Episode 54: Goodbyes, Transitions, and "Making Sense of the Chaos"

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast.

On today's episode, host Allie Wagner says goodbye. We talk about honoring the past while looking to the future, how our filters shape our stories and our lives, and how we can look to art to help us make sense and order out of the chaos of life. All while using this special little carousel as our guide one last time together. 

The podcast will be going silent until we find another host. Be sure to subscribe to to make sure you're the first to know when we're back up and running.

If you'd like to keep in touch with Allie on her new journey, you can follow her on Substack, Instagram, or TikTok.

Transcript

Welcome to the Carousel of Happiness Podcast. I’m your host, Allie Wagner. 

On last week’s episode, we celebrated the podcast’s one-year anniversary with me sharing my personal carousel story. How my life has changed for the better as a result of hosting this podcast and how the carousel’s magic has wriggled its way into my heart and propelled me into a life I couldn’t have previously imagined. On last week’s episode I let you know I am leaving my position at the carousel and that today will be my final episode hosting this podcast.

On today’s episode, we’ll talk about what’s next. For the podcast and for me and the ways those two things intersect and intertwine. As you can imagine, today’s episode is bittersweet for me and I find myself in front of this microphone filled at once with seemingly conflicting emotions like sadness, tenderness, nervousness, excitement, and a little bit of grief.

On today’s episode, we’ll talk about honoring the past while looking to the future, how our filters shape our stories and our lives, and how we can look to art to help us make sense and order in the chaos of life. All while using this special little carousel as our guide one last time together. 

Let us begin with today’s story.

GONG

I don’t love goodbyes. In fact, I don’t even like them. Which is surprising given the fact that I have had a lot of experience with them. Because my dad was in the Navy, I spent the first 27 years of my life living at 32 separate addresses. And the moving wasn’t done after I became an adult. In my career with the government, I travelled extensively, and since “settling down” with my husband nine years ago, we have lived in seven different places together.

I know. I, too, am exhausted thinking about it.

But despite having practice saying goodbye, I don’t love it. I haven’t gotten better at it and it hasn’t gotten easier as I’ve gotten older, quite frankly. I’ll admit, 100% of the time I am always going to sneak out of a party without saying goodbye. Please don’t be offended. It’s not you, it’s me.

It’s not the emotion I mind in goodbyes and it’s not expressing myself that I find difficult. It is sitting with a knot of conflicting emotions that makes goodbyes feel hard to me. 

Because when you say goodbye, if you do it at the right time, you’re at once ready to go, but you’re also sad to leave.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once wrote, “the test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

As we’ve talked on this show before, the mental discomfort that arises from holding conflicting beliefs in the mind is what Fitzgerald equates with high intelligence, and what scientists call cognitive dissonance.

I equate it with the sensation I get when I want to slip out the backdoor of a party or the way I feel right now. Ready to go, but sad to leave.

And while it’s uncomfortable to be here right now, I wonder if, all along, this sensation is what life is all about. The discomfort I feel right now is indicative of me having loved this place so much. So much so that I allowed its energy to work its way through me until I soaked up all that I could get, all that I was ready for in this lifetime.

But because I, like you, Dear Listener, am an evolving being, my work in this body is not done even if my time at the carousel is coming to an end. And once we soak up all of our present moment, we find ourselves ready for the next thing. It’s not a bad thing; it’s how we change and evolve over time.

So often, we listen to the little voice inside that whispers, “it’s time to go,” but we ignore it. We push it away because we are waiting for better timing, we’re waiting for it to make sense on paper, we’re waiting to know where to go next.

And sometimes we wait just a hair too long and the situation becomes untenable. We might even pick fights to justify leaving. We get feisty, angry, or resentful because we want to feel justified in doing what we wanted to do all along. What we are born to do.

Grow. Change. Evolve.

Thankfully, that isn’t the case with the carousel. But what is true is that I am ready, and also sad. I feel deep appreciation, love, and gratitude for what the carousel has given me, and also I am ready to take this new version of me to new places. To learn new things.

Unfortunately, it is these moments of discomfort that don’t make it into the highlight reels of our lives. It’s these moments of discomfort that we forget when we get to where we’re going, and I just want to slow down here a moment to honor this transition period and give it the respect I think it deserves.

The carousel itself is a knot of contradictions. It is a place of happiness that was born from a place of sadness. It is believed to be a place for children, yet 80% of our riders are adults. It is a place where we celebrate life, and we also honor death. It is at once an amusement ride, a moveable work of art, a symbol, and a community hub. It is a place that defies description, yet I’ve tried for more than a year to find the right words to describe it. 

It is because of these contradictions that I feel comfortable standing with my own right now. It is because of Scott’s example, as a self-trained artist of a very specific medium that I feel confident going out on my own and doing the same. Because of Scott’s example, I’m about to do something incredibly nutty and feel slightly sane in doing it. Because of Scott’s example, I am trusting the unseen, I am trusting in my own voice, and I’m trusting something larger than myself to help me along the way.

This is how the carousel has shaped me. This is how I’ve allowed its energy flow to me and through me and out my own filter. To be sure, this is not how everybody views the carousel, nor are these the conclusions everyone would come to after spending time with it.

Our lives are comprised of the stories we tell. Our lives show us our beliefs, our values, and our morals in real time. If we believe, like I did before I started working at the carousel, that artists needed degrees and they needed external validation from the elite to flourish, that will be true for us. It was true for me for a while.

But in seeing Scott, with no formal training, create a functional piece of art that has a lasting impact and legacy without any permission from anyone, I am forced to reconcile those false beliefs in my mind.

Which is what I’ve done in the past year. Over and over again, I have gotten slapped in the face, or better said, I’ve slapped myself in the face with old beliefs about art that just aren’t true. And I know they’re not true, because Scott’s story proved them to be false. 

The carousel is a great example of how you can take a life’s experience of healing and express that healing in a very specific, unique-to-you sort of way. 

There’s a story I love to tell about Nora Ephron and her husband, Nicolas Pileggi. Nora Ephron, of course, was a writer, a journalist, a playwright, and a filmmaker. She is best known for writing “When Harry Met Sally,” one of the top screenplays of all time. She also wrote and directed romantic comedies like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You’ve Got Mail.” 

Her husband, Nicolas Pileggi, is best known for co-writing the screenplay for “Goodfellas” based on a book he wrote about the life of a Mafia-associate-turned-FBI-informant, Henry Hill.  

One month before “Goodfellas” came out, a movie written by Nora Ephron called “My Blue Heaven” was released. Starring Steve Martin as a mob informant sent into the witness protection program in sleepy southern California suburb who engages in all sorts of hijinks while under the nervous-yet-watchful eye of a FBI agent played by Rick Moranis. 

The movie was as silly and zany and completely over the top. While critics didn’t love it, my 9-year-old self thoroughly approved. I loved how exaggerated Steve Martin’s performance was. I loved how silly the “fish out of water” vibes got. And I’ll never forget my well-worn and well-loved copy of that old VHS tape. 

It wasn’t until graduate school that I learned that “My Blue Heaven” is actually based on Henry Hill just like “Goodfellas” was. When Nicolas was researching his book about Henry Hill he shared the information he discovered with his wife. And his wife did what great artists do, she took a good story and made it her own. 

Both Nicolas and Nora took the raw materials of Henry Hill’s life and expressed them in entirely different ways. He took the story and made “Goodfellas” and she took the exact same story and made “My Blue Heaven.”

Same raw materials, same story, but expressed through two different filters and perspectives.

Scott took the information, the raw materials, of his life and he made the carousel. Anyone else would have made something different. Maybe a Seesaw of Joy or a Swing of Sadness. Scott chose the Carousel of Happiness.

The point is, that act of sitting with the raw materials of our lives and making something out of those raw materials is what life is all about. It’s what art is all about. And it’s why we’re here. That synthesis of raw materials is where the magic happens, it’s what makes all of the trials and tribulations of being human worth it.

Through one of my unaired interviews for this podcast, I learned about an anthropologist named Ellen Dissanayake (DISSA NA YAKE). She spent her career focusing on art and culture. Specifically focusing on the question “What is art for?”

And the answer she came up with was fascinating to me. Ellen, who does not have a PhD and is also self-trained like Scott, by the way, discovered after decades of research that art is “taking the ordinary and making it special.”

While that might seem obvious, that idea challenged what anthropologists and art historians had believed about art and its purpose to humanity.

Ellen says, “ceremonies occur at a time of transition between states.” “Birth, marriage, wartime, sickness, death – these are moments of great uncertainty and anxiety.” And in those moments, we as human beings desire to rein in the chaos. Making art, according to Dissanayake (DISSA NA YAKE) gives us the “ability to shape and thereby exert some measure of control over the untidy material of everyday life.”

We make art to exert some measure of control over our own lives.

That’s exactly what Scott did. And it’s exactly what I feel emboldened to do right now. In this transition between states, I feel called to create art. To make sense of the fragments of my life and give meaning to them. To shape the untidy material of my everyday life.

And it is what whoever will replace me as host of this podcast will do, as well. The carousel is committed to keeping the podcast going. In fact, we recently received a grant specifically to fund it and other outreach projects. The carousel’s executive director and its board will be convening to decide next steps on how to move forward in finding a new host. 

Which means, we’ll be resting silent for just a little bit. Until the right host is found and they’re able to come on board with their new filter, their new way of experiencing the carousel. I invite you all to subscribe to the podcast so that you’ll be the first to know when we’re back up and running. 

I also encourage you to make sense of the chaos by making art. Fix a nice dinner for your family, make a baby, paint a picture. Take the minutiae and emotions of your daily experience and make sense of them through art. As Scott has proven, you do not need to know what you’re doing, you do not need to know what’s coming next. Sit with the feelings, move them through you by making something, and watch what happens.

As for me, Dear Listener, I’ll be exploring the intersection between storytelling and metaphysics on Substack. You can follow me there, or on Instagram or TikTok. Links in the show notes. I’ll also be doing what I’m calling “story” readings. If you’re curious what the story of your life is trying to reveal to you, let me help. Understanding our story is one of the most powerful ways to understand and change our life, and I’d be honored to help you make sense of your own.

I’m also writing my own story. With my mother’s help and guidance, I found a pink rotary phone that she’d like me to use to connect with her. I’ll be sharing what I find and what she says on Substack.

In the meantime, take care. Be well. And, as we like to say at the Carousel of Happiness, “don’t delay joy.” And we’ll see you next time around.