Transcription of Words of Wisdom, #105
Speaker 1: You’re listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street, Portland, Maine. Download past shows and become a podcast subscriber of Dr. Lisa Belisle on iTunes. See the Dr. Lisa website or Facebook page for details.
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Lisa: This is Dr. Lisa Belisle and you are listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and podcast, show number 105, airing for the first time on Sunday, September 15th, 2013. Today’s show theme is “Words of Wisdom” with guests Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, writer and teacher and Rohan Henry, author of The Perfect Gift. Words are an important means of self-expression perhaps even more so when used sparingly. Poet Gibson Fay-LeBlanc and author/illustrator Rohan Henry share their passion for words and how this has challenged them to help others communicate in unique ways.
Words have become an increasingly important means of communication. In the year 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented our first modern printing press. This allowed the spread of ideas through mass duplication of text. The written word, its usage, once limited to scholars, religious and individuals of means with mainstream. Fast forward to the 20th Century, computers and the creation of the internet enabled the written word to go digital thus further breaking down barriers to its utilization. Simultaneously, the spoken word has gained ground through use of recording devices and new media such as podcasts.
We love our words any way we can get them. What happens when the overuse of words desensitizes us to the unspoken, unwritten message? What happens when individuals for whom words do not come easily such as children with autism spectrum disorder are asked to participate in society at large? What happens when an overabundance of words instantly available in an online format causes us to use less care when crafting a poem or a love letter, thus diminishing its impact?
As with most things, too much of a good thing can indeed have its consequences. Fortunately, there are among us individuals who maintain a dedication to the art of communication. Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet, education advocate and past director of The Telling Room who delights in helping children and adults understand the pleasure of an artfully crafted sentence. Author and illustrator, Rohan Henry helps us to see that words are often all the more powerful when absent. Modern man has known great benefit from access to words written and spoken. Now, we must be reminded of the communication that takes place in the spaces in between. I hope you enjoy our show, Words of Wisdom.
Lisa: As a relatively new radio show, it hasn’t been often that I’ve had the chance to sit across a microphone from someone who has previously been a guest but I am doing that today. This is Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, who was one of, I believe, our guest on the very first Dr. Lisa Radio Hour in September of 2011.
Gibson: Sounds right.
Lisa: Yup, talking about The Telling Room which was your life at the time. I believe you were exiting out of The Telling Room. Unfortunately, I think we didn’t get to spend as much time talking with you as we wanted. You’ve been doing a lot of very interesting things since then. Thanks for coming back and having another conversation with me.
Gibson: My pleasure, my pleasure. It’s great to be here.
Lisa: Now, Gibson, at the time you were with The Telling Room, I do want to talk about that but I subsequently went and listened to you read from your book, your collection of poems Death of a Ventriloquist, which went on to win the Vassar Miller Prize and received a starred review from Publishers Weekly, also spent several weeks on the Poetry Foundation’s list of contemporary best-sellers and was featured by poets and writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. You’ve really sort of manifested in a kind of completely different and unique way.
Gibson: Yeah, well I’ve always been a writer but it’s usually been sort of back burner for me. Teaching is really important to me as well. I love to work with kids and adults and kind of taught at every level there is to teach at. Working at The Telling Room is a tremendously gratifying place to work. I still am involved there. I still teach there. A couple years ago I had a chance to put the writing on the front burner and so that’s been exciting for me to do that. Interestingly, I’ve been working on this collection of poems for a long time, for several years. That counts as a long time, I think. I’d been very close to publishing it in many different small presses and contests, I was finalist.
I got notes from editors, effusive notes, saying how much they loved it and why, yet but, and it wasn’t until I decided to leave The Telling Room that it was actually won this prize and was published. It seemed almost like one of those things that I had finally committed to my writing and that’s when it finally broke through and was published. It was kind of a nice … The universe telling me maybe that I had made a good decision.
Lisa: That is what is always said is that once you finally focus your energies in the direction of your passion, then that sort of can, I don’t know, start that fire. It’s like the magnifying glass in the sunlight.
Gibson: Exactly.
Lisa: It is interesting that you were then subsequently rewarded from with that happening.
Gibson: Right, exactly, exactly.
Lisa: You have your book with you right here. I heard you do this at, I think, the Space Gallery when your book first came out. I was struck by the sort of range of poems, one of them was I think it was describing your child’s … Well, it was describing fatherhood.
Gibson: Yeah.
Lisa: Yeah?
Gibson: Yeah.
Lisa: You also did a poem about hockey, which is a passion of yours. I’m interested to see which one you’re going to read for us now.
Gibson: Yeah, I thought I might read one of my fatherhood poems because those … I mean many people can connect to that, whether you’re a father, a parent or just an uncle or an aunt or… that people can connect to that part. There’s a strain of poems in the book that come out of fatherhood and really trying to figure out how to be a father. This is one that I wrote while I was living in New York City and I had just finished grad school, where really focused on writing and teaching. Then, all of a sudden, I was home with this baby. My wife was back at work at finishing her residency at NYU. We’re in a 400-square foot apartment, New York City, third floor walk up. You can picture the thing here and this baby who cried all the time. It was a test. It was a really … It was a test. It really became one of my subjects over the last several years.
It’s become … I write about a lot is fatherhood and my kids and thinking about that. This is How to Make Fatherhood Lyrical. How to Make Fatherhood Lyrical: “I could describe the arch of piss as sanctifying the changing table or argue that his wailing resembles a certain style of opera. One develops a taste for its peaks as evidence of proper training, the cultivation of a gift. I might tell you that when the dog tugs the leash in one direction and the stroller rolls in the other, it’s similar to the push and pull of family and vocation and each in turn alters its course. Surely, I’d research and touch on why gerbils eat their young and moose will charge if you dare step between mother and calf. But none of this is the truth I tell myself or don’t depending on the morning. It’s not a set of lyrics. It’s prose, as in pedestrian, a man on foot, not some freak stallion, not a Clydesdale, not even a draft and everyday I have to choose whether to write myself in.”
Lisa: How old are your kids now?
Gibson: They’re now eight and five. They’re much further along.
Lisa: This really is something that I can relate to. Actually, it’s funny because I was going to refer to the arch. I had remembered that you had read that poem, I believe at Space Gallery. This is something that I think a lot of people in the creative field struggle with, that when you’re raising a child, all of your creativity kind of gets sucked over there.
Gibson: Yeah, for sure.
Lisa: The growth that you would like to do in your own writing or music or whatever it is ends up being channeled towards this progeny of yours that you never realize that it was going to be quite as challenging.
Gibson: Hmmm (affirmative). Definitely.
Lisa: You’re right. It can be so physically exhausting that you wake up in the morning and you’re just lucky to get the diaper on the kid and take the kid on the school bus.
Gibson: Yeah, I went through several … I’m not sure exactly how much time but there were few years in there where I was not writing a lot or I was just taking notes or I was just in any 30-second break that I had I was trying to get something down. You’re right, the energy goes toward the kid as it has to, when you’re trying to survive that early period and make sure that the kid survives that early period. It’s a lot of work. It’s a lesson in it not being about you, being about this other being that you helped create.
It’s also I found it important and great to, as they gotten older to make sure I make my writing a priority and for them to see that and to see that it’s part of my life in this creative side and is something that I really need to do and that I’ve got to find the spaces of time to do. It’s a constant juggling act even at this point with eight and five, I still feel like I can’t quite imagine. I have writer friends who go and do the two-week or the month away at a colony and I can’t quite wrap my mind around that yet. Maybe, I can get up to a week at this point. I’ve done some stuff like that. It just seems like a long time to be away at this stage of their development.
Lisa: In the time that you are writing this poem, you were talking about it as being prose and really not poetry at all. On the other side of having a very small child who cries all the time, are you able to find any lyricism in it?
Gibson: For sure, there are those moments even in the middle of the night or when things just when … you’re about to cry and you laugh instead. There are those moments or just you’re … one of my sons looks at me a certain way or cocks their head in the same way as my wife or you just have those moments of clarity in the whole process. I think that’s what poetry is really about for me in those moments, good or bad or in between but just trying to unpack those moments and all the emotion that can be surging through you at those times.
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Lisa: I think you embody or represent this sort of new man. You’re like the man of our generation. I mean you are a poet and a writer and educator and a father. You have a professional wife. You’re also a hockey player and a musician I believe.
Gibson: No, not so much with the music but …
Lisa: Not so much with the music.
Gibson: The other stuff, I’ll claim.
Lisa: The other stuff you’ll claim, okay. I think this is what we have all thought that we would aspire to. After the women … the equal rights movement, we all thought, well men and women are equal. We could all go out. We could all have everything but there are certain challenges and …
Gibson: For sure, for sure. I mean, there’s some things that there … I feel like there are some things that I … There are a lot of things that come much more naturally to me as a dad and other things that I really have to work at. I don’t know how much of it is related to me specifically being a man or it’s always hard to track what that stuff is. Certainly, some pieces of parenthood or fatherhood come a lot less easily to me especially as I’m doing work that is at least traditionally was or was thought as being a woman’s work in our house or with the kids or going to PTO meetings or things like that, that aren’t traditionally seen as being men’s stuff.
I feel lucky to be able to do it. I feel like a lot of fathers still in our culture miss out on a lot of stuff in their kids’ lives and aren’t able to see a lot. I feel privileged to be able to be a part of their lives and to see what’s going on. There are definitely times when I’m also saying to my sons, “You better … We better wait ‘til mom comes home to deal with that one.” There are certain things that they just aren’t going to want to … They’re just not as quick to open up to me about or they still really … There are times when they really, the comfort of their mom is … I can give them comfort but it’s a different kind of comfort. I’m a little bit more willing to let them do things that I think Renee would say, “Whoa, what are you doing?” Diving off the couch or I don’t know, something. There’s some things that I sort of let go a little farther and I think that there are times that’s good and times when maybe it’s not but …
Lisa: But you’re making it work?
Gibson: Yeah, yeah.
Lisa: You also spend a considerable amount of time with other people’s children.
Gibson: Right.
Lisa: You were involved in, I believe a year-long project with a local school here in Portland which was very much invested in bringing arts to the children in this school. Tell me about that.
Gibson: Yes. My oldest son goes to Ocean Avenue Elementary School here in Portland. He just finished the second grade. He’s just been there for three years. As I’ve gotten more involved with the school, I just wanted … I wanted to see more of a focus on arts. Having been involved with the arts community in Portland through The Telling Room, I know how great it is and how many great teaching artists there are and people who are really working on their particular craft, whatever it is and or really as we give to that … bringing that to kids in a way that even a great teacher is still a teacher in a different way than an artist who’s coming into a classroom. It’s just two different things.
I really wanted to see more artists in the school. I noticed over time, working at the PTO, or being involved with the PTO and being at the school, that there also this … just in our school community, there are these great artists who are parents who are sort of this resource that the school wasn’t drawing on. I think we have one parent who’s a dancer and long-time teacher of dance at the high school the Portland Arts and Technology High School, and another parent who runs a local music program for kids where they do rock and roll.
There are some things that we decided, “okay let’s see if we can get some of this stuff into the school”. I was able to write a grant to the Arts Commission and we were able to get some funding to help support that, those programs. We’re hoping to do it again next year. It’s a great way to get these artists in front of kids to open up school a little bit more. I think whenever you do the arts, it does a couple things. One is it brings more kids into school, like into being interested in school in a way that often doesn’t happen. Those kids who are already figuring it out even at first or second grade that school is not for them and doing dance or a performance project or songwriting or writing comics for a school magazine. Those are things that aren’t often valued in school and so to value them in the school community is huge for those kids.
Then, the other thing is I also really wanted to see that great community moment where you’ve got kids and artists and parents who all come together and celebrate the arts and say this is something that’s important to us. We had a night at the end of May where we’re able to do that. We had 400-500 people packed into this cafeteria at the school. We had kids up there singing songs they wrote, dancing, reading things that they wrote. It was just a great community moment. We often do that for sports or other things but we don’t do it as much for the arts as we should especially at the younger ages. It was a really good way to value, to show how our community can be … can value the arts and be changed by the arts.
Lisa: You’ve had a broad variety of experiences in your life. What’s next for you?
Gibson: I’m trying to finish the novel that I have been working on for a few years pretty intensely which is one of the writing projects that’s taken the most of my attention since I left The Telling Room. Hopefully, I’m getting closer. I have a new draft that I’m just finishing up here that I’m going to put in front of some friends who are writers who can give me some thoughts on where it is. Then, we’ll see. I’m going to still … I’m going to continue to be teaching at The Telling Room and doing things at Ocean Avenue and at probably other schools because that to me… Even though the focus for me right now is more on the writing, I can’t not teach. It’s really important to me. It’s important for me to feel connected to my community and to feel like I’m giving something back to kids who might be interested in the arts in their lives in some way or who just need to see directly what the arts can bring to their own experiences.
Lisa: It’s almost two years since you left The Telling Room.
Gibson: Yeah.
Lisa: The Telling Room has been around for …
Gibson: Let’s see, five years before that so they’re going on seven, eight years, yeah.
Lisa: What has The Telling Room brought to Portland and the surrounding community?
Gibson: I think it’s really filled a really important niche and there’s a great arts community in Portland and Southern Maine. There are pockets all over Maine but there was nobody focused on writing and storytelling and kids, in the way that The Telling Room has. I think that’s the reason why the growth curve of The Telling Room has just been kind of crazy and ridiculous. It’s just been straight up pretty much since I started there, when we first started … When I first started at The Telling Room, they were just getting off the ground. I was working out of my living room. It was very part-time but we knew we had something and this great idea and people were already starting to get really interested in it. As we started working with kids, it just … The more and more people that saw what we could with storytelling and kids and writing, the more it’s grown and so, yeah, it’s really been … It’s a tremendous thing to be a part of. It’s also tremendous now to sit back and be involved but from more of a distance and to sort of watch it continue to grow and develop and push into new arenas.
I think The Telling Room has become like some other arts non-profits like Space Gallery or some other places, has become now at this point like a vital cog in the arts scene, something that people can’t imagine doing without, which is I think a testament to all the folks and all the many folks who are involved there.
Lisa: Gibson, your book, Death of a Ventriloquist, is available at Longfellow Books here in Portland.
Gibson: Yeah.
Lisa: How can people find out more about you and your writing?
Gibson: I have a website gibsonfayleblanc.com. They can check out poems and hear about things. I have something on there called The Sentence Project, which is a little pet project where I pick out favorite sentences from prose and poems that I’m reading and just talk a little bit about why I think they are interesting or why they work. They can also see more information about my book on there and order it through Amazon or different … or the independent booksellers, etcetera.
Lisa: Thank you for bringing the arts to the children of the City of Portland and surrounding communities through The Telling Room. Thank you for bringing your poetry to the airwaves with us this morning. I really appreciate taking the time to … or you taking the time to talk with us. We’ve been talking with Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, poet and educator and father.
Gibson: Thanks for having me.
Lisa: You’re on the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast. Hope that our listeners enjoy their own work lives to the same extent we do and fully embrace everyday. As a physician and a small business owner, I rely on Marci Booth from Booth Maine to help me with my own business and to help me live my own life fully. Here are a few thoughts from Marci.
Marci: Words are powerful things. They inspire us and teach us. They help us make sense of the world around us. Sometimes, they move us to tears. It all depends on how what we read is written, how the author intended to move us. The same thought can be translated to numbers and accounting. How does what you’re looking at make you feel about the strength of your business? Are you on the right track? Is your business running as smoothly as possible and what can you do to change the course if you need to? It’s interesting how so many people don’t keep as close an eye on their businesses and bottom line as they should. The numbers don’t lie ever. Look at them. Learn from them. Move yourself and your vision forward.
I’m Marci Booth. Let’s talk about the changes you need, boothmaine.com.
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Lisa: It’s always said that Maine is really no bigger than a small town and that certainly has proven to be true when it comes to this radio show. One of my children’s favorite teachers and in fact one of my favorite people, Charlotte Agell, who has been on this show, said to us, “You really need to have this person, Rohan Henry, on your show.” No sooner had we decided to have him on the show that we realized that oh, his work is being seen over at the Museum of African History. Of course, we’ve already interviewed Oscar Mokeme. We have connections upon connections upon connections. Here we are today with Rohan Henry, who is an author, illustrator and also a teacher who happens to come from Jamaica but has made his home here in Maine with his two children and his wife. We’re really glad that you’re here.
Rohan: Thank you very much. I’m so honored to be on this show. I’ve listened to the show many times and had just been glued to it and intrigued by the guests and to think that I’m here is a great honor.
Lisa: Everybody’s always exactly where they’re supposed to be so you’re supposed to be here with us. We’re very glad that all came to be. In fact, it’s interesting because I went with my daughter Sophie, who’s 12. We walked to Longfellow Books and we picked up your book, The Perfect Gift. I opened it up and I read it. I said, “Wow, this really is a guy we need to have on the show,” and not just because Charlotte Agell said so, even though I trust Charlotte. Of course, any time she says you should do this, I will jump to do it. Tell me about your book, The Perfect Gift, which is a children’s book.
Rohan: It is a children’s book. That’s where it starts. It’s also a parable. When I was writing it, I had children in mind but I also had adults or big children like me in mind also. As I think you would agree, books are very powerful. Even though we’re moving on to like a more digital format, I think if I could see into the future, I’m almost sure, even though I might not recognize the book that I’m holding, I’m almost sure that books are going to be with us forever and ever. I believe that.
Lisa: I believe that too.
Rohan: The specific question, sometimes I …
Lisa: Tell me about your book. This is a book about Leo and Lisa and they are rabbit friends. It’s very simple line drawings with just a little bit of color and a very simple but profound message.
Rohan: It’s where to start. This book has changed my life profoundly. I started writing the book when my mom passed away. She passed away when I was 16, in high school. I’m the oldest of four. It wasn’t until about 10 years later that I seriously thought about writing the book. When I say that I started writing the book, I just write for fun. I love writing. It doesn’t matter what I’m writing. I’ll write a recipe down. I’ll write a poem. It doesn’t matter. I just write. It’s just a part of me. It’s an extension of me.
Lisa: Is it the tactile piece that you like, the active writing or is it …?
Rohan: I love the tactile piece. That’s it, that’s the word.
Lisa: Okay, or the words?
Rohan: I love the words.
Lisa: So all of the above?
Rohan: I love the words. You could see me lighting up as I’m just talking and just … I’m just imagining myself sitting in my dark studio with a light just on the paper itself. I need to do that. I’m a little bit ADD. I easily become distracted. The room is usually dark and there’s usually one light that’s just beaming straight down on the paper. Even if I look to the left or the right, I usually just see shadows and then my gaze goes quickly back to whatever I’m working on. But I do, I absolutely love it. I remember vividly and I’m not going to go into too much detail about my mom passing. It was an accident. We’re all shocked. I remember my dad coming home. I knew something was wrong because he didn’t come home a lot. He worked a lot.
It was the end of the school year. I think it was a shortened day and I was home at around 11 or something like that because we had exams. Then, my brother started coming home. My dad didn’t say anything and that he just want everyone to be together before he told us about the car accident. I didn’t know what to do. I just sort of kind of just looked at him and tuned out everything. People were saying all kinds of things. My aunts and uncles and everybody’s running around and, “What are we going to do?” I just tuned out everything. I went into my mom’s favorite place, which was the dining room. It was her favorite place because she had copper and crystal things, everything copper and crystal, elephants, cups, plates, figurines. I sat there. I pulled out a piece of paper. I always have a piece of paper. I have a piece of paper right now, proof, I always have something to write on, on me.
Lisa: I can attest to the fact that you have a piece of paper right on your person, yes, I love it.
Rohan: Yes, this is radio so I have to say that I reached into my pocket and pulled out a piece of paper. I just started writing. I wrote something about a gift. I couldn’t figure it out at the time. I was just overwhelmed with shock and grief. I couldn’t figure … It wasn’t a story like how it is in this form but I remember it being about a gift and wondering where the gift is and wondering if the gift was still with me. That was kind of like the genesis of it.
There are different levels to talk about the book. There’s the meeting of Charlotte, who’s my fairy godmother. She took that upon herself to be my fairy godmother and meeting Evie Krull, my publisher and my publisher sending me all over the country to see … to read and sign books. There’s that aspect of it but then there’s also, as I was talking about just the fact that the book came out of … I wouldn’t say tragic, a tragic situation. It just came out of a question like a lot of things do. A lot of things started with a question, kind of like why? what’s going on? what’s happening? It came out of that.
Years later, I found it, well at least found the piece of paper that I was writing on. I looked at it. I can’t explain why but it made me happy. It made me smile. I don’t know why. I just remember thinking, “Oh yeah, there’s this thing about a gift. What’s a gift? Where’s the gift? Do I have a gift? Will I have a gift? Have I ever had a gift?” It was just questions and questions and so it started with that. As I sat down, I started to think of it with the writer’s training. I’ve taken too many writers seminars and where they try to take the, I guess the raw passion and they want you to use craft to put it together with characters and a beginning and a middle and climax and conclusion, that kind of stuff. I just put the feelings that I had together with the craft that I learned through writing and just put them together and there they were.
I talked about the drawings. Again, one of the reasons why I wanted the drawings to be black and white and just a little bit of pink is because I think adults feel more comfortable with having something that doesn’t look like a children’s book. I had that in mind too. I thought, should I color the rabbits? I tried them in pink. I tried them black with pink noses. I said, you know what, I’m just going to make them lines and then as I started to draw the lines, it felt right like I did the ears. The ears aren’t really connected. They just started to flow.
It was just like a visual haiku almost, just smooth lines, just simple lines, lines that aren’t connected. You kind of have to look at it before you realize it. I think you could easily just look at them and think, oh it’s a rabbit. When you look really closer, the head isn’t connected to the body. The ears aren’t connected to the head. I think the book is like that too. The illustration of the books go together because when you look at the book, it’s like, this is a simple book but if you think about the book and think about what is the gift that he’s trying to give her, why is the gift so difficult for him to find.
In the book, he searches through the seasons. For example, in the wintertime, he brings her a snowflake. As he’s trying to hand her the snowflake, the snowflake melts. If you think about that, I think, like the illustrations, there’s a lot more than you initially would see.
Lisa: One of the pages, “Lisa and I have known each other for a long time but I wanted to let her know somehow that she was my best friend.” There’s that importance of really knowing that somebody is so valued that you want to do something beautiful and amazing for them. One of the things that he does is to find the most radiant butterfly of spring, which of course is beautiful and wonderful and he hands it to her. It’s ephemeral. It is the most beautiful thing he can find and yet that is fleeting. “’This butterfly is truly beautiful,’ said Lisa. My, how kind you are. But the glow of the sun attracted the butterfly and it flew away. The most radiant butterfly of spring was forever lost. ‘Wait Leo, I have something important to tell you,’ said Lisa. But I was too busy to listen.” Which again is so interesting that he’s so focused on her value and what he can do for her that he’s not really tuning in to the relationship.
Rohan: Yeah, the relationship and who she is and what she might need …
Lisa: What she might really, yeah.
Rohan: … or want.
Lisa: Or want. At the end, “Well, no I said. I searched through the seasons. I searched high, low, far and near and I still haven’t found the perfect gift for you. She puts her hand out and says, ‘Leo, I don’t want the perfect gift. All I want is to hold the hand of my best friend.’” As you’re telling me the story of your mother and your mother passing and sitting amongst all of the things, the possessions and not that those weren’t valued, the crystal and the copper. Isn’t that what you want when you’re a 16-year-old and your mother has died is you just want, you just want her hand. There’s nothing else that you would want.
Rohan: Yeah, no, I’m trying to keep it together. Just trying to keep it together for my first interview with the Dr. Lisa show.
Lisa: It’s very interesting too. One of the things that you and I talked about yesterday when we spoke on the phone was your daughter Ruby and she’s seven?
Rohan: Yup, she’s going to be seven on the 11th, which she reminded me this morning as I was leaving. She said, “Two more days dad.”
Lisa: Yeah? She’s going to be seven. You were talking about her found objects and how she has now her own first show which is also at … Is that also at the Museum of …
Rohan: Yeah, of African Culture.
Lisa: … African Culture and that she actually kind of is … She’s like Leo, the rabbit, running around, picking up stones and sticks and Robin’s eggs and the tactile things. What really struck me is that the gift that she gives you is more than the gift of found objects. It’s sort of the gift of insight back into yourself. This artistic sense that you said is so interesting. She’s six, going to be seven and she already has her own show. As an artist, you didn’t have your own show until …
Rohan: The first show that I did was a show called the Pet Project. It was a show of children’s book illustrators and it was at the Zero Gallery right here in Portland. It was 2006. I was just … You know how you think you would react if you’re at the Oscar’s or something like that and some of your favorite stars or whatever movie stars walked by you, I just remembered seeing Catherine Folwell, who’s become a friend of mine and of course Charlotte Agell and many others, just thinking, what am I doing here? Why are my illustrations here with all these great artists? At the time, I had just the one book. I have three that are published right now, a fourth one which was bought but I’m just not comfortable with it. It hasn’t been released. That was a long time ago and things have developed from that point from where I had my first book and now four that have been purchased by publishers, major publishers.
Back to my daughter, there are not really words to describe what I feel when I see her, when I’m around her, when I hold her. I’m not going to try to use adjectives. I know that I’m alive. I know that I’m here. I know that I’m always continually working to be a better dad and a better person. When I see her, she challenges me in that way. She’s much more headstrong than I am. I never really enjoyed classes but I think she’s going to have a harder time than that with me because she knows how she wants something to look. When I look at her illustrations or her found art, she makes sculpture out of found art, I can tell that she knows exactly what it is that she wants to do.
If you went over to the museum and looked at her piece, you could tell that there’s a narrative there. She chose an egg. It’s a blue egg. She put little pebbles inside the egg. From far away, it looks like there’s something going on in the egg. Then, when you get up really close and you notice that it’s pebbles and some of them, the light hits off it in a certain way. I could just tell that it wasn’t something that she just decided to put there because they asked her to do it, that she put a lot of thought into it. She’s a lot more driven, direct than I am at this point, even at seven. She really is. She will draw every single day. If she doesn’t draw, she gets upset. She gets cranky.
I want her to do more than just draw. I don’t want her to just draw and paint but I don’t have much say in that. She’s her own person and that’s what she loves doing. Sometimes I’ll see her draw for two, three hours straight. My wife and I will say, what can we do get her away from her easel or where she’s working and get her to go outside and kick a soccer ball or do something like that.
Lisa: The goal of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour is to help make connections between the health of the individual and the health of the community. The goal of Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes is to deepen our appreciation for the natural world. Here to speak with us today is Ted Carter.
Ted: One of the things I’ve often learned through working with nature and landscape for the past 30 years is how abundant nature is, how much abundance there is out there in the natural world. It’s really limitless. I think that one of the things I’m going to refer to The Spell of the Sensuous again from David Abram and a wonderful book. If you have a chance to get it or perhaps is on a CD, I would strongly recommend picking him up, “The breathing sensing body draws its sustenance and its very substance from the soils, plants and elements that surround it. It continually contributes itself in turn to the air, to the composting earth, to the nourishment of insects and oak trees and squirrels, ceaselessly spreading out of itself as well as breathing the world into itself so that it is very difficult to discern at any moment precisely where this living body begins and where it ends.”
I think that what this is trying to tell us is that it’s limitless, that our connection with nature and our energy is out there in the ethos and is expansive and it’s as expansive as we let it be. If we think of life that way, we will move with the current of life, the ebbs and the flows and abundance will flow into our life almost effortlessly. But we have to allow that to happen.
I’m Ted Carter. If you’d like to contact me, I can be reached at tedcarterdesign.com.
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Lisa: I think it’s interesting that people don’t always realize the gifts that they have to offer other people and even at age seven, she’s giving you a gift by sort of reflecting back this artistic nature that she has. You’ve enabled this to happen because you’ve put her in a place where there is art and you’ve also given her the room and the space to create this art herself. You’ve been respectful of that. It can be as simple as holding a hand or it can be as simple as … or not even simple but it can be as complicated as trying to be the best parent that you can for whatever your child needs at any given time. I think that that for me is why when we talk about The Perfect Gift, it really is ever shifting.
Rohan: Yeah, it is. The title, The Perfect Gift, when I … At one point, it was The Gift of All Seasons or From All Seasons. There were all these different titles. I was just skirting around the issue. When you try to put a title to a work, you want to take the essence of what it is and use that as the title. The Perfect Gift came my mind. I pushed it out and I tried to think of other things, The Rabbit Who Loves Giving. I’m just like, “What should I call this thing?” The Perfect Gift came back in my mind. I’m like this dialog, in a dialog with myself, why are you calling this The Perfect Gift when there is no prefect gift? Why would that be a title? Then I said, that’s it. That is the title.
Lisa: Because there is always a perfect gift. It just isn’t always the same perfect gift.
Rohan: And it’s always changing.
Lisa: Exactly.
Rohan: It’s always changing. If you try to hold it and say, okay I’ve got it. Then, you’re going to have a hard time. If you say, like for example, today my gift to my wife is going to be to be patient. I’m not always going to be patient but in that particular conversation or in that day, when we’re talking, I can do it. I can be patient. I can listen. I can handle that. If the gift was Rohan is going to be patient for the rest of our marriage or even the rest of the week or for more than four or five hours, that’s where it all falls apart. It’s like, I don’t think.
Lisa: You’ve got the drawing that you do. You’ve got the writing that you do and your drama and the teaching. Just it’s very interesting that you are able to kind of be present, hold someone’s hand, wherever they’re coming from, whatever that looks like, whether your Ruby’s father or whether you’re a student’s teacher. It’s interesting because in our current society, we like to be very linear. I am this. I am that. I am a whatever it is I am. You’re not really trying to put yourself in any one role. You’re saying I just am.
Rohan: Wow. As you were talking, I’m thinking, “Yeah, that’s what I’m doing.” I do. I guess as soon as I just settle on one definition of myself or role to play, for me personally, can’t speak for anyone else, I feel empty in that sort of just trying to be, this is what I am. If I can be in existent in more of a non-linear way and just try to draw when I can and hold someone’s hand when I can and be a teacher, be present when I can, be patient when I can, I feel more alive. I feel more alive that way. I feel like I’m part of the universe, that I’m here.
Lisa: Rohan, I’m glad you are here, part of the universe, part of our conversation. I encourage people who have not read your book The Perfect Gift, to either go right up to Longfellow Books in Portland, if they live here or somehow otherwise find at a local bookstore. If you have to go to Amazon, that’s fine but we like our local booksellers. Also look into your other three books.
Rohan: Yeah, two of them that have already been published, the Goodnight Baby Ruby, which is, that’s a kid’s book. It’s a kid’s book because it’s about my daughter, Ruby and her bedtime or lack thereof routine. It’s a kind of funny book in the sense that the parents want a routine but there’s no routine. It’s if they can catch her, then they can get part of her pajamas on. If they can catch her, they can brush her teeth with her but they have to catch her to do that. That is a very kid’s book.
Lisa: You have two others or two other books. You have this one, Goodnight Ruby and then the third …
Rohan: And The Gift Box. The Gift Box is about an elephant who is kind of like either … I’m not sure if he’s 2 or 14 but he thinks about himself. He thinks he’s the cat’s meow and … he just thinks that he is it, the center of the universe and so he dresses up like a gift, kind of like how you see those people outside sometimes, outside of a store and they’ll dress up like whatever it is they’re selling inside the store. He get up in a box. He tells everyone that he is the gift and he is the most important thing. That’s The Gift Box.
Lisa: How can people find …?
Rohan: Egotistical elephant.
Lisa: I like it. I’m sure we all know someone like that. How can people find out more about the work that you’re doing?
Rohan: You can go to rohanhenry.com, that’s my website. Also, you can go to the Museum of Afro-American Culture. They have a website. Where else can you find me…
Lisa: Maybe they’ll just see you walking down the street?
Rohan: Yeah.
Lisa: Or hanging out at the Aucocisco School, being a teacher. I appreciate your coming in and talking to us today. We’ve been talking with Rohan Henry, a Jamaican-born author, illustrator, teacher …
Rohan: Yeah, man.
Lisa: … father and husband who now lives here in Maine. We’re really glad that you’re here with us.
Rohan: Thank you.
Lisa: You have been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast show number 105, Words of Wisdom. Our guests have included Gibson Fay-LeBlanc and Rohan Henry. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our eNewsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter and Pinterest and read my take on health and well-being on the bountiful blog. We’d love to hear from you so please let us know what you think of the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour. We welcome your suggestions for future shows.
Also, let our sponsors know that you’ve heard about them here. We are privileged that they enable us to bring the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour to you each week. This is Dr. Lisa Belisle. I hope that you have enjoyed our Words of Wisdom show and that our guests have inspired you in some way. Thank you for allowing me to be a part of your day. May you have a bountiful life.
Speaker 1: The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is made possible with the support of the following generous sponsors: Maine Magazine; Marci Booth of Booth Maine; Apothecary By Design; Premier Sports Health, a Division of Black Bear Medical; Dr. John Herzog of Orthopedic Specialists; Mike LePage and Beth Franklin of RE/MAX Heritage; Ted Carter Inspired Landscapes; and Tom Shepherd of Shepherd Financial. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is recorded at the studios of Maine Magazine at 75 Market Street in Portland, Maine. Our Executive Producers are Kevin Thomas and Dr. Lisa Belisle, audio production and original music by John C. McCain, our assistant producer is Leanne Ouimet.
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