Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Artist and performer best known for the 1981 hit 'O Superman', creating an AI Bible, and being NASA's first artist in residence.
On the island
Eight records
I was a kind of like a teenager, pre-teenager when I heard this song and it's just so much fun and I did tell you how to do it.
Gracias a la VidaFavourite
I think it's a very important moment, always. To be grateful, and this is a thank you for everything that life gives you. Not just lovely things, but difficult and horrible things that it gives you to and how do you accept those.
is one of the most lovely pieces about longing and nature and so I thought that would be a really nice thing because it is very balanced. It's a very no typical kind of sad love song, but it's uh it has its feet on the ground and I really I love that about it.
Philip Glass's music in twelve parts is one of his most I hate the word iconic, but it is iconic. It is really. sums up his work.
It's a story about a guy who hoodwinks a bunch of people. He comes to town and he like does a little song and dance routine and everyone's like... Well, we gotta follow this guy. And I think it's a very contemporary story, so that's why I chose it.
Doing the Things That We Want To
I love this song called Doing the Things That We Want To because that is so important. Not the things that you should or think you should do, but doing the things that you want to. You're never gonna go wrong. If you really want to do that, so do it.
I'm taking Magnetic Fields Washington DC to the islands so I can dance. It's just so crazily infectious. And it's um it's a cartoon version of Washington, D. C. And it's a love story in the nation's capital. I just need to be cheerful about the nation's capital right now and think of it in a way that's light-hearted for a second.
Soul coughing is one of my favorite groups and I love the groove in Chicago. is not Chicago. I like titles like that, with the kind of question in them like, what is this supposed to be about? And it puts the voice way in front. And you get to know the person who's telling you the story. You don't know what the story is exactly. I don't need to know the story. I mean, even though I'm somebody who tells stories, I like the roundabout way of telling stories. I don't like things that resolve. My life isn't resolving ever, so I like things that are just leaving you to go, well, let's see.
In conversation
Presenter asks
2:02Tell us how you begin something when you're making new work.
I begin with a chart, actually. I begin with a really big um blackboard or whiteboard, and I see layout the different kinds of things I'd like to put there. And then figure out how to start from that. And more than that, figure out what the engine is of the story. Why are you going to tell this story? Not necessarily how it's going to end because you can find an ending in the most unpredictable places. You know, you can have a drop-dead ending or you can have a mysterious, uh, foggy end, or or you can have a Da-da, sort of end, all sorts of endings.
Presenter asks
5:38What are your memories of growing up as part of a big family?
That's a lot of people to be in a house, ten. And so we had also a lot of animals. We had so many animals. We had donkeys, ponies. Uh we had a monkey? Who bit my brother and then my mother chopped his head off and took it to Springfield, the state capitol in the south of Illinois. to see if it had rabies. A lot of drama around animals. Uh we had cats, dogs, all kinds of birds, a toucan bird, various turtles and stuff.
Presenter asks
8:05Can I ask a bit about your mum and dad? Your father, Arthur, was a paint salesman. Were the two of you close?
Oh yeah, and He was a salesman, but what he did really was marry the boss's daughter. And he became... They gave him this job of salesman. He was very... happy guy. So he would people love to see him. You know, he'd come in with the his paint charts and stuff and like hey art hot and he was genuinely friendly and uh genuinely interested in other people. So I would tag along and watch him do that and I was like, whoa, that's a wonderful way to be really, really open, yet at the same time he's selling them stuff. How's he doing that? That's a pretty good trick. Very silly, too. He would do little dances that were really made me laugh. I just got this very warped impression about who men were from him. All the women in my life were the authority figures, the teachers and moms telling you what to do to your homework product. And my father was just like this carefree guy who was, let's go and have ice cream, let's do little dances. And I thought, wow, men are so fantastic. They're like carefree and silly.
The keepsakes
The book
Vladimir Nabokov
I do see the value in giving voice to some of your memory, and I'm a diarist. I write down so many things and it's valuable to me. Once in a while I do come across something that I wrote and I was like, whoa. That's not what I remember thinking. And those things are very valuable to me. Because we just have these bits of things that happen to us and we keep revising them. And you realize, oh, I thought I was really happy. Then you go back to that and you're like, I was miserable. Don't idealize that thing. You are miserable. Or, oh, that was a much happier time than I thought. Your memory's tricking you all the time and you're tricking it. And so I thought, well, how do I to see it through somebody else's lens for a second? And Nabokov is wonderful.
The luxury
My little dog's collar with her name on it ... is a totem of happiness and freedom for me and of love because it reminds me of all the ways that you can poke your nose into things. ... She was just happy every day to kind of go out and see what was going on. And I need to keep that and love keeping that as a way to live.
Presenter asks
12:03When you were 12, you had a terrible accident. What happened?
This story is about diving, so-called diving into a pool and missing the pool. And I broke my back and spent a lot of time in the hospital where I learned a lot of things about loneliness and pain from other children. I wasn't there for Oh, a couple of months, I guess. And so if you're in the like I was, in the Bernward, it is children being brought in every night who are dying. It was a trauma word, and so I was there with when a lot of children died. It it was a Profound experience for me to be there.
Presenter asks
26:33You've always embraced new technology. I think you've worked with AI in the past, but I wonder how you feel about it today. How do you feel about it now?
Let's talk about different aspects of it as a tool. I love it. I'm working with a group in Toronto now. That is creating imagery out of language, spoken language, instantaneous imagery. So as you say something, it appears as an array of visuals. It's frightening. It's like Having somebody invade your dreams or be able to see what you're thinking or dreaming, it's wild. I also recognize that it's It's the end of the world kind of thing. It's horrible. You can impersonate anyone. You could win an election with something like this. You could start a war with something like this. We depend on a certain amount of um authenticity that gets stamped, but we don't know who's saying what anymore at all. So the success of certain aspects of um Let's say intrusions into social media, you know, let's say disinformation is enormous. It is dismantling our world.
Presenter asks
34:21You practice as a Buddhist. Did that inform the way you approach those last days together [when Lou died]?
Yes, it did, of course. And then What I believe as a Buddhist and what I believe as an artist is the same. There's for me no difference. And there's only one rule in both of those things, in being an artist and being a Buddhist, and that is be aware. That's all. It d it doesn't ask you to believe anything. It doesn't ask you to Act a certain way. And uh one of the things that I kind of went along with in in uh in Lou's death was um basically listening to those teachings about death. And so the number one teaching in terms of that is that there is a transition period. This um Place or maybe phase, maybe it's a time rather than a place, called a bardo and a bardo todol, and in which they consider a disintegration period of 49 days. So, there's a bardo is a typically a period of 49 days when your energy goes into something else. It's a transformative process. So, the first rules for the living who are with a person who is dead is: do not cry. That is the number one rule. No crying. Zero crying. And why is that? Why is that? Because you don't want to call the person back. In one way. And you enthusiastically do that. You do not cry. Do not cry. And you did that. I did.
“Simple, yes. Yes, everything is beautiful. Yeah. I think for me it comes down to being able to convince myself to be in the present and really experience what it is and not not put it on a scale of beautiful, ugly, stupid, interesting, dull, but just to being shocked to be in this present tense. So that to me is a, I would call a quote-unquote beautiful thing to be able to see things as they are, I guess. Or try to.”
“Well, that's one reason I didn't have a family myself. That I've been mom since I was eight, so I think I'm gonna give up on that on that job.”
“I remember thinking how idiotic doctors were. They would say, You're never going to walk again, I thought you're an idiot. Of course I'm gonna walk. And I did. I mean, I I never once believed one of those guys.”
“Let's talk about different aspects of it as a tool. I love it. I'm working with a group in Toronto now. That is creating imagery out of language, spoken language, instantaneous imagery. So as you say something, it appears as an array of visuals. It's frightening. It's like having somebody invade your dreams or be able to see what you're thinking or dreaming, it's wild.”
“And so the first one is don't be afraid of anyone. ... Number two. is um get a good bullshit detector. ... Number three, be really tender. That's it. Fearlessness and love. So, those things are really can help you out, you know. So, try it out when you're in a situation next time. They really do help.”