More Devotedly

Hear the rest of what Portland Creative Co-Laureate Leila Haile said about healing others through their work as an artist on your app or at https://www.moredevotedly.com/episode/v5-e5-leila-haile-joaquin-lopez/

There have been a few moments in conversations with guests on the podcast that have stuck with me for a long time. This was one of them. I think I get used to people who do interviews to be endlessly positive, to insist that artists can do anything, against all odds. But the perspective that Leila offered here recognizes the limits of what any one artist can achieve, or even a whole generation of artists, when facing the enormity of suffering that Black Americans have suffered through the history of this country up to the present. But, what I really admire is that Leila, and so many others, keep trying.

Portland has new Creative Laureates, and I'm excited to share a fascinating conversation I had with them.

Hear it at https://www.moredevotedly.com/episode/v5-e5-leila-haile-joaquin-lopez/ or on your app!

"Take a nap," was the revolutionary (seriously!) advice given to a hypothetical exhausted artist, and to me, by Leila and Joaquin, and I think it was wise counsel.
I was struck by how these two artists were prioritizing healing in this conversation, rather than a more nuts and bolts approach to conceiving of projects. But, there are two things about that that make total sense, and I'm glad to hear them thinking this way.

First, it's covid times, in case you forgot. (I sometimes do forget what anything felt like before.) Second, when you are approaching something so abstract as a "creative laureateship," which could really be anything that that Laureate conceives of, setting a goal, even an abstract one like "healing," makes all the questions that emerge later on more much simple to answer.

Hear the interview at moredevotedly.com or on your app!

William (Bill) Seiji Marsh has been traveling the world with the band Pink Martini. On one of those travels, Bill had an intense moment of self-realization on stage at the Seoul Jazz Festival. All those hours of hard work had gotten him to that moment, and, as he relates it, it was a pretty good moment.

He turned that feeling, and a lot of other ideas and experiences, into a coaching business called Musical Being. Listen in to this week's episode to hear Bill and I talk about that moment, the business, and how the pandemic has shaped the business and his experience of it.