Envy: It Can Be Your Best Friend
The origin story of Emerging Form plus an interview with Cheryl Strayed
Before there was an Emerging Form podcast, there was a friendship. Before the friendship, there was envy. How did Rosemerry & Christie go from jealousy to beloved partners in creative process? How might our experience help you grow from your own envy? Listen in.
Preview: Two Episodes Exploring Envy and Creativity
Let’s face it: Envy happens. We know it first hand. The beginnings of our friendship (and this podcast) began with rejection, projection, and surprising connection. In this week’s episode, we tell our origin story—what we learned about envy and how powerfully it can help us find our own path. And in our next episodes, we interview Cheryl Strayed, author of the popular Dear Sugar columns, the #1 New York Times bestselling memoir Wild, the New York Times bestsellers Tiny Beautiful Things and Brave Enough, and the novel Torch. We chat about why envy is such a common and difficult issue for creative people, how envy can be a window into your true heart’s desires and more. In our second episode with Cheryl, available only to paid subscribers, we talk about her writing process, the differences between writing fiction, memoir and advice, how she is meeting her own fame, and how to write memoir after a long time has passed.
Strayed’s book Wild was chosen by Oprah Winfrey as her first selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0 and adapted into an Oscar-nominated film starring Reese Witherspoon. Tiny Beautiful Things was adapted for the stage by Nia Vardalos in a play directed by Thomas Kail that has been produced in theaters around the world. Strayed's essays have been published in The Best American Essays, the New York Times, the Washington Post Magazine, Vogue, Salon, and elsewhere. She publishes the popular Dear Sugar column as a monthly newsletter and has hosted two hit podcasts for the New York Times—Sugar Calling and Dear Sugars, which she co-hosted with Steve Almond. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her family.
Things We’re Reading:
Rosemerry:
In Episode 34, we spoke with James Crews about mindfulness and creativity. His new anthology is out now! How to Love the World: Poems of Gratitude and Hope. It features so many of my favorite contemporary poets—Jane Hirshfield, Danusha Laméris (featured in Episode 29), Ellen Bass, Li-Young Lee and so many more. A book filled with potential—a book to help me meet the day.
Water. So essential, and at the heart of a new anthology, Wet: an Anthology of Water Poems and Prose from the High Desert and Mountains of the Four Corners Region. Thirty writers "Speak love to water," as editor Sonja Horoshko writes. It's just out, and I just got my contributor copy in the mail, and I'm thrilled to be reading such a powerful melding of Native and non-Native voices. Here's to WET, and to water. Order your copy by emailing info@montezumafoodcoalition.org with the subject line: Anthology order.
In Episode 38, we spoke with Kim Langley about creativity and grief, and this week she sent me this note and link: “When I read this article in the times I thought of your listeners-- all of us trying to figure out together how to do our best at this writing thing that can be so satisfying and also such a mystery. And this interview [Ezra Klein Interviews Tressie McMillan Cottom] is really engaging and made me think about writing in some new ways so I thought I would share it with you.”
Christie:
I’m halfway through The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett and am totally captivated by this novel about how our pasts shapes our futures and the way that family ties influence us.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, by Katherine May reads like a meditation on slowing down, resting, and taking time for replenishment. In other words, just what we need i these pandemic times.
When I saw the headline of this Adam Grant piece, "There’s a Name for the Blah You’re Feeling: It’s Called Languishing,” I felt seen. Finally! An apt word to describe my weird state of being during this pandemic. "Languishing is a sense of stagnation and emptiness. It feels as if you’re muddling through your days, looking at your life through a foggy windshield. And it might be the dominant emotion of 2021,” he writes.
Alice Gregory’s story of Frank Siebert, a white man who made saving a Native American language spoken by members of the Penobscot Nation his life’s work raises so many important questions: Who does a language belong to? And what good does it do to write a language down if no one is speaking it? As anthropologist Darren Ranco puts it, “For communities like my own, where our language was beaten out of us, literally, and discouraged time and time again, having someone like Siebert come in, with an interest only in documenting the language, not committed to reënlivening it—considering my relatives were his sources—this absolutely upsets me, after the hospitality so many Penobscot gave him.”
Great Poems for Earth Day
“Place,” by W.S Merwin
“Morning Poem” by Mary Oliver
“Lazy Bones” by Pablo Neruda, trans. Alastair Reid
“Spring Has Come Back Again” by Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. Stephen Cohn
“Remember” by Joy Harjo
“The Earth Is a Living Thing” by Lucille Clifton
A Note About Paid Subscriptions:
First, we want to thank ALL our subscribers! We are so grateful you join us in this conversation about what it is to engage with yourself, the world and others in a creative way. And a BIG thank you to our paid subscribers. You make this podcast possible. Starting this month (with our second, bonus episode with Cheryl Strayed), only our paid subscribers will receive our bonus episodes as a thank you for their financial support. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, you can go now to our website or by clicking the button below. Thank you!
Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
How has envy benefitted you in your creative practice?
What quality do you most envy in other creative people?