Out of the Blue - The Podcast: Finding the Way Forward
Out of the Blue-the Podcast features interviews with inspirational survivors of traumatic out of the blue events who have overcome unimaginable challenges, sharing their stories of resilience and triumph. By sharing these stories, "Out of the Blue" aims to create a community where others who have faced similar hardships can find solace and strength as together, we find the way forward.
Out of the Blue - The Podcast: Finding the Way Forward
Collaboration in Healing and Creativity with Kevin Carey
One ordinary Thursday in 2019, while preparing to teach a class, Kevin Carey – coordinator of creative writing at Salem State University and author of seven acclaimed books – suddenly experienced distorted vision and temporary blindness in one eye. What followed was a harrowing medical journey that nearly ended in tragedy—twice. Despite recognizing the seriousness of his symptoms, Kevin was almost sent home from two different hospitals without proper diagnosis. It was only due to his wife's persistent questioning about his lingering fever that doctors finally discovered a life-threatening bacterial blood infection that had sent fragments to his brain.
Kevin takes us through his treatment of a PICC line delivering antibiotics directly to his heart, and the profound gratitude he feels for surviving what many others don't. The permanent slight vision loss in his peripheral vision serves as a constant reminder of his brush with mortality.
But Kevin's story isn't just about survival—it's about transformation and creative resilience. With disarming honesty and humor, he shares how his journey as a writer has been marked by persistence through rejection and an openness to unexpected directions. After focusing on fiction writing for years, Kevin found his initial publishing success in poetry. His novel "Junior Miles and the Junkman," which tells the story of a disabled, bullied boy whose deceased father leaves him a junk sculpture that comes alive, took nine years to find a publisher.
Kevin's experiences illuminate the power of collaboration, intuition, and perseverance in both healing and creativity. Whether developing a movie from a playful conversation with a friend or co-creating poetry inspired by photography, his willingness to follow inspiration wherever it leads exemplifies the "out of the blue" moments that shape our lives most profoundly.
Join us for this powerful conversation about recognizing life's signposts, embracing unexpected opportunities, and finding deeper meaning through our most challenging experiences.
For more from Kevin Carey: https://kevincareywriter.com/
Order "Junior Miles and the Junkman": https://regal-house-publishing.mybigcommerce.com/junior-miles-and-the-junkman/
Out Of The Blue:
For more: outoftheblue-thepodcast.org
For exclusive content: patreon.com/podcastOOTB
Welcome to Out of the Blue the podcast, a platform dedicated to celebrating inspirational stories of people from all walks of life, overcoming life-changing experiences, who have found their way forward. I'm your host, vernon West, and my co-host for today's episode is my daughter, jackie West, who, along with being our social media and marketing manager, is a professional musician and Reiki healer. And I also want to thank you, our listeners, for joining us today, for giving us your precious time and attention, because we know just how valuable that is, and please remember to smash that like button and hit that subscribe button, because everything helps to get the word out there.
Speaker 1:In today's episode, we're thrilled to welcome Kevin Carey, a native of Revere, massachusetts, now residing in Cape Ann. Kevin is the coordinator of creative writing at Salem State University and the author of seven acclaimed books. He's here to share the incredible story of a life-altering event that unexpectedly landed him in the hospital, fighting for survival. Kevin will take us through his journey of recovery and how he transformed a traumatic experience into a story of resilience and triumph into a story of resilience and triumph, thriving as both an award-winning author and an esteemed educator. Hi, kevin, and welcome to Out of the Blue the podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello, vernon and Jackie, it's nice to be here. Thank you, good to have you Good to have you.
Speaker 1:You know, kevin, I know we've had a bit of a talk, we know a pretty good idea, but I really have a lot to learn from this. So tell us to start off with what really that event that brings you to Out of the Blue, the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a Thursday evening, fall of 2019. I was sitting at my desk in my office getting ready to teach an evening class I think it was a playwriting or scriptwriting class and I went to stand up and the whole room resembled an old Zenith television set all wavy lines and the whole picture in front of me. I lost sight in one eye temporarily and temporarily, and so I knew something was going on. And I remember I walked upstairs to the classroom and I said guys, I think I'm having a stroke. Can someone you know call 911? And so they came and I got rushed to Salem Hospital and I had managed to call my wife, and my wife and daughter met the ambulance there, and so they did a scan and they thought they saw something in my brain, a blockage in my brain. So by the time they figured that out, the ER doctor said to me look, there's a medication to clear that blockage. The problem with the medication is you need to take it an hour from the onset of the incident, and so you have about five minutes to make up your mind. And he said oh yeah, by the way, a certain percent of percent of people get brain bleeds from this medicine. Yikes. So my wife's a former nurse and she's calling colleagues of her and trying to figure out should he take this. Should he? You know? And a long story short, the doctor came back into the ER and said I asked him. I said what would you do? Or my wife asked him. He said if you are my father, I tell you not to take it. So we didn't take it and anyways it didn't.
Speaker 2:I still had all this funky vision going on. It's kind of like looking through a cheese board or a grate with a bunch of holes and my sight was coming back in the eye that it had gone out of a little bit. So they kept me overnight and they had called a neurologist. There was one on call but there was nobody in the hospital. And then one other phone call they made, somebody told them to send me home and to come see an ophthalmologist in the morning, that they knew what this was. So neither of those things sounded very plausible to my wife. Thank goodness she was there.
Speaker 2:And the next day I was moved to a hospital in Boston and they couldn't find out what it was. So I was in there two days and they were sending me home. And then my wife asked the nurse why does he still have a temperature again? And that's when they decided we'll do a blood culture. And they did the blood culture and they found that I had a bacterial blood infection and what had happened was a piece of that bacteria flew off in my bloodstream, went through my heart and lodged in my brain and that's what caused the stroke incident. Twice two hospitals were sending me home, right, and they didn't know what it was. And if it wasn't for my wife speaking up for me, I probably would have went home and either bled out or gone into sepsis or you know whatever. And you know it's amazing.
Speaker 2:Once they knew what it was, I had teams of doctors coming in. Really, the care was great. I had neurologists, infectious disease MDs, and you know like they knew how to treat this. Now that they knew what it was and the treatment was a PICC line into my vein that went to my heart and a box of antibiotics that I carried around like a shoulder bag for eight weeks. You know kind of kicked the crap out of me, but it did what it was supposed to do. It got rid of the bacteria in my blood and you know it felt all so surreal, really, until it was almost over.
Speaker 2:And then I started thinking back on it and I kept running into people and I told them what happened and they'd say oh yeah, my cousin died of that, or my friend down the block died from that.
Speaker 2:And when you mention bacterial blood infection, the outcomes are not good for a lot of people, this is true. So I think if I had really gone home either of those times, I think I would have been in trouble, you know. Oh yeah. So I credit my wife for saving my life, and you know which she's probably done in more ways than one over the years. Well, I can agree with that. You know, I was a pretty healthy guy. I mean, I had been a big drinker years ago and I'd stopped drinking for many years. So, you know, once that happened, I became pretty healthy. You know, I really wasn't sick that often. I kind of bounced through life and did most of the things that I wanted to do and then bang, you know, this thing just kind of falls in my lap one night sitting at my desk, and nobody knows how I got it.
Speaker 1:They don't know.
Speaker 2:They had theories. They wanted to take my gallbladder out and I said, well, was it from the gallbladder? And they were like we don't know. But you know it could be and I'm like I don't think I want to lose body parts if I don't have to. You know there was. We have a theory. We had been down the Cape a couple of weeks before that.
Speaker 2:I think maybe let me back up about three years before that I had gotten this thing called an ocular migraine. It's like an aura in your eye. It lasts about 20 minutes and then goes away. And I had had a couple of those over the years and I think I mostly associated them with dehydration if I worked out too much and I didn't drink enough water. But then after we got home from the Cape, I had been swimming in the water. It was after a rainstorm, it was really warm and I had a hole in my eardrum and my earplug fell out. And as I was swimming I looked and I saw a dead fish in the water.
Speaker 2:So then I got home and then I had like four of these ocular migraines within five days. So our theory is I don't know if it's true or not is that I must have got some bacteria from the ocean that went in my ear and into my bloodstream, but the doctors didn't agree with that. They said they didn't see that as being the source. Didn't agree with that, they said they didn't see that as being the source. Long story to say, I have really no idea how I got this to begin with and where it came from, what the onset was, how it got into my system.
Speaker 1:It was literally out of the blue on its fortune. Literally out of the blue, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Meaning you could say the ocean, like in what yard theory that would have been out of the blue. Yeah, yeah, meaning the meaning, the everything you could say the ocean, like in what yard theory that would have been out of the blue too, the ocean. That would have been definitely specifically out of the blue yeah, right really specifically like from the blue yeah, but I'm the blue, yeah, no or, or the sky I mean yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, it's interesting to hear what your intuition about where this came from goes.
Speaker 2:Well, I think the reason I go there is because it makes me afraid it could happen again if I don't know what caused it. I agree with that. So, you know, maybe I'm doing something right now that caused it and I don't know. So that's, you know. It's crossing the line between fear and paranoia, I guess it's just. And you know, the thing I think that's the scariest about it is it's a loss of control, right? It's something that's affecting the way you see.
Speaker 2:You know, I still have a little sight loss in my peripheral vision on that side, and the way they described it to me was is that I actually did lose a little sight, the way the brain works with my eyes and the brain is making up for what should be there, and so if I concentrate on it, it's a little kind of fuzzy, like a camera out of focus, like a little pixelating video image, and I don't notice it too much anymore. Some lights. If I'm with my head down reading and there's a light over in that corner, it sometimes draws attention to it, but I've just become accustomed to it and it kind of I can make myself focus on it and it still freaks me out a little, but most of the time I just forget about it, you know. So you know of the time I just forget about it, you know. So, you know.
Speaker 2:The damage, thankfully, has been minimal. I don't know what it's done to my brain. My brain functioned in strange ways before this, so it's hard to tell what has changed. You know, it's kind of business as usual. It is frightening to think that you're kind of bouncing along and bang right and I feel really fortunate and really lucky to have you know, to be able to tell this story where I've run into so many people that tell me you know of endings that a pretty sad story, that pretty sad, you know so.
Speaker 1:Um, I'm for one. I'm, I'm in favor of your intuition. I'm not the doctor here, that and I but I think that, um, uh, in my case, I was also had intuitions about what happened to me. You know, usually the intuitions are right. I really think that I think that, um, you probably are right, it probably would happen. And they I think that you probably are right, it probably would happen. And they don't want to say that because it's just something that doesn't fit into what they read in their papers and all the stuff that they're using to back up their knowledge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, I think you know my wife was an OR nurse for years and you know I have so much respect for the medical profession and I think they're really good at treating what they know and sometimes not that great at figuring out what it is they need to treat.
Speaker 1:I really think that's where there's a blind spot in a lot of the medical profession. Menace again, it's a practice. I always told my doctors you're practicing medicine, right.
Speaker 2:When are you going to get it right? But I love my doctors.
Speaker 1:You were practicing medicine right. When are you going to get it right?
Speaker 2:I love my doctors.
Speaker 1:I have nothing bad to say about doctors.
Speaker 2:No, I was so impressed with how they handled it. After the fact, I remember the first hospital I was in, the doctor said to my wife she asked him you know you don't have a neurologist on staff here. What happens if he bleeds out? And he said, well, we have him on a monitor and we have someone on call. And she said, yeah, but someone on call has to drive here. That's a. You know, that's an acute event. Right, you need somebody dealing with that instantly once that happens.
Speaker 1:Was that Salem?
Speaker 2:That was at Salem yeah. And you know I'm thankful for the ER doctor, because he was straight with me, you know, and he seemed a little overwhelmed with it, you know I mean, but you know he gave me the correct advice in the end.
Speaker 1:So, um, and I love those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, doctors I gotta tell you, yeah, you know so much on their plate. And then you know, and then when I crossed the bridge into boston, uh, uh and, and they were going to send me home, it was kind of like wow yeah, that's, that's disconcerted. That's a little uh disconcerting that they would have been ready to send you home but in the end they did, you know, they saved me, so that's right, they did my wife and them and you had great advice. Your wife was advocating for you.
Speaker 2:That's amazingly, yeah it's so important to have an advocate. I mean, I was out of it, I didn't know. Oh, my god. Yeah, you know, I probably would have agreed to anything. Yeah, you know, um, just let me get my regular sight back. I don't care what you do, you know.
Speaker 3:So uh what happened like? How did you feel during all of that, when, when it was happening?
Speaker 2:I mean it was anxiety provoking because I I really I don't know how long my sight was gone on that one. It was like a gray kind of fabric, you know, kind of over one of my eyes, and then, like I said, I had this kind of cheese like looking through, like a cheese grater or something, just a bunch of holes, and that stayed with me for about three days, um you know, uh, and then it eventually started to fade and it was just left with that little uh fuzziness in the corner of my peripheral vision so, as you move on from this, I think I wonder um, this there's probably I'm not gonna, I don't want to put it the words in your mouth, but what happened?
Speaker 1:Did you feel like a new kind of look at life, a new kind of uplifting your senses about being appreciative of things?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, like I said, I was a pretty happy, functioning guy before this happened. But then you just have a new found appreciation and you know, then I stopped thinking of the things that I would complain about and they seem so silly, you know they. They seem so like such a waste of time, right, you know, after the fact, and you know, like, like I said, I had to wear that bag of antibiotics for seven or eight weeks coming when I was in the hospital and that kind of really kicked the crap out of me and I was pretty, you know, pretty tired and pretty beat up by the time it was all over, but but so thankful to be able to to go to sleep without rolling over on an IV line that would send an alarm off and wake me up you know, little things like that, and I did go back to teach a couple of weeks afterwards with my little suitcase, but I would teach two classes and go home and be exhausted, you know.
Speaker 2:So you just take good days for granted, I think, and then you realize it after the fact and I'm a pretty accepting, peaceful, happy to be alive person twofold from before and after this, you know, because it is kind of a lottery, you know. You know, here we are, we have time to do what. You know, what, what we want to do, what, what's important to us, how we treat other people. You know, and I think it's just a reminder to use that time wisely and generously and, you know, be there for other people that have traumas in their life, you know, and have events, because people were there for me you know, and I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1:Definitely think. I noticed that very strongly, strongly that you had your wife there and that's such a, your wife and your daughter, my family, definitely they kept me on earth.
Speaker 3:honestly, Jackie you want to say something, jackie? Yeah, I was thinking about how I guess my generation is millennial and we're uh I can't really speak for my entire generation, but I definitely feel like millennials and Gen Z are kind of growing up like very solitary. Um, and this is I'm just thinking about what you're saying about just having both of you have cultivated families, so you have people like interacting with you on in such a deep way, and there's a lot of work that goes into creating those relationships um, and I'm just thinking about AI.
Speaker 2:I think community acts that way too, though you must see it in the music community. I know Vernon did, and I have a pretty far-reaching writing community that I lean on and hope that I help too, and teaching does it for me. I feel like I'm really lucky. I've had a lot of jobs in my life that I'd have to drag myself out of bed to get to, and, uh, this is not one of them. You know, this is one that I that I've I finally got, finally got the dream job.
Speaker 1:yeah, that's amazing sounds like you're really appreciating your role. Yeah, you know, and.
Speaker 3:And you know.
Speaker 2:I feel like I can try and help other people just by coming to work, you know. I'm sure you do. I think that's a blessing, really.
Speaker 1:So as you were going on from this event and you were getting your, you know you're acclimating, you're starting to feel healthy again and I think, some other things, any other other blue events that were noteworthy following that event, something to do with the book, yeah, I mean, you know the book had its own kind of uh.
Speaker 2:I guess that event started well before the the uh trauma so the overlapping, that's fine yeah, um, you know, years ago my wife and I took my kids to it might have been Mass Smoker or another museum in Pittsfield, and they had this exhibit called Spring Sprockets and Pulleys. It was a bunch of figures made out of recycled material like life size, human being size, and they would be in little groups, like you might have a band, and you'd go up and press a button and they were all connected on pulleys and they'd move in this kind of syncopated rhythm. You know, and it was fascinating. My kids loved it, I loved it.
Speaker 2:And I looked over in the corner and there was this one solitary figure. His name was George, he had a fishing pole and he had a watering can for a head and I just started thinking about what would happen if that junk man I called him came alive, right. So you know, I'm percolating the story and you know, two years go by and I'm in new jersey, I was in in an MFA program and I look at the Morristown Museum and the same exhibit is there. So I go again and again I see that little George in the corner with the fishing pole and so I started to write this story. A little shame and self-promotion, oh that's fine.
Speaker 2:We're going to put the link to that at the end. And then I had the story. I really liked it. I had an agent that really liked it and she got great reads at big houses and they all said wonderful things and they all passed on. And then I had a second agent who had it for a very short time. She got a few good reads and then she gave it back to me. And then I had a third agent and she had it for two years and she got a lot of great reads and, again, a lot of wonderful comments. I had one guy that passed on. It said I'll never drive by a junkyard again without thinking in this novel, but yeah, they pass. And then I'm like, well, why are you passing on it? You know? Um, so this was the this, this was the road for this novel.
Speaker 2:I think it was about eight or nine years from the time I finished the first draft of it, because each agent would dive into more edits and it would get rewritten again, and so I think it was eight or nine years and I took it back from the agent that had it and I started to shop it to publishers on my own and that's when it landed at Regal House Publishing in North Carolina. And so you know, I tell students when I because it's it's marketed as the middle grade novel, but I think it's a novel for adults too. And but when I go into schools to read it, I just tell kids look, if you have an idea, if you have something you believe in, don't give up. A day before the miracle happens, you know, just hang in there. And you know I could wallpaper my house with rejection slips right from all the writing that I've done and I just got one today, you know, on a poetry manuscript. So it's to me it's like if you believe in it, persevere with it and something will happen. And I'm really excited that that I've had.
Speaker 2:This book came out in 23. It was my sixth book, fifth book, and you know I've been able to get around and travel to different states and read in schools. And you know, if I hadn't gone to that museum on that day with my kids and saw that exhibit, you know this would have never happened. So I don't know. I think there's kind of signposts out there all the time for us and if we're open enough to to entertain kind of what we think might even be impossible, you know. Then I think maybe we can follow that intuition to a place that is successful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. That's summarizes what inspiration really is.
Speaker 2:And I w, I was a kid, that uh. You know, when I was younger, I stuttered all the time I was um.
Speaker 1:Can I read you a poem about that? Oh yeah, please do.
Speaker 2:Because I read this to the kids. When I go to read the Junkman because this is who I was as a kid this is called Getting it Right In grammar school I stuttered, felt the hot panic on my face when my turn to read crept up the row. Even when I counted the paragraphs and memorized the passage, I'd trip on the first or second word and then it would be over. The awful hesitation, the word clinging to the lining of my throat, rising only too late to avoid the laughter around me. I was never the smartest kid in the room, but I had answers I knew were right, yet was afraid to say them. Years later it all came out, flowing sentences.
Speaker 2:I practiced over and over Shakespeare or Frost, my own tall tales in low-lit bar rooms, scribbled in black-bound journals, rehearsing, anticipating my turn, my time, a way of finally getting it right. So I love it. That was really good. You know I read that sometimes before I read the junk man to tell kids, because it's a story about overcoming obstacles. You know junior miles is a 13 year old-old, disabled, bullied kid and you know he manages to overcome a lot of what's put in front of him. What's the total name of that book? Kevin, it's Junior Miles and the Junkman. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1:I sent you one. I know that I can't wait to read it. Yeah, so Junior Miles is the lead character protagonist, right yeah?
Speaker 2:yeah, you know. Basically what happens in the story is Junior's father dies at the beginning of the novel. He's a junk sculptor. They live on the grounds of a junkyard and he leaves him this life-size figure in the shed in the back of the junkyard and he comes alive and sends him on all these journeys, all designed to overcome the grief of losing his father.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's a wonderful story. What a great idea. Yeah, I love that.
Speaker 2:You know, and I'm not even sure how I framed that story like that. My father, you know, I was in my late 40s, I think, when my father died. You know he and I had a pretty long life together, but I don't know, there's just something about the story about this kid and his mother kind of hanging on to each other through this that felt right. I graduated from college in 1980. And I worked a bunch of different jobs and we knew each other in the 80s, bernie, oh yeah, and you know, from fry cook to bartender, to construction worker, and then one day I had two little kids and I had dabbled in writing stuff but it was kind of personal, I wasn't sharing it, and I said I want to write more. And I started taking creative writing classes at Salem State. And I don't know if you remember Rod Kessler, jacqueline, do you?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah, he was my advisor, or something yeah.
Speaker 2:So I took a creative writing class, myself and a friend of mine, with, uh, rod Kessler, and then I I took every course Rod Kessler taught for the next two years and finally someone said to me look, you have so many credits, you might as well matriculate and get a master's degree. And I did, but I really wanted an MFA. So I did a low residency MFA at Fairleigh Dickinson in New Jersey and when I was there I went for fiction writing and I ran into all these crazy New Jersey poets and I started writing this narrative poetry like one I just read to you. And then I got a book published. And then I got a second book and a third book published. What kind of books were those? The first three books were poetry. Three out of the first four were poetry books.
Speaker 2:And you know, here I was wanting to be a fiction writer and all I could publish was poetry. So you know, sometimes the universe decides that this is what has to happen first. And you know, my poetry is really narrative. It's not that far removed from sounding like fiction, it's prosy. Right, that far removed from sounding like fiction, it's prosy. I think I was open enough to get out of my own way and just accept what it was that was happening, even though I had grander designs. Not that fiction is any more grand than poetry, but mean it's just. You know, here I was, I'm going to be this fiction writer and this poetry just kind of took me over. So, um, and largely because of people, I met this friend of mine, uh, maria maziotti gillen, who has become a wonderful friend of mine, who I do poetry workshops with twice a year in new jersey, and I just kept meeting all these really cool Jersey poets. I didn't expect that to happen.
Speaker 1:That's what I call like out of the blue, because you're putting yourself out there. First of all, we have to put ourselves out there. Nothing will happen if you're sitting in your house twiddling your thumbs or going to Dunkin' Donuts and doing the job you don't love and not doing anything about it. You do have to take the chance and if you don't, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Right, I mean, but God helps those who help themselves. I feel like that's really the truth. If you go out and do it, I think something out of the blue will keep you going or guide you. That's what I see happening to everybody that's been on the show. It's like amazingly consistent that people will find a sort of guiding light. Whatever it is In your case, you just wanted to write.
Speaker 2:No, it was great, it was such a learning experience and I trusted these people I was meeting. And then so I mean these people I was meeting, and you know. And then so I mean, here I was, I had two degrees and I threw my name into human resources at Salem State and I remember I got a call from the, the acting chair of the department at the time, and he said I have a world lit class open if you want to teach it. And this was on a Saturday. I said yeah, when does it start? He said Wednesday, and I was like holy crap. So I said yes, before I could say no and, you know, before I could think too much about it, and I'd call up friends of mine who were teachers. You know what's your syllabus, you know what do you use, and I just didn't have Homer laying around on the coffee table, you know. And so I stayed a week ahead of the students the whole semester, and when it was over I said wow, that was, that was a blast. You know, like I really felt, like you know. I mean, here's this kid that they couldn't read aloud in school because he stuttered. And now I'm up in front of the class, you know, talking about world lit in a college, no less, right, yeah, and so it just felt like a moment for me, you know. And so I, I hung in there and worked as an adjunct for many years and got sometimes a couple classes, sometimes three, and I had some filmmaking experience.
Speaker 2:So every once in a while, a full-time, two-year job would come up and I would be lucky enough to get that. It's just one step at a time. If you have an interest and you pursue it, something will happen. Step at a time. If you have an interest and you pursue it, something will happen. You know, I mean, when I was a kid, I wanted to play for the boston celtics, but I turned out to be 5'8 and you know, um so, but I coached basketball for 19 years. Like I stayed connected to the dream a little, you know. So, uh, I think it's all. I think. If you have something in your gut, just let it go where it's going to go and just stay connected to it, however you can, and things will happen that you might not expect. That might be the best things that could ever happen to you, and in this case, teaching at Salem State was that thing for me.
Speaker 1:That's again. We're back to the title of the show Out of the Blue. You know that's again. We're back to the title of the show out of the blue because essentially, I think what we all come to realize in our lives is just how much of it it comes out of the blue, how much of we want things, we go for them, put all our work into them, but we don't really know exactly how it's going to unfold until certain things come our way, and so those are the flags, those are the signposts and that, you know, people listening to our show would realize talk about this stuff.
Speaker 1:That's it. We want to start the conversation. We think about ourselves, as you know, not so much that we're in control so much, but the things we're in control of our own self and getting those inspirations and following through on them. I think that's a that's something that makes me think of Anthony Brown we had on a couple of episodes, last episode or two and he was saying that one of the things his higher power told him was finish what you start. Like if you get inspired to do something, you have a dream like you're saying. You have a dream like what you said, you should go for it. You shouldn't just be at the bar someday going. I know I wished I could have done. You should be doing it, you know do it.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, I used to be that guy in the bar room saying, oh, I know I could be a writer, and then you know, forgetting that, oh yeah, you have to write to do that.
Speaker 1:You can't sit here and drink. It's just building your next elbow exercise.
Speaker 2:There's one thing missing in this right yeah, yeah, you, you, you have to actually write to make it happen To be a writer, you must write the lesson I'm getting you know.
Speaker 1:The biggest takeaway for hearing this is you know. First of all, it's very inspiring the journey you've had and I think that you got the okay for Junior and the junk man that was after that trauma, wasn't it when that came?
Speaker 2:to you? Yeah, it was, and that was fall of 2019, and that book got published in 2023. You know, vernon, I think a lot of it is too is just being humble enough to like not have all the answers and not really know, but know there's something in your gut that's making you want to pursue this thing and being, you know, being open enough to accept some of the signposts that are out there, and you have to kind of get out of your own way sometimes. You know, I had a friend years ago that used to say I may not be much, but I'm all I think about, and you know. So I think I have to remember that, like when I feel like I'm really in charge, you know the universe might have different plans. I think I'm an open enough person that if I start down a road some way and some opportunity jumps out at me that I'm going to pay attention to it now, because I've been lucky enough to have those opportunities come to fruition.
Speaker 3:Yeah, when you said, when something comes your way, you're going to listen to it now and jump at the opportunity. It sounds like you've been sharpening your like, your tool, like for assessing what's coming your way, like seeing, seeing the signpost.
Speaker 2:I think maybe I look more for them too.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know that I don't think everything is just chance. I think it's well, wait a minute. I heard that story for a reason, or I listened to that interview for a reason, and I think it actually is kind of comforting to think that, you know, maybe these things are being put in your path and it's it's almost disingenuous not to pay attention to them. You know, I ended up meeting the guy who had that exhibit His name is Steve Gerber, which he lives in Newburgh, new York and I went to his studio and it's a crazy place. You walk in, he flicks a switch and there's his feet hanging from the ceiling, kicking footballs and things rotating around. It's just he's a super nice guy and I dedicated some of the book to him and told him it was his.
Speaker 2:So we've we've met each other in person and hung out and you know, stay kind of in touch with each other, hung out, and you know, stay kind of in touch with each other. So you know, I feel like the art world and the writing world have kind of met in that way and that's really cool. Yeah, I love that. I love that. I love that. Yeah, I just had a movie, premiere of that movie.
Speaker 1:Oh right, Tell us all about that. How'd that come out of the book?
Speaker 2:Well, there was a friend of mine. We went to the MFA program together and we used to laugh and joke about the program all the time Because it was. You know. I got a ton out of the program, but there were some things about it that were kind of funky and we used to always joke around about it. So we decided to write a play.
Speaker 1:What were the funky things?
Speaker 2:Well, it was the first year of the program and there was just, you know, there were some funny people involved in the running of it, and you know. So we used to just joke with each other. And so we wrote this play about four MFA students going to a residency and it turns into a murder mystery. We had a reading, I remember, during COVID. We had a reading online with people. And then I approached a theater director here at Salem State, peter Sampieri, and we were going to stage the play because he had done a play of mine a few years ago up in Newburyport, the active studio.
Speaker 2:Then the more we talked, the more we said you know, this would make a fun movie. And so we applied for some grants and we were lucky enough to get them. And then we went to a retreat house in New Jersey where I teach twice a year with Maria Maziotti-Gillen, and we rented the space and Peter and I co-directed it and we went up and shot the movie in four days and then shot one day in Salem and a couple of pickup days later on, and I'd been editing that thing since July and we had a premiere April 30th and it was great. We had a sold-out theater and people really thought it was. It's very silly and farcical. There's a lot of puns in it. It's a knock on higher ed. So you know if you can't make fun of yourself right I think that's a great thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love, I want to watch it. Is it streaming anywhere or what it'll?
Speaker 2:be available. I'm getting, uh, I have to get a print made that can go to the festivals called the dcp and once that happens I'll be able to send it to people to see. But um, so, uh, you know that just started with myself and this guy joking around with each other. So you know, you said something about finishing stuff. I am good at finishing stuff, like if I, if I say if I get an idea, and I do collaborate a lot. You'll see, uh, one of the books I sent you was a collaboration on, uh, this poet, carlene michaels, and I. We used to meet after the pandemic and give each other prompts to write poems about the Greek gods, and so we reimagined the Greek gods living in a modern gated community.
Speaker 1:And I saw that description in the book.
Speaker 2:That sounds interesting, here I go. Shame with self-promotion.
Speaker 1:Oh please, if we're not, we're all about that, yeah we have no shame on out of the blue.
Speaker 2:No shame I sent you one of those too, but you know that was a blast and we were friends and we didn't expect anything to happen with that really. And then we published a couple of them individually and then we found a publisher who wanted it. So, um, really it just came about generically, just a couple of poet friends getting together, because now people will back out and go into coffee shops again, and it wasn't the lockdown pandemic anymore, you know. So something bad led to something good again, so I'm a fortunate guy really.
Speaker 2:I just but once I have a project in my hands, I do want to finish it. I don't feel like I've done the idea justice just by playing around with it.
Speaker 1:I agree with that. It's like when things come, inspirations come out of the blue. I mean, first of all you get a sickness, a trauma out of the blue and you try to use that to first of all inspire you to get through it, inspire you to learn how to deal with it, and you learn things about love and connection that are very valuable in your whole human experience. But then what I take away from you, kevin, is you've also developed a real keen eye to see those out of the blue things coming. It's like I think the more keyed in you get to the wavelength that is out of the blue, the more your life becomes full of these wonderful experiences where you meet somebody and through joking about the program begets an idea for a movie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's just, you know, you go home and write about Zeus and I'll go home and write about Hera, and then all of a sudden we have two poems and then we start thinking, hey, maybe this is something you know. And then it just grows out of that kind of generic chance meeting of a friend and writing something down. You know.
Speaker 1:Anybody that's an artist really relates to this a lot, but I do think that normal people, not just artists, have definitely the ability to do this, to be able to well.
Speaker 2:I've been called a lot of things never normal.
Speaker 1:No, I think once you become an artist of any kind, you already you left that behind.
Speaker 2:You're going to be a little quirky compared to yeah, I think I just really like, you know, uh, I like collaborating with other artists. I mean, there are times I like not collaborating, there's times I just want to embrace something on my own, uh. But you know, uh, I think you learn a lot by trying to work with other people, even if it's, you know, even if it's frustrating at times. It's kind of like you learn the act of give and take.
Speaker 1:I think when I was younger, if I got an idea, it was a little harder for me to collaborate. I felt like, oh no, you're going to hurt my idea. But as I got older and wiser, I started to love collaboration and really, when I tuned into it and became really loved it, it's when first stage of my life success began to happen. What I loved about any kind of writing I've ever done is this all collaboration, so much collaboration, especially when it comes to writing a screenplay or getting into something that's going to be a performance. It's a huge collaboration. Everybody, even the actors, would collaborate. You know they could change it, yeah. Yeah, I don't say it that way. You know what I mean. So there's a clue I know it's.
Speaker 2:You know, years ago I would write something I'd want to give it to somebody to read and I'd be thinking to myself just tell me how much you like this, you know. And then, because my ego wasn't ready for all the rejection that that comes with it, but you know, now it's like I just say be honest, tell me what you think. Right, right, collaboration is that really?
Speaker 1:it's about, yeah, yeah, learning to understand that a criticism is a negative thing. It's, it's a help, it's aid.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think if you're going to be, you know, open enough to let somebody read or look at or view something that you've done, then you have to allow them to be honest in what they think about it and you don't have to agree with it at all. I always say this to my students Look, if you're in a writing workshop and and you get five different opinions, well you go home and do what you want. You don't need to embrace everything that everybody else tells you, but be open enough to listen to it, because it might lead you to do something that makes it better, you know yeah, I can expand your view, your, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 2:People see them differently.
Speaker 3:We're not speaking the same language most of the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and plus we're so into it, right. We're in that little closed space in our mind about this is my thing, right, and you have to give that thing away. I mean, I'm always telling my students that you know, if you write something and publish it, it's not in your business anymore, it's what the readers think about. So someone could totally misinterpret your poem or your essay or your piece of fiction. That's fair game. That's what they got out of it, right. So you really do have to try and control the ego and just tell it to go back where it came from and just be open enough to kind of embrace different opinions that you wouldn't come up with on your own. Like you said, it can nourish it, it can make it something better, something different, absolutely.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've written a lot of songs in my life and to me I look at a musical inspiration as sort of something coming out of the blue I used to say out of the mist and it would come more and more clear to me. I might say out of the shadows. Out of the shadows, but I like that too. But as it comes through, when you have stopped putting it on paper or recording it or whatever you're doing, yeah, you're going to bring in extra people and they're going to help solidify that, get it clearer, and you know when they're giving the kind of the right feedback. You can feel it Because actually what we're talking about here is something that's called an idea.
Speaker 1:I mean, it's intangible and it's totally out there and where our job as an artist or a writer of any kind is to make that thing something that other people can touch, feel, see and hear, and you hope it transforms. It's transformative. You hope that when they see or hear or read it or whatever, that they connect with the wavelength of what you think the message is. But you have no control over that and that's the baffling part. You know you really you get. I used to hear all kinds of interpretations of songs and I personally knew what they were about, but they weren't about that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, that was my little joke about Ghost in the Shadows. I know that, I think that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, jackie Kevin, we did a video with both Ghost in the Shadows as one of our songs.
Speaker 3:I love that video.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we just used it. I I actually collaborated with a photographer from salem state named stephanie young and uh, an old, revered person, jennifer martelli, you know I know jennifer yeah, well, jennifer is a poet too, so we wrote poems to stephanie's photographs. And again, here I go, shameless promotion.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna put a blinking sign shameless promotion and this book came out of it, but it was a photography exhibit with 14 beautiful photographs of riviera beach. And then we, our poems, acted as kind of placards, like information cards, next to the photograph, and we just had it in the gallery here at Salem State and it's going to be at the Mass Poetry Festival in the Peabody Essex Museum on the 30th May 30th. It's again just another chance collaboration. Stephanie had showed me some photographs and I said, wow, I wonder what these would look like with poems. And I pulled Jennifer in and two years later we ended up with a book and an exhibit.
Speaker 3:I'm just going back a little bit. I'm glad that you collaborated with your wife to not collaborate with that bacteria.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's. That's well put. Yeah, it is. You know, I and again it isn't just I mean I trusted what my wife was thinking and you know, because, left to my own devices, I probably would have made the wrong decision and that's emblematic of a lot of my life. I would say that's a perfect way to describe Making the wrong decision. Left to my own thinking, right when, when I've leaned on other people to explore it and talk about it and come up with a decision collaboratively, I've usually made a better decision.
Speaker 1:And it's one key. The key point of that Jackie pointed out was that you know it was with your wife whom you trusted. You know that's an important part of collaboration to have that full trust with each other, and when you're in that space, anything's possible. You'll complete the work. I think Everything you do will be completed to the best it can be.
Speaker 3:Or trust. Respect like respect.
Speaker 1:First, Respect is even more important. I think. Well, I think you have to have both you definitely have to.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if you don't, if you, if you don't respect someone, it's hard to trust them right?
Speaker 2:you're always thinking of why you don't respect them, yeah, and that this information is not going to be what I need, because I don't respect this person, right, you don't know where it's coming from. I mean mean, I remember when I was in that MFA program I was still focused on fiction, but you had to take a crossover genre, so you had to take a genre in something else. So I took poetry and this poet rest his soul Bill Zander. I wrote this poem about being on a train going to New York at a crazy time in my life and he read that poem and he said this poem's a keeper. And I remember saying, wow, this guy's a pretty good poet. He's telling me this poem is a keeper.
Speaker 2:And that became a title poem for the first book I ever published. I don't know if that would have happened without him saying that. So I always remember that, as much as I'm trying to correct student writing or the bigger part of the job is encouraging it. Right, it's saying this is I really like what you're doing here and maybe think about working on this part of it. But you know, because you never know what little piece of encouragement can do to somebody, because you never know what a little piece of encouragement can do to somebody and just make you feel kind of worthy and that you're on the right track and that you're doing something that is working. And sometimes it is just a kind word of encouragement more than anything else that can keep you going.
Speaker 3:Especially being at the start of something.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It can be really fragile to be there than anything else that can keep you going, especially being at the start of something. Yeah, yeah, it can be really fragile to be there. Yeah, I mean it can be daunting to think about the whole process. But if you have one poem or one story that someone says you know what? This is really good. Then you can build on that, and I think that's what happened to me. It's like I had people along the way saying they liked what I was doing and without that I might have given up a long time ago the takeaway from this for me I guess hopefully our audience and uh is that you first of all.
Speaker 1:you already were developing collaboration skills in your writing adventure, but that key collaboration that day in the emergency room, it's the reason we're talking right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah because a lot of it happened post that. You know I can't be more grateful than I am that it happened the way it happened. I don't wish it happening to anybody but you know it's scary and it's frightening, but I'm just so grateful that I was able to kind of get lucky enough to get treated in time and gave me time to do more work right, to have more fun. That's what we got from.
Speaker 1:Kevin Keery. It's an incredible body of work that's getting better every day, and I think I predict the Junkman book. I think it's a great movie idea. From our lips to God's ears. God listens to me, right, god, that's a funny one oh. Shut the F up.
Speaker 2:I've never heard that before. What you never heard that expression? No, well, that's because you're dealing with two old guys here.
Speaker 1:I'm always coming up with them. She says where'd you get that? No, but that's a funny expression, I like it yeah, I think we could probably say that what a great episode this has been, kevin and um uh, thank you for asking me to do this.
Speaker 2:I'm I'm really, uh, really touched that you thought of me and uh, well, I'm thrilled you're here. Great to see you again.
Speaker 1:Great to see you again just to let everybody know, there'll be some great links at the end of the podcast that you can look up, get dive deep into kevin's books and everything like that and um, and when that mfa, the terminal degree comes out, you got to make sure you see it and I'm sure if you get you know, get in touch with us, stay on this, we'll. We'll definitely update you when things like that come along from our out of the blue podcast site. So thank you so much, kevin. We so much appreciate you here today. It really was a wonderful, wonderful episode, very inspiring, and I mean I learned a lot too. I mean I always learn, but I learned, I learned a lot and I continue to learn from these episodes, especially with someone like you and, yeah, I'm going to be calling you about some stuff with regarding some books.
Speaker 2:That's right. We have another collaboration. We're collaborating on something.
Speaker 1:And speaking of getting things made into movies and stuff, we're going to start exploring that very soon.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I'm ready to go.
Speaker 1:I definitely have some context out there we've got to use. Okay, at any rate, anybody listening. Thank you so much for joining us. Smash that like button and hit the subscribe button, because every little bit helps and we certainly need your loving help. Thank you so much, jackie. Thank you so much, kevin. So much, bye-bye everybody. Out of the Blue, the podcast Hosted by me, vernon West, co-hosted by Jacqueline West, edited by Joe Gallo, music and logo by Vernon West III. Have an Out of the Blue story of your own you'd like to share? Reach us at info at outoftheblue-thepodcastorg. Subscribe to Out of the Blue on Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you get your podcasts, and on our website, outoftheblue-thepodcastorg. You can also check us out on Patreon for exclusive content.