Welcome to EWM INSIGHTS where we celebrate on HUMAN CAPITAL!

In this episode Kienan Briscoe returns to EWM Insights to discuss his recently released novel, "Eternity is a Shattered Coffee Cup." This poignant work explores impermanence through the coming-of-age journey of two friends, Mateo and Egos. As they confront the complexities of adulthood and the inevitable losses that shape their identities, Briscoe raises profound questions about the nature of existence and the significance of relationships in the face of life's transience. His reflections, shaped by personal experiences of grief, emphasize the possibility of self-reinvention amidst profound change. This conversation invites us to contemplate how loss can lead to a deeper understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

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We hope our conversations will help you acquire more knowledge, become even more curious about the gifts that are in and all around us, while supporting you to reach new heights as we grow together.

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Takeaways:

• Keenan Briscoe discusses his latest novel, 'Eternity is a Shattered Coffee Cup', focusing on themes of impermanence and identity.
• The narrative centers around two friends navigating the complexities of life, loss, and the evolution of their identities over time.
• Briscoe's reflections on personal losses, including the deaths of family and friends, inform the philosophical underpinnings of his work.
• The novel explores the question of how individuals can reconstruct their identities following profound emotional experiences and losses.
• Briscoe emphasizes the value of living in the present and appreciating experiences as they unfold amidst the challenges of life.
• The conversation touches upon existentialism, illustrating how grief can catalyze personal growth and transformation.

Keenan Briscoe

https://mkeenanbrisco.com.WordPress.com

Eternity is a Shattered Coffee Cup

https://www.amazon.com/Eternity-Shattered-Coffee-Cup/dp/B0C4KJ6Y6H

Satori and Sorrow

https://www.amazon.com/Satori-Sorrow-Keenan-Briscoe/dp/B09G9GFGZP

Ellis Wealth Management

https://www.elliswealthmanagement.com

Welcome to Insights.

This is Paul Ellis, managing director of Ellis Wealth Management where we encourage you to invest in what you love.

Ellis Wealth Management is an independent financial services firm focused on planning, advice, coaching and investment management.

We are dedicated to the families we serve and we encourage you to invest in what you love.

Within Insights, we look at ways to make our world richer through focusing on sharing and developing human capital.

Well, all right.

What a great, great day it is in beautiful Pacific Northwest.

We're sitting in mid-70s.

It is a beautiful time of year.

Well, I am so blessed to have with us Keenan Briscoe.

He has been on the podcast before.

He is a Seattle based novelist, a poet, an award winning journalist, a musician and and he likes to explore existential identity, human relationships, philosophy, culture and explore the dynamics of love and loss in his writings.

He's the author of number of books.

One is called Satori and Sorrow, the Magnum Opera and Emerald City Blues as well as poetry collections entitled Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn, Dancing to the Beat of the Apocalypse.

Also some things that explode, Poems of Love and Loss.

And Keenan just completed or just released his newest work entitled Eternity is a Shattered Coffee Cup.

And so without further ado, Keenan Briscoe.

Keenan, how are you today?

I'm doing great, Paul.

You know, when you were saying your intro about how it's a beautiful day in the Pacific Northwest, it reminded me the last time I was on your show.

It was also a beautiful day, Pacific Northwest.

So I'm seeing a theme here.

Well, wherever we are, it can be beautiful.

That is a fact.

That's true.

Hey, well, you just released your newest work and we had talked previously about your new book that was coming out and looking forward to the day when it was coming out and it's just been released.

So let's talk about that.

Eternity is a Shattered Coffee Cup.

Explain that.

What is that about?

Yeah, so it's essentially a coming of age story, underscored by a central theme of impermanence.

And this manifests in various ways, from losing loved ones to growing older and recognizing that your childhood and your past is no longer to the changing landscape of the world around you.

Everything ends.

And the question that the novel attempts to pose is, you know, where do we stand and how do we build ourselves up in the face of impermanence?

Does that mean render everything meaningless or does it grant a new sense of meaning because it allows us to appreciate the things while we have them and while they're in the present?

So, more specifically, the story follows two really close friends, Mateo and Egos and the story begins as they're teenagers and they're counterculturist offbeat exploration into juvenility and troublemaking.

And then as they get older, they navigate adulthood and various relationships and, you know, trying to find stable jobs and going to school and that sort of thing.

And they're faced with several challenges along the way, including substance abuse and behavioral health challenges.

And, you know, at the end of it, we're just left kind of reflecting back on these two journey together, what they've learned, what they've lost and what they've lived through.

Interesting.

Well, that's a dynamic that I think many people can relate to is childhood friends or friends that you're still connected, but you take two different paths.

Yeah.

You know, I was thinking about the other day, my great Grandmother was like 101 when she passed away.

And one of, one of my biggest regrets is I never sat down with her and I never asked what was it like to see two world wars, to see the invention of the automobile, the first man on the moon?

You know, so much innovation took place in this woman's life.

But then, you know, looking back, I was born in the late 80s, looking back on everything that I've seen through my life, you know, through Covid and through 911 and the invention of the Internet and cell phones when I was a kid, like, cell phones weren't a thing and we were still going outside and playing basketball and knocking on our friend's door to see if they can come out and play.

Yeah, and that was just a.

It was a really interesting.

It reminded me of, you know, different age, of course, but all the advancements that my great grandmother witnessed in her life and all the things that I've witnessed in my life.

Well, explain that a little bit further.

Let's flesh that out.

So the time period for your grandmother was.

You said that she lived to be 101.

Correct.

What a blessing that is.

That is fantastic.

And through that arc, she, like you said, she's gone through two world wars, she's gone through the invention of the Internet, the man.

You know, people have gone into space.

Gosh, the, the rail system connecting people on ground, you've got satellites connecting people in air, and cell phones.

And what about the changes in her life, not just from a technological aspect, but how do you deal with societal issue changes during that arc as well.

What do you think about that?

There's this.

There's a correlation between that, I think, because the story attempts to shine, a magnifying glass, if you will, on our mental and behavioral health system, if you want to call it that in our country, and how it's not quite set up for success.

And, you know, for example, like, when I was a kid, autism and neurodivergency were.

They were kind of lumped into one category.

But now research has shown us that it's more of a spectrum, so we have a better understanding of neurodivergence now than we did back when I was.

When I was growing up.

And that's just one example that I can give you about, you know, how things have changed from a societal perspective, not just certain events and technological advancement.

That's very interesting because in one aspect, we're looking to science today.

How do we fix this problem?

And if I think about the time period with my grandmother that kind of maybe overlaps a little bit with.

With your grandmother, their responses weren't so much, how do we fix this problem?

It was, how do we deal with this problem?

Yeah.

Or, you know, how do we incorporate this into our lives and then overcome it?

I think there's a piece that you had mentioned previously to me that there's a part of the story in your novel and is after there's a situation, for example, the shattered coffee cup.

It's what comes after.

How do people rebuild their identities after profound loss?

And in some respects, today, we're looking to how do you fix that?

Or what box does that go in?

Or what systems can be put around that.

Whereas with your grandmother.

My grandmother, it was more like, this is a loss.

We deal with it, and we move on.

Yeah, well, it's, you know, a common theme in most of my novels is they.

They teeter into the realm of existentialism.

So from a philosophical perspective, you know, it's asking those difficult questions about being and what it means to be and whether or not we actually have an identity to begin with, whether or not the ego exists or it's something kind of projected or imposed.

And it's this.

This is something that.

This directly, you know, relates to the theme of impermanence.

But in this particular work, how that's explored is.

I guess the best way I can explain it is if you look at the school of existentialism over the years, right?

Like, you have.

And this is, of course, around the time of the scientific revolution.

So what Nietzsche met was that we no longer require this idea, this notion of God to have, like, a meaning in life.

Of course, it was grossly misinterpreted and got a lot of plaque for that.

But the question, you know, not getting into all that, the question that was left is, well, if there's no God, then what replaces him?

Like, what is the meaning of life if there is no meaning?

And this kind of propelled the existentialists movement into.

They.

They were kind of categorized as being nihilists because they were, oh, life is meaningless, you know.

Right?

Okay.

So in my work, I'm exploring that same.

That same thought experiment where these two boys, they're creating identities for themselves as they grow up, which is what everybody does.

And they're kind of.

As they're exploring the world and navigating the world, and as the world around them is changing, like we were just talking about, they're finding that their sense of being is shifting, kind of like in different modes.

So relating back to your point.

Yeah, this shattered coffee cup.

And that's what the book refers to, by the way.

There's a scene where the two kids, Egos and Mateo, are talking about eternity and what they think eternity is.

And Mateo is an artist, and he says, well, you know, art is the only meaning in life because that's the only thing that truly encapsulates the human spirit, the human experience, in a metaphysical way.

And art transcends human mortality.

So in that sense, art is the only true meaning in life.

And Ego says, well, I don't think you're correct.

I think that eternity is a series of experiences and knowledge that's passed on after generation after generation after generation.

And the fact that we can spend an entire lifetime, you know, curating and perfecting a craft and becoming the best at what we do and produce something out of that expertise.

And then the next person can come around and read the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, for example, and not have to spend, you know, several decades on the galapagos Islands doing biological research on tortoises.

Right.

They can pick up that work and they can pick off where Darwin left off.

And so that's eternity.

Right.

It's like you have.

In this day more than ever, we have Google at our fingertips.

If we have a question, it's almost instantaneous.

We can just Google it and be like, oh, I have instant knowledge.

And I can use that as a foundation, as a baseline for extrapolating, you know, a building upon that knowledge so, you know, relating it back to the existential concepts.

It does ask the question, you know, as far as when it comes to loss, it's.

It's a similar concept, right, where Jean Paul Sartre was saying that because life is meaningless, it's actually a romantic idea because we then have absolute freedom to create whatever meaning we want out of that meaninglessness.

The same thing can be said about loss and impermanence, where everything ends eventually.

Everything has a timeline, but that gives us the freedom to appreciate and to live in the present instead of falling victim to the past or even the future.

That's an interesting concept, isn't it, the focus there?

You know, live in the moment and take.

Make the most of every moment.

Because the moment is all that you have, Correct?

Yeah, that's, that's.

That's one way of looking at it.

Sure.

And I would just add to that too, that it's building upon.

So you're building upon your experiences too.

And then in.

In this, in this book, the two.

May.

The protagonist.

The two main protagonists make plenty of mistakes.

They kind of live outside of society a bit, and they don't.

They don't operate under its typical kind of moral structure and they definitely, you know, reap the consequences of that, but they're able.

Instead of one.

One of the boys, and I don't really want to spoil the ending, but one of the boys falls victims.

That is not able to get out of it.

The other one is able to kind of look back and reflect and build a completely different life.

It goes back to what I was saying about this concept of eternity and the shattered coffee cup metaphor that I use.

You know, building upon people's experiences, you can also build upon your own experiences while still remaining in the present and not.

Not drowning in your mistakes too much.

Yeah.

So you don't have to feel like the mistakes ones made or the choices ones made, they don't have to necessarily be mistakes.

But let's say the choices one's made has scripted out the path for the rest of their life, that they can take the.

Use their agency and create a better life or another life.

They can.

They can move directions.

Yeah, exactly.

We're talking about existentialism.

Just a little bit ago, you know, Heidegger had this interesting idea about being.

And how when he asked the question, what does it mean to be?

His his thought process was that there are different modes of being.

So the person who I am right now, as I begin this sentence, isn't the same person who I am when I put a period at the end of it?

Yes, it was the.

The idea, basically, are you.

Are you the same stream?

Is the stream divined by its borders or is the stream design defined by its waters?

And if it's by its waters, it can never be the same stream.

Correct?

Yeah.

Heraclitus has a great quote where he says, you can never step in the same water once.

Well, that could be very beneficial to people so that they can say, hey, look, I am not necessarily defined by experience.

I'm not necessarily.

Because I can change my experiences.

I can choose to bring what I want with me in the future and I can leave what I want in the past.

Yeah.

And that can be a beneficial mindset from the aspect of removing someone from feeling that they're in a rut or that all is lost.

And we see that throughout the American experience, but out of the human experience as well.

The great American dream is that people would be able to come to America and rebuild their life or create their destiny.

So it is intertwined with the American experience.

Here we are in America's 250th year.

So the idea that you're not necessarily beholden to a caste system from the past, choices that you've made in the past, limitations that you may have bound you in the past, you can make changes.

Your book, I think, delves in a little deeper in regard to that and says, well, what do we do when we experience loss?

How do we.

How do we deal with that as we attempt to move forward?

Is that correct?

It is.

I gotta catch myself, though, because I misquoted.

Heraclitus actually said, you can.

Can't step in the same river twice because, you know, life is like a constant set of change.

And it was actually Cradle List later that said, you can't step in the same river once.

Well, both of these.

Both of these fellows would be enjoying a Guinness on both sides of that river stream, I'm sure.

Yeah.

But what brought you.

To.

To thinking about this.

I know you've been working on it for a while, but what was the impetus that helped you move along and say, hey, you know, I really need to finish this book, or I really need to get started with this book.

Well, what was that catalyst?

Yeah, it took me about five years to write, and that includes about a year of editing.

And what inspired me to write the story is I experienced a series of tremendous losses over the last few years where almost back to back, my older brother died from cancer.

And then a couple months later, my best friend, who I grew up with, who egos is in a lot of ways based off of, passed away.

And then shortly after that, actually going through a divorce process with my spouse.

So it was like, you know, back to back to back, and every single moment, I had to restart that grieving process.

And each one was different.

You know, in my brother's case, he was sick for a long time, and I was kind of expecting it.

My.

My friend passing away was unexpected, and so was my divorce.

And what I found.

What I found is that in each of these moments, I was forced to reinvent myself because my identity was so contingent on their existence, in a sense, you know, especially with.

With my spouse, my best friend, who I grew up with.

So much of me was in him, and a part of me died with all the deaths of these relationships.

So I was forced to kind of, you know, steering it back to that existential redefining, creating identity for oneself.

I had to create a whole new identity from scratch.

And this con.

Just steering it back to this theme of impermanence, you know, and in Buddhism, for example, impermanence resounds in its philosophy.

They say that by accepting impermanence, you are able to detach from things, and with loss, you have to detach.

So I think that was the inspiration.

I also realized something in these moments of grief and loss that I was learning so much about myself and about the world around me in these moments of tremendous hardship.

And Marcel Proust, who's famous for writing the remembrance of Things Past, he.

You know, he writes in his work that if.

And I'm.

I'm probably misquoting him, so I'm gonna.

I'm gonna paraphrase.

But he looks back on his life, and he realizes that the moments in which he was the happiest, he hardly remembered.

You know, they kind of just flew by.

But the times where he was in grief or mourning or struggling, those were the moments that he really, truly remembered as being formative.

So he may not remember the moment, but he knows that it was a pivotal moment which formed him and changed him.

Well, he didn't remember the moments that were easy.

Okay.

He did in great detail, remember the times that were taught.

And that's kind of the point that I'm.

I'm making.

So these are all.

These are all connected, right?

Like we're talking about.

If the central theme is existentialism, existential identity, if the theme is learning about oneself and this kind of constant flux of existence, mourning and loss are the times in which you're going to evolve the quickest and become the strongest and to, you know, you have the opportunity to truly reflect on things and to.

To create a life for yourself, an identity for yourself, a sense of yourself, while also detaching from things that are ultimately impermanent and don't make sense to begin with.

Detaching to.

Yeah, they're definitely moments of confrontation.

So in from my aspect, let's use.

I used to coach rugby along with a really great group of guys, the Seattle Rugby Club.

Great club.

And we used to tell the young lads that you will never feel more alive than right before this kickoff.

Yeah, you're right.

You're lined up, you know, you're facing the other guy, the other team, the other young lads.

The game is not on yet, and they're about to blow that whistle.

Every piece of fiber in you is awake and aware, right?

Yeah.

And the whistle blows just like in football, you know, the kickoff happens and the game begins.

Well, confrontation is like that.

You're having to deal with a loss, and you're never more.

I don't say more alive.

That might not be the right phrase, but you are definitely aware of what's going on emotionally, mentally.

The fibers in your being are more alive and how you.

You have to deal with it, but it definitely has that impact.

Beautiful day.

Sitting outside on the beach in Mukilteo, seeing the seals going up and down into the water.

Maybe you see an orca or two.

You're lucky enough to see an eagle on top of it.

You feel like you're in a Disney movie.

It's a.

It's a wonderful experience, but it's not the confrontation that you have through some other life's.

Life's really challenging moments.

And that confrontation is met with decision making.

What are you gonna do?

Who are you?

What do you believe?

What are you gonna do next?

Yeah, that's spot on.

I'm reminded of.

I'm not the.

I'm not the biggest fan of Ayn Rand.

I Just gotta preface by saying that.

But I'm reminded of this character in her novel the Fountainhead, Dominique, who deliberately chooses things that make her unhappy or destroy things she loves because she fears the pain of losing happiness or having it corrupted by the world.

And, you know, you look at artists over the years that have had been tormented by their, you know, like egregious high standards, like Monet, Edgar Degas or Michelangelo.

You know, it does beg a question whether or not there's, like, there's their world.

It's without question that there is a beauty in.

There's a beauty and torment, the beauty and suffering, I guess a better way.

Of putting it, similar to where gold is being purified by.

Or silver is being purified by fire.

Gold and silver being purified by fire.

The fire itself is an agent to purify it.

Yeah.

Or diamonds being formed through immense pressure.

Yes, yes.

Or.

Or lotus flower blooming from swamps and murky water.

Yes, exactly.

Well, I think that's terrific.

That's terrific.

Now, so, Keenan, this is terrific.

This is an absolutely wonderful conversation, and I am sure that reading this book is going to cause one to be able to really think through some very deep and profound ideas.

Where can one purchase your book?

Is it available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble?

Where can one purchase your book?

Currently, it is available on Amazon and that's the only retailer.

I'm working on getting it into some local bookstores in Snohomish County.

I don't want to say where or who because the conversations are early and are in early stages, but within the next few months, I'm working on just a little mini book tour.

Well, I'll be going to local bookstores up and down the i5 corridor.

Oh, terrific.

And it will be an opportunity for, you know, me to meet face to face with the public, talk a little bit more about my book in detail.

I'll be selling copies, I'll be reading portions of it, but, yeah, it's a little too early to say which exactly what stores exactly I'm working with, but as of right now, it is available for purchase on Amazon.

Absolutely.

Wonderful.

When you have that information, let let us know and we'll definitely pass that along to our listeners.

That.

That would be.

Definitely.

And so you're still writing, you're still writing your books, you're still writing for the Limwood Times, and you're still winning.

Winning.

Winning.

This is.

This is.

This is wonderful.

And I think we mentioned at the outset, the Linwood Times won seven awards recently, and you won four of Them, including the prestigious News Writer of the Year award.

Congratulations, my friend.

That is, you're, you are doing wonderful.

You are doing wonderful.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's, it's an incredible honor.

There's 130 newspapers that belong to the WNPA, the Washington Newspaper Publisher Association.

I also won an award for my investigative reporting, which I'm pretty proud of.

And I got some fun investigative stories coming out soon.

But yeah, I'm, I'm writing every day.

It's the only thing that I want to do in life.

I just came out with a book of poetry too.

You mentioned it in my introduction.

And I'm currently.

This is kind of my process.

Like, not a novel.

A novel is like running a marathon.

You have to train, you have to condition yourself and then you get into it.

And I can't speak for everybody, but as for me, it's torturous, you know, sitting down to, to make everything work and to the rewriting it and writing it and figuring out what works and what doesn't work and killing your darlings, as the phrase goes.

It's, it's a, it's very tough work.

I get addicted to it where, when I'm in the, in the process of it, where it's all I think about and I get hyper obsessed with crossing the finish line, which is also kind of similar to running a marathon.

But I, every time I finish it and I put it out there, I kind of just have this big sigh of relief and I want to take upon smaller projects until I get that itch to write another novel.

So I have some short stories that I'm in the drafting stages of and I'm probably going to be writing short stories for the next year or two until I can get the outline done for my next book.

But Jack Kerouac, he, he said once I have so many stories that are coming out of my ears, I kind of feel the same way.

I haven't, I have notebooks upon notebooks of story ideas of books that I want to write in the future.

And I have, I have a pretty good idea of the next three books lined up that I'm going to be writing.

But yeah, I need a, I need a well deserved break and just focus on some poems and short stories for the time being, which are less of a commitment.

Well, that is beautiful.

Hey, listen, if people want to get in touch with you, what are your coordinates?

How can they follow you and your work?

So I'm on Twitter M. Keenan Briscoe6 and that goes for Instagram.

I have a website where you can buy copies of my book and read my blog.

And I have some free short stories and some free plays, excuse me, poems that are on there.

It's mkanabrisco.com.WordPress.com and I'm in the process of putting together some social media channels that are.

Because these are my personal pages and I have no problem people reaching out to me on my personal pages, but I'm in the process of actually putting together an actual, like, marketing social media just for my writing, just for my books.

Kind of separate the two.

So I can give you an update on those once I get those formulated.

Terrific, Terrific.

We'll put that information in the show Notes.

And brother, I want to thank you for your time today.

Thank you for causing us to think, to spend some time, you know, contemplating the.

All of the moments, the moments that are beautiful, the moments that feel like they're a shattered cup, and the importance of them as we continue to invest in what we love.