536 - Rest and Retreat as a Neurodivergent Creative with Katherine May

32:05And then I talk to my other friends who read a lot and I've never read the same books as them. And I'm like, what have I been doing with my time? Have I been slacking on the reader? Am I even a reader? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, I think maybe that's where the birth of the rebirth of book clubs. They've come back with such fervor because of just that need of a little discipline that work. I don't know where this is not related to Housewoman Castle or my retreat or anything, but it's just something that came to mind as you were saying that. So we've got to take you back to your diary. You had your hand on the diary.

32:39Did I mention I had ADHD? I think I said that at the start. All right. Don't have to apologize again for these tangents. Please don't. They're great. Back to the dial. We're on the dial. We're on the dial. So I've got my first one would be I'd like to wake up in L.A. Now, L.A. is a controversial place. Not everybody likes it. I see the critiques. OK, I've been there and I feel it. There are plenty of things that are – there are plenty of things not to like about L.A., I feel. But I am kind of a huge fan. And it's something about – I think it's almost as simple as the air. When you go outside, there's something about this – the temperature being like exactly where you would set it.

33:33It feels deeply calming. It feels like, oh, everything's all right. You could be like doom scrolling in your bed and then you walk outside and you're like, nope, it's good. We're good. Like it feels pretty good. So I think that's where I'd go. I'd go there. I'd go to Intelligentsia, get some coffee, go to Squirrel to get my breakfast. And there's just something about that. I feel like waking up in L.A., that'd be just a great vibe. I always, I've never been to L.A. It always looks from a distance like it's very frenetic. Is that the experience on the ground or? You know, I think it's like, I think that what I like about the energy is that, okay, it feels almost like a foil to New York City.

34:22So I like going to New York City. There are things I really like about it. There were times where I was like, this is really feeding me. Um, but there's something about, there's like a, a callousness to you better get it together and get on with it. Like, and you better be quick, um, about it. Like there's something about that, that doesn't jive with me. And I think in LA, even though that, okay. So everybody that, not everybody, but a lot of people you meet are deeply friendly and warm. Yeah. The only little dark side of that is there's a little bit of desperation in the air in L.A. Everyone's got an ambition, a goal that they're trying to meet.

35:09But I don't know. There's something about it that I actually – I like this explanation too of if you're ever doing calls with teams and half of them are New York, half of them are on the West Coast. There's just this established feeling that the West Coast people are slackers because they're three hours behind. They're just like, they can't catch up. They're in bed right now. We're getting stuff done. So I think there's just an energy of, to me, it feels a lot more laid back, which I like as well. So yeah, I think that's where I would go. That's my first dial. First turn of the dial. Yeah. And then the second dial is Stockholm.

35:53Oh, nice. Which I just love. Big contrast. Very big contrast. Again, this is, I mean, hey, I live in the land of contrast. This is great. When I, I've developed my taste a bit in terms of music, but when I was younger, and I'm still a little bit of a sucker for it, I love the songs where, like, drop after drop after, you thought that was the drop? This is the drop. Boom. It's just like the contrast just keeps going up. And again, it's just the stimulation of that. Multiple key changes. It's like, whoa, we're on, you know, I like that kind of energy. So, yeah, I think that's what is so appealing about this dial.

36:35It's like I can be chilling in L.A. in the warm, nice vibe and then boom, Stockholm. And the time I went there, it was super cold. So I even might go in the winter. Stockholm in winter is a whole vibe. It is. candles everywhere gloomy light yes ice in the harbors yeah uh it it's it was amazing i fell so in love with that place everyone like everyone was wearing black and no one in the streets like the streets are quiet like no everyone if they are talking you can't hear them talking um it just feels like it felt like an alien planet to me honestly coming from america in the best kind away and they have such good taste and amazing like design and bookshops and um i just love to mull around that kind of uh space for a few hours so that's definitely my second open sandwiches for breakfast open sandwiches yeah and they have all these every lunch you have uh wherever you go they have like five bowls that you can just pick things from um i i love it heaven

38:08so we've done two turns of the dial two turns of the dial all right in many ways quite opposite places not maybe not opposite but some contrast very different very very different and that's what i love about it that's actually as i was doing this like exercise i'm thinking really hard for me to want to go somewhere for very long like i that's that's i really would prefer and even any vacation i have i want to think about do they have is there a city aspect and a beach aspect. Is there like, can we mix it up? Because I really need that. Third one is the most, this is the third turn of the dial.

38:48That one is going to be question marks. Now, I have a few places that maybe I could pre-select. It's one of these, but they're ones that I've never been to. And it's either, maybe Egypt. If I could just go, you know, I can imagine a lot, all of the travel and airports and all that that would take to get there, that sounds like too much. But if it was just a turn of the dial and it was randomly selected, I could definitely show up in Egypt. Just step out of that door and into Egypt. Would love to see that. What's that? Yeah, maybe. And then I would say Tokyo and then I had another, Germany. So I haven't been to any of these places.

39:33and I would love not to pick. I would love to. It's just a novelty thing. I turn the dial, don't know which one it is, walk out completely unprepared. Wow. Wow. That is not relaxing. No, that's novelty though. And that's what it is. It's like when I think about retreat, I think I'm rarely thinking about relaxing. I'm thinking about filling up my cup inspirationally and feeling, again, that zest. Like that's what I'm lacking, I think, a lot of time when I get burnout. Noise, color, stimulation, input. Like I often say I need a randomizer. I need something that's a randomizer in my life because I need to not be choosing, which is exactly what you're saying here.

40:30Like I need stuff to come at me sometimes that is outside of my control. Because when I'm in control of it, I make everything the same all the time. And it's really smooth and lovely. And I read the same kinds of books and I listen to the same kinds of music and I watch the same kinds of TV and everything gets the same. And I, you know, I see my same friends. What I used to love about going to the school gates was, which I don't anymore, my son's too big to, you know, pick him up and drop him off. was you'd have chats with people that just randomized your day and they'd tell you something and you'd be like, oh, really?

41:04Oh, right, okay, that's... And then you'd go home and be like on Google trying to find out about it. Like those kind of randomizers are so valuable. Absolutely. I think that I also feel like it's just so important. Like I think a lot about the different types of creativity I think when we talk about creativity, I think we're usually talking about one specific aspect of being creative. And often even when we're talking to people, we're talking about different aspects and maybe don't realize it. Two aspects of creativity that I'm really interested in and I try to dip into them. I think of them kind of like curious creativity and then strategic creativity.

41:56I think they're both super important. You can't really do them at the same time, but they're the opposite. So the curiosity is starting without knowing where you're going, knowing where you'll end up. And strategy, like the definition of strategy is literally the opposite. We're going to start with the end and then we're going to work backwards. And I actually think you need both of those. We all have those like TV shows that we loved until the end and then we hated it because they didn't have any of the strategy. You know, they didn't have the strategic creativity. The reason I bring that up is because.

42:33They just let it resolve itself somehow. Yeah, right. And I think I really respect and I love a thing that like I think a lot of the Miyazaki stuff is very curiosity, creativity. There isn't a lot of strategy. it's not really clear it's very mythical symbolic it's not very obvious what this is about or what it meant but it's still you cry or you you know feel these big feelings so it's very effective um i bring that up because i think strategy is so over indexed in uh both the culture because of the way the economy is and how much every we're in that survival mode so we need to know where this is going we need to know where this is going we need to this is going to have an output that is going to be meaningful at the end yeah and then if you're neurodivergent you have all these ways that you feel the need to protect yourself um for me that looks like how do i avoid getting in places where i'm in deeply low stimulation because i will feel that pain of boredom um in a kind of an extreme sense, I'm constantly thinking about how do I control my life, you know?

43:47How do I keep the pace up? How do I like make sure that I'm provisioned in a way that isn't familiar to other people, but that is my provisioning. I need stuff coming at me. Yes. And so - This is ideal. You've chosen the ideal. Yeah. I've thought about it. Now I'm just sad that it's not real. No, I'm actually feeling some grief that we're going to have to end this conversation at some But yeah, I think that I love the randomizer point. And it reminds me also of how I will, there are like, I listen to like online radio, different online radio stations now. and I feel like we get in this space where we're very pessimistic for good reason in lots of ways, pessimistic about the world and people and I get it, I feel it very frequently but I also think generation to generation we're more resilient than we give ourselves credit for and there are a lot of ways in which behaviors that a generation gets sucked into and addicted to, the next generation looks at that and is like, I'm not doing that.

44:58We're not going to do that. And so I think in this moment where everything is on demand and we're choosing everything and we're curating every minute of our lives and we're all exhausted of the mental tax of choosing. Yeah, choosing is so tiring. It is. And the tax of like having to look consistent within that. True. My generation was obsessed with that. Like I noticed that generational difference between myself and my son, that when I was a teenager, we had to pick a stream and fully commit to it so like if you were like I don't know a bit punk like I like to be yeah you couldn't then listen to a dance record that would be that would be appalling that would be like a massive betrayal I mean obviously I've just to be clear I have grown out of that attitude but when I was his age I was fully committed to that and now he will he just doesn't genre he's really super aware of what the genres are but it's just like a buffet for him it's just like yeah i can just have i'm gonna like a bit of opera here and then i'm gonna love some swing and then i'm gonna take some brazilian funk he's talked to me about that a lot cool i know i know about funk guys i'm not i'm still with it um but it's like he's got this this amazing array out in front of him it's like yeah i'll take a little bit of everything thank you very much so different and i think it is very very different i also wonder if with my own kids their habits are very similar to that and i've noticed that in their generation that's pretty common even the bands coming out of their generation like yeah super into into this band geese and uh cameron winter and they they are so eclectic and they have a there's a lot of stuff that you recognize like oh there's a rolling stones kind of bit there's a bob dylan thing going on but they do they're just not beholden to any one way of being and even track to track.

46:54It's just all over the place in a way that's really refreshing. But I see in my kids too, there is a little bit of incoherence in their, like, who am I? It's not, there is. Yeah. We were given identities in a much stronger way. Yeah. I think. So, yeah, I don't know. But that's, yeah, so that's my third dial is just random. So wait, is there a fourth turn of the dial? Yeah, there's a fourth turn. The fourth turn is I want to go to the hills of Yorkshire. I lived there for five years. I would love to go to Holmfirth. I've never seen Last of the Summer Wine, but that's— Haven't you ever seen Last of the Summer Wine?

47:38I've never watched. I lived there, though. I lived there. You must rectify this immediately. Well, at the time, like, living there, that's all. And it was like, oh, Last of the Summer Wine. I'm like, yeah, I don't know that, but I've heard about it. And I know a little bit about the vibe, but I actually lived it last summer wine. It's where there are a lot of people that retired that go there. We kind of randomly picked it, but it's gorgeous. And I would love to spend the evening going on a Yorkshire hike, ending up in a pub. I have a pub in mind even. No music, no TVs. Lovely. Just with some friends.

48:23Yorkshire pubs are little heavens. They are. Absolutely. So I think those are all my dials. This is wonderful. So normally I ask people if they're going to bring a cultural artifact, but I'm not sure you're going to need one, are you? Like you can just step out into any major city in the world. Or do you have something in mind? I am pretty busy, But I think that I would probably, I just brought The Little Prince to my last vacation and reread that. I don't reread things very frequently. But that's probably my all-time favorite book. And I love that it has this ability, like the things we were talking about earlier.

49:09And I think all of this is kind of getting at trying to get back in touch with as much of a pure creative side as I can. And I use the word creative, but I actually feel at a loss of words for what this is because there was a period of time, and sometimes I talk about it this way, but there's a period of time where it would be called the right brain. but there's so much criticism around how it's really nuanced, whether it's left brain, right brain, they're all involved. And I actually feel kind of annoyed. I get that we want to be accurate. That concept was really useful to me. Don't take it away.

49:52It was very useful. But to me it's more like, okay, I don't care if they're the hemispheres of the brain. I know the difference between being in this zone and that zone. and I got about halfway through this audiobook which doesn't sound very impressive except for it's like a 20 hour book and it's called A Master and His Emissary it's all about left and right hemisphere and it's trying to be very nuanced I think still there's criticisms around like the science of it but I think and I think the philosophy still holds up and is pretty respected but But he makes this great argument around when you're in what they would call, what he would call the left brain hemisphere, or you're in the mode of parts, like pulling things apart, being rational, thinking probably a little bit more strategic.

50:52It's really useful. It's very important. But the problem is you can get stuck there easily. Right. And his argument is that part of yourself doesn't respect the other part. But the other part does respect the rational side. So if you talk to creative people, I haven't met very many creative people. It's very true in life. It's so true. It's so true. And the more that I've thought about it, the more I've become kind of on a mission to figure out what are the things that snap you back into that other softer side of you that senses wholeness. and has this, you know, in touch with the symbolic. And that, so I think that's what this whole thing was about, is I'm always trying to build into my life things that snap me back because against my will, the world we live in requires so much of the other one, and it's so easy to get stuck there.

51:55Yeah, yeah. When did you first read The Little Prince? Is it a childhood book or is it something you've come to as an adult? So it's something where I think I don't really remember how I got a copy of it. I know it was from one of my teachers. Right. I don't know if they gave it to me or if I accidentally took it. But I have. Might have stolen it. I might have stolen it. I don't know. I can't be for sure. But I didn't read it right away. I don't even remember how old I was when it was given to me in quotes. When it came into your possession. Passive tense is so useful sometimes.

52:38So I can't be sure when that happened, but I know I didn't read it then. I didn't read it until I was in high school. I don't remember why, because I wasn't a big reader when I was a teenager or a kid, really. And I read it. I read it in probably like one day. It's a pretty short book. but I remember feeling like everything had changed it was one of the first books that I read that had that I mean I'm sure everybody can relate to that you have those books where you're like the world looks different in a dramatic way and nobody understands because nobody had that experience and that I love every time I dip into that book I feel like it snaps me back into that other side So there's like this kind of pure moment there that's available for you.

53:29Presumably you can't go in there too often. You have to have a little space between it, right? Yes. Yeah. So I haven't – I reread it this year. I haven't probably read it in six or seven, eight years maybe. But it was effective. And I kind of had low expectations because rereading something, even though I would think of it as my favorite book, rereading it, you just don't know how you're going to feel. and um yeah it it definitely puts me in that place i love the the nonsensical uh stuff of myth and fairy tales and this sort of creative work does something to you that uh i that we're like oh this makes more sense than than real um and that's can you outline the story a little for anyone that hasn't read it.

54:21Maybe you've got some new converts here, but what's the premise? Yeah. So the premise is the author crash lands in the desert. He's a pilot and he comes across this little prince who's a boy. And, you know, initially you're not really sure if this is real or not. Like, is he really having this encounter? Is it a mirage? Is it a hallucination? and they spend time while he's fixing his plane over a few days talking and the little prince is telling him the journey from his tiny planet to earth. And it's got, it's very melancholy and bittersweet. There's some real tragedy. And, but there are these little anecdotes as this prince is going from planet to planet.

55:14He's encountering these different types of adults. and and actually I feel like each one is kind of obsessed with that strategic brain that we were talking about they've lost themselves and so a lot of it is about it's kind of like um it's it kind of reminds me of how when you think of Peter Pan versus Hook that they they're the there's these two opposites that are in tension like Peter Pan is about a kid that will never grow up and obviously it's about all kinds of things um beyond that but then Hook is very much about an adult that's lost their inner child and I like that tension of the opposites that you and it's again back to this like strategic brain curious brain rational brain irrational brain all that like there is this i'm very into the seasonality of that yeah and i think in this book it's very much about how you get back in touch with your childhood self and it always feels like a book that's really written for adults to me i i mean i've only read it as an adult so maybe i don't i don't have that childhood thread to connect me to understand like what it would look like then but it feels like something's being snuck under the fence with this book for me I really love that.

56:37I don't, I'm not very convinced by the strong line between children's books and adult books anyway. I think adults who love reading children's books are the best people anyway. But yeah, interesting that that's your choice. So that's going to reset you and that's going to give you that pure hit of creative thought and just take you back down to get rid of all of that mechanical thinking of your brain. I love this. And we also asked if there was an artifact that you'd bring with you from home that would either comfort you or just remind you of where you're from or even be practical. Is there something, I mean, is there something this castle really needs?

57:21It was like everything's there, but is there something you'd bring? So I was thinking I would bring probably like a dream journal sketchbook. I love I mentioned this before I'm really into dreams on a bunch of levels I think at the very least again it's the same theme it's getting into that other side of the brain and self I feel I'm not really I'd love to entertain the idea that dreams are somehow otherworldly spiritual I love it It feels true. I don't really know that. I wouldn't really say that it's true. But I like to entertain that. The thing I really love about it, I love about dreams, is that they are an escape.

58:17And I guess this whole theme is an escape from ego and control. And I love how young Ians talk about when they're interpreting a dream, something that I think they get really, really right is that you don't trust your perspective in the dream. That's the ego's perspective. So if you're like, okay, I'm dreaming and there's a bad guy there, then the, the interpreter will look at everything and be like, let's put all the evidence together. What, what, what told you they were a bad guy? You were just assuming they were a bad guy. Or when you, you know, you find a monster and you run from it, like, how do you know that was a monster how do you know they were going to hurt you like and it and you really they're trying to encourage a curiosity into your subconscious it's sort of external to you almost it's that it's this thing that's happened that you have a perspective within which is that's quite a surprising idea to me it is it's a weird idea but i think them you know i went on one of my big threads and hyper fixations was youngian uh thought and i have kind of have this feeling like that there's a lot of ways where the academic and scientific community really doesn't want anything to do with Jung.

59:33And I think they have some good critiques that are very justified. Yeah, it's fine.

59:42Yeah, there's too much there to pull out, but there's plenty. But I almost feel like it's like the kind of medicine that we discovered and we thought it did one thing and then later we were like, oh, this is actually much better at treating this other thing. And so I feel like Jungian thought really got put into psychology and psychoanalysis and then therapy and that sort of thing. And all of the way it doesn't, its efficacy rate for that sort of stuff doesn't necessarily doesn't stand up. Yeah. It doesn't really stand up to a lot of the modern things that we do. But I think in terms of like if you aren't dealing with a major mental health issue, I have a feeling that if you are stuck in that rational egoic brain, if you're someone that is going to work every day and just going through the motions and trying to make more money and, you know, all that sort of thing.

1:00:40It's almost a way of engaging in life and art. that it's like it's a sort of spiritual and philosophical tool rather yeah until it's rather than a therapeutic tool in in terms of like a person in crisis and it makes me sad that because of its framing it's been rejected because as i've read so rich it's so rich it's so interesting too it's just so interesting and actually think the thing is that it's like we're allowed just to find something interesting yeah what if it's just yeah it's just interesting and i get you know i get the thing of like well there's a rational critique if people are using this and and especially the more out there parts of it and it's doing more harm than good on people and people that are sick or you know whatever yeah um i get all of that but i think even in terms of like so much of uh of his work is so perfect for artists like a man and his symbols is really like just an engagement in imagery and what it the power of it and understanding on a deeper level it's it made such a big impact on me as an illustrator really really has in direct kind of obvious ways um but i love they it's full of little nuggets like that around you know when you go and when you go into your dream you think about your dream just make two things that it does one is like don't be so quick to identify with the point of view with the ego that you're moving through useful tool for life very kind of intellectual tool for life yes and then also it's safe to assume that everything in this dream is a part of you it literally is because it's in your mind but also it's part of parts of yourself kind of working out things um and so the reason i'm trying to remember oh why i brought that up is because i brought the dream journal and and so i love dreams i will often take notes about my dream when i wake up but in my every day i really don't have the time.

1:02:37I don't really have the time and it makes me very sad. And so if I had a retreat and I had that space, I would be, I really want to go through a period of time in my life where I'm not, I have a dream journal that's a sketchbook and I'm drawing the dreams instead of just writing about them. And the times I have done that, the dream recall aspect is so much stronger. Like if I flip through that, I'm like, oh, I remember feeling that. So that's definitely something I'd I spent about six months writing down. I think it was in my mid-twenties. Yeah. Wrote down my dreams every morning. And every day the detail got greater and greater.

1:03:12And in fact, it became self-limiting for that reason because it got to the stage where I was remembering my dreams in so much detail that there was, it would have taken an hour to write it down every day. And one of the interesting, I still sometimes find that journal and I read through it and I am still now seeing ideas come up in my work that are in that dream journal. That's amazing. And I've forgotten it consciously, but they're coming up still. And I think that's one of the good critiques of Jungian Thought, even though I am a fan, is, you know, he had a psychotic breakdown. And I think that, I'm not saying that's directly related to, it could be genetic, it could be all kinds of things.

1:03:57But just that as an example, you writing down your dreams and they get longer and your memory gets more full of them until you could lose yourself in the symbolic side. So I think you could. It just became completely impractical to be engaged in it anymore. Like you just, you had to let it go. It does. So as a retreat, I feel like that's, that'd be a great thing to just get, just touch base with and get in tune with. And I, like I said, what I like about dreams, really, even though I'd love, I love to dabble in thinking maybe they're more than this, but I think they're definitely a picture of how you're really feeling.

1:04:34And it's an ego check in a couple different ways where sometimes it's like you're feeling these big feelings, existential encounters with your shadow and all this stuff, and it's really big. And then sometimes your dreams are really humbling because you're like, oh, that was about how I forgot the groceries in the car. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I like that it's just a way to get past your ego. It'd be like, okay, what's going on? It sounds absolutely perfect. Yeah. And so you're spending your days, you're getting up your dream journaling, you're exploring cities. Anything else you're going to do during that time?

1:05:13Are you going to be drawing, for example? I think so. You know what's interesting about drawing? I feel very much like a writer and an illustrator. I'm very in the middle of that. and I think that drawing didn't come from a place of passion. It came from a coping mechanism. It was literally a thing where at any time, almost any time I could draw and that would eliminate boredom. And so for me, I don't know. I guess I don't know if there would be drawing because I'd be trying to fill this up with nothing boring. You might not need drawing. Not needing drawing. And now drawing is both, it can be a coping mechanism.

1:05:59So there are lots of times where I'll reach for it when I know, like, oh, there's going to be a bout of boredom coming up. Or it's more like a tool for communicating. Like, I really kind of think of it that way. So I don't know. Maybe I'd take a break from drawing. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. I have never succeeded in taking a break from writing. Really? As soon as I say I'm going to take a break, I'm like, oh, no, I've got to write a huge thing now. Sorry. Like I'm going to invent a whole new universe. I'm more like that with writing. And I actually think there's something too about like, again, going into so much of creativity for me is like understanding how to work with your brain.

1:06:39How do you, it's, it's so fickle. It's so difficult to like you. I've thought about it like this came from that book, Master and His Emissary, where he talks about creativity is like falling asleep. It's not something that you can force to happen. You can create circumstances where it's more likely to show up. Unfortunately, one of those circumstances is what you just described, which is pretending not to look at it. Like, I'm not going to do that. And that's exactly when your brain's like, okay, here's a huge creative idea. All the days I spend when I'm like turning up at my desk going, come on, you know.

1:07:20And as soon as you go, oh, it's okay. It's like having a cat, you know. You try and make friends with the cat. The cat's like, oh, no, thank you. You're so lame. So true. You turn away from the cat. The cat's like, hi. It's so true. And so who knows? I'll bring a sketchbook. I got the dream journal. Maybe I'll probably think of my best idea. In fact, I will say a few of the biggest creative breakthroughs I've ever had came on vacation. Yeah. It's just likely to happen. Well, a work of great genius may be born here. So. Yeah. It's time to go home. Okay. How do you know when you're ready? Is there a moment for you when you're like, okay, I'm done?

1:08:04Or do you never want to go? Are you kind of like singing Don't Stop Me Now? I think for me, with a retreat, there's three phases. There is the resistance phase. You're like, I can't let go of all the, I got so, why am I doing this? I'm itchy, I'm uncomfortable, everything's wrong. This is not the right place for me. I made a bad choice. I shouldn't have ever come. Yes. And then if you are in it, this is one of the things, this is a critique of America. America doesn't know how to holiday. They think they can do it in four days. You don't have much time. You can't do it in four days? That's the problem.

1:08:37You've got like two weeks a year or something. No, it's my critique of the system, not the people. They, like the first four days, that's your resistant phase. You're like, I can't let go of everything. I don't even like vacations. Yeah, four days. That's just the beginning. That's just getting into it. That's the on-ramp. Exactly. And that's why I think a lot of Americans think they don't like holidays or vacations because they've only ever had that little section, the first section. The next section is I don't ever want to go back. You know? Yeah, these are so familiar to me. You're like, oh, my gosh, I can't believe I resisted this.

1:09:13Work sucks. I don't even want to do that. I hate bills. I hate all this stuff. And then, you know, you're done when you're like, OK, I need to go back. I wish we could. Can we end this a day earlier? Because I need to go get on this creative thing. So that's yeah, that's how you know. So, you know, you're going to be really clear. and is there something that you'll bring back home with you an idea or an item back to your home i would love to just bring back one creature from a miyazaki world to just be in my house you know i saw this sorry excited excited i saw this uh like i don't know short form video and it was a guy and he's like looking longingly by a river and it's got a little voiceover that says and it repeats it a bunch of times man i wish pokemon was real my son shares that sentiment that's me like maybe not pokemon but all the like all these different things i just went i have this feeling that and it's what my all my kids books around invisible things are about.

1:10:27I have this feeling that what I love about that idea is that we're, we are surrounded by like 95 % of the universe is invisible to us. So we are surrounded by weird, almost magic, strange things. And I think we have, when we get into that side of the brain, we get a sense of it. We're like, we know stuff's going on. I've got some sensory things telling me there's stuff happening yeah and so i would love to bring back one of those creatures just to be like a little reminder like which one are you going to pick one or is uh or does it matter i mean maybe it would it would follow you home yeah i i like the ones that don't have names i like all of the in the bathhouse and spirited away i like all the ones we don't know what they are we never hear anything about them so be one of those or um moomin has that where there's like these little creatures in a tree or something you don't know what they are yeah be one of those be one of these we don't know what it is um yeah that's that's what i want to show you yes no face could is i mean it was definitely up there yeah no face is definitely uh a contender I don't want him to eat me I don't want him to eat me either but I just feel like he's a kindred spirit I absolutely agree I understand that feeling of wanting to eat the world I absolutely do I think that's what this whole retreat was that's what it's all about could I just have the whole world at once please yeah let me swallow it all Andy thank you so much for taking us on retreat with you it's been such a joy and I really hope you get to do it one day.

1:12:15Me too. Maybe in a dream.

1:12:36Hello, 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. okay the podcast is over so i don't know why you're still listening uh 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.

1:13:52But again, thanks for listening. Glad you enjoyed the episode and stay pepped up, y 'all.