Leah McGuire’s spoken-word show Between Flesh and Faith is playing at the ESL Rochester Fringe on September 24 at 6:30pm at the Rock Cinema Theater — get tickets for $5 at rochesterfringe.com (seriously, five bucks — cheaper than my emotional support latte).

Check out the episode on Just Can't Not wherever you get your podcasts or on Lunchador.org!

https://player.captivate.fm/episode/2fe6e2be-1e59-4cb3-88be-50df2658460d/

We sat down with Leah to unpack a 45-minute, diary-based solo performance that mashes up a one-night stand with a famous actor, an unexpected dive into a Hindu community, questions about celibacy and identity, and even an unspooled crush on a monk — basically flesh meeting faith in the ring and neither’s getting a clean knockout. I’ll also say Leah writes most of this from her actual diary entries, poetry and prose, so you get that up-close, slightly messy, very human vibe — spoken word done like someone’s whispering straight into your ear but louder. She explains things like kirtan (that’s communal mantra-singing used in her spiritual practice) and synesthesia (a sensory crossover — like seeing letters or people as colors) so even if you’ve never heard those words, you’ll leave smarter and kinda delightfully discombobulated. Leah’s a novelist who even did a Finland residency and then pivoted from endless agent emails to getting on stage because, as she put it, the Fringe kinda cured her writerly existential crisis — yes, there was crying in the bathroom to Wicked, and yes, we laughed about it. Come see it, follow her on Instagram @leah_thecreativewriter, and we’ll see you out on the Fringe — bring tissues, bring friends, bring your weird color-sensory self.

Mentioned in this episode:

Joe Bean Roasters

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Well, that music means it's time for another episode of Just Can't Knock.

This is part of our previews for the ESL Rochester Fringe Festival happening from September 15th to the 26th in scenic downtown Rochester, New York.

Go to rochesterfringe.com to get your tickets to as many events as you can possibly go to.

And you definitely want to do that.

And I'm here with a guest.

Guest, why don't you introduce yourself?

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Leah McGuire and your show is Between Flesh and Faith.

So your show is happening on September 24th at 6:30pm at the Rock Cinema Theater.

A great venue for, you know, a show.

Tickets are $5 at rochesterfringe.com It's a great, great thing to do for that.

So why don't you describe what, what is this show?

It's a good question.

So I used to live in London and when I lived there I had this really interesting experience where I had a one night stand with a famous actor.

Sure.

As we all do.

This is part of my life experience.

I was very excited to have this experience.

But then actually the downfall of that excitement, not finishing and pleading my every desire in the world, led me into this spiraling of oh my God, what do I really want in life and what am I really doing here?

And that led me into this Hindu community where I know obviously that's it's.

The next step from that is, you know, every, every torrid love affair with a famous, you know, actor.

Actress turns into, you know, a religious practice actor.

I see it as like a peak and valley.

Like it's truly flesh and faith, like those polar opposites being juxtaposed with each other.

Yeah, this, this practice found me and I found this community and fell in love with it and spend this time like struggling with, oh my God, how do you not try to date people and have sex with people?

And what is celibacy?

And who am I if I don't, you know, if I'm not sexually active?

And it was an interesting question, but so it's interesting because I also got kind of infatuated with a monk and we had kind of like an unsp.

Love affair as well.

Again, this, this is part of my entire journey.

I can't tell you how many months I've been involved with.

So what I'm kind of intrigued about is like this is.

So you're doing a 45 minute show when you're thinking about how to format a show that is not, it's not a 20 minute thing.

It's not a 10 minute thing.

This is a 45 minute show.

When you think about how to format it was the, you know, you're the one person show.

Was that obviously the way you were going or how would you describe the show technically?

Yeah, from a technical standpoint, it's based off of diary.

Diary entries that I wrote.

I'm a writer, I'm a novelist and I pursued creative writing, got my master's in London.

That's why I was there.

So it's all documented.

Everything's documented.

It's extremely intimate experience.

That's all about what's going on in my head.

Very, very like you.

You're up close with me.

So I did want to perform it as, you know, true to its form, as it was with the diary entries and the poetry and the prose.

But I also considered for a moment like having people, I think my mom suggested, like, you should have people like contemporary dance.

The lyrics.

That is a very fringe idea.

And I appreciate that it's fringe.

And I'm like, oh my gosh.

If I. I'm just trying to figure out what the heck a spoken word show is right now.

So I'm not sure if I can choreograph dancers.

That would be awesome.

No, it's a cool idea.

No doubt.

Yeah.

Well, I also love that like, you know, this kind of show could be like, could be interactive, right?

Could have like, you could put the stuff on a screen.

You could actually put the dire entries up on a screen, you know, for a journal.

So I'm like, I have to imagine, you know, the, you know, this kind of show is a very personal show, right?

Not to say it's super, like intense or anything like that, but it's still a very personal thing to be doing this both, you know, talking about it generally and then talking about it on stage.

Is that something you have?

Is that something you've done a lot in the past as be on stage?

Is this something you're comfortable with?

I. I've grown to be comfortable with being on stage.

It was not easy at the beginning.

Like, accepting myself as a writer in the first place was very hard.

So being that Persona on a stage is like full acceptance or full attempt to accept.

Yeah.

And I actually, funny enough, in this Hindu community we do kirtan, which is when you sing mantras, like Vedic mantras.

And they selected me as a singer to be on stage, which got me really used to like, okay, sing and don't care about what people think of it because I'm doing this for Krishna or for a higher power.

And that actually kind of played into how I view performance now.

Like, instead of like, oh my God, what are people gonna think of me?

I. I'm seeing it more as like my craft for something, for something bigger.

Yeah.

Well, it's also like, it's also part of an internal practice as well.

Right.

Like, you know, which is endemic in that whole thing as well, is it's not just about.

It's not a worship thing always.

It's about that internal.

It's about that internal practice.

It's about, you know, being, you know, being present in the moment as well.

And I have to imagine that's part of the challenge is.

Yes, you have to kind of get out of your head, but still be present in the moment and be engaged with this whole experience.

Yeah.

That's how spoken word works best.

It's when you're delivering the content like you're saying it like it's part of you, not just reading from a paper.

You've got to be.

I mean, I go to like Boulder open mic and you see the people who are like, who are screaming the words and they mean it and they memorize it.

Not that I can memorize 45 minutes, but it's definitely an up leveling of your craft if you can do something like that.

Yeah.

And I think there's also this.

It's like a balance as well.

Right.

Because there's this.

There's an element of at some point somebody's going to look at you, oh, you're, you're doing too much.

Right.

This is.

You're overly.

You're being overly performative.

Right.

You're.

That looks like a put on.

And there's this constant balance of.

You want to express these things genuinely.

Right.

And on stage you do have to be bigger.

Yeah.

So there's this constant balance of you want to show these emotions, you want to show these words, you want to express them with the right amount of emotion, but you also don't want to be too.

But have people feel like it's fake because that's the other thing people go to, you know, one person chose to experience is genuineness and earnestness and honestness as part of the process.

Right.

And I feel like that plays into myself as a writer as well.

Bringing up diary entries is like, hey, this is really me.

But then sometimes my writing style itself can be really, I don't know, poetic can have a lot of fluff.

And I was asking my friend, is this something that really needs to be included or should I just Be down to the core of what I'm saying.

But yeah, I just think that it's a really important situation, so.

Yeah.

So you mentioned writing a few times.

What about writing?

When did you feel like, not feel like you were a writer, but when did you feel like writing was something that you needed to pursue?

I always felt like it was writing for me when I was in seventh grade.

So I'm 30.

You probably don't know that.

You probably thought I was 20.

I mean, I, I would never have said or thought anything of the sort.

People love to impose their ideas about my age upon me.

Right.

Well, I mean, it's like, it's, it's such a, it's such an interesting thing.

Right.

Because people's perceptions.

Yeah.

Play into how people engage with you on stage too.

Oh, yeah, right.

Because they're, they, you know, they're making a snap thought about this person and then they get to experience your journey.

They experience your, your writing and your thoughts and everything else.

Right.

And I imagine like having it all, you know, written down has to be part of that whole thing.

Yeah.

And I feel like a lot of people will say, like, how did she experience all of this if she's just 20?

But anyways, I was in seventh grade and I was reading about Anne Frank and that she really stood out to me as a character because I realized that young women's voices mattered in that moment.

And I had just gotten this urge to like write in the notes section of my little like Motorola.

And it just started growing and becoming like something I did like all the time, like almost like every day, like routinely, a little bit impulsively.

And when I got older, it started to turn into stories.

And I just loved the feeling of looking at a blank sheet of paper, like a blank canvas, and being like, what can come of this?

That feeling of creation.

So I loved writing.

Loved it, loved it, loved it.

Decided to go to school for fashion design, obviously, and then went into the fashion industry.

She had a stripper as a roommate who was dating a felon who would hit her at night very bad.

Sounds like a creative way of living in a challenging way too.

For sure.

Yeah.

And was getting killed by the fashion industry.

Ended up having near death experience.

Okay.

The fashion industry didn't kill me.

Like, that made it sound like, I mean, not directly, not indirectly, indeed, by influence.

And so I finally, when I felt like I lost what I had been trying to build with my own ego, looked at everything and was like, oh my God, I don't have anything left.

Like who am I?

And I kept hearing, I want to write a book.

I want to write a book.

And finally I decided, okay, I have nothing else to lose.

Let's do it.

Okay, well, I want to write it in Finland in a writing residency, because there was one that I found.

It was my dream one.

I mean, how many times have I tried to write my novel in a different Nordic country?

It just happens to me all the time.

They say that writers get the best inspiration from their lives, and I feel like my life.

It's like every episode of a show that you watch, there's something crazy happening, and I'm just spewing them.

But, yeah, I got that writing residency, quit my fashion job, went to Finland and wrote my first novel and pursued writing adamantly for years.

Writing my first novel.

I've written it five times at this point.

But the Fringe show came about by me being really kind of, like, energetically blocked by all of the emails that I have to send the agents, and they're, thank you for your courier, and I really like this, and I hope someone gets it, but it's not gonna be me.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh, when is it?

And I started crying in the bathroom to the Wicked soundtrack earlier this year.

Sure.

Yeah.

Those.

That's.

Yeah.

I will say, I'm sure that has happened to at least one person who lives in this house, just not me.

Do you have any cats?

No, no cats.

There's.

There's no little furry.

There's a little furry guy that lives in the house now.

He's a.

He's a cute little dog.

Oh, instead of rat.

I'm sure there might be some of those, too.

So I'm kind of intrigued.

So you mentioned, like, you know, going after a novel, which is.

That's a big project.

Right.

As when you were deciding what did you want to write about, how did you, like, Was it that snap thing?

Like, oh, I know this is what I want to write about, or was it kind of a.

Like, I want to really think about what is.

What is this novel meant to be?

Right.

I feel like it was both.

Like, I feel like it's the snap initial idea followed by like, wait, what is this novel meant to be?

Like, what is the.

The point of this idea?

What message am I trying to send with the platform that I get?

But the novel came about to me.

Can you repeat the question?

I'm sorry.

Oh, it's okay.

So, like, what is.

When you were deciding what to write about, how did that really happen?

Yeah, I was Always having this idea about synesthesia.

So if anybody doesn't know what synesthesia is, it's a syndrome where one sense crosses over with another.

And so, for example, I have the kind where when I read, I see numbers and letters as though they're colored.

I used to have association with color and personality.

So there was a new girl at our school who sat at a particular lunch table, and I remember thinking, of course she's purple.

And then I was like, what?

Wait, what?

And so I always love this concept of having a character with synesthesia and always wanted to write about this character.

I tried to write it when I was younger, when I was in, like, middle school.

It was some kind of weird Tumblr, like, esque, like, works in a cafe as you do.

I mean, it's, It's.

It was also like.

It was a.

There was a beautiful openness to the platform, especially during that time frame where it was, hey, people just wanted to explore people trying something.

And it didn't have to be clean.

It didn't have to be well thought through.

We just had to be, you know, at least feel real.

It doesn't have to be real, but it had to feel real.

There's so much romanticism in that time, too.

Tumblr was very, like, known for that.

See, I'm.

I'm also thinking, like, the pre Tumblr times.

Like, I'm.

I'm a.

A little bit more of an old.

So it's like, you know, I remember when people were writing blogs, it was like, blog spot and like, you know, all those kind of places that were just.

People were just going.

And Tumblr was like that.

But.

And then even amplified because it was this big, you know, echo chamber of everybody pushing the limits of, yeah.

Creativity and honesty and openness and then shit posting and memes and everything else all in the same place all at the same time.

Right.

I think that also, like, there's this intimacy somehow on that social media platform where I wouldn't feel like.

Like, on my writing Instagram, I wouldn't feel like I can post on it and feel, like, totally safe and protected.

Yeah.

Whereas with Tumblr, you truly, like, you don't really know.

Maybe you'll get some reblogs or something.

But there's something about maybe not having a face behind someone's profile or, I don't know, maybe that also increased bullying.

Maybe we were just happier, you know, a few decades ago.

Probably.

It's there.

There are moments, but I also.

There's this, you know, as as you.

I mean, for me, there is.

There's these inflection points where you're like, oh, this is odd.

I'm the adult in the room now.

Which did not happen at 30.

This happened later for me.

It's like, it's.

It's, oh, I'm an adult in the room now.

Like, I'm not.

I'm being looked at as somebody that people want to ask questions to.

And it's a very odd experience.

Is it odd you feel like.

Did you feel like you didn't have that for a while?

Yeah, no, I think so.

Like, for me, it was.

I. I didn't know everything of who I was for a very long time.

Like, that journey was not.

It was not 20, and it wasn't 25.

It was way closer to 30 for me when I figured out who I was.

Still young.

Yeah.

And then started that.

Started the path and that.

It wasn't the end of the path.

It was the start of the path was 30.

Right.

That was kind of the start of really figuring out where do I want to go and what do I want to do.

Yeah.

So, like, when you.

When you completed, you know, the novel.

Right, the novel.

The novel, did you feel like, oh, this is.

This is the start and.

Or did you feel like, oh, I need to redo this or I need to keep on this?

I was very naive.

It's like the more, you know, you realize that you know nothing.

And I was like, oh, yeah, ready to get published.

Look at all my friends.

And they're like, yeah, I've been working on my book for five years.

And I was like, loser, I'm gonna get published asap.

And it's been six years and I still don't think it's been too long.

I think this is a normal situation.

Yeah.

Very common.

Yeah.

And the stories are all over the place.

It can take people years and years and decades, honestly.

Well, it's a lot of work.

Right.

Like, it's.

That's the thing that is hard to explain is that, yes, writing the novel is a ton of work.

And it's a lot of dedication, a lot of passion.

In many ways, it's the easiest part of the process because the rest of it is something you don't want to do.

Right.

I don't.

You don't want to self promote.

You don't want to.

To reach out to a publishing house.

You don't want to pitch yourself over and over and over again and convince somebody, hey, I did something good.

Yeah.

Like, for me, the writing part Sounds awful.

Like, I hated writing.

Like, when I.

When I did restaurant reviews for a city, like, for years, man, the process was awful.

I hated doing it.

I liked having done it, but I hated doing it.

And it never felt comfortable.

But for the people that write, the writing is the part they enjoy.

And then you have to then fight that other side of the battle for an interminable for an unknown amount of time.

And that's why you cry in the bathroom to the Wicked soundtrack.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, thinking about elevation and whatever else and stuff, and brooms and something.

Or other, I cried about elevation and brooms.

Yeah, sure.

Yeah.

I kind of saw part of one of the parts of that.

I can tell.

Well, I felt like the Fringe festival is exactly what cured me.

Yeah.

Because I was like.

Like starting the writing Instagram was important.

It made me feel like, okay, someone can consume my writing right now.

Maybe an agent and an audience in a publishing house isn't the time, but, like, okay, maybe my nine followers, like, you know, earlier on will.

Will read something or benefit from something.

And that idea of, like.

Like, I had this conversation with someone before about, like, when you create, shouldn't you just do it out of, like, your love for creation?

Or does it need to be consumed by somebody?

And when you do it for six years, like, where.

When is the line drawn where you're just doing it out of love for creation?

And again, like you said, dealing with all these logistical things, the feeling of being consumed is, like, so energizing.

It keeps me going.

And I stopped.

I decided I'm gonna stop querying agents.

I'm going to do spoken word shows.

I don't know if you heard about listen to your mother that was like,.

Oh, go for it.

There was a show earlier this year, it's called listen to your mother.

And it pops up around the U.S. okay.

It's about.

It's like different women, they share stories that they wrote about their mothers.

I'm sorry, not different women, different people.

And so I auditioned and got into my first show, and it was hosted at the Hochstein.

The crowd had 600 people earlier.

Oh, wow.

So that was like a jump from me behind a computer screen to 600 people at the Hawk Stein.

And the feeling was tough.

I disassociated on stage for sure.

But then I was like, hell, yeah, this is great.

Yeah.

Well, there's also, like.

I think it's one of the things that's.

One of the things that is so important, you know, in life to engage with is if you want to be, if you want to create something great is you have to do different things.

Right.

It's that diversification.

It's that different experiences.

You don't know what the thing that's going to grab you next is because you wrote.

You wrote a book.

Right.

And that's an amazing accomplishment.

But you don't know when your next creative, you know, spark is going to come from.

You don't know what part of your life that is going to.

That's going to be born from you.

And by, you know, keeping on the same thing forever, you don't.

You're not going to feel new things.

You're not going to engage in new things.

Yeah.

It's like a dying relationship.

You know, you've got to find new ways to keep it spicy.

And.

And it's like, even I've been like that, like, locked into writing nonstop.

And no, I want to get this book published.

That has to be the book.

But yeah, that gets to be really sterile or quite.

What's the word?

Like, just kind of stuffy after a while.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Do you feel like, as we're wrapping up, do you feel like, you know, that there's going to be another book?

Do you feel like that's still something.

That's going to happen, like, different from this book?

Yeah, I hope so.

Yeah.

Like the idea, like the idea part of the process is so fun.

Yeah.

And the initial part of the creation.

But I hope that I write more books.

I hope that I write films.

I hope that I write more spoken word shows.

I hope that I write and have a library full of things that I write.

So cool.

Well, thank you so much for coming over.

This was an absolute blast.

So the show is Between Flesh and faith, happening on September 24th at 6:30 at the Rock Cinema Theater.

Tickets are $5 at rochesterfringe.com and Leah, where do you want people to follow you?

Otherwise, you can follow me on Instagram at Leah, the creative writer.

Awesome.

So, speaking of writing, make sure to check out our new show on the Lunchadore Podcast network called Reader's Advisory.

Four different librarians are coming together to talk about all the books and different genres that they love.

This is Rochester's book club in podcast form, so join and listen to that episode.

Should be coming out soon, and we'll see you out on the fringe.

This has been a presentation of the Lunchadore Podcast Network.

Man, the amount of tears I shed to Glenn and affab and the brooms and, man, the flying monkeys.

Man, the amount of tears the flying monkeys gave me just what an experience.