A Podcast for Writers, Readers, and Creative Lifers
We keep creating against the odds, because we long for purpose and meaning in a chaotic world. Join the staff of Talking Writing magazine as we talk to artists of all mediums about their personal and creative lives – and the intersections between the two.
In the wake of this summer’s Canadian wildfires, protesters are descending on Climate Week NYC, which includes today’s United Nations Climate Ambition Summit. Although the spotlight on climate change has gotten a lot brighter in the past several months, the issue has been going on for decades. Three works have come out recently that were all conceived before this summer’s alarming weather but seem even more relevant now. All three artists have some connection to Talking Writing, and I decided that making a collage of their works and interviewing them would be a great way to explore these themes through the lens of aesthetics. JoeAnn Hart has just released a book of short stories set in the near future called Highwire Act and Other Tales of Survival, which won the 2022 Hudson Prize. In April 2023, Alice Major put out Knife on Snow, a collection of poems that weaves together emotional considerations of climate change with science, mythology, space exploration, and daily life. And in March, 2023 John Atkinson released his solo album Energy Fields, created from field recordings of coal mines, turbines, refineries, and animals from his residency at the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming in 2019.
In this episode, the interviewed artists talk about their approaches to playing their music live. What are the challenges? Where is the wiggle room for improvisation? What makes a performance engaging? As with the previous episode, each artist approaches the live situation differently, whether trying to present something that you've made in a studio or working out something that you've made in rehearsal.
Performing live and recording music are very different acts, and the skill sets don't necessarily cross over. Some musicians are prone to creating things in the studio and then face the challenge of making something live out of it. Others write and experiment in the live setting and then go into the studio to try and translate what they've been doing live. Both approaches come with unique challenges, and this episode asks the question: "What do you get psychologically out of each process, playing live and recording?"
Most artists tend to have many different projects occurring simultaneously or over the course of their artistic lives. Here the artists interviewed tell how they tend to move from one project to another and what their various projects provide them.
This episode explores the way that ideas come up and how they move through the process into becoming a piece of art. The path from vague idea to finished product is never straightforward. One thing that becomes clear during these conversations is how messy and random the progression can be.