Winter, 2024
Retsoor asks: can people change?
Shielah Restack: Parts of them can.
If one has the will and the capacity to seek help, a mentor, the gift of friendship, support… I think then many things are possible. I have witnessed too many stories of great change to doubt this. Even me, on a smaller scale. I started life as a horribly shy kid who couldn’t even speak, but now—close to the age of 50—I can fit the expected mold of outwardness. So it took a long time, but I changed to fit the extrovert world. It all takes so much work, and it’s so easy to slip back. I think change is a constant commitment—not a check-the-box and-done kind of thing, which makes it harder.
Dani Restack: Yes
Transformation is an inevitable part of any living experience. A microscopic fertilized egg changes to a deteriorating dead body, then back to the soil to become another creature or plant.
Could we be biologically of each other? The Hopewell people lived (Columbus, OH) here thousands of years ago. A contemporary corn farmer grows in the soil where they died. We eat the corn. Are we of each other now? I guess that’s not someone’s change; it’s just a fact. But, inside, I changed from a traumatized child to an addicted teen to a lonely, sober adult now enriched with a love-pulsing family living in a house.
RS: Is the belief in God a choice?
SR: Yes, it is.
DR: I’d say belief in God is a choice. But I feel God is present in everything, including inside us, whether we like it or not.
SR: I agree with Dani that there is a higher power of nature, life, and force that awes me. That is also a choice, I think, to let it in.
RS: Is everything singular or plural?
SR: I am not sure. Maybe? I am one person, but at one poin,t I was pregnant, and I was two. When Findley the dog lays with me, I am two. The pencil plant next to the bed is one plant but has many branches that could become plants. Latent plural potential just depends on where you draw the line.
DR: I’d say everything is plural. We can say, “I drove to the store.” But not really, I drove because someone invented the pavement, cleared the trees, paved the road, and built the car, which was invented by people getting to the store via horse…
SR: I love this answer of Dani’s – it reminds me of when Michael Morris (who lives here in Columbus) told a class we were leading, ‘NONE OF US ARE SINGLE!’
RS: What percentage of the world is evil?
SR: I see evil as an unbridled quest for money, power, and domination. This probably exists in most of us to some degree, but when it goes unchecked or unquestioned, it gets bad. When you deny the rights of a people, when you are profiting obscenely, when you put others down to allow yourself to ‘rise’—that is evil amongst us, and sadly, those with the most power seem to have let more evil in.
DR: I wholeheartedly agree with Sheilah. And why the fuck can’t the fascists of the Israeli government own the fact that the holocaust is over and they are currently committing genocide? The biggest hypocrites on the planet…
RS: Why do you get out of bed in the morning?
SR: Because I have to make sure our daughter, Rose, wakes up and gets off to school by 7:20 am.
DR: Same here. Even when I don’t get up for Rose, I have to get up when Sky climbs into our bed. Pema Chodron asks the same question on a soul level. What wakes you up? What puts you to sleep?
I get up some days ready to join the rapid rivers, observe, work, help someone out, and experience the pleasure of food…other days, it’s a slog with another orthodontist appointment, car repair, post office lines…
RS: What % of your personality can you choose?
SR: 37% or maybe none.
DR: Is personality a question of perception?
Where does mental illness fit into this equation?
RS: How has mental health affected your creative life?
SR: That is hard to say because I think part of what I work out creatively is all the ways in which I struggle in the world—or the creative life is to translate struggle/ questions through material and form. I am in love with someone who has bipolar, which affects me and my own creative life, as well as my anxiety, neurosis, and quest for perfection, which can have me obsessing about cleaning a stain, responding to a work email, worrying about a student before getting to the studio. So, mental health can both push me away or towards being creative – ultimately,y I just want to communicate a feeling or an experience or make real the reality that feels unseen.
DR: I’m driven to the studio when manic and still driven to the studio when depressed.
RS: Which parent do you sound like when you’re angry?
SR: Good goddess. Probably both of them. My mother tended towards silence, and my father similar, but both interspersed with bouts of intense rage. Several holes were punched in the walls and hollow core doors of my childhood home. I keep trying not to fall into those traps—to make myself make words so I don’t wall off with silence.
DR: Good goddess indeed! My mom is a secretive, passive aggressor. My dad holds no reins on his rage. I guess I’m a bit of both. My fury is deep; my strategy at home is to keep my mouth shut and draw it or journal hateful words. I’m trying to break this cycle with Rose and Sky.
RS: What % of utility have we lost or gained from the internet?
SR: It is an amazing tool, but it is also a vortex. I love being able to want to know something, and I can just google it so easily – but at the same time, I miss the intentionality of research in a library, looking for books, and having to find multiple sources. Right now I feel like students (and myself sometimes) often feel like the result of any question could be found on Wikipedia. I would say it has increased our capacity so greatly, but it’s also made us feel like we have to be on top of things and given us a permanent state of FOMO vis a vis the ways the internet and social media work together, which is really a sad way to live a life and makes me always feel like I am running to catch up.
DR: The internet is fucked. An incessant capitalist tool. However I like getting Democracy Now on my phone to watch while eating lunch.
RS: Do you do what you do so you don’t get sad or because you are?
SR: Both.
DR: One of the best things about my job is that as soon as I walk into the classroom and face those young people, my self-centered emotional wormholes disappear.
SR: This is so true, Dani. I think teaching is a way out of oneself. Same with being a parent. Gotta show up for another.
RS: Does answering questions in a public forum worry you or inspire you?
SR: I like best to answer questions in public with Dani. She gives me courage. I love it when we argue or say something the other one doesn’t expect, and the electricity of our connection is made public. In other words, I am deeply nervous about public forums, but I can do it more easily with Dani, and sometimes things come forth that are surprising.
DR: Lately, I’m curious about the complicated discourse that can ensue from a Q&A. For instance, when we were fostering Sky, it was illegal for us to show her image; now, with adoption, we can include her in the work, just like we do with Rose (Sheilah’s bio daughter). But Sky is brown, and we are a queer white family —people have very strong opinions about interracial adoption. We haven’t done it yet, but we know with our new video, Stovepipe To The Sun, that there will be some difficult questions that I need to consider, and I have some things to say that I hope other people will consider…
RS: Which list is longer: a list of everything that is wrong or a list of everything that isn’t?
SR: It really depends on the day for that one.
DR: Yeah, life is fucking hard, but the practice of gratitude can increase the list of what is right. Living through the lens of gratitude is exponentially better when I can do it.
RS: Bonus question: Drugs?
SR: I just listened to Eileen Myles give a talk on drugs, and they say it all for me. The beauty, the horror, the way it makes you see, and the way it can take you over.
RS: Would you choose to live again without knowing you were given a choice if you had the choice?
DR: Hell, yes. If I had the choice, I’d come back as an otter.
SR: Horse.
