Meg Elison on Creative Honesty

Join Thorn as they talk with author Meg Elison about life, vanity, pleasure, activism, and creative magic.

Meg Elison is a Hugo, Philip K. Dick and Locus award winning author, as well as a Nebula, Sturgeon, and Otherwise awards finalist. A prolific short story writer and essayist, Elison has been published in Scientific American, McSweeney’s, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Fangoria, and Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn.

www.megelison.com
www.thorncoyle.com

Transcript

0:05

Hello everybody, I'm here today with Meg ... Elison and Meg is a Hugo, Philip K. Dick, and Locus award-winning ... author, as well as a Nebula, Sturgeon, and Otherwise Awards finalist. A prolific short story writer and essayist, Ellison has been published in Scientific American, McSweeney's, Fantasy and Science Fiction, Fangoria, and Best American Science ... Fiction and Fantasy. Elison is a high school dropout and a graduate of ... UC Berkeley. She lives in Brooklyn. And you can find out more about Meg at megelison.com that's Elison. So welcome to the show Meg, thanks for joining me. I'm very happy to be here ... thanks for having me. So, first of all I had to laugh when ... I read your bio because I am also a high school dropout. Love to hear it. And so I just think that's ... interesting that here we are two professional writers who ... dropped out of high school. Why did you drop out of high ... school, if you don't mind sharing? I don't mind at all. I was living in pretty extreme ... poverty and my mom at the time left the state. And I didn't want to follow. So I stayed where I was and I ... worked for room and board and it was very difficult under ... the circumstances to finish. So I carried it as far as I could ... and then I had to work full-time in order to support myself. So that was the end of high school. Wow. Yeah. What happened with you? I just really loathed high school. It was a waste of my time, you know, I was too smart, too awkward. You know, too whatever. And I. Wanted to leave when I was 15 and my parents forced me ... to stay until I was 16. So I did that and then ... dropped out, went to Community College ... for a couple years. Fled to San Francisco as soon as I turned 18 and ... dropped out of college. Finally went back to college ... in my late 20s, early 30s, to get my philosophy and religion degree so here we are. I went back to school about the same time and there's ... way more of us than you might think. And after I dropped out I really needed to hear that so ... I want to keep that in my bio for a long as I feasibly can. Yeah, it's great. Just to give a little context for people,

the reason I wanted to have you on the show is: 2:22

you're a novelist, short story writer, essayist. You also express creativity ... through fashion. And I'm sure a lot of other ways, too. I want you to tell us about other forms of creativity and ... how creativity weaves through your life. I think it's important to have a form of creativity that you ... don't monetize or even necessarily show people. I love that I make a living as an author, and my work is very important to me, but that puts a different sort of pressure on creating that ... kind of work. I'm a really good cook and ... that doesn't have to go on Instagram or make any ... money for me. And I'm really bad pianist and ... it's great to be bad at something and pursue it as a ... true amateur with an amateur spirit. And to see myself get incrementally better without ... the added pressure of an outside audience. So I'm loving that part of my creative flow right now. That's cool. Yeah I'm an amateur ... photographer, which I do post to Instagram ... but people sometimes say to me "are you going to publish ... your photographs, are you going to have a ... show?" I said "no," like I'm very clear it's just for me and whoever happens to ... stumble across my social media and enjoy what I'm ... doing. Just let me live. just let me have one thing unobserved, yes. Yeah. It's interesting because, since I've been a creative person my whole life, I've not really had hobbies. The only hobby I had was when I was going to a lot of ... anarchists meetings I did a lot of embroidery. To keep from stabbing people. Right? The endless meetings, endless consensus meetings. But since then, I realized I hadn't had hobbies for a long time. I was getting into the habit of monetizing everything and ... you're right, it's not great. So I'm really happy to have picked up photography.'Cause like I monetize my music, you know, everything. It gets to be oppressive. Like I love reading and I used ... to tell people reading was my hobby. And then being a writer is like 80% reading, so reading is my job now. And I still enjoy it a great deal but when someone asks me ... about my hobby I feel not quite right saying that I read ... for pleasure, because I do, but I'm on the clock the whole time. Yeah. Yeah, I get that.

The other question I wanted to ask you is: 4:47

what does the word "magic" mean to you? This is definitely a word that's taken on a lot of different ... definitions throughout my life. I've gone all the way from a pretty hermetic description of magic as the etheric ... attempt on behalf of the physical body to change ... probability through force of will; to the power to bend reality or to change consciousness, which is the working definition for most of us in the ... pagan community for a long time; to thinking of it as the last resort of the unheard, of the powerless, and sometimes I still think it's that. At this point in my life, as much as I make my living with words, I find it almost impossible to describe what magic is. It is an energy, and a sense for that energy, that all human beings have, that we are capable of ... interacting with and acting upon that we do not have the ... right words for you. Mmhmm. That's what I got. Well and your definition of the last cry of the powerless, however you put that that, that seems to weave its way through your writing. It definitely does. So do you consider writing to be a form of magic? It always is. Because you are forming a connection with another mind ... that neither one of you can see and you have to form that ... connection across space, across time, sometimes across language barriers which requires ... another magician, the translator. Right. I've heard it compared to all ... kinds of things. I've heard it described as sex, as community. It is communion, it is communitas, I'll take that, but it is absolutely magic along the way. Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense to me. The other thing about your writing is you weave in— that also relates to your one definition of magic, the last cry of the powerless— is you weave in a lot of what some people might call social ... issues. Right? And it almost doesn't matter what genre you're writing, fiction, nonfiction, you know, you're writing about abortion. You're writing about gender. You're writing about fame ... and public scrutiny. Do you consider writing to be a form of activism? Is that not the right word? Or is it just part of how you're ... trying to make sense of the world? What's going on for you in weaving all of those topics ... through your work? Or do they just arise naturally? I would say it's actually all of those things. I would say it's actually all of those things.I would say my ... social consciousness arises naturally from the world and my relationship to it. I would say that it naturally forms part of all of my work. Because of that it shows up ... in my art, because it reflects the life that I live. And it is also absolutely activism. I'm trying to speak to people who already know about this and need encouragement, need another node of ... connection. Or who don't know yet, to whom I can be the town crier and say what time it is. There's a Mexican artist, whose name I can never ... remember when I need it most, who builds large scale installation art. One of his best pieces is a brick wall, and underneath one small part of the brick wall he set a ... hardback book. You know the piece I'm ... talking about? I do. And it warps the entire shape of the wall. Like you can see the rippling effect through not only the ... bricks directly above it but all the bricks that touch those ... bricks and so on because they're all connected. That's what I think about when I'm trying to write books ... that matter, that can change someone's ... mind or help them understand something they ... didn't understand before. I can ripple the wall. I'm not a brick. I'm not a mason. But I can ripple the wall. That's what I want. And that reminds me of To paraphrase James Baldwin, talking about, you know, you think you're the only one having your experience in life ... and then you read. And that's reflected back to you. So the magic for me of writing is its world-changing ability. And sometimes you know I can despair because the world is a harsh and difficult ... place. And it's like well, you know, I used to be out in the streets ... all the time, I used to be blockading, doing that sort of activism. With my health and my brain ... injury and all of that I can't really do that anymore. So occasionally I say "is my writing enough?" And I have to remind myself my writing is my best form of culture change. And so when I think that I'm working on the long trajectory ... rather than the short immediate trajectory that ... calms that part of me down that feels like I'm not doing ... enough. But I love your bringing up the image of the book changing ... the shape of the wall. Because. the power of art, and the magic of art, is that ability you're talking ... about. That's exactly it. And that works for a long time and books have a long— if they're lucky—they have a long shelf life and people find ... them. I found books hundreds of ... years after they were written that changed my life that ... rippled the wall for me. It's a small object and it can't be everything, but it can be something to a lot of people. Jorge Mendéz Blake is the artist. Thank you for that. Was going to drive me nuts. What else about writing, when did you start to write? Very early. There are only two things I've ... ever wanted to be in my life. When I was very young I wanted to be an opera singer ... because my parents had a bunch of Maria Callas ... records and I could sing it and it just seems so opulent and dramatic and everything I hoped to be. Well you are opulent and dramatic. I think that worked out all right, but I'm not Maria Callas and that's for the best. But I love that kind of music and I thought "yeah, that's what I want to do." And then when I was about ... 10, I discovered that I wanted to ... write. I had a series of moving ... experiences with books, mostly because of the ... Scholastic Book Fair and the bookmobile. Wow. I bought a Pocket Penguin ... Classics copy of Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. and gained a great deal of my cosmology from it, as incorrect as it is, as colonialist as it is, it appealed to me. And from there on out all I wanted to do was write. So I started writing then. I wrote these terrible little roman à clef novels loosely based on my classmates in a fantasy setting. And I would enter every school writing contest, every poetry contest, every little essay contest they ... could shuttle my way. I got good at it in a way that ... most hyperlexical weirdo little kids who read all the time are. Right. I've been developing it at one ... level or another since then. Very cool. Yeah I've been writing since I was a child also. It seems to be a thing for a lot of us. Yes, I think it is. People used to ask me all the time if my parents or which ... one of my parents was an English teacher. Which, as a child of felons I thought was hysterical. No, actually. Yeah and I come from a really working class family, so it's like, no. It's funny to figure out what someone imagines your life ... might have been based on what you've become. And you have to say 'no, I built this myself.' That's terrific. What is your current 'why' for creativity and magic?'Why' is really hard. As a person who believes in the primacy of this world, of this life, of living in this beat body and ... probably no other ever again, it is difficult to say 'why' with anything. Really hard to describe why you live a life. structured for the benefit of tomorrow when all you have ... is today and you may as well eat eight cans of whipped ... cream and see how it goes. Right. So there are a few principles that I can prove to myself are important. based on the compass of my desire. I find it pleasurable to write. I find it intensely pleasurable to be read, to wake up to fan mail from New Zealand like I did this morning, and to be understood. And that's maybe the best ... way to get at that. Saying things with your ... mouth is much harder than writing it down. I find it pleasurable to see books with my name on the ... spine on shelves. I find it pleasurable to be ... translated with those books into languages I do not speak. I find it pleasurable to contemplate and sometimes ... arrive at a future where there are more of those books. These pleasures don't harm anyone. They occasionally do good things for other people ...

including the other artists involved in the process: 14:09

the typesetters, the cover designers, the publishers. And occasionally it does even more good than that, as in the cases where I get letters from people who've come to understand their non-binary grandchildren ... better because some of the books that I've written. All of those things I can prove, I can lay my hand on, I can justify. It's difficult to get that degree of surety from any other kind of work. Right. I appreciate that your 'why' includes the word pleasure. Because too often we think our 'why' has to be some large, grandiose, earthshaking thing, and some people end up feeling badly about their lives and what they're ... doing in their lives. Or their creativity, their creative process, or anything, you know, because it doesn't feel big ... enough. It doesn't and the disconnect ... between your day to day and those lofty ideals makes you miserable. There's no better place to learn that than Silicon Valley. I worked for these lofty idealists who really thought ... really thought they were changing the world by ... revolutionising taxis or revolutionising fiat currency. Right. And they, to the last, even though they were millionaires, billionaires sometimes, they were miserable, anorexic, empty people. Devoid of the pleasure that would have bridged them from the self to that ideal. Well and the thing I've also noticed about those people is they are thinking in grandiose terms for grandiosity's sake. Rather than for a real purpose. I once sat in a gathering of some of those people, and it was when they were all talking about disruption, and I looked at them and I was like 'you people are ... disrupting nothing.' You're not disrupting anything that's at the core or ... the base level, you're disrupting tiny things ... and acting as if— one white dude started quoting Ho Chi ... Minh—and I was like'you really need to stop.' No but they're the same guy! They're both obsessed with ... the great man archetype and how to become him and the ... great revolution of making themselves rich. It's laughable looking back how many times I saw that ... same moment. I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah and I just shook my head because I was like,'you are not Ho Chi Minh, and you never will be, and the things that you're doing, you're not revolutionising anyting. So can you claim what you are doing? Right?

My Mantra that I continuously return to is: 17:02

do what you can when you can where you can. That's great. I love that. And I wish some people who had grandiose lofty aspirations. got more granular and said 'I am going to do my best to ... affect this one thing like the book in the wall. Right. What can you do right here, right now. Not how much venture capital ... will it take you to have a 5-year plan. So, pleasure, bringing that back into the conversation, feels like a good antidote to some of that grandiosity ... because pleasure is simple. It is, it's self-affirming. It's the grape between my teeth. It's the flower on my walk. It's the scent of jasmine, it's that snatch of music, right? And if you really, if you are honest with yourself and can observe ... your own reactions, if you can determine when ... you are honestly feeling pleasure, and not when you're fulfilling ... obligation not when you're performing to type not when ... you are being of service to someone else, which are all different things. If you can truly identify those things that bring you pleasure, it becomes the guiding force of your life. There's nothing else that's worthwhile. And it'll tell you when you're in the wrong situation, when you've made the wrong decision, when you're associating with the wrong people, because it evaporates. What has helped bring you to that place where you can accurately gauge? Therapy, frankly. A great deal of therapy that I was privileged enough to ... have access to in my 30s. Which helped me free myself of what I like to think of as ... bad programming. Right. I think of, I'm running old subroutines on a very old computer and a lot of them ... are broken and a lot of them installed by people who weren't going to have to work on this system in 30 years ... like I am. Right. So understanding that you are the system, that you own the system, that you get to delete any ... subroutines you want. And reset to what actually works. It makes a big difference. I had an excellent therapist through most of my 30s. And also a great deal of self-reflective work. I'm a journal keeper. I practice a great deal of magic in groups and on a ... solitary basis and that is another tool that when ... wielded with great honesty, can lead you to your actual desires. Yeah, I was raised to be good, partially to keep from terrible ... consequences, random acts of violence, instead of random acts of kindness. It definitely took me time to grow into a sense that ... pleasure is good and pleasure is necessary and ... that I can and should have pleasure in my life. And again, that it really didn't have to be ... big, that it really was all the small ... things that make up the web of life that give me pleasure. And that my part in the world can offer some pleasure, too. Because, sure, some of my writing tackles deep philosophical questions, just like yours does, and some of my writing is like half something sweet ... because dammit life is hard. The thing that I love most about your work is when mutually supportive groups of people find moments to just enjoy each other. Like you write people dancing ... in a way that I really loved. Oh, thanks. And the real joy of a spontaneous moment and ... you're great at that. I think that without that ... webwork of small pleasures you don't discover the big ... ones. You're not on the right track ... so you don't get led to the center of the web. So. In the world we're currently living in, where there's so much pain and suffering and horrific ... things happening, what is the role of pleasure in the midst of all that for you? That is a difficult one because a life in pursuit of ... pleasure is necessarily selfish. It takes guts to recognize the difference between pleasure and intentional ignorance. It may feel pleasurable to ignore terrible things. But what you're actually feeling is relief. Which is a different sensation and has a different meaning ... and leads you in a different direction. So it brings me no pleasure to ignore terrible things happening close to me or far away from ... me but it does bring me relief and sometimes comfort. Parsing those things out, and figuring out how to be brave, and how to follow my own sense of pleasure in justice and follow the ability to create moments of pleasure for ... others toward making that justice happen is part of a work. It's usually further steps away ... than the grape. But it's just as necessary. I mean Adrienne Maree Brown talks about that a lot. It's the core of her work, is to not be in states of self-abnegation in order to ... bring about justice. That pleasure needs to be ... part of the work we're doing as communities. When community action, whatever it is, is at it's best, it includes those moments of pleasure. It does, yes. Coming together and eating, coming together and playing ... music, those sorts of gatherings, right? It can't all be a grind. It must not be. I mean the the ones who ... want the constant grind and absolute vigilance and total ... discipline are the fascists. Right. The rest of us are figuring out how to feed each other's ... babies and make sure that there's music on. Right. So we're talking about Emma ... Goldman's beautiful radiant things. Yes, exactly. Yeah I love that. I'm going to steer us back into your fiction because I love that you talked about writing being pleasurable to you, and people reading your work being pleasurable to you, and that's true even in your novels that tackle really hard ... things. Yes. And those same novels also have a sense of wonder that moves through them that feels really key to you and ... who you are in the world. Is that accurate? That is extremely accurate, yes. I will caution anybody who's not read my work before that ... my novels are often grim. And really bad things happen in them and I write a lot about sexual assault, and reproductive justice, and the necessity of bodily autonomy, and the difficulty of living in an unruly body, and poverty, and...real bummer subjects I promise. It's pleasurable to me to write even about those things ... because I get to tell the truth inside the lie which is the ... work of fiction. And because it creates contrast to when I write moments of pleasure for ... character so that you can truly enjoy it because you ... know what they've been through. So it's life. It's life. It's just like life. Thanks for that. That's terrific. I'm pausing here because we've already talked about so ... much that was on my agenda to talk about. I talk fast and I don't waste a lot of words. No I'm the same way. It's terrific. I love it. Where I want to go next is first of all what's next for you writing-wise? Are you working on a large project, are you working on some small projects? What's happening? I am working on a large project, actually several. I just finished a horror novel about dentists. Oh my gosh! Like most people who grew up in poverty, I am afraid of the dentist and I expect to be both in physical ... discomfort and a great deal of shame when I encounter them. Which is pretty fertile ground for a horror novel. Yeah. I've also been writing a great ... deal about the nature of the individual in fiction and what it means to be a person and how differently that's viewed in ... different cultures, what your responsibility is to ... the collective versus your own destiny. Those are weighty subjects and what better way to get at ... them than science fiction and horror? So there will be lots more of that. I've also been doing a great deal of work for a couple of ... magazines, and that keeps me busy ... these days, but I am always writing a novel. What's next for you or current for you magically if you can ... share anything. Since I moved across country I was very fortunate that my particular branch of Wicca is well represented on the east coast ... to where I've moved. So I was able to land with not ... one but several covens that were open to me coming and ... joining either visiting or staying there. So I am very pleased and very lucky and excited to get back into ... keeping a regular calendar with group practice. It's difficult through the big holidays at the end of the ... year but I'm looking forward to spring. I miss being with my fellows. Do you have a core spiritual practice that helps you? This is always difficult for me to define because spiritual ... practice has been so many things throughout my life. But going back to before I had a definition of these ... things, before I accepted somebody ... else's framework for it, my core practice has been gratitude. There are always things to be grateful for even when I've ... been at my most miserable, my most abject, my most pain. And it's not to say that you shouldn't pay attention to ... things that suck; you should. But it has been a source of calm and comfort and joy for me To consistently return to those things that I'm grateful ... for and more than that to assign that gratitude to the person or people who helped me to have it. It helps me stay connected to the people around me and it ... helps me to stay grounded in the things that I can use. That's really helpful thanks. Yeah that's a major practice for me too. It really works. I appreciate that reflection. So the other thing I want to bring up is one of the things that I find delightful about your ... presence in the world are your fat vanity posts. I often comment 'oh, you're working your 50s film ... goddess vibes again today.' It's your combination of ... fashion and joy in the world and looking good and ... pleasure and all of those things rolled together in one ... magical package. And I'm wondering if you ... have any reflections to say about that process what's ... that been like for you to make your fashion posts and your fat vanity posts? And what is the relationship you have between vanity and pleasure? It's been nothing short of revolutionary. And I know to a lot of people that sounds simplistic or ... perhaps obsessed with symbol or surface, but I have not found anything more powerful in this life than ... falling in love with myself and the image of myself. You can't take good care of a body that you hate. You cannot be hard on yourself until you're better. Neither one of those things works. What works is caring for yourself and loving yourself ... and believing in yourself, not only as a being worthy of care, but as something great. And I take great pleasure in my vanity. I take great pleasure in good clothes, and frankly being pretty. It's definitely worth it. If you're the kind of person who likes to be pretty you ... should pursue that with all due haste. It's a major mind-f*** to be as fat as I am and as ... vain as I am and I love what that does to people. Both people who need it and ... people who are frightened by it. And I get to accept a great deal of compliments and ... confusion and questions and the occasional confession for people who ... have to contend suddenly with what my existence ... means for them. That's not a path for ... everybody and you certainly don't have to do the work if ... you just want to be cute. But I really welcome it and by embracing my own image of ... my sense of fashion and frankly my vanity for my own ... goddamn face, it's made so many ... opportunities for people to enjoy that. There is a moment for everyone who reaches this level of self love and beauty where you become...'iconic.' It's a dead word, I know everybody's throwing it around these days, but you literally light someone up in the way that a ... religious icon does. They look at you with ... something not quite human. Something more. You can be very symbolic to them because of that. It is an incredibly powerful moment. Again it's just a moment. It is, it doesn't last. Right but it's the power of the moment. And sometimes that's all we have with each other. It's just when the light is right. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. It is one of the best things ... that I get to do. Also difficult to describe. It's not rippling the wall. But it means a lot. To a lot of people. Including me. I think it is rippling the wall. In what way is it not rippling the wall? I think because for the most part it doesn't last in the ... same way. Like you can argue that that ... kind of iconography like you know the best photos of ... Marilyn Monroe which will never fall off and die, people will be painting those on walls long after the fall of ... civilization, in some cases the image of ... the body endures in that way. I've caught enough people at ... the right moment they realize the Venus of Willendorf is in ... the room with them. The likelihood, however, of that lasting is statistically less than a book. I see. So it's not rippling the wall in ... the way that your books do. But it is consciousness changing and it is therefore ... part of the longer cultural change project. So it's affecting individuals in a moment and then it goes away. Absolutely and the moment is ... very important but yes it is fleeting. It would be remiss of me not to mention that in order to ... adjust my consciousness to this way of thinking about ... myself and about the body in general, it took reading a great deal of black scholarship about the body. Books that I always refer people to are 'Fearing The ... Black Body,' especially for fat people, especially for fat white people, and 'The Body Is Not An Apology' by Sonya Renee Taylor. Yeah 'Body Is Not An ... Apology' is beautiful work. Beautiful, great book. Life-changing. Much better than 'The Body ... Keeps The Score.' Yeah. Thanks for that. I appreciate you bringing up black writers, black singers, black scholars into this conversation because, of course, the black body has been so commodified and then rejected, vilified, fetishized, all of the above. So that's important. It occurred to me I think pretty late in life, that I'm glad that I learned it, that the best way to learn the ownership of your body is to ... seek out the scholarship of people who have been ... denied ownership of theirs. They are much further along in this journey than you are ... usually. So reading black authors and ... trans authors, too, has really revolutionized my thinking. Well and so that's another way of another ripple in the wall, right? We're all changing each other by encountering each other. So that feels like a key point to me. About how can we better open ourselves to have a wider ... variety of encounters outside of what is familiar to us? For me I often think creative people, not always, but often we seek out what is ... unusual to us. We seek out what feels ... foreign, what feels different. And if we do well, we can center ourselves and ... say 'what's really happening here?' Beyond my reaction of my response, what's the deeper thing that this person is offering and ... trying to transmit? Do you have any keys or suggestions for people who might not be ... used to doing this sort of activity? For an entry point? Yeah.

I have two things: 35:03

my first thing is take one step ... out of your lane. You don't have to go so far ... that it scares you, I don't think that's necessarily ... healthy for everybody. But one thing you wouldn't normally do, a place you wouldn't normally go, or if you are an artist, a discipline that's not yours, to get out of your own head. To force yourself into the amateur's way of thinking. You're not an expert, you don't know what's going on here. It's slightly out of your normal track. The other thing is what you said. The difference between reaction and response. Lots of people have not learned how to parse that or to slow that, and still perceive those two things as one. The response is their reaction. This is applicable to literally everything in life, to conversations where you might be conveying judgment ... where you don't mean to, to interaction with your ... children or with your parents, to how you react in an emergency in a difficult situation. Reaction comes first. It is often based on your conditioning, on those old subroutines, on the things that you did not install on yourself. Your response is the thing you get to own. It's the thing you get to take at least a microsecond to think about. Your reaction to art is the exact same thing. Your first reaction, your gut reaction, the way it makes you feel, is something you didn't create. It's how you came to it with all of your baggage and how ... you fit your bags on the bus. Sitting with your response, until it's what you mean to ... say, how you mean to respond is difficult. It's really hard to master. I'm impatient and I like to talk ... fast and I like to have witty retorts. Learning to be patient enough to make the difference between those two things has been ... the work of at least a decade and I still mess it up. I would tell everybody artist or not to learn to take those two things apart. Yeah, and the practice for me can be as simple as pausing to take a ... conscious breath. So it buys me just a few seconds of time, and that tiny bit of distance is useful for my ego and all my training. To say 'oh there's something in the world outside my training.' There's something in the world outside my inculcation. There's something in the world that exists outside of ... my family dynamic, my birth family dynamic. The thing you said that feels really important is yes and ... then you get to choose. Which I know a lot of people feel trapped in their reactions ... to things because it's big feelings a lot of the time. It's shame and guilt and anger and defensiveness and ... they feel too big to get around. Learning to take just a little bit of time away from those ... things gives you back your decision, your control, your choice. And you know for me that is also true of both my creativity, what am I going to work on and why, do I feel like working on it today, am I resisting something or do I actually need some rest? And I need to parse the difference between those things. Are you reacting to scarcity? Are you thinking I need to ... make money next year? Are you thinking 'everybody's ... writing vampires?' Nothing good comes of those ... reactionary books. Right. I will say it's self-reinforcing because the first time ... learning to parse those two things keeps you from saying ... something you wish you hadn't said. Yes. You feel like a god. I stopped myself from saying something embarrassing. But it works in those larger decisions like what you're ... going to do next in your career or even how you ... represent your work. A reactionary representation ... of work has gotten more than one person in a lot of trouble. Well that's for sure. Million cases of that. And you know it's also true for me with magic I think. What is this magical act? What is my intention? Why is my intention? And is that really what I want, need, or desire. Focusing on parsing the difference between want, need, and desire has been ... important for me. Also the work of a decade. Yes, indeed. Because we're not allowed to—in some cases we're not allowed to want ... things, in other cases are not ... allowed to need things— so people often switch those words. To try to lighten whatever. To get around those rules. To get around the rules. Yes. Then, let alone desire which circles us back to pleasure. Right? There are so many rules ... around that. Yeah you know, what is my deeper desire? What is that place where ... want and need come together in me? And want something more. Hey I told a friend of mine not too long ago that I think my ... twenties were about figuring out what I like. And then my thirties were about learning to like what I like. And so for my forties have been about learning to like ... liking what I actually like. Because of the rules around pleasure. Because what are you allowed to want? What are you allowed to need? What has someone told you you're allowed to desire? It is harder than you'd think to know those things. And everything good comes from them. My hope is that we can all find our way to pleasure no ... matter what our current conditions are and no matter ... how fleeting it may feel. Every moment of pleasure feel is important. Worth it. Among the the worst days of ... my life like making a cup of tea has made a huge difference. Even getting arrested in protest and having your right ... arm zip-tied behind your back. Figuring out that you can help somebody unzip their ... parka by biting their zipper and having them pull away ... and then wadding up your jacket behind your hands. Incredibly pleasurable. Yeah, small acts of resistance and mutual aid are pleasurable. That's it. That whole process, figuring it out, having the satisfaction of ... getting it right, the satisfaction of helping ... somebody out. The minute relief, a feeling not as uncomfortable as you were a minute ago. It is that simple, it is that important, and it is that complex. Thank you so much for that. That's beautiful. So before we close, any last thoughts on creativity ... or magic or life? I would say that one of the hardest things for most artists to deal with is jealousy, professional and interpersonal. Everyone says that comparison is the thief of joy but you're going to do it anyway.

So the thing that I have learned is: 42:19

jealousy works best as a compass. It is pointing you towards ... something you want. You may not be comfortable ... with that wanting, you may be very upset at ... yourself that you wish you could take it from someone ... else, you may feel unkind and ... ungenerous, that you are drawn primarily ... to what someone else has. Let those feelings pass over you. They're just part of being a person. And then look carefully where that compass points. It's going to lead you to pleasure. Wonderful thank you so much. So once again, I've been talking with Meg ... Ellison, and you can find her work at ... megelison.com. And you can find me at ... thorncoyle.com. I hope everyone has a magical creative day.