways to engage my creative brain because of this show, and one of those ways is essentially cold-calling my friends and pitching ideas, [laughs] and just seeing where it takes us. [laughs]
And that isn’t to say that you need a podcast, or a YouTube channel, or a blog, or some kind of shareable platform in place to enact this kind of collaboration — you totally don’t. You just need one friend, and one idea, and the willingness to iterate on that idea with that friend, and to sit down together and just make it real.
And let’s be honest, this kind of entreaty and entree into a creative partnership takes confidence, right? And even moreso, it takes vulnerability — because you don’t know where this project is gonna end up; you don’t know how long it’s gonna take to get there; and you just have to be okay with, you know, to put it in pretty common terms, trusting the process. But if you can find that inner reserve of self-assurance and that little bit of motivation to call that one friend and share your little spark of an idea, you might find yourself in a similar state to me: just this bubbling, brimming, boiling cauldron of creative energy that can enrich not only your maker-life, but also your friendships, too.
And speaking of creative collaboration: let’s talk about our October ABC theme, and our reading picks for the month. (That might be a stretch, I– I admit that. [laughs] But I see us as– as collaborators in reading and enjoying literature.) So as you might have guessed, and I’m extending our micro-series theme to the Asynchronous Book Club as well — so our October reading theme is Hauntings, and as I said earlier, I’m gonna be pretty expansive in my interpretation of Hauntings: so, we’re not just talking about ghost and specters; hauntings might be visited upon a person by melancholia, or regret, or maybe some crisis of the human condition, or even fond memories or nostalgia — any number of things. So I’ve got three books for you: Little Eyes by Samanta Schweblin, which was one of our original picks from the top of the year that we’re revisiting now; Strega by Johanne Lykke Holm, which is a favorite of the folks who run the Weird Women Book Club over on Instagram, one of my favorite accounts; and Dark Tales by Shirley Jackson, which I read every October, as a matter of fact.
So Little Eyes is a techno-horror novel about surveillance and constant connectivity — and I’ve read it a couple times already this year, so I’m looking forward to reading it again; just really visceral and very eerie. Strega is, to quote the blurb here, “a modern gothic story of nine young women sent to work at a remote Alpine hotel and what happens when one of them goes missing” — so, like I said, I learned about this book via the Weird Women Book Club on Instagram (and I’ll link to their profile in the show notes; really great stuff), and so I have a feeling this one is gonna be a little bit creepy, and little bit atmospheric, and a little bit emblematic, maybe — uh, lyrical, possibly — and I’m really looking forward to how it’ll haunt me in the future. [laughs] And, finally, Dark Tales is a collection of short stories by the inimitable and legendary social horror writer Shirley Jackson, one of the “mothers of my heart,” to borrow a phrase from Maggie Nelson. And, in my Penguin Classics edition from 2017, there’s a foreword by Ottessa Moshfegh, one of the other mothers of my heart, to be honest with you. So it’s a double-whammy for me. But I just love the stories in this book, all of them filled with that classic Shirley Jackson slow social dread, and this Catherine Wheel of “good society” feeling — she’s, you know, kind of the sinister side of somebody like Raymond Carver, I guess; not to say he isn’t sinister at time, but Shirley dials in a little bit further. [laughs]
As always, check out content warnings before you pick up any books we talk about here on the podcast so you can be sure your reading experience is safe and enjoyable. And, since this is an Asynchronous Book Club, you can read what you want, when you want, or you can use the theme as inspiration for your own reading list, or listen list, or watch list: what does Haunting convey for you? What does it look like? How does it hold you in thrall? What does it whisper after all the lights go out? [laughs]
And that’s it, my friends; thank you for walking through this cozy haunted house filled with Golden Ghouls with me. If you like what we’re doing here on Little Oracles, share an episode with somebody, or leave us a rating or a review wherever you listen; it would certainly soothe my spirit. If you’re into more big book energy and creativity content, hop over to Instagram (at) little oracles, and to the blog at little oracles dot com. And, as always, take care, keep creating, and stay divine.
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