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Episode 2410th August 2022 • PowerPivot • Leela Sinha
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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

Transcripts

Leela Sinha:

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.

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