Transcript: FRANCESCA LIA BLOCK on Finding Rhythm Through Word /323
Ayana Young Hello and welcome to For The Wild podcast, I'm Ayana Young. Today I'm speaking with Francesca Lia Block.
Francesca Lia Block Magic, like love, you know, it is a practice, they're all one thing to me, frankly, but it is a practice and it takes a lot of work and daily diligence to commit to them. And we're being pulled, I mean, I'm constantly being pulled away, not just by the things I have to do to survive, but also the things that I don't have to do that somehow seduce me into thinking that I need them to survive.
Ayana Young Francesca Lia Block, M.F.A., is the author of more than twenty-five books of fiction, non-fiction, short stories and poetry, and has written screenplay adaptations of her work. She received the Spectrum Award, the Phoenix Award, the ALA Rainbow Award and the 2005 Margaret A. Edwards Lifetime Achievement Award, as well as other citations from the American Library Association and from the New York Times Book Review, School Library Journal and Publisher’s Weekly. Oh, Francesca, thank you so much for being with us today, I'm really looking forward to slowing down and having a really good and deep conversation with you.
Francesca Lia Block Thank you so much for having me. I'm really honored to be on this program.
Ayana Young I'm honored and appreciate your time, and I just feel really drawn to your work because I feel like so much of it really delicately balances the beauties and joys of life with the absolute pain and difficulties that come along with it. So as we open up this conversation, I, I'd really love to hear more about how you cultivate this balance and speak honestly, to our confusing human existence.
Francesca Lia Block It's funny, I was just thinking about this topic before this a little earlier this morning, when I drive across town, I go into the east side a lot more lately, and every block, I'm feeling one or the other of those emotions, like this sky with the pink clouds is making me want to cry, and then these people living under the bridge are making you want to cry in a different way, you know, and it's always like that. I'm feeling both of those things almost all the time. And I remember having that since I was a child, except during the times when I've sort of numbed out and it's become too overwhelming to feel either of those things. But most of my life, I think, fortunately, I've been able to stay in touch with that, and it can be really challenging, but I think really rewarding as an artist and also just as a person.
Ayana Young Yeah. Gosh, I'm thinking about so many of your book reviews that I read in preparing for this conversation, and also there is something that you wrote on Twitter where you say, "You were born to make beauty in the slaughterhouse of the world. You were born to toil, you were born to love, offer yourself up to the light of the golden eye of the sun, to the silver mouth of the moon, to the gods and goddesses of love. Loss is inevitable, but do not fear it." I really love that. There's so much I could ask about this quote but definitely something coming to me, and please share more as it comes to you, but how do we remember to center beauty in our understanding of the world?
Francesca Lia Block I think just the consciousness to look for it because when you start looking for it, it is everywhere. At least it is in many of our privileged lives, but I think nature provides it, always, for everyone. Certainly. And one another right? Our interpersonal relationships. So I think it's just awareness of it. I think as a writer, I'm constantly trying to keep a record of it for the purpose of my work because I want it to be the inspiration you know, I use it as inspiration. But of course it also then feeds my life because I am paying attention. Sometimes when it's hard to pay attention and I have the purpose of creating art, it brings me back to that. So I think not that you have to be an artist to do it, but whatever practice, whether it's taking pictures to remember, whether it's keeping journals, whether it's sharing with your friends, you know, just keeping a record as a reminder of what exists around us. And certainly art too, through music I feel it, through visual art I feel it, through books. The quote that you mentioned was inspired by the Egyptian Book of the Dead in this really beautiful translation, which I can send you the name of. I was researching that for the novel House of Hearts, and then I realized that the Egyptian Book of the Dead is full of all my spiritual beliefs that I didn't even know were so specifically there. And that quote is a lot from that.
Ayana Young Yeah, that's something I've yet to dive into, but I have had friends that have been really drawn to that book and have created entire practices and life ways based from it. So I know it's really powerful. So thank you, that's now on the list. It's still winter, that's a really good time to get into it. It brings up a good point for me: how can literature give us permission to feel and experience beyond what we would normally find in the confines of our daily lives? And how might this allow us to explore ourselves, you know, the world around us more deeply?
Francesca Lia Block I think, again, because of my work, I'm reading a lot to help my students, to strengthen my own work, and looking at it through the lens of craft. But of course, what is really amazing about these books, it's often the themes. And when we revisit some of the great classic books, we might think, well, you know, it's a classic, so therefore, is it really going to be relevant? And then you go back, and you see these lessons in these books. I only in the last maybe five years, I believe, read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison. And I somehow missed it growing up and I thought, every single one of my students needs to read and we read this, it is so amazingly relevant for today. And craft wise, it's perfect. It's a perfect creation. So I don't know if I answered your question exactly, but I know that there is so much to be learned from the books that you love. And also to just allow yourself to love what you love and do a deep dive into it. And then to understand why, so that as an artist, you can learn from it and strengthen your own work ideally.
Ayana Young Yeah, it's almost like apprenticing with the teachers, whether it's our teachers, our elders, like folks that we respect, and I wonder where that desire or practice of apprenticeship has gone, because I really think about that a lot with children I know in my community and how our education has shifted so much, and how there were times in our human history where we really practiced and apprenticed and honed skills for years, and how that shaped us and our human experience and our relationships and our craft. I really appreciate thinking about that, that when we read we're almost taking time to be with mentors in a sense and that's really beautiful.
Francesca Lia Block I love the way you're phrasing it and I think that certainly in The Thorn Necklace, which is my memoir and craft book, I talk about finding a mentor as one of the principles of writing, for how to be a writer in the world, for me personally. And then I talked about how I was really fortunate. I have to have it in my dad, but a lot of people might not have that. There may be a teacher, but you might not have that, but yes I talk about it in the books, it's right there in the book. I've been lucky to be a teacher to have, I've worked with some of my students for over ten years, and not only is it really, hopefully helpful to them, I find for myself, it's, I learn so much about the craft by teaching the craft, you know, and again, I'm turning to the books to deconstruct it and help demystify some of this magic. I mean, it's still magical, but to try to understand how this magic is done. So I really feel perhaps in this world of mentoring writers, that that model exists in a nice way. So I feel really fortunate to have that.
Ayana Young Yes, speaking of The Thorn Necklace, which really, I think, focused on the power of creative process and the healing journey. I'm wondering about your own journey, and how it's evolved in your years as a writer, and what magic the written word contains for healing from varying perspectives of life.
Francesca Lia Block I mean, it's certainly helped me profoundly, I really would say, it sounds a little dramatic, but I do feel it sort of saved my life or saved my sanity. I mean, I always went to writing as a way to help calm my anxiety, understand the world, connect to others, as I became published, it was a lot easier to actually connect to others through it. And I feel extremely lucky for that. The bonds that have developed through my writing, most of my relationships actually, started through someone either reading my work, or a student, or a friend who, you know, I share work with, went to school with, teachers of mine. So it's been healing in so many ways, both the internal process of just getting the story down, and then the more external process of sharing it and connecting, and hopefully helping someone else, I've had that experience too, of people who have been in really painful circumstances and have felt heard or understood, there's something that they've read maybe that I've written. I read a book that I love. I think you'd really like it if you have not read it called The Midnight Disease and it's about hypergraphia and this woman who had, she's a neurologist and she had a terrible trauma and couldn't stop writing. And later, when she healed some from it, she wrote a book based on these sort of endless writings covering the pages and pages sort of ramblings, in a way, but it turned into this book on the science of, you know the way that writing actually changes brain chemistry, and can be a source of healing. They did a study on Holocaust survivors and they said that the two things that helped were writing, telling their story, rather, and massage, so both things that get something out of the body in a way, and I think writing is, is a form of that too, or has been for me.
Ayana Young I'm kind of drawn to, as we speak about healing, also speaking about pleasure and I really love in your books that they offer these pathways to give ourselves permission to be present and to find pleasure within our environments and our inner selves. So I'm interested in the role of pleasure both within your books for the characters, and within the act of reading and imagining itself.
Francesca Lia Block I know that I get a lot of pleasure writing about my characters experiencing pleasure. So I've always just done that for myself, and hopefully that has translated. I tell my students write about the things that you're obsessed with and don't worry if there's something that you think is insignificant, because if you're passionate about the basmati rice, the doll, you know, ginger, whatever it might be it and you write about it with specificity and passionate detail, the reader is going to have a visceral response and they are going to be able to derive pleasure out of it too. So, I really tried to do that. And when I was very young, I went to hear the band X play, and I remember was, you know, late teens, I remember watching the people move to the music and thinking, I want to write something that makes people feel viscerally the way music makes me feel, because no other art form gets into my body in that same way. And so that's another motivation for me when I'm working, it's how can I make someone else feel, and not always just pleasure, sometimes it is pain, but feel that in a visceral way, what I'm feeling maybe, maybe selfishly, to make me feel less alone, but also, hopefully to give them some things, some kind of a gift to, and then maybe they are, you know, if they are also writers, they might think about ways to go deep into their own experience to translate it so that someone else can feel and experience that. And then that, of course, I think empathy starts there.
Ayana Young I really see the wisdom in this because I think when people are passionate and in love and present with what they're working on, speaking to, writing on, I know I get drawn in. I mean, as soon as you started speaking about rice, dolls, and ginger I was like, oh, yeah, like if somebody were really passionately writing about that, I'd want to know more. And it's not maybe something that would be my go to somebody who said, "Well, what are your interests?" Maybe I wouldn't say, but if somebody were really into that, I'd be like, yeah. And I think there's so much beauty in that itself because, in a sense, it's also taken out of the capitalist model of how do we find joy? Or you know, it's like finding our interest again, or I don't know if that's the way to say it, but it doesn't cost us anything, to feel passionately, to write passionately, to share passionately with what we're drawn to in this world. And I think that actually makes us healthier humans. It revitalizes our relationships with ourselves and others. And it's almost a practice of gratitude as well. Because when we're focusing on love and what we're passionate about, we're in a creative, grateful state.
Francesca Lia Block Absolutely, yes.
Ayana Young Yeah. I'm not necessarily a writer, but now like, wow, where's my journal, because this seems like something that would actually uplift me throughout the day and focus my mind. I was just speaking with somebody about mental hygiene and it's really easy. I know, for me personally, to start feeding, whether it's negative thoughts or anxious thoughts, or just things that aren't necessarily reality, but I can really make them reality in my mind. And then I live by that. And one of my mentors was like, "Okay, Ayana like mental hygiene. You need to reel this one back in." And so again, it connects to what you're saying for me, because when we're in these practices of passion, love, gratitude, it is mental hygiene, we are cleaning up the corners of our mind, and we're re-focusing ourselves on things that bring us life, rather than everything else that can just seep into us so easily. You know, it's not hard now, especially with all the media and just all the emotional pain that so many of us feel. I think it's really easy to get bogged down by fears and stresses and all that stuff. So yeah, I'm feeling very grateful to be reminded of these practices, because I think it's also empowering, like, we don't need to be stuck. It's another way to like, come back to the pleasure and the beauty of life and yeah, so thank you.
Francesca Lia Block No, thank you. No, and it's true. It's thinking about being in the flow of something, which isn't always easy to get into the flow, but when I am writing, when I am dancing, when I am listening to music, when I am teaching or talking about writing with someone else, walking in nature, you know, with my dogs, there's no cost to those things and they are so completely consuming for me that it pushes the anxiety away in this really powerful way without trying to force positivity, you know I think I'm not good at saying well just see the bright side, you know the more I do that, the more I'll sort of see the dark side, but if I do something actively engaged with the world actively, that's when I can start feeling so much better. So it's interesting you bring up capitalism in the sense that as you say, these aren't things that we have to depend on that model for, in the same way, mostly so a good reminder for for me too, because it is so easy and just being with people you love really that's the number one thing without phones around.
Ayana Young Yeah, I wonder, there's an interview you did with Sex Magic Podcast, and you said, "The books make me aware of what I need to learn." And I'm wondering how does the process of reflection and refraction through storytelling, alter both the listener and the storyteller?
Francesca Lia Block Nicely said. So I think when I set out to write a book, I don't necessarily know why I'm compelled to write it. I don't start with the theme, in other words, and most of my students don't seem to start with the theme. And when I teach a class, I bring up the theme at the end. And I say write down what are the things that you believe in? If you thought you were to die tomorrow, what would you want people to know that you believed about the world? And you can write them as cliches, it's just for the meaning as opposed to the way you say it, although many of them say very original, beautiful things. And then I say is that in your book? And they'll look back and say "oh, it is" or "no, it's not, but I could put it in more." So I think these books teach us, I think art teaches us what you know what it is, at least for me, I need to understand or learn. When I wrote House of Cards, I didn't understand what it was, I knew there was a myth that I was very drawn to. The character emerged sort of full blown in my head one day in response to the way another book ended, and that I had written in a very tragic way. And this character came to avenge that character. And I had these elements, I knew it was going to be set in the Salton Sea. That's all I knew. And I discovered the story as I went, and I discovered ultimately, that story was the search for love, but not as much the romantic love that's depicted, but finding the self and putting the self back together. So that was something that I had to, you know, wander through the desert for a long time to discover. Interestingly, this is a little bit of a tangent but my beloved therapist of many years speaking of mentors, passed away, got very sick and passed away a few years ago, and I went I was having trouble going to see anyone else because just she was such my soul mate, you know, mentor, and I found a woman I liked. And I still wasn't sure because it was just hard to attach again. But I was telling her about my book and or no, I'm sorry, I wasn't even talking about my book. I was talking about what was going on in my life at the time. And she said, it sounds like you're wandering in a desert, like so thirsty for this love. And I started laughing and I said "Do you know, that's the book I'm basically writing?" You know, it is that search in the desert. So synchronicities, like that also sort of validate, that's another topic, but I feel like I'm on the right path when I have that. So anyway, that goes way, way off topic, but to your point about what was it?
Ayana Young No, it's good I like when the stream of consciousness takes over, and we just are led by what we're being. Yeah, what we're being--
Francesca Lia Block I'm sorry, theme that’s what it was.
Ayana Young Yeah no, I like when that happens. We just get taken by the stream. But I want to think about the importance of magic and enchantment in a world that is rapidly attempting to create uniform experiences of reality and I see as social media grows, it seems that we are often swapping imagination for simple stimulation, and I wonder about the long term impacts of there being less reading, less imagination, I think less magic because of the ubiquity of social media and our phones.
Francesca Lia Block Yes, and I think that's, in the last few years, I've been really developing a magic practice and I haven't thought of it as specifically to counter that. But I think that makes perfect sense. This is something that I do with collage and candles, and water, glass, and the moon, and these like sort of poems, drawings, not for sharing my art but for my own spiritual practice and healing. And zero phones and zero, you know, posts and photos of myself or whatever the stuff that we do, I don't know anyway, so I think that magic, like love, you know, it is a practice, and they're all one thing to me, frankly. But it is a practice, and it takes a lot of work and daily diligence to commit to them. And we're being pulled, I mean, I'm constantly being pulled away, not just by the things I have to do to survive, but also the things that I don't have to do, that somehow seduce me into thinking that I need them to survive. So I think it's this interest in spirituality, and mysticism, and magic, and Tarot, astrology, that, you know, is partly being distributed through the internet, which is great, right? We have access to that in different ways. Some of my friends do that kind of work and reach people, broadly, but also to find it away from that in a concrete way, in real time and space.
Ayana Young Yeah, I guess following this thread is, it seems that reading and free thought are seen as threats to the current system of power, which I guess really isn't anything new when thinking back in history, but you know, now I'm thinking about so many book bans and school districts across the United States, you know, for instance, and I'm just wondering, what is it about the power of imagination and transportation that makes it so threatening to these vast systems of power?
Francesca Lia Block You know, I love it when my students talk a lot about trigger warnings, right? And, of course, I don't force anyone to read anything that makes them feel that way. But I stop and I say, just think about this fact, these are words on a page. That's all they are, but they're making us feel this, how potent that is, you know, whether you choose to read them or not, whether it's too much for your mental state at the time, but just the fact that these words are doing this, that's power. So it would make sense to me that, you know, we're being distracted from some of that, in order to not fight back against some of this stuff that's happening. And I think, yeah, I do notice a huge difference, less people reading, but storytelling is survival. It's how we survive ourselves. But it's also how we help others survive. You know, the, there's a book called Wired for Story by Lisa Cron, she just talks about the way storytelling evolved to keep us alive, because when you're sitting around the campfire talking about how you escaped the dinosaur, you know, you're not just engaging somebody in in a way that takes their mind off things, you're actually showing them how to survive that dinosaur, you know, that, whatever it might be, whatever that symbolizes now.
Ayana Young I want to talk more about this idea of survival and there was a quote from your recent interview in the Daily Mail where you say, "I think that those two things, the survival aspect, and the craft aspect are actually connected, that another thing that I teach in order to learn the message of the story, in order to survive, one needs a structure that helps the reader identify with the character to go on the journey of the story and learn the message of the story." And maybe the second part of that is thinking about the value of myths and archetypes as profound messages for survival, and in that same interview, you say, "I feel that these stories give us a template on how to survive in the world in a way, that's why they've survived so long. Even if we don't understand why we are drawn to the story, we may still feel it resonates and give us some kind of guidance. I love them for that." So thinking about your work, continuing this legacy of myth, and how do you connect it to the greater human project of survival?
Francesca Lia Block I think that I like those quotes, because I sound much more articulate than I feel now about it. But let me think if I can add anything to that, thank you for sharing them. I think that as I said, with House of Hearts, I didn't know why I was drawn to the particular myth. I have others who like Orpheus and Persephone. I just keep going to them, trying to understand why. And maybe I'll never fully understand why, but there is something about going into the underworld, about seeking the beloved, about piecing someone back together. That resonates for me, as a human in the world. So I think just following that desire to understand ourselves, and looking to these mentors, stories, as you kind of created that metaphor at the beginning. I know for me, it's just, it's just an essential. And I'm always trying to encourage people to follow that path. And I think the craft aspect of that is just how do you make the reader care as much as you do about the story, this character, so that they will also understand this message that the myth imparts. So whether that is making a character gifted in a special way flawed in a certain way, whether it's making sure they have a clear want or desire, a strong antagonists, whether it's about seeing them change, which I think is really the basic principle of this story is how does someone change over the course of the story, which is a guide for how to we do we survive change, which is inevitable in our own lives?
Ayana Young Yeah, it's interesting, because I'm like this change that's inevitable. I'm thinking about the book you wrote called Love in the Time of Global Warming, and I think it's interesting how you captured human emotions and setting regarding a process that we still don't even know the full ramifications of. And so, I think, the question of inevitability and the mystery, and how those two things connect, because, like, even of course, death is coming for all of us. Like that's inevitable, but there's a great mystery of how we're going to live until that moment. And similarly with climate change, I think it signifies a death, a grand a death of many different species, of ecosystems, of ourselves in many ways, of our history and legacies, but yet again, we see it happening and sure we have data and we can point to graphs, but ultimately, we don't know how it's going to unfold, and we don't know, when the next natural disaster will hit, or where or how severe. I mean, there's just so much, so it's interesting. It's like inevitability and mystery. I keep going back to these two words. And I think you were able to work with those two themes really well. And I wonder if you have any thoughts on that?
Francesca Lia Block I love the word mystery, you know, and, for me, there's a spirituality that is very redemptive, in the face of the inevitability of change. And change also is not, it's scary, but it's often a really positive thing. Right? Birth is change, too. Love is change too. So I think, growth, you know all these things, healing. I think, though, for me, it's, it's this idea that something goes on and continues no matter what. And again, I would call it love, I would call it art, I would call it spirituality, I would call it magic. They're all really one thing to me. But I mean, this is my I, it's maybe the first time I've said this publicly, when I say it privately, people just look at me, like, what are you talking about, but it's just my reality of my spiritual beliefs are based in the idea that for me, just for me personally, when my children were born, I had this sense that I was, you know, almost complete, there was still a missing piece, but that I was complete in finding their souls again, it just felt so clear to me. And I felt that way with a few other people in my life as well. And I think that, that feeling however, whatever it looks like, for an individual might be very different than having to be the birth of a child, but love or whatever, you know, it. It goes on, it's eternal for me. So that's how I deal with a lot of these feelings of fear and of change. And I guess that word mystery goes along with that, too. Because I don't understand it. It's so inarticulate as I talk about it now. But I know it's real. I believe in it, just like I believe in the mystery of the universe.
Ayana Young Yeah, thinking about love, mystery, magic, enchantment, they're all touching each other in one way or another. And I wonder, in times like these, how we turn to magic and enchantment, how do we imbue the places in which we live with this degree of magic, as you often do in the landscape of California? Because if we know that we are directly connected to the Earth, and there really is no separation there. I think that to imbue our environments around us with that, I love the word enchantment, because I think there's so much respect in that word. There's gratitude, of course to be enchanted is to be drawn to in a way that so like I could feel it in my body. What enchantment feels like but I think, as we've talked about disconnection or social media are the distractions. That's like really a block to the enchantment, and if we're so focused on our phones or taken to some other place, it's really hard to imbue just outside our window with enchantment, we may not even see the enchantment. I think that's part of it. When we're distracted. We may walk right by anything, whether it's the butterfly, the dandelion coming through the crack that, you know, our neighbor sitting on the porch with her face in the sun. I mean, there's like all these moments and all these stories, and so many worlds and lives happening all around us. But I think in today's world, also just being so fast paced, it's hard to slow down enough to imbue our surroundings with this magic and enchantment, so yeah, I don't know if you have a practice for this or the importance of that reenchantment with our environments.
Francesca Lia Block Yeah, I do want to say one just one thing, back to the words magic and enchantment. I was teaching a class on fairy tales and magical realism, I do a lot of that and I was researching the meaning of the word fairy tale and there's a Tolkien quote about not being able to define magic, really, it's something that is ephemeral and you can't quite ever define it. So I'm constantly looking for ways to understand and express it better. And words sometimes, I love words so much, but a lot of times language isn't even enough. But that's sort of an aside, when you talked about how to bring it to the environment, I think it's some of the things I mentioned earlier, like, having started this magic practice, that I've always wanted to do something like this, and I felt, maybe I don't know, a little judgment of myself for it. I don't know why. But when I started doing it, I was like, oh, this is what I did when I was 12 years old, you know, and younger all the time, like dancing in the garden with the flowers, you know, building little fairy houses or whatever, lighting candles, you know, doing collages, writing little poems that aren't for the intention of publication, drawing little pictures of what I imagined my world, I would want my world to be like, so always dogs, dogs always, always helped with that for me my whole life, animals in general, but for me, it's been pretty spiritual, deep relationships with these dogs I found mostly, so I think, you know, cultivating that, you know, and I've been dating someone for a few months now and what I keep sort of joking about these peak moments, like having another peak moment, and I'll be like, wait, what but it's just because I'm paying attention so much when I'm with him, and I'm honoring that moment to moment sort of experience so I'm seeing stuff much more often. I had that also when my children were young because I was just so focused in on them and my relationship with them in the moment, the care, and the love so I think it's really a lot about attention too, which is as you know, your whole thing about this sort of slow discussion and thinking about things feeling, being present, which is powerful.
Ayana Young There's so many things to ask you and I know our time is getting shorter, but there's definitely a theme that I wanted to bring up, which is the hero's journey and the journey of womanhood and I'm just thinking about the balance of sharing what it can be like to come of age, and I'm curious to hear your reflections on healing our inner girl and the journey of womanhood that comes with it. This is definitely something very personal to me right now, being a woman in this world and knowing that there you know, I've had a lot of my own traumas that have come with that and I don't want to bring them along any longer. I don't want to continue bringing them into the next year, next year. So yeah, just this healing of our inner girl and the journey of womanhood, I'd love to hear your thoughts on that.
Francesca Lia Block It's a constant one for me. It will probably be till I die. I can't imagine it ever fully healing, to be honest. That doesn't mean I can't feel a lot healthier, feel joy, certainly help others, maybe help others more, because I still have to confront it so, so much. I think it is an ongoing journey. And that's okay, to know that part of the healing is just feeling it, doing the work and being conscious and aware, and probably the biggest thing of all, you don't have to do it alone. My motto is basically life can be really hard and we don't have to do it alone. We just have to reach out a little and open ourselves a little. And we'll have others there to support us as they also go through this same journey and that, to me, is so powerful and beautiful and when I write these books, which revisit this journey over and over again, really doesn't have to be a book. Again, someone can do it through many types of work, but I'm sending a message in a bottle sort of out into the world and saying, like, I'm experiencing this, are you, you know, how can I help you? And when I get a response, I'm also healed more. So I think it's about community consciousness, being present, mentorship, being mentored as you brought up, mystery, spirituality, all the things we've talked about, it's part of that, that journey.
Ayana Young Yeah, and I love how in your book, specially your new book, House of Hearts, often focuses on a journey or a quest, but this is not just a typical hero's journey, there's something I think, deeply feminine and complex as well, and I'd love to hear more about how you tap into the feminine journey archetype through writing.
Francesca Lia Block So I, interestingly, wrote this book in a stream of consciousness, in vignettes, like I was sort of dreaming it and once I had that draft down, and it did have a journey to the underworld, which they sort of all seem to have. But then what I did was, I kind of put a much more rational hat on and I started looking at story structure, traditional story structure, and I studied it. And I rearranged the story in a much more traditional way, but because I had started with such a deep internal mystical stream of consciousness, poetic approach, I'm hoping that by adding this structure, it actually strengthens the story. And so it's kind of a masculine, feminine, right brain, left brain process, to find that for me. I do think, you know, I looked at hero's journey, I looked at heroine's journey, Gustav Freytag's pyramid, Vladimir Propp, and the screenplay Beats, and I think, a few others as well, but, you know, really, there are some basic structural elements that go through many of them. The key, the trick is to kind of start with the very personal. And then start thinking a little more about your audience and about how to present a story that people can understand and again, learn from in the way that we talked about earlier. So I don't know, I love studying all the different structures, and then I love when my students come back and say, "you know what, this one I don't like this, this didn't work" or "this one resonated for me" or "this felt formulaic," but it's just about knowing the different structures. And for me, a three act structure is a kind of a natural way of seeing the world, but it's not for everyone. In any case, I think this story is a very personal one, but it's also very much grounded in myth and traditional storytelling. And I guess that's what my basic philosophy is, it's a mixture of those two elements, putting those things together, your personal experience and what we learned from our ancestors and mentors.
Ayana Young Yeah, along with the hero's journey, I guess I'm wondering, as a storyteller, what do you think are some of the most important stories of our time or what messages do you think the collective is really in need of right now.
Francesca Lia Block Well, you know, of course, this whole movement now for, you know, diverse voices is hugely life changing, important, you know, world changing, I think that is probably the biggest thing I've seen in my, or is the biggest thing I've seen in my lifetime as far as a paradigm shift. And to be in the midst of it is really exciting. So I would say that I think, you know, just giving people opportunity and validation that their stories matter. And if their voices have been silenced, giving them that platform to be heard, it's going to change the world. And it just has to continue like that. And hopefully will do so I mean, I feel this generation is not going to let go that you know, and they shouldn't.
Ayana Young Yeah, I think it's also fascinating, because the stories of our time or that, collectively are very present for us. But then, you know, your books have been so influential for decades. And I think that storytelling can really connect us and with others across time, and of course, there's stories that we've been telling for 1000s of years and reading for hundreds of years. And so, yeah, how do we make stories that hold up against the test of time? Or what do you see with the stories that have been able to do that?
Francesca Lia Block I think they help us. You know, they start by connecting us to a character in a way, as I mentioned earlier, that we feel we can identify with that character. And there are craft techniques that do that, that I talk a lot about in my classes, but, you know, they start with that, and then they often go on some kind of a journey, and teach something thematically. And I think there is a universality to that. Also, I just to go back a little to what we were talking about earlier, you know, I was fortunate, so fortunate that I was told my whole life, because I was surrounded by, happened to be born into a time and place, and with parents that said, "Your voice matters, your stories are important, they have values." My goal is as a teacher, now, so many people do not have that, do not grow up with that, so what I try to do is like, how can I give that validation and it is so beautiful to see how people who are carrying these stories, wonderful stories around with them, they just need that little bit of validation. And then a little bit of craft, which I am constantly learning more about every day, and then it's like they just, it's just a blossoming, it's so beautiful. So the more of that I think, the more of that kind of support and encouragement we can give to each other, the more these beautiful stories will will emerge and hopefully fight this, you know, wave of, perhaps this idea that stories are less important than you know, the kind of makeup that you buy, or whatever it might be, you know. So I think that there's a very hopeful movement around this validation of voices, as well as these other things we're talking about that are maybe trying to combat it.
Ayana Young Yeah, well, Francesca this has been such a beautiful and heartfelt conversation and I'm wondering, as we begin to wrap up, I really want to meditate for a moment on the distinctly human goal of so many of your characters, which is the search for love, and often though, we're sold false images of what love looks like or even means and I'm thinking of House of Hearts, which heavily features a cult focused on finding self help, and so I am interested on how do we learn to recognize real and powerful love.
Francesca Lia Block That's a good question, it has taken a long time for me, I would say I think knowing the self, deeply, or at least, you know, sometimes when we're very young, we may not feel we do yet and that's the way we can have profound love. So I don't want to make it sound like it's out of reach, but I think the understanding of the self, the understanding of the shadows, the understanding of the wound and the past history, just like you would create a character really, you know, to create a good character in a story, you need to understand these things about them, I think to be in the world, and to really understand love, you know, it's still a lot of putting together the severed parts of the self through whatever practices, you know, whether it's talking to a friend, whether it's writing, whether it's another form of art, meditation, all the healing arts, movement, music, really, that is the journey and then I think, once you've begun to repair, and as I said, remember, it goes on, the repair could go on for a very long time. But once you've begun the process of awareness around it, and support from someone who understands us, you know, then I think it can happen. It's really a lot of, I believe in this attachment theory in psychology, which is about finding someone who really sees you, in whatever role, they can be a parent, but they might be a mentor, teacher, friend, and they might be a lover, but you know, might be a child, and builds this strong bond with them that then becomes internalized for both of you. And I think that strengthening those relationships, strength in the self and then allow for more loving relationships to grow out of that. But I'm still figuring it out. I'm still trying to figure it out.
Ayana Young Well, wonderful. Thank you again, Francesca. I really enjoyed this time with you and yeah, and now I just want to curl up with a book honestly, I'm like ready to hunker down for a moment?
Francesca Lia Block Me too. Thank you so much. This was beautiful to speak with you.
Francesca Glaspell Thank you for listening to For The Wild Podcast. The music you heard today was by 40 Million Feet, India Blue, and Ariana Saraha and Flight Behavior. For The Wild is created by Ayana Young, Erica Ekrem, Francesca Glaspell, and Julia Jackson.