PLEASE NOTE: This is a minimally-edited transcript that originates from a program that uses AI.
Anita Rao
This is Embodied, from PRX and WUNC. I’m Anita Rao.
Is devoting your life to art worth the sacrifice it requires? Writer Stephanie Elizondo Griest has been asking this question since the early days of her career.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
My love for what I do made my life logistically a nightmare or impossible.
Anita Rao
Stephanie hustled for decades... putting aside life milestones and stable jobs to write. But she eventually reached a point where she needed reassurance from other female artists who had chosen this path.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
I am bowing down to this muse that is driving everything that I do. So I need to find my community. I need to find another chanter in the dark, um, if I'm going to continue down this path of being an art monk.
Anita Rao
One woman’s search to understand what it takes to build a life dedicated to art. That’s just ahead on Embodied.
Dedicating your life to art in this country is often an uphill climb, and it is one Stephanie Elizondo Griest knows well at each juncture of her career as a writer, Stephanie has had to make some hard choices. Should I write or should I pay my rent? Because I realized I couldn't actually do both. That question came to Stephanie in her early thirties after almost a decade of trying to be a full-time writer.
Although she'd published numerous essays and gotten a book advance. The math wasn't math, so she put all of her stuff in storage and set off with only a backpack. She went from one writing residency to another couch to couch, and that hustle continued for years, the list of things she'd sidelined to make room for her art was getting pretty long, and Stephanie started to have some doubts.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
So not only the. Personally, am I feeling this way? But also just the barrage of questions from everyone who loves me and cares me and is concerned for me. Like, what are you doing?
Anita Rao
By the time Stephanie turned 40, these doubts had solidified into one. Big existential question, how do you determine if art is enough for all the sacrifices it requires? This is embodied our show about sex, relationships, and health. I am Anita Rao.
To answer the question is art enough? Stephanie embarked on a 10 year long journey. She traveled the world seeking out other female artists. She'd witnessed firsthand how women in art are underrepresented and underpaid, so she was eager to understand why and how they chose the artist path. Those stories are captured in her new book, art Above Everything, one Woman's Global Exploration of The Joys and Torments of a Creative Life.
Stephanie is also a professor of creative nonfiction at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. We'll travel around the world with her soon, but her story of becoming an artist starts in Texas with her dad. He was a drummer.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Two things really come to my mind in regards to my father's influence in my life. The first was just, you know, my, my mother was the breadwinner of the family. She would dress up in the morning, power suit, shoulder pads, get her briefcase march off to IBM was gone all day long. My dad, however, just. Seemed to have such a cool life. You know, he would like, you know, he would like take me to school. He would go play tennis with his buddies. I'd come back, you know, he would be gigging with his band mates. And then when I would go and actually hear him perform, I mean, he was extraordinary. Just such a force of nature. And I would just feel myself like hurdling through the cosmos by his, his music, and also what I think made an maybe even bigger impression on me. Is for my bedtime story. Every night he would take down the globe and he would spin it and he would stick his finger on it, and wherever it landed, he could literally tell me a story about wherever his finger landed, even if it was out in the middle of the ocean, because he was on an aircraft carrier for 10 years in the Pacific. And so I knew. Intrinsically. As a child, I wanted to do this. I wanted to find something that could take me, first of all, all over the world, but then having so many meaningful connections with people.
Anita Rao
How did you choose writing as your art form?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Well, it was kind of process of elimination. At first, I was. Pretty awful at everything else. You know, my voice cracked in the choir, you know, making little ashtrays, they would explode. Um, so I just really wasn't showing any aptitude in anything else. So here I am, you know, as a kid trying to find my form. And my grandmother, the very same woman who found my father's form, she discovered my writing. Just by echoing back to me that I could do it, this is my father's mother, my very beloved grandmother in Kansas. Uh, we would go visit her every summer and once I ran out of reading material, which for me is just, you know, uh, grounds for like serious panic and she's like, oh, well let's go look at the letters. And so she. She opened up this armoire, which I'd never seen before, and pulled out this big stack of letters and she was reading me letters from my dad and they were just so incredible. You know, he was writing to her all throughout his amazing travels all over Asia and Europe and Morocco and, and then she started pulling my letters out and reading my letters back to me. And I'm, I could not believe she was doing that. I'm like, you kept my letters. And she said, of course they keep me company. And that really struck me because. Even as a child, I perceived my grandmother to be lonely. And then it became evident when she was reading my letters that that brought her some joy. And I'm like, well, I'm gonna write the best letter I can, you know, even as a kid. So then I just started paying attention and moreover started thinking, well, what can I do that would be more interesting? And that became an interesting motivating force in my life as well.
Anita Rao
So you had some early affirmation that you had, um, a, a skill in writing. You went to college, you did some international traveling, and then you were starting to get into the field of journalism. Mm-hmm. So kind of by day you were being a journalist, but by night you were working on a memoir about your travels. You were still really doing creative writing. Then there was a moment where you had to. For the first time, kind of make a decision Yes. Between your own art? Yeah. And a stable career. A stable job. Tell me about that moment.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that was, that was 1999. Okay. And, uh, I had already lived in Moscow and Beijing and I had just. A stack of notebooks of all of these really incredible things that I'd witnessed being in Moscow right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Being in Beijing, I was an editor of the English mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party. I mean, I'd really seen some wild things. So that is what was my motivating force. I had been hired by the Associated Press, but fortunately my job didn't start until like 10 or 11. And so I had a, a substantial morning of working on this book. So I would, you know, get up at like five, six in the morning and I would write for several hours before I would go to work. And then I would come home and I would edit what I'd written back then. Um, when you got a job with ap, you had a six month probationary period. Okay? And so at the end of the six months probationary period, I had actually. You know, written a couple of chapters of this book and I was so excited about it. And AP meanwhile was excited about me. And they, and they offered me a job. It was a real job with a real salary and health insurance and dental insurance and, you know, all the things you're supposed to want and need. But I had this book and I did not know what to do. They offered me a job on a Monday and were surprised when I, when they realized, you know, they thought that I'd be happy and they just could, you know, see my face. And they said, well, we'll give you till Friday. Why don't you think about it? And I said, okay. And so, you know, Monday goes by, I'm like, ah, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Thursday. I'm like, bicycling home down Congress Avenue. And I'm just like. Begging Ian, you know, please send me a sign. Send me a sign. Somebody send me a sign. And I went to check my mail, um, actual mailbox, and I opened it up and there was my very first acceptance letter from Latina magazine. Okay. And it was for $500 for this essay that had written just about wanderlust and. $500 was my exact rent at the time. And I was like, okay, this is it, you know? And so I said No. And then things very quickly happened. Like I suddenly realized, well, you know, in addition to the $500 rent, there are many other bills that come along, you know, and of course of a day. So, um, within a couple of months I was, I had to move back in with my mom and dad in Corpus Christi, Texas, and that's when the real writing began.
Anita Rao
Are you someone that looks for signs? Like, is this totally, is this a theme in your career?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's absolutely, it's all about the sign because that's really literally all we have to go by. Yeah. As artists, uh, I didn't know anyone that had done what I was doing, so no one could give me advice and I was constantly trying to determine how I can continue being a writer. I felt so alive doing this. I. Right in the style of what they call in Mexico testimonial, which is deeply, deeply witnessed reporting. My challenge was that my first book, for example, which is called Around The Block, my Life in Moscow, Beijing, and Havana, that book. Made an advance of $10,000. Mm. Right. Yeah. So this book to which I had made all of these sacrifices, quitting jobs, saying no to relationships, you know, moving back in with my parents, moving to New York City to try to make a go of it, working three jobs, like just an unbelievable amount of sacrifices that I made to publish this book because I loved it, because I believed in it, because I wanted to do right by everyone who had shared those stories with me. Earned $10,000 and I continuously had that experience in publishing. So I just like, I was just going, reaching really hard for universe to tell me what to do.
Anita Rao
So you made all of these sacrifices in your twenties. You were really hustling. Then you spent a lot of your early thirties on the road. You went from writing residency to writing residency, and you started at a certain point to kind of identify with this term, art Monk. Yes. Tell me about Art Monk. Okay. What that is and And why did you feel like you were becoming one?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah. Yeah. So Art Monk originated as a joke. Um, which is, uh, I was living in Gredo, Mexico at the time, and I had the best setup in, in Gredo. I was living with a, a bunch of painters. Um, and they were all Mexican men and they were all gay. Okay. And they were all fabulous. And they were all so confused as to what I spent so many hours a day doing. You know, they're like, what? You look at your computer again, like, what's in there? You know? Um, and uh, they were also very concerned about my lack of a sex life. So finally when I was trying to explain like. What I am. And I was like, you know, you know, like I'm like a nun for art. And they just thought that was hilarious. So that's just what they started calling me. So at first it was a joke. Then I entered a period of like total nomadism, which was from 2006 to 2009. Um, all my stuff is in storage. I'm living with a backpack and a nap sack, and that's all I've got access to. And um, that was a period of my life where literally. I would go anywhere that was free and or cheap, and where I wouldn't be bothering anyone, so I could just write. And so that eventually led me to Le Shaima. So Le Shaima is a Catholic house of prayer in Sarrita, Texas, 90 miles north of the border. And in order to stay there, it's, it was at that time, $15 a day. The catch is you have to take a vow of silence to be there. At first, I'm like, what? I cannot possibly take a out of silence, like, what does that even mean? What does that look like? But when I got there, I had this kind of panicky moment when I realized, oh, I am already living a life of silence. I'm not someone who can write with music. In fact, I really need total silence. And so I was being amazingly prolific at this place I was. Doing like some of the best ride in my life. And then I realized, oh, it's because it is silent. And then I discovered there were two canonized hermits at this, um, at this residency that had taken vows of silence in the 1980s. And I started wondering like what is actually so different between how they spend their day and how I spend my day. They are there praying for the souls of people they will never meet. And I am writing for the souls of people I will never meet. You know, they are. Bowing down to their God, and I am bowing down to this muse that is driving everything that I do. We're all doing this in silence. We're all doing this outta devotion. We're all doing this out of love and reverence for something completely outside of ourselves. And then I was like, huh, there's something to this idea.
Anita Rao
Just ahead. Stephanie sets off on an international quest to find other art monks you're listening to. Embodied from North Carolina Public Radio, a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. You can also hear Embodied as a podcast. Follow and subscribe on your platform of choice. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I'm Anita Rao. Stephanie Elizondo Griest is a writer before anything else, but as she details in her new book, art Above Everything, her journey as an artist has been as much about sacrifice as devotion. In her twenties and early thirties, Stephanie was able to prioritize writing through finding cheap. Ways to live going from writing residency to writing residency, and living off the small advances of her first books. But at a certain point, she needed more stability. So she went to grad school, got her MFA, and landed a tenure year track job at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It was a big transition, both personally and as an artist.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
It definitely, it was hard to stop crying at first. Yeah. Uh, just like out of relief. Yeah. So complicated tears, right? Yeah. Um, but just my body was crying a lot, you know, even just opening up the boxes that had been in storage for so long. Hmm. You know, I just couldn't believe that a, a paycheck was arriving, you know? Every, every month. Um, I couldn't believe I had health insurance. So all of those things that had just, you know, really so much of the worry and stress of my twenties and thirties was all related to finances. And now that that worry had been taken off the table, I hardly knew what to do with myself. But when I kind of got over that sort of just, um, gratitude tier, then came another kind of tier, which is I suddenly realized like I am. An adult, you know, by physical appearance and by reality. But, but inside, like I could relate to my students more than I could relate to the faculty. In a way, I felt really developmentally stagnant because all, everyone my age was married. They had children, they had houses, they had mortgages. And then I began to kind of anguish in the fact that I had just tried so hard and I sacrificed so much to be a travel writer vagabond. And so to leave that lifestyle was really, really, really sad. Um, so yeah. So it did, it did take some adjustment.
Anita Rao
Did it feel like a sacrifice? Like were you putting your art a little bit more on the side by choosing this profession, or did it feel like this was gonna allow you to do your art?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Wow. So there's so many ways to look at that. Um, one metaphor that, or better or worse, I will offer is to be an artist. Is to climb a mountain whose peak you never see.
Anita Rao
Mm.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
There are moments in your life where you get to a really beautiful scenic spot on that mountain and the clouds clear and you're like, oh my God. This view, you know, maybe when you published your first book or you know, something, something else significant that happens in your writing life, and so you're so thrilled you have this view and then you look down and you're like, oh my gosh, there are all these other. Writers and I should be helping them. And so then you, you extend your hand and you start pulling up, but then you start hearing some noises coming up from above and you look up and like, oh wow. There actually are some writers that you actually really admire and they're on another view and they're amazed at that view. Mm. So then you're like, which one do you, do? You know, should you be, spend your time helping the people climb up to where you are or should you continue climbing? And so that has been the sort of like existential struggle mindset that I've been contending with for the last, you know, 15 years probably. And I, I am definitely, especially now with this particular book out in the world, I am starting to feel like I do wanna spend more time helping people get up, in particular Chicano writers because we don't have much of a presence on this literary scene. So my ambitions now are moving a bit more away from my own individual work and more toward how can I be support to the Latino literary community as a whole.
Anita Rao
I wanna take you back for a minute to that moment of starting this new chapter, feeling some existential questions around where you were as a young Yes. Okay. Professor. Yeah. And where the people were around you and how this. Led to your desire to meet other women artists around the world? Like what were you looking for? Yeah, absolutely. From other women.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Okay. Yes. Another observation I made when I was at LEP Shea is what I feel enabled these actual monks, how they were able to do this is they were doing it in community, and so it maybe felt less alone. It's easier to spend your day in your cabin praying for the souls of the world when you know. This woman you're in community with is also doing it too. So you're, you're by yourself, but you're in a community doing this and just psychologically that really helps a lot. And so I began feeling that way. I need to find my community. I need to find another chance or in the dark if I'm going to continue down this path of being an art monk. And so I had this idea. Just as I was beginning to feel this need, there was another sign from the universe, which is I got, um, a little ding on my inbox. I had done an artist, a fabulous artist residency in upstate New York called Art On My International, and the director of that had just reached out to everyone, all the alumni of that residency saying, Hey, guess what? I just started a new residency in. In India, and India had always been, I, I've always considered India to be like the PhD of traveling
Anita Rao
As someone who's spent a lot of time there. I agree. I agree.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
So, um, and I had actually, so I have this whole other like story. I was just trying to go to India. I'd actually tried multiple times in my life to go to India and something kind of catastrophic happened every time. So, so just the fact that it was in India, it was already like, Ooh, is this a sign? But then I read about where this place was going to be held, and it was held in Renogram. Which is the village of the extraordinary classical Indian dance troupe, NOIA Graham. Uh, it was founded by a woman. All the dancers there at, at that time. Anyway, all women and everyone who worked there are also a woman, so just like a woman feminist village. That Eat, sleeps, breathes stance. And so I was so incredibly lucky the first summer after becoming a professor, I got to spend a month with them and, um, went there to work on a different book, but very quickly was like, oh no, no, this is the book. You know, I am entering into a book right now.
Anita Rao
So this began a tenure journey. A tenure journey of traveling around the world, meeting women artists, and with this very first. Kind of experience that you had in your book. You write about kind of spending the day with these dancers and some aspects of their day were really relatable to you, like the devotion to the craft. Mm-hmm. You were like, I get it. I know what it's like to be in a room alone. Yeah. And, and. Right. For hours. But this question that was kind of burning for you all the time was like, how do you think about your legacy and how do you think about mm-hmm. If at the end of your life you're gonna look back and think that all of this devotion was mm-hmm. Kind of worth it. Yes. Tell me about what shifted for you through spending time with them. Like what did they, how did they help you think about art and, and the sacrifices in a different way?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah. So at this point I am, this was, I, I arrived in Igram actually literally the month before I turned 40, which is a pretty landmark birthday for a woman who hasn't yet had children. So it's really less, less chance to do this. Um, and I'd had a year of online dating by that point, and I'm like, oh, wow. You know something. There's really gotta be some kinda like divine intervention. And this is scar out there, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, um, and again, I'm in a, um, environment where most women have already had children and I was for the. You know, for the first time in my own life around at at gram artists who were like, no, not doing that. Mm, this is my baby. This is my child, this is my everything. This is my universe, and I'm going to dance until. I can no longer dance and there will come in that day. But this is just my journey. Uh, neurogram is structured as a guru. Cool. So students would arrive to live and work and garden and cook and share meals alongside the guru for six years, and this is how the. The classical arts had been passed down in India and in a different time period, and this was sort of resurrecting this, this system. And then it just also occurred to me of like, how do women become artists in other countries? This showed me this really radically different model that I had not yet tapped into in the United States.
Anita Rao
You kind of started at the beginning of this book with this question of do women artists fair better elsewhere? Mm-hmm. Like if you have, you know, socialized healthcare Yes. Or, or if you have subsidized childcare. Right, right, right. Does it look different to make art?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
What did you find? Mm-hmm. Absolutely. So Iceland is probably the best case in point. So Iceland. Is 91% patriarchy free. Oh, okay. I have it down to the decimal. Yes. Yeah. Um, yes. And so in Iceland, I was really blown away by everything that happens. Obviously, socialized healthcare. Also so many benefits from mothers. You know, you have. Prenatal care. You have so much time off. Both parents get all of this time off. And it's, it's well documented that that the World Economic Forum has declared Iceland for many years running to be the best place to be a woman, okay. On planet. Right? And I interviewed eight women writers there. So first of all, like being a woman, a writer, I being a writer, period in Iceland. Literally you get royalties when your book is checked out of the library. What?
Anita Rao
That's amazing. I mean that, that is amazing. That's amazing.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
If you write in Icelandic, you can apply for a state grant every single year of your career. Wow. Um, so I met women who were essentially being paid by the state to. Write novels. Wow. In Icelandic, because they are, you know, the country is very concerned about the loss of language. So all of the women writers I met, all lifetime writers, people who had published eight books, 10 books, all had kids, and actually not just one. They had like four and five kids. Wow. I don't know. Do I know any woman in the United States that has that many kids and books? I don't think I do. And all eight of them did.
Anita Rao
Wow. Yeah, so, so you kind of document like the, the sacrifices kind of externally look different based on your political circumstances, the, the kind of economic dynamics of the culture. But there are those really personal questions that every artist is asking about, you know. What does it mean to, to lose some of my time to child rearing? Yeah. What does it mean to have a partner who I'm also kind of taking care of? How were these conversations about relationships affecting how you were thinking about your own relationships at that point in your life?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Okay, so I have identified three models.
Anita Rao
I'm ready. I'm ready.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is just based purely on my own research. There's nothing, nothing scientific about this. Okay. So there is sort of the artist slash patron model during my period of extreme nomadism. That was in my. Early to mid thirties. It started off as a joke, you know, like, I need a patron. Uh, but then it was like, no, I really need a patron. And then incredibly, I did indeed meet someone who made 12 times my salary. Wow. And, um, all of the problems I had at that moment in my life. Literally could be solved by a swipe of his credit card. Mm. And so he did do this for me. You know, one time I was in New York and my flight to LA got canceled and my plan was literally to curl up by a potted plant in JFK airport. And he's like, oh no, I just booked you in a hotel. You know, I mean, so just things like that. Incredible. Yeah. Incredible. Like I am so. Unbelievably grateful that this partner came into my life at that moment. Long term. It does set up obvious challenges in terms of just equity in the relationship. Yeah. And that sort of, that the power differential is pretty extreme in that kinda a relationship.
But anyway, then there is the, the alpha beta situation, and that is when you are dating another artist the longest. Lasting relationship I've been in. I was with an absolute a hundred percent alpha artist. This artist was extraordinary. We once went to the Ubuntu Festival in Rwanda, and the Ubuntu Festival gathers artists whose nation has survived genocide. And so we enter, we arrive the day before the festival, and she's just, at this point, my companion not. She has no involvement in the festival at all, but she brings her violin. She's this world class violinist, and we walk in and it's just this flurry of everyone's running around, you know, trying to get ready for this massive festival on a shoestring budget so no one even looks at us when we walk in. She takes out her violin. She somehow instantly captures the energy of everyone running around frantically trying to get ready for this, with also the gravity of what we are doing. And she begins to play and literally everyone just literally drops what they're doing and turns around, jaws dropped, sits down in front of her and just. Begins to weep. Hmm. And sway and you know, like no story I can tell can do that. That's what I mean by alpha, right? It's like, I'll bow down to this. You know? So there's extraordinary things about being with an alpha artist. The challenge, of course, is that it's really easy to. Lose sight of your own artistic practice, especially as a writer, because what are you doing as a writer? You're just sort of staring into a screen. There are so many very instant and obvious ways to help a musician. You know, like literally carrying the violin case and carrying the amplifiers and those like active things you can be doing. And also it's way more fun than sitting at a computer you're doing, yeah. So, and additionally, what can be challenging about. That kind of a relationship is that jealousy can arise, competition can arise, and probably the worst situation is you become their student. Yeah. Fortunately I didn't experience any of those three in this particular relationship, but I have witnessed that many, many, many times over with, with others. So then it becomes almost like the intellectual equivalent of the artist patron model because there is this sort of power differential.
Then there is what I'm currently in, what I like to call like two monks in a monastery uh, model. So this is when, and this is rare, but when you find someone who is in the similar. Place in their, their career that you are, and you can really just sort of relax into, we are lifers, we are in this for the love, we are in this for the devotion. And then you can have the joy of just doing it side by side. And that's amazing.
Anita Rao
I wanna hear more about your current partnership, but I do wanna talk first about the question around. Kids. Yes. And the ways that you have weighed that throughout your career, there is this really big chapter of your, uh, own personal story that kind of played a big part in this decision. So I wanna, I wanna tee that up. Okay? Yes. Yes. So you, let's go. There we're a couple of years into. Traveling around the world and meeting women artists. You had published your fifth book. You were engaged to someone, and this partner had a really strong desire to have kids. Yes. So the two of you had been talking about that, but you said, okay, I, I need to go on this big book tour. Mm-hmm. And when I come back, we'll really kind of talk about this kid question.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Talk about the kid question. Yeah.
Anita Rao
So you go on the book tour and. Two weeks into the book tour, some strange things start happening to your body.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the first thing I noticed is that when I would eat, I would feel full. My neck.
Anita Rao
Hmm.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
So it was a different sort of satiation. And I was also having some pretty profound acid reflux, which I'd never had before. And it was easy to explain it away because I'm on book tour, I'm in Texas. That means every night we're going out for, you know, enchiladas and like margaritas is out of my head, you know? So I am really indulging in all the Tex Max that I don't get to eat on my normal day. But I'm suddenly not able to eat more than a few bites. And so I noticed that, but also I was on a, I think that was maybe. 40 cities. I mean, I had like unbelievably ambitious book tour and uh, so nothing's gonna distract me on a book tour until one morning when I was about to fly back to North Carolina to unpack and repack. I woke up bleeding and it was obviously not menstrual blood. And I just again, like. All we have as artists is to go by is signs. And obviously that's a sign like, okay, I need to call my doctor immediately. Yeah. And she took me the very same day. So my doctor put her hands in my belly and she just looked at me and she goes, are you pregnant Stephanie? And I was like, you know, so it's something that intense, you try to make a joke and I'm like. Well, I am Catholic. You know, like Immaculate conception is, you know, always a possibility. And she said, you know, you, you feel like you're deeply pregnant. And so she immediately got me an appointment at the radiology and somehow my left ovary had grown a tumor the size of an abla. Basketball. Basketball, yes. Yeah. Okay. So the reason I was feeling full up to my neck is because the food literally couldn't pass around it. Yeah. Scary stuff. So whole book tour canceled instantaneously, which was my concern at that time because I'm so obsessed with, uh, my, my books. Um, that was to me the, the, the, the tragedy of that moment. Or maybe it was just simply what my mind could grasp as opposed to the other very major loss, which was about to happen, which is I was about to lose my womb and I did. And so that was very intense, obviously. Then they discovered, um, so when they first removed the tumor and did the, uh, the pathology, it did not show sign of cancer. But then a week into it, I find out that there was indeed cancer in the tumor, and I was now going to have to undergo chemotherapy. So the first. Two weeks were just profound panic attacks, anxiety attacks my mind. It was really hard to to take hold of my mind until I began to use my art. So the first way I used my art was my entire practice as an artist has been to travel to unusual places and really do deep witnessing and note taking and suddenly. That world was brought like into my own body. Yeah. And so when I began to, when I made the change of, instead of having a panic attack about what was happening in my body, when I instead began to write what was happening in my body, that made me curious about what was happening and so that, that leap of freaking out about it to suddenly becoming curious. Really saved my mental health completely. And then it also became about, oh, this is what I do. I take notes, I observe, and now I'm just going to have a quieter observation of just what's happening to me internally. So that was, that was one thing that was happening. Another big thing that happened is all of my life up until that moment. I felt like I was always in a, a pool of doubt and bobbing, sometimes treading water, sometimes drowning, um, but just water all around me drowning into doubt, and that is where my life switched from doubt to certainty. And cancer really was that, that land bridge, um, certainty about whether art was enough? Absolutely, a hundred percent. Because obviously the, the, the child door closed, but. With that came total certainty. I, I, I would've thought I would've collapsed over that knowledge. What I instead collapsed over was the knowledge that I couldn't do my book tour. You know, and I, I realized that must sound insane to 99% of the people out there. And I, I agree. It is insane. But there is 1% of you that's like, yeah, that's true. You know,
Anita Rao
Just ahead, we'll hear what changed in Stephanie's life. After all, that doubt turned to certainty, and she'll take us inside her dreams for her next decade as a writer. We'll be right back.
This is Embodied. I am Anita Rao. Stephanie Elizondo Griest has been a writer for decades and for about as long she's had doubts about the choices and sacrifices she's made for art. It all culminated for her in one big question, is art enough to answer that? Stephanie spent a decade traveling to 12 countries and talking with many other female artists. She asked them about living an art filled life and how they decided what sacrifices were worth it. These women helped her settle some of her own doubts, and Stephanie shares their stories in her new book, art Above Everything One Woman's Global Exploration of The Joys and Torments of Her Creative Life. But true clarity came for Stephanie a few years into her work on the book. When she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She was forced to take stock of the choices she'd made for art, like not getting married and not having kids, and what she felt was relief.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
It was like a lactic shot of euphoria. Yeah. It was just like, I felt it in my whole body. I felt it in my whole being. I felt. Thank God I had chosen exactly as I had chosen because I realized if this was my exit off the planet, well, first of all, if I'd had a kid, I mean, that would be a whole other level of grief, and my books were done. I had just published the book that I had spent all this time on, so it's like, okay, legacy is done. If I go now, you know I have health insurance, like there will be money left over. I can use this to start my, my grant to fund future writers. It was good. I could go. Your mind was fully thinking about art it seems like at that point. Totally. Yeah. So there was the land bridge to certainty. There was panic attack stop when I began to take notes. And then the third final thing, which was such an incredible gift, and I also wanna share this story, is that I decided to turn my imminent hair loss into an art performance. Hmm. Performance art. So just a little. Word about my hair. My hair is very important to me. You have beautiful hair. Um, I love my hair so much. I have not changed his style since 1992. And, um, there's also some family things about hair. You know, Mexican culture really values long hair. And indeed, my maternal grandmother, who I never met, my, my maternal grandmother, unfortunately committed suicide when she was 25 years old. But one of the last things she said before, before dying. Is that she did not ever want her infant baby son's curls cut. Mm. Anyway, so like not cutting hair is like a thing in my family. And so losing my hair, which is, you know, long and brown and curly, and I have always felt like it is the most visible marker of my, of, of being Latina, which is a, a big hangup that I've written extensively about, but will not go into now. I was devastated that I was going to lose my hair. So what I did, I'm so glad I did this. I decided to turn it into an art performance, so I invited over an Italian opera singer, uh, my partner at the time who was an extraordinary violinist, another cancer survivor. A photographer. A psychologist who is also a best friend, uh, my mother. My. And Diane, who is the owner of Beehive Hair Salon in Chapel Hill, north, North Carolina. And they came over and, um, the opera singer began to sing these old woman melodies. And she had this, you know, tambourine ham drum and just pounding. And then, you know, my partner goes in with a violin and just this crescendo of music. To drown out the sound of the shave and my mom held my hands and that is what got me through that experience.
Anita Rao
Yeah. So we marked that as, as part of the way through this journey of traveling and interviewing artists, I'm curious about the lessons that you kind of had gleaned from these women that shaped. What you wanted to do next on this journey? Like you'd had this personal transformation, this personal moment of clarity. Art. Art is enough, I think. Mm. I guess what questions did you still have and why did you still need to keep searching after having that clarity yourself?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yeah. So the next few people that I spent time with post-cancer, well the first thing I had total clarity, the kind of artists I needed to be with next. Mm. And just came into me with just deep body knowledge is I need to go hang out with belly dancers. Okay. Yeah. You have to, you have to tie that thread. So, so I was once a belly dancer, um, in my twenties and that was a really happy, joyful period of my life and I knew I needed that kind of energy around me, me. Uh, belly dancers, if you've ever spent time with them, are profoundly self-possessed women who have total control over the region of my body that had just been utterly traumatized. And so I knew I would, I needed to be with them. So I can't even remember why I was in Miami, but I looked up. Who are the belly dancers in Miami and unbelievably, again, like universe just always aligns things. There was going to be like this major international belly dancing conference that same weekend I was in Miami. I mean, what is the chances of that? So I go there and, and it's very immediate who I need to spend time with, which is this incredible woman named Tiffany. Madera, she's Cuban American and she, in her own words, was like the mafia of the belly dancing community. And she's like the den leader and, uh, just so beautifully spoken and just so powerful, and I just really respond to people's energy. So this is someone I wanted in the orbit, and so went out with her in between panels, belly dancing panels and workshops. I took a little bit of her time and she began telling me. This was like the precursor to the really big thing she was doing, which is the Havana Habibi Belly Dancing Festival. And I'm like, okay, that's in four weeks in Cuba. All right. Clearing the schedule and going with you. Right. So this was, um, a gathering of belly dancers from all over the world, plus like, I think 80 Cuban women and girls a gathering together in the national, um, I don't think I can remember the exact name, but the where the, where the National Ballet of Cuba. Rehearses, which is literally a neoclassical palace. And that was an unbelievable experience. It was initially difficult for me, uh, just because I arrived. I'm bald, I am emaciated. I lost all of my weight during that time. So, um. I had such extreme scarring on my body after chemo and yeah, and I'm also just, I feel like I'm walking in clouds, you know, I had a hysterectomy, but they had to really cut a lot because the tumor was so big. So I had this really. Very scarred body. And so, and I was surrounded by unbelievable human beauty, like incredibly beautiful woman all around me. And so the point where I would forget what I then looked like and I would catch a glimpse in my mirror and I would just like, you know, just have this body shock when, and so there was even this moment where, um. I was taking a class, taking a workshop, and we were motivated and inspired and commanded to go and create our own hip signature. And so we're all like, lining up in the mirror and every woman is, you know, kind of moving her, her body in a certain way, trying to find like her signature move through her hips. And, and this is a moment when I've forgotten what I look like, but I look up and I just freeze. And I, I can't believe what I look like and this Cuban woman next to me just somehow. You know, is looking in the mirror at her own body, but sees my look and just somehow understands completely what I'm going through. And it turns out her body, when I look at her abdomen, it is also completely scarred. She'd just gone through a cesarean, seemingly around the same time I'd gone through my cancer and, um, just without words, which is what I love so much about belly dancing. She began to move so that I could follow her. Hmm. And we just created our hip signature together.
Anita Rao
That's really beautiful. Yeah. So you finished chemo, you were in remission.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Mm-hmm.
Anita Rao
When did you decide it was time to stop traveling and, and stop this search for other women to talk to?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Oh, that was totally COVID actually. Okay. So arbitrary, but not arbitrary. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. There was only one woman I knew I had to interview. Just because I loved her. So, and actually I discovered her through COVID, um, the performance artist Ayana Evans. Okay. So I did do one interview beyond that, but actually COVID just became its own hard deadline. Yeah. Yeah. And I was also getting to, I, I can't spend more than a decade on a project. So by that point I was nearing, I could see that I was nearing the 10 year mark, and I'm like, all right, I've gotta stop this.
Anita Rao
So you had asked this question in a number of different ways to a number of different people. Is art enough? How do you know when art is enough? Surprisingly, you got a similar answer from a lot of the women that you talked to. First of all, they all said, yes, art is enough, and, and they all kind of described a similar way that they knew. Tell me about that.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Mm, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what, maybe what I'll do is I'm just gonna read how I've structured the book, 'cause that gives, uh, one word the answer. Art is inheritance. Art is a spiritual orgasm. Art is reconciliation. Art is descent. Art is self-actualization. Art is a waltz and the palace of the moon. Art is revenge. Art is medicine. Art is un zipping your body art is a house of your own. Art is lineage. Art is love. Art is inor immortality. And so these were the motivations of all of these different women, and this is why they did it. They all kind of came to their own truth. For me, artist freedom. And that's, I think why it was, it's been so difficult to, at different moments in my life for money needing to give it up because I do feel like I'm losing freedom.
Anita Rao
So you are in a partnership now. I'm curious about how all of this deep reflection about. The way you wanna relate to art and the role it plays in your life shapes how you show up in this romantic partnership. Yeah. Yeah. And then what makes it work?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yes. It's so lovely. So he has a beautiful way, he's a poet and he has this beautiful way of speaking about our art, which is he calls them our thought children.
Anita Rao
Mm.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
And so that is how we spend our day tending to our thought children. And uh, to take that metaphor just a step further, I've had such an incredible experience. Um, I'm currently on a book tour for art above everything. I'm going to, so far 35 cities. And, um, he has accompanied me for the first leg of the tour and I was a bit nervous about that, how that would go down. And only to realize like he's a stepfather for this, that child and he is in the audience, gets teared up every time he's seen it probably 13 to 15 times now, and it's like open house at the monastery of art and we are co-hosting it. And so, you know, he's completely present when I'm doing my thing and then when it's over, you know, there's a book line and he goes up and down the aisle. Introducing himself, talking to everybody, you know, making everyone feel at home like he is. Totally the stepfather for this slat child. It's amazing. It is amazing. So yes, the two mon in a monastery model, I highly recommend for those of you, uh, in artist partnerships or seeking for an art partner, better yet you don't actually have to go un bumble to find them. Um, you have to go to an artist residency. Mm. So a lot. That's where I met my partner. That's actually where a lot of artists meet their partners is at residencies, because that's where you find people who are equally devoted.
Anita Rao
So to the young artists who are kind of coming up to you in the line on your book tour, or who are taking your classes at UNC who are looking around them at. This moment of, of art in the United States, what it means to create art, the funding that exists for it, and, and trying to really like, practically think through the question of like, how do I make it work and how do I know if and when I should keep going? Right. How do you answer that question for them?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Yes. Yes. So my students, I am brutally, brutally honest, um, with my students. I literally. Write out the numbers, um, which are very scary. I write out my own numbers. So three of my books I literally spent 10 years working on. So, um, three decade long endeavors. And then I did other things, you know, concurrent with them, but 10 years on, three different books and those collectively royalties and advances equals $33,000. Mm-hmm. 30 years. Wow. Of everything. Uhhuh. Yeah. That's it. $33,000. That's it. So that in and of itself is enough to get a lot of people to turn away. Yeah. Right. And you know, other books were more successful, but all the books together don't quite equate, or actually just slightly are over what I make in one year as a professor. And. Everyone knows that professors are notoriously underpaid as well, right? So we're talking like really small numbers and also I have them like, look at my website and see how many events I have done. I have done close to God. I think I'm, I'm over 400 events now, you know, like hand selling my books and hand selling these books for such a long time. I've still only sold, you know, 11,000 copies of my first book and I've been hustling it for. Two decades now. Right. So it's just, yeah, that kind of math should, should turn almost everyone away. But the one person left standing loves it. Love loves, loves it so much. They're still standing. Yeah. And they're still listening to me and they're still engaging and they're still taking classes and they're still wanting to go because they know that they are not living their true path unless they try at least try it. Also, I say that there was a moment. Not so long ago when you could pick a career, attend a university as wonderful as ours at UNC Chapel Hill, and you know, if you were reasonably apt at this job, you could know that you would have it for 40 years and have a decent retirement and you know, have happy life with your grandkids. Right. That day has passed and, um, and, and, and this actually our students are keenly aware of, they're watching this all happen all around us. Yeah. Um. So being an artist has always been impossible, but now everything is impossible, and when everything is impossible, anything is possible.
Anita Rao
So you say at the end of your book that while art was the thing that caused volatility in your life throughout your twenties and thirties, in your forties, it became your primary self-soothing technique. You turned 51 this summer. Yeah. What role do you expect art to play in this next decade of your life?
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Well, yeah, the instability is all around us, right? So literally I discovered that with first cancer note taking is what kept the panic attacks away during cancer. Also helped me feel like there was. A reason and a purpose in all of this that I was going through it was to write it down. I'm really finding like note taking is sort of my safety blanket through these very scary things that are happening all around us all the time. Now, what I hope to, if I'm lucky to survive this period of a profound instability. That we are now enduring. Collectively, what I hope to do is create a place of sanctuary and so sanctuary and also funding. Actually, last year for my 50th birthday, I started a, um, I started a grant called the zos, which is out of UT Austin, which is my alma mater in the journalism school, it's for students who are from the border who write about the border. The border is a subject that I've devoted about 20 years of my life to covering. I was able to raise $27,000 for that. Um, so it's endowed, but I want that to become a bigger endowment to continue funding border reporting because obviously we need people from the border to actually write about the humanitarian catastrophe happening in our homeland. And then what I ultimately wanna do is start a writer's residency in Mexico and invite ano writers to come, um, connect with their homeland and also connect with. Their own, their own spirit, their own love, their own devotion, their own immortality.
Anita Rao
Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for your beautiful book and for this conversation. Um, what a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much.
Stephanie Elizondo Griest
Thank you so much.
Anita Rao
You can find out more about Stephanie Elizondo Griest and her book Art Above Everything at our website, embodiedwunc.org. You can also find all episodes of Embodied the Radio show there, and make sure you're subscribed to our weekly podcast. You can find behind the scenes and bonus content for our show by following us on Instagram. Our handle is @embodiedWUNC. Today's episode was produced by Kaia Findlay and edited by Amanda Magnus. Wilson Sayre also provided editorial assistance. Nina Scott is our intern in Jenni Lawson, our technical director. Quilla wrote our theme music. This program is recorded at the American Tobacco Historic District, North Carolina Public Radio is a broadcast service of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'm Anita Rao.