On October 26, our Artist-in-Residence, everybody loves puppets!) We caught up with Mikki after the event to talk about their process and what to expect for their final Findings Night presentation coming up December 11.

What made you want to explore a retelling of the Medusa myth?

Back in 2020, I really was diving into learning more about myself, my beliefs, and what I stand for. What else was I going to do while stuck inside? I had always considered myself a feminist, but had never looked too far into the history or real messages and teachings of feminism. I started to see a trend within 4th wave feminism, pushing the story of Medusa as a victim of the patriarchy. 

While I don’t disagree with it, I wanted to look at the story from a new angle. Why do we think Medusa was unhappy? She asked for help, and no one said the Gods were graceful or kind when responding to requests. What if it was a blessing in disguise, a look that could turn men into stone? A way to stay safe. How would Medusa tell it in her own words? The story wouldn't leave my brain.

Why puppets?

Well, everybody loves puppets! Really, though, puppets have been a way for performers to connect with audiences, and younger audiences, to show and tell difficult topics. They give this freedom to be silly, but seen in the truest form. Secondly, as an avid sewer, this was a chance to really push myself in terms of creation. Having done some smaller sock puppets before, making a large version that I could perform along with sounded like so much fun.

What are some of your favorite materials to work with when you’re creating?

I use so many different materials, but I really do love working with recycled materials. For the Scratch workshop alone, I used all recycled cardboard and upcycled felt scraps to make smaller finger puppets. We live in an overconsumption society, so being able to create with materials to give them a second life is a joy.

What discoveries have you made through the process? Were there any surprises in your first presentation for Scratch Night?

I’ve made some fascinating discoveries throughout this process, especially about the myth itself. Medusa’s story — often reduced to a beautiful woman transformed into a monster — has shifted and evolved over time. But did you know she originally appeared with a beard and tusks?

What kind of art excites you? What kind of art do you wish you could see more of in the world?

I just wish there was more art in the world. We live in places that push this beige, clean aesthetic. I would hope one day that Seattle is filled with elaborate window displays that show different art, not just nice paintings, but full window displays. Murals that cover all red and cement, just to live in a world much more colorful than where we are today.

What should folks expect to experience at Findings Night?

Findings night is going to be fun! Folx should expect a little history, a little education, and a lot of silly campy fun! I am hoping to bring something that isn’t just educational, but is a bit silly as well. I’ll also be bringing along the mini finger puppets and stage for anyone who wants to play around before or after the event and try their hand at a little puppetry as well.

Click below to learn more about Mikki's upcoming Findings Night (12/11) and get tickets.

Learn more about Town Hall's Residency Program and view past residencies here.

The post One Must Imagine Medusa Happy: A Retelling of the Classic Tale appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

What is your background in psychedelics?
Four years ago, my choice to begin creating education within the psychedelic space was driven by consumer protection. Prior to that, my work for the past decade has been focused on cannabis and women’s health — and I saw the impact cannabis education had on more positive outcomes. Through my podcast, SetSet, I’ve had the chance to speak with clinicians, researchers, and everyday people about how these substances are reshaping our understanding of mental health and personal growth. I’ve also designed products and experiences to help people — especially women — engage with psychoactive substances in safer, more intentional ways.

What prompted you to create the Psychedelic Salon series?
When I looked around at the public conversation on psychedelics, I noticed three gaps. First, most of what we hear is either highly clinical — focused on FDA trials — or highly sensationalized. I wanted something in between: accessible, nuanced conversations that reflect the real-world ways people are exploring psychedelics. Second, women’s voices were largely absent from the stage. So I created the Salon as a space to highlight diverse perspectives, foster dialogue, and make these conversations approachable for anyone who’s curious. Lastly, outside of the psychedelic experience itself, the most profound impact of these medicines is the community of like minds that they foster. The Salon allows us to gather IRL!

Do you have a piece of advice for anyone interested in attending a Salon?
Come with curiosity, and maybe even a little skepticism. You don’t need to have personal experience with psychedelics to get something out of these conversations. Many attendees don’t, but they’re hearing about the experiences of their friends or reading headlines. The Salon isn’t about convincing anyone — it’s about widening the lens, hearing stories, and walking away with more thoughtful questions than you came with.

Is there a piece of film or other media that gets the psychedelic experience right?
I don’t think any piece of media can fully replicate the depth of a psychedelic experience — because so much of it is internal, ineffable, and shaped by our psyche. Unless you’re choosing to experience psychedelics while in nature, including an audio track of music or spoken word is critical to optimizing an altered state of consciousness. A few years ago, I collaborated with Seattle electronic music makers to create audio to listen to while under the influence of psychedelics. Music for mushroom journeys is here, and soundtracks for LSD and MDMA are here.

How do you choose the speakers for each Salon?
I start with science-driven topics that are trending among my Substack readers and in my 1:1 conversations. When a specific theme is repeatedly circulating in my newsfeeds and conversations, I note it as likely of interest to a broad group of people within the psychedelic-curious community. 

Finding speakers is the tricky part because an expert may not be based in Seattle, so sometimes a Salon theme is reworked to align with the expertise of local talent. To forge a true Seattle psychedelic community, keeping the Salon hyperlocal is essential, and this will carry through into new markets as the Salon tours the US in 2026.

 What do you hope audience members will take away from these conversations?
I hope that people leave feeling both more informed and more connected. Psychedelics are ultimately about relationship — with ourselves, with others, and with the natural world. If someone leaves a Salon with a more profound sense of connection, or even just a curiosity to keep exploring, then I feel like we’ve done our job.

April will be curating Psychedelic Salons throughout our 2025-26 season. Each event highlights unique themes — including grief, seniors, menopause, and more — emphasizing the role of psychedelics in mental health, spiritual growth, and personal optimization. Designed to be inclusive and insightful, this series invites attendees of all backgrounds to discover how psychedelics can foster profound connections, healing, and well-being.

Click the button below to learn more and get tickets!

The post An Interview with Psychedelic Salon Curator, April Pride appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

Bailey Ambrose Heller, a mechatronic artist and Town Hall's Fall 2024 Artist-in-Residence, will explore his passion for robotics and process for creation at his October 15 Scratch Night event. The Town Hall Marketing team asked Bailey a few questions about his creative process and how he uses technology to reflect aspects of humanity. Read on for a fun and fascinating chat!

How did you get into robotics?

Legos. I was obsessed with Legos. I built many Lego robots in elementary school and entered many robot competitions. But the competitive aspect was never appealing to me. My favorite part of any competition I attended was seeing how others approached the same challenges that I had been focused on for months.

What do you hope to discover in your build process during this residency?

I want to have the design and behavior of my robot shaped by the audience. At Scratch Night, I’m looking forward to receiving feedback and suggestions on what people want to see. And for the final presentation, I am excited to deliver an experience with this robot unique to the Town Hall stage.

Have you ever been surprised by one of your creations?

I’ve mostly been surprised by the range of people’s reactions to them. Some approach with sympathy, talking to the robots and coming close to meet their gaze. Others are more off-put, they keep their distance and make negative comments about automation. For a few, they invoke images of killer robots as depicted in the Terminator movies. I appreciate all reactions and want every creation of mine to spark a unique emotional experience.

I imagine there is a lot of testing and recalibrating that happens in the process of building a robot, have you ever had to give up and start over on a concept?

So many times. I have so many prototypes scattered across my workspace. But I learn so much from those iterations. With my drumming robot, I started the project by spending a month building and testing a motorized arm that ended up being too bulky. But I had so much fun making it, and that’s what made me branch out to using compressed air actuation for the first time. So I proudly placed this learning moment on my shelf for display (after salvaging the motor of course).

What would you say to someone who’s maybe a little worried about an AI takeover?

The potential uses of AI are vast and important, but the capability and potential of AI isn’t as great as some technologists are telling you it is!  AI is good at identifying apples in images, but it can’t bake an apple pie from scratch. The gap between humans and the artificial brains we create is so vast that the real danger comes from overestimating its ability and letting it handle decisions it is not equipped to solve without having a human in the loop. AI is an incredible tool that can help solve many complex issues and make many of our systems far more efficient and effective. But AI is only a tool, we must keep humans as part of these automated systems – human intuition and discernment is an essential component. It’s also important to have a skeptical eye – knowing what to look for to identify AI-generated content, especially on the internet. We need to stay conscious of our application of this new technology as with all innovations but rest assured, we are not in danger of an AI robot uprising.

Learn more about the art of robotics at Bailey's free Scratch Night on Tuesday, October 15 at 7:30PM.

The post Art in the Machine: A Conversation with Fall 2024 Artist-in-Residence Bailey Ambrose Heller appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

1. Favorite show?

Every show! But the Final Cello-bration will be the feather in my cap.

2. Favorite commission?

I love them all —  it's been amazing to see pieces go on to have a life that began at Town Hall.

3. Biggest regret?

Not capturing every single Town Music moment on HD video from the beginning.

4. Moment of bliss?

Fratres with all the cellos.

5. Moment of panic?

Turning a page during the premiere of Gabriela Lena Frank's solo sonata and seeing that an entire movement was missing.

6. Artist you wish we’d been able to present?

I'll never tell!

7. Best after show meal spot?

Ba Bar on 12th Ave — consistently delicious, close to Town Hall, and open late.

8. Favorite sandwich?

The Market Grill (in Pike Place Market)! It’s a Seattle gem with great views, and I love taking guest artists there for lunch.

9. Thing you’ll miss about Seattle?

The Town Hall audience! Hopefully I'll be back often enough not to miss y'all too much!

10. Thing you’ll miss about Town Hall Seattle?

The whole team. Town Hall is truly special, and there's so much good energy with everyone there, including all of our supporters and audiences. I wish every audience listened with that much care and interest! And The Great Hall…love the sound in that room...

Click here to read Joshua’s farewell letter to the community on our blog and check out his playlist of past performances.

The post A Bittersweet Farewell: 10 Questions with Joshua Roman appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

Sarah Salcedo, who planned the event as part of her residency, explained what she was looking forward to most about the evening. "We live in an ableist society with a truly abysmal national sense of what the word 'healthcare' means. We approach disability for ourselves in our work as a deeply personal practice, but we also consider how we write these identities for those both within and outside of our communities. We write about our joy, our pain, our day to day experiences, and with every story, the practices of how we balance ourselves and our exploration of self within our work varies."

"I am a bit in disbelief that I get to talk to these writers and have this discussion. Both John and Ross have written stories that have not only made me feel seen as a disabled person but you make me want to be a better and bolder writer. When I received this residency, I was told I could create events that reflected the conversations I wanted to have in my writing, and I cannot wait to learn from and chat with these two amazing authors."

"When I asked my guests about the discussion ahead of the event:

John Wiswell wrote, 'I love normalizing various critical and underrepresented parts of life, and disabilities are among them. It's wonderful to just happen to have characters share my hearing issues, or chronic pain, or whatnot, without it being centered. But there are bigger things that need saying, and those call for stories that center the experience. Yet in writing lived experience, there is always the questioning of how much of the truth will fit within the word count and the plot.'

Ross Showalter replied, 'I see fiction as a channel of empathy, and if I could show folks what it’s like to live in this world and not be able to participate as much as you want to, then I’m inviting people to empathize with a point-of-view that, personally, I think should be given much more space. Selfishly, I think writing fiction also allows me to work through some complicated feelings regarding my own disabilities and my own state of being. All fiction is personal, in some way, in the questions we ask and the way we tell the stories, and we just have to acknowledge that it is something that can be seen objectively.' "

If you're not familiar with the writers' work, you can visit their websites below to find a full list of their stories available online.

Sarah Salcedo's website // Twitter
John Wiswell's Twitter
Ross Showalter's website // Twitter

For more information, and to get tickets to Sarah's free virtual event on 4/26, click here.

The post Disability in Fiction with Sarah Salcedo, John Wiswell, and Ross Showalter appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

Para español, haga clic aquí.

Town Hall (TH): Who were your musical influences growing up?

Kiki Valera (KV): I grew up in a musical family, heirs to the legacy of Cuban Son. We used to gather several times a year to celebrate with live music and dance. These were spontaneous reunions and at that time, we were unaware of the role my family was to play in preserving the authenticity of this musical tradition. In 1982, the musicologist Danilo Orozco was conducting an investigation on the origins of Cuban Son in the eastern region of our island and through my paternal grandmother Emilia Miranda, he discovered that he could trace the we played Cuban Son all the way back to the late 19th century. In this musical environment my main influence was the Cuban Son in its purest, simplest form. After that, I began my classical guitar studies at the Esteban Salas Conservatory in the city of Santiago de Cuba, where I had the opportunity to expand and enrich my knowledge from a theoretical point of view.

 TH: What do you love most about playing the Cuban cuatro? For those who might be unfamiliar with the instrument, how would you describe its difference from a standard guitar? 

KV: What I like the most about the Cuban cuatro is its versatility from a melodic, harmonic and rhythmic point of view. The Cuban cuatro is a mid-sized guitar with eight strings, tuned in pairs of two. It has a distinctive sound that is soft and sparkly and the extra pair of strings (as opposed to the six-stringed Cuban tres) offers me the creative freedom to improvise.

TH: Your roots are in Cuba, but today you’re living, teaching, and making music here in the Pacific Northwest. How does this region inform your music? 

KV: Coming from Cuba from a musical environment like that of my family, I have tried to preserve the traditional Cuban music style as authentically as possible. Most artists are unconsciously influenced by other currents, and I am no exception. Being surrounded by a different musical environment than the one I come from, I have really enjoyed playing with excellent musicians of other genres and attending concerts of world music, jazz, Latin jazz, salsa and rock. I can say that I feel lucky to be in the cultural atmosphere of Seattle.

TH: Has the COVID-19 pandemic changed anything about music for you? 

KV: For us musicians, interaction with the public is very important. It is a kind of necessary feedback to continue offering the best of ourselves through music. I have used this time to dedicate myself to working on new projects and remote recordings with my musician friends in other parts of the country and world. Musically speaking, COVID-19 has not changed anything in me but I think that it has changed the way we socialize in a general sense and I miss playing live concerts.

TH: What, in your opinion, are the biggest gifts of son Cubano?

KV: The best gift that Cuban Son has given us is that it has allowed us to transmit joy and above all to share with the world our cultural identity.

Cuatro preguntas con Kiki Valera

Eche un vistazo a la mente del virtuoso cubano Kiki Valera, quien reflexiona sobre sus influencias, su instrumento preferido y el arte de hacer música. ¡Asegúrese de unirse a nosotros más tarde en febrero para un concierto en vivo con Kiki Valera y su son Cubano (2/25), parte de la serie Global Rhythms de Town Hall!

Town Hall (TH): ¿Quiénes fueron tus influencias musicales mientras crecías?

Kiki Valera (KV): Crecí en una familia musical, heredera del legado del Son Cubano. Solíamos reunirnos varias veces al año para celebrar en vivo con música y baile. Estas reuniones eran espontaneas y en ese momento, desconocíamos el papel que mi familia iba a jugar en la preservación de la autenticidad de esta tradición musical. En 1982, el musicólogo Danilo Orozco estaba realizando una investigación sobre los orígenes del son cubano en la región oriental de nuestra isla y a través de mi abuela paterna Emilia Miranda, descubrió que podía rastrear el son cubano que interpretábamos hasta finales del siglo XIX. En este ambiente musical mi principal influencia fue el Son Cubano en su forma más pura y simple. Posteriormente inicié mis estudios de guitarra clásica en el Conservatorio Esteban Salas de la ciudad de Santiago de Cuba, donde tuve la oportunidad de ampliar y enriquecer mis conocimientos desde el punto de vista teórico.

TH: ¿Qué es lo que más te gusta de tocar el cuatro cubano? ¿En qué se diferencia de una guitarra estándar?

KV:  Lo que más me gusta del cuatro cubano es su versatilidad desde un punto de vista melódico, armónico y rítmico. El cuatro cubano es una guitarra de tamaño mediano con ocho cuerdas, afinada en pares de dos. Tiene un sonido distintivo que es suave y brillante y el par de cuerdas extra (a diferencia del tres cubano de seis cuerdas) me ofrece la libertad creativa para improvisar.

TH: Tus raíces están en Cuba, pero hoy vives, enseñas y haces música aquí en el noroeste del Pacífico. ¿Cómo influye esta región en tu música?

KV: Viniendo de Cuba y de un ambiente musical como el de mi familia, he tratado de preservar el estilo de la música tradicional cubana de la manera más auténtica posible. La mayoría de los artistas están inconscientemente influenciados por otras corrientes y yo no soy una excepción. Al estar rodeado de un ambiente musical diferente al del que vengo, he disfrutado mucho tocando con excelentes músicos de otros géneros y asistiendo a conciertos de world music, jazz, latin jazz, salsa y rock. Puedo decir que me siento afortunado de estar en el ambiente cultural de Seattle.

TH: ¿La pandemia de COVID-19 ha cambiado algo sobre la música para ti?

KV:  Para nosotros los músicos, la interacción con el público es muy importante. Es una especie de retroalimentación necesaria para seguir ofreciendo lo mejor de nosotros a través de la música. He aprovechado este tiempo para dedicarme a trabajar en nuevos proyectos y grabaciones remotas con mis amigos músicos en otras partes del país y del mundo. Musicalmente hablando, COVID-19 no ha cambiado nada en mí, pero creo que ha cambiado la forma en que socializamos en sentido general y extraño tocar conciertos en vivo.

TH: A su juicio, ¿cuáles son los mayores dones del son Cubano?

KV: El mejor regalo que nos ha dado el Son Cubano es que nos ha permitido transmitir alegría y sobre todo compartir con el mundo nuestra identidad cultural.

The post Five Questions with Kiki Valera appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

Town Hall Seattle is pleased to introduce our Fall 2021 Podcast Artist-in-Residence, Samantha Allen. Samantha is the author of Patricia Wants to Cuddle and the Lambda Literary Award finalist Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. She's also a GLAAD Award-winning journalist, and her writing has been published by The New York Times, Rolling Stone, CNN, and more.

As Town Hall's Artist-in Residence, Samantha examines the intertwined human-animal history of Western Washington through the lens of six wondrous, wild things. The result of her extensive research and interviews culminates in a fascinating 6-part podcast series, Beasts of Seattle. We took a moment to talk with Samantha to learn a little more about the series, Seattle's unique ecosystems, and how she really feels about Bigfoot.

Town Hall: How did you start to conceptualize Beasts of Seattle? What did that process look like?

Samantha Allen: I think the seed for the series was probably planted when I saw the salmon run at Pipers Creek in Carkeek Park the very first autumn I lived here. What an incredible thing to be able to watch amid an urban environment! We’re a city that values green space, that loves nature, that takes pride in our wildlife — and yet the longer I’ve lived here, the more I’ve realized how precarious our beloved creatures are. Hence the series!

TH: The series covers six pretty iconic animals, but are there any creatures you wish could've been included? Which ones didn’t make the cut?

SA: Oh, gosh! I was tempted to choose either squirrels or raccoons — arguably our two most famous “nuisance animals,” as they’re sometimes called. I also thought about picking cougars because of how plentiful they are in Washington and because of how often they’re seen in residential areas. Earlier this year, people thought they saw a cougar in Discovery Park but state officials said it was probably something else. It would have been nice to have a land mammal on the list — well, besides Bigfoot, of course.

TH: How did you decide who to interview for each animal that’s discussed in the series? 

SA: While I’m sure I could have gleaned a lot from strictly interviewing conservationists, I wanted to talk to an array of folks who could each offer a unique lens on the creature in question. That’s why I’m interviewing the artist behind a steel salmon installation in Olympia, for example, and a working dog photographer. I put on my journalistic research cap and tried to assemble the most interesting and eclectic group of interviewees I could find for each episode.

TH: What do you think it is that makes Seattle’s creatures so iconic and fascinating to both locals and folks from outside the region? 

SA: Anyone who visits this city, even for a day, is blown away by its beauty — especially once they realize it’s not constantly downpouring here like it is in the movies. You’ve got the Olympics on one side, the Cascades on the other, and water all around. We’re the biggest city in the country that’s built on an isthmus. I think we’re so powerfully situated in nature, and surrounded by trees, that we’ve been able to build up this reputation as a wild, wonderful place. But unless we take care of our environment, we’ll be just another city — and I’d like for us to stay unique.

TH: What’s one of the most surprising things you’ve encountered while working on the series so far? 

SA: I knew that orca whales were threatened by a lack of salmon and by water pollution, but I didn’t know quite how badly noise pollution impacted them until I talked with Orca: Shared Waters, Shared Home author Lynda V. Mapes. Killer whales hunt with echolocation so if there are noisy propellers nearby, they can’t hunt. They’re apex predators, kings and queens of the ocean, but a loud boat can essentially ruin their ability to catch prey.

TH: What does exploring these creatures teach us about where we live and how to interact with the world around us?

A: At a minimum, it’s a valuable exercise to see the world through the eyes of the eponymous beasts. At best, though, it can encourage us to be more responsible stewards of the environment and to remember that we live in an interconnected network of animal life. There’s a selfish motivation here, too: The kind of world in which salmon thrive and the orca swim free is a better world for us, as well. We need to care for our creatures if we want a habitable planet.

TH: Which animal from the series would you like to study and learn about more?

SA: Of the animals in the series, I probably knew the most about sea otters and salmon in advance. But I’d like to learn more about crows. That’s why I’m glad Dr. John Marzluff is joining me for the live crow finale! I hadn’t really spared a thought for any corvid before I started researching for that episode. I see them everywhere and I wondered once why they were cawing so much in Leschi Park, but apart from that, I didn’t pay them much mind. Come to find out, they’re wildly smart and endlessly fascinating.

TH: If you had to get one of the animals from the series tattooed on your body, which one would you choose?

SA: Bold of you to assume I don’t already have a sea otter tattoo! But you’re right, I don’t have any animal ink yet. If I had to choose, it’d have to be the sea otter. Just look at their little faces! I wish I were goth enough to rock a crow tattoo, but I’m a big softie at heart.

TH: Who would you love to listen to this podcast?

SA: Anyone who wants to think about our region from a fresh perspective. I think in an election year, we’re going to be talking a lot about some very important and timely issues affecting Seattle, and I’m glad those conversations are happening. I think my hope is that amid that essential dialogue, Beasts of Seattle can remind us of the long view of our history and our future in this place. We’re nothing without our nature.

TH: Bigfoot believer: yes or no?

SA: To quote Fox Mulder, I want to believe.

The Beasts of Seattle series kicks off with a fascinating dive into the world of the iconic salmon. Listen in here!

Learn more about the Residency Program at Town Hall Seattle and explore work by past Artists-in-Residence here.

The post An Interview with Fall ’21 Podcast Artist-in-Residence Samantha Allen appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

Joshua Roman, Town Music’s Artistic Director, has spent much time in quarantine thinking about what a season of concerts can be without a concert hall for everyone to gather in. He sat down with correspondent Jonathan Shipley to discuss what it means to be a curator in this day and age and what silver linings there may be in a pandemic.

The post Town Music | A Conversation with Artistic Director Joshua Roman appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

Abbs will be streaming a Town Hall discussion of The Joyce Girl on 6/9/2020. To preface the conversation, she spoke with Town Hall’s Alexander Eby about the life of Lucia, what it means to be a self-taught writer, and the amazing but overlooked artists who Abbs finds inspiring.

AE: Can you tell us a bit about The Joyce Girl?

AA: It’s a fictional re-working of a critical period in the life of the only daughter of James Joyce (the Irish author of the great modernist novel, Ulysses), Lucia Joyce. The novel is deeply researched, but all of Lucia’s letters, medical notes, diaries were destroyed, so there was very little of her left. During this period—1928 to 1934—she lived with her family in Paris where she was training to be a dancer. She was supposed to be a very good dancer and had performed in dance tours in Italy and Belgium as well as at various theatres in Paris. But during this time she stopped dancing, and I wanted to understand why she had given up something she loved. At the same time her father was grappling with his final book, Finnegans Wake, which took 17 years to write. Lucia was also believed to have had an affair with Samuel Beckett at this time, and then with Alexander Calder, who became her drawing teacher when she gave up dance. Later on, she told other people she had been engaged to each of them.

AE: How much of the story is biographical and how much is fiction? Why did you choose a mixture of the two, rather than fully in a biography format?

AA: Lucia is already the subject of a biography written by a Joyce scholar, and although I relied heavily on it, the book is constrained by the absence of material in Lucia’s voice. No new material has come to light, so I felt wary about writing a second biography. I felt her story lent itself to a fictional re-telling where I could slip beneath her skin and imagine her experience—at the centre of an oddly dysfunctional exiled family but in the wild excitement of Paris at its creative apotheosis. All the characters are based on real people and all the main events of the novel actually took place, so the biographical facts acted as my scaffolding leaving me free to imagine Lucia’s thoughts, feelings and responses.

AE: What was it like to write the characters of James Joyce, Samuel Beckett, and Carl Jung? How did that experience compare to writing Lucia, particularly as a figure whose personal character is likely less well-known but is more central to this story?

AA: Lucia was the hardest character to write. Not only had her own letters and diaries been destroyed but so had hundreds of letters that mentioned her or discussed her predicament. I felt as though I was looking for her through an endless telescope. I had quite a few photographs and one snippet of autobiography that I used to look at in a London archive, but it was hard to fathom her from so little. Joyce, Beckett and Jung have tens of biographies between them, as well as collected letters, interviews, voice recordings and numerous scholarly works. I read four biographies of Beckett, and hundreds of his letters, as well as attending an entire season of his plays, going to something every day for a month. I had a much clearer sense of their characters, their foibles, their likes and dislikes.

Lucia came to me in that strange liminal time between wake and sleep. It sounds weird, but in those few minutes I found a version of her—my version.

AE: Many would consider James Joyce and Samuel Beckett to be household names—yet not Lucia Joyce. Why do we have so few details about her life? What initially drew you to tell Lucia’s story—and what draws you to continue that discussion today?

AA: Yes, Joyce and Beckett are household names, as is Carl Jung—who she was sent to in 1934 as she became more and more fragile. This juxtaposition made me uncomfortable—the way the men in her life had become legendary figures while she had been erased from history, barely a footnote in most scholarly works on Joyce. There was considerable evidence that Joyce had been hugely influenced by Lucia, and inspired by her dancing. References to it appear throughout Finnegans Wake. I felt this needed acknowledging. I was indignant at the attempts to wipe out all trace of her. But the stigma of mental illness was very strong then. Lucia’s story is really about what happens when you live in the shadow of another person, what happens when your own creativity is thwarted, and the dark underbelly of jazz-age Paris. There was an entire community of extraordinary dancers (mostly women) in Paris at the time, most of whom have been forgotten. We still think of 1920s Paris as being very much the playground of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Joyce, Picasso. But there were just as many women trying to live in a new, more emancipated way. I’d like to see them all resurrected.

AE: How does your own work as a dancer compare with Lucia’s point of view? When researching Lucia's life, did you find that you and she had any similar experiences from working in that field?

AA: I’d done some dance before but not the freeform modern dance that Lucia trained in. So I tracked down someone who had trained with the same woman as Lucia. She was nearly 90 and she introduced me to a group of dancers (most of them very elderly!) and a teacher who taught me to dance the same method. It’s called the Margaret Morris Method (Margaret Morris was the name of the woman who devised this style of dance) and it’s still going in some parts of the world. It’s a very expressive form of movement, with lots of improvisation. I loved it, and it gave me an immediate understanding of how Lucia must have felt when she danced. It’s nothing like ballet. It’s very free, very creative. It was Lucia’s voice, I realized. She spoke through her body while her father spoke through words.

AE: You mentioned that Lucia served as her father’s muse for Finnegans Wake. Can you elaborate on this, based on your research about their lives and relationship? 

AA: Joyce attended all Lucia’s performances and there are accounts of her dancing in his study while he wrote. Finnegans Wake is full of references to dance and when she was initially hospitalized he visited her every Sunday and they danced together. Later, Lucia said that all the bits in Finnegans Wake about dance, love and madness were about her. Dance seemed to be how they communicated when words failed them, it seemed to be a bond between them. What struck me was how they were both breaking boundaries. He was writing a book about the ‘dark night of the soul’ using language as it had never been used before (or since) and she was dancing using movement as it had never been seen before. Her dance was as radical as his writing.

AE: What do you think of the concept of “the muse” in general—as a typically feminine figure that’s been woven into our concept of authorship in classical and contemporary literature? Do you see the archetype as empowering? Damaging?

AA: The notion of the muse (usually female, often supine) seems quaintly old-fashioned now, thank goodness! It’s a notion that requires a person to be both subject and object, making it inherently problematic. I find it hard to see the traditional muse as anything other than passive and possessed. On the other hand, in the past being a ‘muse’ offered women the chance to do something a little more interesting than they might otherwise have done and to have exposure to a circle of artists and writers. So I’m reluctant to write them off. All too often they were aspiring artists themselves. They frequently had an enormous impact on the works they inspired, but received no credit for this. This is what bothers me—how little agency they seem to have had and how little credit they received.

Does anyone call themselves a muse now?

AE: You’ve famously decided against formal writing courses and MA programs, instead building your own curriculum and structure. How long did it take you to figure out what worked for you? How do you keep yourself motivated?

AA: I had too many family commitments to do a course, although I would dearly have loved the support network that comes with doing a Creative Writing Masters! Instead I bought some books and devised some creative writing exercises that I did whenever I was stuck. And I read like crazy, copying out lines and paragraphs and then dismantling them so I could better understand the author’s craft. I also edited and rewrote, over and over. I was kept motivated by my rage at how Lucia had been treated. Whenever I stalled (which was often), I took out a photograph of Lucia in the mental hospital where she died, and was re-fuelled with anger. Then I got back to work.

I think you need to be comfortable with a certain amount of chaos, uncertainty and isolation if you take this route. COVID-19 lockdown is a good dry run!

AE: Who are some female writers and artists from history who inspire you, but who have been overlooked or overshadowed in their time? Who are the female artists and authors who inspire you today?

AA: Oh so many…where to start? Overlooked…all the best-selling female poets of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many women wrote and published hugely popular poetry, but very little made it into the cannon. It frequently lacks the muscular style of their male counterparts but why do we rate muscular more highly than emotional? Letitia Landon is my current favourite—she wrote under the initials L.E.L and died tragically at the age of 36. I’ve also been researching and writing about a painter called Gwen John who also worked in 1920s Paris but was completely overshadowed by her brother, Augustus John.

Finally, I’ve spent much of lockdown looking at the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe—all that open space has helped keep me sane in my London house—and reading Hilary Mantel, one of the best historical novelists writing today (in my view!).

Annabel Abbs will be streaming a Town Hall conversation about her book The Joyce Girl on 6/9/2020.

The post Who Was The Joyce Girl? A Conversation with Annabel Abbs appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.

In a typical Town Hall season, we select Artists or Scholars in Residence and give them the literal keys to the building so they can engage with our programs and develop original events for the community. This year, in consideration of the current global crisis, we're altering our Residency platform to present a podcast residency.

In partnership with South Seattle Emerald, Town Hall presents Life on the Margins. Co-hosts Marcus Harrison Green, Enrique Cerna, and Jini Palmer share stories not just about marginalized communities, but from within, and alongside them. In each bi-weekly installment of this residency podcast, they engage with the narratives and experiences of our city, sharing them more widely with the Town Hall community.

Alexander Eby: Back in 2017 you served as Town Hall’s Scholar In Residence. What’s got you excited to be working with Town Hall again?

Marcus Harrison Green: It's great, to be honest with you I feel almost as if I never left. Town Hall is such a central hub of the city when it comes to civic engagement, when it comes to featuring  public intellectuals, provisions of space for communities to come to and gather together and feel as if they are a part of the fabric of the city. Even after I left as the Scholar In Residence I would still go and participate in talks, I would go to and attend talks that were very insightful life affirming and challenging. And, well I'm not a really religious person, but I imagine it’s like the feeling of having worked at a church for a while as a youth minister or what have you, and then shifting to becoming a congregant. So even though I wasn't necessarily there in an official capacity anymore, I was certainly there in intellectual or an emotional one. So it's almost as if I never left.

I think the Beach Boys said something like this once, trying to create an experience where people can go from it, but can never leave it. And that’s really what Town Hall is to me. Even though I’ve gone from the physical space, it stays with you. It makes an indelible imprint upon you.

AE: Can you tell me a bit about Life On The Margins? What inspired this project?

MHG: I think for us—myself and my co-hosts Enrique Cerna and Jini Palmer—I think like anyone, we’re all consumers of media, whether that's broadcast or printed or digital. For us, this podcast came about because we were seeing a need that wasn’t met, and conversations that weren’t being had with any regularity on a lot of mainstream platforms. We really wanted to hone in on what’s been going on with marginalized communities, on their stories. Our city and county, certainly before the coronavirus, have been seeing this shift and reconfiguration. And even now I think it’s more important when you have this pandemic that we’re all experiencing, and the potential for certain communities, especially communities of color, to be disproportionately hurt. 

I know that the early local numbers don’t quite match to what’s been going on nationally—I think in Louisiana, 70% of the deaths that have been recorded are African-America, and there’s been a huge surge of COVID cases in the Latino community. If these numbers are any indication, it’ll be communities of color who will be hurt the most. And I think that even though we are empathizing with and featuring the stories of communities of color,  this is still something that affects people who are within our community, within the fabric of Seattle and King County. These are stories that affect us all, so we’re just trying to bring some light where darkness once was.

AE: With the quarantine directly affecting everyone’s lives right now, the first episode of Life On The Margins is very much reflective of this moment in time. What kind of direction do you hope to take the show in future episodes? 

MHG: We definitely want to make this a longer-running podcast series, and this is just season 1. We felt that, given the current state of the world, that would certainly be a good topic to explore in this 6-episode run. So that will be the thrust of it for the first few episodes, but obviously life is large, so we want to try to highlight other things that are going on. And we’re definitely acknowledging that people are experiencing some COVID fatigue, shall we say, and many folks want to take their minds off of what’s going on around them. 

AE: I’m curious about your thoughts on this—the idea of self-isolation and quarantine as a sort of blueprint for collective action. Once the quarantines are lifted, how can we use this shared experience to motivate ourselves and others to show up for other causes and make change in other parts of society?

MHG: We keep hearing this mantra repeatedly right now, “we’re all in this together.” One of the things this time of quarantine has given us is to be somewhat introspective and contemplative. I think that’s allowed people to interrogate and examine what that actually means, for all of us to be in this together. What does that look like in practice? Lots of people are scanning fundraising pages for different organizations and thinking about their $1200 stimulus check, thinking maybe they don’t necessarily need all of it. I know this is all indefinite, but I think when all of this is over it will have shown us that if we can come together in the worst of times, why can’t we in the best of times? 

I think we’re going to see an awakening, an acknowledgement of other people’s humanity and empathy. I people on my daily walk, people who used to hurry to pass you by—now their cadence is slower and more deliberate, and they actually wave and say hi. This is a period where we can use this time to look within ourselves and learn to extend our locus of concern to other people.

AE: What’s on your quarantine reading list? 

MHG: Right now it’s a lot of the Stoics. I’m in the middle of reading Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. It poses a question a question to me that’s applicable not just to this time period but to life in general, which challenges me to wake up every morning and face this strangeness and uncertainty and ask myself “how do I want to be remembered in this time, and how do I want to remember myself in this time?” Was I a better friend, a better son, a better roommate? Did I cultivate resilience? Was I kind, was I generous? Was I somebody who I was proud to be? And I think anything that can challenge you day by day to be a person who’s better because they’ve endured the worst. I know it’s a 3000-year-old text, but that still resonated with me.

I’ve also been reading How To Be An Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi, Nickel And Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. Then there’s Winners Take All by Anand Giridharadas, and I’m about to start Pleasure Activism by Adrienne Maree Brown—I’m trying to knock out about one a week. 

AE: Who do you have lined up for future guests on the show?

MHG: We’re definitely trying to get a range of people, to strike a balance between the sort of well-known figures and everyday people, if you will. We’ll certainly have a mixture. At the end of the day, what we sought out with our guests was people who had an interesting story, or an interesting take or stance to share with our listenership. We do have Luis Rodriguez coming up actually on the next episode. He and his wife Leona are very prominent because of their famed and venerable coffee shop called The Station coffee house, which is continuing to help serve people in need and bring people together.

AE: What’s one message you want to send to listeners of Life On The Margins, and to Seattle in general? 

MHG: I would say that we have an opportunity here to really sit still and really examine life as it is, and ask if we want it to continue to be this way. I think it’s time to really focus on what matters, and to maybe rethink things. We’re always in this frenzy of life, we barely have time to think because we always have to move on to the next thing and the next thing after that. And now we have the time to not take things for granted—just saying hello in a coffee shop, sending a message to a loved one expressing that you care. This is the kind of time where we can value life more than we have done and cherish it more than we have done. How do we want to show up in this world today, how do I want to be present, what do I want to take away? That’s something we can do now, and I hope it’s something we can bring forward into the future.

Listen to Marcus Harrison Green, in conversation with Jini Palmer and Enrique Cerna plus special guests, every two weeks with new episodes of Life On The Margins! 

The post Shouting From The Margins appeared first on Town Hall Seattle.