hyacinth podcast
Combining scholarly research with artistic practice. Interviews with scholars, writers, and artists. Poetic narrative and original musical score.
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What is beauty? Where can we find it? In this crazy world that is burning up (quite literally) and seems to be falling apart, does beauty even matter?
I discuss the enduring imperative of beauty far beyond physical appearance or aesthetic with Dr. Alice Brittan, a professor of contemporary literature, and architect Dhiru Thadani.
Listen here then find the rest of Season 1 on your fav podcast platform.
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In this episode, I wrap up Season 1 with the most beautiful words I could find to leave you with: a story from the prodigy poet, Ocean Vuong, and a gorgeous meditation from the iconic Mary Oliver. And while the world aches and calls out for justice, I also leave you with one small story of my own.
REFERENCES:
Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Mary Oliver, “Bone”
Billie Holiday, “Strange Fruit”
CREDITS:Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol
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Instead of "getting back to normal," why don't we use this extraordinary time in the world to reimagine how we make things and who we make them for? What if we integrate accessibility into everything we do going forward?
In this episode, we discuss what disability and accessibility really means. Arts-based researcher, Dr. Carla Rice, explores changing the ways we think about difference in bodies has the potential to change our world more broadly. Circus artist and teacher Erin Ball shares the incredible story of how she brought herself back to life after a life-altering trauma and found new purpose in the disability world. We also hear from Vanessa Furlong who collaborates with Erin on a project called Legacy Circus with a mission to make circus practice and performance more accessible to people with all types of bodies and minds.
GUESTS:
Erin Ball - Circus artist and adaptive circus artist coach
Vanessa Furlong - Circus artist
Dr. Carla Rice - Canada Research Chair in Care, Gender, and Relationships in the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences at University of Guelph
REFERENCES:
Legacy Circus: “The World at our Feet” performance
Carla Rice, “Project Re•Vision: Disability at the Edges of Representation.” Disability & Society, Volume 30:4, 2015.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music written and produced by Carmel Mikol
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Explore the way small and private intimacies of human life persist and even thrive in times of major upheaval. Meet me in the one place we can still travel to: into the words of others who have lived through life's great cruelties.
This episode is a gentle way of being together when we must be apart. It is a love letter for difficult times.
I compile excerpts from some of the things I've been reading during this crisis and share a love letter that I discovered, by happy accident, in the front cover of one of my books.
Are these small things enough to get us through these difficult times?
REFERENCES:
W.H. Auden. “In Memory of W.B. Yeats.” Collected Poems, Vintage International, 1991.
Ginia Bellafante. “They Survived the Spanish Flu, the Depression and the Holocaust.” The New York Times
Scott Berinato. “That Discomfort Your Feeling is Grief.” Harvard Business Review
Helen MacDonald. H is for Hawk. Penguin, 2016.
Maria Cramer. “Love Letters From World War II Reveal Promises Made and Broken.” The New York Times
Maria Popova. Figuring. Pantheon Books, 2018.
Sylvia Townsend Winter. T.H. White: A Biography. Jonathon Cape Ltd., 1967.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol (from the song “1969” - strings & horns arranged by David Langstroth)
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What remains? And who decided what is archivable? I unearth a mysterious family archive that leaves me with more questions than answers. I also follow archivist Heather Home into a vault at the Queen's University Archives and speak with Dr. Kristin Moriah and Dr. Mark Campbell whose research confronts important issues around what is missing in institutional archives and why.
There’s a box under my basement stairs that I haven’t opened for ten years. I thought I knew what was inside. But when I finally get the courage to open it, I encounter a mystery that goes beyond my own family archive and leads me to ask: what does “the archive” mean and who gets to decide “what remains” there?
To find out, I follow archivist Heather Home into a vault at the Queen's University Archives and speak with Dr. Kristin Moriah and Dr. Mark Campbell, whose research confronts important issues around what is missing in institutional archives and why. Plus, we learn how black studies and the culture and artistic practice of hiphop could reshape traditional archival processes.
GUESTS:
Heather Home - Archivist at Queen’s University Archives
Dr. Kristin Moriah - Assistant Professor of African American Literature and Culture, Queen’s University
Dr. Mark Campbell - Assistant Professor of Music and Culture at University of Toronto and one of the founders of the Northside Hiphop Archive.
REFERENCES:
Mark V. Campbell. “Hip Hop Archives or an Archive of Hip Hop?: A Remix Impulse” Public, Volume 29, Number 57, June 2018, pp. 68-79 (12).
Jacques Derrida. Archive fever: A Freudian impression. University of Chicago Press, 1996.
Achille Mbembe. “The Power of Archive and its Limits.” Refiguring the Archive. Springer, Dordrecht, 2002. 19-27.
Robert Reid-Pharr. Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique, New York University Press, 2016.
Cheryl Thompson. "Searching for Black Voices in Canada’s Archives: The Invisibility of a “Visible” Minority." Public Volume 29, Number 57, June 2018: 88-95.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol; all additional audio clips from family archive featuring Larry Mikol
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Democracy is under threat across the globe. Humanities studies are in decline in universities around the world. Is there a connection? This episode is not about politics. It's about democracy as an idea. It's about the skills needed to be democratic citizens, including deliberative discussion and community-building, and how the humanities are central to teaching us how to think and act democratically.
GUESTS:
Dave Meslin - Democracy activist and author of Tear Down: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up
Dr. Amanda Anderson - Professor of English, Director of the Cogut Institute for the Humanities at Brown University, and author of Psyche & Ethos: Moral Life After Psychology
Dr. Cecil Foster - Professor at University of Buffalo and author of They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada
I also explore important ideas from Pulitzer prize-winning American author Marilynne Robinson and Kandice Chuh of the CUNY Graduate Centre in New York.
REFERENCES:
Amanda Anderson. Psyche & Ethos: Moral Life After Psychology. Oxford University Press, 2018.
Kandice Chuh. “Pedagogies of Dissent” at the 2017 American Studies Association.
Cecil Foster. They Call Me George: The Untold Story of Black Train Porters and the Birth of Modern Canada. Biblioasis, 2019.
Dave Meslin. Teardown: Rebuilding Democracy from the Ground Up. Penguin Canada, 2019.
Marilynne Robinson. “Decline” in The Givenness of Things. HarperCollins, 2015.
Freedom House: “Why is Democracy Declining Worldwide?”
The Economist: “How Bad is the Crisis in Democracy?”
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol
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I discuss the enduring imperative of beauty far beyond physical appearance or aesthetic with Dr. Alice Brittan, a professor of contemporary literature, and architect Dhiru Thadani. Fascinating parallels and paradoxes emerge that take us on a journey from a vacant lot in Hamilton, Ontario, to the Piazza Navona in Rome. Along the way, we consider the meaning of beauty through the lens of Elaine Scarry’s seminal book On Beauty and Being Just, Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, and the philosophy of American writer Marilynne Robinson.
GUESTS:
Dr. Alice Brittan is a professor of contemporary literature at Dalhousie University. She an award winning and widely published literary scholarly with an MA from the University of Toronto and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania.
Dhiru Thadani is a renowned architect and urbanist. He has worked alongside the likes of Robert Davis and Leon Krier, and won awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society of City and Regional Planners. Find Dhiru’s books Visions of Seaside and The Language of Towns & Cities on Amazon.
REFERENCES:
Bob Dylan. “Shelter from the Storm” from Blood on the Tracks.
Saidiya Hartman. Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. W.W. Norton & Company, 2019.
Marilynne Robinson. “Decline” in The Givenness of Things. HarperCollins, 2015.
Elaine Scarry. On Beauty and Being Just. Princeton University Press, 1999.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol (with guitars by Nick MacLean)
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DO YOU HIDE MEMORIES AWAY IN BOXES UNDER BEDS, AT THE TOP CORNERS OF CLOSETS? OR DO YOU KEEP THEM ALL AROUND YOU, CLUTTERED UP ON YOUR MANTEL AND STUCK TO THE FRONT OF YOUR FRIDGE?
From our personal stories to public histories, memory affects the way we view and move through our world. I talk with journalist Pauline Dakin, writer Emma Donoghue, memoirist Jennifer Browdy, and poet Canisia Lubrin about the power of memory and how to harness its mystery and meaning.
GUESTS:
Pauline Dakin is a renowned Canadian journalist, a journalism professor at the University of King’s College, and the author of a best-selling memoir, Run Hide Repeat: A memoir of a fugitive childhood.
Emma Donoghue is an international best-selling author. The film she scripted for her 2010 novel, Room, was nominated for 4 Academy Awards and her latest book, Akin, explores the tension between a family’s hidden story and the history of World War Two.
Jennifer Browdy is a professor of literature at Bard College and a writing teacher. She specialized in purposeful memoir writing and, in her own writing and her workshops, helps connect personal stories to pressing political and planetary causes. Find her books and information about upcoming workshops at jenniferbrowdy.com
Canisia Lubrin is a poet, critic, editor, and teacher at Humber College. Her poetry collection, Voodoo Hypothesis, explores memory and history from the local to the cosmic, crossing the boundaries of nation and time with the sheer force of language.
The Toni Morrison quote I reference can be found in “The Site of Memory” in the book Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir, edited by William Zinsser, Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol
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WRITING LIFE (PART 1): HOW STORIES MAKE AND BREAK US.
WHAT IF TELLING YOUR STORY COULD ENDANGER YOUR LIFE … BUT ALSO POSSIBLY SAVE IT?
In Part 1 of Episode 3, I interview Jesse Thistle, Masuma Khan, and Musemo Handahu. We explore storytelling across mediums and from various backgrounds and discuss the powers and dangers of storytelling.
GUESTS:
Jesse Thistle went from living on the street and suffering with addictions to being an award-winning scholar and Assistant Professor at York University. He shares his remarkable story in his new memoir, From the Ashes, which has been on best-sellers lists for months. Buy From the Ashes here.
Masuma Khan is a committed community activist who made international headlines while she was a student at Dalhousie University. She has had to reclaim her story in the face of hate speech, death threats, and skewed media coverage. Watch her Tedx talk here.
Musemo Handahu, better known as @misslionhuner online, is a fashion writer and influencer breaking new ground in fashion and marketing. Her unique style and authentic storytelling has helped her reach audiences across digital spaces.
WRITING LIFE (PART 2): HOW STORIES MAKE AND BREAK US
WHAT ARE THE LIMITS OF OUR NARRATIVE? HOW CAN STORIES LEAD US INTO BLANK SPACES AND THE UNKNOWN?
In Part 2 of Episode 3, I interview writers Johanna Skibsrud, Carol Bruneau, and Nicola Davison about the transformative potential of story and the challenges of writing what is unsaid and unknown.
GUESTS:
Johanna Skibsrud is a Giller Prize-winning writer and professor at the University of Arizona. Her latest novel, Island, explores imperial and colonial histories via the modern existence of "black sites." The story follows two women over a single day on a small island that is about to burst into revolution. Buy Island here.
Carol Bruneau is an acclaimed Nova Scotia writer and the author of eight books. While writing her latest novel, A Circle on the Surface, Carol mentored debut novelist, Nicola Davison through the writing of her first book, In the Wake under the Writer's Federation of Nova Scotia's Alistair MacLeod Writing Mentorship program. Both books would go on to win awards at the 2019 Atlantic Book Awards. Buy A Circle on the Surface here. Buy In the Wake here.
Thanks to the Kingston Writers Festival and the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia for hosting interviews for this episode.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol. Original music by Carmel Mikol. Live event sound recording by Kailyn MacDonald.
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CAN ENCOUNTERS WITH THE WILD HEAL US? CAN TRAUMA, AND THE WAYS WE SURVIVE IT AND COPE WITH IT, YIELD DISCOVERIES THAT ARE BEAUTIFUL AND EXPANSIVE?
I talk to a psychotherapist and two licensed falconers about the surprising connections between traumatic experiences and the art of falconry. It turns out that training birds might be a little-known secret to healing. And (spoiler alert), to test out the theory, I learn to fly a hawk myself.
GUESTS:
Rodney Stotts - Falconer, Rodney's Raptors
Dr. Kathlyn Conway - Psychotherapist and writer
Jamie Stride - Falconer, Island Falconry Services
Find Kathlyn Conway’s book Beyond Words: Illness and the Limits of Expression here. I also discuss the seminal book The Body Keeps the Score by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk and Helen MacDonald's bestselling memoir H is for Hawk (buy here).
REFERENCES:
“Helen MacDonald, “H is for Hawk”.” Politics and Prose, https://youtu.be/fUjwCjjU2SM.
“From Criminal to Conservationist: How Birds of Prey Saved My Life.” Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1Rl0DOuHLs.
Also see links to books and websites in description above. Donate to Rodney’s Raptors urban youth programs here.
CREDITS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original music by Carmel Mikol (track originally mixed by Iron Tulip audio; episode remix by Carmel Mikol)
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WHY DO TREES HAVE SUCH SUCH ENDURING SIGNIFICANCE IN OUR COLLECTIVE CULTURE? WHAT DO THEY REALLY MEAN TO US? AND WHY DO WE LIKE THEM SO MUCH?
I talk to an urban planner, a public historian, an instrument maker, and... my mom to find out. Plus, we hear about a single maple tree that birthed an entire ensemble of hand-made instruments and the incredible music that resulted.
“When inquiring minds have perceived them, trees have become metaphors for the structure of human knowledge and for [hu]mankind’s place in the world.”
- Matthew Bevis, Keble College, Oxford University
GUESTS:
Adam Fine - Urban planner
Dr. Martha Norkunas - Professor of public history, Middle Tennessee State University
Otis Tomas - Instrument maker and composer
Donna Mikol - My mom
REFERENCES:
Bevis, Matthew. "The Funny Thing about Trees." Raritan, vol. 34, no. 3, 2015, pp. 86-115,180. Read online: http://fliphtml5.com/traq/jpzn
Norkunas, Martha. “Are Trees Spiritual? Do Trees Have Souls? Narratives about Human–Tree Relationships.” Narrative Culture, vol. 4, no. 2, 2017, pp. 169–184. Access full article online at JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.13110/narrcult.4.2.0169 or Researchgate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326617047_Are_Trees_Spiritual_Do_Trees_Have_Souls_Narratives_about_Human-Tree_Relationships
Tomas, Otis. The Fiddle Tree. http://fiddletree.com/music/books.htm.
“Urban Forestry.” Halifax Regional Municipality, https://www.halifax.ca/transportation/streets-sidewalks/urban-forestry.
CREIDTS:
Written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol
Original poetry and music composed by Carmel Mikol (featuring "The Fiddle Tree" by Otis Tomas)
About
Hyacinth Podcast is written, produced, and hosted by Carmel Mikol.
It’s a careful close reading.
It’s a wildly improbable promise.
It’s a query into grief.
It’s a series of questions.
A series of possible answers.
It’s a research project, a composition, a love letter, and a secret.
Hyacinth Podcast mixes scholarly research with the work of writers and artists through interviews, storytelling, and original music.
Each episode features interviews with people who have incredible stories to share. We ponder anger, beauty, love, loss, fear, glory, and other shared experiences that are sometimes hard to talk about, but that matter a lot to who we are. In the process, scholarly ideas come out from behind pay-walls and fancy journals and enter into free, accessible spaces where we can think and talk about them together.
Why Hyacinth?
Because of this excerpt from T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land:
“You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
They called me the hyacinth girl.”
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.”
Ah, the human conundrum: the very things that bring us to life are nearly impossible to capture and have a habit of passing by too quickly. Over and over again, we fail to adequately memorize, express, or even understand the most impactful experiences of our lives.
Hyacinth Podcast is the process of “Looking into the heart of light” - staring straight into the most hard-to-articulate emotions and experiences - and then sharing what I see. Usually, I can’t figure it out alone, so I call up someone who has written a book or lived an interesting life. The more diverse the voices, the better.
For Eliot, beauty was an ineffable antidote to the tragedy and destruction of his post-First World War world. And I think it still is. That’s why each episode is made with care. And while I take research seriously and approach difficult topics, I also want to give you a beautiful listening experience, lush with carefully curated conversations, original music, and thoughtful soundscape.