(audience cheers and applauds)
- Good evening.
Thank you to everyone
for braving the rain.
It keeps raining on us out
here in southern California.
It's weird.
It's getting to be like
Portland or something.
It's such a thrill to be
able to talk to Dessa tonight
about her book My Own Devices.
I'm gonna be asking a lot of questions
about the book itself, and at the end,
we'll turn it over to you, the audience,
to ask if you have some
of your own questions,
anything that I don't cover.
Dessa, first I wanna ask
you about the writing side,
and I'll get to the rapper side.
But what or when did you
know you were a writer?
What made you wanna be a writer?
- I knew that I loved language when I was
a really little kid, in that,
at least as my mom tells it,
my first stated definitive aspiration
was declared in her office
chair, you know, at work.
She couldn't find a sitter
or somebody was sick,
and I said, I wanna talk.
She was like, I know, honey.
And I said, no, I wanna
talk about back and forth,
where I talk and then you
talk, and then I talk,
but it's always about the same thing.
And she goes, babe, that's
called a conversation.
And I said, okay, I want to have one.
And I knew from jump that
I really liked words.
So actually, I had wanted to
be a writer before I thought
I might have a shot at being
a professional musician,
in part 'cause my mom
had a really killer voice
and I was like, I wouldn't
win The Voice if it was staged
only with contestants at my address.
(Margaret laughs)
- Well, I love the description
you give of yourself
as a child, that you
were pretty precocious,
that you were always wanting to be the one
that would sit there and
have adult conversation,
eat the garlic dip that
was too spicy for you
as an eight-year-old or whatever.
Do you still feel like you're
that high-strung kid inside?
- Yeah.
I mean, I want to say no,
I'm very cool, I'm very cool.
(Margaret laughs)
But like, the kind of kid that I was
is the kind of kid I admit
that irritates me a little
now, you know what I mean?
Like, it was too eager.
I did have some adult interests,
but I very much wanted,
I wanted the gold star,
I wanted the praise, I
wanted to impress them,
and I admit that I want to impress now,
but I'm also aware of the
fact that that can be,
that has to be mitigated.
The desire to be liked and to impress
I don't think is one that I can root out
and disregard 'cause
I've already tried it.
I just have to figure
out how to put that aside
in light of more important objectives.
So I always have that clamoring,
like I wanna be liked.
But you know what, I wanna be right,
and I wanna be my fullest self
more than I want you to like me.
- Has that been an evolution in your life,
figuring out how to let
go of the worst parts
of that need to be liked
that I think we all have,
and maybe particularly women have?
- I would say I'm probably
still working on it.
- Yeah.
- Even now, in conversation,
particularly when you meet somebody new,
and if they express, I don't know, a love
for a certain book or movie
that you happen to not like,
you might temper the
degree to which you admit
to not liking that, whereas
on the phone with your mom,
you're like, it was garbage.
You're like, oh, yeah,
season two was okay,
(Margaret laughs)
in an effort to sort of
find some common ground,
to be liked in those first
moments of an acquaintanceship.
- Rapper.
I notice that very distinctly
all throughout this book,
you call yourself a rapper
as opposed to a musician
or a singer, artist,
anything more general maybe.
What's important to you
about identifying
specifically as a rapper?
- I think in part,
it was that was where my teeth
were cut, was in hip hop.
I deliberately tried to avoid
singing on most of my songs,
in that I was apprehensive
about being relegated
to a secondary support role.
I didn't wanna be a dancer
that was part of the team
that made the rap show look cool.
I wanted to be the primary thing.
Rap is a genre that
really prizes wordplay.
Yeah, the writerliness
of the lyric is really
how a rap song is very often evaluated,
at least in the kind of
rap that I was writing,
which isn't always true in other genres.
When you're listening to
a really good pop song,
sometimes the hook is like,
ee, ee, ee, and it's fine.
- Right, right.
- That's catchy.
But I wanted to make sure
that I was making my way by my pen.
And then it was only later
that I started now singing more
and learning how to play
just a little bit of piano
and producing as well.
- What made you wanna
move away a little bit
from straight rapping?
- I think it was in the beginning,
I was part of a community
that, to our discredit,
was really interested in, we were purists.
You know what I am?
I'm a backpack rapper,
because I rap and I
wear a backpack to bed.
That's what I do, I wear backpacks
and I rap and I listen to rap.
(Margaret laughs)
And pop was kind of a dirty word.
Like, we weren't crossing
genres a lot then, which I think
is very often true whenever
you have a new genre.
People are really mindful of
the parameters of that genre.
What counts as hip hop?
And maybe the same was true of Klezmer
when that was in its infancy.
And now, as a grownup, I know that a lot
of those same purists who were
like I'm a backpack rapper,
that's all I do, and
then secretly listening
to Billy Idol or whatever
they really liked,
in the same way that I was
like, I still like Joan Baez.
(Margaret laughs)
So I think part of it
is rap coming of age,
and part of it is me and
my cohort coming of age
and saying, you know
what's more interesting
than a genre designation is the question
not is this song pop or rap,
but is this song any good?
- Yeah.
- Like, that's a better question to ask.
- Yeah, always.
The lyrical content of
your songs, do you feel
like that's where your ideas
start first and foremost,
is that you would write the
lyrics and wrap music around it,
or do you come up with beats
or musical ideas first?
How does it work for you?
- Yeah, I think for me, it's
kind of like a paleontologist
in that there will be
little shards of language
that I'll collect throughout the day,
either just in my hip
pocket on my iPhone or maybe
in a Moleskine notebook or
something, but little phrases.
So this isn't a full verse.
This is an image, and then later,
when I'm listening to a beat,
I'll kind of scroll
through dozens of pages
of just little tiny scraps of language
and see which ones my beat collected.
So it's so like dumping the puzzle pieces
on the dining room table and
going, okay, now I need corners
and kind of putting all those aside
to see what picture you might be making.
- Mmhmm, that's really beautiful.
I was struck by certain lines
in your essays that did feel
like something that you might
have thought of at some point
and found the right nest to
put the beautiful sentiment in.
- Are you busting me right now?
- No, I think it's great.
I think that's what writers should do,
have those little gems and find
the right house for the gem.
And one of them was I've seen footage
of vocal cords in action.
They look like cartilage orchids.
- That was one for sure.
- Yeah, I mean, that is
just such a beautiful way
of describing something
obviously deep in our
throats and anatomical
and that we usually don't
assign much beauty to,
but that was a really tremendous line.
So do you have moments like
that where you have a notebook
that you're just collecting
those kinds of things in?
- Yeah, I do.
I would say by now I probably have
100 or 200 pages of one-liners.
- Wow.
- But some of 'em will never get used,
or if you go through 'em again,
you realize they're not that fresh,
(both laughing)
or you've gotta now go write a story
that somehow incorporates
a cartilage orchid.
(Dessa laughs)
- Right, like do you sit
down and you're like,
all right, I've gotta write an essay
that's gonna bring in these
cartilage orchids somehow?
- Yeah, yeah, occasionally.
I would say I write
fiction too, and for me,
there's probably, and I'm
less comfortable in that form.
It's a secondary form for me for sure.
So I definitely have just a
wheelbarrow full of scenes
that I'm hoping to be
able to eventually place.
- Yeah.
Well, tell me about the genesis
of some of these essays.
Maybe we should start
with a particular one.
I'm thinking of A Ringing in the Ears,
which is the essay that really
centers around your father
and him building a Woodstock
glider from scratch.
So tell me how you put that one together.
- So, I think like a
lot of people and maybe
a lot of artists in particular,
I had a pretty tumultuous
relationship with my
father when I was young.
I admired the hell out of him.
He was super bright, he
was super mad all the time,
but when he wasn't mad, it was magnetic.
And so I have no idea
if this is true or not.
If there are psych majors in
the house, I can just already
feel the eyes rolling and
spraining and staying there.
(Margaret laughs)
But I've heard that
for a lot of performers
who do end up approbation hungry,
you know, you want people to clap at you,
that a lot of them had
complicated relationships
with angry dads, because there was that
sort of only intermittent
approbation, right?
It only worked sometimes,
so you got really good
at reading people's vibe.
- [Margaret] Interesting, yeah.
- Which then is a skill
that you can translate to stage.
I can tell that person's bored.
That person's texted twice.
That guy's not gonna go home
with that girl, you know,
(audience laughs)
whatever the read is that
you're taking on the room.
And you end up also for this
kind of insatiable appetite
for praise, because you
had a little less of it
than you wanted when you were a kid.
So with my dad, I wanted to
honor the fact that he is
one of the most important
people in my adult life.
I love the hell out of him.
- That was clear, yeah.
- Okay, thanks.
But I also wanted to investigate
that kind of tricky, troubled time,
and I think part of the reason
that I loved him so much
was the same reason
that he was unavailable
a bit at times as a dad.
Like, he's this dude driven by passion.
I mean, he just almost, I don't know,
he's an eclectic cat, and
when I was a little kid,
he decided to build this airplane
made entirely out of wood,
and he really flew it.
There's no engine in it.
And he decided to make it
without electric tools.
So he's essentially, like, he
spent seven and a half years
in our garage building a bird, you know,
that he was then gonna fly.
When he wheeled it out of the garage,
the neighbors were like,
what the hell is going
on at the Wander house?
(Margaret laughs)
That's an unusual thing to
do, and the reason that I was
so excited for him to be
my dad is the same reason
that he didn't really have time sometimes,
or have the patience maybe
for real little kids.
- Yeah, I love the line
that you say at one point,
well, it's a quote from him that he says,
flying the Woodstock is
like flying a violin.
- And he just talks like that.
He does sound like an orator
of a very different generation,
do you know what I mean?
He sounds very much like a
World War II speech writer.
That's just how the words
come out of his mouth.
And that can get a little
long at lunch sometimes,
(Margaret laughs)
but it's convenient for if
you're writing a book about him.
It's just endless.
- Well, I think something in the book
that's really interesting
and explains something
about your own journey perhaps
is that both of your parents have chosen
these really unorthodox
career paths and life paths.
Not only has your dad gravitated
towards building his own
flyer or glider and then offering
pilot lessons from there;
your mom, who was this
Bronx-born Puerto Rican gal
turns around and starts raising
cattle at a certain point.
Who saw that coming?
(both laughing)
- Not me.
I was so not supportive.
What a jerk.
It's like, I become a rapper
and she can handle that.
But it just didn't seem well-planned,
and it was like, as she was retiring.
And she's also very slight
bodily, she's very slight.
She looks kind of like Grace Kelly,
so just a really fine
frame, and it was just,
oh, they're gonna step on you.
- Yeah.
- They're gonna step on you.
- I'd be worried about it too.
- She grew up in the tenements.
Like, you have no idea
what to do with a cow,
and the way that it all
came about was like,
she'd been thinking about it.
But we think about a lot of things, right?
And then she saw this herd
on the side of the road,
pulled over, and she's
still in her corporate wear,
and makes an offer for those cows,
like, to an 80-year-old farmer.
And I was like, I say it in the book,
but I was like, this is one
step above magic beans to me.
(Margaret laughs)
Like, what are you doing?
And yeah, flash forward,
whatever, seven years
or something like that
now, and she's a rancher,
and kicks ass, and yeah, and
I used to be a vegetarian,
and now I eat her beef,
'cause it's delicious,
and it's raised really conscientiously.
- I mean, yeah, how can you refuse?
- You can't.
- She's raising it by hand.
- Yeah, literally, bottle-feeding.
- Grass-fed beef.
This is what we spend $10
on at Whole Foods easily.
- [Dessa] Yup.
- Because your parents were so unorthodox,
I wondered how they were
when you came to them
and said, hey, I'm a rapper.
What did they say?
- You know, it wasn't an immediate win.
My mom was like, I thought
you would go to law school.
That was her first thing.
And I was like, I don't think
we've ever discussed that.
I think that was the life plan?
I've never indicated an interest in that.
And then my dad, he had
a more serious concern.
He was just like, you know,
he is of an artistic bent.
Money is not super important.
Money is as unimportant
to my dad as it can be
for someone who is also
an independent adult.
He just doesn't give a flying about it.
So there was no hesitation
on the, what if you
don't make enough money?
That was fine for him.
But he was like, you know,
rappers speak so poorly of women.
I don't understand why you wanna do this.
I don't understand what in your background
would make you gravitate towards that,
and I was like, you know what,
that's a totally legitimate concern,
but it might be the case,
and I knew it was the case,
that the kind of rap that
he would be familiar with,
not having sought any out, is
the kind that's gonna end up
on a mainstream TV channel
or even on the news.
So I was like, the impression
that you have of rap
is not a representative impression
of what that world is like.
So I made him a mix tape, and we sat down
and listened to some
lyrics together and stuff.
- Amazing, what did you
put on the mix tape?
- I remember some of
it, but not all of it.
I remember there was some of the artists
in the underground
world that I was a part,
so it was like Sage Francis,
who's an East Coast guy,
he's really political.
(Margaret laughs)
There was also, and this was complicated,
but there was also the Outkast
song I'm Sorry Ms. Jackson.
- [Margaret] Oh, yeah.
- Which means that I had to
talk through that second verse,
right, 'cause yeah.
So it wasn't that he didn't have a point.
There is a huge vein of misogyny
and at least disrespect,
and also, in that era more
than today, of homophobia.
But that was a descriptive factor
and not a defining factor of the genre,
and there were plenty of people
who were operating with a
different moral compass.
So part of it was explaining that to him,
and then also I think as I went on,
he had been a classical guitarist,
so as I got a little bit more musical,
I think he just happened
to like the music more,
which made it easier.
- Mm, yeah, there was more
of an entry point for him.
- Exactly.
- Yeah.
Well, a section in your book
that I thought was really interesting
and has to do a bit with
what you just mentioned
of what people's ideas of rap are
is you talk about being at a dinner party
or any dinner party, and
when you introduce yourself
as a rapper, you get
this certain reaction.
I'll read a little bit from this.
A corporate type will
usually cross his arms
in a half-assed b-boy pose
and ask, like, rapper, rapper?
If he happens to be wearing a cap,
he will turn it backwards at this point.
When I confirm yes, a rapper,
rapper, the guy will often
recruit a friend to share
in his astonishment.
You also talk about the sort of class
and race expectations that come into play.
I'm socially polished and well-educated,
traits he doesn't expect from rappers,
and maybe, by extension,
traits he wouldn't expect
from young black men in street wear.
So, what I thought was really
interesting about this part
is that, I an way, you're getting
this really multi-layered
reaction, which one, is like,
what is this woman who look white to me
doing saying that she's a rapper,
and then another layer of it
is, what I think of rappers
as being are uneducated black kids.
So how do you navigate that reaction?
- And I admit, I'm sensitive to it,
because that's not something
that you can call someone on.
When he turns his hat backwards
and he does a dumb like,
I can't say, Ted, you're a racist.
- Right.
Though it's tempting.
(Margaret laughs)
(both laughing)
- But I can think it, no.
Because first of all, that's
an oversimplification.
But there is an undercurrent
that the reason it's funny
to you to do that posture
is because you imagine
that there is such an
enormous cultural divide
between the social role that you occupy
and the role that a person who would move
and dress and dance like that occupies,
that here, over our
second appetizer course
and a glass of white
wine or wherever we are,
like, this is just as far
afield in our intellectualism,
as far as we could be from
the universe of rap music,
which is true maybe only in its trappings.
There is an intellectualism
that runs through rap music.
We just don't call it intellectualism
because the gatekeepers of the academy
communicate differently
and in different words,
but it is absolutely a form
of dissent, or cultural criticism.
It is an idea-driven form, and
it is a language-driven form
that celebrates flourish
and virtuosic skill.
Does the song Boots with the Fur do that?
No, obviously not.
(Margaret laughs)
But on the whole, you are an
Olympian verbally in rap music
in a way that is absolutely a
mental intellectual exercise.
And so, when a dude does that, delicately,
I will try to be like, yo,
the joke that you're making
doesn't actually work,
because the premise doesn't
support the punchline.
It is true that I don't
look like a lot of rappers,
and it's totally fair to
call that out in the same way
that if I were to meet, I
don't know, a basketball player
who was pro who was like, a
five-foot-two blonde lady,
I'd be like, this is
exceptionally surprising to me.
(Margaret laughs)
It's very, very surprising.
You're on the Lakers, really?
Whatever.
So there should be room
for that moment of surprise, absolutely.
I don't fit the bill, that's true.
But there shouldn't be room for the joke
that makes a very silly,
stupid caricature of rap,
because that is very often
shorthand for like, men of color.
And that's not that funny.
- Absolutely.
Well, I wanted to ask you
about some other statements
that you made on the same
page, which is basically
having to do with being, and
your mother is Puerto Rican,
so you're white and Puerto Rican,
and you're a practicing hip hop artist,
and that has traditionally been
linked with people of color.
How do you mitigate being the
racial makeup that you are,
and does that conflict with taking any
of that art form away
from people of color?
You talk about how that's been
an incredibly hard question to answer
and just figure out as time goes on.
Do you have any sort of
new ideas about that,
or just how do you grapple with it today?
- Yeah, I mean, I would say
when you use the word hard,
I think it's exactly the
same word that I did,
but I wouldn't say like, oh,
my position is very difficult.
I have a very difficult position.
No, my position is very easy.
Figuring out the appropriate response
has been a challenge in
that, I think initially,
when I first started, and admittedly,
I didn't know the word
white presenting then.
For me, that's a recently learned word.
But when I had long, dark hair
and I have big hoop earrings
and it's the summertime, I'm
very often more identified
as Latin than when I have
bottle blonde short hair.
And so, at the beginning of my career
when I had a really long braid just looked
more classically Latin,
people would do that,
that initially, when people would ask me
about being a white rapper,
I would just be like,
yo, you need to check your facts.
That's really unfortunate
research that you've done.
(Margaret laughs)
Now, I admit that that question
isn't about me anymore.
I'm gonna make my own way.
I'm paying rent off music;
that's freaking rad.
That's a question about culture.
So when I answer that question,
in addition to hoping
that my career does well
and that I can sell my
new CD or my new book,
whatever it is I might be
promoting 'cause I'm on the radio,
that there are people who
are more affected by the way
that that question is
answered, who have more skin
in this game and have had
more skin in this game.
I look white enough in
almost every circumstance
to benefit from white privilege,
so I should answer the question
about how that affects me before saying,
also, you need to do your research.
So, I do maneuver through the
world with white privilege.
Let's talk about it.
Also, I'm Puerto Rican and I
don't wanna say that I'm not.
That's part of my life in
whatever way it has been,
and it's something that's important to me,
and I don't wanna write off
'cause you think I look white.
Go make a pastele.
I don't have anything interest
in disacknowledging that
because of the way that
I physiologically look.
Latin cats are really mixed.
Like every other Caribbean family,
I got cousins who are hella dark
with green eyes and kinky blonde hair.
It's just a Yahtzee throw genetically.
(Margaret laughs)
And I'm not gonna disavow that
'cause I happen to be light.
- Yeah.
Well, early on, you include
a glossary in the book,
and I think that's important to include,
because there are so many terms,
all kinds of terminology
that comes into play
with being any kind of touring musician,
but I think particularly with hip hop.
What was a term that you threw in there
that you were happy to
finally shed some light on
or dismantle, 'cause
there's a couple of terms
that you're like, no?
Like femcee, you were like, no, thanks.
(Dessa groans)
(Margaret laughs)
- I don't think we need that one, femcee.
- No, toss it out, toss it out.
- Or Feminem are just words we don't need.
I admit that my initial
attraction to the glossary
was only half content-based.
I liked the idea.
Does anybody visit the
website McSweeney's?
Do you know that site ever?
Okay, it's like a humorist
site, but they take
a lot of unconventional
forms and make them funny.
So instead of being like,
here's a short story
that has a lot of laughs in it,
there'll be like, here's
an instruction manual
to assemble a new Ikea
shelf, and it'll have
all the diagrams and stuff,
but that's somehow rendered
into a comedic piece that's really rad.
I liked the idea of flipping
a glossary on its head.
So it starts out as a
glossary that explains terms
that you'll need in the
book, but then it becomes
a more personal piece about love and loss.
So I admit that I was kind
of romanced by the idea
of flipping the form on that one.
- Mm.
- As much as any term.
- Yeah, absolutely.
Well, I think you just struck
on a little bit of the
love angle in this book.
The underpinning of this book
is an off-and-on relationship
that you had with who
you call X in this book,
who was a member of Doomtree.
I wanna ask you, what did you
do in terms of figuring out
how much you wanted to share
about that relationship
in this book, 'cause you
do mention that you asked
his permission, or I don't
know if that's the right phrase
but you walked to him about the fact
that you were gonna write about him.
So I'm wondering how
the two of you navigated
how much you were gonna share,
what might be off limits,
so forth and so on?
- Yeah.
So in writing the book, I
knew that I wanted some essays
to touch on that, because
I didn't know how to write
a series of true stories
that didn't include that,
because it really was
not only all-consuming,
but it had been the secret of my life.
I'd been on stage and
on tour with this person
for more than a decade,
and it's never appropriate
at a rap show for that first
song to come out in tears.
(Dessa laughs)
Which means that you
buy waterproof mascara,
because I was crying before most shows.
It was just really hard,
and also felt so lucky
to be alive and on stage
with this rad, aggressive crew.
There's no other crew who
I would have ever chosen
to be a part of, even given
that it was so difficult.
But it was very sad, and I
didn't wanna ruin the vibe
in the van with the other rappers,
'cause that's ruining
other people's whole lives.
I mean, you tour together.
You live like this.
You are tied.
Yeah, it's a sack race.
So if you are crying in
front of those people,
you are really affecting
their whole lives.
So it was really important to hide
however painful it was for a lot of years.
So I didn't know how to write about music
without mentioning that,
and then as I went on,
I think the editor with
whom I worked pushed more,
to have more and more of it
in, and I was like, dude,
I don't want this to be
some heartbreak vibe.
I don't want that to be
the story of my life,
this like, I'm a heartbroken girl.
(both laughing)
My PayPal is.
I hated that idea, but
I took their suggestion
to include more of it, and
then by the time it was done
wrote dude, and was like, hey, man.
- [Margaret] Guess what?
- Wrote a book, and I sent it to him,
and he said, crying in my car, and I said,
are there things that hurt
too much for me to publish,
or are there things that
are factually wrong?
And he said, you remember so
much, I think it's beautiful.
And I think I've been lucky
that he gave me the green light,
and throughout our entire careers, though,
I think, because he's also a real artist,
a real artist, right,
both of us have decided
that we would rather
suffer a sting in listening
to the other's music than
not have that song released.
So there was one song about
killing me on one of his albums
and I heard it and I was like,
this is a beautiful song,
and I would never like to hear it again.
(Margaret laughs)
(audience laughs)
You should definitely put this out,
and I would never like to
hear you perform it, you know?
'Cause it's a good song.
It should be out there,
it's rad, well done.
That hurts.
But I'm lucky in that I think both of us
have a higher priority than avoiding pain.
- Mmhmm.
Well, one thing that you do that I think
is so distinctly you is to
figure out the heartache
that persists from that
relationship being on and off.
You pursue some really
unusual courses of action
to figure it all out.
One chapter, you're writing
to Geico, basically.
You know Geico, everyone,
where you're basically
asking them to insure you.
Why don't you explain it?
Explain the letter that you wrote to them.
- Can I just read it?
- Yeah, absolutely.
Do you remember what page?
I think it's one of my tags in there.
- Oh, when you said one, I
thought you were gonna hit me
with a page number, like it's 112.
I'm like, wow!
(Margaret laughs)
- That'd be super impressive.
- Wow!
Well, I'll just do it.
Dear agent, my name is Dessa.
I'm a Geico auto insurance customer
looking to expand my coverage.
Your rates are fair,
the perforated ID cards
easy to tear, and I like the gecko.
- [Margaret] It's true.
- I do, I really still do.
(Margaret laughs)
- The gecko,
yeah, it's been around for a while.
- He still works on me, I don't know why.
(Margaret laughs)
- And I've been doing a little
bit of research on insurance.
I read that Ben Turpin
insured his crossed eyes
because they were crucial to his career.
He'd been a film star, a
comedian that made a lot of money
based on the kind of
silly look that he had,
and he had paid an insurance
company to insure them
so that if the ever went
straight, he'd have a payout.
I'm a songwriter who makes her
living writing torch songs.
I'm able to do that well because
I'm naturally melancholic,
and also because of unresolved feelings
for a former romantic partner.
If I were to find myself
in a state of unchecked,
protracted joy, I'd
either have to re-career
or take a lengthy sabbatical
to acquire the skillset
necessary for a new
mode of self-expression.
Can you please tell me
whether or not you'd be able
to ensure heartache as
a professional asset,
and if so, how much a
monthly premium might be?
Thank you, Dessa.
(Margaret laughs)
So yeah, we started an exchange.
(audience applauds)
- Did the customer service agent tell you,
I mean, I was gonna say, were
they recording your call?
But I guess you wrote that as a letter.
- They were, and I recorded it too.
(Margaret laughs)
The thing that was weird to me is that
it was like she had 100
calls like that every day.
She was like, you know, we don't yet,
but do you want rental?
(Margaret laughs)
And I was like, really, really?
- She didn't even bat an eye?
She was like, you're the
third person to ask today.
- She literally said, but check back,
'cause we're expanding
our commercial coverage.
(Margaret laughs)
(audience laughs)
You're insane.
- Amazing.
I mean, what is it you think
about your emotional process
that makes you turn to
these scientific methods
or other really logic-based
inquiries to figure it out?
- I think it was honestly just the length.
Like, if you're heartbroken
for three months,
you know, you do the thing.
You have ice cream, you know?
You watch sad movies and you
go out with your girlfriends.
- [Margaret] Right, go
out with your friends.
- Yeah, you do the thing.
But it was like, the 14th year of this.
So I'd had a lot of ice cream, you know?
And also, I was reluctant to lean,
to be honest, too much on friends.
Like, I'm having the same
conversation with friends,
which A, is kinda taxing
on our friendship,
and B, is humiliating, it's humiliating.
Like, everyone else
is getting over this at a reasonable rate.
People with marriages and children
are figuring out how to move on.
So I think in part, it
almost put a little distance
between me and that feeling,
to take it out and look
at it through a lens
and say, well, this is ridiculous.
Can I walk around the thing?
Can I manipulate it?
What is this conceptually?
I know how it feels; it feels bad.
Well, I've covered that.
But philosophically, I
wonder what's happening here.
I wonder if there's a genetic
predisposition to hold.
I wonder if that's something
I can inherit from my parents.
I wonder if this is
something that I could make
a different relationship
with, given the fact
that it doesn't seem to be
leaving when I've evicted it.
- Yeah.
I think this might be a good time
to talk about Call Off
Your Ghosts, 'cause to me,
that's the ultimate thing that you did
to try to figure out what
this heartache is all about
and sort of answering
the classic question,
is it all in my head?
Where is it?
We do have some slides.
I think we can show a slide or two,
and then we'll turn it over to you guys
to ask some questions.
But basically, you decided
to get your brain scanned
to see how your brain would
react when you saw a picture
of who was called Dude A in this essay,
because he was contrasted with Dude B,
who was someone you knew,
but you weren't in love with.
- Right.
So initially, I myself had seen a Ted Talk
about this researcher who
said that, in her work,
she found that particular
parts of the brain
were associated with romantic response.
So we were talking backstage.
You're married, so if we were
to put you in an fMRI machine,
that's one of those
really big magnet joints.
You know how on TV, there's the one
where they get wheeled in, this one?
It's that.
- [Margaret] They scare me.
When you said you're not claustrophobic,
I was like, oh, I would
be setting off that alarm.
- I mean, I was tripping.
(both laughing)
- There's an alarm you can
set off with a red ball
that you can squeeze and
say gimme out of here.
- Panic ball, yeah.
- Yeah, panic ball.
- But if we were to wheel
you into an fMRI machine
and then show you pictures of your man,
parts of your brain would
really reliably light up
that are different than even
if we showed you McConaughey
or whoever you happen to dig.
- How did you know?
(both laughing)
- It's universal.
It's not thinking that guy's
hot, and it's not thinking
that I have relationship
with that guy or history.
It's not familiarity.
The parts of your brain that
light up in romantic love
are distinct even from
the parts of your brain
that light up in platonic love
or maternal or fraternal love.
And that was exciting to me.
And I thought, wow, if there's
a reliable cortical region
that's responsible for this feeling,
maybe I could just get it
out if I could find it.
(Margaret laughs)
So I worked with a team of neuroscientists
at the University of Minnesota to recreate
that scientific protocol
in a single blind study.
So here's a couple images, let's see.
That's what the show looked like, right,
when you're pretending you're not sad.
This next one is it's
really an athletic scenario,
so you do burn a bunch of
calories at a Doomtree show.
And then, slide, I always
wanted to do that, slide.
Yeah, that was me,
and those are three of
the regions of the brain
that are associated
consistently with romantic love.
You have that kind of red arc there,
which is the interior cingulate,
which lives kind of right here.
You have that kind of
golden set of ram's horns,
which is the caudate.
I had mine 3D printed and bronzed.
(audience laughs)
And you have the ventral
tegmental section.
In short, this is the structure that,
through other published research,
seemed to reliably light up in love.
So when I laid down in my fMRI machine
and looked at pictures of my man,
and then a dude who I thought
was hot and I kinda knew
but was not my man and who
I was not in love with,
so he was the control,
we found that my brain
did reliably light up in those patterns
that had been anticipated
by other research.
Slide.
(Margaret laughs)
And so I ended up leaving
with a few images of like,
my brain in love.
And it was, in some ways, very silly,
'cause when I first got this email,
I opened it in a coffee shop,
and just really, I don't know,
just felt like I'd been
kicked in the chest,
a really dramatic reaction.
Subjectively, of course you know
you're in love, and that it hurts.
That's been the story of your adult life.
But somehow, to have an
objective piece of information
to be able to show other people.
I think the line that I
thought then and think now
is like, of course it's all in my head,
but now I know exactly where.
(Margaret laughs)
And it was really gratifying
to be able to have
something demonstrable, to say this is it.
This is the strength
of the cortical signal
that's been driving me nuts.
- I mean, this is the most industrious,
ambitious response to
heartache that I can think of.
(both laughing)
Most people just keep it lazy,
just go the ice cream route.
Was part of you like,
okay, I'm gonna do this
because it would be pretty bananas amazing
to write about this in an essay?
- Absolutely.
I think it's also like, okay, well,
it's like the show Chopped or something.
It's like, what's in the fridge?
I have to make dinner.
Well, I have to make a record, right?
What's in the fridge?
Pain?
Okay, let's figure out how
to make something out of it,
'cause it's certainly not valuable
as a subjective experience
in its own right.
So what is something lovely,
or at least entertaining
that could be rendered
with this ingredient
that is plentiful in all the cabinets?
(Margaret laughs)
- Okay, I wanna end on a different note,
even though I'm dying to ask
you how are things with X now.
You can just say two words.
How are things with X now?
Answer in like, two, three words.
- Two or three words?
Medium.
(Margaret laughs)
- Okay, I'll take it.
- Friendly.
- Hamilton, Hamilton Mixtape.
Congratulations.
- [Dessa] Thanks.
- Congratulations on Congratulations,
but also, one thing I really like
about this collection of
essays is how frank you are
about the artistic life, which
is that there are struggles,
there are ups and downs.
At one point, you write about
how you thought in your 30s,
by then, you'd be playing
in a different set of clubs
and you'd be laughing about the old days
of all packing in a van
and that kind of thing.
So tell me, and I love the part
where you just spend all
day counting the likes
and the retweets and all
that of the song coming out,
but tell me sort of now how it's been
since Congratulations has come out
and what kind of new goals
you might be setting for yourself.
- Yeah, I would say, so,
I got to record a song
on the Hamilton Mixtape,
and I think when that
opportunity first came through,
I was like, I'm made!
(Dessa laughs)
Such a dink.
(Margaret laughs)
Yeah.
I had an outsized response to that.
And then it has helped, but
as I mention in the book,
it wasn't nearly as profitable
as I thought it would be,
although no complaints.
I was really fairly
compensated, but of course,
my hope was like, oh,
now that that song's out,
all these people are gonna
discover all my other music
and I would be touring on
a bus instead of a van,
which is a really big difference
in the life of a musician,
'cause it means you get to
sleep at night instead of drive.
So that didn't happen, but
it has helped in the way
that I think all incremental
wins have helped,
that, well, when we were backstage,
there's a little TV back
there where you can see,
there's a video camera there.
So we could see what
was happening on stage.
And I was looking at you
while Corina introduced you,
because she said, Margaret
has written for Elle
and the New York Times,
and she was listing
all these cool places, and I was like,
does that still feel freaking awesome?
(Margaret laughs)
And I was watching your face
to see if it was just like,
yup, or if it was like, yes I did.
(Margaret laughs)
And I think that's old news to you now,
because you've earned it
and continue to earn it.
But yeah, being able to put
that thing in the byline.
There's two or three
things now in the resume
that at least establish
that you're credible
in a way that I didn't have before.
So when I got my first piece published
in the New York Times,
that's a game change.
Does it mean that you're rich and famous?
No, it certainly does not.
Does it mean you're gonna sell
a bunch of copies of your new book?
Let me tell you, it does not.
- Real talk here, real talk.
- Real talk.
- Yeah.
- But it does mean like,
I'm a writer, and I'm legit,
so now please evaluate
my work on its own merit.
You can hate it or you can love it
or find some other middle ground.
And similarly, I think with
the Hamilton Mixtape thing,
it was like, okay, that's legit.
That record was at number one.
I had a tiny little
contribution to make to it,
but for people scanning
a resume, it's like,
oh, yeah, okay, what's this?
It at least buys you
30 seconds of attention
to have an audition,
and that's what a lot of
the musical career is,
is saying, hey, I could never
make you like this or not.
You will like it and you will know,
or you will not like it and
know, in about 90 seconds.
You're just fighting for that 90.
Could you press play though for 90?
That's the whole ask.
- Yeah.
Well, and Hamilton is, like you say,
it's a bump on the resume, but
it's an extraordinary bump,
'cause it's like, in
the water at this point.
- I've never seen anything like
that culturally in my life.
- Yeah, it's insane.
All right, I wanna hear from you guys.
What questions do you have for Dessa?
Can we hear from you?
- [Audience Member] Hi, I
have a two-part question.
Number one, what sort of
influence has the Twin Cities
had on your career, and
what advice do you have
as someone who has lived in
St. Paul their whole life
and is deciding whether or not
to live there after I'm done living here?
(audience laughs)
- You're not living there
your whole life, right?
You're studying here
and you're trying to decide
if you're gonna go back?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- I feel you.
I would say that I always
struggle a little bit
to answer questions
about how is growing up
where you did affected your
life, because none of us
get to grow up in two places
to A and B it, you know?
So I'm never quite sure.
But I will say that the
independent scene musically
in Minneapolis punches
above its weight class.
It's way better than I thought it was.
When I left, I thought
every city must have that,
and I found out that that was not true.
It is an unusual place in that way,
maybe because there are no
majors, so we all figure
we all just have to build
the systems that we need
to be able to put out our music.
So in Minneapolis, and St. Paul,
you can put out a mixed
bill in a way that,
by that, I mean you can
have different genres.
You can have metal and punk
and hip hop on the same stage,
which you find out
quickly in other cities,
you duck beer cans, for real,
full beer cans, 'cause
people don't like that.
(Margaret laughs)
And those populations
don't like each other.
But in Minneapolis, it works.
That's rad.
I don't know, I would say go out
and see other cities before you decide.
The world's a big place.
Twin Cities has a lot of magic in it,
but the world is big, yeah.
Don't decide too soon.
- Can we get just a quick
Twin Cities roundup?
Raise your hand if you have a connection.
- Wassup!
- Okay, very good.
- [Young Girl] Okay, so
since I'm an 11-year-old,
what advice would you give
your 11-year-old self?
- Ooh.
- Advice for 11-year-old self.
- I'm looking at you to try to figure out
how similar we were at 11.
I know a little bit about you,
'cause I talk to your mom at concerts.
You, to be honest, seem
pretty self-possessed.
By that, I mean you seem comfortable.
When I was 11, if I were
holding that microphone,
I know how heavy these are,
it would look like this.
- She seems pretty chill.
- You seem very chill to me.
- [Margaret] She's got it under control.
- So I might give my 11-year-old
self different advice.
But I would say that I was preoccupied
with, like I said before, being liked.
I wish that I had been a little
bit better at doing things
that I thought were fun
but I wasn't good at.
I still struggle with that.
I wanna be good at something to do it.
Let's say you're not
good at soccer, right?
Well, who cares, it's fun to
run around and play soccer.
Just be medium at soccer and have fun.
I wish I'd done more of that
instead of feeling like
I always had to impress.
- [Margaret] That's excellent advice.
That's so true.
- [Young Girl] Thank you.
- [Audience Member] Hi, I had a question
mainly about the letter
that you wrote to the
Geico customer service.
- Do you work for Geico?
(audience laughs)
- Please work for Geico.
I want that insurance policy so bad.
- We need a Geico employee in the house.
- [Audience Member]
Yeah, no, I was wondering
about, sort of because
you're kind of talking
about, can I have insurance
to make sure that I always
feel this pain so I have
something to write about,
and I found in my experience
that a lot of artists
and people who make art and
communities that make art,
there's almost a romanticization
of mental illness and pain.
- Yup.
- [Audience Member] And I find that
to be really harmful and damaging.
So I was just wondering if you could share
a little bit more about
your experiences with that
and the truths and some of the falsehoods.
- Yeah, I would say that
I think as a teenager,
I was like, I bought into the Plath thing,
hook, line, and sinker, right,
like you have to suffer.
I don't think that that's true,
but I'll say it with the caveat
that I have found it to be true.
I don't think that I'm
representative, however,
whereas I used to just imagine
everyone was like that.
I just met a bunch of
artists, and a lot of artists
who, okay, well yeah, even
if my 20s were really hard,
I practice a lot of self care on the road,
and I make sure to see
my therapist every week,
and I started meditating.
Lazerbeak, one of the dudes in Doomtree,
is like a huge advocate for meditation.
I have noticed though,
so I also wanna feel
like even though my story I
don't think is representative,
it's still mine, and it's still true
as I've lived it and understood it,
which is in the moments when
things are going really rad,
I just haven't felt
compelled to pick up a pen.
I would just live 'em.
It's when there's conflict,
and that doesn't mean I'm suicidal, right?
That's not what that means.
But I mean when there's conflict,
when there's an unresolved
question, those are the times
that I would wanna go in and investigate.
So to be honest, using the
Geico thing, I was hoping,
although maybe I wasn't
successful by your lights,
to investigate that in a
more playful way, right,
which is just like, hey, we've seen this.
But what is it?
How come I write when I'm sad,
and what would it be like
to write really happy songs?
Could I do that?
Let's say if my life flipped
and I wasn't so naturally blue,
I wonder what those songs would be like?
At the same time, the more that I learn
about happiness studies,
I might push against you
just a little bit to say,
I think that there is
some value in happiness
research when they say,
you know what the most
effective way to be happy is?
To have been born with a
predilection for happiness.
That's the most effective way,
that there is a
dispositional predilection.
That doesn't mean, if you're scared
and you're really in
pain not to seek help.
Go seek help.
As somebody's who's benefited
from help, gosh, go seek it.
But I'm not gonna beat
up on myself anymore
that I'm not happy all the time.
I'm okay with being a little blue.
I think it's a fine way to be,
and I don't wanna apologize
for that anymore either,
whereas I felt like it
used to be a failing.
Like, oh, I'm living life wrong
if I'm regularly visited
by bouts of melancholy.
I kinda think I'm just built that way,
and I found a way to make
some cool music out of it.
So as long as they're not so blue
that your quality of
life is really suffering,
I think that's a legitimate
way to be a person too.
- Yeah, that's a great question.
I also think that in the book,
there's almost a default
mode you talk about.
You talk about heartache
being a sort of default
mode that you write from,
which isn't necessarily
how you live all the time.
- That's true too.
- It's like a point that
you can access for your art,
but it's not necessarily
coloring your every single day.
- I think that's a good
distinction to make, yeah,
that's it's not, if you wanna be a writer,
you better go get sad.
Yeah, absolutely not.
I just think for me,
that's the parts of my life
that have felt most fruitful,
are those probably when I'm
doing some investigation,
when I have a question
or an unresolved issue,
which very often definitionally
are those moments of some discomfort.
But yeah, on the whole,
I would agree with you
that I think we do have,
we are too ready to Van
Gogh the whole world.
(Margaret laughs)
- [Audience Member] Hi.
- Hey.
- [Audience Member] There's
been a lot of discussion
about your work with the Hamilton Mixtape
and how you got that work, but I'm curious
how you ended up working
on the RBG documentary.
I haven't heard anything about that.
- Yeah, that, to be
honest, was like an email.
There was a filmmaker who said,
hey, my name is Julie Cohen.
I'm in New York.
I'm working on this documentary
about Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
Would it be okay if I
brought a few friends
to your show to check out the live show?
I said, yeah, sure, put you on the list.
Met her there, thought she was super rad.
I don't know, just easy,
effortless, one of those people
who's just effervescent,
really easy to like,
and it didn't look like a
performance of effervescence.
She was just cool.
And then I don't know what she would say
about the performance of
that doc, but I had no idea
that that was gonna be
as successful as it was.
So, yeah, I think she
was an indie filmmaker
who was easy to root for, and also,
and maybe this is more business
than people wanna know,
but for understandable
reasons, filmmakers often
don't offer compensation
packages to musicians.
That's just a fancy way of
saying you don't really get paid
a lot of times for movies,
'cause people are hoping
that you'll wanna do it for the exposure.
And she offered like,
hey, here's some money to
put your song in my movie.
And I was like, wow.
- I love that, because yeah,
the exposure argument gets real old.
- It does, and also,
it's a reminder to me too to do the same.
'Cause there are times for sure I'm like,
hey, listen, there's no budget for this,
but this is such a cool project.
Do you wanna be involved?
So I get it, and I've done that pitch too,
but I admit that it was kind of refreshing
to be like, here's the
work that you've done,
and does this budget make
sense and does it line up?
And I was like, wow, thanks, Julie, yeah.
(Margaret laughs)
Thanks, Julie.
And it's been of course a lot
of fun to watch her sweep,
to watch her win.
Man, it's cool.
- [Margaret] Yeah, RBG.
- [Audience Member] So
having spent those 14 years
navigating heartbreak, both in your music
and maybe in the structure of
your life and having that be,
maybe if not gone, at
least less there now,
what is your current relationship
to that negative space?
- Hmm, hmm.
You know, sometimes I feel
like it's even tough to,
I've never broken a major
bone, and I'm not a parent.
But I think it's really tough for us
to conjure from our memories
in full color big pain.
You know?
But when I remember the
behavior that I would do,
I mean, it would just like,
(Dessa groans)
lying on the ground just 'cause it hurt.
That is such a foreign memory now,
that I can only remember
like, wow, that woman
must have been in considerable
pain to hold that position
on the carpet at her dad's
house at Thanksgiving,
but I can't actually
remember how painful that was
in a full color kinda way.
There's probably an amnesia
built into our design,
to make sure that we continue
to lead full lives that
would potentially render us
vulnerable to a second heartbreak.
So yeah, I would say, my relationship is
there's kind of a foggy
recollection probably in some ways.
- Just like childbirth.
- I was gonna say.
I mean, 'cause I'm not a
parent, I didn't wanna go there,
but I was very much hoping
that you would make that
connection, so thank you.
(Margaret laughs)
- It's good that you don't remember.
- Yeah, 'cause else you
wouldn't go for round two.
- Right, exactly, round
two would never happen.
- [Audience Member] Hello,
I was just wondering
if you might be willing to do
a tiny miniature performance
of one of your favorite.
- Of what?
- A miniature performance of what?
- [Audience Member] A
miniature performance
of one of your favorite
pieces that you've created?
- Listen, so everything in
me is like, I wanna be liked.
(audience laughs)
But nothing is sexy about
sitting in a chair and rapping.
It doesn't sound cool,
it doesn't look cool.
(audience laughs)
- Yeah, you can't like kind of get down.
- [Audience Member] Or how about
some of your favorite phrases?
- What are some of my favorite phrases?
Okay, ah, let's see.
I'm working on a new song
over a beat that I'm making
with Lazerbeak, my Doomtree
cohort, and a dude named
Andy Thompson who's a killer
producer in Minneapolis.
And I recorded, oh, I
don't have my phone on me.
I recorded a pair of subway
drummers in New York,
and then we cut up, just, I had my iPhone,
and then we cut it up to make the beat.
So I was writing that today.
Let me think if I can think of
an eight bar, just hot fire,
here at this theater.
- [Margaret] Do we need a check?
- No.
(both laughing)
Chekhov says you got a
gun, you gotta use it.
Guess they're reading Chekhov
downtown in their cruisers.
Bang, catch the case we all lose,
come for the news, stay for cartoons.
History's a flywheel,
likes to stay the course,
takes it through the violence
to get land rights, divorce,
or a woman's world ends
right there on her doorstep
married in her mother's veil
and buried in her corset.
- Whoo!
(audience applauds)
- [Host] All right, we have
time for one more question.
- Okay.
- Oh, God, the pressure.
Dead center here, let's go with that.
- [Audience Member] Okay,
so I actually have two,
if you don't mind.
(audience laughs)
The first one is, now that
your book is released.
- Wait a minute.
- [Audience Member] Do
you feel like a weight
has been lifted, and
then the second part is,
you mentioned a lot of books here.
What are some of your favorite books
that have changed your
perspective on life?
- Could you say the last thing?
Oh, what are some of the books
that have changed my perspective on life?
Is that what you said?
- [Audience Member] Yeah.
- Now that the book is out, I feel
probably a medley of feelings
that are not unique to me
but are shared by all writers.
One is secretly in your vain little heart,
you hope you're gonna
sell a billion copies
and your life is gonna change.
It did not happen.
But, I'm proud of it, and the feedback
that I have gotten feels
real, it feels legit.
There are just more
people who are struggling
with protracted heartache than
I ever thought there were,
and because I happened to
have written a book about it,
it's super weird.
I cannot express how weird it is
that so many people are doing it.
But there's never a point
when you meet someone,
you know, to be like, hi, I'm Becky,
and I've been in love with
my ex-husband for 42 years.
(audience laughs)
Like, there's no point
that you should ever say
that to anyone, ever.
And so, but because I wrote a book,
every once in a while,
someone will be like,
hello, my name is Becky, and I've been.
(all laughing)
And grizzled, old stage
hands will be like,
God damn it, I've loved her for 30 years.
I'm like, are you serious?
You hate me, you know?
It's just not that rare,
and that has recalibrated
my understanding of this.
It's just very private.
And so, there's no reason
for fellow strugglers
to know each other,
'cause we're not meeting
over weak coffee in Lutheran
basements to talk about it.
Okay, and then books that
have changed my life.
Like any reader probably,
it's as much the time that
it hits you, right, okay.
- Yeah, so if I read
it today, I don't know
what my response would
be, but when I first read
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
by Dave Eggers, I was
like, on every level.
First of all, he was in pain,
but that wasn't the only thing.
He found a way to be funny about it.
He also did a lot of that form-bending
that I talked about earlier,
like with the Ikea thing.
He has this cool, like, the floor plan
of the house that he lived in at the time,
this is not a spoiler, 'cause it's early,
but his parents are very sick,
so he's gonna have a hard run in his 20s.
And he does this really cool
schema of his living room
where he just shows the vector
exactly through the furniture
and down the hall where
a man running in socks
could get the longest slide.
(audience laughs)
(Margaret laughs)
- Critical knowledge.
- As if anybody's gonna go
visit his childhood home
to recreate this slide.
That was a killer one for me,
and then David Foster Wallace
was, yeah, probably like a lot
of undergraduate-era readers.
I just had no idea that people
came that smart to the planet
and that they were
allowed to be that smart
and expect other people to accompany them
on their intellectual
trips and still sell books.
So the fact that he was
like, there's calculus
in this work of fiction, I was like, wow.
And I wanna know enough what happens
that I'm gonna go figure out,
I'm gonna brush off the calc
and figure out what the heck is going on.
Like, I just had no idea
that you could be that smart
and also so vitally creative.
I thought it was rad.
David Rakoff, David Sedaris,
'cause it's just funny
bar stories, which means
that all the people who blew
my mind are named David.
- I was gonna say, tree of Davids.
- I'm big on Davids.
(Margaret laughs)
- [Audience Member] Thank you.
- All right, I suppose
we're out of time, right?
- Can I just also say
thanks for braving the rain?
- Dessa, thank you for making my job easy,
and thanks to all of you
for coming out tonight.
- [Host] A big hand for
Dessa and Margaret Wappler.
(audience applauds)
