Listen Slowly
2024 podcast highlights—and a question for you.
It’s no secret that I have an affinity for quiet, even if it sometimes directly opposes my curiosity. Over the years, I’ve followed my creative interests in art, dance, and, most notably, writing. Yet because much of my work exists in or utilizes the digital landscape, it takes a concerted effort to remain connected to the tangibility that was the genesis for many of these endeavors.
When I soft-launched Slow Stories as a podcast in late 2018, I was tired—practically engulfed in the platforms that had been partially responsible for my professional success. I wondered if other creative people operating in this nuanced, digital landscape felt the same. I also recognized how little I was using my everyday voice, instead spending hours typing and scrolling and connecting without so much as a whisper. Something needed to change. I began to slow down, ask these questions aloud, and reconsider my personal (and our collective) relationship with time, pace, and creativity.
I formally launched the podcast in 2020—and this newsletter in January 2024. With the latter in mind, it’s been incredible to foster a growing community of readers and continue to grow in various directions as a writer. Coupling this with publishing my first book, I’ve been thinking about how the podcast might exist in my current practice.
It takes a lot to produce each episode, but when I zoom out from the minutiae, I’m reminded all over again that the conversations themselves are generative in ways I couldn’t have imagined. In the last year alone, my guests and I have had wonderful exchanges about attention, crying, television shows, collaboration, history, friendship, style, art, grief, evolution, time, creativity, and, of course, pace. I continually walk away grounded and grateful for my humanity. For my voice. For my ability to ask questions and receive responses with intelligence, wisdom, and warmth.
All of that said…
Whether you’re a long-time listener or new to the podcast, enjoy a look back at highlights from my 2024 episodes, and stay tuned for more conversations coming very soon. (And if you have a moment, consider answering the poll at the very bottom of this newsletter!)
Thank you, as always, for being here,
Rachel
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“We're always living. We're always in the midst of it. And it's only retrospectively that we can see some sort of a shape to our experience. … So I think the structure of beginnings and middles and ends is a way to make us feel safe in life where we don't have such mastery, and we don't have such knowledge.”
“I suppose the challenge of living in the present moment isn't asking if one is happy in the present—because the moment you bring happiness into it, then there is an element of the future and the past, and then you're no longer in the present. … I think it's one of the greatest challenges to every writer or every artist: learning how to be in the present without judgment.”
“One's heritage is so daunting that you don't know what to do with it. So you sort of chip away at it, and you use the tiniest little bit.”
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“It genuinely is helpful to me to be asked questions about how the work fits together, to have things pointed up to me. … I have no idea what's interesting. To me, it's all interesting.
“I think that desire can deceive us into believing that it's love when it's not. It's need or lack or want, and it's wonderful and it needs to be honored for what it is and not transformed into something that it isn't. Love can be there as well, obviously, but it isn't always. I think that we can accidentally trick ourselves into thinking our desires are our loves.”
“I think there's probably a connection between grief and power in the sense that grief can spur us on to try to take back some measure of power.”
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“Grief is a problem of narrative. It's a problem of coherence. I am a wife, but I do not have a husband. The narrative of my life doesn't make sense. And when we drill past what we think of as time—as an authority, as a clock in our world—and we start looking at time as what it is, the blurring drops away, and we start to realize that we don't understand anything at all.”
“If grief was an entity that I could ask a question, I think I would ask grief what it needed from me. Because I feel—and this is my grief, my therapist has told me it's actually not how a lot of other people hold their grief—but the term I use in grief therapy a lot is I feel grief has colonized my life. That it came in, and it forcibly took everything that was mine, and it renamed it in the name of grief. And I feel angry a lot of the time that I am held by grief in what I consider a very aggressive way.”
“When I am writing about pain, I feel closer to it, truthfully. I think I feel closer to most things in my life when I'm writing about them. It is the medium in which I am the most myself—the most honest and most open, which is crazy to have a book about my life because I'm so private. I am a very private person, and I have this very public pain, and it's a dissonance to live in.”
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“We're very conscious of that aliveness in the relationship—and how it's always in process and in progress.”
“I would say that both [grief and power] are intense states that change your position in your life—and how you're perceived by others, and by yourself completely. It rescripts your social interface. And I definitely don't think that power is the opposite of grief. I actually think grief is kind of underestimated. I do know that grief is underestimated as its own power. You think that it allows a person entry into another dimension, which a really good part can be created, whereas power, to me, is extremely uninteresting.”
“It's a question about where I place my body: Where are you placing your body, and is it the right place?”
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“It takes a lot of energy to be slow. It's hard to be in that sort of creation mode. For me, making art can be very exhausting—and emotionally exhausting—but it can also be very joyful. It just depends.”
“I think I'm just always interested in those bigger questions: Why are we here? What are we doing? What am I supposed to do when I'm here? So, I just don't care about a lot of the things that happen in the world—or try not to care too much about a lot of them because I'm always thinking about those larger questions.”
“I actually think grief is about surrendering. I think it's about letting go of control and power and the desire to change. I think it's allowing yourself to sort of flow with the grief along your side, like a friend, a companion. And also, I think it's accepting that it probably won't ever go away and that it will constantly change. And that you can't control it as if it's a companion that's separate from you—yet it's always at your side. So, I think it's the opposite of that kind of reclamation or desire to control or power. Those words just don't feel like my own experience.”
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“Crying is a cool thing. It's really great.”
“There's this kind of shared history and humanity that we've seen in each other at our highs and lows. That's also important for collaboration, where we know each other well. That just makes a richer dialogue.”
“I feel like so much of the quick communication that happens on the internet is often people want something, they hit you up, and then it's like, Hey, I like your thing, by the way, can you do this for me? Just having basic communications where someone is checking in and asking how you're doing is important. And I think it's important for all of us to keep this in mind because, as we were saying before, people can be going through so much, and you have no idea. So maybe that's the question: How are you doing?”
SLOW SOUNDBITES
“I find a lot of value in the sadness. It can be dangerous for me because it's so comfortable. But I do enjoy feeling sad.”
“I think it's our job to try and have as much as we can in terms of opening up our book, reflecting, learning, or growing. And I think the more we grow that emotional and mental toolbox, the more we have to (hopefully) make more positive and informed decisions. But I try not to really judge anyone—even my own parents or family members—for doing something that I think is wrong. [It's] just really being able to accept that they're doing the best with what they had at that time.”
“I think there's a lot of wisdom and humility in just being able to create the best art that you can make at the time. Put it out and keep learning and keep going—but don't wait for a moment [that] you don't know when it's going to come.”