Morgan Harper Nichols on art and perception
How We Live Now with Katherine May:
Morgan Harper Nichols on art and perception
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In this episode, I talk with Morgan about the ways that her work ushers us towards a kind of reenchantment with life itself - but, in all honesty, I quickly lost control of the whole interview. Like me, Morgan is autistic, and I got lost in the joy of spending an hour in her thoughtful, inquisitive company. This is a conversation about how we see our work and the world around us, and how creativity helps us to connect.
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Listen to the Episode
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Katherine May:
Morgan, welcome to How We Live Now. I'm thrilled to talk to you. How are you today?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I am doing pretty good considering the circumstances. So, I've decided to go back to school and I actually have some papers due in two days. So, it is a delight to chat with you because I have been-
Katherine May:
It's a break.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I've been really deep in art studies and I love it. I love it, but it's nice to take a little bit of a break, so I'm honored to be here.
Katherine May:
Yeah. What led you to do that? Because I mean, you are really successful in the artistic sphere.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah.
Katherine May:
What drew you back into education at this stage?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. Before I knew I was autistic, a lot of this had to do with the fact that art is really a special interest of mine and I was able to hyper fixate and focus on making digital art on my iPad because I just loved it so much. This might sound strange to say it this way, but it was relatively inexpensive thing to get really fixated on, because in contrast to art where you're buying acrylic paints and canvases, an iPad, you buy it one time. An Apple Pencil, you buy it one time. So, I was very happy about I could just go all in on it and it became a way for me to just cope with existing. It just so happened to be something that could be shared on Instagram and Pinterest.
Katherine May:
That's perfect.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I ended up in this scenario where by the time it did turn into something so much bigger, which just thank you to everyone who's ever shared my work, because I think that is a huge part of it. It just turned into something where it was like the actual, such as traveling and being a speaker for all that, I don't know if I can do all of that. I need to find another way that I can really go deeper into this practice that doesn't involve me to do the whole social aspect of it all the time, because I can do it somewhat, but not to the degree that other people can. So, going to school is a way for me to say, "Here's how I can continue to do what I love and grow," but on my own terms and not constantly worried about, "Okay, how many speaking engagements do I need to do?"
There's so many things that I now feel more comfortable saying no to, even from an income standpoint, because I'm working toward being able to do lectures over Zoom on these topics. That is a huge part of what informed it. I love what I do and I'm very grateful that it became a job, but I do want to keep finding ways that it can become a version of it that's more aligned with my capacity.
Katherine May:
How long have you known you're autistic now? Because I feel like what you are going through is a phase that seems really common amongst late diagnosed autistic, that we gradually begin to figure out how to make life sustainable rather than to carry on as we were before.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. So, I started the process with a specialist at 30, diagnosed at 31, and now I'm 33.
Katherine May:
So fresh.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I will say credit to the specialist that I work with. She was so serious about telling me, "You've got to slow down. You're doing way too much. There's too much on your plate. What can you do to take some stuff off your plate?" Even before I received the actual diagnosis, that was when I would start talking about my life, she was just like, "Hold on. Hold on. What do we have to do so that you can do less because this is too much? This is too much." She was like, "You're not going to be able to sustain that." So I will say that was a huge credit to me realizing how serious I needed to take it and recognize that even though... Because I started sharing and doing a lot of the artwork and poetry that I do now in 2017.
So, I've been doing it for a few years now. She was just like, "Yeah, even that though, that's a long time." I was like, "Are you sure?" She's like, "Yes." I was so glad that my specialist wasn't on social media because explaining all this to somebody who doesn't use, it's just, "What? Why are you doing all of this?"
Katherine May:
Yeah. I don't think we realize because we've been drawn into it, but it's something that so many autistic people have in common that on one hand, we are drawn to work so hard on the things we love and we can't stop. There's that sense of complete fascination and entanglement with the thing we're interested in, but there's also that other element that I think we maybe find it hard to measure ourselves against other people effectively. So, we always think we are not doing enough. Actually, we're often doing way more than other people. Me when I'm taking it easy is a sensible person working really hard quite often. I find it very hard to stop.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes, it is very hard to stop. I don't know if I've figured out how to catch myself in it, if that makes sense. I don't know if I've gotten there or if you ever do get there because I don't know. Because I'm in school now and I'm starting to sense that a different version of that might be happening, but-
Katherine May:
Okay. It's hard to tell.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
... it's hard to catch myself in it. I think there is some degree of just maybe context that maybe one grew up in or something like that. I grew up here in this particular part of the US and I grew up in the South. I grew up in a community where I saw... I think people would know this outside of the US. ... a lot of civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, John Lewis had a prominent presence here. There are a lot of historically Black colleges and universities here where I grew up. I mentioned that because I was surrounded by a lot of other Black people who were doing great things.
I took from that as a little girl, okay, I may not be able to be in those spheres, but what do I have to do to contribute in my way, in a way that's successful, in a way that matters? Because I struggled so much socially, which I didn't know why back then, but I knew that I struggled with that. So, I was like, "I got to find something. Maybe it's in these books."
Katherine May:
I've got to be good at something.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'm like, "Maybe it's in the books, maybe it's in the art. That's where I'll find my way." In many ways, my story is a lot of that, of finding my way into some group of books or some art form and trying to find my little way in it. I've been thinking about that with school because there's been a few times where I've taken on more than I should. For instance, I took two classes when I could have taken one.
Katherine May:
Of course, you did.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
You can take one at a time, but I was like, "But you can take two at a time. So, I'm going to take two at a time because I really want to talk about both of these things and I really want to get into both. I think I'm going to need both of them. This is all relevant information." I can't do the whole stacking it in my brain. Oh, I'll get to that later, but I'm reading about it now.
Katherine May:
I recognize that so much and that feeling of wanting to swallow this big fascinating world all at once. How do you step away from that? So there are so many really interesting things and other people know them and I want to know them too.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, yes, even this moment right now, it's stacked with books that I'm just like, "Okay, I'm going to read that. I got to read that too. I got to read that too."
Katherine May:
It's really hard. I've gone so far off-topic at the beginning of this podcast that I'm giving up on my topic already, but I do-
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I love it.
Katherine May:
I do feel like there is something about the way neurodivergent people work, which means that actually a more traditional ideas of finding balance aren't really possible. We are very bad at pacing ourselves and doing a measured amount of work every day. I think instead the way we find balance is by throwing ourselves at something wholeheartedly until we are completely exhausted and then lying down on the ground groaning for a period of time. It's almost like we're forced to work in that way. There doesn't seem to be another way.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. I have no idea what that is, but I can absolutely relate. One thing I do try to do is and it might sound cliche of saying it, but just considering your wonderful work, I feel like I can talk about this here.
Katherine May:
Yeah, absolutely. This is definitely the space for this. Yes.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Of just trying to find my way in nature, if you will. Yeah, maybe I'm not going to figure this out with words. Maybe there are no words to figure out how to be here in the best possible way. Maybe what I should do is just go outside if I can for a few minutes or even just look outside because I'm very sensitive to weather. Right now-
Katherine May:
Totally.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
... I just feel like it should be slightly warmer than it is.
Katherine May:
It's freezing this year. I don't know if it's the same for you, but it's so cold here. Oh, I thought I was just getting old.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I was like, "This is messing up my whole thing." This morning, I got a cup of coffee and I was like, "I'm going to go outside, even though I have papers due and stuff." I'm like, "I'm going to go get fresh air." I am not exaggerating. I lasted 30 seconds. I was like, "This is not the temperature I was anticipating." So back indoors, I go.
Katherine May:
If you're from the South, you're used to heat.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. I was like, "No, no, no, I'm back inside." So yeah, why did I say all that? Oh, yeah. I was just like, "Yeah, I don't know, but I do try to just..." Right now, I'm in the spot of okay, let's just go beyond the words. Sometimes I'll just look out the window and watch the trees blowing and just think, "What about me and my existence and the way that I am is similar to that and how when the wind blows, the leaves rustle and shimmer and the light, and then when the wind comes, they settle back into place? Then when the wind comes again, when the wind goes, when it comes." Just thinking about that, I don't know if I'll ever get to the words of what that is beyond what I just said. Maybe that's okay.
Katherine May:
I so relate to that. I think so much of my work, even though I use words, which seems like a crazy thing to do in the context of this, but I feel like I'm trying to reach a place past the words and into something that's actually really inexpressible.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Oh, your work absolutely does that for me. I feel when I'm reading your words, I use this word a lot, but one, I feel like they're invitations. They're invitations into that wordless space for me. I truly think had I not known your story, had I not known you're autistic, I probably still would've felt that way because-
Katherine May:
Oh, yeah, it's that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. I'm really interested in that. It's the way that we use words. We recognize that there's more than words. Words have their place, but then there's space beyond them. I've been think about that for a while. I'm really thinking about that.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I mean, even autistic people who aren't non-speaking have that relationship with not speaking, I think. Also, it's really common for us to have a relationship with speaking in a way that others consider too much. There's a very particular relationship with voice that sometimes we can't stop and sometimes we just don't want to at all. Whichever way it's perceived as unbalanced, but again, it's a peculiar way that I think we find our balance almost by extremes.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. That's actually how I feel about color and shapes and abstractions and the things that end up getting called art. So, one of my biggest realizations, which has been the hardest to communicate, funny enough, in finding out I was autistic and realizing that was that for me, I think, I'm theorizing here, but I'm leaning more toward no, I think this is what it is.
Katherine May:
Let's do it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I think the reason why I'm an artist, visual artist and a music artist too is largely because I live in a world that really prioritizes other ways of communicating over what's natural for me.
Katherine May:
That's so interesting. So, you've burst out sideways almost. Yeah.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah, colors and shapes. Abstraction is always how I've thought, how I've experienced things. I'll have a memory of something that happened years ago, and it could be something small. We're sitting in a restaurant or it could be that was the day that person told you that thing or that one thing happened on the news. It could be anywhere on the spectrum of events that one could have a reaction to.
Katherine May:
Of how meaningful they seem to be.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'll recall them in these layers that are very abstract and separate from one another. So, I'll have a memory of sitting at a bistro outside of a restaurant, and the sky is pulled away separately from the table. I feel them pulling apart. As they do, if I fix my mind on the table, I can hear the clanking of the glasses. I can hear the bee that was floating around. It's very hard to explain, but that's exactly what I'm thinking about, how I'm thinking about things when I'm making art. So, I'm like, "Is it art or it's just the way that I think?"
Katherine May:
You're trying to express a specific mode of perception that is how you experience the world, but which you don't necessarily see in mainstream culture.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Exactly.
Katherine May:
So you're struggling to express it, because actually, there's not a lot out there that says this is really meaningful to... I know exactly the kind of immersive memory you're talking about that feels so particular and so special and so important and yet insignificant. It's about the intensity of feeling that you experience in that moment rather than the actual thing that happened. Although the importance, the external importance of the thing that happened, I suppose I'd say.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. That word intensity that you just said, that's it. I feel it with intensity, and it feels very big even for the so smallest thing. So, it makes really cool art. I'll say that I'm very proud of my art that I've made. At the same time, it can be challenging, because I wonder if you've ever had this experience in some way of where I'll get these points where I'll start to communicate in my way, and I'm just like, "Whatever. I'm just going for it." I'm like, "You're just going to have to just follow me. I cannot do it in that whole structure of the other way. I can't do it. It's just going to come out of order. It's going to come out the way I speak, the way I think about it." Then I'll have someone say, "Okay, but can you say that less poetic or less metaphorically?" I'm like, "Those weren't metaphors."
I was actually talking about the intensity of the sun and how hot the sun felt. When I'm writing about light, I'm talking about the sun. It's not just poetic. If I'm outside and the sun is shining, I'm like, "Oh, there's a sun and it's found me. I feel it. I feel the heat of that." That's not just poetic language for me.
Katherine May:
No, absolutely. If I express it in the way that I've processed it, loads of people won't understand what I'm talking about. I know I won't be using conventional language. I do often think that the reason I get away with being a writer is because I just am expressing my perception and that comes across as original. I'm not sure if that's the same. I'm just emptying the inside of my head really.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. I love that visual. I'll have to find the sketch and send it to you. I started working on a piece. I can't finish it, but I think you'll appreciate the sketch. It's this little stick figure that's sitting there with an ink pin and the top of their head is open and it's just spaghetti chaos-
Katherine May:
I know that's so wow.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
... coming out before them onto the page. It's not illustrated very well. For me at least, it's very hard to illustrate. But I was like, "I'll just keep the sketch as a reminder of yeah, this is what it feels like."
Katherine May:
I can feel it already. I know exactly the quality of experience. But I mean, what we're pointing to is that you are so accomplished in so many different ways. You're a beautiful writer. You're an illustrator. You're a musician, and you have this presence everywhere. You come off as incredibly energetic and all of it being integrated. That makes me envious really, because you have all these different modes of expression that you can deploy to say what you need to say. What comes first? When I look at your Instagram feed, for example, that's probably where most people see your work most immediately. The words and the images and the messaging, the overall arc of what you're trying to explain to the world are all tangled together in a really beautiful way.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Thank you.
Katherine May:
Do they land in your head in that entangled way, or do you do one part of it first and then respond to the other with a different part of your craft?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. That's such a good question. It's interesting. I really appreciate you saying that, because sometimes I have a hard time seeing the beauty in it. I know that may sound like a lot to say. It's like, "Well, you make art with colors and all that. How do you not see?" But for me, it is very hard to appreciate it in a way at times, because it does come in so chaotically, if that makes sense. It feels like it's coming toward me in a way. I will have some days where I think I wake up and I'm thinking about how much it bothers me that the curtain in the bedroom is so sheer, because I'm like, "Sometimes I just want darkness in here."
But at the same time, I really like the texture of the fabric and the way that it looks when the sun is coming through it. So, if I get rid of the curtain, then I'm going to lose that. I'll spend forever thinking about that when I have actual stuff on the calendar that I need to do. I'll just lie in bed for five minutes and just stare at that and think about that.
Katherine May:
Soak that problem.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I cannot get rid of it. So, what I do is I try to trick myself into, "Well, maybe I need to talk about it somewhere so I can get it out." I bring that into the art part. So, I'm like, "Okay, there's something about translucence that I'm really into." So I'll just start painting something translucent. I may not even finish the piece, but I would just see that as my way of this is me talking it out, because there's just so much of that in my head. Sometimes it makes it hard to focus. But to answer your question in a more direct way that you asked-
Katherine May:
No, that's fine. I completely think that way.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
The words probably come the closest to the last. So, I have such rare moments of the words coming in this very sentence-like way or even poem-like way that I can remember them. I wrote a song. This was 10 years ago, and I heard the words first. I remember exactly where I was standing in the kitchen. I was two steps before the coffee maker when that came to me. That is how rare that is. I was like, "Are these words?"
Katherine May:
Yeah, the really particular moments.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
This is amazing.
Katherine May:
What is this?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I can write it down. I don't have to go sing it. I don't have to go color it. I can just go write it down. Wow. So, yeah, I'm not going to lie. Sometimes I'm reading your work. I'm like, "Oh, I need more words. I want more of these." So yes.
Katherine May:
I wonder if putting the words to it makes it easier for other people to process rather than you as well.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes.
Katherine May:
I think that's an opening for you. Yeah. That makes sense.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
The way you just said that, I needed that. I'm like, "Oh, that's what it is. Thank you. Thank you."
Katherine May:
Well, I mean, I think if wasn't more conscious of my audience, my writing would all be about trying to pin down particular feelings that are really unpindownable and it would be quite floaty and anchored, but I'm now like, "Other people have to make sense of this."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. What you just said about other people having to make sense of it, that's very well said. Because I do want to communicate and do want to share. Even outside of my public artist's life, just in personal life, if I'm texting someone, I'm sending lots of pictures. I'm sending graphs. If someone's coming in my house, I know other people don't need it, but I'll just do it. I'll go out inside and show them this is what the mailbox looks like. It's hard to find, the street. Ring the doorbell here. So, I'm sending pictures.
Katherine May:
That's really sensible actually.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. Because I know if somebody sends me a wall of texts of instruction somewhere, I'm like, "I'm not remembering that. I'm sorry." These pictures, go over the bridge. What bridge? Is it almost footbridge or is it an industrial city bridge? I need to know these things.
Katherine May:
I think we can all agree that instructions in words are awful. Why would you put that in words? Why in a paragraph? At least make it a list for me with numbers.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah, I can't do all that.
Katherine May:
Yeah, no, I can't convert words into a picture. I find it very hard to picture things. So, yeah, I can't make that translation.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I get a lot of pictures with a word.
Katherine May:
Yeah. This is all making me think of the beginning of You Are Only Just Beginning, which is your newest book where you give us this image of your son building a wooden train track through the house. For me, I don't know, it downloaded a whole lot of stuff, because my son loved to play with his wooden train track when he was younger. So, for a start, I completely recognized it. It surprised me how he played with it, because I thought that if you built a train track, you built the track quite quickly and then the whole thing was running the trains over it. But for him, the thing was definitely building the train track.
I realized after a while, that that was a narrative in itself for him, the way that the track was built and the way that it inhabited the space in the room. I suddenly thought about how children's play enchants our spaces, how it creates these beautiful stories that weave their way around our houses, that it's really tempting to see us mess.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. Oh, goodness.
Katherine May:
But actually, it's a mode of communication when we do that. They're making the space theirs and they're creating a story in it, even if that story isn't a readable story, a story that we would recognize as a story immediately.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. That resonates with me so much the way that you said that, because I've been learning so much just watching my son, because with his train tracks, similar to what you just said, I remember thinking, "Oh, I think he might like some train tracks." Oh, well, yeah. He loves them.
Katherine May:
They love a train track.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I was like, "Okay, yes, you're going to build a track and then the trains will go on it." But it's more of that process of finding the way through his own version of a story and creating his own patterns and its own rhythms and in just laying that foundation over and over and over again of, "Yes, I want to lay it down this way and I want to lay it down that way" and not make it so much about "But it's got to be in a way that I can then get the train on it and then go." Sometimes that train is not even necessarily a part of the scenario. It's just more about, "What can I do with these tracks?"
I was just so fascinated by watching that. It just reminded me of my own childhood. That was my approach. I would just collect sticks and I didn't know why. Grownups would ask me, "What are you going to do with stick and rocks?" I was convinced that every little asphalt rock was secretly a gem, and I was going to be the one who discovered that.
Katherine May:
It is. It totally is. It's true.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I would just collect them and I would have grownups immediately try to attach it to, "Oh, do you want to be this swing girl?" I'm like, "I don't know. I just collecting sticks, especially the sticks."
Katherine May:
That is not the thing.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I still don't know why I was collecting those sticks. But now when I look at my poetry and I look at the way that I write and the way that I write stories, I see, "Oh, I'm collecting. I'm bringing these things in and not pressuring myself to always know what to do with them." That's especially important in a world where there's so much input. You do have to have, according to social standards, something to say or something to do with it. For an autistic person, that can be as simple as someone speaks to you at the grocery store, people expect an immediate response. Whereas for me-
Katherine May:
You're not allowed to go think about it for a while.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Exactly. Whereas for me, naturally, if I weren't just thinking about all the social everything, if someone just approached me like that, it would take me much longer in my natural rhythm to actually process what they said and then respond. So, yeah, in that way, it's that placing of the train track of I actually don't know where this is going to lead. I actually don't know where that placing of the sticks that I've collected on my table for no reason other than just I did. It creates more space in this world that makes that very hard to do in so many other settings.
Katherine May:
Yeah. I mean, it seems to me that the placing of sticks, that the reordering of things, that the gathering of things is a way of creating a symbolic structure to thinking whatever that is. When I run retreats, I always begin by getting people to go out and gather stuff. Because people just love to do it. It's so soothing to go and gather because there's choosing involved. You get to select the thing you gather for a start. You get to say, "Oh, that's a really pretty stone. I really want that stone in my pocket." There's the tactile element to it that it's satisfying in your hand and it's somatic.
I mean, it's actually stone above everything else, because it's so heavy, so soothing to have that weighing in your palm. Then if you ask people to explain something while they're handling the thing they gathered, it transforms their thinking every time. It makes it so much easier to express and to go deep, to go deep really quickly. I always start with gathering. It occurred to me while you were talking that we are really comfortable as a society with people gathering if that stuff is valuable, but we get really itchy about gathering worthless... I'm doing big scare quotes in the end of it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Oh, my goodness.
Katherine May:
[inaudible 00:30:10] podcast. Worthless objects, but actually, there's different value to gathering things like stones and sticks and leaves and shells and bird nests and feathers. There's something about that that's intrinsically soothing.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. Oh, my goodness. Yes. It is wow. So, I have to find a way to sneak into one of your retreats now.
Katherine May:
You're very welcome.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I want to gather.
Katherine May:
Exactly.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
That sounds amazing, but yeah, it's very fascinating, the gathering and the collecting. It's like, "Well, what's the purpose of it?" It's like, "I don't know. I can't tell you." It made me think about an experience-
Katherine May:
But it hasn't got words. It hasn't got words attached to it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Exactly. It made me think about an experience I've had on this. I used to fly way more than I do, but this is years ago when this happened. So, when I do have to write, I overwrite. So, I'm just like, "Every word that I can possibly come up with that has ever been a word that I've ever thought, I'm going to get it on this page." So one thing I would do is if I was on a flight, I'm like, "All right, no distractions. I'm going to write." So I would open up. I should also say, I've always written. I've kept a journal or diary since I was eight years old. So, I've always written.
Katherine May:
Oh, wow.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
But if you read them, they do not follow here's what happened this way. I have an actual diary from age 10 where I cut off the lock of my hair and I taped it on the inside and I dedicated about three pages to talking about hair, knowing nothing about it.
Katherine May:
Oh, wow.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So I don't know. Don't know why I did that. So, anyway, I do write.
Katherine May:
Why would you not collect your hair?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I just have all these moments when I look back, it's like, "How did you not know?" Now I know that I'm autistic, but I was just constantly looking for my way. What is my way of communicating?
Katherine May:
But you know what? That just means that no one in your family freaked out about it and dragged you to a doctor though. Just like, "Okay, she's storing her hair. That's fine."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
That's very true. That is such a good way of thinking about it. Yes, there is absolutely some neurodiversity in my family. So, I must say I am grateful for that because there was a lot there, me as a kid. So, yes, when I was-
Katherine May:
Sorry, I interrupted you.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
No, I'm so glad you said that though. I am getting so much from talking to you. I appreciate it. So, let me remember what I was trying to say. Sorry about that.
Katherine May:
Yeah, sorry. My fault.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Well, yeah, no, I love it. But I was on a flight, and this happened a few times where I was trying to write. I was just like, "I have no distractions. I'm going to write." Because that's not really how I think in terms of let me jot down a few notes. I'm just very freehand, stream of consciousness, just writing. Numerous times, getting off the flight after, I had someone walked up to me and say, "What were you writing? What were you writing?"
Katherine May:
I hate it when people do that.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
What were you writing? I was like, "I don't know." People would freak out about that.
Katherine May:
Why would it be any of their business? What would I tell you, stranger?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Numerous times, different flights. It just got me thinking about how I'm like... I don't know what it was in ancient times, but whatever this current version of the world that it is, it's interesting to me that it's such a novel thing to see a grownup do something like that. It's not like I was singing where everyone could hear. I was just sitting in my own chair, just writing in a journal.
Katherine May:
But people find it quite disturbing when you do it, I think, or some people find it quite disturbing. They're unsettled by it. I think I've talked about this before, but I had it once in a museum where I'd looked at the exhibition and I'd sat at the side on a bench and just started to write some things down, some stuff that was buzzing around my mind from seeing that fascinating material. The museum guard came up to me and was like, "What are you doing?" I was like, "I'm taking notes." He was like, "Well, what about?" I was like, "Why does it matter?" There was no way in which this is threatening.
After a while, he did stop pretending that he was asking as a museum guard and just admitted that he was just curious. He didn't often see people do it. You could tell he was a little unsettled, and I was unsettled by the attention because it felt like I was doing a private thing that I should be allowed to just do. I mean, why aren't more people sitting at the side of museums writing stuff down? It seems like a really natural response to that environment. To me, it's full of interesting things. I'm going to capture it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. Oh, exactly. I just love that. I mean, I don't love that you had that experience because you shouldn't have had that experience. But I guess for me, I love to know I'm not alone. It just helps to know. Okay, so I'm not the only one experiencing this. One thing I have thought about that I've shared a few times that when it comes to the writing, because for instance, I'm writing these two papers right now. I do have to, and they are for grades. I do have to get the things into words. But what helps me get there is by first carving out that space for me to be able to do it in my own way first.
So, even when I'm writing a research paper, I'm like, "Let me just dedicate a few pages to just writing about all the ways that is interesting to me and not worrying about the structure, not worrying about how much of this ties into my larger thesis right away." There's this one guy who did some cool stuff with computers. I won't bore everybody with it, but his name is Ben Laposky. I'm just really into what Ben did, because Ben was not about the final product. He learned how to make these really amazing images in, I think, the '50s on the computer screen, but he wasn't even saving them. He was just like, "I'm just looking at them."
I've just been so fascinated about his work. I knew, okay, all of that's not going to make it into this 8,000-word paper that I'm writing, but I'm like, "I want to talk about it first for me. I'm going to carve out that time for myself and allow myself to do that, because I think that's important." When it comes to writing, I do think it's very interesting. I mean, at least here in the US, this is what it's like, where in school, that's the main place where you're learning to write. It becomes one of the place where a lot of people are writing long form and the only time.
So, a lot of us are getting exposed to writing and writing becomes something that is always graded. I wonder if that has some effect on there's probably more people out there who would like to just grab a journal and just go for it. But it's like if the only time where you even had a composition book was in a classroom-
Katherine May:
People were going to see it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes, the whole concept of buying-
Katherine May:
And judge it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
... school supplies.
Katherine May:
Explicitly judge it.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. I was fortunate that my mom is a writer. So, she was very excited about buying my sister and I journals and notebooks and stuff. I think that helped me a little bit because it helped me not always associate writing with classroom structure. My mom, she just loves it. Oh, look at this gold journal. Isn't it amazing? Whenever me and my sister were interested in at the time, she would find a journal for it. So, I have a journal with cameras on it because she's like, "You like cameras. Here's a camera journal."
Katherine May:
That's amazing.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. So, my sister was really into bunnies at one time, so she would get bunnies. So, we have all these journals and notebooks and ink pens, and my mom loves that stuff. So, I think that that played a huge role in me seeing that writing can be fun. It can be something exciting. My mom bought me this journal.
Katherine May:
Because not everyone gets to see that actually.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Exactly. Yes.
Katherine May:
I mean, I think what you're saying is so permission giving for loads of people, and even for me, you saying, "In my journal, I didn't really write journal stuff. I stuck bits of my hair." Actually, I would say to you, I've never kept a journal because I haven't felt like I did journaling as it's presented to us. But I've done loads of that, recording all the different colors of every lipstick I ever bought. That suddenly makes Sense.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'm like, "Why haven't I done that? I want to do that."
Katherine May:
Well, yeah. Now, you will.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Oh, I love it. Love it, love it, love it.
Katherine May:
But I don't love running writing workshops anymore, because what I've noticed is people bring really weird energy into that room and it's not their fault, but it's because the contact they've had with the teaching of writing or learning around writing has always been about competition and judgment. It's really hard to get people out of that space and into a place of actual growth and learning and actual genuine exploration, rather than performative writing and checking over their shoulder about what other people are doing. I really feel people's feelings when I'm in a room with them. I actually can't tolerate the feeling of that room anymore when people are so anxious about the act of writing, which I just think is so tragic.
We do that in schools because we grade people's personal expression, which I'm just not really sure we should actually do. So, I will go back to teaching writing one day, but I only want to do it when I get enough time with people to calm them into the space and to set the rules. When I run a workshop for another organization or something like that, it makes me end up feeling very uncomfortable.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. Oh, I can so relate to what you're saying in that the energy thing is very, very resonant for me, because I feel that too. I've taught a few writing workshops and I've finished some feeling so exhausted because-
Katherine May:
Yeah, so drained. Yeah.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
... I'm trying to help guide beyond the words, but if you come there for words though, that was like, "No, I need words. Not beyond the words, I need words." I'm like, "No, we could actually sit here and make a collage out of an old magazine." That's right. That's a part of the process. So, yeah, that is something I've been thinking about more and more, even just wanting to share what I've been learning in this journey of writing, of just how can I share the textures and the sounds and all these other things that inform the book.
Because by the time it gets to the book, it's been so many things before that. In my book, You're Only Just Beginning, there's so many of the art pieces in there that were photographs from my phone first and then I just zoomed in on them and found this little color palette inside the photo. Sometimes these photos are just like, "Oh, my coffee mug was shimmering in the light in this particular way." It's just an iPhone photo. No one would look at it more than one second. I'm literally going into the photo because I'm zooming in on it to the point of pixels. Then I just start selecting colors out of it. I'm just like, "Oh, just these, let's say, 20 pixels." Because when you zoom in on that image on the iPad, it really shows you. Oh, these are just pixels.
We call it a digital photo, but they're pixels. How cool is that? So I look at those pixels and I'm like, "Just these 20 pixels tell a story all on their own, and I can just expand on that." Eventually, the word to poetry rises up out of it or sometimes it is weird. I use different language. Sometimes I'll say it rises up out of it. Sometimes I feel like it comes to me. Sometimes I feel like it comes out of me. I don't know. Those words are very sneaky in how they appear.
Katherine May:
Either way, it's passive, isn't it? It's like you don't summon the words. You don't make the words. The words arrive from one direction or another.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Oh, my goodness. Yes. Absolutely, that's so it. I also have another thing I've been unpacking too as I start to do some genealogy. I've just recognized that wait, it's actually relatively new in terms of actual generations of humans in my family, for us to have been speaking English in the first place. So, I was like, "Maybe I'm putting too much pressure on myself to sort it all out in the English language," because I was like, "That's the only one I know. I only know English, but-"
Katherine May:
Do other members of your family speak different languages, or does it go back further than that?
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. So, I'm more so saying in terms of more so everybody in my immediate family-
Katherine May:
Yeah, historically.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
... speaks English.
Katherine May:
Yeah, I was just wondering if there was any other languages that were washing around in your mind.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I wish that there was more, because what I do know is just because of slavery, well, there's other languages, but I don't know what they were. But I was like, "That's not that far back." Because I believe was my great-great-grandfather was born a slave and died free.
Katherine May:
That's just so close.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
So I was like, "That's not that long ago." So to me, thinking about language, I'm just like, "Well, obviously, the English language has changed too." Language changes so much. It probably wasn't even English that long ago in my family. So, I'm like, yeah, that passive part that you said really spoke to me, because I'm like, "Yeah, I'm going to leave it there. I'm going to let it be this thing that I have this very interesting relationship with." Of course, it's even more complicated being autistic, but it's like, "I'm going to just let it be, let it be, and just let them come as they come."
Katherine May:
Let it come and let it be receptive and let it arrive. The training comes in learning to be receptive, rather than learning to make the work for me anyway. But that makes me think of the bit in your book, in the section on the sea, because you take these elements that are quiet every day and transform them into different meanings and different movements within the book. But there's a beautiful bit where, and I wrote this quote down, you talk about the dream of my ancestors who were not meant to survive in the context of the ocean and the idea of the ocean as a space where people were lost. There's that association with unfathomable deaths, both of meaning and emotion and of the sea in which people were thrown in.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes. That line is probably the most important line to me in the book. So, it just means so much that that stood out to you because-
Katherine May:
Oh, it really did. Yeah.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
It helped me finally get at the words of what I feel so heavy when I look at something in nature such as the water. For me, it is this deeply complex thing, because yes, I love the blueness of the water and it calms me. I turn on my ocean sounds to try to go to sleep. At the same time, it's this deeply complex thing where it's like I know that there are stories that I may not even actually want to even know. If I knew them, it would break me. So, trying to bring all of that into the form of words in a poem is very difficult for me because it's a space of peace and chaos of joy and suffering in terms of my relationship with it.
So, that's very hard to put it in a poem that can help other people connect with it. So, I can honestly say that I worked it out through the color blue. The color blue was my entry point. I knew when I started to map out the book, which is very hard for me to do. I don't really plan things out very well naturally. Here's my plan.
Katherine May:
Yeah, no, [inaudible 00:47:10].
Morgan Harper Nichols:
As you know working with editors, it's like, "Okay, where's your outline?" What are you talking about? So literally, the whole book, my outline was colors.
Katherine May:
Wow.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
There's something blue here. It was blue before... I knew the butterflies first. So, the butterflies are the end of the book. I knew that was the homecoming, because that was the impetus for the whole book. Monarch butterflies just sent me on this wild journey of... Anyway, back to the blue. I was like, "There's something blue here, and I don't know what it is." That's when it became blue. Oh, it's the ocean. Oh, it's this and it's that. It's going deeper, but the tension of going deeper. It's going deeper, but the struggle of knowing what happened here also. So, that was the way that I got there. It was definitely a moment of, okay, yeah, that actually did get at what I was trying to say.
Katherine May:
Well, in a weird way, that little bit made me feel strangely optimistic because you are writing this fundamentally inspirational book that leads people into their future and gives them all these positive ways to model their journey and the idea of adventure coming through. But you know what? I love it that we can no longer divorce that from the history that has caused such suffering. I love that that is now integrated and that you have permission to do that. It's so important that you're able to do that. I thought, "I'm so grateful to see this in here."
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Thank you for saying that, because that is how I've been feeling more and more in that I want to bring that forth. It takes great courage to do that just because, as we all know, the internet in particular is just anybody can tell you anything about anything and they will let you know. They'll find a way to tell you. So, a lot of times, I do hold back with certain things, not because I'm like, "Oh, I'm so afraid to say what I actually..." It's just, "Oh, I have to now manage all of the comments or questions that what come as-"
Katherine May:
All of which are completely predictable as well. The worst part of that is you know exactly what those comments are going to be, and they're going to come anyway.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Exactly. Oh, my goodness. So, yeah, I've been working on that in myself of just figuring out, "Well, how can I tell my story?" Especially just the more I realize post-diagnosis even of just how can I share more of this in a way that I don't feel pressure to either make it either way more serious or more joyful? How can I tell both at the same time?
Katherine May:
As it is.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yeah. In one way, it's hard to do, but then in another way, it's like, "Well, that's what life is. Life is joy and suffering." It's not like a 50/50 like, "Okay, today's a joy day." It's very complicated to live with that tension.
Katherine May:
All of it knitted together.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
I'm trying to bring that more forth with the words and just really thinking about that.
Katherine May:
Oh, Morgan, that's probably a great place for us to end because that's such a beautiful thought and it takes us back to that idea of everything being intertwined with purpose and meaning and adventure and desire and grief and sadness and all of life mixed in together.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Yes.
Katherine May:
Thank you so much. That was a beautiful conversation.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Thank you.
Katherine May:
I'll make sure that there are really good links so everyone can find you.
Morgan Harper Nichols:
Thank you as well. I was looking forward to chatting with you today, and this is just such an honor. Thank you so much.
Show Notes
When I spoke to Morgan Harper Nichols, she was taking a break from assignment-writing for the MFA in Interdisciplinary Media Arts she’s studying. That’s a telling detail for this exuberant soul: she has ideas and energy to spare, and she’s always learning, always reaching towards new forms. A visual artist, writer, musician, speaker and podcaster, I always see her as a communicator first and foremost. She draws on all these different modes of expression to facilitate the sheer urgency of what she has to say.
In this episode, I talk with Morgan about the ways that her work ushers us towards a kind of reenchantment with life itself - but, in all honesty, I quickly lost control of the whole interview. Like me, Morgan is autistic, and I got lost in the joy of spending an hour in her thoughtful, inquisitive company. This is a conversation about how we see our work and the world around us, and how creativity helps us to connect.
Morgan Harper Nichols is an autistic mixed media artist from the Atlanta, Georgia area who has worked with brands such as Google, Starbucks, Hallmark, COACH, KIND bar, and her work has been featured in places such as Target, Anthropologie, Kohls, Barnes & Noble, among others. She is the author of books that combine words and vibrant images, including You Are Only Just Beginning, How Far You Have Come, All Along You Were Blooming, and Peace is a Practice. She is also the creator of the Storyteller app, and her podcast, The Morgan Harper Nichols Show.
Links from the episode:
Morgan's website
Morgan’s instagram
Morgan’s podcast, The Morgan Harper Nichols Show
Morgan's book, You Are Only Just Beginning: Lessons for the Journey Ahead
Other episodes you might enjoy:
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Enchantment - Available Now
“Katherine May gave so many of us language and vision for the long communal ‘wintering’ of the last years. Welcome this beautiful meditation for the time we’ve now entered. I cannot imagine a more gracious companion. This book is a gift.”
New York Times bestselling author Krista Tippett
