480 - Creating Wonder Rituals, with Katherine May

36:39Yeah. And then also what can feel that way when it gets overly mystical and that there's this way in between where you don't have to know how it works. Because even as you're saying, you know, I don't know if you feel like this, but having put out a bunch of books and a bunch of podcasts and stuff, you can never put enough nuance into the actual experience of it. And, you know, when you say that it can feel like channeling, I completely agree with that. And I also feel like, and I don't know what it is, but I like, I actually like the idea that I could see it from both angles. I could see it from, what's the same thing that happens when you have a dream is that it's not in your control.

37:24It's coming from, it's instantly coming from somewhere else. And we don't, we don't fully understand that either. yeah I mean first of all I'm compelled to say I edit like hell as well so I do I do then there's so much of me in that bit yeah

37:55I don't know if you've got to this bit in enchantment yet and I think it's later in the book so maybe not but I write about Julian James's book uh the origins of consciousness in the something of the bicameral mind it's such a long title I haven't got to that okay you're going to like you're going to like this because uh this it's like this weird completely um unsupported book about neurology, I guess, from like the 60s, where James, and the thing with it is it's beautifully written and it's so compelling, but also almost certainly wrong. But he puts forward this incredibly well-argued theory that in our early evolution, our brains were in two halves, the two halves weren't joined together yet.

38:47And therefore, we received information from different sides of our brain to the other side of the brain, as if they were the voice of God. Yeah. And so we evolved feeling that we were in direct conversation with God all the time inside our head, when it was actually that we just didn't have access to one half of our brain. And loads of neuroscience i have got to this part i have got this part but keep going because it's a i did absolutely love this yeah keep going yeah i mean i i loved it when i first read it you know always aware that it wasn't it's not the gospel yeah yeah um and loads of neuroscientists do for the same thing and like what david eagleman says about it is we don't actually have a better theory we don't think this one is right but we don't have anything better like it's it's outlandish but like it's it's one of many outlandish theories we have about how the brain honestly operates and how it evolved um but i i like it on a metaphorical level i love the way it lets us think or lets me think about creativity in all honesty because that's if you have if i if if i had to pin down a theory of how creativity operates for me i would say the bicameral mind sure why not why not because where else is it like where else is this stuff coming from i don't know yes and just just so i because i want to make sure that i get it and that it the listeners get it too he's saying and and by the way uh as an aside one of the things i think a lot about is um what could be a great relationship between creative thinking and scientific thinking a lot of times i think what a problem that happens is when creatives are trying to say, this is literally how it is when it's an intuitive idea or when scientists won't be creative in their ideas.

40:52I think most scientists that I have met actually acknowledge the power of intuitive thinking and how much it's led the way through scientific thought because you need the hypothesis and you need like, even if it's wrong, it's a way of like opening up preconception. So you need that kind of dialogue between these kinds of philosophical ideas that are not true, maybe literally, or could be. But I think that to me, as I was going through that chapter, and I absolutely loved it. This is my kind of juice. As soon as you're getting into it, I was like, oh man. But that we need, to me, it sounds almost like oh that's the great it's not only just an interesting theory what a great premise for a book what a great premise for a world in which things work that way yeah exactly like it's this great leap of imagination and it's an attempt like i love attempts you know what i mean like yeah he's tried to think it through and he's and also like he draws on loads of literary like early literature to try and prove his point and gets a load of that wrong too you know because as soon as you examine it closely what he says happens doesn't happen you know he says that i think it's the iliad that um that just you know shows that that this is happening in in those in the characters in there and i don't care like i love i love flights of fantasy you know like it's I've got no bearing of my real life.

42:23It's a great meta. It's a great metaphor for thinking about how it is to be and how to, how to be a creative person. And just in case I want to make sure I get it right. What, how I'm thinking about what you're saying is essentially in the book, you talk about how we take for granted that we have this kind of emergent one voice that is us in our brain. A sense of self, like a really clear. Yeah. yeah access to all the elements of our thought yeah and that these are and that they're one perspective even though you know you take the ifs look or you take a little bit further peek behind it you realize that there's many perspectives that are very argumentative usually um at least in my head um and and he's proposing that there was a time where there was we were all hearing voices we were hearing these different perspectives in our brains and some of them were attributed to god we're thinking oh god's just speaking to us essentially is that kind of what yeah he was saying yeah there's no evidence of this but that people believe that they were in constant and personal dialogue with god that was a voice directly inside their head and I I just do you know what I I just love the way Julian James's mind works I that book is I mean honestly it's inches fat yeah it's a labor of love to get through it but his prose is beautiful and what you're doing when you read that book is wandering around the mind of undoubtedly a genius but geniuses don't always get stuff right yeah and I'm I am deeply okay with that because he didn't get stuff right in a not only a harmless way but in like a really enriching gorgeous immersive way yeah it's hard to have that conversation isn't it in our current era it's like things got to be either right or wrong things got to be science or art like actually no we could we can just immerse ourselves in the gorgeousness of some ways of thinking and some ideas and it's safe for us to do that nothing bad happens yeah and i and i'm very interested in that because because of being uh a creative and also then having a podcast that's attempting to be more non-fiction yeah um because um it's a it's a delicate space i think there's something of taking the work seriously and not yourself that quote uh at all not taking yourself so seriously So like creating a world where you, like, I think your books are great at this of like, these are a personal perspective that, where I'm kind of poetically working through things and it doesn't feel positioned as.

45:14It's always like a journey. Yeah. I hate didactic books. Like I've, I've got no interest in being told. Like I'm just a horrible rebellious teenager still. You could never tell me anything and you still can't. I'm sorry. Like I want to, I want the experience of learning. yeah i've just got no interest in having it ready made i tell you i don't know if you know kristen hirsch the uh songwriter and musician i don't know if i do well she's just she's i mean she was my teen hero um and my adult hero too but i you know you have this intense relationship with people um i've just interviewed her for my uh for my sub stack so excited about that And she's written a book called, I'm going to get it right by picking it up, The Future of Songwriting.

46:00And it's really a book about creativity. And one of the points that she makes in there is that songwriters, and therefore I think writers and artists and creative people, are medicine. They are offering medicine. But they are not, you have to remove the ego for that. like we're just a conduit for that medicine to come to our audience and that therefore there's there's necessary humility in that like you have to realize how small you are as the deliverer of that medicine because you're not fully in control of what that medicine is and that made sense of so many things for me really just this this feeling of like what what am I doing like what What is this?

46:51What is this thing that I'm doing? Because I don't think I've got the answers, but I know people, I have to acknowledge that people find answers in my book. And I think she has captured that relationship better than anything I've ever read. Honestly, I just, I think she really has thought about her role there and what she, what she offers and what we offer. And it's really gorgeous. I love that. I love the idea of the, the conduit and the, and the, you're the messenger, but you're, you, you know, you're not creating the message and there's a good kind of, um, both end way of holding something where you're, you're doing something important, but it's also not you that's doing it fully or, you know, something in that vein.

47:35Uh, the other thing that makes me think, you know, yeah. And, and I think the other thing that makes me think is, um, I keep thinking about this. So I've mentioned a few times in the show, I heard, uh, Mike Birbiglia on his podcast talking about how essential it is to have stand-up friends for him because the best stuff that he does is so natural to him that it feels like nothing and it gets back to this thing of channeling uh and that and when i read your books your there's some things about the your way of being that are so different to me that I, and it's funny because nobody thinks of me as a meditative person at all.

48:24I'm the opposite of whatever that is. Right. And, um, and, uh, and so, and, you know, so in, in my, when I was, you know, in my twenties, I would have not sought out books like yours. And yet there's something so medicinal about it. Like, it's like, it hits me on such a, such a hard level. And it feels like you say, there's definitely a lot of levels to it that feel, um, just you being you and, and, and this thing of being able to notice how, how have you, what helped you be able to capture those things? Cause I think about this, I also heard Jerry Seinfeld say back in the day that he's like a joke chuck.

49:11So there's like wood chucks. You just have to figure out like what does your brain do, you know? And then being able to notice what does it just naturally produce? And that also gets to this channeling thing, you know? How did you get acquainted? Because it seems even more as you've gone along, you're more aware of like this is what I do yeah I mean I I think writing electricity every living thing changed that because I'd set out to write a really straightforward memoir about walking and it was really supposed to be about motherhood and how you come to terms with being a parent and like how you process that huge life event and along the way I realized I was autistic and realized it was a book about autistic experience, but also about that I was actually literally, I'd put myself in the situation to learn how to cope with being autistic, which I didn't know how to do.

50:08And so I sort of consciously started to add in the bits that I'd have probably otherwise edited out. You know, like my instinct when I write a book is to learn everything about the field and then to just write the core of it and of course for writing that book that included like well who else has lived along this path like what are the what are the stories here what are the mythologies you know i love i don't know if you have these in your country but we whenever you in any tourist destination if you go into like a petrol station there will be a little rack of kind of thin books of local ghost stories someone has really called the market in this what i don't know i don't know if we do at first i was thinking you're like pamphlets you know and i'm like yeah we got pamphlets but i don't think i have seen this now they're they're thicker than pamphlets but they're probably like 50 or 70 pages long okay um and they're always you know they've gathered up and i i love it i love these things like i'm i'm all over them i've got so many of them they're terribly written they're not i mean they're probably made up i don't care i love them yeah but you know like So all of that I would do around the route.

51:21And I and I started to think, wait, that is actually if that if I've got an autistic brain, then wanting to suck in the knowledge around this place is part of part of that. That's that's what that leads me to. Yeah. And so I started to try and include it. And I realized as I was doing it that that was part of my sense making around the world. I was I didn't want to just think about the basic facts. I wanted to know it deeply. And that's how I approach everything. And so Electricity was still like a pretty straightforward memoir, but it included all these other little stories along the way, like about Jean Rhys and about Samuel Palmer and all these quite sort of weird, outsiderish visionary people that had been attracted to this path that I was walking.

52:13and I you know I felt lineage with them I came to feel lineage with them they were attracted to the edge of the world and so then when I started to write Wintering I really invited that in fully um I didn't want to tell a story about myself or not solely I wanted to create the kind of patchwork and I was trying to represent the way I think. And that in turn helped me to start to notice that detail. You know, like that's the call and response of knowledge. You know, it's you learn some stuff and it takes you deeper and then it raises more questions and you go deeper again. And it's this beautiful cycle.

52:56It's a recursive loop. It's, you know, and it's definitely how I absolutely work now. And it's changed the quality of my attention. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. I also, I love that kind of process element. It reminds me of Ira Glass talking about how for him, storytelling is this thing of, I'm going to tell you a bit about the story and then I'm going to tell you how it made me feel. And then I'm going to tell you a bit about it. And that's a huge part of storytelling. And it just has this, yeah, I think it's an interesting way to engage in a text or a body of work or research or whatever your substance is that is kind of the, the meat of your project whether it's fiction or nonfiction.

53:46Yeah. There's also this awareness of like, okay, you're engaging with something and then you have another layer where you're able to, to notice, okay, how did that make me feel? What did, what was I doing what as I was engaging in that and then that's part of the work and then it kind of sort of check in yeah yeah I mean I like in lots of ways all creative work is a distillation of somebody's quality of attention so you know when I see your work I understand something about how you perceive the world and yeah like not just visually but meaningfully like how do you make meaning around what you see, you know, we will see the same thing and you will construct one set of meanings around it and I will construct another.

54:35And I don't think I'll ever get over the thrill of that, you know, of like really encountering someone else's consciousness. I think it's the best, the best we have. And that's such a challenge too, because I remember, And I don't know if this was just my own trauma or something as a kid, like learning not to trust my own experience or whatever. Or if it's just a thing that every artist needs to learn because there's this thing of like, I imagine young musicians seeing Lady Gaga wear meat dress and think, that's what you got to do and take the wrong lesson. Rather than be like, no, what she did was follow her thing.

55:17That was her attention. and being able to trust and notice where your attention goes. That's such a difficult muscle to learn how to work. But then once you start getting it, I think that's the thing for me is, you know, I'm kind of aware of like, oh, I kind of, I do think I know what my brain does from doing the podcast for 10 years. A lot of these were monologues too. I just kind of know like, oh, that's one of those things that turns into something. um but it takes a while you begin to get a feel don't you yeah oh I've got that feeling I got that feeling and you begin to know your like your the the sort of beats of your creative because I'm I'm like I don't know I'd say I'd say I'm exactly two-thirds through writing a book and I know that because I because the day before yesterday I had the watershed moment and I knew it had to come at some point and until then I was slogging and slogging and slogging towards it and feeling like nothing's working what is this what does this mean what is the answer and then like literally that is my behavior every evening when I walk away from my desk and then yesterday I had a conversation that I thought was entirely unpromising and I came home and it was like I mean I was crying and I was like my body felt different and I was like here it is this is it I knew like I know my process well enough to know that was going to happen and I trusted it but But the first few times that happened, I thought I was, I'd gone completely insane.

56:47And I know the last third of the book will happen really quickly now that that was, because the whole emotional center of it has landed for me. Oh, I'm so, I love, I love getting to talk to you in that moment because, you know, the thing I think about a lot when I'm encouraging people to trust themselves, trust that interest or whatever, I'm trying to get across to somebody who's maybe never had that experience that you just described or maybe had it once and didn't realize like i talk about it like a boomerang where or not a boomerang uh um what's it called uh slingshot um a slingshot where at a slingshot which doesn't come back to you fortunately hopefully unless you do it wrong you can load it wrong and that can happen but the um But for me, the first time you have that happen, you can think, oh, the moment where everything changes when I let go and totally ignore the fact that, oh, there's all this tension building that was also essential to, you know, that kind of thing.

57:50And so I love that you said this because that took me so – it took me – I wasted some of my college years in my early part of my practice because I just didn't have the confidence that this would come together, especially when it felt wrong. When you're – sometimes in the early process, because it's not working, it feels wrong. It feels grim. Yeah. It feels like the opposite of what creativity is supposed to feel like. Yes. And yeah, and I think probably the truth is that most people who feel like they fail don't push to that point. You know, they get deterred like quite rationally, honestly. But I and actually there is a direct parallel with the walk there because I like I know when I was walking the southwest coast fast path and I was finding it so hard and I was doing it through winter and I was alone and I'm not sporty.

58:50that there would be this kind of direct process of the first hour or so, it would be all about my discomfort and my doubts. And I'd, you know, stop to relace my shoes and adjust the straps on my backpack and wonder, like, think I can't do this. I'm too tired. My legs don't feel right. And then I'd hit this kind of flow and sense of like slight euphoria, actually. And I'd call it popcorn brain. And I'd be having all these ideas and I'd feel really excited. But then if I pushed on through past that which I think probably most people don't walk for long enough in their life to get there I hit I would hit this place of like emptiness beautiful serene emptiness that I wouldn't even remember that part of the walk but in the days afterwards I'd realize I'd process something massive in that place that again I'm back to my bicameral mind yeah yeah but yeah i love the creativity is so analogous to that describe that and i've and i can think and i as i'm reading i can think back to the walks i've had where you do like you say just become a body towards the end and it is this it's really and creativity is so like that yeah um i wondered i want to be sensitive to your time and uh i wanted to ask just one more question which was um having gone through the enchantment world i won't call it a journey we won't say it was a journey but it's the enchantment process um but i just have to live with that no it's fine i love i i love i love uh i love i genuinely love a pushback i love it i need that Like I love that.

1:00:35I love both sides. It's safe for us to do that. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, and also there's always new stuff in that. There's always new when someone's like, well, yeah, but here's the problem with that. I, I've learned to love it. I, okay. So the last thing I was going to say was in the enchantment process, the, I wondered if you had any, any like, um, ritual or practice that has been, you know, at least somewhat consistently fruitful for you, because I think for me going through burnout, that's the thing that I've been really thinking about. Like I need, you know, when I go on my phone, there are thousands, millions of new ideas, like new prompts, new ways to do it, all that stuff.

1:01:33And I've realized like, oh, my dopamine deprived ADHD brain freaking loves that, loves a new thing. Let's go. Yeah. But then I realized like, but my humanity cannot deal. I don't actually need any new thing. I am longing for what some of the old things where people had the ritual and that worked, you know, even if it just works 20 % of the time, even less, whatever. But we used to trust the ritual and now we doubt it before we even get there. And I think that's, you know, like what I'm trying to learn to do. And my new book is a lot about this as well, is to just get into certain habits of undertaking the ritual and to stop questioning it.

1:02:25You know, to stop asking, do I belong here? Will I like it? Will I like the people here? Like none of that actually matters because the thing that you will ultimately value is that you showed up. and that you did it over and over again, and that you sat through it when it was boring, you know, because we've lost community. You know, we've lost the ability to withstand any tension in our lives. And we've walked away for it for really good reasons, but the loss has now become greater than the reasons that made it useful to us. Yeah. Yeah. And that means that I am not meaningfully contributing to a community, to any community, because I'm not present in it, because I've allowed myself to not be present in it.

1:03:14And I am looking for that that thing that I will just damn well show up to. But if you want like a it's not even a ritual, but it's something that I write about at the beginning of Enchantment. yeah when I was really stuck when I was really burnt out I kept a post-it note stuck to my screen that said go for a walk and when I found myself like gazing into the middle distance or constantly picking up my phone you know that cycle of like oh I've opened Instagram I didn't mean to I'll close it oh I've opened Instagram like do you do that yes I do round around like that post-it note was like right go for a walk even if it's five minutes even if it's just I mean I've got like loads of little alleyways around my house sometimes I just do a loop around those it's fine yeah it will change it will change something up you'll notice something you'll bump into someone you'll pet a cat that you've passed and you've plant will have grown in that familiar place that you walk past every day the air will smell different the weather will be doing something because it always is because I'm in England like it's it's always weather to notice um something will happen and a lot of the times you'll end up walking for longer than you meant to uh but even if you get back home you'll come back with like fresh air on your clothes and you will feel differently like it's it's just do that just just walk yeah and it and it speaks to that go into the woods and find something to bring home kind of thing and it reminds me of you know the the thing you were speaking to about finding community and habit and ritual even if it's boring even if there's problems with it i think that i'm taking that as a greater theme because i think uh our age we have had the spirit of deconstruction and individualism and correcting and critiquing and that has been the wilderness it's the and it's been a really necessary thing i think there's no doubt about it yeah no doubt no doubt but i think we i think i feel like everybody's um hurting for that yeah that ritual and that connection and that um that thing you're speaking to so i love that you know what like when i was a kid i asked my mom if i could take the hoover apart and she said you can take it apart but you've got to put it back together again and i think like yeah i'm always that in the new book apart no i maybe it will be now though oh i'm telling you i love it it's a great it's a great image on the spring of the of the hatch and thinking i can't put this back together so i'm gonna i'm gonna reverse out of this that symbol is like feels like society right now it's like okay we're we broke it apart okay but definitely there's a deal here take it apart but you've got a responsibility to reintegrate it and i like yeah we've got to we've got to acknowledge that responsibility because we have disintegrated and it's we're not okay because of it ah i love that thank you so much thank you for your writing thank you for your time thank you uh yeah absolutely hope to talk to you again like it was it was delightful to meet you and uh yeah thank you i just yeah it's a nice way to finish my week.

1:06:36Awesome.

1:06:56Massive thanks to Catherine May for taking the time. I hope that I get to talk to her again because it is just truly enriching and i'm so grateful for her work it's really really powerful stuff and um if you are burnout or you've lost your zest maybe go check out enchantment there or if you're going through kind of working out what's unique about you or even maybe um some level of neurodivergence uh diagnoses then maybe check out electricity of every living thing. I also recommend following her on Substack, katherinemay.substack.com. It's called The Clearing by Catherine May, and she's really active over there and has a really great community.

1:07:44Yeah, really appreciate you. Thank you for taking the time. And I said I'd be back with a creative call to adventure. Here it is, post-it note ritual. I love this thing that Catherine talked about where she has this post-it note that says, go for a walk. And I wondered, you know, you could do that. That could be yours. Or you could use that as a prompt and say, you know, what needs to be on your post-it note? What needs to be a regular everyday thing? What's something that tends to consistently help you regulate or get into your creative brain or get you out of a stuck place or a low place or just an overly stressed place?

1:08:24I started thinking about this for myself. And one thing that came to mind was take care of your dog. Now, yes, taking care of my dog is something I like to do in many ways. But I mean something different, which comes from a different author, Martha Beck, who is just a real wild individual. I heard her recently say that you can treat yourself, your body like a pet that you love. Instead of waking up and saying like, all right, what does this creature need to get done today? Thinking, just starting with, looking in the mirror and just saying, what do you need? You know, when your dog is acting a certain way, you're thinking or misbehaving or even just acting weird or disruptive.

1:09:15Your first guess is not, you know, why aren't you being productive, first of all? But second of all, you're thinking, you know, what do they need? And if you're waking up feeling bad and feeling out of whack, which I do very frequently, I've tried to. I can't always do it. But even just the self-love of looking in the mirror and being like, hey, what do you need today, man? You're tired? You need to take a nap today? You need to go to sleep earlier tonight? You need some enchantment? You need to listen to some new music? Whatever it is. Whatever it is. I just found it really powerful. Take care of your dog as a reminder to take care of yourself with the love and care that you do, your pets, and providing their needs.

1:10:04There's so many ways in which I can find myself ignoring my own needs. And so even throughout the day, I will think that recently, like, oh, I'm starting to be really unproductive or I'm starting to feel really bad or my brain is starting to spiral out like a dog doing chaotic zoomies. And instead of just thinking, oh, you better get your crap together, I think, okay, man, what do you need? What do you need, dude? What's going on? And that's kind of become a little ritual for me. So that's my call to adventure for you to just think about what do you need to put on that post-it note? What is something that you need as a regular reminder for your practice and well-being?

1:10:49All right. Thanks, Catherine May, for being here. Hope we get to do it again sometime. Thanks.

1:10:59each episode of creative pep talk is designed to help you maintain a consistent creative practice if you're trying to transform your creativity from an infrequent hobby into a real discipline sign up to our newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com so that you never miss an episode creative pep talk is part of the Podglomerate Network. You can learn more at podglomerate.com. Massive thanks to my team, Sophie Miller, for content editing and co-writing, to Connor Jones of Pending Beautiful for editing and sound design. And thanks to all of you for listening. Until next time, stay pepped up.

1:12:00Okay, the podcast is over, so I don't know why you're still listening, but I am glad that you enjoyed it enough to stick to the end. I have one more thing for you. If you're in a place where you're feeling a lack of clarity and you want to figure out your industry market and niche and find the perfect strategic side project to do next, go sign up to our newsletter at andyjpizza.substack.com and you will get a confirmation email that will give you the download of our Creative Career Path hand booklet and the whole process is in there and you might also get a few bonuses in there depending on when you sign up.

1:12:44But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up, y 'all. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast. For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them, like our recent episodes on Dante and Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influenced Sylvia Plath, and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature podcast wherever you get your podcasts.