Today I am delighted to be posting an interview I recently did with Chicago writer, activist and yoga practitioner, Michael McColly. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Ascent, The Sun and other journals. His last book, The After-Death Room: Journey Into Spiritual Activism
(published by Soft Skull Press), about his journey throughout Africa and Asia in order to come to terms with the global AIDS epidemic was a Lambda Award winner for Spiritual Writing in 2007. Michael also leads international writing and yoga retreats and teaches in the Graduate Program at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and Columbia College. See more of his work at: www.michaelmccolly.com and his blog on creativity and yoga: www.michaelmccolly.vox.comMichael, thanks so much for joining us today. We’ve known each other such long time, it’s hard to believe. I think we first met in the 80s at the Field Museum of Natural History where we both worked in education. Since then, you have been on quite a journey! You wear so many hats: writer, yoga practitioner, public speaker, writing professor and activist. How do you keep all those balls in the air and still maintain balance in your life?
I have grown two more hands. Never thought I could but you'd be surprised how magical yoga can be. All kidding aside, I do have a lot of energy, which is in large part because I've learned to pay close attention to my body. I do practice yoga regularly, even if just for half an hour. I am writing now about walking and hiking and it's affects on the mind and body, so I walk a lot too. I live with HIV, and I’ve learned that caring for my health has to come first. But more than that, I need a break from my mind, from the patterns of worry and the endless tasks that we are saddled with, exercise and especially being out of doors, focusing and feeling my feet on the ground or swimming or walking in nature, is extremely important to reset my brain. As writers, we are unnecessarily chained to this machine, and it ain’t good.
I try to follow your blog, Yoga and Creativity: Practicing the Art of Living, whenever I can. You have written so many intriguing pieces on topics such as neuroscience and the imagination, walking and mindfulness, memory and nature, yoga and the creative process and so on. It seems that your practice of yoga intensely informs just about everything in your life. Would you mind talking a little about the connection between yoga and your own writing?
Look, I live with a chronic disease with no health insurance and had struggled with depression and addiction for many years before I was diagnosed. I see yoga as just a technique to keep me alive and awake. But, after practicing for a long time and teaching yoga as well, you begin to realize that your mind and body need focused attention and objective care. And you can get this in many ways. People in many of the arts discover that their entire body begins to serve as an antennae and as a vessel for expression. Many poets seem to understand this--Whitman, Hughes, Neruda, Lorca. "I sing the body electric." This isn't a cute phrase. It's a fact. But, you have to learn how to read it so as to translate it for others. And this takes some kind of discipline--so systematic way to learn to listen and feel and trust.
Some of us are lucky and grow up in worlds full of sensualists or a natural world that teaches us. I need a discipline like yoga to help me retrain my mind so that I can learn to explore sensation not as a means to and end—to be a better writer or better lover or something—but to simply be more alive. When you listen and feel your body, particularly in meditation, you become dumbfounded by where it begins to take you: into emotion, into your the workings of your imagination, into the far reaches of your unconscious mind, and most amazingly into the world.
Perception is a two way street. "Every act of perception is an act of creativity." (My favorite quote from Octavio Paz--but he got it from Merleau Ponty, the great French philosopher.) Cezanne spent years trying to paint Mountains. That's exactly what I mean. He used contemplation to help him see. The Zen poets and artists knew this a long time ago. And of course the first artists were those responsible for creating ritual, maskmakers, dancers, musicians, icon makers, (the word for image comes from the latin imagio--"a ritual substitute") or the singers or chanters who all knew that the mind and body needed to be entrained in order to be able to see with big eyes and feel with the big heart. Whew.
Thanks for that really thoughtful answer Michael. I particularly love that quote by Octavio Paz via Ponty. Anyway, some of my readers have been curious about retreats (as opposed to artist residencies) so I wanted to ask you about the yoga and writing retreats you do. One of the places you take participants to in Guatemala looks like paradise! Can you tell us about the yoga and writing retreats you lead?
I do workshops all the time, fusing art-making, creative writing, and yoga. It’s nothing special. You do some breathing, you lie down, you imagine, you record, you do some poses, you focus, you take a hike, you draw some things. It’s play and you feel good. Your artistic sensibilities come alive. I love doing retreats in Guatemala because I love to hike and swim and kayak around Lake Atitlan. I think people who participate in these retreats enjoy the chance to be in their bodies, and appreciate the chance to rest, eat well, swim, see beautiful flowers and be around the Guatemalan people. My retreats are low-key. No computers.Wow, I'd love to go to one of your retreats some time! So Michael, I know that you have attended different artist residencies before, like Blue Mountain Center in the Aiderondacks, MacDowell Colony and others. What do you feel is the main difference between a residency at an art colony and a retreat, in particular, one of your retreats? What are the benefits of both?
Oh, there's nothing like a residency. I wrote my book at several residencies: Ragdale, Yaddo, MacDowell, Blue Mountain. I can't thank them enough. it's the chance to breathe and just be with your work, take naps, walk, read things that you’ve never read, listen to the intelligent and wiser artists who have lived through many struggles and learn from them. They may have a few egos around but you’ll always find good souls. I met people that had an enormous affect on my work, who are still dear friends. Community building. We need it desperately as writers.
I read your amazing memoir, The After-Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism about your personal and political sojourn throughout Africa and Asia. Do you have a new book brewing in the back of your mind these days? Or are you taking some time to regroup, meditate and work on some shorter pieces of work?
There is a line from Thoreau’s Walden that seems to pop up everywhere once I read it. It says something like this: “The surface of the earth is soft and impressible by the feet of men, and so with the paths which the mind travels.” For the past ten years I’ve been hiking in the deserts and mountains of the southwest, traveling to find some refuge from these very paths Thoreau speaks about. Neuroscience has unveiled promising discoveries to help us understand the how the brain functions but it has placed a mirror before us and made us see just how dangerous it is to remain stubbornly ignorant to what we are doing to the health of our bodies by neglecting the health of the planet.
Perhaps I’m selfish but all I want to do these days is hike and walk even if it’s in the city where I live in Chicago. It’s as if my mind needs the comfort of the feeling of my feet in motion and in touch with the world. I’m trying to understand why we have become so removed from the earth in such a short time and what effect it is having on us. I’m walking and writing and walking more, trying to feel my feet and listen to what comes from paying attention to what I’ve felt I’ve lost: my relationship to the land. And I’ve been writing of course—about the great hikes of my life, of my many sojourns in the desert, of my hikes along the Appalachian Trail, in the savannas of Africa in the Peace Corps, and now just the streets and the strangely beautiful and sorrowful industrial wastelands of Chicago and Northern Indiana where ironically the study of ecology began. How can one afford not to write about our relationship with the earth now?
Michael, thank you so much for your insightful responses to my questions. I really appreciate your thoughtfulness and candor. I’ve heard such great things about your retreats and I can see why. I look forward to taking one some day and also to seeing you back in Sweet Home Chicago! Thanks so much.
You can find out more about Michael McColly, his writing and the retreats he offers by visiting www.michaelmccolly.com or his blog at www.michaelmccolly.vox.com. For more information on his latest book, The After-Death Room: Journey into Spiritual Activism, click on the Amazon link.