ArtStorming

ArtStorming the Art of Remembrance: Robert Washington-Vaughns

• Lili Pierrepont • Season 2 • Episode 5

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What if legacy isn’t a monument, but a moment where someone finally feels seen? We sit down with Robert Washington-Vaughns to trace the unlikely path from corporate burnout and suicidal ideation to a life anchored by art, nature, and community—and a simple ritual that’s changing how men relate to themselves and each other. The Black Man Flower Project began with a brave question: why do most men only receive flowers at a funeral? Robert’s answer is a living practice that replaces isolation with acknowledgment and performance with presence.



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 We're going to pause here for a moment to speak to our listeners. if you like this content, and want more information on our guests, their projects and more indepth ways to engage with us, you can find us on ArtBridgeNM.org or our ArtBridge Substack. Please read, follow and share our content. Your subscriptions, shares and contributions help us grow our artistic community. Thank you and now back to our conversation.


Music for ArtStorming was written and performed by John Cruikshank.

SPEAKER_01:

Have you ever wondered what makes creative people tick? Where do their ideas come from? What keeps them energized? What kinds of things get in their way? Is their life really as much fun as it looks from the outside? Hello, I'm your host, Leely Pierpont, and this is Artstorming, a podcast about how ideas become paintings or poems, performances, or collections. Each episode, I'll chat with a guest from the arts community and we'll explore how the most creative among us stare down a blank canvas or reach into the void and create something new. In our inaugural season, Artstorming the City Different, we dipped our toes into the vast ocean of creativity with a focus on some of our favorite creators of Santa Fe, New Mexico. That conversation was enjoyed by artists and non-artists alike because it showed us how we can all benefit from learning how to generate something from nothing, dream bigger, charter new territories, and solve problems in new ways. In season two, we're going to take that concept of generating our lives with intention to the next level. This season, we're talking about legacy, art as legacy, and how the most creative among us tackle this rich and deeply personal subject. Welcome to ArtStorming, the Art of Remembrance. Today I'll be Artstorming with Robert Washington Vonds. In this conversation, we explore legacy not only in terms of patterns passed down through generations, many of which are fraught with expectations and external pressures, but also how the breaking of these cycles can create a new kind of legacy, one of acceptance and acknowledgement. So what does it mean to leave a lasting impact? For Robert Washington Bonds, it's about breaking generational cycles and creating a safe space for men to express their humanity and vulnerability. His Black Man Flower Project highlights the legacy of compassion and transformation. Now, as you listen to this journey, I invite you to reflect on the legacies that you are building in your own life. What makes you flourish? I'm here with Robert Washington Vaughns, and we're here sitting in my living room in Santa Fe, New Mexico. And I feel so lucky that you live right here because you actually have a national organization that you've started.

SPEAKER_02:

Indeed, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And uh I met you, I'll do some of this in the intro, but we met at a Creative Mornings, and actually I had read an article about you before that, and I knew about you, and then when I found out that you were going to be the speaker, I was really excited. So your story is so compelling, and it hits every mark of what we're trying to accomplish with this season of the podcast from legacy project to inspired by death as muse, um, and just everything that you're doing with the Black Man Flower project. So I'm just gonna let you take the mic for a little while and then I'll start to interject.

SPEAKER_00:

I think I know. I was I'm still figuring it out a little bit.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, that's that that's the beauty of it too. I mean, I think that one of the things that struck me about your presentation at Creative Mornings is that this is obviously such a hard project. And because it's such a hard project, you're responding to it as it unfolds, or you know, with your heart and as things come in. So say a little bit about how you got it started and then or maybe go backwards, say where you are now, and then we'll talk about maybe nothing.

SPEAKER_00:

It's right at the beginning. Yeah. Um, so I was born born by the river in the little tent. No, but seriously, I was born outside of Chicago, single mother, as you know from the talk. And I was very much instilled with the sense of like you are a black man in America, you need to watch your back, you need to do twice as much to get half the credit, and you have to be successful no matter what. Like, even even if it kills you. And that was like the unspoken part. I was a smart kid, but only not in my household, but like in the world, right? Things just came naturally and easy for me, which made traditional school very hard. So I was a f up to say the least. And I was told at one point by my mother and grandmother that if you wanted to see the world, because I wanted to see the world. I was very inspired by the Truman show growing up. And they were like, Well, if you want to see the world, like you need to go work on a cruise share. Because my mom had put all this pressure on me to be a doctor, and like she was bringing home Department of Labor Statistics, and I didn't know that those things that the government kept, you know what I mean? So I'm like 13, she's like, You have to be a doctor, you have to be a doctor, like just drilling this in my head. And I'm consistently failing out of school because just the standard of education just didn't fit the mold. It was in I was told by a mentor later that it was just too easy, and like I would go. I remember there was an assignment in high school, and we had to do um an argument of why we shouldn't get kicked out of the class. And I didn't study, I didn't write anything, I just got up there and I spoke. And I spoke about how I'm gonna be a doctor and you be hurting your your family, your family's health by not having a doctor in the community. And I got an A- on that. So So was that a confidence booster for you? Yeah, a little bit. Like it was like, oh, like I can kind of just like skirt by. And so then I got a full ride. I went to military school, um, and then I got a full ride to college. And again, it got hard. I mean it's it's harder to skirt, like when you have to cite sources. Okay. If I went to a barred college, it might be easier. So yeah, I begin very much instilled with this strong sense of needing to be successful in failing in all the traditional senses.

SPEAKER_01:

And were there were there any creative people in your world so that you had another metric for what success could look like?

SPEAKER_00:

Um, so that's the irony. Like, so I ended up I fell into the vagabonds, right? So I ended up in Columbus, Ohio, after a couple trial and error. And this is like the Ohio State University, very prestigious, top 10 school. And I fell in with all these artists and creatives, and I was a part of an art collective. And we found this old meat packing factory, and we turned it into like a like multiple studios and did events and stuff like that. So, in a sense, that was a version of success, but it wasn't the version of success that my mother wanted for me. And therefore, it was like it was just like me doing a side quest. It wasn't my dream, even though it was, it was like, well, my mother doesn't want this for me, so why should I want this for myself? So, yeah. The short story is that all this led to burnout, right? Like, I'm doing creative things and I'm being around creative people, although their lives may be messy and they do drugs that I don't do, and they have messy relationships and things that I've never been exposed to, the church boy growing up. They were still living out their dreams and like living their best, messy lives in that chaos. They still brought they still felt happiness enjoyed, like the little things. I'm like, Well, I don't have a car, I don't have a big boy job. Like, you know what I mean? I was always like, How can you be happy sleeping on a mattress on the floor with living with 10 people? You know what I mean? And they were, and I'm like, this is not me. This is not the life that I want, which very much true today, right? But still to an extent, there was still a level of contentment with what little they had, and still being able to like, I'm giving my all just to be creative. It got to a point where I was successful in the traditional sense. I had the brand new car, had the beautiful girlfriend eating out every weekend, big TV, nice apartment. And I'm like, okay, I've arrived. Like, where's the happiness? Where's the joy? And it wasn't there, it was just gone. And I didn't know I was depressed. I didn't know I was suicidal, I didn't know I was anxious. It was like this thing that I never thought about, nobody ever talked about. And never thought it could happen to me because I had money, right? I had money, I had success. Why would I be stacked? How can I be depressed? And I went to work one day, and I worked for a company that was um, they did nutrition, like baby nutrition. And I worked in like a packaging engineering facility, and I had to sit here and lie about why this packaging was like corrupted irrelevant. Like, we don't have any more formula. And the best thing we could do was like send more coupons for more formula, but I couldn't say the defects or the things that were really wrong with it because then like all this red tape, like, well, you have to prove it, and so I was like, I just want to die. I don't want to be here anymore.

SPEAKER_01:

And so it didn't occur to you at that point yet that you could well, obviously you decided you took a little fork in the road. And thank goodness you did decide to off yourself.

SPEAKER_00:

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01:

But how how did you get from that point of sort of devastation to where you are now? Because that's a whole different use.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. So I went to the emergency room and they were like, we can have the police take you or you can have someone pick you up. I'm like, I'm just a relative. If the police take me, I might not make it there. In the ER, they told me that I mentally had a broken arm and a broken leg. And if I had this physically, I would have been here a long time ago. So I spent three months in intensive group therapy. It was a uh facility in Columbus, Ohio that was shared with um hospice. So like this beautiful sprawling forest with deer and fishing and whiskey for the thing. And every day for three months, I made art. I had people I can talk to. As part of the program. As part of the program, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

I had people I can talk to about my feelings and emotions. And I spent time in nature. And something I don't really talk about is like I was the only man, I was the only black person there. So I'm surrounded by like all these white women that have a certain level of privilege to be like, this woman was like, my husband, I'm mad at my husband, so I'm just gonna go. I'm just like, I'm just gonna be in this program until my husband gets it together. Some people were there for frivolous reasons, some people were really like fighting for their lives. And it made me realize they're like, oh, my problems are not so so terrible. And I even thought, even going to this program, like, oh, I can just go to therapy. They're like no, that's not intense enough, it's not intense enough. And I can't tell you the magic that happened in that, other than I am who you see before you today, is that these women poured into me, these therapists, these like the wobbi-sobby-ness of everything, like it poured into me and it and I became a functioning member of society with a lot of medical dent. But I realized how do I take this? How do I kidnap my guy friends and force them into a three-month program? Like, well, they don't have benefits, they don't have the time, the money. Who can take off three months?

SPEAKER_01:

So you recognize that what you had been through was probably a common experience for your family.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely. All young men are taught this, like, you gotta be successful. And like most guys want to be football players, movie stars, things of that nature. And I wasn't athletic, I didn't really lean into the creativity at that point in time, but I knew if I am like this kind of nerdy, quiet boy, and the most popular kids in school are being like, oh, like you guys can get a scholarship, you should go play basketball. And like, what is it, like 5% of people that try out for the NBA actually get in? So it's like, what do you do when those dreams fail? And so if I'm the lesser of what is a stereotypical man in America, how much harder do they have it? And how do I stop them from going off of the break if these are my loved ones, my friends, my peers?

SPEAKER_01:

Well, it's it says so much about you that your first thought after you go through this experience of getting really depressed and then checking yourself into this institute, you're in a minority, you have this experience, and your first thought when you come out is how can I serve?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean, that's remarkable. That really speaks to your whole character and probably why so many people are so drawn to you, and why I think your story is gonna resonate with so many people.

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, thank you. Well, the way that I like to put it too is like if you went down a street and you realize it's dangerous and it was like a cliff, and if I go five miles down this road and it's just like keep going, keep going, and you realize it's a dead end and like the bridge is broken. Wouldn't you want to put a sign up? Wouldn't you turn around first, figure out how to skip yourself to safety and then put a sign up to dead end? Like, do not like danger. Like, wouldn't you want to put up as many signs as possible to keep other people from going down there? So that's how I see myself is like I want to keep people from this pathway of danger of like, hey, this will kill you. Like you will have everything, and you see so many celebrities, so many political figures commit suicide because they chase, they chase this dream, and it's really a nightmare.

SPEAKER_01:

And so for you, you discovered sort of the life-giving qualities of the creative process that it's absolutely part of our humanity to embrace this, yeah, instead of pinching off, which is what you were sort of taught to do.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

And so to take us to the very next step. So you have this the light bulb moment that you know you want to stop other people from going off this cliff.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes. And then so I'm just like thinking of how can I make this real? And it's so funny how like it was cultural informed language. They guided me because I started hearing this phrase, give him his flowers, like he deserves his flowers. But they meant in a sense of like gratitude, like, oh, even though the Lakers lost, LeBron put a 40 point, like, give him his flowers, like give him his dude. I'm like, okay, but what about actual flowers? So it was just like a light bulb for me, and the all the science and all the research came like years and years after. But I initially just started giving my guy friends flowers, and I hadn't lost anybody, there wasn't any grief at that time. I grew up going to a lot of funerals of people that it was ripped, it rippled through my family, but it wasn't people, it wasn't people that I was close to. That being said, I still was like, you know, maybe I should just give my guy friends flowers, and they were very weirded out by it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Like, what the like are you coming on to me? Yeah, like it was very weird, but I it didn't stop. I didn't stop because I realized there was like a it was a sense of fear and shock, and then it led to gratitude, like after maybe 10-15 minutes. It was like, I've never gotten flowers before.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and you quoted a statistic at the Creative Mornings presentation that and you'll have to say what it is, but most men Yes, 88%, 88% of men don't receive flowers except at their funeral or something like that.

SPEAKER_00:

Yes, and you have to even consider the fact that men maybe even get flowers when they're sick. So what 12% of those men are getting flowers because they're in the hospital for a long time, they're in a coma, or they're on their deathbed. So even that smaller statistic of it's still a sense of own you have to earn these flowers either through sickness or through verbally through like an accolade. Like it's never really just because. And I think that's most of society is like you can't have this unless you work hard for it.

SPEAKER_01:

And was that all men, or is that black men in particular?

SPEAKER_00:

All men. All men.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

And so you started giving your friends flowers, they started to get used to it. Yeah. Eventually.

SPEAKER_02:

Eventually, yes.

SPEAKER_01:

And then was this the concept for black man flower project? How far along later did that emerge?

SPEAKER_00:

So I was saying about a year later. So this is during the so I did the intensive group therapy in 2018, practically 2018 and 2019. So then the pandemic hit. So then it's like we were all separated, everyone was on lockdown. I have to give credit to a small platform that's no longer it's still around, but in a different form. It's called it was called Clubhouse. And it's basically just like another audio-only chat rooms, kind of like AOL chat rooms, but like audio only. And somebody gave me the idea of turning this into a nonprofit. And they was like, oh, you know, people would donate money to this cause. And I never I didn't consider that. So I started a nonprofit, and the first man I gave flowers to was a good friend of mine that we he was one of the creatives that was just like in the corner of the ring with people. Um, but we had been through some hard times together, and he endured through those. And I wanted to recognize him for like, hey man, you made it through to the other side, you made it to New York, like you know, you have a pretty successful life. And I sent him flowers, and he the biggest thing for me was like he was queer. And I'm like, okay, because you're queer, it should be less jarring for you. And that was not the it did make it easier because even if you're queer, you're still a man. You saw there's still an expectation set upon you as a man and how you're raised, you know. Maybe it well, at what point do we understand our own sexuality and who we want to be in this world versus the gender norms that are placed upon us? It doesn't matter if you're queer or straight, right? You're still supposed to like defend in the there's a mopping middle of the night, you're still expected to go to war in some sense, you're still expected to procreate, even if that's not even if you don't want kids, even as a woman, right? Yeah, there's still gender norms on both sides.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, sure.

SPEAKER_00:

And it isolates us.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. And so where so now we're in pandemic time, and has your father already died? No, no, okay, so keep going because I want to that's an incredible part of the story.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, yeah. So that was 2021. So kind of just like I started in I, you know, had just found a forest in New York, but I'm living in Columbus still. So it's kind of like Johnny Appleseed. So I moved from Columbus to Chicago, and um I meet a forest there that I'm gonna work with, and he brings me the same size bouquet that I brought you. He brings that to me. We're sitting in a restaurant, and it's like it scares the crap out of me. Like I have been doing this for at least two years.

SPEAKER_01:

And now, and but never being on the receiving end.

SPEAKER_00:

Never received being on the receiving end.

SPEAKER_01:

And so now you know what it's like to be on the receiving end.

SPEAKER_00:

It's terrifying. It was it was like I felt like Smiley snatched all my clothes off, and I was like trying to cover myself up. Vulnerable. I was very vulnerable. I felt very vulnerable. It was shocking. I didn't, I was like, I had never felt so it was I was afraid. I was very much afraid.

SPEAKER_01:

What an interesting response.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. And I thought in my head, like it was a slurry emotions. Like, somebody's gonna think I'm gay, like somebody's gonna like see me and like, oh, what's wrong with this guy? Like, why is he getting flowers? Like, that's such a weird thing. So like all the negative, all the voices.

SPEAKER_01:

I'm just sitting here with my mouth wide open because I have to just think, just very parenthetically, it's kind of weird because this project for you know, talking about death as muse and remembrance and everything, has been a 30-year in the making project. And now that it's finally here, and I've started to I make a list of questions, yeah, yeah, to ask people sort of rhetorical questions for the substack thing. And if somebody were to ask me those questions, even with all this thought that I've given it, yeah, I would feel like a deer in the headlines. Yeah, yeah. Right. So I mean, that's the only way I can kind of relate it to what you're saying. You're giving is much easier than receiving. It's where you thought what it was like to be on the receiving end of your very own gesture.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow.

SPEAKER_00:

So it did lead to gratitude. And there's I'll send you the photo of that of me like holding them. And it did lead to gratitude. Like I was able to s emotions were able to settle, but it was a lot of shock in that initial moment.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, what an incredible gift, because now you even incorporate that into the whole universe of this.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And so, what I'm trying to do now with the project is usually we have like a third party that's delivering flowers. I'm setting up like a decision tree when you're nominating black men to receive flowers. It's like, are you able to do this in person? Are you able to do the one to deliver these flowers? Because you should sit with this person when you give these flowers, you should be there, you should be the person. You know what I mean? Like, you need to be like, because that it is a very scary thing. Absolutely. Because it's like, why the hell did this dude for this?

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. Yeah. And so, what are some of the responses? You you had your own response. Have you heard from other people, other recipients, what the response was?

SPEAKER_00:

So, another response I heard recently was like, I didn't know I could receive flowers.

SPEAKER_01:

Like it just never occurred to them.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, it just wasn't an idea, and that really shook me to think that somebody would be like, Wow, I didn't know I could get flowers, and of course, like why not? Like it's all around, it's all around us, like at all times. Every time I leave the house, I sit in our fridge in different containers and boats, you know what I mean? And it's just like we we've conquered nature, and that's we don't have to engage with it anymore.

SPEAKER_01:

That's oui, yeah. That's oui, yeah. So you weren't yourself necessarily, you were partnering with other with florists, so you weren't you're not a flower, you're not arranging a flowers.

SPEAKER_00:

yourself sometimes I am sometimes I'm learning to but in the beginning it's like I want to just give I want to support small businesses I want to make this a network I can't be everywhere at once uh my time machine and my cloning machine are both broken currently and I can't get it repaired so I have to find other florists in different cities uh to kind of help support the project right and so you gave a few flowers away to people you had these reactions you received the flowers yourself and then what happened so I think yeah from from did you start the 501c3 at that point or I started to I started to initiate initiated it so I was in Chicago I moved back because my mom got sick so I went like quit my job I like moved out of my apartment and I moved back so I was also still struggling to support myself while still trying to do this nonprofit and it was very bumpy in the beginning and it's still kind of bumpy just like trying to reform and I'll I'll tell you why in a moment but overall it was um how do you get how do you build up momentum for this how do you find other floors that are in alignment that are not going to steal ideas from you because that's happen that's happened. Like I've had there was a project that I did this past January at the community gallery that another florist when we talked about it a year or so ago she took that idea and ran with it and made like a different version of it. And it's just like damn like I just want to help people I just want to like you know I'm still like this naive child and people are like wow that's a great idea I'm gonna do that and I've had people with larger platforms try to steal this idea not to say that I'm gatekeeping it but they fail because they don't have they're not doing it with the heart and the intention. So essentially I moved to Santa Fe in 2022 23 2023 and obviously at that point I brought the flower project with me but at that point we had given flowers nationwide between LA and New York Mississippi Atlanta and I think last year we were in the Caribbean we have a florist in the Caribbean now too so we're technically international.

SPEAKER_01:

So yeah it's just been a wild journey and so how does somebody give flowers through your or I just love this idea because it's you know typically you call a florist as somebody's birthday I mean birthday ha ha ha but how does the Black Man Flower Project work within that framework? So they call up and say I have a man I want to give flowers to and so that becomes its own type of delivery or because you wanted somebody to be there like you said.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely so that's a that's a new occurrence where I'm trying to have somebody be there or be have the person do the deliveries themselves like we deliver to your house because if you call your friend and say hey I have something coming in the mail for you will you be home between these hours because there's been a lot of deliveries that just end up on doorsteps and we don't we never hear anything back. You know and maybe they assume depending on the note and are they anonymous or they're usually from somebody they're from somebody we still is there a black man in your life that you want to give flowers to and that's the other thing that women love this project. And what I found out early on which is a lesson learned was that like when women give men flowers it can come off as like kind of like this is a little romantic or you know I've had like women nominate their coworkers and it is like the reception is not the same. So something that's important to men is social permission. And it's like if other men are doing it then it's okay for me to do it. And I think that's where Black One Flower Project really shines is that you can go online and see all those other men that have accepted flowers. And some not all men accept flowers on camera like hey here's the bouquet I don't want to be pictured. This is a very like this means a lot to me and I've respect that too but you can see for 99% of men you can see men smiling with bouquets of beautiful arrangements. So from that social permission what I'm now building out because there have been a lot of nominations for women I'm asking like can you is there a black man that can co-sign for this or another man that can co-sign for this bouquet to say I also recognize this person. Because it's easy for our our mothers our sisters other women to recognize it's like oh you're doing such a great job for my partner to go oh Robert I love you so much. You're doing great you gotta go on this amazing podcast. But when I hear from other guys it's like I'm not competing anymore. We're in community together and it's okay for us to be in community. We're not fighting for resources. We're not cavemen fighting over the last warthog Right well I just love this idea that it's from the opposite of the scarcity model.

SPEAKER_01:

There's enough to go around and the more you give the more there is to give absolutely and that's what's beautiful about flowers because there is sort of this abundance I mean they they can be expensive and they are considered sort of a a luxury but that's what makes it special too.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely yeah and the fact that there is a creative component that they're usually artfully designed I'm assuming it gives men permission also I would say to receive art which you know unless you're an artist yeah yeah men probably don't get a lot of absolutely my house is pretty bare so and I'm trying to change that but that's important too so that was like kind of the first three pillars of the nonprofit that was very important to me was art, nature and community. So you have nature that is artfully designed as you mentioned and it's given in a sense of community that like you're a part of something bigger now. You're receiving this bouquet is somebody that unexpectingly wants to acknowledge you with art in nature and it's like wow now to realize that there's not at least one other person in the world that would care if I was no longer here. So is there a vehicle that you have within your organization to capture the responses from the men like after the initial shock yes and somebody's with them and they're there to receive and kind of like help them receive it deeply yeah yeah and then there's probably like a germination or whatever you call it like a a process that happens the fact that they've been given flowers and then is there a place or a container for them to give voice to that experience what you're speaking to I believe was a difference between awe and wonder so awe is the shock of receiving what is this thing like your brain short circuits for a second and the wonder is like why am I receiving this? Where am I at right now? Where am I sitting? It's like coming back down to earth in reality. So something that we're play testing right now we have a floor shop in Dayton Ohio very strong community very small city as you may know it's flowers and gifts there's a gentleman that we're partnering with that is they're donating four bouquets a month to us so he goes and gets all four bouquets and he goes with the photographer and he's going and making these deliveries himself and the photographers there to capture them. And so he's able to sit and talk for a moment or two before he has to go on to the next delivery of like you know sitting in that gratitude and that thanks. So it's not just like a third party coming to drop off you know or I mean one time it was a birthday party and it was for uh a brother who's it was his birthday and the delivery came in everyone was like oh like the whole family so the whole family was able to like partake and like love on him even more because like it's like wow you got flowers you know so but a more instances like that right where it's communal is where it's people around or the person delivering is actually like hey I'm gonna sit with you in this moment while I give you these flowers and let you just have all the feelings be mad be upset be worded out I just love it so much.

SPEAKER_01:

I mean there's a part of me that wants to capture the qualifiable moment indeed to see what follow that man a week later two weeks later a month later and see how just that one gesture has completely altered their life and that makes me think about if you wouldn't mind sharing it totally up to you when you shared the story about your dad you know and just like the the way certain things kind of unfold and you don't even know that it's happening until it has happened.

SPEAKER_00:

So would you share a little bit yeah yeah yeah so again growing up in a single parent home my dad was around I actually you know in the past couple of weeks since doing the creative learning talk I remember a point in time telling people I didn't have a dad and it's funny how kids think because I knew my dad but I think I was I knew this there was something wrong with him. I knew he was kind of off I knew that he kind of had like a sense of childlikeness to him and playfulness and I think it just disturbed me because kid I feel more mature than my father like my dad is bringing me toys and like playing with me like we're of equal age you know and it was very weird. I remember at 13 my mom asking me do you want to go visit your father and I was like no I don't and it would be instances it'd be before then and after then where he'd be living in an efficiency apartment and I'm like how come this apartment doesn't have a bathroom or we're at a mental facility and I'm like why are these people drooling in the corner or like talking to themselves? You know it was all these weird instances or we'll be at my great grandmother's house why is my dad talking to his mom why is he calling her mommy and asking for a new pair of shoes and it just always worded me out and I never understood it. And I was told over the years that my dad was poisoned. My dad was a good basketball player great basketball player and he would never want my mom to come because guys would try to bite him on the court because they were so embarrassed by how bad they lost and my dad's cousin slash playbrother was a drug dealer and that was like the only two options like you could be really good at basketball or you can go in the main streets of Chicago and sell drugs. But those are the two options of masculinity so it's like you know the tale of two like the city mouse and the country mouse right so my dad played basketball and his brother cousin sold drugs. And I was told that because my dad was so good at basketball somebody put something in his drink and he slipped something in his drink at a party and he never mentally recovers like a Mickey or something like that. And that was the story that I'm like okay well I have a reason why my dad is like the way I can't be mad at him. It wasn't his fault he just he was doing life the best way he knew how and someone came in ruin and then I would say around 29 I was talking to my grandmother and she was like you know your dad and I asked her I'm like hey was my dad like somebody push up any string like is that what happened because I'm like on the brink of 30 right so I'm like oh my god I'm in my halfway to death like what are I need answers and she's like no your dad was a paranoid schizophrenic you know I had abusive relationships and he would be for witness to that and his he was already had a fragile mind his dad had a fragile mind and when your mother was pregnant with you he started to slip and I tried to war your mother and she didn't want to listen and his mind started slipping and slipping and slipping until it was gone. And I was like no one talked about this no one my own grandmother didn't tell me this right like no one ever talked about mental health or depression again in my own story no one talked about mental health depression suicide anxiety and I'm witnessing this in real life and just like oh my dad is just crazy because there was a chemical imbalance of an external factor rather than it only it can only happen internally.

SPEAKER_01:

And so when you had your experience of depression was that before or after you had learned this about your dad I can't remember I had my own it was before. So I had my own journey without even knowing my father's so that but had knowing a little bit about your father's history must have scared you a little bit about what was going on with you. Although it just seems like it happened so gradually that you weren't even sure that you were in a depression until you were like pretty 20. Yeah absolutely wow I wonder if that was what it was like for him too that he didn't realize that he was what do you call it a not a sudden onset but a gradual onset.

SPEAKER_00:

Indeed yes yes and I don't know if again I don't know if my grandmother like tried to help him through that and like you know explain things to him of I don't know what that what their journey was like because he was also raised in my grandmother in a single family home as well. So it's just like I'm breaking this I want to break this trauma this generational trauma of like not informing my future children of like hey this is what mental health is this is what it means to be sad. When you get up and don't brush your teeth if you're butt and you don't want to leave the house you might be depressed. Those might be signs if you don't want to be alive anymore if you or if you're hearing voices that could be a sign that that's a danger you should talk to somebody about that. That's not normal.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah yeah well part of the project that you're doing that's so beautiful is is breaking people out of isolation as I did the community column of what you said was so important the art and community and nature and nature absolutely obviously and so you know that is based on a network and so you know reconnecting rebuilding that network absolutely people don't risk falling into isolation as much. I agree yes yeah yeah so where are you now with the project? Oh so then it the I I interrupted you because you had told a story about after discovering about your dad and then your father he ended up passing away.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah he passed away uh at the end of January this year.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah so it was quite recent for you. Yes and I I seem to remember that there's some kind of a connection between his passing and your revelations about that whole relationship and how it has informed this project or how it continues to inform.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah so I think the biggest thing for me is that these boxes of masculinity they as much as they protect us they hurt us so they keep usolated. And so for my dad it was basketball and later it was just cigarettes because he couldn't do anything else. So he just sat he was like in confined to a mental hospital 13 stories people just walking about and he just started smoking. That's all he could do and so every conversation I had with him was about cigarettes and money about$20 and two packs and marble reds. Because he was just so far gone. I'm still trying to make sense of his passing because we weren't close he would have some moments of clarity and we would have a decent conversation but for the most part I'm like I'm still a part of him still lives in me but like who am I like who am I without my father? And again he was never around because he couldn't be but now that he's gone gone like now his physical presence is done what am I actually left with that's the question I still ask myself and I'm trying to understand.

SPEAKER_01:

Well I think there's like a natural um next step and I think I just saw on a feed and there's a another project that sort of reminded me of the Black Land Flower project that's about fathers and sons but the continuity project of some kind but men have really been at the effect of so much difficulty I'm gonna say I'm a real champion for men actually and you know this father-son bond is something that we don't have a lot of rituals for in our culture right and so it makes me think of the Black Men Flower Project as being a beautiful ritual that could happen between fathers and sons.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely I talked to a friend about is that we don't have rites of passage for young men anymore. We don't have music there's no culture for teenagers right there's either like there's either like kids bot or there's adult contemporary right and that's all about just hype hypersexual but at what point does a male become a man because you're always a male like from tender poor you're just a male but when you go when do you go from a boy to a man in Jewish cultures is bar mitzvah right in other cultures like Indian cultures they might have other acts in um that kind of like you are officially a man now like you are able to have to kill something you're able to like show endurance in some way or mental fortitude but in America we don't have that and so I think that lost art of that transition a lot of people like going out of control crashing out is what the kids would say.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah well there's and I had to add like another layer to it because the person to parenthood I mean stuff man to father which doesn't happen for everybody or woman to mother that didn't happen for me. But but that's another rite of passage that is uh that certainly deserves to be more ritualized than I think it is culture.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely there are some books around that about like from man to father I think it's Hill Harper wrote a book about lessons to a a son without a father or something like that. I forgot what it's called but yeah that too and like I worry I worry about myself as a father like how will I teach somebody to be a man if I if I wasn't taught because all I had was my peers. And I went to military school because my mother told me she couldn't teach you how to be a man. And the only lessons that I learned in military school is that it is you're do everything a man does is to appease his male friends. And no man will ever admit that but it's like I'm gonna run faster than you I'm gonna dominate you for respect. It's very homoerotic it is very ironic and the men are very like homo um I don't know what the word focused very good or identifying. Homophobic no men are very homophobic but they do a lot of homophob like like that with my homies over my brones like it's just me and the guys and you'll see memes now of like guys going out to dinner together just like doing like semi-romantic things and it's like well like well there was no like I can't appease a woman I can't find a girl so leave my hoes or just want to go to this nice restaurant or go to the movies. And two of my best friends like we we'll go out drinking we go to the bars we go to the movies together we play video games like all the things you would do with a tradition in a traditional sense is like there are a subsect of men I believe that are finding community with one another and it's like this is normal. It doesn't have to be sexualized in the traditional sense.

SPEAKER_01:

Do you find that there's a difference between your artsy friends and your I call them the art artists and civilians. Yeah that's the word that I'm trying to gap yeah because even though the civilians might be very creative they don't think of themselves as artists in their fight from two camps.

SPEAKER_00:

I do have I do feel like I have to kind of trick some of my guy friends into doing creative creative activities. Even if we go hiking or kayaking or something like that it's like oh hey let's go make some pottery let's let's go to this bar like what's that spot downtown Santa Fe that you can make make pottery oh yeah I've walked by but I don't know what it's called yeah yeah yeah yeah so places like that is like hey like let's go let's go do something cool let's go let's go this paint and sip or something like that you know what I mean is like oh like this is like that like oh let's like let's just shine out like hey crazy idea like let's just like all the out of the box absolutely yeah well so so have you ever thought about going back into the business world but bringing these learnings into it yeah so that's the irony I still do work in a very like staunch business world oh I didn't realize you were still completely oh yeah so you really have your your a foot in each yes I'm inside the matrix still I hop out occasionally this is me outside the matrix right now but I still I gotta go back on Monday. And so but you are you able to find that you bring different energy to the workforce now that you've been through this whole metamorphosis I try to or you just compartmentalize it I I do have to separate it out a little bit the saying goes there's no crime in baseball but statistic in actual baseball there is a lot of emotion and you know I mean they do paint a story a very emotional story and most most recently you know with the current administration I was supposed to present my creative morning talks at work. My management was interested because I did promote it at work. I do they do know I work with flowers and have the nonprofit and the current administration got rid of our employee resource groups which are like you know Asians or veterans or caretakers. So there was like these subsections of Drupal like hey like these police we you can come and learn Spanish or hey you can try Asian dishes or hey we can go watch this perform like it's part of a diversity program. Yeah so it's a budget so they got rid of the the current the administration they had to get rid of all our diversity programs. So I actually was like I don't think it's I don't think I have to pass this whole talk through HR and I don't think it's gonna get three I don't think it'll make it through the the checks and balances because I talk about mental health I talk about you know racism. I talk about my personal journey and it's like well if it's not inclusive to all people then you can't speak on how is your journey

SPEAKER_01:

Not inclusive to all people. I don't know anybody who isn't touched by racism. I mean, you know, regardless of sexism, all about sexism, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

All there isn't.

SPEAKER_01:

Mental illness, yeah, rights of passage. That's why I think I I think your story is so compelling because it is so universal. And what brought you to this project is you got life on you. You know, you got was your response to what life dealt you, and you turned it into something absolutely beautiful.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

So how is that not? I don't know. I guess it's one of the reasons I'm not working in a company with an HR department.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I'm hoping to get out of the golden handcuffs in the next year or two. That's my plan.

SPEAKER_01:

So well, I I love this idea that that there are people like you in that environment because it's it's bringing a kind of nourishment into community spaces that is very necessary.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. I agree. You gotta have agents of change, like in like kind of hitting. That's it.

SPEAKER_01:

Exactly it. Agents of change. I love that. And so how many sort of offshoots of your uh Black Men Flower Project are there at this time?

SPEAKER_00:

Last time I checked, I think there's 12 floors, and there's a couple on like the frill, so like maybe like around 20. There's some floors that we've done like one-off engagements that I'm looking to make long-term and really solidify that and kind of bring them into like this full stream. So between 12 and 20, depending on where nominations are happening. So again, I want to start programming to say, hey, this is an ongoing thing. We've done um somatic release classes for black men as well here in Santa Fe in the rail yard performance center. And I want to like, hey, like we need more safe spaces for black men and boys, but without the cameras, without the social media, without the and so I do it doesn't get me as many likes, but it's more about the impact.

SPEAKER_01:

And how are you measuring that? Which is always the tricky question.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think you spoke to that earlier. I think it's through storytelling, I think it's through following up weeks, months later and asking men, what was that like? What was that experience? Like and capturing those moments and sometimes sharing them, not always sharing them, but like, hey, what was it like to receive this? How much how impacted were you? But also knowing that you may never really know. Some men will never like I've reached out in the past and they maybe never gotten a response. And I might I can get a photo with a smile, but I think you could save somebody's life and never know it.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure. Well, there's that butterfly effect.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, absolutely that they talk about.

SPEAKER_01:

And it's it's something that I think those of us who are in the arts service business, which is what I think of myself as an arts delivery service system, and so are you, you know, we have to just go on faith that we're making a difference. Absolutely. And even though we can't get to the metrics necessarily that prove it, but I do want to support you through this podcast in other ways to get the message and the story of this project out there. So beyond social media, what what avenues are you working with to get the message out?

SPEAKER_00:

Something that was very like sly on my end and almost going against our mission statement, which is through the Minium of Flowers, we allow black men to be seen, heard, and acknowledged. They were like, you know, the Boys and Girls Club, Department of Education here, Black Education Act would reach out and be like, hey, like we want you to come and like teach educators, we want you to come and break flowers like to this program. Bido spaces, be like, hey, like, could you break flowers into the black and brown boys summer camp? And I'm like, okay, well, it's not black men getting flowers, but if I partner organization to organization, then I can maneuver. I'm the black man, I'm giving the flowers, there's one black kid in the corner of him there, like, so I'm checking the box. And that just it created like a lot of just like nuances in my own head of like, what is what am I? This is my I set out to give black men flowers because that's what I identified with at the time. But again, I healed a room full of white women of varying ages, you know, some younger, some older than me. And it was like, I came out okay. So, what the new initiative will be outside of Black Men and Flower Project, and keeping that containment, I have a hard time pronouncing it, even though it's my own. It's called Foral. F-O-R-A-L. Foral. So like for all before all. So the initiative there would be like all the lessons learned, all the programs that I have tried to do that didn't necessarily fit in that black men flower project popped, will now be for all.

SPEAKER_01:

Well, and I'm wondering if you couldn't try something. One of the things that I'm doing with Artbridge and with our second season, The Order of Remembrance, is I've started these art of conversation dinners. And the idea is I have seven guests for dinner, which is why I did the flowers on good feedback on those. Um but uh I had seven guests for dinner, and we have a topic and we talk about it. And in this case, it's been Death as Muse, just to where everybody's experience with that is. And then my request is everybody at the table then has a dinner for some people so that we start this sort of viral thing. Absolutely. So I'm wondering if you could do something like with the suggestion that the men receiving flowers then consider what it's like to be on the giving end and give flowers to somebody else, so that you know it kind of creates this viral attack.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. We're speaking the same language. That's something I'm literally working on now with another artist is the bifold. What does it look like? Is usually the florist just has like a handwritten note of why there's person receiving flowers, but how do other men pay it for it? Because they never think about, wow, that was such an amazing experience. But in my mind, I went to three months of intensive group therapy. How do I pay it for it? Not everybody has that insight. So you literally have to kind of prompt people like, hey, like, would you be willing to who else deserves flowers in your life? And then also saying, This is how you take care of the flowers, and it's how you take care of yourself. This is how you acknowledge that you you receive flowers, this is how you sit with them, put them somewhere where you can see them, put them somewhere where you in your workstation, bring them to work with you, change out the water. On death, even I lost my younger brother two years ago, and there was a maybe like a year after that, um, a couple other deaths happened, and I was making a bouquet for a nomination here in Santa Fe, and I just broke down and started crying. And I didn't realize like the power of just like working with the flowers, tending to the leaves, and knowing that these flowers are gonna die sometime. And I know you remember maybe at the talk, this woman tried to speak to like maybe giving men plants instead. But that kind of defeats the purpose because if we can't sit with impermanence, yes, of life, of flowers, then what are we doing? If we have a plant that outlives us or that's gonna die because we don't water it, then it becomes your fault versus something that was gonna die to die less.

SPEAKER_01:

I love the impermanence. And and the truth is that even in nature, even a plant, the flower doesn't stay in bloom forever, you know. So it is this perfect symbol of impermanence, indeed, which is why I think that I haven't even looked into the the history or the origin of giving flowers at people's funerals, but obviously there's there's gotta be a correlation.

SPEAKER_00:

That's because bodies smell bad. Oh I looked into that. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I guess that would be true.

SPEAKER_00:

So it's to cover up the smell of the body. Um it started.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh wow. Thank goodness we have other reasons to keep it going. Absolutely. Oh my goodness, that's so quite that's good. That's good. Wow. So I'm trying to think where else to go with this. So as a legacy project, another thing that you did you think that it was going to be a legacy project, or this was just a pay it forward impulse that will turn into a legacy project.

SPEAKER_00:

It was just a pay it forward type of thing. I never considered legacy. And now I think about that, even like with again the range of loss that have I experienced is from very old to very young. It's like, what's gonna happen to this project after I pass away? How does it carry on? And not just my legacy, but the legacy of the men that ever see flowers, how do they pay it for it to other men in their lives and other boys and even their children, regardless of gender and their partners? Like, how do how do we make this ripple effect of getting connected back to their well?

SPEAKER_01:

What I what I really love is that they're you're doing something that's very deliberate. You're creating a deliberate new legacy concept because what you're trying to alter, what you're trying to correct, are some of the negative legacies that we've all inherited.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_01:

And by turning that ship around and turning it into something positive is something that I admire so much about this project.

SPEAKER_00:

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01:

In a perfect world, if you could see this vision playing out to its fullest, what would it look like?

SPEAKER_00:

Oh, that's a great question. So our vision statement, which may become the vision forum, is every person's uninhibited access to their version of success. So what that looks like is I've been told no. Like I've for the past three years, I've given uh flowers in the plaza uh during Juneteenth, like right next to Father's Day. And some men will say, I don't deserve this. I don't know, or they'll just say no, or they'll see their guy friends getting them flowers getting flowers, and then like, okay, I'll take it. Because again, it's that social permission. Like, I'm not gonna be the first one to do it, but I'll do what somebody else's does it. I don't know if you remember when uh guys were wearing like pink and like tough guys wear pink and stuff like that. It was like probably some high school jocks thought it was funny to start wearing pink, or like you know, it could have been a cancer thing, right? Like a breast cancer thing, but guys started wearing pink, and then like, okay, so I'm I can do it because he's doing it. Like the toughest guy, the strongest, the most masculine version of man is doing that, so it makes it okay for one else to do it. Because if I'm on the outside, then I don't get to eat, I don't get to sit by the fire, I don't get the warmth of masculinity, the protective flare of I need to come off as tough or hard in public. But going back to your question, when those men say no, why are they saying no? And so I don't know if I presented on this in the talk. I think I did with the the analogy of the flower. Of when you think about a flower, do you think about the petals? Do you think about the stem, do you think about the leaves, the stamen, the anther? But men are saying no not only because it maybe doesn't align with their identity, but also because of the social issues that they're dealing with outside of just mental health, right? Physical health, emotional health, social health, financial health. I heard a story. I uh participated with uh Mike Silver, he did uh brother lol, Love Out Loud. Uh, there's a gentleman that was about to commit suicide because of his financial ruin. Like this is during like the housing crisis, he was selling cars and his dealership was going under. And he had a child all the way. He had one young child and another child all the way. He's like, the only way I can provide for my family if I kill myself and they get the insurance money. And so that has nothing to do, yes, it's a mental health issue, but it stems from financial health. So when we look inside the black community and we look at all the initiatives that are happening, a lot of them are based in mental health. But we're not actually looking at what's causing the mental health issues. Is it food deserts? Is it food swamps? Is it inadequate health care? Is it job disparity or like lack of job movement? Like, is the only company, is it only an Amazon or a Walmart? And there's no schools, right? So I can't get more educated and get up or work work up higher. So that causes depression, right? Like I only have$1,500 through a whole month, my random is$1,200, right? So do you need a mental health therapist or do you need a financial advisor? Do you need a school advisor? Do you need a different kind of help? All that to say, if I came to that person and offered them flowers, they're like, this is not like well, I didn't try to make it to the end of the month. I don't like what is receiving flowers. So I think of um Maso's hierarchy of humanity.

SPEAKER_01:

Sure, that's what I was just thinking.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, and so it's like, okay, my basic needs are not being meth. Receiving flowers andor giving flowers have to be self-actualized.

SPEAKER_01:

And so I love people have that attitude about art too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

Exactly. Like it's it's not it's not a necessity.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

And so I love this phrase by uh Marshall Schwartz. It says, like, black people are magic because you think about somebody like Bernie Mack, who could like have hungry children at home and go out and do an amazing comedy set. I know that like this art will get me to the next step. And so you see a lot of comedians, a lot of musicians that through struggle, and even my friends, right back in Ohio, they were struggling in a lot of different ways mental health, drug addiction, housing insecurity, and they can still go out and do an amazing archit, they can do an amazing uh set, like music set, or just be a part of a band. And so you jump up and you touch that self-actualization for 30 minutes, an hour, and then you go home and you gotta go back and deliver real life. So the goal of the nonprofit, both nonprofits now, is like how do we create more hang time? How do you get how do you stay? You don't get to just touch it for 10 minutes or 20 minutes, you can just stay in that self-actualization. So you get all your basic needs in that. So my goal, so to answer your question about what is a perfect world looks like, it's like I can go get all my basic needs in that. We can use flowers as a hammer to break down these systemic barriers to saying, like, you need to have X, Y, and Z to be a project manager, you need to have this to be a basketball player. You can be the best basketball player in your neighborhood and get drugged. That's my way of dealing with the big deal with the with that story. But is to say that if we can acknowledge who we are for where we are today without any extra like performative actions or we okay, well, then that's so much more powerful than saying that you have to have this many years of school and this many years of credibility. And so those are important of some as aspects that shouldn't deny somebody food, that shouldn't deny someone housing.

SPEAKER_01:

Right.

SPEAKER_00:

Because they lack in certain areas.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I saw this. It was sort of a mantra that said that says, I am what I am, and that is enough. And this idea of sufficiency, of being sufficient in who we are right now, and that that is enough to deserve all those Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And I think you and I face a similar challenge in that one of the major things I'm trying to do is show that art is integral to our lives. Flowers are integral, nature is integral, community is integral. These are not extra. And I think somehow in our culture, and I'm not really sure where it came from, that art is extra. I mean, art used to be integral. We used to sing and dance together as part of our daily lives. And somewhere it got distilled and ritualized out or something, it got synthesized out so that it's only there, there as entertainment or a currency for the wealthy or for the affluent sufficient to above sufficiency instead of a critical component of our mental health, of our community, of our lives.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. It lacks uh productivity in a sense. If you're sitting there lolly gagging and playing and saying, and that's you know the irony, and this may be off base, but like even slave owners understood the importance of like allowing their enslaved people to have a sense of community of singing and dancing until they realized that they were using it to communicate, but it's like you can't, and but now we have people urinating in bottles at Amazon, right? Because they've taken away all forms of creativity, all forms of like I love this concept of um freedom, create creativity, and autonomy. And that's the false sense that that's given to us at work. So you go to Google, right? You go to the offices, and there's slushy machines, you can drink alcohol after 5 p.m. There's ping pong tables, there's a cake machine, there's unlimited PTO. Because they want and people that companies that have unlimited PTO end up using less than the average person in a company where you get a set amount of hours. It's because you have so much freedom that you don't take it because it's it's the word, it's false, it's not real. They want to sh make your working life the same as like the pleasure and joys that you would get outside of life. So when you blur that line between productivity and play, you end up working more. And so I think we go in down a deep event trying to find where I was going with this. It ends up where again everything be our becomes so abstract to the productivity hours of the of the average human. And it's like I can't have that or I can't enjoy that because I need to be productive until after work.

SPEAKER_01:

Right. And the irony is that the more that gets integrated, the more productive people actually are. And the more, you know, they their their vital forces are supported.

SPEAKER_00:

Absolutely. And so again, that's what happened to me, where it was all about productivity. I was working to have nice things, and then I worked for my nice things. So I had to keep uh cable bill paid. I had to keep the latest engine oil or whatever, get my car fixed and maintained. So like I, so like what did Henry David Thoreau was like men have become tools of their tools? They have all these nice things and they all required maintenance. So it was like, okay, I'm productive at work, but now I'm productive at home in the sense of like keeping this aesthetic. The pretty girl has to go, we gotta go eat at this nice steak house. We had this new restaurant opened up and da-da-da-da-da. You know, there was no art in my house, it was just all materialism, like this electronics and nice furniture and no art.

SPEAKER_01:

Wow. And that's you're you're making a point of trying to shift that you said absolutely.

SPEAKER_00:

So I think everyone You must know so many artists. I I do, I do, and it's almost like you know so many, you like you just like none come to mind because like almost everyone in my circle now are artists, people they create. But every couple years too, I just like get rid of like I find myself like still buying things that I don't need or things I'll bring. Every couple years, I just give away. I just give away like I gave with that after I came out of that program, I gave away like all my furniture, my couch, all that hundreds of pairs of shoes. I gave them all away for free. And they're like, wait, like you don't want any money like no, get it out of here. Like it tried to kill me. I don't want it anymore. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So and then when it my mom got sick, I was able to like very nimbly move back to Chicago because I had given everything away.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. Well, I think it it when you get a healthier sense of things, you sort of realize that life is a metabolic process and you have to you have to really release things and process things and let things go in order for new things to come in. But anyway, I just love what you're doing. And again, I want to support you in getting the word out. We can even stop in here. Does Oprah know about you?

SPEAKER_00:

No, she doesn't.

SPEAKER_01:

She needs to know.

SPEAKER_00:

You know who knows about uh Jennifer Hudson show, they reached out and the Tamra Hall show, but not it didn't make it to Oprah. Not yet, at least.

SPEAKER_01:

Not yet. Yeah, you will. I can just feel it. So thanks for joining us today. Artstorming is brought to you and supported by Artbridge NM and listeners like you. Look for us on your favorite podcast platforms or wherever you listen. Your subscriptions, likes, comments, and shares help us to reach more listeners and attract the support we need to thrive in these challenging times. If you love what you hear, please consider making a contribution. We rely on your help to keep these conversations going. Every dollar you contribute goes directly into programs that support our mission. And we've been offered a matching grant that will match every dollar that you contribute. That means more compelling stories, more in depth articles, and an even greater impact on our community. Please visit our website at www.artbridgenm.org and thank you so much for being an essential part of our work.

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Lili Pierrepont

Host