S2E27: Claire Zorn, author, artist and enthusiastic maker

Um, yeah, I, I think I re I remember when I was growing up, this is going to be a tangent, but when I was growing up, there was, um, my parents listened to a lot of music and, um, I was introduced to Joni Mitchell, very, very young person.

Yeah.

Joni.

Um, and I remember learning that she also painted, and

I think I learned that through the lyrics to one of her songs.

where she said, I'm a lonely painter and my life is in a box of paints.

And then I learned that was actually like, she paints as well.

And I think just like blew my mind a little bit.

I was, I think it's easy to kind of put people into boxes.

If this person writes music, this person makes movies, this person writes books, this person paints, but the overlap is actually, there's a lot of overlap, I think.

um yeah I remember a number of years learning that Michael Stipe the musician from REM had taken a bit of a break from music and he was doing photography and it's like oh okay you are actually allowed to let all of these parts of you go when you have time and space yeah

and um I also think that it feeds into the other parts of our creative work anyway.

I'm a knitter and I've been trying to work through a kind of tricky part of my manuscript.

And so I'll go and just sit and have a knit for a bit while I'm knotting the idea in my head.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, I used to, I can't knit anymore because I got like an RSI issue in my thumb.

This is so common for people who are not knitters.

We go hard and then we injure ourselves.

It's the neck or it's

the elbow or the hand.

Yeah, yeah.

But I used to have, yeah, my knitting, like when I'm working on a book, I'd have my knitting next to me and when I hit a spot, That, yeah, instead of picking up my phone or, you know, doing something not helpful and distracting, I would always try and pick up my knitting.

Yeah, I do find that there's something wonderful that happens.