Lifewriting Episode 8: The Eightfold Path

Welcome to the Life Writing podcast where married authors and screenwriter Stephen Barnes and.

Tananarive due talk about writing during stressful times, breaking into Hollywood and balancing life.

Every week we'll share more tips on how to build a better life while you create your dream projects, even if.

It'S only at a rate of one sentence a day. Life writing is the application of the tools of writing to life and the.

Tools of life to your writing. This is an incredible episode, actually unprecedented because for the first time we have three guests today that we'll bring in later. But I just have to say, it's a village. It takes a village to do a podcast. So we have the great Charles Johnson.

The great John Jennings, and the great Brian Moss.

So we're going to be talking all about comics, graphic novels, but first, just catch up a little bit on what's been going on this week. This is toward the end now of Black History Month, and I just wanted to mention something that honestly, I had not remembered until the Zen Educational project put a post up on Instagram and Twitter. February 20th was the anniversary of my late mother, Patricia Stevens Dues Jail in There was a historic jail in in Tallahassee, Florida. My mom, my late mom and her sister, my aunt Priscilla Stevens Krause, were really excited by their first exposure to a meeting by a civil rights organization called core, the Congress of Racial Equality. And after the Greensboro sit ins, they said, hey, we can do sit ins in Tallahassee, Florida. So they just a handful of them, really. You know how it is when organizations start. It's just like a couple people start that snowball rolling. But they went. Several students from Florida A and M University went and they got arrested. And when my mother was arrested and my aunt, rather than paying their fine, they were like, we're not going to pay for segregation. They decided to go to jail. And they spent 49 days in jail, got all kinds of attention internationally. Dr. King sent them a telegram. The baseball great Jackie Robinson sent them diaries to fill out. And afterward they went on a speaking tour where they were hosted at Eleanor Roosevelt's. I mean, it was just like a whole thing. But I just wanted to acknowledge that, that milestone.

Very cool. Very, very good. Your mother was an amazing woman.

She was. And I'm so thankful that she supported me in the arts. I have said many times, because my father, who's still living, John Dew, is a civil rights attorney. And they were titans to me, absolute titans. And if either one of them had given me any indication that they thought I was wasting my Time or wasting cultural capital in the arts, I might not be a writer.

Well, you're talking about the internal permission thing.

Yes.

Do you have permission to express your excellence? Do you have permission to be who you really are and, you know, sing your song? And if you did not get that from your parents, you're going to need to find a way to give it to yourself.

It would have been tough. I put them on such a pedestal. You know, both of my sisters, Johnita and Lydia, they're both lawyers, you know, following in my father's footsteps.

Right.

Your mom wanted to be a musician, didn't she?

She did. Thank you for mentioning that. We used to play trumpet duets when I was in middle school. She had a trumpet. I had a trumpet. She was a music major, which just really underscores to me how much she sacrificed for the movement. Because the first couple years of her college life were all about just being a college student, playing in the band, orchestra, bassoon, trumpet, little piano, having fun, getting in a little bit of trouble. But. But the minute they were exposed to a concrete methodology like, these are the steps you can take. You go into an establishment, you establish your goals, you resist, but nonviolently, like, you go limp. You know, it was just like a blueprint. And once they had that blueprint, it was it. I mean, for the rest of her life, basically. Civil rights, social agitation, that was. That was her life.

Well, that's that whole thing. You need a map, you know, the whole magic formula, right? You have to have a map of a potential, of a potential set of strategies that will allow you to leverage your energy and intelligence and creativity so you move towards a goal. And one of the things that we wanted. We want to do on this show is to every week provide a map to how can you be more efficient and effective, just, you know, to move from the political to the personal arena. In the last week, we have been hit with multiple, you know, curiosity about projects. We could be about to get overwhelmed. So we have to have very, in a good way, strategies in mind for how can we actually meet these deadlines? How can we produce the best work we can within a controlled time frame without clawing each other's eyes out? Last week we did the, you know, how to collaborate without killing each other. It's going to be, how do you. How do you. During the times. And if you stay on the carousel long enough, the brass ring comes around, and sometimes it'll be, you know, feast or famine that you go through a long period of time where nothing is happening. And all of a sudden, a ton of stuff is happening. How can you do that? How can you do that with a certain degree of joy? You can't. Don't want to mention any of the projects right now, but they involve books that you wrote, books that we wrote, projects that I've done, you've done, other projects that people are bringing to us. And, you know, there are times when if you don't take advantage of those projects, they're gone forever. And you'll end up wondering, why didn't I take that? So, you know, one of our friends, Brian Fuller, talks about how he can write. You know, he can only be showrunner on one project at a time, but he can write five projects at a time. And, you know, Rodney Barnes, you know, I don't even have any idea how many projects he's juggling. So the. The idea that we can only do one thing at a time I think is connected with the idea that maybe we are only doing one thing. What we're doing is we're paying attention, we're being honest, we're expressing ourselves. There are many different containers that can hold that creativity. But there is only one thing that you're doing, and that's you're being yourself at this moment, being appropriate, expressing yourself through writing.

And I know neither of us wants to make what I would consider the mistake we made last year. Although, in retrospect, what was that? We were. Let me. Let me set the table here. We were working on a feature script. We were working on maybe two pilot scripts, several pitches, and then a major horror showrunner offered me a spot in a mini room, and I turned it down. And I'm like, oh, never again. Never, never, never again. So that's what we're learning how to do. I mean, it's like, you know, overwhelmed.

Jason still, you know, rubs my nose in the fact that I turned down that animation gig. You know, I thought for sure that other things were going to happen. And I was in the middle of this. It was working on the Hannibal series with Vin Diesel, you know, and so I thought, hey, you know, it's like, open up the gates, Lord. I'm coming home. And this is like, you know, hallelujah. I thought, you know, everything was working. And then that fell through. And the long winter began.

Yes.

Oh, my goodness. So we've learned it would have been better to. To split my attention and do two projects than to put all my attention on one project, have that fall through. And then I got nothing. So I think that that idea of Overlapping projects over, you know, that we're, we're promoting one thing while we polish something else, while we're doing rough draft on this, while we're brainstorming about this whole. While we're pitching about this, while we're taking meetings about that all at the same time. How do you center yourself? So the first thing is, you know, I'd say every hour, every, at least once every three hours, stop and breathe deep, slow, diaphragmatic breathing for 60 seconds. Just center yourself critical, critical, critical.

And also reward yourself. NK Jemisin talked about how if she wrote up to a certain writing quota, that then she would give herself the treat of playing on her video game. Also, I love the idea of just walking through a doorway to acknowledge that you've accomplished a task so that the whole day doesn't feel like a blur of work. And we have the sense that we haven't accomplished anything. Now if you get up and you acknowledge every time you accomplish something, listen.

I really need to do that more. I mean, please remind me of that more. I really do tend to just roll over into what's next, stop and say, wow, I did this. Yes, I did this. You know, it's that little kid inside you that is the creative dynamo, needs to be patted on the head and said, good boy, good girl. Wow, aren't you clever. So look, I guess, you know, I want to talk about. We have a lot to talk about today that is specific to all of this process. So I wanted to give a very. A very short intro to the fact that 10 years ago, you know, I'm always looking at models of behavior of how we can be more efficient and effective as human beings. And one of the models was Buddhism's Eightfold path to producing proper behavior to be in alignment with the dao, to be in alignment with nature, so that we can evolve as human beings and hopefully become awake and enlightened. And it occurred to me that it would be possible to create a series of stories, an anthology in graphic form. And I thought this should be graphic, not written stories, each of which expresses one of these segments. I'm not going to be specific about them because I have somebody who can be a lot more specific than I can. And I knew that if I was, I've meditated for years. I've been involved in yoga and martial arts and so forth, but I'm not a practicing Buddhist. But when I realized that within my resource circle was someone who was. Who was also an amazing writer and also just a good friend, I thought that If I could. If I could enlist him in this process, that I then would have the resources necessary. So let me. You, You.

You.

You go with this T. Okay.

I've been so excited about this introduction because, listen, I've been reading Dr. Charles Johnson since I was a child. Sorry. I hate it when people say that to me. But it's true.

You know how it feels.

I read his cartoons in Ebony magazine. You know, using humor and cartoons to address all these big issues of the day. Integration, you know, civil unrest, you name it. And that was just a staple in our household. And of course, you know. Well, let me. I'll go into the official introduction. He's a University of Washington professor emeritus, the author of 26 books, a novelist, philosopher, essayist, literary scholar, short story writer, cartoonist and illustrator, author of children's literature, screenplay and teleplay writer, a MacArthur Fellow. He received a 2002American Academy of Arts and Letters award for Literature, a 1990 National Book Award for his novel Middle Passage, which I know is required reading in schools and universities all over the country. Is 1985 Writers Guild Award for his PBS play, Booker, the 2016 W.E.B. du Bois Award at the National Black Writers Conference. Many, many. Really. I can't go into all of the awards, but I would like to talk about his most recent publications, which are the Way of the Reflections on the Art and Craft of Storytelling, his fourth short story collection, Nighthawks, which was nominated for a 2019 Washington State Book Award, A Grandparents Wisdom for a Happy Life, and the graphic novel the Eightfold Path. And I also had the pleasure of introducing the two of you. Well, it was one of those situations where, like, two seconds after I met him, I could introduce him to you. But let me tell you, when you're a newlywed as I was, we had only been married a couple years, and we were living in the Pacific Northwest where there were not a lot of black people. Let's just be real. So we went up to Seattle for a Go On Girl Book Club conference. It was huge wall to wall Women readers, and Dr. Charles Johnson was there. So when I introduced you to Steve, Dr. Johnson said the Stephen Barnes. I'm like, no, this is the Charles Johnson. And he's like the Stephen Barnes. So, hey, that was so exciting. And now take it away, because it was a match made in heaven.

Chuck, just, you know, let me just turn it over to you, and then we'll, you know, just. How you doing, buddy?

Pretty good. And that was 1999. Tonight, Reeve, that meeting. I remember walking in and saying to you, Congratulations, you know, on this award. And you said, well, congratulations to you. Would you like to meet Steve? And I instantly knew instantly who you were talking about. We met in 1999, but I've been writing about you since the 1980s.

Really?

Yeah. If you look at my book, Being in Race, Black writing since 1970 came out in 1988. The final chapter. I talk a little bit about this person whose work I've come across. He was black, he was a martial artist, and what. He also did science fiction. And my first thought was, I gotta say something about him because he sounds like me, okay? But he's probably a lot more, oh, I don't know, a nicer guy and communicates better with people. So I knew instantly when you said Steve, I said, what other Steve could it be? And that was quite a while ago. And what I've learned is just how. How much of an honor it is to know you, Tananarive, and you, Steve, you are. You guys are pros. And I value more than anything else professionalism.

How do you define professionalism? You said that several times. I want to be sure that I know exactly what you mean. What is professionalism to you that you have such respect for it?

You get the job done. You get it done. Well, you get it done on time. Okay. Or before time, deadline, and you get it done on budget. If you're talking screenplay writing. Right?

Yeah, I guess. You know, it. It's one thing to sit by yourself and write something that's for your own pleasure, but as soon as you want someone to publish it, let alone invest millions of dollars to produce it, you better come correct. You know, you better understand that these people have, you know, I just saw recently, you know, for instance, Ford Coppola being unhappy because people won't give him $100 million to make a movie without strings attached. It's like, what? You know, are you kidding me? You know, it's like if you go to somebody and so he's making his new movie with his own money, and God bless him, I think that that's. That's. It's very dangerous when you can't get the money, people to invest in you. That's a good way to lose your shirt. But I'm hoping that. That he's going to be able to do this thing. But for the rest of us, we're trying to operate in an arena in which people have professional needs. You know, that in the creation of what it was that I brought to me, we'd written a couple of short stories together first 4189, which actually is one of the stories in Eightfold Path. But when we realized we needed to go to someone and say, would you publish this book? We had to be able to give them something that would work for their business needs, that he'd be able to take to the people above him, his editor, his publisher, you know, and say, this is why this book is important. And hopefully this is why this book will make money. Because if you can't say that, then you're asking for charity. You're asking them to do it because, you know, it's. It's a nice thing to do, and it's. That's all well and good, but if there is a market for what it is that you're doing, then it will make money. And if there is no market for it, then why are you asking an entire distribution and production chain to invest their critical time? They're trying to send their kids to school. They're trying to keep a roof over their heads in terms of the Eightfold Path, right occupation, that we're trying to do something that is good to the world. And in the adult world, money matters. What are the steps of the Eightfold Path? Chuck, because you are. You have written numerous serious academic books on Buddhism and Buddhism and black people and Buddhism in America and modern life. So tell us a little bit about what it was that you saw I was trying to do.

Well, I have been a practicing Buddhist for most of my adult life. I started meditating in my teens when I was 14 years old, and, you know, studied Buddhism academically in college and then took my vows in the Soto zen tradition in 2007. So this is my life. What to say about that? The Eightfold Path. If you want to understand that, you have to understand the Four Noble Truths. The First Noble Truth is that there is suffering, or suffering is universal. The Second Noble Truth is the cause of suffering. And in Sanskrit, the word is trishna, which means craving. Craving or selfish desire. That's the Second Noble Truth. The cause of suffering is craving. The Third Noble Truth is there is a way to end suffering, a practice, if you're willing to embrace it. And the Fourth Noble Truth is the practice. The way to end suffering in your life is the Eightfold Path, which has eight limbs to it. I won't tell you all of them, but right view, right thought, right meditation, right effort, right livelihood, right action. And perhaps very important also right speech. Right speech. So that's what I could bring to this particular project that really, Steve, you conceived from the ground up and executed. I just was in the passenger seat going along for a really happy ride. But you brought the. You brought the meat and potatoes. That is to say, the story idea, the plot, and the character. I just. For the meat and potatoes, I just add some seasoning, philosophical seasoning, in terms.

Of operating within the wheelhouse of a very specific philosophical tradition. I would consider you to have been the master chef in the kitchen, overlooking a younger chef in terms of this particular type of effort, putting things together. You gave me many corrections.

You.

You grounded what I was doing. You gave me the confidence to fly because I knew I wouldn't go in the wrong direction, that you would real. You would reel me back. So without that confidence, I could not have done this. And I cannot think of another human being that I would have trusted to. I was just totally open. Whatever you said I was prepared to do because I wanted to be sure. However much the entertainment value had to be there. And it does, because entertainment is the carrier tone of any story. But the serious intent. I wanted to be sure that a serious Buddhist would understand that I. That I had done my homework and that my homework said I don't have a lifetime to go back and study these things. I don't want to hallucinate that. I understand more than I understand. So the fact that you were actually walking that path allowed me to just kind of relax and flow. And that is I. That is a pearl beyond price, my friend. I mean, truly, it is. Well, I think it's.

So I just wanted to add. I think what is so fascinating about this project is that it takes something that is so serious, something that you could literally study, you know, in a scholarly way, but applying it to stories that on the surface can just be entertaining. Right.

And they're very sugar comics, you know, so there's horror, science fiction, a war story, a martial arts story story. You know, there's. You know, it's. There's all the detective story set in a zombie universe. There's all sorts of different stories. But just as William Gaines did with EC Comics and Mad magazine, there was a serious philosophical intent underneath that. That at no time were we. Were we straying too far from that. There has to be a moral core, I think.

So when.

When Charles introduced the concept of Via Negativa. Would you tell us about that concept?

Well, I could say a lot about that. The stories, it seems to me, are teaching stories. All great art entertains, but what these stories do is they educate as well as entertain. So there's a moral kind of lesson in each one of the stories that you compose. But you can't. If you look at these stories, what you're going to understand is don't do this. Don't do what this guy does. Now the one exception is the Gauntlet. Your story, the Gauntlet, where you have a very noble martial art character who behaves in a way that is unselfish to save a young man, you know, several young men who have gone astray. So, yeah, that story stands out for me as a very good example. Entertainment and educated.

You know, I think that the temples of his gods might also be a positive example. But I think that one of the decisions I made was to not be on the nose that I wanted, I wanted to leave room for people to debate about which, which category this story was in to actually have, you know, to, to. I wanted to honor the intelligence of people by saying, if I am dogmatic about this, I lose. But if, if each of these seems to be entertainments, then I'm asking them to look at these things and hopefully they'll begin to look at other entertainments that they look like that they, that they look at. I mean, what is Breaking Bad? That's, you know, it's like, don't be Walter White. You know, I'll buy that because you're talking about somebody who one step at a time, delivered himself unto hell for what seemed to be good intentions at the beginning, but was ultimately a revelation of a corrupt character. Once we had this notion, what was critical was for someone on the other side of the editorial desk who is in, in contact with the money people to say, yes, I get your vision. So what I'd like to do now is introduce the man who midwived this entire project. And I just. So Tanari, may I introduce our next guest?

Go right ahead. Go right ahead.

All right.

John Jennings is a professor of media and Cultural studies at the University of California in Riverside. Jennings is co editor of the Eisner Award winning collection the Black or the Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Jennings is also a 2016 Nazir Jones hip Hop Studies fellow with the Hutchins.

Center at Harvard University.

Jennings current projects include the horror anthology Box of Bones, the Coffee table book Black Comics Returns with Damian Duffy and the Eisner winning Bram Stoker Award winning New York Times best selling graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler's classic dark fantasy novel Kindred. Jennings is also founder and curator of the Abrams Megascope line of graphic novels. He's also a 2021 Hugo Award winner for the illustrations on Abrams Comic Arts graphic novelization of Parable of the Sower. And it is a huge, huge honor to be able to introduce the man himself, the myth, the legend, John Jennings.

Hey, cue applause if we had it.

That was crazy, I think.

I appreciate that, Steve. I think that's the first time that someone's actually, like, read the bio the way it was supposed to be. Like, the stops and starts and everything. I was like, yeah, that's. I appreciate that. Thank you. It's a great honor to be on the show. You know how big a fan I am of you and Tananarive and, of course, Charles. So thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Pleasure.

So what spoke to you about Eightfold Path when you first heard about it, John?

You know, so many things. First of all, you know, I mean, you have two legendary writers, right, who work on this together. And, you know, when Steve first told me about the project, I was like, I want to see what. Having a conversation about Megascope in general, please. Steve was like, hey, I'm working on this project, you know, with Charles Johnson. And I think that's the first thing I was like, okay, these are two incredibly talented individuals, first of all. Second thing is that I'm a massive fan of EC comics. Like, obviously, I'm a huge horror fan, but I'm also a big fan of what Gaines used to call the Preachies. Right. That's what he called them. He called them preachies. You know, that's what. When he talked about EC Comics, like, Ethos, he was like, we're preaching. We're telling people about how to live a life.

Yes.

We're dealing with ghouls and, like, gore and, like, unseemly situations, but. But at the end of it, they are morality tales, right?

Yes.

And the way it was set up is, like, I'm a huge fan of, like, Night Gallery and Illustrated man and Twilight Zone and all the things that you were referencing, including, like, the books that were directly influenced by EC Comics, like the DC Comics horror line, for instance, like, House of Mystery and, you know, Tales of the Unexpected and all these things. Right.

Creepy and Eerie. Creepy and Ear.

And that's.

That's the second one. The Warren. The Warren Magazine. Eerie. That's. You read my mind. So, yes. So all of those. All those things were my childhood. And then also the fact that the Megascope line is dedicated to really trying to, like, you know, upend the idea that black folk and people of color are monoliths. Right. And so you Know, it's not just a particular type of story that we can tell.

And.

And I love the beautiful complexity of it. The setup reminded me so much of the 1970s horror story, the Tales in the Crypt movie. Oh, yeah, from the 70s, right, with.

John Collins, Canterbury Tales. Very ancient tradition.

The idea of an interlocking story. It has a classic aspect to it. And then it also had this really, like, kind of pop culture, you know, piece as well. But the end goal is to. Nannery was talking about was to teach this very wonderfully complex, you know, spiritual system, you know, and it just. It just spoke to me on so many levels, and I was like, how am I going to sell this? I'm going to pitch this to Abrams, you know, very, very. Like, this is a book about Superman, you know. You know, it's like, very straightforward.

Right?

So. And the way I was talking about it, it's like, well, when I'm putting together a project, I think like a dj, you know, like, okay, so what beats do we have to put in? What assets do we have to sample from that kind of thing?

Right?

So I always call myself a cj. You know, I. As you said, I was a hip hop scholar, right? So I think about, like, what are these different components, you know, how do they fit together for a book, you know, because I know that there's audience for it, you know, even if it's just me. But I know there's, you know, and that's kind of what attracted me to it. I said, this is going to be a test to see what kinds of experimental books we could do with this with Megascope, you know, where it's not just, you know, books about black people suffering in history. Right. Because we are doing books about, like, the unfortunate aspects of, like, racialized oppression and civil rights struggles and things. We're doing Emmett Till book, you know, things of that nature. But what types of, like, interlocking dreams can we actually. Can we push as well, you know, through this imprint? So that's what my thought was, you know, and it was risky, you know, because, you know, a full path has been on.

It was on the.

It was in the original pitch to Abrams, you know, from the beginning, like, this. This particular book, unlike some of the others, has always been one that I wanted to do.

So this was on your slate when you were just first pitching the entire Megascope line?

That's right. It was on the initial Megascope line pitch.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

What a vote of confidence. That's. That's fantastic.

I know. I've Never done a project where we played with as many different genres, as many different types of work. I mean, there are ways. And I always kind of think to myself, what if this is the last book I ever write, the last thing I ever do? If people look at this, does it encapsulate who it is that I am and what it is that I think about the world? And, you know, there are ways in which there are maybe four or five projects out of the 30 something books that. That I've written where I could say, yeah, if I had had to stop at that point, that would have been a good representation of who I was at that moment. And right now, I think I'm trying to rediscover my original voice. You know, the Question Society can be a lot like a Procrustean bed. And for black artists working in Hollywood and working in New York, sometimes you. You file off the rough edges. You don't say everything that's in your mind. You. You are that the. That the target audience does not necessarily want to hear everything you have to say. Well, this is one of the very few times I didn't hold myself back at all. What you're seeing here is who I am, you know, and it's. It's a beautiful thing. And I wanted to be sure that it worked for Chuck and that it worked for you, you know, and it worked for your company, you know, the people willing to put out the time and the energy and the money to make this happen. Yeah, you pay attention to that. But at the core of all that has to be the sense of that little kid inside me, that little Buddha baby that started the world. Earth below, heaven above, no one in the world like me. And then how much of that do we lose? Can you get back to that voice and find the part of you that looks at the world uniquely? And so I am so grateful, and I mean this from the bottom of my heart. I am so grateful that you gave us the opportunity to do this. This is hugely meaningful to me. And I will never forget that you had that faith, John.

I mean, it was easy, Steve, seriously, for me to have faith. You know, I was like. I knew it was going to be a wonderful project. And also, you know, when I started thinking about who could. Who could work on it, you know, that's why. Who could be the artist.

Yes.

On it, you know, that's why I was thinking about Brian's work.

Why don't you introduce Brian? You should talk a little bit about Brian. Then let's bring him in, because this.

Is the one thing about graphic novels, and I'm just learning this myself as someone entering the world of graphic novels for the first time with one we have coming out later this year, is that the illustrator is a co author. Right. It's not like your story as illustrated by. No, y' all are telling this story.

The illustrator might be the director and the art director and the editor. You know, really we write the script, but the illustrator has massive responsibility.

Yes. You know, it's, it's a very, it's. One of the most beautiful, surreal, amazing mediums ever created is comics, you know, because of the fact that it's a syncretic, you know, of amalgam of different types of storytelling, you know, and it's so flexible. And I think like the inherent surreality of comics as a medium is what helped us put together something like the Eightfold path, you know, it totally makes sense on the page, you know. Other thing too is like comics are an abstraction, you know, and so it takes, it's really good at actually taking things that are really abstract and turn them into like concretized forms, you know? No. So basically, let me, let me tell you about the. About this amazing gentleman, Brian, Brian Christopher Moss. We met online actually. I saw, I think he was a good friend. My friend David Brain, who I think you guys met as well, we worked on after the Rain together and I was looking at his work and I was just like, this work is vibrant. It's very, it's beautiful. It has these different aspects to it. And I just hit him up, you know, on Facebook and I was like, man, I would really like to talk to you about your work. You know, and this is years ago. I mean, I think now at this particular point we've known each other for about a decade or so and so really big name in the Columbus art scene, you know, both as a fine artist and fine art teacher and kind of a cultural activist and curator. He's a painter, a muralist, an illustrator, an educator, a creative director. He was born and raised and been working in Columbus, Ohio and he's been working as a professional artist for the last like 20 years or so. He's a self taught artist who focuses not only on pushing his artistic limits, but also creating impact and camaraderie in the art community. And I thought he'd be perfect for his project. This is one of my best colleagues and friends, Brian Christopher Moss.

There he is. Welcome.

Hey, Brian.

Hi.

Thank you for having me, everybody.

One day we're going to have our sound effects together on this podcast. And you'll have applause at moments like this. We're still building. We're still building.

Great to have you.

This is something very unique in the history, the short history of this podcast. We've never had so many guests at the same time.

Brian, why don't you start by giving us a little rundown on your reaction when the project was brought to you, and then that'll bring us up to speed, and then we can just talk like a bunch of buddies.

Yeah, totally. So when John spoke to me about the project. When Was that, John? 2019. Was that 2019 or 20?

It had a bit around. Around that time. Yep.

Yeah, it was like cusp. You know, around the turn of the year. And so during that time, when I initially got the script, I. And I looked over it, I was like, okay, this is a lot of work.

Yeah, keeping it real.

I was like, okay, this is a lot of work. This is a lot of ideas and a lot of styles. But the thing about that, that's where I thrive. So, like, I'm really huge fan of, like, doing different styles or, like, taking risks stylistically. And so when John was informing me about the project and, like, gave me permission to have that license to do that, then I was like, oh, okay, yeah, let's go. I was ready then. So, yeah, so it was like a combination of John's encouragement and then obviously reading the script, and then I had to do my research. So as I researched Charles and Steve, I was. Got a little nervous, and I was like, I still want to do it, and I'm familiar with them, but, you.

Know, like, when you're so intimidated, actually.

So, yeah, so I figured to step up and, you know, put on my big boy pants. Let's go. You know. So that's how I got started on the project.

Very cool.

We did an episode about collaboration last week with just the two of us, but now we're talking about a situation where you have three collaborators, you have two co authors and an illustrator. How difficult is it to find your own voice within someone else's inspiration?

So I take on a lot of work. Like, I don't say no to projects. And during that time, I was working on a project for White Castle because they're from Columbus and it was like their hundredth year anniversary, and it was, like, included this mural and then these cup designs. And so this project took an entire year. So these projects overlap. And so during that time when I was working and developing, you know, going into Eightfold path, I realized that it Took more than just my voice. And what I mean by that is that I could, I guess, for lack of better words, exploit or take advantage of the fact of my community and support that and bring in other artists. So the way that I created it was kind of like a bullpen where it was rotating artists. Um, so we had some people working on storyboards, and then I had some people working on inks, coloring, and. But not everything was filtered through, like, me drawing it or coming off of the storyboards from what my friends created. So it was a highly collaborative process. And during that time, when you go into it, that's where I was like, okay, I have to remove the ego. That was like. Because I just want to style and, like, do all kinds of cool stuff. So I had to really pull back during that time. So, yeah, so thinking back about. Made me redefine and think about how I approach just working and collaborating, period. So more of like, hey, what are your. Extracting ideas from my friends? And stuff like that, and to allyship and have support during that time of the book.

And you essentially created a. A studio around his private.

Yeah, yeah, totally. And that was included with, like, I would say, about eight to 10 artists. And so there would be points where we're just sitting around at a table and rotating the pages, inking, like, every 15 minutes. So it was actually very addictive and very fun because it was, like, one of those things where I could, like, hang out my friends and actually work, which is rare, especially as a painter. It's a lot of isolation. So it was almost a communal space. And then there was a lot of symbolic process in that. I was living in my mentor's house at the time. So it's a very nurturing thing. So I feel that a lot of that came through from the book into me. So it's definitely a kinetic process.

Dr. Charles Johnson. I wanted to just jump in for a moment to sort of take a long view. I mentioned that I've been reading your comics since I was a kid. And I'm wondering when you first discovered the power of comics, cartoons, to tell important stories.

Well, that was in childhood. I mean, that was back in the 1950s. I was an avid comic reader because I was interested in looking at art from everywhere. You know, I mean, from every country, every culture, every time period. And comics, you know, happen to be one of those vehicles for expression that, you know, a picture's worth a thousand words all over the planet. It's like music. You know, people can understand the visual image. We think in Terms of pictures. That is an old truth, I think. So I was passionate about drawing from the time that I was, you know, very young and kept it up and work as a cartoonist from professionally 65 to 72 and did a lot of work, did a TV show, and I haven't. My first collection of cartoons in 49 years comes out in September.

Oh, fantastic. What's it called?

That's awesome.

It's called all your racial problems will soon end.

Thank goodness.

Finally. Yes.

It's about time. Yeah.

This work is over 50 years old. This is stuff I did in the late 60s, early 70s. And so it's kind of interesting to see it miraculously resurrected in the last couple of years. But that was my passion. And that will lead you, of course, to being interested in storytelling. You know my friend Ethelbert Miller, the poet? Yes, yeah. You know Ethel Burley.

Yes.

Arts activist. He interviewed me for a year, and one year, I think it was like 2011, he asked me about cartoons and comic art, and he said, is a cartoon a visual poem? They thought about it, and I said, yeah, it is, you know, a short poem. Right. But, you know, the acts are all interrelated. I think we have to, you know, realize that when you talk about visual arts, literary arts. Steve, we can add martial arts. Absolutely, yeah.

Expression of the deep self. You know, when. When Bruce Lee says, you know, I don't hit, it hits. You know, Stephen King talks about. He doesn't come up with the ideas. It's the boys in the basement, you know, it's that the deepest well of art is at the level of unconscious competence. The things that you don't think about that you have spent the time and energy so that it's on automatic. You just automatically respond that way, and you don't even know what you're doing anymore. You know, so if somebody asks Hemingway what the symbology of the old man in the sea is, there's no symbols. It's a guy in a boat and a big fish.

He.

You're talking about a master at that deepest, deepest level. And you, you know, it takes 10,000 hours. 10,000 hours won't make you a master, but all the masters spent 10,000 hours getting there. I would love to have the other panelists here discuss, you know, because everybody here has professional level skills. That means that they have those skills at the level of unconscious competence. Tell us a little bit about your road. How did you do that? Because once again, the people listening to this, they want to have to be on that road of mastery. And so how did you get your feet on?

Yeah, Brian, you were self taught. That's a pretty fascinating story.

Yeah, if I could like, I'll kind of like tailor it to where it's kind of like my story, kind of giving advice. So I would say the key to my breakthrough really early on, and this is like really young, they found the art, found me really early, was that I had a mentor by the age of seven. That being said, I find that to be extremely critical for anyone who wants to pursue any form of art. The second part of that would definitely be disciplined. And it's like a weird thing because it comes across as like a very masculine, aggressive thing, but that be come across in different forms. The discipline goes back to just having the ability to sit down and focus on what you're creating. I would say that those were the two main keys that really separated me from people who did as a hobby to doing it professionally. And then the other parts that come along with that along the way is like education. So I actually like took advantage of things. Museums, you know, reading the boring art books, you know, that kind of stuff. So even stuff that you're not really into or even say some aspect of art that you need, if I feel that way, actually go towards it, because it's like, why do I feel that way? And so those are the kind of the steps and keys that are even in my life today that I still use in order to create. And actually. And I always see myself as a student. I never. So there's always something to learn.

Right.

So I never approach it as if I've done this. So I'm a master of it. It's like, okay, this is just the next step in the next process. And then the other key to that, I say work smart, not hard. So definitely take advantage of like technology and things like that. So because a lot of artists are very traditional and have a friend who makes brushes, I'm just like, there's no way. That's like, no one has time for that. That's a. Yeah, but I can appreciate the idea of it. There's a discipline there. But it's like there has to be a practicality to the process. So definitely those kind of concepts weigh heavy on me. More of a practitioner of it, Drawing things physically, those things. So as an illustrator, you have to do the act of drawing. So a lot of time when you're theorizing that only goes so far. So those are the kind of things where it's that road where you want to stay kind of in the middle don't appear too far this way or too far that. So, yeah. And then just single single focus. Art. Art. So, yeah, that's my journey and story and advice.

Every book I've read by a female writer speaks about discipline, but sometimes they will put it in the. I just love it. It's hunger. Just, you know, just. They just want to do it. So I think it's. We have both sides. We have yin and yang, and we can label those different things, but really, we all have the potential for all this.

Go ahead. And John. And John, also Dr. John Jennings, now you're also an inquiry. Just.

Professor.

Professor. I'm sorry. Me too.

People, I want to get your PhD.

Okay.

I have an MFA, which is.

Oh, good for you. Good for you.

It's not. I mean, but it's not.

So you're not. You're an acquiring editor. Thank goodness. Because that's why the Eightfold Path will be making it out. But you're also a working artist. So I want to go back to that sort of inspiration piece that Steve talked about in the beginning, how you made it to the point of being a professional level artist. But also, has it changed? How have comics changed since when you first started?

Oh, man, those are both great questions. So. I don't know. I think I fell in love with reading first. You know, my mother went to Alcorn State University for English, didn't finish, got pregnant with me and dropped out of college. You know, Alcorn is a. Is a hbcu, a historically black college university in Mississippi. And, you know, she ended up moving back, you know, with her parents, my grandparents. And so I grew up in a very isolated agrarian space, you know, with a single mom who was trying to figure out, okay, how do I raise this kid, like, post civil rights era. I was born in 1970, and, you know, I was. I started reading at a super early age. And I think that's where my love for the art started. Started. It's just like, just the love for knowledge. You know, I often tell people, like, I had this kind of, like, weird, almost like Steinbeckian upbringing. Like, I used to. I literally was a stargazer. Like, I would actually lay on, much to my mom's chagrin, I would, like, climb on top of a barn and actually lay on top of the barn and stare at the stars and wonder what was out there at an early age, you know, And I fell in love with mythology and folklore super early. I had, like, three library cards. I had one for the. For the. The town That I lived in Florida, Mississippi. And I had one for Canton, Mississippi, which is actually the. You know, that's the county seat, and also for Jackson, you know. And so I started reading very early and actually fell in love with images very early. My mom gave me my first comics, and from then on, I was hooked. Anything that looked like a comic book or, like, pretended to be a comic book, any image that looked like a symbol, I was into it, right? And so I started drawing at a very early age. And I think one. One of the best gifts that I have found, I found that passion super early. But also I realized, like, I think, and I think this is for any profession, that knowing where you stand in a spectrum of the experience is very important, you know. You know, you can't come out the gate and say, I'm the best writer ever, right? That you're going to fail at that. That's not going to work out right for you. I think at an early age, I realized that there were artists that were better than me and I wanted to. And that made me want to be good and be a better artist. Like, I remember meeting, like, you know, 4:1, had a huge family, met a cousin of mine who was actually a talent artist, and I could see how good he was. I was like, man, this guy is really good, you know, And I just wanted to hang out with him and understand, like, why he was so good. He was practicing. Practicing his drawing and. Yeah, and that's. And that was something that I think still sticks with me to this day, like, to understand the continuum of, like, different types of work and where you stand in that space. And. But I went to school. I actually, first of all went to the military to start with, you know, because I didn't have. I didn't have a. A lot of direction as far as like, doing, you know, going to school, being an artist. And so my mom was like, you're going to be an artist. I'd rather you go to military and retire. And that's all I heard. I was 17, went to the army. Fortunately, I was in a car accident. It actually messed my foot up bad enough that I couldn't be trained anymore. Actually, I have a steel, a piece of steel on my right foot, on my. Holding my third metatarsal together. It's one of the best things that happened to me. And I'm getting a scholarship to Jackson State because I actually also was valedictorian of my high school and actually ended up signing my scholarship papers while I was, like, mending in a military Hospital in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, actually. And that was the first time I realized that parents don't know everything.

I know.

That's right. Oh, boy.

And so, yeah, and from then on, I, you know, I worked. I worked as. I was a working artist at like 20, you know, I was like, you know, making money as an artist as soon as I could. And then I ended up going to. Getting a internship at the Clarion Ledger, which was the. The newspaper of Jackson, Mississippi. I was offered a job by Gannett, you know, to work for like, you know, work for them.

USA Today, etc. Yeah.

Did you say today? Exactly, yeah. And I ended up going to grad school, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. First Masters in Art education because I wanted art. A high school art teacher. But then I realized I was pretty good at graphic design. So I got an MFA in graphic design. And I became. And I went back to Jackson State University. I started the graphic design program and I've worked there for four years and then went back to U of. I worked there for about eight years, got tenure there. I was the only. The second African American artist, you know, to get tenure in at the school. And then, you know, I was there for eight years. I went to University of Buffalo. So I've been teaching, I've been. I've been in that space for a while. And one thing about being on a tenure track, it makes you focus. It's like, you know, if you do not publish, it's publisher, parents, for real. If you don't, if you don't put out work, then guess what you get. You're gonna lose your job. You're not gonna be able to continue working that space. And I'm very competitive on the sly. So. And at the time I was just trying to figure out, like, well, how do I. How do I get this done? How do I. How do I get better? And I've always loved comics. And so I fell back in love with comics, I want to say, in the early 2000s. And then I actually kind of stumbled across this. This thing called Afrofuturism.

Yeah.

And then before you know it, I became one of the leading, like, visual voices in the space. Which, you know, it's still weird for me to say, but that's, that's actually what happened. And so here we are now, and it's kind of this new renaissance of black spectrum of art that we're, you know, engaged with right now. So that's kind of.

It's incredible.

One of the things that I'm hearing in you John, is you both did the work and you taught other people do the work.

Yes.

And, yeah, I have run across the greatest masters that I know are always learning. They're always doing and they're always teaching.

That's correct.

They share. They're standing right in the middle of that road. It's flowing through them. They're not trying to hold on to it. Yes. So it goes right into that notion. But one of the things that happens when you're trying to move from one level to the next, it challenges the ego. And plus, you're going to get resistance from the outside world. So stress is going to be a constant fact. You are engaged with life. And I would like to ask. I mentioned the thing that I do for stress, which is breathing exercises and engagement and lots of hugs and, you know, just. Just making sure that I understand that this is the life that I chose, that I chose. This is not being inflicted upon me. Okay.

It's similar for me. I use music in that way. My piano is behind me and walking and that sort of thing. But, yeah, we wanted to. I didn't mean to cut you off, but I did.

No, no, no.

We wanted to ask all of our panelists, Starting with you, Dr. Charles Johnson.

What do you do to relieve stress?

How do you relieve stress?

Oh, I practice meditation. I work out in the martial arts. I've been doing that since I was 19. I still get together with old buddies. We've been working out since the 80s. One is 66, another guy's in his 50s. I've been doing it ever since I was 19. So this is part of my life. But also, you know, being able to just step away and step back and appreciate the moment in which we're living, you know, living in the present, you know, not worrying about the future that hasn't come, not worrying about the past, which cannot be changed, but living in the present moment, as Thich Nhat Hanh, you know, the great spiritual teacher, taught. So take a moment during the day and just appreciate the beauty that is all around us and always there. You know, take a deep breath. And I think you talk about that, Steve, you know, breathing in and out. So meditation, martial arts, that kind of helps me chill out.

Yeah.

Fantastic. I bet reading is in there, too.

Yes.

How about you, John? How do you dump stress?

You know, it's funny that you. You mentioned breathing because, you know, I'm not a practicing martial artist or. But I am a human being, right. And so what I do is breathe. Like, for real. Like, I will actually definitely like you said to myself, I will take a deeper. I used to do a lot of meditation earlier, like in my early twins. And then you get back to it, honestly. But I will actually stare at the sky. You know, it's somewhere. So I just look at this, at the sky. Whatever.

You did that as a child.

It has a child.

You're going back into your child space. You're finding something that brought you peace as a child and brought that into your adult life. That is wise.

That's.

That's great.

Thank you. I. I don't get called wise a lot. I get called.

Mostly it's wise ass.

There goes our clean rating. So I know that's okay, but. But no.

But also I draw actually. I know that's funny. But you know, the thing that I use to like make money sometimes actually still gives me a lot of release. And because. Because it's a natural thing. And what you're saying is I'm a conduit for creativity.

And may I assume that when you go into your art space, you're in flow. Does time disappear?

Yes, very much so.

There you go. So you find the things that help you that time where time is disappearing and. Fantastic. Brian, what about you?

In agreeance with Charles and John. The working out is like Mary, you know, exclusively. So it's like a lot of cycling, peloton, also really healthy eating. But the thing I would like to key in on because I don't think a lot of people either don't come from this environment or never really experience this. So yeah, so it was like these kind of conditions where I didn't really take care of the surrounding, you know, because you don't have resources. So the one thing that I did as I got older and like to support the art and to decompress was actually like have a healthy living space and create a space to where I can actually like lax, opposed to the environment being hostile. And so people who come from that environment or that world, I strongly advise just. Even if it's something simple or if you don't even have that space in your environment, you can go to like libraries and things like that. There's resources in your city that can provide the same space of like decompression if you're in those worlds. So it's more kind of like advice slash my personal experience.

I love that. And that's so true. To find beauty even when you don't think there is any. To Charles Johnson's point, there's always beauty around us somewhere.

I would love for our panelists to tell our audience where they can connect with you. Where can they find out more about what you're doing? Chuck, you first. Where can people connect with you?

You. Well, you know, you can reach me. I'm retired from the University of Washington. I'm professor emeritus. I retired 14 years ago. But anybody can reach me at the University of Washington and via email, if that's what you mean.

Well, do you have a website?

I do have a website, yes. It's www.oxherdingtail.com.

Fantastic. John.

Let's see. You can find me on my site. It's johnginningstudio.com all one word. I'm also on the Twitters at J.I. jennings and also Instagram, which is John Jennings art.

Great. Brian.

Mine would be, my Instagram would be Strange Moss. I use that primarily as my portfolio and as my contact. So definitely reach out. Also Facebook, but Instagram's my primary. So Strange Instagram again.

Did you say Strange Moss?

Strange things Moss.

Strange things Moss like strange things.

That's great. So Eightfold Path is going to be out March 22nd. I understand. So that'll be, that'll be great. And pre order, pre order, preorder, pre order. The thematic. We always try to tie this in with, with some of the thematics that we're doing. And today the, the fifth step of the hero's journey, allies and powers was all over this. And I would like, I would encourage you to listen to this again, pick out all those different skills that you hear people talk about here and look at it specifically the gathering of allies, finding other people who have skills you do not have that enable you to play bigger than you play. If you let your ego say, well, I just want to have control over everything. No, sometimes the very best work you're going to do will be when you give up control and allow other people to guide you. I know that's been true for me. This, the continuation of this podcast is you're going to be able to follow it at www.lifewritingpodcast. you can get on our mailing list at www.lifewritingweekly.com and our year long Life writing premium program, which is a year long writing program. Every week we're coaching. You can be. You can take a look at that@www.lifewritingpremium.com. so any final words?

T. Yeah, it's a lot of conversations like this. Videos, PDFs, lectures, essays. It's a subscription program so you get a new lesson every week. So check it out at www.lifewritingpremium.com I.

Would like to thank our panelists today so much. Chuck, you have just made my life a better place. There's no question. Three deep bows. And, you know, John Jennings, what can we say? Thank you for having faith.

Thank you.

Thank you so much. And the money to back it up. You know, in this world, Brian, you brought your whole. You put your foot all up in this.

So thank you.

Thank you for, you know, bringing enthusiasm and just, you know, it's. It's just great. Any last words either any of you have before we wrap up?

I had one thing. Sure. So I'm good friends with a comics critic, Adam McGovern, and he writes for high low brow. And I let him check out the Keeper and Eightfold path. And he said that Eightfold Path is a staggering collage of styles and voices with a remarkable consistency of vision. Oh, this is the guy who knows comics. And he said of the Keeper, he said, the Keeper broke my heart. And maybe the best graphic novel of 2022.

Get the Heck out.

That's what he said.

That's get the heck out. You can't do this alone, people. Will you listen to this? I'm going to have tears in my eyes. All I wanted was for people to be able to see this, to be able to work with somebody like Chuck, to be able to document that for a little while on this planet, we knew each other. And John and Brian, this is why I got into the arts. Thank you, people, and thank you, everyone who's listening. And tune in again next week. I hope that you're having a wonderful life, that you can fulfill your dreams and understand that if you willing to put your effort behind those dreams and you're willing to provide value so that other people see how they can create their dreams by helping you fulfill yours, you can have the life you want. And you know, that's it. That's it. You know, t you take the last word.

Whatever your endeavors, whether you're an artist or whatever undertaking it is a new business, sometimes you reach a point where you can't do it all alone. And that's where you need to look for your allies and powers. Hollywood is all about collaboration. Collaboration can happen in the household, it can happen in the community. This has just been a great example of what happens when you put together so many fantastic creative people. So thank you for tuning in. Go on and write the story of your life. Make yourself the hero or heroine of your own story. Thanks for joining us. Bye bye.

Bye bye, Rosebud.