#Conversate w/ Joel Leon
ICYMI: We chatted with Brooklyn-based writer, creative director, poet and actor Joel Leon about the audacity to chase every creative ambition you have.
#Conversate is a Twitter Spaces series engaging Black writers and the Black writing community at large in conversation about the challenges, trials and beauty of storytelling.
Our first #Conversate guest, Joel Leon, is possibly an expert at reaching for the stars while staying grounded in the everyday rhythms of adult life. He is a writer, a Twitter favorite, an author, a TedTalk speaker, a creative director at the New York Times, a spoken word poet, and a father of two. Here are some favorite moments from our chat with Joel.
On balancing full-time work with creative ambitions:
I'm very much a fan of keeping the 9 to 5 and letting it fund the other work.
On being more than one thing:
When people call me certain things, like I don’t want to be known as the affirmation guy, I’m an artist. That’s what I do. I do it exceptionally well. The things that I post — that’s not my poetry. What I’m sharing on Instagram and Twitter are just my heartfelt thoughts coming from the source.
On constant self-evaluation:
The question I try to ask myself and implore each of us to ask is, “Who am I if I am not ___.” Who am I if I’m not a mother? Who am I if I’m not a creative? We can get to the root of why we’ve chosen this path, why this path aligns with us and does it actually.
My favorite people are the most curious people who are consistently and constantly asking questions about their craft, their hearts, their love lives, and the people they love.
On being bold:
Whether I’m writing it or speaking, I speak candidly because it’s important to me and healthy for me to be transparent in that way. It also allows other people to have the opportunity to be bold and daring. That’s the world I wanna live in, where people can be their most dynamic selves, especially if you’re a Black person. When we’re giving each other the opportunity and the grace to live bravely, the work we get to do, we can’t even imagine it. I’m trying to tap into whatever that thing is. I want to be the greatest of all time.
““I’m very much a fan of keeping the nine-to-five and letting it fund the other work.””
On the privilege of saying “no”:
I wanna say yes to the things that speak to me. I also recognize the privilege that comes from that because I recognize where I was when I couldn’t [say no to anything]. Working my retail job and my case manager job, I was still living at my mom's. There were so many things that were forcing me to say yes.
I think there’s a level of acute awareness that I’ve tried to maintain. I might think I’m a superstar, but no one knows, and no one gives a shit…It was always this self-assuredness of myself that everybody might not know I’m dope, but somebody here probably will. I need to catch the attention of the person that is important enough to leverage my dopeness. I knew there was going to come a time and point where I didn’t have to say yes to anything anymore, which is where I am now.
On his gritty spoken word album, The Kids Are Listening:
Labels give us direction, but when you look at my spoken word project, I don’t really consider it a spoken word album. It’s more than a spoken word album.
You can hear the girls running around on separate tracks if you listen hard enough. There were certain times I kept the sound of me opening my notebook and turning the page because I wanted you to feel as close as you could to the experience I was trying to create with the project.
On thinking differently about love:
An article by The Cut on relationship anarchy. Regardless of how you feel about polyamory, relationship anarchy, for me, is a beautiful way to deconstruct the hierarchies that we have been assigned.
Relationship anarchy is essentially saying there are no hierarchies in any relationship. We’re just existing in this world to love each other and romanticize our lives. That romance gets to live outside of what’s deemed to be a primary partnership. We can find romance in platonic relationships and even in the work we do.
Photo credit: Ramon Diaz
