These things that I know I need are also things that I am noticing other people need. And when we provide those things for people like us what happens? We become better.
https://www.graceedison.com/ https://www.lacma.org/patternproject https://www.lacma.org/sites/default/files/module-uploads/M.2007.211.797_LACMA_pattern_proj.pdf
Transcript
Hi, everyone, and thanks for tuning in. I am
Leela Sinha:feeling uncommonly mellow today. And that's a weird feeling. And
Leela Sinha:I don't usually sit down to record when I'm feeling mellow,
Leela Sinha:because I have to admit, I have a little fear that you won't be
Leela Sinha:as interested, or you won't feel as engaged or you won't think
Leela Sinha:that, that this is as worth your time, if I'm not kind of pitched
Leela Sinha:up here and really excited and... and I am, I'm still
Leela Sinha:excited. But intensives, we go through these phases of go and
Leela Sinha:then these phases of stop and I've learned that if I try to
Leela Sinha:fight that cycle, nothing good comes of it. Like the stuff I
Leela Sinha:produce is just not great, because it's out of alignment of
Leela Sinha:where I am. And, and so I'm trying an experiment today, and
Leela Sinha:I'm bringing you along for the ride because I'm going to talk
Leela Sinha:about stuff even though I'm not in that hyped up super energetic
Leela Sinha:place right now. I figure the world is full of a lot of hyped
Leela Sinha:up energy, and maybe it's okay for you to come with me on these
Leela Sinha:more mellow moments, too. So this is going to be a slightly
Leela Sinha:longer episode, we're not sticking to five minutes and and
Leela Sinha:I'm going to allow you into this softer, more thoughtful space
Leela Sinha:that I sometimes occupy. This feels like a more private space
Leela Sinha:to me. And I think that's true for a lot of intensives that
Leela Sinha:we're very comfortable kind of projecting that thing that often
Leela Sinha:people think of as extraversion- I was just on a Facebook Live
Leela Sinha:the other day with Grace Edison, who is fantastic. By the way, if
Leela Sinha:you're looking for support with sales, you should absolutely get
Leela Sinha:in touch with her. Also, if you're just looking for a
Leela Sinha:fantastic person, you should just get in touch with her. She
Leela Sinha:lives in works out of rural British Columbia. And, and she
Leela Sinha:has the most interesting, interesting life. And I mean
Leela Sinha:that in all the good and bad ways, but she has made something
Leela Sinha:fabulous out of it. So anyway, I was on this, having this
Leela Sinha:conversation with Grace, and we were talking about introversion
Leela Sinha:and extraversion. And we were both really uncharacteristically
Leela Sinha:mellow and, and she was talking about how how people are often
Leela Sinha:like down on extroverts that are like telling extroverts, so they
Leela Sinha:have to hush and step back, so that introverts can have more
Leela Sinha:space in a space. And, and she kind of one of the questions she
Leela Sinha:asked me was what I think of that? And is it her
Leela Sinha:responsibility to make that space? And I said, Well, who are
Leela Sinha:you in the space? Right? What is your leadership role in the
Leela Sinha:space? Are you just a participant? I mean, just quote
Leela Sinha:unquote, participation is very important. But are you a
Leela Sinha:participant? Are you carrying some privilege vis a vis the
Leela Sinha:other people in the room? Or are you the facilitator? Because
Leela Sinha:each one of those occupying each one of those spaces requires a
Leela Sinha:different thing from you, as a person in that role. And then I
Leela Sinha:was thinking about, and I was thinking about how, how we get
Leela Sinha:told, we're not supposed to be proud of ourselves, we're not
Leela Sinha:supposed to, you know, pretty as pretty does and we shouldn't, we
Leela Sinha:shouldn't claim space, we shouldn't be out and loud and
Leela Sinha:proud and how, especially in queer spaces, and in a lot of
Leela Sinha:people of color spaces, right, we've had to, we've had to teach
Leela Sinha:ourselves and encourage each other to take up that space that
Leela Sinha:we've been taught not to take up. I know that it's true in
Leela Sinha:black and indigenous spaces. It's also true in South Asian
Leela Sinha:spaces. I'm projecting that it's also true in other spaces that
Leela Sinha:are occupied by other communities of color, and we see
Leela Sinha:some of that on Tik Tok in places where people are able to
Leela Sinha:occupy and define their own stage, their own way of sharing
Leela Sinha:who they are and what they do. And thenI was thinking about my
Leela Sinha:clothes, because I have gone through a long period of not
Leela Sinha:really, not really wanting to call attention to myself,
Leela Sinha:visually, for a variety of reasons. And recently, I've
Leela Sinha:started to come out of that only as I started to have the
Leela Sinha:capacity to make clothes for myself because part of what I'm
Leela Sinha:discovering is that I didn't want to wear clothes, and call
Leela Sinha:attention to myself in clothes, that I didn't feel comfortable
Leela Sinha:in, that I didn't feel like we're representative of me,
Leela Sinha:myself, my values, how I want to look, like none of that. And of
Leela Sinha:course, being me, being an intensive, what I want is a
Leela Sinha:little bit outside the norm. It's a little bit different from
Leela Sinha:what everybody else wants.
Leela Sinha:And in the case of my clothes, that means that I'm wearing a
Leela Sinha:combination of 18th century menswear mostly that I'm making
Leela Sinha:myself and I have been through a months and months long project--
Leela Sinha:I'm really proud of myself actually. Because ordinarily
Leela Sinha:when I end up stuck on a project, I end up shelving it
Leela Sinha:and I walk away. And in this case, I, I have been working on
Leela Sinha:this fitted Banyan. So there are two kinds of Banyans, fitted and
Leela Sinha:unfitted, and I've been working on a fitted Banyon, which is
Leela Sinha:basically just a glorified very elegant bathrobe, for months
Leela Sinha:trying to get this pattern from what it was. I started with a
Leela Sinha:pattern derived from an extant garment, in the LA County Museum
Leela Sinha:of Art, all the way to a pattern that fits me, which looks
Leela Sinha:tremendously different from the original pattern. I don't know
Leela Sinha:if the original pattern was made for a boy, or if the original
Leela Sinha:piece was made for a very small man, but it was certainly not
Leela Sinha:made for somebody of my size, and I've had to scale a lot of
Leela Sinha:it up in order to get it to where I need it to be. But
Leela Sinha:scaling it up is not as simple as adding inches around the
Leela Sinha:edges, you end up having to readjust the entire pattern,
Leela Sinha:which is what I've been learning. So I've learned a lot.
Leela Sinha:But the reason that I've persisted, I've actually
Leela Sinha:persisted, I've stayed with it because it has novelty, because
Leela Sinha:it's this giant like three dimensional jigsaw puzzle,
Leela Sinha:because it uses parts of my brain that I don't get to use,
Leela Sinha:in the same way in my work, but I do use those parts in my work,
Leela Sinha:right? If you've ever worked with me, or if you're familiar
Leela Sinha:with my work, you know, that I will take an existing system or
Leela Sinha:an existing structure and restructure it to fit the people
Leela Sinha:or the institution that's using it. I will, rather than saying,
Leela Sinha:Well, you have to fit into this box, I'll say, well, let's build
Leela Sinha:a different container. A box isn't even the right thing, we
Leela Sinha:shouldn't even be using cardboard, we should be using
Leela Sinha:wood, and it shouldn't be six sided, it should have, you know,
Leela Sinha:17 sides, because that would accommodate you better. And next
Leela Sinha:thing, you know, we have a completely different kind of
Leela Sinha:containing structure, that fits the institution that needs it,
Leela Sinha:that supports the institution that needs it, maybe we leave
Leela Sinha:the top off so the institution can continue to grow. And I'm
Leela Sinha:only able to do that, because I have finally, in my late 40s,
Leela Sinha:come to a place where I'm willing to be out and proud not
Leela Sinha:just about all of the identity pieces that we've had to be
Leela Sinha:politically and socially in order to keep and advance human
Leela Sinha:rights, but also out and proud about what I do and what goes on
Leela Sinha:in my head. I had this really interesting experience when I
Leela Sinha:was growing up that I kept having original ideas. And I
Leela Sinha:kept trying to put them forth as legitimate thoughts. And people
Leela Sinha:kept telling me, in academia, this is very common, people kept
Leela Sinha:telling me over and over well, you have to come up with, you
Leela Sinha:have to come up with a source this has to come from somewhere,
Leela Sinha:you got to cite somebody, and I said, but there is no source, I
Leela Sinha:came up with this. And they essentially told me that my
Leela Sinha:ideas didn't count, that the only ideas that counted were
Leela Sinha:ideas that came from external sources. And so if I couldn't
Leela Sinha:find somebody else having already said it, then I couldn't
Leela Sinha:put it in my paper, then I couldn't write it down anywhere
Leela Sinha:then I couldn't build on it. And I found this both insulting and
Leela Sinha:frustrating. And as I got older and found out exactly how old
Leela Sinha:Emerson and Thoreau were when they wrote some of their most
Leela Sinha:famous works and, and institutions that I was studying
Leela Sinha:in really elevated Emerson and Thoreau and their peers and
Leela Sinha:contemporaries-- as I started to realize that quite young white
Leela Sinha:men had been allowed to have original thoughts for a very
Leela Sinha:long time, and that we base a lot of our current thinking on
Leela Sinha:their thinking from when they were like, in their late teens
Leela Sinha:or early 20s, I became really clear that I was not going to be
Leela Sinha:constrained by the limits of academia. And I actually think
Leela Sinha:that's when the seeds of my resistance to academic
Leela Sinha:structures started. So I continued on I mean, I have a
Leela Sinha:graduate degree, but my graduate degree is a Master's of
Leela Sinha:divinity, which is a practicing degree it's a it's a degree of
Leela Sinha:praxis. In the same way that an MD is a degree of practice in
Leela Sinha:the same way that
Leela Sinha:a JD is a degree of practice, right? There are two different
Leela Sinha:kinds of graduate degrees there degrees that are more
Leela Sinha:theoretical and degrees that are really about how do you practice
Leela Sinha:this thing you've learned; how do you make it into something
Leela Sinha:tangible and tactical in the world? And I chose to go that
Leela Sinha:route. I ended up with a master's degree because that's--
Leela Sinha:it's not actually the last degree you can get anymore, you
Leela Sinha:can get a Doctor of Ministry, but the master's degree is
Leela Sinha:considered complete. It's it's the most degree you need to do
Leela Sinha:ministry work in the world. And and so I got this master's
Leela Sinha:degree, which is it's a very it's like an MSW. It's three
Leela Sinha:years plus field work kind of situation. So by the time you
Leela Sinha:are fully accredited and degreed, you've done four years
Leela Sinha:of work. But because of the vagaries of our academic system,
Leela Sinha:you only have a master's. But I decided to get a master's
Leela Sinha:degree, that was not an academic degree. And I decided not to get
Leela Sinha:say a ThD, which is a Doctorate of theology or a PhD,In my
Leela Sinha:field, partially because I was interested in practical
Leela Sinha:applications. I was interested in taking what we were doing and
Leela Sinha:doing it in the world. I had no idea when I graduated with my M
Leela Sinha:div, that I was going to leave the institutional church as the
Leela Sinha:primary container of my work, and that I was going to go out
Leela Sinha:into the world and instead, do this, do this very fusion kind
Leela Sinha:of work, right, where I, where I take some of the principles of,
Leela Sinha:you know, goodness in the world with the ideals of being good
Leela Sinha:and being good for the world. And I bring them into the
Leela Sinha:business context. And that kind of interdisciplinarity was very
Leela Sinha:new when I was in an undergraduate and I was doing
Leela Sinha:some similar things there. And I really shouldn't, I guess, be as
Leela Sinha:surprised as I am, that I ended up where I am, doing what I do.
Leela Sinha:But the only reason that I'm able to go out in the world and
Leela Sinha:say this, this mashup of, of theory and philosophy and belief
Leela Sinha:and, and world transformation is relevant in the business world.
Leela Sinha:It's important in the business world, it's what we need to be
Leela Sinha:doing in the business world, the only reason that I'm able to do
Leela Sinha:that, and the only reason that I'm able to say, these things
Leela Sinha:that I know I need are also things that I am noticing other
Leela Sinha:people need. And when we provide those things for people like us
Leela Sinha:what happens? We become better. All of us. Our institutions, us
Leela Sinha:as individuals, the other people we're interacting with,
Leela Sinha:everything gets better when we do this. So we're making the
Leela Sinha:world a better place by making space for intensives. By
Leela Sinha:carrying that intensiveness forward and by being out and
Leela Sinha:loud and proud, as intensives. As intensives. The only way
Leela Sinha:reason I can do that is because I am finally at this place where
Leela Sinha:I'm willing to say this version of the world that I'm imagining
Leela Sinha:has legitimacy. It deserves to take up space, it deserves to be
Leela Sinha:on the page, it deserves to be in the front of the room. It
Leela Sinha:deserves to be heard and seen and understood and perceived and
Leela Sinha:grasped in all the ways that people interact with ideas.
Leela Sinha:Because it's not just a theory that has no impact. It's... it's
Leela Sinha:a seed, it's a seed of what could be if we all get together
Leela Sinha:and do it. And we have to be able to be proud, we have to be
Leela Sinha:able to be loud. And if I could go back and tell ninth grade me
Leela Sinha:who wanted to do original research on the children's
Leela Sinha:anti-Nazi resistance movement in Scandinavia, that me trying to
Leela Sinha:chase down sources for a ninth grade paper would lead me
Leela Sinha:eventually, to a place where I had the confidence and the
Leela Sinha:audacity to write a book. Without an academic degree
Leela Sinha:behind it. I have a degree but it's not a degree that that most
Leela Sinha:people would consider qualifies me to write that book. But the
Leela Sinha:book needed to be written and the ideas are valid and
Leela Sinha:validated in the real world by people like you and me.
Leela Sinha:And that's why that book had to exist, regardless of whether or
Leela Sinha:not I had a PhD after my name. My father has a doctorate. And I
Leela Sinha:thought for years that I couldn't legitimately occupy
Leela Sinha:intellectual space without one. And now I know better. And now I
Leela Sinha:know that there are lots of ways of knowing. That academia,
Leela Sinha:upholds some of those ways of knowing but not all of them. And
Leela Sinha:that we can validate ourselves and each other, we validate
Leela Sinha:ourselves and each other. And that's why this work is
Leela Sinha:important. Because everybody's way of being needs space. That
Leela Sinha:doesn't mean that you get to harm other people with your way
Leela Sinha:of being. But it does mean that there are spaces and needs to
Leela Sinha:find the ways that we can all be in our own ways of being and
Leela Sinha:bring what we have to bring and give what we have to give
Leela Sinha:without being told that we're wrong. Without squishing
Leela Sinha:ourselves and without harming others. This was a lot easier in
Leela Sinha:the times and places before the internet. Because now, if I'm
Leela Sinha:having a thought, I might sit down and write about it first,
Leela Sinha:like privately, offline, in a journal somewhere. But I might
Leela Sinha:just sit down and write a public post, or I might just sit down
Leela Sinha:and record a podcast episode, and put my ideas right out there
Leela Sinha:without, without doing a lot of digestion. And that's a
Leela Sinha:legitimate way of telling stories, that's a legitimate way
Leela Sinha:of transmitting ideas and knowledge. There's not
Leela Sinha:necessarily a requirement to refine and refine and refine;
Leela Sinha:refining is one method. But it's not the only method. And
Leela Sinha:sometimes, when I refine my stuff too much, it loses its
Leela Sinha:energy. And so I have to come to this space, willing to be a
Leela Sinha:little bit less refined, really willing to carry forward a rough
Leela Sinha:draft in order to carry forward the energy that comes with that
Leela Sinha:rough draft. And the advantage of that, is that when I bring a
Leela Sinha:rough draft, I'm more open to friendly amendments. I'm more
Leela Sinha:open to other people's ideas. It's still soft, it's still
Leela Sinha:forming, it doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to get
Leela Sinha:out there. So it can be a seed. So it can be a pile of seeds. So
Leela Sinha:it can be a handful of seeds scattered on the ground. And
Leela Sinha:someone somewhere will pick up one of those seeds and make
Leela Sinha:something of it. And that's what's most important. Of
Leela Sinha:course, this is capitalism. So it's also important that I
Leela Sinha:figure out how to get credit. I figure out how to occupy public
Leela Sinha:space that I figure out how to hold my presence as one of the
Leela Sinha:presences in the discourse as it proceeds, and to interact with
Leela Sinha:the results of my own ideas, to engage to be engaged to be
Leela Sinha:credited, and... and profit; to benefit from the results of my
Leela Sinha:ideas. All of that is important. And one of the joys of this
Leela Sinha:immediate publication social media world is that we can bring
Leela Sinha:partially formed rough draft wet clay to the table. And then we
Leela Sinha:can find out what happens when it's not just us in isolation.
Leela Sinha:Sometimes we need isolation. Sometimes we need privacy.
Leela Sinha:Sometimes we need cogitation, sometimes we need rumination,
Leela Sinha:but we don't have to do that all the time. We can mix it, it's a
Leela Sinha:tool, those are all tools. And we have access to all these
Leela Sinha:different tools. When clergy used to write sermons that were
Leela Sinha:supposed to be all day services. And I mean all day, or when they
Leela Sinha:still do, probably, I don't know. But when they used to,
Leela Sinha:they would just be writing alone, it was them, and a whole
Leela Sinha:bunch of parchment and a quill pen, and a cup of tea and a
Leela Sinha:break for lunch until they had like four or five hours worth of
Leela Sinha:writing to read. And we don't have to do that anymore. Not
Leela Sinha:only can we consult books, which they could consult whatever they
Leela Sinha:had in their library, whatever their next door neighbor had in
Leela Sinha:their library, whatever the church had in its library. But
Leela Sinha:not only can we consult texts, we can also consult people,
Leela Sinha:living people with living experience. And that's what
Leela Sinha:makes it possible for us to be ourselves because we don't have
Leela Sinha:to represent everybody. I can represent myself and other
Leela Sinha:people like me, and the minute somebody feels like I don't
Leela Sinha:represent them anymore, that's cool.
Leela Sinha:That's all right. I don't have to represent everybody. We don't
Leela Sinha:have one spokesperson for this and one spokesperson for that
Leela Sinha:one representative of this and one representative of that. We
Leela Sinha:have all these examples of all these kinds of ways of being and
Leela Sinha:all these people and all these presences. But the only way that
Leela Sinha:that amalgamation of experience is accurate is if a lot of us
Leela Sinha:get out there and occupy space that we've been told we
Leela Sinha:shouldn't occupy for some reason or other. Now I'm an introvert.
Leela Sinha:I'm not an extrovert, but I am an intensive. And so often I get
Leela Sinha:out there and I occupy a lot of space with really big ideas.
Leela Sinha:That's part of my role in the world. That's not everybody's
Leela Sinha:job. And that's okay, too. Some people are not doing that. Some
Leela Sinha:people are, are collating, they're aggregating. They're
Leela Sinha:weaving together and that's also important. If there's nothing
Leela Sinha:that anybody learns from my work except that we can value
Leela Sinha:everybody, we can value what all the people bring to the table,
Leela Sinha:we can value the loud voices and the quiet voices, we can value
Leela Sinha:the big movements and the small movements, we can value, the...
Leela Sinha:the... cacophony and the silence. We can value, the in
Leela Sinha:breath, and the outbreath. The tides rise and the tides fall,
Leela Sinha:the salty and the sweet. And it's everything together that
Leela Sinha:allows us to know ourselves well enough to move forward.
Leela Sinha:When I'm not wearing 18th century clothes that I made
Leela Sinha:myself, I'm wearing one of two things. Either I'm wearing
Leela Sinha:saris, which I typically drape in ways that are slightly
Leela Sinha:unconventional, to suit me, because they're incredibly
Leela Sinha:flexible garments. Or, I'm wearing the default uniform that
Leela Sinha:I fell back on, which is a black V neck t shirt, and this single
Leela Sinha:pair of pandemic pants. I keep wanting to tell the story of
Leela Sinha:getting so annoyed with pants that I stopped wearing any other
Leela Sinha:pairs of pants, and how that led to my clothing being mostly hand
Leela Sinha:sewn, or draped. But I do also have this fallback position of
Leela Sinha:pandemic pants. At some point, I will actually put the whole
Leela Sinha:story up on the YouTube. But the funny thing about having a
Leela Sinha:neutral, a default, a thing I can fall back on is that it
Leela Sinha:provides me a place to rest. It provides me a place to go when
Leela Sinha:my energy isn't high. And when I'm not prepared to even be loud
Leela Sinha:about myself in public, when I'm in that cogitation, that
Leela Sinha:internal space. And I just, I just want to be in there. There
Leela Sinha:may have been a time in this world where I could have worn
Leela Sinha:these clothes quietly and gone about my day, and nobody would
Leela Sinha:have noticed. But that was a number of hundreds of years ago.
Leela Sinha:And that time was terrible in a lot of other ways. So let's not
Leela Sinha:go back there. So when I need to get dressed, when I need to go
Leela Sinha:out in public, when I need to present myself on social media
Leela Sinha:even, I get to decide how I'm going to bring all of myself in
Leela Sinha:that moment. Sometimes it's bright colors, flowing silks,
Leela Sinha:exotic, imported, rich, delightful, sensual stuff.
Leela Sinha:Sometimes it's... sometimes it's flamboyant in a completely
Leela Sinha:different way. And I'm fully cognizant of the negative
Leela Sinha:connotations of both flamboyant and exotic and, and I'm aware
Leela Sinha:that that is part of what I'm carrying with me into the space.
Leela Sinha:That some people will have those thoughts, those ideas, those
Leela Sinha:overtones, those undertones when they see me in those clothes.
Leela Sinha:And sometimes, that's not what I want. Sometimes I want to be
Leela Sinha:absolutely unremarkable. Sometimes I want the words or
Leela Sinha:the art that I'm making to be front and center. The only thing
Leela Sinha:that people notice. And if that's what I want, then I put
Leela Sinha:ont a black V neck t shirt and a pair of pandemic pants. So I'm
Leela Sinha:not saying that you have to go out there and be shiny all the
Leela Sinha:time. But I am also saying that you do not have to not. No
Leela Sinha:matter what anybody has told you.