Episode 659
Carvell Wallace, Joy Sullivan, and Danielle Durack
New York Times bestselling author and podcaster Carvell Wallace unpacks his transformative memoir, Another Word for Love, where he mines his own history of growing up, getting sober, and finding his voice as a writer; poet Joy Sullivan discusses her collection Instructions for Traveling West, which explores themes of home, luck, and starting again; and singer-songwriter Danielle Durack performs "Moon Song" from her latest album Escape Artist. Plus, host Luke Burbank and announcer Elena Passarello hears from our audience about their most memorable road trips.
Carvell Wallace
Writer and Podcaster
Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster covering race, arts, culture, film, and music for a wide variety of news outlets, including writing profiles for GQ, Esquire, Glamour, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. He has also hosted multiple podcasts, including Closer Than They Appear, which explores race and identity in America, and Finding Fred, which focuses on Fred Rogers's teachings and their use within systems of oppression. In 2019, Wallace co-authored The Sixth Man with Golden State Warriors forward Andre Iguodala. After building his career on writing unforgettable profiles, he has now turned the focus on himself in his memoir Another Word for Love, examining his own life and the circumstances that frame it—to make sense of seeking refuge from homelessness with a young single mother, living in a ghostly white Pennsylvania town, becoming a partner and parent, and raising two teenagers in what feels like a collapsing world. Kirkus calls the book "an intricate and exhilarating memoir—heartbreaking, humbling, and hopeful. An exquisite, soulful must-read." Website • Instagram
Joy Sullivan
Poet, Teacher, and Author
Joy Sullivan is a poet, teacher, and author of the national bestseller, Instructions for Traveling West. She received a Masters in poetry from Miami University and has served as the poet-in-residence for the Wexner Center for the Arts. Her work has appeared in places like Goop, Oprah Daily, and The Sunday Paper among many others. In addition to leading international writing retreats, Joy has guest-lectured in classrooms from Stanford University to Florida International University and is the founder of Sustenance, a community designed to help writers revitalize and nourish their craft. Read her thoughts on the creative life in her Substack newsletter, Necessary Salt. Website • Instagram
Danielle Durack
Rising Indie-Rock Star
A rising star in the indie-rock world, Danielle Durack emerged from the Phoenix music scene boasting pop hooks and dramatic flair. Her 2019 album Bashful, led by the hit "Sunshine," was a breakthrough, landing her on Spotify's "New Music Friday" and touring with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. 2021's No Place was a towering breakup record achievement, with standouts like "Broken Wings" and "Eggshells" drawing attention from Pitchfork, NPR and more. On her third album, 2023's Escape Artist, Durack showcases growth from heartbreak through diaristic, emotionally deep songwriting. Written during lockdown, it explores themes like escapism, trauma and tumultuous relationships across tracks like the melancholic "Jackson" and "Good Dog." An atmospheric journey of healing, the cathartic Escape Artist cements Durack as an incisive, sensitive voice in indie-rock's next generation. Website • Instagram
Show Notes
Best News
Elena’s story: “Rats Wearing Tiny Vests Are Helping Sniff Out and Catch Illegally Trafficked Wildlife”
Luke’s story: “A Missouri elementary school building has been renamed after its beloved longtime custodian”
Carvell Wallace
Carvell’s new book: Another Word For Love
Carvell references the television shows M*A*S*H, Three’s Company, and Benson.
Live Wire Listener Question
Live audience members answer the question: What is your most memorable road trip?
Joy Sullivan
Joy’s newest poetry collection: Instructions for Traveling West
Joy shares her poems “Leap” and “Luck III”
Check out Joy’s Substack: Necessary Salt
Danielle Durak
Danielle plays the song “Moon Song” off her newest record, Escape Artist
Station Location Identification Examination (SLIE)
This week’s station shoutout goes to KENC-FM 90.7 in Estes Park, Colorado.
-
Luke Burbank: This episode of Live Wire was originally recorded in October of 2024. We hope you like it. Now let's get to the show.
Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's... This week, rider Carvell Wallace.
Carvell Wallace: Part of why we make art and tell stories is because there's a little parlor trick, there's a little human-to-human magic trick of taking reality and making it beautiful.
Elena Passarello: Poet, Joy Sullivan.
Joy Sullivan: What if I burn everything down and I answer with my life, this instinct that says there's another life out there for you?
Elena Passarello: With music from Danielle Durack and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank.
Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thanks to everyone tuning into Live Wire from all across the country. We have a really interesting show for you this week. It's gonna be fun too. That is a thing that does happen still. And we're gonna kick it off with one of the most fun segments that we do. It's called The Best News we heard all week. This is our little reminder, now more than ever, Elena, that there is some good news in the world. You just gotta look for it. What's the best news you heard all week?
Elena Passarello: Well, you know what I always say, Mr. Burbank, when you're looking for good news, you need to look to the rodent kingdom.
Luke Burbank: I don't know if i've ever heard you say that but honestly it makes as much sense as anything
Elena Passarello: Why not? And I wish I would have known this sooner, but for like the past 27 years, there has been this non-profit called APOPO and they have basically worked to train rodents, usually these rats called African giant poached rats to serve in humanitarian efforts. Rats are perfect for this kind of work because they, yeah, they're trainable, they live a long time, They're highly portable. They have great senses of smell, and as we know, a lot of members of the rodent community can basically get into and around almost anything. So that's why they've used rats all around the planet to do things like detect landmines and other buried explosives. They've trained rats to smell for contagious diseases like the disease called TB that I could never pronounce. Do you know how to say that? Ha!
Luke Burbank: Listen, if that's your one Achilles heel, I think we can live with it.
Elena Passarello: There's something about it that I just can't do but a rat could probably teach me how to pronounce it at this point And now this new study that was just published in frontiers in conservation science They took 11 rats and they trained them to sniff out Basically poached animal matter like tusks and horns that are being smuggled out of countries illegally And so now there's another thing that these amazing a popo rats can do they can sniff out this contraband and hopefully help with, you know, the sort of protection of endangered species that are hunted as trophies. And when they're learning these processes, apparently they're very trainable. The rats are rewarded with trail mix that's made of chow pellets, avocado, and bananas. And now here is the best news. I know the holiday season is coming up and you may be looking for the person that has everything. You can sponsor one of these hero rats if you go to APOPO's website. Uh, and just imagine, uh, you know, on Christmas morning or Hanukkah morning or whatever morning, you just, you could give somebody like a little stuffed rat with like a vest on it and be like, this is an avatar for this thing that you're sponsoring that's going to do so much good.
Luke Burbank: I love the idea too, of a poacher being thwarted and they just go, rats. And it's literally a rat. That busted that.
Elena Passarello: Good idea, that's the most Scooby-Doo.
Luke Burbank: Maybe I'm just dissociating these days. I'm Just living in various old cartoons right now in my head. Uh, the folks that are living in Swedeborg, Missouri are, are, are the location of the best news that I saw this week. There's a K through eight school in Swedeborg of Missouri. It's a very small school. It's got like 40 students or something. This is a pretty rural area and their school building has been named the Swedeborg district three elementary school building for some time and uh, they had a long time staffer, a very, very beloved custodian named ClaudeneWilson , who retired in July. And when Claudene retired, uh, everyone in the town and associated with the school had these great stories about all the different ways that Claudene had helped them out over the years. She was just so beloved that they renamed the school for her, the ClaudeneWilson learning center. Because Claudene was not just the custodian. Claudene also would do the plumbing at the school, apparently, when needed. Was a handywoman. Was a shoulder to cry on. A lot of the kids, when they were having a hard day, they might not be inclined to talk to the teachers or even their parents. But apparently, they would talk to Claudene. So she was a guidance counselor. Put that on the business cards, Claudene? And she even, there was a family that was very close to experiencing homelessness. This was just a couple of years ago. And Claudene owned a house that she wasn't living in. And she said, if you wanna stay here, you can. So she was also housing services. Wow. Right? And she just made such an impact on this community and has made such an impact. They say that, I mean, one of the people quoted in this article says. When you tell someone you're from Swedeborg, if they know one thing about Swedeburg, Missouri, they'll say, is Claudene still there?
Elena Passarello: So she's an ambassador as well.
Luke Burbank: This is the George Bailey of this town or something. And so anyway, they named the school after her, which is just an incredible thing. She said she was of course really honored. Here's, I think classic Claudene, okay. She retired in July and by this school year, she found out that they were needing a bus driver. So she's back driving the bus.
Elena Passarello: To an elementary school that's named after her.
Luke Burbank: Yes. She's now apparently the bus driver. Her retirement lasted like four months and she is driving the kids to the Claudene Wilson Learning Center.
Elena Passarello: Well, now they're going to have to name that bus after her, too.
Luke Burbank: Hey, she uh, she's having quite the impact there in Swedeborg, missouri. So i don't know if we're on the radio there, but hopefully soon live wire will
Elena Passarello: Just get Miss Claudene on it. Sounds like she's the person for the job.
Luke Burbank: Exactly somebody in the live wire productions that please reach out to clodding wilson and see if you can get us on the radio there in Missouri anyway that's the best news that I heard this week. All right, our first guest is a writer and podcasters written profiles for GQ Esquire, the New Yorker, uh, the book that he wrote with the NBA player, Andre Iguodala, who was called The Sixth Man. It ended up on Barack Obama's famous list of like year-end books. And now he has turned the focus on himself. He's got a memoir out. It's called another word for love. Kirkus calls it an exquisite soulful must read. Carvell Wallace joined us at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon to talk about it. Take a listen. Carvell, welcome to the program.
Carvell Wallace: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.
Luke Burbank: I really, really enjoyed this book. I felt like I was really riding along with you in your life. The book is kind of at three sections. It's kind of your childhood and then your, I guess, kind of young adulthood and having a family and then kind of making sense of your life in this next act. Let's start with the beginning part. You moved around a lot with your mother and you're describing a lot of stuff that could be really hard. you know for a young person in terms of your life circumstances and then you but you write like This was a really good time for me. Like this is a really beautiful time. Yeah, even though maybe it wouldn't seem like it on paper
Carvell Wallace: Yeah, that's right. I mean, I think that so many different things are available to us in any given moment. And it's not necessarily that one thing is more important than the other. It's just that part of my healing has come from being able to like go, okay, well this, these were difficult things for sure. But the difficulty wasn't the only thing. Like I think somewhere in the book I say, you know, it is not enough to hurt and know that you hurt. That love actually requires of us to heal. And so I think part of what the book is about healing, but the book also is like, is the healing. And part of that healing is the recognition that it's just naming your pain is important, but it can't stop there. At some point I have to say, yes, this hurts. I was harmed in this way. These external forces were difficult. These things, they were bad, that's real. And also they weren't the only thing happening. that there was other stuff happening and I get to hold all of it. One doesn't cancel out the other. I get the hold all them.
Luke Burbank: The thing you were saying about the healing, like this is a book where you watch someone who's healing throughout the book. We've talked to a lot of authors who write about pain and about healing and what I hear a lot from them is writing does not heal you. Like it's not the cathartic thing that people might think it is. I think you write it down and then it's like you've been cured or healed or whatever. Was it actually sort of cathartics for you to write all this stuff now?
Carvell Wallace: I don't know that the healing comes through catharsis. I think that might be the misunderstanding. I think to whatever extent there was healing as a result, it had to do with maybe a feeling that there was nothing left to hide. There's nothing left be afraid of in the self. Part of what harms people, like all forms of systemic harm, whether they happen along lines of race or gender or class or what have you. The thing they all have in common is they make a person feel like their full humanity actually isn't that good and like isn't important. And once you have internalized that belief, people don't even have to do anything to you. You're now just operating at 20% capacity all the time. And so you can't advocate for things that are important. You can't build things that aren't meaningful. You can remake the world in your vision because your sense of self has been deteriorated. And so the opposite of that is the regathering of the self. So I think the way that the book has worked to do what we might call healing is that it has allowed me to regather pieces of the Self and put them all in order and say, okay, this is all there. And now that I see it all together, it's actually okay. This is fine. Now I can go and be a person again.
Elena Passarello: I get the sense that there's another component too, cause it's not just like this happened, this happened. This happened. The book has its own voice and it has its own music and your particular sound and lexicon and syntax is so specific and it's not the same but it's consistent from part one to part two to part three and that has to add something onto it too. It's not displaying the events, it's finding this artful music and language for the event. Yeah.
Carvell Wallace: Yeah. Well, OK, so there's two things there. I think one is that, you know, part of what part of why we make art and tell stories is because there's something there's a little parlor trick. There's a little human to human magic trick of taking reality and making it beautiful. But also on the deeper level, probably storytelling gives us a frame through which to view our reality. And when I was a kid, I grew up, I was really obsessed with TV. I watched TV all the time. I was like really obsessed. ball safe. And so I would watch TV for seven hours, then I would go look at the world, and I would try to fit the world into the framework that I had seen on like MASH or Three's Company or what have you. And...
Elena Passarello: Two very different frameworks, really.
Carvell Wallace: And yet they worked together for me. They... Throw some bents in.
Luke Burbank: I don't think you could have two theme songs that were more wildly divergent than Suicide is Painless by MASH and Come and Dance on Our Floor.
Carvell Wallace: Come and dance on our floor.
Luke Burbank: For the Three's Company crew.
But if you look at the book, you'll see that those two influences are heavily evident, right? The maudlin, kind of like gallows humor of M.A.S.H. was super impactful to me, as was this kind of freewheeling 70s vibe of Three's company. Anyway, the point is that part of what you're doing don't get me started on Three's Company, but part of it. Part of what you're doing as a storyteller is, and this is the privilege of it, is that you're offering a frame for people to view reality through. And so I think that's a really important thing to do because if you're kind of with that, then you make the world a worser place. And so the engagement with beauty is a way of giving people a beautiful framework through which to view their reality. So it might be that some person reads about the flower or the this or the that or whatever is in the book. And then when they leave and they go out, that frame is just there for them. And it impacts the way that they might engage with their reality.
Luke Burbank: This is Live Wire from PRX. We are talking to the writer and podcaster, Carvell Wallace, about his new memoir, Another Word for Love. We gotta take a very short break, but when we come back, Carvell is gonna talk about the sadness that you kind of feel as a kid watching TV, which seems like very niche, Elena, but I actually think the listeners, a lot of them are gonna relate to this thing.
Elena Passarello: Yeah, yeah, yeah
Luke Burbank: Um, so we're going to talk about that right after this, stay with us. This is Live Wire. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm your host Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. We are listening to a conversation we recorded with the writer Carvell Wallace about his memoir, Another Word for Love. Let's get back into that conversation now. We recorded this live at the Alberta Rose Theater in beautiful Portland, Oregon. Not to get totally bogged down in the television conversation, but you describe something in this book that is a kind of an ennui that like I had always had as a kid and nobody ever really named, which is you start watching TV when it's light out. And it gets dark, but you haven't turned on any lights. And now it's like hours later and it's the credits of something. And you just think as a kids, how can I even exist in this kind of sadness?
Carvell Wallace: Unbelievable. It was unbelievable and I actually opened the book with this image because I think, I mean, you know, you're you're writing about yourself but you're also thinking of it as a story in the story editor point of view and you go oh well here's an image that sets the framework for where the character begins. They end in light and togetherness and community but they began alone and that particular sadness that would start when I'd watch a movie and my mother would she was always taking naps or falling asleep or just like not. that it would start in the day, and then the credits would roll, and then it would be dark, and you were just like, this is death. I have encountered the dark underworld, and I will never, you know, but that's- Bruce Banner is walking along the side of the road to another town. And also, the other thing about the book is that it's actually funny to me. I think some of the stuff that people don't know it's funny, but to me, it's that a six-year-old is contemplating death. because like, you know, the afternoon movie on CBS went off. You know what I mean? That's like, what is wrong with this kid? Just be normal, go play outside. Like, what are you doing?
Luke Burbank: One of the things that you do in this book, I think, really expertly is write about your queerness. And you write about it in this way that I don't want to say is casual, but it doesn't seem like you get particularly hung up on it one way or the other. You're describing the life that you have and the people that you've been with. Did it take you a while to get to that point? Did you always feel that way? What was your journey with your queerness?
Carvell Wallace: I think I write in the book, or I may have said in some interview, I knew enough to know that certain places, spaces I was in growing up, queerness could result in physical harm. So I was mildly aware of that. But I never struggled with it personally, like, oh my God, am I queer? What's going on? It always just made perfect sense to me that you could like whoever. Like I just never, and anytime someone would try to convince me that that didn't make sense. I'd be, you know, I'd, I be worried because I was like, well, they seem pretty mad about that. I don't like, I could, I might get hurt, but it never actually made me question whether or not that was right. It always just made the most sense. Yes, and you could like whoever. Why wouldn't you be able to like whoever? Like, what are we doing? So when I wrote about it in the book, it was important for me because I don' like to pimp trauma. And I don't like, and I think that there is a way that we really like to read pain and suffering from certain people so that we can. feel bad, but then also feel relieved that we felt bad, and then that ends the exchange. And the problem with that is that it doesn't really disrupt any power dynamics, because the reader is just like, well, I'm glad my life isn't as bad as this person's life. And so because I don't like to do that around anything, around any marginalized identity, I didn't want to do it with queerness either. I didn' want to tell a story of woe and suffering and abuse the queerness. But I also did want to be honest about what happened. But that's not what this book was. So this book. I thought maybe the most radical thing I could do is take queerness as a given. It doesn't need to be explained, it doesn't to be introduced. We don't need like open up the curtain and say, now introducing our special guest, queerness. And everyone has to stops and applauds. It's just that is a normal thing in this world. And so now we can move forward with our story.
Luke Burbank: Um. We're talking to Carvell Wallace. The book is Another Word for Love. I was really interested to see that you got into writing this kind of stuff pretty late in the game. I mean, you were a performer, an actor, and doing a lot of other stuff, but I don't wanna say accidentally, but I mean you came into this kind of writing almost accidentally.
Carvell Wallace: Yeah, it was accidental, I would say for sure. I mean, I went to school for theater and I worked as an actor. Then I left acting to play music for a while and that was what it was. And then my kids were born and I couldn't tour and I could go and do like Oregon Shakes or whatever. And so I was at home and I just started writing because it was the one like creative discipline I could do without having to leave the kids. But I didn't really know how to do it and I didn’t have a lot of practice with it and then somewhere around 2014 I wrote a little tiny thing on Facebook and a friend of mine asked if she was like this is really good but my friend has a blog can she put it on her blog and so I was like sure so then she put on the blog and then about a month later she asked me to write another thing so I wrote another thing for that same blog and I just forgot about it I had this tech job you know I was two little kids I'm working in Texas, whatever. And then one day I opened up my Twitter and there were like a billion notifications and I couldn't figure out what happened, you know? This was even before people were getting canceled. So I didn't even, I wasn't even afraid that I got, I just didn't know what was happening. And it turned out that this blog was like- Yeah, you see me trending, it's not good news. Sorry. It's for the record. This is before I didn' even know to be afraid that was trending. But it turned that that blog was, it was a small blog, but the followers were like almost all famous people for some unknown reason. and I guess Cindy Crawford. had retweeted something I wrote.
Elena Passarello: Wow.
Carvell Wallace: I believe that that's who it was. I'm still not 100% sure, but it was some 90s supermodel. I think it was Cindy Crawford. And it was gone from there. And then so Jessica Hopper at Pitchfork was like, you know, try writing some music stuff. And I was like yeah, I do. And It was literally from there I wrote a few pieces for PitchFork and they did well. And then more editors reached out and I was like, oh, wait, I think this is it. I think It's happening. So I just I ran with it.
Luke Burbank: Another big part of this book is your recovery, literally your recovery or sobriety. And you write about this kind of moment of clarity, which comes at a totally, not when I would expect this to happen for someone. Like you've had a pretty fun Fourth of July barbecue. It's gone pretty well. You've got a wife and a family and friends and life is working for you. And you realize that you've had this whole bottle of vodka or whatever it was, bottle of something. and So many people, myself included, wake up the next day from that and go, I'm never doing that again. And then we totally do that again, why did this stick for you? Why did this moment of clarity actually cause you to change your life the way you did?
Carvell Wallace: I truly don't know, I've thought about this so much. I don't why that one stuck. There were so many things that happened before that that would have been a moment that any rational, reasonable person would have been like, I should probably stop drinking, you know? And I did, but only for seven hours, you now? [Luke: Wow, must be nice.] And so, and so, you for me, what kept it going was there was an illusion. that there was some different, I might have messed up last time, but there is a way out there that I can do this that won't lead to negative consequences. Like what happened on that particular day was that I suddenly no longer had that. I was like, oh, I get it. There's no way for me to do this. It's not a possibility. And I think before then I thought it was a possibility, now I had never seen that possibility, but writers are nothing if not magical thinkers. It's what we do for a living. And so my magical thinking was like, I'm sure I can find a way to drink like a normal person and not have consequences. I haven't done it in 20 years, but I will figure it out starting tonight. And then I think that night it was just like, oh, I get it now, it's never going to stop. And people in my family had died, but they had died a long time ago, but their deaths suddenly made sense to me that night. Oh, I Get it. She didn't plan on dying. She just, she went too far. It was like she couldn't stop. And if I don't stop, I'm gonna go too far And I don't want that.
Luke Burbank: I'm guessing your kids have read the book?
Carvell Wallace: My son has, my daughter hasn't.
Luke Burbank: How do you feel about that? It's a very honest book uh... about your life.
Carvell Wallace: He skipped the sex part. Which was great because that chapter is called this sex and so he was like, I'm just gonna yeah.
Carvell Wallace: Skip that. Yeah, so I knew, I thought they would both read it, but I figured it'd be like after I died somehow. I was like.
Carvell Wallace: You know, they're going to be like, OK, who was that guy? Like, for real, who is that guy, you know? Because when you're a kid, you don't really think about your parents. You're just like, you just think of them as like a source of stuff, money, and whatever. And then when they die, you go, wait a second. Was that a person? Who was that person? What was going on with that person now? You know? So I figured that's when they would get to the book. And so I wasn't like tripping. I wasn't like trying to get them to read it. But my son just was like, Dad, I'm totally going to get your book. I ordered it. Like, I pre-ordered it. Like, I'm really in. I was like, Well, you sure you want to read this? I think it's pretty hairy. He's like, No, I want to get into it. And he did. He really read it. And he really loved it. And he wanted to talk about it a lot. And yeah, it was great.
Luke Burbank: It must be amazing for him to have this insight into his father, you know, because I feel like having read the book, I have some new insight into your life, at least the stuff you put in here, for him be your own actual son and to learn this about his dad.
Carvell Wallace: Yeah, I think there's that. I also think that, you know, at 21, I think, there's some stuff about the book that he doesn't get. I mean, the book is like written, you know, from the point of view of someone who's a lot older. Like, I remember once I was having a conversation with him and he was like, it's like you say in your book, Dad, terrible things happen and life is bad. And I was like. I don't think. I'm not sure that that's...
Elena Passarello: You need him to write like an analysis of the book, you have a paper due to get a grade on it. Yeah, maybe then.
Carvell Wallace: You know, it's like you say, people do terrible things to you, and that's the point. I was like, I don't...
Carvell Wallace: I think that's the point. But he's, you know, so I think he's processing it the way young people process things. Because when you're young, you're very focused on the wrongs done to you. That's your primary focus. It's the right and healthy way to be. As you get older, you start to put aside, for a moment, the wrong is done by other people, and you start looking at your own stuff. And you know. So the book tries to do that. I think some of that stuff went over his head.
Luke Burbank: It's a great book. It covers so much and in so many different kinds of emotions and does it all so sort of expertly. It's another word for love. Carvell Wallace. Thanks so much for coming on Live Wire. That was writer and podcaster, Carvell Wallace, right here on Live Wire. His memoir, Another Word for Love, is available right now. I'm Luke Burbank, that's Elena Passarello over there. Of course, each week we like to ask the Live Wire listeners a question. Inspired by Joy Sullivan's book, which you're gonna hear more about coming up, we decided to ask the listeners, what, Elena?
Elena Passarello: We asked them, what is your most memorable road trip?
Luke Burbank: And we're doing something fun occasionally this year, which is we actually like to ask real audience members from the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon to answer the listener's questions. So we sent our producer Melanie Sevcenko out to do that. And these are the responses. This is from Jan.
Jan: So one year, Portland Public Schools let school's out at the 1st of May because they ran out of money. And so my parents decided to take us on a road trip and we went across the country and the one thing that was the worst in the entire universe is my younger sister had a pair of shoes that had a hole in the toe and she never wore socks and if she really wanted to torture me she'd take her shoes off and it was the most disgusting aroma ever.
Luke Burbank: I love that is just like really on brand sibling behavior. I feel like you really subject your sibs. I have, you know, six brothers and sisters. You subject them to things as a kid that you would never do in adult life to anyone.
Elena Passarello: No, yeah, it's totally torturous. I grew up in the house by myself, so when I went on road trips with my family, I had just like this spacious backseat. It was a delight. I could stretch out. I had no idea that like all of the people with siblings were basically getting tortured on the highways of America.
Luke Burbank: All right here's another story of a memorable road trip this is from Sarah and her friend Candace
Sarah: We were actually both just talking about this. We've known each other since seventh grade. And senior skip day, we drove to Kenita and on our way back we ran out of gas. And there's one service station pretty much between Kenita and like Gresham. We didn't have any money, so we decided to try to sell whatever we had out of the back of our car. and this sweet man gave us $10 worth of gas and we went back up and repaid him a couple weeks later.
Luke Burbank: Those were the days like where you could run out of gas so thoroughly and there was probably no cell phone Around to call for help that it was like well How much can we get for these road flares?
Elena Passarello: The spare tire.
Luke Burbank: What else? Whatever you can find in the car.
Luke Burbank: Me and my buddies took a road trip when we were in high school down to California. And on our way back, we really wanted to go to San Francisco, to Ghirardelli square, where you could get the clam chowder and a bread bowl. We were like obsessed with that. Yeah. And while we were getting the clam Chowder from the bread bowl, some kids threw a rock through the back window of my buddy's Honda Civic and stole pretty much all of our stuff. [Elena: Oh, no]. There was no back window as a hatchback. So we drove all the way back with me lying down in the back of the car, bracing a foam mattress against the hole in the...
Elena Passarello: Oh, God.
Luke Burbank: I should have answered all of these questions because I've got millions of weird road trip experiences. Let's hear one from listener John, who is at the Alberta Rose Theater.
John: driving from Spokane to Seattle for the premiere of Empire Strikes Back through the ash from Mount St. Helens. When I-90 was closed we snuck on it because we had tickets for the world premiere so we had to get there. It had a Volkswagen bug that had an oil bath air filter so it saved it because the didn't make it through.
Elena Passarello: Oh my God, I was already imagining like a 70s Beetle bug before he even mentioned that it was a bug.
Luke Burbank: I mean, that is the kind of tenacity that John brings to the audience experience. I don't even want to know what he had to do to get to Live Wire, but he did it. Thank you to everyone who answered our listener question this week. This is Live Wire from PRX. Our next guest is a poet, a teacher, and the author of the national bestseller Instructions for Traveling West, which Booklist describes as moving, forthright, and fresh poems about loneliness and desire, beauty and pain Her work has appeared in such places as Goop and Oprah Daily. Joy Sullivan joined us at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon to talk about her real life journey traveling west. Take a listen. Hi, Joy. Welcome to the show.
Joy Sullivan: Thank you so much for having me.
Luke Burbank: I've been aware of you because you're here in Portland and I see your work and I'm really excited to get to talk to you but I want to get a little bit of your kind of history which is sort of laid out in the book. You grew up going back and forth between Ohio and Africa as a young kid. Where were you in Africa?
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, well we bounced around a little bit. So my family worked in the medical field and so we were first in Quebec and then Haiti and then Central African Republic. So we moved around quite a bit. But most formative years were in Central Africa.
Luke Burbank: And your parents were medical missionaries. There was a pretty strong religious life for you, right? What was that scene?
Joy Sullivan: Yeah. Exciting. Wow. Yeah.
Luke Burbank: Okay, I feel like that pause really said a lot.
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, I mean, I'd say the first, up until really high school and college, the formative years of my life were in some ways oppressively religious. And so I sort of began deconstructing that in high school, in college. Like I had a high school teacher who actually gave me my first cigarette and that kind of thing. So I like became, true story. They would arrest you for that now, I believe. And rightfully so. I had some experiences after we left the mission field that sort of, I think, helped me. find a different path. But I'm really grateful in many ways for that time, because even though I had to deconstruct a pretty formal religious upbringing, it gave me this really expansive sense of the world. It gave me the this language of poetry. I think that's my first experience of coming to language was writing in church. These really long sermons we would go to as a kid, I was just allowed a notebook and a pen, and so I would write. And I think that was really formative. So there's a lot that I've deconstructed and a lot I'm really grateful for in that upbringing.
Luke Burbank: Something that you write about in one of the poems in the book, by the way, we're talking to Joy Sullivan about her book of poems, Instructions for Traveling West, is that when you were growing up in Africa, your neighbors had a chimpanzee named Mendelsohn, and you loved this chimp, but were low-key terrified of it because it was getting stronger and stronger.
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, it's such a tragic thing. And I think a lot of times you just accept things as a kid that you're like, yeah, my neighbors have a chimpanzee. And he was a primate. And so he needed physicality and touch. And he kept chained. by my neighbors, and I would sort of sneak and see him, and if you got close enough, he would hug you, and then he wouldn't let you go. And so it became this sort of tragic metaphor for me as a kid to see what it was to be really caged or trapped, and I think I internalized that of really wanting to always have freedom and wanting wild things to also have freedom.
Luke Burbank: How do you, the poems are so specific in terms of a particular way something smelled or how somebody, the look in someone's eye or the way the sky was on that moment. Are you like keeping copious notes at all times? How are you recalling the detail of those moments in your poetry?
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, so one thing, a kind of a mantra that I say to myself is to write from the belly, not the brain. So I try and be really sense forward in my work. I'm a little bit synesthetic, which means that I experience sometimes an overlap of senses. So in my sentences, sometimes they have a little bit of a texture or a flavor in my brain. So genuinely, like literally on the page, I'm experiencing something sensorially before I'm even sort of making sense of it rationally.
Luke Burbank: Well, can we hear one of the poems? Sure. Let's hear Lee.
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, this is Leap. I made a really big leap about three years ago in my life and I wrote a poem about it. Nothing my friends tells me shocks me anymore. No wild dream or unadvisable plan or moonshot idea. Recently, my friend told me she wants to move to Wyoming to be closer to horses. She tells me horses can hear your heartbeat from four feet away. That's enough for me. Another friend is relocating to Peru. Another to Alaska in search of his true North. Another is adopting a child. Another is turning down a killer job so she can finish the book she's been trying to write for years. Another is leaving the man of her dreams for a woman. Look, America is awful and the earth is too hot and the truth of the matter is we're all up against the clock. It makes everything simple and urgent. There's only time to turn toward what you truly love. There's only time.
Luke Burbank: Joy Sullivan here on Live Wire. I was really struck by that poem because I feel like, depending on maybe how much privilege one has, a lot of us get to sort of figure out what we want our life to look like, and then we get to go try and do that. But then you also get to the end of your little rainbow and you go like, okay, this is what that was all about. Do you feel that? Do you kind of try to address that in your work? You have this life that you wanted to create. You're a poet. You live in this beautiful city. and now you have to deal with the reality that this is your life.
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, it's weird. I wrote a piece recently about like the surprising tragedy of getting what you want because it doesn't, you know, you can become a bestselling author and it doesn' fix your depression. You know, you still have to get up in the morning and face yourself.
Luke Burbank: That was my plan. Yeah, I know. As soon as I write a book, you're saying it doesn't work. It doesn't fix the depression.
Joy Sullivan: I think for me, like a lot of us, I sort of woke up in the pandemic and was like, am I doing the work that is meaningful? Am I living the life? It was like a lot of we're like, am I doing things that feel really meaningful? And so I ended up just quitting my corporate job about three and a half years ago, leaving my relationships, selling my house, taking my two cats, and getting in my Subaru and driving west until I hit Portland, so.
Luke Burbank: So you really did this, this instructions for traveling west is like.
Joy Sullivan: You know, it's like, for me, there was privilege in that because I had means to do that, but it was kind of like an exercise in letting your intrusive thoughts win. Like, what if I burn everything down and I answer with my life this instinct that says there's another life out there for you.
Luke Burbank: You rarely hear people say, trust your intrusive thoughts. It's not usually the message, but that's what we're here to talk about today on Live Wire. You also write a sub stack that I'm now following. It's a great read. You're very, very open. You were mentioning, I feel comfortable saying this, it's in the sub stack, that you were having a special moment with someone and called them dad instead of daddy, which is a totally different vibe.
Joy Sullivan: Thank you.
Luke Burbank: In that scenario. really, really changes the energy. It really does. And have you always been comfortable talking in that kind of detail about your life with strangers and radio hosts?
Joy Sullivan: Well, you know, I'll say like, I think a lot about if you don't have some blood on the page, like it's not worth reading. I do think there is, especially in poetry, there has to be some exchange of vulnerability. I don't believe in using vulnerability as currency, like I'm not just going to be vulnerable because it's sensational, but I do you think when there is some kind of emotional exchange, if I can open something about the universal human experience. That's something I wanna share. I'm a big proponent in not being the hero of your own work all the time. So there's a lot of things that I share that I think people can really relate to. And that's one thing I like to do in Substack and then also in the book.
Luke Burbank: Can we hear another poem?
Joy Sullivan: Uh, this one is called luck three. I somehow got upgraded on my flight today to see my family. And because I'm almost never lucky, I'm trying to be very quiet about it. The attendance even gave me free whiskey at noon, which is definitely a mistake, but also one I'm going to make because it's free. And for the first time in a while, something nice and not horrible has happened. Also, if not for the grace of strangers who let me cut them at a holiday check-in line that lasted for centuries, I most certainly would have missed my flight. Now I'm in premium class drinking whiskey and worried if anyone is nice to me, I'll sob. A woman on Instagram once posted about the fact that she gets upgraded on flights all the time because she's able to manifest luxury and the universe loves her like a little spoiled brat and God, I can't relate. I'm decidedly not. the universe's spoiled brat. I'm no one's patishoo. I am the universe's weird great aunt. The one drinking whiskey and writing poems in the bathroom and swiping left on Bumble and running for her flight, terrified she won't get home for Christmas. The thirty-something woman who's just trying to get there, wherever there is.
Luke Burbank: That's Joy Sullivan, reading from instructions for Traveling West. Do you feel like we can affect our luck? Are we just unlucky or lucky or can we do something?
Joy Sullivan: Well, I think the beauty of being a poet and a writer is that you can literally shift a narrative. And I think something amazing happens when you start writing things down on the page. You sort of bring things into existence and you can also reshape a story. So I found like when I started writing, I wrote instructions for Traveling West as a poem. And 40 days later, that poem, which is the titular poem of the book, I had sold my house and left. my job, and so I think what we write down literally on the page shifts our luck, changes our stories, and drives something new into existence.
Luke Burbank: You're also a teacher and I'm wondering, people must ask you all the time, like a lot of people have a dream probably of writing, particularly maybe of writing poetry. And I mean, you did this kind of scary thing of going from a sort of civilian life, corporate life to this. What is your advice to people who have had this dream to kind of write and have never really had a chance to do it?
Joy Sullivan: Yeah, I think a lot about instinct and like, you know, I think about this when I was writing the book, it's all about following your instincts. And there's like these geese, like who's the first goose that's like, it time to go, you know, we're gonna fly south. I think in us in people, there's that same instinct that's trying to get us to go somewhere, somewhere new. And so I tell people like, You don't have to leap all at once. It looks like I did because I did this really dramatic move. And I sort of everything down. but I scooched for a really long time, you know? And so if that's you, I would say, you know, if you have the dream, it's okay to scooch to the edge for a long time and you'll learn scooching, you'll get braver as you go.
Luke Burbank: Scooching towards greatness. Joy Sullivan's follow up to instructions for Traveling West. Joy, thank you so much for coming on Live Wire.
Elena Passarello: Thank you so much for having me.
Luke Burbank: That was Joy Sullivan right here on Live Wire, her latest poetry collection, Instructions for Traveling West is available right now. It's Live Wire. I'm Luke Burbank with Elena Pasarello. We need to take a very quick break, but don't go anywhere. When we come back, we're gonna get some music from indie rock artist, Danielle Durack. More Live Wire coming your way just after this. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, here with Elena Passarello. Ooh, it is time for one of my favorite parts of the show when we play station, location, identification, examination. This is where we quiz Elena Passorello, one of the number one geography knowers in America, by my estimation anyway.
Elena Passarello: Okay.
Luke Burbank: About a place in the U.S. Where live wires on the radio Elena's gonna guess where I am talking uh... this was at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon Elena was putting her brains on full display in front of the live on Okay, so here we go. Station location identification examination. It's home to a place called Seven Keys Lodge, which is named for a popular mystery novel. And with it having that name and being named for that novel, people have started to bring, or over the years have brought keys to this hotel, this lodge, and now they have like 20,000 keys, which have been given to them by visitors and dignitaries. It's like a whole thing.
Elena Passarello: Hmm, okay
Luke Burbank: I've got another hint here. It's also home to the Stanley Hotel, which was built in 1909 and was the first hotel in the state. And it served as the inspiration for Stephen King's The Shining.
Elena Passarello: It's in Colorado.
Luke Burbank: Okay, yes, you're right. You're in the right state.
Elena Passarello: Overland Park, Colorado. Is that right?
Luke Burbank: It has Park in the name.
Elena Passarello: Anderson Park.
Luke Burbank: It is. It's one of the great hip-hop producers of its era, Anderson Paak, Colorado. That's it. No, it's got part, first, second word, park, first word. You're right, Estes Park, Colorado. Exactly right. Where we're on the radio on KENC. All right, there you go. Big shout out to our friends tuning in from Estes Park, Colorado. This is Live Wire. Okay, before we get to our musical guest, a little preview of what we're doing on the show next week, we're gonna be celebrating National Poetry Month with some of our very favorite poets. We've got Hanif Abdurraqib, who's gonna read us a poem about a ghost in his house. This is a true story, apparently. Also, we're going to hear some incredible readings. from our friend, the former poet laureate of Oregon, Anis Mojgani. Also we'll hear from Kaveh Akbar, who's got a best-selling book out right now. And speaking of former poet Laureates, we've got one from Utah as well. Paisley Rekdal will talk about her latest book that really helps those of us who maybe don't have a real background in poetry kind of understand what's really going on. She calls it Understanding Poetry Forensically. And then we've also got some music from Kasey Anderson. who's written a song inspired by a poem and who helped bring all of these great poets together that we're gonna be featuring on the show next week. So don't miss it. It's the Live Wire Poetry Special, coming your way. Our musical guest this week hails from Phoenix, Arizona by way of Nashville. Her 2019 album, Bashful landed her on Spotify's New Music Friday, as well as a tour with the band Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. She's now out with her third album. It's Escape Artist and it is cementing her status. as an important voice in indie rock's next generation. This is Danielle Durack, recorded at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Hello Danielle, what song are we going to hear from you?
Danielle Durack: I'm going to play Moonsong.
Luke Burbank: And is this off your newest record?
Danielle Durack: It is, yeah.
Luke Burbank: All right, this is Danielle Durack here on Live Wire.
Danielle Durack: [Danielle Durack performs"Moon Song"] Thank you so much.
Luke Burbank: So good. Danielle Durack, here on Live Wire. That was Danielle Durack right here on Live Wire, performing Moonsong. All right, that's gonna do it for this week's episode of the show. Huge thanks to our guests, Carvell Wallace, Joy Sullivan, and Danielle Durack.
Elena Passarello: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michelle is our Executive Director, and our producer and editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Eben Hoffer is our Technical Director. Leona Kinderman is our Assistant Technical Director, and our house sound is by D.Neil Blake. Ashley Park is our Production Fellow. Becky Phillips and Andrea Castro-Martinez are our interns.
Luke Burbank: Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alves, and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. Welcome to the show, Haziq.
Elena Passarello: Woo-hoo! Additional funding provided by the Marie Lamprem Charitable Foundation. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank member Marsha Truman of Portland, Oregon, and David Martin of Portland Oregon.
Luke Burbank: For more information about the show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire crew, thank you for listening and we will see you next week.
PRX.
