Surrender to the Process with Jon Batiste and Suleika Jaouad

31:58Exactly. So Don was basically doing exactly that when I reconnected with him. I was 16 at that point. It's my first month at Juilliard. And I saw him on the wind train. I had no idea that he was at Juilliard. And he was dancing and singing to himself with big old headphones on. and everyone in the subway car was staring at him. Like, what is going on with this guy? You gotta be who you are, man. And I turned to my friend Michelle and I said, I know that guy. That's John Batiste from Bandcamp. And then out of nowhere, I said, that's the man I'm going to marry someday. Really? I have no idea why I said it.

32:44Didn't think of it again. We reconnected. And you hadn't thought of it prior? Nope. And I didn't think of it after. You didn't walk out of band camp thinking, ooh, that John. He said not a word. I felt a thing. I felt something with that one. You were still in your gloriously awkward phase. Oh, yeah. Okay, what was he wearing? I don't remember what he was wearing that particular— I remember the headphones. Were they a color? You were in your Converse sneaker era at that time. You were trying some things at the time. oversized suits. Yeah, yeah. Had three suits. Three suits, that's right. I would take drawings to a tailor and they would be like, well, we can't make this, but we can give you the textiles to make it.

33:34So then I would buy the textiles and then I'll bring them to a tailor that I could afford to make the stuff. And then they started making suits. So I'll play shows and I'll take some of the money from the gigs I'd take to the tailor and I'll start making my own clothes. So I started making my own clothes and buying Converse that matched the suits. What colors were these? Canary yellow. Of course, I knew. I knew it. Fuchsia pink. Remember that? I remember. I can. Why did I know? I remember all of them. One had tails on it. Oh, yeah. Like tux tails? Straight up tails. Yeah. Okay. Cloaks. Cloaks.

34:13Cloaks, of course. Don't sleep on a cloak. No. No, no. Don't sleep on a cloak. Really? Because I have been sleeping on a cloak. I have been sleeping on a cloak. There's something to it.

34:38So you're in the subway. Yeah. Did you consider this your subway attire, performance attire? Sometimes. Just going to the, you know, the Dwayne's drugstore in it. You know, it was performance at times, but it was more than that. It was a form of expressing the identity that we were discovering in the sound, in the look. And it was just how I was when I was walking around in the world. You know, I remember I would go to vintage shops and thrift shops and, you know, I would put stuff together. and I started traveling doing some performances where I discovered some tailors from different parts of the world and they had different textiles and all kinds of stuff you could use.

35:26So that opened up a whole nother thing. But yeah. And what was the sound at the time? Was it your jazz band? Was it straight jazz, old school jazz? I didn't have a term for it, so I made a term. I called it social music. Social music. And the band's name was Stay Human. Okay, yeah. That was the philosophy. And it was a mix of the idea of social music was really music from all of the different folkloric traditions of music before music was commodified. and how do you take all of those different traditions, study them, find the different dots that you can connect between them and bring it into the 21st century.

36:15So that was my vision. I was lofty. Yeah, sure, you still are. That's what makes you beautiful. You gotta be yourself, you see. So you saw this happening on the subway and you were like, that's my dude. You know, it was one of those things that you blurt out, don't know where it comes from, you don't think of it again. And it wasn't until our mid-20s that we really started dating. And it was such a beautiful time in our 20s. And I think your band name, Stay Human, is really an encapsulation of what I love most about you. You were just so open and just so incredibly creative. I'll never forget the first time I went to John's apartment.

37:06It was like a sight to behold. Tell us. There were mantras written on the ceiling and on the walls. I remember above his bed, he had written a list and it said, pray, drink water, phone home, have fun. It was suitcases, looked like an airport terminal because he was constantly playing shows and on the road and would come home and not unpack and have his next suitcase. Was this in New York? In Washington Heights, piles of books. First time I had dinner there, it started to rain and there was a flood of water coming in through the window. And I was like, how long has this been going on for? And he was like, since I moved in.

37:57And I was like, how long ago was that? And he said a couple of years ago. You just let it rain in your house. Yeah, exactly. But you were just... It's fine. It's just water. You were just living in the world of your creativity and your determination to do what your band was called, to stay human and to figure out what that meant. But did he cook dinner that night? He did cook dinner. In his water-filled apartment? He did. He made red beans and rice. You don't remember anything. I cooked red beans and rice. It wasn't good then. Was it good? It was. There's your answer. That's interesting. I can cook now.

38:52He's a great cook. He's the cook of our family. But I wasn't cooking back then, so it was probably not very good. But you were dazzled. I was dazzled and I was totally befuddled by John. He was unlike anyone I'd ever met. And I remember that first week we went to a park and John sat me down and he said, what are your intentions? Which nobody had ever asked me before. And we had this conversation, it was a couple hours long, where we talked about what it was that was, important to us, but the terms of the relationship were. Oh, I love it. Yeah, just very, like, no games. Right, just to get to the point.

39:41Get to the point. Figure it out. And what was going through your mind? Did you say Sulayka? Sulayka, you call her Sulayka. Why do you say Sulayka? That's how I started saying it. And you told me you liked it. So I just, I love it. I just kept. I said I like it. What were you thinking when you saw her again? I like it. See, now I'll never call you anything else. But I was thinking that it felt monumental. It felt like that conversation was like a major turning point. How did you guys think about building your lives together? Because by then, you had been diagnosed. You understood the messiness of it all.

40:31How did you two in real time negotiate that? And how do you continue to negotiate it? Well, I think it's in the vows. You just decide that we're in it, however it needs to be set up. And it's going to be ever evolving. You know, it's going to be a range of different realities that we can't predict. so let's exist with the commitment that we made and move however we need to move knowing that we're not quitters so you gotta know that the person you're with is not going to quit and if you know that the logistics you sort that out just gotta know that we're in this and that's that's my true north and I think we've figured out a few different there's an equilibrium to having this illness and not letting it define giving it only the attention that it deserves it's not a defining characteristic of our life it's just that's here okay and we do what we need to do with that but everything else is also here.

42:00Yeah. Yeah, I think if anything, you know, the illness is just for us a good reminder of the one certainty that we all share, which is that we are born and we will die and we are here for a very short period of time. And so I think it's changed our relationship to time in a way that I'm grateful for and doesn't feel unique to us or to my illness, but that does change the way we move through things. Because yeah, when you made a vow, the big shift for me is, yeah, there's no longer that question of, am I in or am I out? But if this is the person I'm going to be with. How do I move forward as productively as possible?

43:00Because we are not only sharing our lives together, but we'd like to enjoy our lives together. And John really early on in our relationship had this idea that instead of writing in a journal and doing our individual journaling, we'd write them as letters to each other, which we do especially when we're apart when we're both on the road for work and it was so interesting because there are things that would come up in these letters that would never come up in the quick phone call where you're like how are you how was your day are they letters texts real you know pen to paper or any form of we've done pen to paper on the road where you take a picture of it.

43:47Oh, nice. Or if in person, you know, you write, and then we trade books, little journals. But, you know, that's letters. It's the spirit of the letter writing. So I think it has to be right with your hand. It's not a text. Yeah, it's a very different thing. It's not a dictated note. Right, I guess. So, um... Yes.

44:13but like you said having the time to the writing part of it for me for me I still write you know everybody asks me what is it should we still go high I get that all the time I get it now and I have to explain and re-explain that going high is about communicating with intention and strategy that doesn't mean you don't feel the emotion but a lot of times the emotion isn't the truth. So you exaggerate in the midst of the emotion. You always do this. You never do this. But when you write it down, you start thinking, well, always isn't actually the right word, right? Or you people, you know, that's not really what I mean, right?

44:59It's how we raise kids. Count to 10. You know, I mean, going high is counting to 10, you know, and writing in a relationship is like counting to 10. Give yourself a moment to understand what you really feel and mean and then have that be the source, the beginning of the conversation. Right. Yes. Our friend Esther Perel says, what you need to say is not always what they need to hear. And sometimes, like I know for me, I don't even know what I'm thinking or feeling until I start writing it down. And it takes me, you know, a page to get through all the emotions to actually get to the heart of the thing.

45:42Yeah. Well, that gets us also to journaling, right? Which is your project, your book. So, Leica, would you talk a little bit about what you've produced thus far? Yeah. So, I've been keeping a journal my whole life. For me, it's always been this hiding place and seeking place and finding place. And just this daily practice that I do. I know you talk about small powers. Just something I do every day. It can be for two minutes, 10 minutes to ground myself, to write my way back to myself. but I found that I was kind of getting bored of the sound of my own voice. And so I started to find ways to prompt myself.

46:36So this book, The Book of Alchemy, is a meditation on the art of journaling and a synthesis of this approach to journaling. And it has a hundred essays and prompts. Do you journal? So I don't journal by the typical definition of journaling. So I started my professional career in investment banking, sales and trading. So I had to keep a diary every day of what I did. It was really transactional, if you know what I mean. And so I never really journaled my feelings about Craig Robinson. Yeah. And now since my mom passed away, I keep the small little book in my backpack so that when I think of things that remind me of her or the kids do something that I try and remember, I have to write that down.

47:41Now I have something I can write it down. I'm of the opinion that there are no rules when it comes to journaling, But I know you had a journal that you kept in your 20s during a tumultuous time. My teens and 20s, I had a journal, you know, sporadic. Barack was a big, big journal. He has a lot of written journals. But what I did do for the White House years, because I knew that this was a unique time, and things were, you know, I always say it's like we were shot out of a cannon. and how do you keep track of all of that? And I just literally did not have the time to put pen to paper, but I knew that I needed to capture what was going on.

48:34So what I did do was that I worked with a dear friend of mine, a law school buddy of mine who was a dean at a law school. We were very close. I trusted her, smart woman. She, a friend would come in twice a year and it was a way for us to catch up and stay in touch while I was first lady. But she agreed to interview me. I needed to say out loud some of the stuff that I was feeling. And so she would come in with prompts that she had gathered watching me in the news and what was going on. And I always would have her talk to my chief of staff and schedulers just to get a sense of what literally had happened over the course of that six-month period of time.

49:23And then we did a series of interviews that after each one, we got it transcribed. I did not read them over, but it's there. For eight years, we collected the stories of emotions and that material became essential when it was time to write Becoming. Wow. Because you know how life is when life is moving so fast. Just like you say, you don't remember any of your teens, right? And a lot of that is because you've packed so much life in. And that's what it was in those eight years. I mean, I would look up and, you know, make a comment like, oh, I'd love to go to Prague. It sounds wonderful. And my chief of staff would say, you've been to Prague.

50:08I was like, no, I haven't. You know, I had a discussion with my staff. They were like, you participated in a sit-in at law school. I was like, no, I didn't. And they were like, no, I think you did. I was like, I absolutely have no recollection of taking over the dean of students office and sitting in. I said, I would have remembered that until they showed me a picture of me. So what, you know, but I had no recollection of it. And I didn't want to go through eight years forgetting really major things.

50:51Well, and I think so many of us are living in a state of overwhelm. Well, I think we're grateful for this project. And I think this is the best time in the state of the world for people to start journaling. For me right now, the journaling happens through a need to write a speech and to communicate. I find that that's when, you know, I'm putting pen to paper. So I think I'm going to take on one of the challenges. I love it. And see where it goes. As long as Craig commits to do it with me. You know what I'm going to commit to do is the listener question.

51:38well we oh yeah okay we'll talk about this we'll talk about that afterwards post-production

51:47this question is from Sharon I've lived with multiple sclerosis for 10 years and I worry about the effect that it has on my family I have a teen daughter who is so supportive of me but I also am concerned that her needs might be lost in all of this. I definitely want to prioritize balancing my own health, but also carry the load for my family. For Michelle and Craig, when you were growing up, how were you affected by your dad's illness? And if you've ever been sick, how do you build in self-care? How do you prioritize what you say yes to when it comes to family, work, and everything else in life?

52:24How do you preserve yourself so that you can feel good about the days you're having with your loved ones. Sharon from Atlanta. That's a lot there. Misha, I'll let you go first. Well, how did dad's illness affect me? Because I think we're all individual in the way these things affect us. And I wrote about it in The Light. You know, I think having the father, the center of our household, be clearly vulnerable to us, right? Even though he was persistent, defiant, strong, you know, didn't really claim it, never talked about his illness, you know, because I think he was probably trying to project a level of certainty and security that maybe he hadn't come to grips with.

53:15So we didn't talk about it a lot, but it was staring us right in our faces. You know, our father was different. But there was also a sense of vulnerability that you live with that can make you hold back. But at the same time, I think our parents pushed us out at the same time. I don't think they wanted us to think of the world by their limits. Because I think they were limited. From a socioeconomic background, our parents were working class. They couldn't go to college because they had to make sacrifices. They, you know, they had to work and earn a living. So their worlds got smaller as a result.

54:04And they didn't want that for us. I think for me, a lot of that is consistent, except I operated from a place of fear. I was fearful. I was fearful of vulnerability. I was fearful of catastrophe happening in the house. I was afraid of fires. I was afraid. I was always afraid. And I think I operated out of fear. So I was successful out of the fear of not being able to provide. And this is a great question because I've never really addressed it. but I was sitting here listening. What if you would journal? Yeah, there we go. Here we go. I know, John. This is the show, man. This is the show. This is the show.

55:02And from that fear, I think my parents saw that in me and the pendulum swung back over. And I think while they did push us to do stuff, they were more successful in pushing you to do more than they pushed me because I was reticent. I was the oldest. I almost didn't go away to college. And it wasn't until my dad was like, I'll be okay. I'll be okay. Because he knew I was always worried about him. and when the second part of the question is how do you do you how do you handle your own self-care for the longest time i didn't because i was fearful that i'd find out that i was gonna have some malady and it wasn't until in it wasn't until i started it's like if we can laugh at it now but it wasn't until i was in my mid-30s and i started uh i became a head coach where we had our own sort of team doctor that I was like, I got to start.

56:15My wife, Kelly was, you got to start having, getting regular physicals. And I was in my late thirties, early forties when I started having physicals every year. But now I think having children has made me more cognizant of being intentional about my own health in order to stick around for those guys. Right. I relate so much to that. I think, you know, when you've had the ceiling cave in on you, you no longer assume structural stability. You're kind of living on fault lines. and that can make it hard to push yourself out into the world. I know that for me as someone who has sat both in the caregiver's chair and who's right now going through treatment, I just finished five days of chemotherapy right before coming here, I have to actively figure out how to be in relationship with the fear that's there because it's there I've tried ignoring it I've tried compartmentalizing it and when I do that I find it looms even bigger and to acknowledge it but not let it be in the driver's seat and and I've had to figure out how to allow myself to do things that feel risky, to say yes to the invitation, to make the plan, even if I don't know I'm going to be well enough to do it, to, you know, undertake writing a book that takes two years and you don't know if you're going to be able to see it through, to prioritize time with friends and family.

58:18And so I think for me, one thing I think of a lot is in periods when I've been at my sickest and I've had maybe only two or three good hours in a day, it's been a very specific kind of clarifying exercise in that when you only have two or three good hours, you get really clear about what you want to do in those two to three hours, who you want to spend it with and what's important to you. And right now I'm feeling good. I have lots of energy, but in the morning, sometimes I'll think to myself, if there are only two or three things I could do today, forget my to-do list, what is it that would make this day a really good day?

59:07And the other thing I do as someone who loves a to-do list like you, I love a list. I'm the person who at the end of the day, I'll add things to my to-do list that I've already done just so that I can cross them off and feel that sense of satisfaction. I start with, in my journal, I'll start with a to-feel list before I get to my to-do list. And it's just like, whatever it is, I want to feel rested today. And then I write a couple of ideas of how to get myself there. And I actually make whatever that self-care is part of the list. And it's attached to the feeling that it produces, not to the, you know, I have to go to the gym or whatever it is.

59:52It's going to make me groan and want to avoid it. I'm more likely to get myself there. Wow. I love that. Yes, as a caregiver, that's important as well. Caregiving can make you feel the need to, I'm just going to power through. Yeah. But your body keeps the score. So you know that, well, after a certain point, you realize I have to do something to maintain this role. And you have to make it be something that you're motivated to do. So finding those emotions and not just emotions, but the practice of self-care. As the same with the craft of making music, I find that there's a practice to self-care.

1:00:42you gotta go in the woodshed as we say musicians you gotta learn what's the techniques and it's very much a shift in perspective that you don't have to martyr yourself in service of those you love in fact that's a disservice to those you love it's the internal world what's it feel like in there? Do we need to renovate? Do we need to, maybe we need to - Is there a whole bunch of water coming in your window? Maybe so. It might be a little leak. Gotta patch that up. Well, I know I did learn that from watching my parents martyr themselves on both sides, mom and dad. But I did work. I think I have worked hard as an adult to find that balance, if only to show my daughters a different balance.

1:01:49Because if I want them to change, I can't show up like my mom, who it's like I'm taking care of everybody, and I put myself fifth on my priority list. Yeah. People are okay. They can do without you. Yes. They can. And sometimes the best way to care for someone is to model care by caring for yourself. I think about that all the time with you. It's not selfish or indulgent to take a moment for yourself. It's actually a way of giving permission to the other people in your radius to do the same thing for themselves. John, how are you taking care of yourself these days? and what's on your to feel list.

1:02:38My to feel list? What's on my to feel? I'm in a vibe. I want to feel vibey and free. You know, a lot of times we have self-imposed pressure to respond. And that could mean anything. I mean, just to respond, to act versus to just take a pause and sit with something. Even if everything is telling you This has to happen now. Everything is in fact totally fine. So I'm in a very deep on a cellular level. I've gotten to a place of fortitude and the chaos and comfort and taking the time, exactly the time it needs for me to show up. As the best version of myself. Yeah. Yeah. And everything else. I like that.

1:03:41It continues to run, believe it or not. Feeling the vibe. Well, that's a perfect vibe to end on. Yes. Yes. I really appreciate you guys being here. Man, yeah. It's been a fantastic discussion. Thank you for making the time for this. It really means a lot. I love you guys. We love you both. I really, really do. Yeah, we're grateful to have you in our lives and just to have this beautiful, beautiful opportunity to have conversation and celebrate your great work, my love. Yes, so proud of you as always. Yeah, it's such an honor for us to get to have this kind of a conversation. It's really such a gift.

1:04:28The honor is ours. Well, everyone, the book of alchemy, plus your journal, and I'm getting mine. And I'm going to challenge myself to start a new journal series for myself. So thank you. Thank you for bringing this. And she's going to bully me into doing the same. I am definitely going to. All I have to do is your list. Yes. I like the list. Thank you. Well, maybe you're doing a to-feel list for you because I want to know what you're feeling. Hey. I feel like you leaving me alone Just keep it vibing Keep it vibing Hold on