Charlie Sandlan (00:00:03):
I think it is very important as a creative person to as much as you can surround yourself with people who inspire you, who challenge you to think in different ways, to build friendships and creative relationships with people that you feel are more talented than you, smarter than you, that really force you in an exciting way to level up your game. The more you can do that, I think the more it improves just the quality of your life, but also improves your artistic output. Today, I get to share with you a conversation with one of my new friends who's come into my life, and I'm very, very fortunate to have had many, many, many conversations with her. Jillian Marshall, she has a PhD in ethnomusicology.
What the fuck is that? We're going to find out. She is a published writer. She is a jazz trumpeter, a pianist. She's played at Carnegie Hall. She's rift with Wynton Marsalis. She speaks Mandarin and Japanese fluently. And today, we're going to talk about what it means to live a creative life. Put the phone back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now. Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers, friendships, they're really important. When you're young, I'm finding this now looking back, in your twenties and thirties, it's easy to make friends. If you're in class, you're in school, you're training and you've got your classmates, you bond with them.
If you've got survival jobs and you go from one bartending job to a catering job, to a waiting job, you meet a lot of people along the way. You go out after work. You socialize. The next thing you know, you build this kind of community of people. You do a show. You do a film. You make friendships. But I'm telling you, I find as you get older, it's harder to do actually to make new friends. At 52, it's not like I'm making new friendships left and right. All of my friends, my core group that I've known 15, 20, 25 years now, I mean, they're all over the place. They're all over the country. All over the world really. They've got their families and kids and jobs. If you see each other two, maybe three times a year, if that, then wow, it's been a good year.
When Jillian came back into my life recently, I was pleasantly surprised. I met Jillian in 2017 for the first time, and it was very brief. She had a friend who was at the studio and she was in New York City visiting down from Cornell. She was getting her PhD in ethnomusicology, which we're going to talk about. It came up that she had lived a number of years in Japan. I was actually just a couple of months away from going to Japan on a solo vacation, and we just hit it off. After a 10, 15 minute conversation with this woman, I was like, "You're fucking smart." Her use of language, her intellectual heft was just clearly... It was clearly on point and it really caused me to level up. She was saying things to me which were just deeply impressive.
It just stuck with me. Fast forward to just a couple of months ago, I get this email from Jillian. She was like, "I don't know if you remember me. We had this conversation in your office, and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd love get a coffee with you and just talk about teaching and academia and about art." I just thought absolutely. Why not? Okay. I'll tell you, after a couple of coffees and maybe three or four hours of conversation with her, I was just like, "You have to come on the podcast." She's a new friend for me, and I'm very grateful and appreciative to be able to say that. She's one of the smartest people I have ever met. That's the first thing I'll say about Jillian. I listed off all those things that she was in the open.
I mean, she's got this book called Japanthem, which came out earlier this year. The full title is called Japanthem: Counter-Cultural Experiences, Cross-Cultural Remixes. I highly recommend it. I've just started it. It is really fascinating. It'll certainly open your mind to a different culture, her experience of spending a number of years in Japan. But she's also a musician and she speaks three languages. She's just very, very smart. I really enjoyed talking to her. This conversation is great. I learned a lot from her. I had never heard of Lester Bowie until I started to talk to Jillian. She put me onto his album Duet with Phillip Wilson, a great drummer. I had no idea who Sun Ra was. Great jazz musician. I learned something there.
I didn't even know what Zeno's paradox is. That comes up in this conversation. What the fuck is Zeno's paradox? I know what it is now, and you will do if you listen. This overpowering necessity to create, that's what I admire about Jill. She has an overpowering necessity to create. It reminded me of this great Pearl Buck quote. If you don't know who Pearl Buck is, great author, wrote the book, The Good Earth, which I would say, if you wanted to read 10 books that put you in a culturally literate arena, The Good Earth is one of them. This is one of my favorite quotes. Before I turn it over to Jillian and our conversation, I want to read this quote to you because it's beautiful.
"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this, a human creature born abnormally inhumanly sensitive. To her, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a God, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create. So that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, her very breath is cut off from her. She must create, must pour out creation by some strange, unknown, inward urgency. She is not really alive unless she is creating."
It's beautiful, and that is how I would describe my friend Jillian Marshall. I'll turn it over to her. And at the top of the conversation, she's explaining what the fuck an ethnomusicologist is. Here's the lovely Jillian Marshall.
Jillian Marshall (00:08:12):
Well, it's funny you say that. On 30 Rock... You ever seen the show 30 Rock?
Charlie Sandlan (00:08:16):
I've watched it a few times.
Jillian Marshall (00:08:17):
I actually have never seen it, but a lot of people that I respect really like it. Liz Lemon, the protagonist, she has a boyfriend. She has a bunch of boyfriends. I think they're all kind of crazy until she finds a real good one at the end of the series, who's like a hot dog seller. He sells to Brits out on the street. He went to Wesleyan and he did a really rigorous degree there, but he couldn't get a job with that major. It's not revealed until I think the last episode what exactly his major was, and it turns out that it was ethnomusicology. I think you're in good company. I think Tina Fey probably opened up a course catalog and was like, "Let's find the most obscure, bullshit sounding major we can possibly find. Ethnomusicology, okay, winner." You know what I mean?
Charlie Sandlan (00:08:59):
I mean, it sounds good.
Jillian Marshall (00:09:01):
Does it?
Charlie Sandlan (00:09:02):
It sounds interesting. Yeah. I don't know. I have no idea what it means.
Jillian Marshall (00:09:07):
Ethnomusicology, the ethno comes from the word ethnography, and ethnography is research that's based in experience. It's based in field work. Anthropology is an ethnography-based discipline. Ethnomusicology is basically anthropology of music, so understanding a culture through a musical lens and immersing yourself within that musical culture, within that musical life world to gather experiential firsthand participant observation, or just straight up participant based data in order to draw conclusions or ask more details, more nuanced questions about a culture and its music through those experiences. As an ethnomusicology, for me, I do have PhD in it and my dissertation was on contemporary Japanese music.
I trisected traditional music with Jpop and underground music. Basically my "research" was taking Buddhist dance lessons with some very sassy old ladies studying a Buddhist dance set is a thousand years old. And of course, dance and music are inextricably linked, especially in non-Western cultures. You couldn't really have one without the other. And then going to raves and parties in Tokyo, Osaka, the mountains, wherever. And then Jpop research was kind of different because how do you really do ethnography with YouTube? That's pretty lame. Anyway, these sorts of questions that these sorts of experiences ultimately opened me up to form the basis of my own ethnomusicology research in contemporary Japan.
Charlie Sandlan (00:10:43):
Is there a bird chirping in your apartment?
Jillian Marshall (00:10:44):
People have been asking that we got a bird feeder this weekend. We put it up on our fire escape and they have eaten the entire thing in two days. It's pretty wild. I'm sorry if that's distracting.
Charlie Sandlan (00:10:53):
No. Now we know where it's coming from. But I'm curious, is it just the pigeons that fucking eat the stuff?
Jillian Marshall (00:10:58):
It's actually the invasive species of European sparrows, the little brown ones.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:03):
Really?
Jillian Marshall (00:11:03):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:03):
They have been very greedy. I actually really enjoy it. It's better this than a siren.
I find what you've accomplished at your age to be actually rather remarkable. You speak three languages, right? Three, or do you speak more than three?
Jillian Marshall (00:11:18):
I speak just the three.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:21):
Just the three. You speak Mandarin fluently. You speak Japanese fluently. You're a doctor.
Jillian Marshall (00:11:27):
Not the kind that can help people.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:29):
Well, that's true. I mean, we understand that. But you are, you're a doctor. You're a musician. You're a published writer. It's not just you're a writer, you're a published fucking writer.
Jillian Marshall (00:11:43):
Thank you.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:45):
How do you identify yourself? I mean, when you have all of that, when that skillset is so broad, but deep, how do you define yourself? I'm an artist, or I'm a musician. I'm a writer.
Jillian Marshall (00:11:59):
Really, really great question and it's something that I've been meditating on really recently. It's a very timely question as well. I originally was like, maybe I'm just I'm a writer, I'm a musician, I'm an artist, I'm all these things. And then I just realized maybe ethnomusicologist is the catch all for all these things. Because if you are an ethnomusicologist, you probably do speak at least another language, right? So that takes that box.
I've written about my time in Japan and that's actually the basis of my first book, Japanthem: Counter-Cultural Experiences, Cross-Cultural Remixes. Available anywhere books are sold. But if you buy it from the publisher's website, ThreeRoomsPress.com. I get a 50% cut as opposed to a 10% cut. Cut out the middleman.
Charlie Sandlan (00:12:37):
Cut them out.
Jillian Marshall (00:12:38):
Cut them out. Cut them the fuck out. My research turned into this book. It's decidedly non-academic, by the way. It's like fun. One of the reasons I left academia is because I just hated academic writing with a fiery passion. Anyway, the writing, the languages, and of course, the music, all of this is it falls under this broader umbrella of ethnomusicology. And then that to me has been very liberating to just realize like, oh, I don't have to pick one thing. I don't have to float or transition between these three worlds.
Maybe the cohesion between all of them is this weird thing called ethnomusicology, which is also something itself like a work in process, like a definition in process. I'm not even really sure what ethnomusicologist means. For me, it just means being able to live a cross continental, creative, musical, inquisitive life, artistic life.
Charlie Sandlan (00:13:26):
I mean, that sounds beautiful.
Jillian Marshall (00:13:28):
Here's hoping. I'm out on the tightrope here.
Charlie Sandlan (00:13:31):
But I mean, you're in the middle of it. Well, I mean, not in the middle of it. You're just really starting out, right? I mean, getting through school and you're done your academic learning career, I guess.
Jillian Marshall (00:13:43):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's long gone, which is great because the learning doesn't stop, and neither does the teaching. That's been such an important auxiliary journey since I moved to New York four years ago to just wing it and see what happens. I've got this PhD. Let's make it work. Let's just be me. Let's be Bohemian. Let's just live life itself as this creative enterprise, life itself as this improvisatory scheme. I just want to live a life where I'm able to do everything I want to when I want to, which I realize is asking a lot, but I think as a creative, that's the goal that kind of keeps me going. But teaching, it's really nice to be able to teach and not have to worry about giving grades. I evaluate. Right?
Charlie Sandlan (00:14:25):
Fuck yeah. I would not survive in academia. First, I would probably be fired within the first three months. I'm serious. I'm serious. I listen to my friends, my contemporaries who teach with me, but also teach at NYU or they teach at Columbia or other academics, and it just sounds like a fucking horrible mess.
Jillian Marshall (00:14:51):
Yeah, it really... What in particular sounds like a horrible mess?
Charlie Sandlan (00:14:55):
The coddling and the babying of this millennial generation who...
Jillian Marshall (00:15:03):
Or gen Z.
Charlie Sandlan (00:15:04):
Gen Z, I guess. I don't even know. The alphabet is so far down the line for... As a gen Xer. No, I mean, it's this whole idea of we're in this "woke" period, which is a word I don't like to use, although I appreciate the sentiment of it all. I feel like academia is putting for lack of a better word a bunch of pussies into the world who are fragile and are willing to... Especially as artists. I'm looking from an artist point of view, putting so-called artists in the world who aren't willing to look at the totality of humanity, the most beautiful and the most disgusting and ugly parts of ourselves. It's all couched behind, can't say this, can't say that, that's inappropriate.
Jillian Marshall (00:15:53):
Trigger warnings.
Charlie Sandlan (00:15:55):
Trigger warnings. I don't know. I appreciate mental health. I understand that. But I have found that, boy, that has become a great excuse to be lazy, to not show up to class, to not do your work. I need a mental health day. I got stuff going on. Now, as a teacher and a business owner, I'm in that position. We're like, well, okay, you need a mental health day? Take a mental health day. You can't work today because you're anxious? Okay.
Jillian Marshall (00:16:24):
In those moments where you feel like you can't do something, I feel like that's... There are some times where you really do need a break. But even so, in those moments where you really feel like, "Oh, I can't go on," that's oftentimes I've found where the big breakthroughs happen. I remember finishing my doctorate. It was hell. My computer couldn't... By the time I finished writing my dissertation, my laptop, which I wrote the whole thing on, but by the end, it was just so glitchy and it wouldn't save my document. I ended up having to redo my footnotes twice. I had 400 footnotes and it was horrible. After I defended, I had to make a couple edits, my committee said, and I couldn't find the Word doc.
I could only find the PDF. I couldn't find the Word document that was the latest version that I could actually update. And I literally thought... I had almost zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance style. I freaked out. It was 2:00 in the morning. I remember I couldn't sleep. I had just discovered earlier that day I might have to retype my entire dissertation by hand. I might have to just retype it. I had the PDF, but we're talking three languages, all these pictures. Just the act of typing it all would've taken me way more time than I had. I remember it was 2:00 in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I had a full on call it a panic attack, call it whatever you want. I just broke down. I was just crying hysterically.
I wrote my advisor an email and I said, "I cannot do this. Please just accept the pre-defense draft because that's all I have." He wrote back and he said, "I know that you can do it, and we can hire you a typist if you want, but we will figure this out. You have to push through because I want you to produce the document that I know that you're capable of producing." Man oh man did I hate him in that moment. But let me tell you, I pushed through. I did find not the latest, but a later version that I had originally found somewhere in the cloud and I pushed through and I typed it up and I pushed send. Let me tell you, it made the reward of getting those letters, P, H, and D, all the more sweet, because I really had to earn it.
I know I had to earn it and I had to push through something. I grew as a result of that. Because with those moments when you don't want to do something, the breakthrough is growth and that's a souvenir for a lifetime.
Charlie Sandlan (00:18:51):
It is. Especially if you want to live a life in the arts and you want to be artistic, you're going to struggle. I mean, that's what it means to be creative. You're struggling with something. I just don't think in the younger generations the appetite for struggle is there.
Jillian Marshall (00:19:10):
Yes, I definitely agree. I liked what you said earlier, mental health is definitely something that we should talk about. I think it's great that the word trigger, for example, has become normalized to the extent that people can now recognize like, yes, there is such a thing as trauma. Yes, there's such a thing as triggering that trauma. However, I think the flip side of that normalization is that now, like you said, people kind of use it as an excuse. Everything is a trigger, any uncomfortable feeling. I don't want to feel that, so I'm going to take a mental health day. I don't want to feel that. That's uncomfortable. You made me feel it. You are an abusive narcissist, or whatever it is.
Charlie Sandlan (00:19:43):
Right.
Jillian Marshall (00:19:45):
I think that's dangerous. Academia in general... I feel like academia is filled, and this includes myself to a certain degree when I was in it, with people who want to be creative, but are afraid to actually be it because creativity is an act of being.
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:00):
That's an interesting thing you just said there. Could you say that again?
Jillian Marshall (00:20:02):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:02):
Want to be creative, but are afraid to be it. Is that how you phrased it?
Jillian Marshall (00:20:05):
Yes. Instead, they're writing about it. Instead, they're problematizing it. They're proselytizing on it, instead of actually being it. For me too, speaking about creativity, before I went to college, I was actually a pretty serious trumpet player. I played at Carnegie Hall when I was 16. I was digging...
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:26):
That's amazing.
Jillian Marshall (00:20:27):
Honestly, I'm not saying this to pat my own back per se, but it literally is kind of amazing that that happened. At the time, I was like, "Whatever. It's a gig."
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:34):
Yeah, it's a gig.
Jillian Marshall (00:20:41):
Everything happened really naturally. I grew up in Vermont in a very small town. I won this talent show or whatever. I'm not saying like, oh, this is... I'm just talking about the origin of how things kind started... My weird past life as a trumpet player. Weird in the sense of weird and precious, not weird as a derisive cut to myself. I won the Maple Festival Talent Show. I'm from where maple syrup is a big fucking deal. The Maple Festival Talent Show, well, I just went with my little rummage sale cornet and I played a bunch of stuff. It's a small town, a small community. It was actually in the next town over where the talent show was in, Saint Albans, the bustling population 7,000 big city in the area.
People just kind of noticed, "Oh, this trumpet girl. And then by the time I got to high school, they asked me to play the national anthem at games. So I did. And then it was like, "Oh, you're really good." The Dairy Co Op wants me to play. Dairy Co Op in Vermont is a big deal. I'll play the national anthem for a hundred bucks here and there. Oh, the VFW wants me to play taps for all their events. All of a sudden, I had this little career like, "Oh, I'll play this wedding, I'll do this," just as a trumpet player, and then I would just get calls. The Carnegie Hall gig came about when Phish, that hippie jam band?
Charlie Sandlan (00:22:00):
Of course.
Jillian Marshall (00:22:00):
Yes. Trey Anastasio was doing an orchestration project of his favorite Phish songs, and he wanted them to be played by young local musicians. They wanted the best trumpet player in the state. This is in quote. One day my high school band teacher came out to me. He's like, "You got a call and I think you should take it." It was to be in the orchestra that they were assembling to go to Carnegie Hall. Anyway, by the time I went to college, I was kind of caught between these two worlds. This is getting back on track here for the original point about academia versus creativity. Where I went to college, I went to the University of Chicago for undergrad, and this is a school with a motto "where fun goes to die."
It's not exactly the most creative place. It's intellectually very creative, but intellectualism, while it's a certain kind of creativity, it's less vulnerable. By the end of high school, I thought, do I go to music school, or do I go to just regular college? I ultimately chose regular college because I wasn't ready to just go to conservatory. There was something that told me, conservatory might take the love out, at least that was the fear that I had that maybe that was a way of blocking myself. Then I put my trumpet down. I also am a pianist as well. I still played piano, but I put my trumpet down, and then it became this very fraught... I had this very fraught relationship with it for a very long time, and then increasingly with piano as well.
And then when I was in grad school, doing a PhD in musicology, right? I realized I am talking and thinking about music, but I'm not playing it. There was a point in my grad school career where I was like, "I really need to get back into this." I started playing trumpet and piano. I started performing. I'm self-taught on both instruments, but trumpet, it kind of naturally made a lot of sense to me. I didn't necessarily need to fix anything up in terms of technique. Piano, I definitely did. I kind of had a Thelonious M onk kind of flat finger vibe going on. I was like, okay, I want to get classically trained while I'm here and lessons are free and I'm working with world class musicians.
This is my chance. That's what I did at the latter part of grad school. I just realized this is such a different process than intellectualizing something where you're just really up here. You're really in your head. You're not in your heart. You can't bring a piece to life until you become the piece. You have to become what you're playing. You have to feel it. Honestly, going back too to this idea of trauma, trauma is scary, feelings in general. Not everything is traumatic. I think people think everything is trauma. Oh, I'm traumatized. My fucking takeout order, they screwed up my... I wanted sweet potato fries.
Charlie Sandlan (00:24:42):
Well, I think trauma is... Oh my God, that word's thrown around. Outrage, that word is thrown around a lot.
Jillian Marshall (00:24:55):
Outrage. Everybody has baggage. Everybody is fucked up. That's the thing about life. No one makes it out alive. Thank God. I wouldn't want to live forever. This is hard, and it's hard in a rewarding way. Maybe that's what you meant when you were talking about how creativity is like, it's a struggle. It's like a negotiation with that struggle and going inward and confronting these feelings. Because if you block off the negative feelings, well, guess what? Your positive feelings are flattened too. Maybe that's why us, artistic types, I feel things very deeply. It's not mania, and I think that everything too in today's world, as a sidebar, I think so much is pathologized now like, "Oh, you're happy, and then you're sad. That's bipolar. That's manic depress..." Maybe it's not.
Maybe it's I'm feeling really good, and then I feel less good. I just am really in touch with that because I... Since I left academia, really dedicated myself to living a creative life, a creative life, one where I create and one where, again, I'm living life itself as like I'm... Life is this canvas that I'm painting, that I'm living. It's a movie that I'm starring in, whatever it is. It's everything all at once. Being in touch with my feelings is literally the most important thing that I can do in this life as a result. I feel like a lot of people, I don't know, are afraid to have negative experiences.
Charlie Sandlan (00:26:21):
Whether that's their anger or shame or humiliation, certainly as actors, these young students that are for the first time trying to get in touch with their anger to try to break out of the misogyny, the sexism, the abuse, whatever, the traumas of their life and find their voice. I mean, it's scary work. I understand that.
Jillian Marshall (00:26:45):
Especially as an actor, I imagine it's like, so if you don't have feeling, if you don't have empathy for those feelings, it seems like it's absolutely impossible.
Charlie Sandlan (00:26:57):
I mean, you're not going to go down an artistic creative path if you don't have empathy. If you don't have empathy for the human suffering or the human condition, you're probably not going to live a creative life. You're going to go off and do something else.
Jillian Marshall (00:27:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
Charlie Sandlan (00:27:14):
I'm curious. How would you define the word artistry?
Jillian Marshall (00:27:19):
That is a big question. The act of being an artist is this courageous leap... This is the definition of artistry, I guess, that I'm tapping into here. A creative leap into being the director of your own life and using whatever tools that you can to realize whatever it is that you want to bring forth, to work through whatever you have to to get to the other side. It's life in motion, artistry. Maybe this is kind of crass, but productive excrement. I think the best artists that I know are people that literally they poop art. They literally can't help it. I'm just screwing around with just... I have this one friend. She's a playwright. She's a poet. She's a dramaturg, and she's a visual artist and she makes doll...
Literally, she'll just be like, "Oh, I just screwed around this morning." I looked and she painted 10 paintings. That to me is productive excrement. Artists, you can't help but leave a trail of things that you've produced in your path. Because I think that for this what is artistry, it's desire to... It's not even a desire, like an absolute need to create to stay sane. Because when you're living in your feelings and when you're living out... I think when you're living out there in a creative life, maybe this is just my experience, but I feel like it could be really easy. What is sanity, right? I think that's almost two sides of the same point. Artistry is a way to stay sane and you're living creatively and you're living with your feelings.
You feel things really deeply. Dare I say kind of triggering. You know what I mean? You feel scared. You feel nervous. You feel angry. You feel happy. But art is like an anchor, artistry is the anchor to make sure that you are still part of this world and you don't get too lost your own feelings or your own perceptions. You're not just doing all the inner research. You don't get lost there. You apply it outwardly and you use whatever tools that you can to do that. I think of it as like casting nets, right? When I'm playing music, that's a very particular process for me that's very... When I do it, I just healed. I feel happy.
Charlie Sandlan (00:29:43):
It reminds me of this Pearl Buck quote that I can't remember completely, but she just talks about the creative person has an overwhelming need to create. It's an overwhelming need.
Jillian Marshall (00:29:54):
It is overwhelming, principle, cardinal.
Charlie Sandlan (00:29:57):
But then finding the way to funnel that into something that has process and craft to it.
Jillian Marshall (00:30:01):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:30:10):
So that it's not just crap and poop.
Jillian Marshall (00:30:10):
Exactly. That ties in with this idea of staying sane, because there's always going to be pain. You don't have to go out seeking it. You don't have to go out making it for yourself. I do agree that being a good artist, you do have to have maybe like a range of emotion, which I think is just being human. I don't think anyone is devoid of that. It's just, again, the artist has to summon the courage to go there. And that's something that I'm just now starting to get hip to because I kind of have silver bullet thinking sometimes where I think once I get through XYZ, whatever it is, it could be a creative process, it could be a kink in a relationship, it could be just any kind of intellectual project I'm working on, once I get through this, then it'll be perfect.
There's no such thing as perfect. Creation is kind of like you're giving something up. It's an act of faith as well. Then you see how it kind of manifests, and that's kind of this secondary joy. Doing a doctorate, it's like I learned how to go as deep in as I possibly could in my mind and take an idea to the end or as closest to the end as I could.
Charlie Sandlan (00:31:20):
To take an idea to the end. That's an interesting thing to say. That just seems overwhelming, an overwhelming idea to take an idea to the end.
Jillian Marshall (00:31:36):
Exactly. I was like, there's a pun there. We should go for it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:31:41):
But what does it mean really to take an idea to the end? What does that mean to you?
Jillian Marshall (00:31:47):
To flesh it out and to connect it to as many other ideas as possible and to have it basically become a star in a broader constellation, to put it in conversation permanently out in the world of ideas.
Charlie Sandlan (00:32:02):
Now, see, I would posit that that is artistry, because there are a lot of people that will create that won't do that. And that's attention to detail.
Jillian Marshall (00:32:12):
What do you mean?
Charlie Sandlan (00:32:13):
Well, I mean, to take something as far as it could possibly go, you have to be so detailed. To me, that's what artistry is. Artistry to me is attention to detail, right? You could buy a pair of Louboutin nudes for $1,500 and go to Payless and buy the same pair of nudes and they're $40. There's a reason that they're $1,500, those Louboutins, the craftmanship, the material, the artistry of it, the attention to detail. To me, that would require such attention, rigor, commitment. To me, that's the top of any art form.
Jillian Marshall (00:32:56):
That is profound and simple. I really like that. It has me thinking about jazz. Even though I'm a huge jazz head, I didn't understand bebop for the longest time. Then I had my aha moment with Charlie Parker, and it was this attention to detail. You listen to a bird phrase and it's infinite. That attention to detail is infinite. It's not just the notes he plays. It's how he plays them. It's the tone. It's the phrasing. It's using a little bit of vibrato here. And that to me is unbelievable. Your conception of artistry is detail is almost entering that infinite space where there's always room to improve.
There's always a way not necessarily improve, but always room to put your own twist on it. It's love. Maybe artistry is love in that way. Love is both infinite and it's all... Infinite is both going inward, like Zeno's paradox, you can always cut in half infinitely, or it's outward and expansive like the universe itself.
Charlie Sandlan (00:33:56):
I don't think you can have the discipline and the temerity if you don't have the love of it. You know what I mean?
Jillian Marshall (00:34:03):
Yes, and the love for it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:34:06):
The love for it, yeah.
Jillian Marshall (00:34:07):
One of the reasons that I admire you sitting in on I think two of your acting classes back in 20... It must have been 2015-'16, which I cannot believe. '17, yeah, around there.
Charlie Sandlan (00:34:24):
It was right before my trip to Japan, because I remember that's where we struck our first conversation.
Jillian Marshall (00:34:27):
Yes, yes, yes. You seemed so like you were in fifth gear, that it was natural to you, and that you were operating naturally on a very high level as a pedagogue and as an artist, which are two related skills, but they're also different. It seemed like you were going on all cylinders in a way that just seemed like you had integrated and learned the earlier lessons of living a creative life and were kind of at this phase of being at the peak.
Charlie Sandlan (00:35:05):
That was five years ago, so now we're talking five years later, but it's all you get to that point where you become unconsciously competent, right? If you read any Malcolm Gladwell, you start off unconsciously incompetent. And maybe over 10 years and 10,000 hours, you're unconsciously competent, where you've made it your own in such a way where it's...
Jillian Marshall (00:35:31):
Part of you.
Charlie Sandlan (00:35:32):
You're in the moment. It's like, I don't have to think. I don't have to think anymore. I was very lucky, and no doubt you have been lucky, to be mentored by masters. Not a lot of artists have that, to really truly be mentored by master teachers and master artists. If you can soak that up and you can take really what they say and make it your own, then you can turn yourself into something really special.
Jillian Marshall (00:36:05):
That's a very good point that reminds me too circling back to this kind of past and somewhat present life now as a trumpet player. I do play. I haven't played out in a while. I think the last performance I gave on trumpet was probably in 2014, and then I put it down again and I just felt this existential angst. And then in 2018, when I was at my last semester at Cornell, PhD, Lalaland, I was the TA for the jazz theory and improv class. Wynton Marsalis, the most famous trumpet player in the world, he came to Cornell. He had a residency there. It's one of the perks of going to a very name brand institution. He came to our jazz class. He came to a bunch of different seminars that I was able to go to.
I was able to meet him several times. Meeting him, it was like this... I was practicing, in particular, this one classical music piece that I played at the Maple Festival Talent Show called The Carnival of Venice, which is considered one of the most virtuosic pieces that a trumpet player can play. I played it when I was 12, and I learned from listening to Wynton Marsalis. Anyway, I practiced all this and I just... The day he came to our jazz lecture, it was a full house. My professor that I was working with, he came up to me and he was like, "Listen, this is about the students. Under no circumstances... You're not going to play. He might ask people to jam with him. It can't be you." I was like, "Okay, I understand."
And of course, Wynton Marsalis, he's there for I think it was an hour lecture. For 55 minutes, he's just talking and everyone's just listening to him enraptured. And then he gets the five minute cue and he goes, "Damn! Why didn't anybody tell me?" He comes up to me, and we'd already kind of like met a few times and I could tell he liked me. We just had a vibe anyway. He came up to me and he smiled. He sat down next to me on piano and he said, "You. I'm an A. Let's hit it." I jammed with him. He was on piano. I was on trumpet. And then he just looked at me, he said, "Stay on your horn." I felt like I melted. To me, it was affirming.
For me, living a creative life also is living a spiritual life, because there are so many acts of faith that we have to make as artists. I have to summon the courage. I don't know what's going to happen, and I have to do this. Certainly living your creative life also too in terms of even just everyday things, maybe especially everyday things like finances, how are you going to pay the bills as a creative? I made the full...
Charlie Sandlan (00:38:38):
That's real life shit right there.
Jillian Marshall (00:38:39):
It's real life shit. Two years ago, actually really last year, I made the full leap into just no more I'm going to work 30 hours a week and then dedicate myself to blah, blah, blah. I am going to just be full freelance me. I'll open up a little LLC for myself.
Charlie Sandlan (00:38:56):
Talk about rolling the dice on yourself.
Jillian Marshall (00:38:58):
Exactly. But hey, I'm not in debt. I have my little savings account. I'm building something. Just to me, that's an act of faith, then meeting Wynton Marsalis. And then when I was waiting tables at this older than old school, cough, cough, mafia connected, cough, cough.
Charlie Sandlan (00:39:16):
Which I know is going to be the subject of another book.
Jillian Marshall (00:39:19):
Oh, it is. The book is written. It's called PhD Waitress. I'm looking for agents now, which is not fun, but that's the other side of artistry. It's not really glamorous. You have to be willing to sacrifice and be like, okay, if I want to make it to the next level, if I need a fucking agent, then I need a fucking agent.
Charlie Sandlan (00:39:37):
I mean, the business side sucks, but it's necessary and it's essential.
Jillian Marshall (00:39:41):
It's essential. To me, it's like the muck of finishing my doctorate. You just got to push through it. If I really want this, I got to push through it. Eye on the prize. But anyway, at this mafia restaurant, the bartender came up to me once, it was a really slow day, and he was like, "Jillian, you got to meet this guy." It turns out he's this absolutely amazing living legend jazz trumpet player named. His name is Joe Magnarelli. He lives in New York. He actually lives down in Bay Ridge. I actually studied with him for a year after that. I was like, okay, this is a sign. It's going back to this idea of spirituality. Having Wynton Marsalis... After we jammed, by the way, he looked at me, he's like, "Stay on your horn."
When Wynton Marsalis tells you to stay on your horn, and then you meet another famous jazz trumpet player, and then that makes the third famous jazz trumpet of player that you happen to cross paths within your life, I take that as a sign.
Charlie Sandlan (00:40:27):
Absolutely.
Jillian Marshall (00:40:28):
Right now I'm kind of just figuring out, okay, where do I go from here? Because of course, then you think this is getting a little specific, but the jazz world is very like... How many of these old standards can you play? It's like I think back to Sun RA. I'm more interested in creating something new, or Lester Bowie for that matter. Real avant-garde. One of my favorite records he put out was called Duet with the drummer Phillip Wilson. Just trumpet and a drum set, a duet, free improv. Absolutely brilliant. That's what I'm really interested in.
But at the same time, this attention to detail, this technique, you can't just go and be a free jazz artist without knowing your technique, without learning everything that you need to learn. Specifically for a jazz musician, your arpeggios, every skill forward and backward, learning and trans... I have good ears. I'm very blessed in that sense. I can listen to something and I can play it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:20):
See, that's interesting, and I think this is where acting and music. I use jazz music as an analogy often, because, yeah, you do have to do all that work. So that when you get in the moment, you're out of your head and you can improvise.
Jillian Marshall (00:41:36):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:36):
That's exactly what actors have to do. You have to do all those homework at home. You have to train yourself. You have to have all these skills, fundamental. So that when you get in the moment, you hear action, lights up, whatever it is, you're completely out of your head. You trust the technique, and you can improvise from moment to moment, unanticipated moment to unanticipated moment.
Jillian Marshall (00:41:55):
Like flow, I'm sure.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:56):
Yeah, flow.
Jillian Marshall (00:41:57):
Yeah, exactly.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:59):
See, this is why most people think they can act. It's not the same with other art forms. I don't think people watch Wynton Marsalis play and go, "Oh yeah, I want to be a jazz musician, or I want to be a rock star," but they watch actors act and they think, "Oh, I could do that," because the virtuosity isn't as apparent as it is in other art forms.
Jillian Marshall (00:42:26):
That's so true.
Charlie Sandlan (00:42:26):
But behind a great piece of acting is such skill and such grace, such clarity that it looks effortless.
Jillian Marshall (00:42:36):
Exactly. It seems like with acting... And by the way, it's funny you say that because I've always, always wanted to do acting.
Charlie Sandlan (00:42:44):
Really?
Jillian Marshall (00:42:45):
When I was a kid, classic...
Charlie Sandlan (00:42:51):
Add that to your list of creative pursuits.
Jillian Marshall (00:42:53):
Like we were talking about, if you're a creative, it's like you... It's not like I do acting, but I won't touch a paint brush. Everyone's kind of interested in everything. It's creation. It's expansive. I mean, Frank Sinatra was a painter.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:09):
Please, George W. Bush is a painter.
Jillian Marshall (00:43:12):
I was just going to say. He's actually pretty good.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:16):
Jim Carey. Jim Carey is a fucking unbelievable painter.
Jillian Marshall (00:43:20):
Phenomenal.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:20):
Jesus!
Jillian Marshall (00:43:21):
Phenomenal. Yes. Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:23):
Blows my mind. I mean, not only is he one of the most courageous actors you'll ever find, unapologetic, talk about unapologetic and fearless. I shouldn't say fearless, courageous. His art is phenomenal.
Jillian Marshall (00:43:39):
Totally. Just someone who's really spiritually in tune 100%. Exactly. Two things. One, yes, I always wanted to try acting and I think it comes from this creative urge. The cliche is when I was like six, seven, eight, I'd fantasize about my Oscar's speech. I was like in my speech, I remember the fantasy in my head was like, "Oh, I'm also in the Olympics as a skier." It was like I had all these things I wanted to do. But acting, the idea of really almost accessing feelings like a Rolodex kind of, accessing the feelings that you catalog, that you understand, that's so appealing to me.
I feel like it would open up other avenues of creativity as well. But the other thing I wanted to add just real quick is I think you're absolutely right, I just recently watched Marriage Story. Adam Driver, I think...
Charlie Sandlan (00:44:36):
Great, great, great work.
Jillian Marshall (00:44:39):
The best actors are the ones where you can't tell they're acting.
Charlie Sandlan (00:44:42):
That's right. That's exactly right.
Jillian Marshall (00:44:45):
Adam Driver, talk about an artist. Maybe I'm one of those cliches that think like, "Oh, I could be an actor. I could do it." But just as a creative exercise, it does seem like extremely appealing.
Charlie Sandlan (00:44:59):
Yeah, I get it. Yeah, of course, because you're working out the human heart. This is why I think... It's a permissive art form. As an actor, if you're working at a high level, you get to really function from the parts of yourself that you spend most of your life suppressing.
Jillian Marshall (00:45:20):
That is deep.
Charlie Sandlan (00:45:22):
And it's a thrill.
Jillian Marshall (00:45:24):
Are you ever scared of what you might find inside?
Charlie Sandlan (00:45:28):
I am not anymore, because I've done all that hard work on myself. Nothing scares me. But when you come to training, absolutely scare the fucking hell out of you. It's the students that can work through that, can work through their fear and find the resilience to unpack and unlock all of the resistance and all the blocks that keep them from being open and free and in the moment, they're the ones that really put the work together. But yeah, no, it terrified them. And rightly so.
Jillian Marshall (00:46:06):
A question I have is, how do you think being an actor has positively impacted your life, your emotional life, your personal life?
Charlie Sandlan (00:46:13):
My emotional IQ is off the chart for sure, and my empathy for human suffering and my ability to listen and to be able to hear how a person is talking to me and what they really mean, what they're really saying, because that's what acting is. It's a subtext exercise. The Meisner technique, which is what I teach and I'm a master of, has to do at its fundamental level with teaching you how to really listen and to hear what's being said to you. Because the lines can mean anything, a script. I love you can mean go fuck yourself. But when you can really be attuned to subtext and in the moment respond for how you feel in every moment, which is what an actor needs to do, I mean, this work makes you, made me, just more present and more just open.
Jillian Marshall (00:47:10):
Yeah. Do you find that you can pick up on people's BS like in an instant?
Charlie Sandlan (00:47:15):
Oh absolutely. Are you kidding me? 100%. 100%. 100% absolutely.
Jillian Marshall (00:47:22):
I love that.
Charlie Sandlan (00:47:24):
Students try to unload their bullshit all day long. All they have are excuses. When you're in your twenties and you're starting out in the world, you've done just enough to get by, right? You spent your life... I think most people do. And why not? If doing just enough gets you by, you're going to do just enough. When they come to me for the first time, many of them are being told, "No, no, no, that's lazy and that's unacceptable and that's horseshit what you're doing. Let's look at going beyond trading on your looks and your personality and your charm and see what hard work can do for you." The students that respond well to that are the ones that stay. Those students that don't respond well to that, they quit or they go off and do something else with their life.
Jillian Marshall (00:48:11):
That's part of the process.
Charlie Sandlan (00:48:12):
Absolutely.
Jillian Marshall (00:48:14):
It's part of the process. You see that too. I mean, obviously with acting, it's so immediate. To me, it's so raw. That's one thing I really respect about certainly you as an artist, because I feel like acting is almost like this ultimate training ground, you know what I mean, for just the skills that any artist would need. Like you said, it's learning the human heart and understanding the subtext with stuff, with life, the subtext of what everyone is saying, what everyone is thinking and feeling. Those are necessary skills for really everything.
It's something too that I find as a writer, which I guess we haven't really talked about and that's probably my most accomplished at least in terms of being established on the world, as being a published writer. Japanthem. Just put it out there again.
Charlie Sandlan (00:49:06):
Again. Right, right. I'm finding the cliche, everybody's got one book in them, but you have multiple.
Jillian Marshall (00:49:14):
Well, it's the same thing. It's the compulsion.
Charlie Sandlan (00:49:15):
A compulsion. You have a compulsion to write.
Jillian Marshall (00:49:18):
I have to. If I don't, it's like... I know I keep using excrement in my analogies here, but to me writing is like pooping out the stuff. It's like clearing my brain.
Charlie Sandlan (00:49:29):
But don't you have a compulsion to play the trumpet? Don't you have a compulsion?
Jillian Marshall (00:49:32):
I have all these compulsions. Let me tell you, the things that I want to write about are different than the things I want to play music about, the things that inspire me. For me, writing is a very particular creative exercise of meditation for me. It's a way for me to process my memories. It's a way for me to process events. A lot of the books and stuff that I find out there in the world recently, a lot of, "I'm so sad. This shitty thing happened. This is hard. Here's my memoir. I'm so sad. This is traumatic." Okay, it's not that I don't care. It's just I don't really need that.
Japanthem, for me, the first book, that was a way for me to process this other life that I have across the Pacific. I was in a multiple year relationship with someone there. It was the only place I had ever lived as an adult up until I was 30, 31 years old.
Charlie Sandlan (00:50:31):
And you spent what, four years there? A little more?
Jillian Marshall (00:50:33):
Four years cumulatively. Yes. Yes. Two years I was in a fishing village on an island, twice we moved from the mainland. That was my first job. It's the only nine to five I've ever had.
Charlie Sandlan (00:50:46):
Teaching English.
Jillian Marshall (00:50:46):
Teaching English at two rural middle schools, which was amazing. My students were... That was my anthropological training ground, going back into this conversation about ethnography. And then doing the PhD was really just a way for me to stay in Japan and to be able to go there and obtain visas easily. Because Japan, if we want to talk about systemic discrimination, Japan is really good at that. If you're a foreigner renting an apartment, forget it. It's really difficult to. If you want to get a career that's different than teaching English, then that's really difficult. Being a PhD student allowed me to have this more broad, open relationship with the society.
Every time I was there, as long as I was producing my re... And life was research for me. I think that's really where the seeds of living a creative life were planted was this life I had in Japan where I've done all this stuff there. I was a Bohemian drifter. I was a researcher. I was a student. I was a cake baker at a champagne bar run by a woman that used to be a hostess, which is someone that gets paid by the hour very handsomely to basically flirt with people. I have this crazy life in Japan, going to Buddhist dancing in the mountains in Northern Japan, go to raves with DJs that I'm going out with, all of these experiences juxtaposed especially at that time with this mild mannered life that I was living as a PhD student, an Ivy league institution in the US was so different.
Charlie Sandlan (00:52:18):
It's a double life.
Jillian Marshall (00:52:21):
It was a double life. I had to really reflect on, okay, how did I get myself into this double life situation? It's probably not the most healthy thing for me. How do I stitch these worlds together? The book that I wrote is actually... It's the non-academic part of my doctoral thesis, because I basically produced these two mirror documents that I presented as a whole, one-half being your standard theoretical stuff, like my analysis of XYZ, and then just stories. The stories are just me. It's like I wrote it like you're talking to me. I needed to put them out there. As I was writing, this process of what I was actually creating became clear to me and I thought, I want to actually try to publish these as a real book.
That's what I did. Writing for me, it's a way to stitch together these worlds. PhD Waitress, same thing. It's a way for me to make sense of this time I had working at this restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn that closed in 2020 after 84 years. They just were like, you know what? We're not cur... This was a social club where people went in four times a week and bumped into people from the avenue. Anyway, the second book is about stitching together these experiences to make sense of them, especially when there's some kind of disparity in my life. If there's something that I don't understand, I write and it helps me understand. But if I'm trying to understand my feelings or to release feelings, music.
If I'm trying to just get inspired to just be more playful, visual art, painting, collaging. These days I've actually been painting quite a bit. Paint is great because it moves. You only have so much time before it dries if I'm working with acrylic. And then if I'm working with watercolor, as soon as I put it to the paper, it's out of my control, and I love that. Visual art allows me to be free. It helps me... If I have a visual art project in the midst, it just helps get my creative juices flowing. Writing helps me stay mentally organized, and playing music helps me release feelings. The work for me is not writing or playing music or whatever the work is getting to a point where I'm able to do that.
I don't really have a survival job anymore. Making this transition into this lifestyle, obviously there are sacrifices to be made, but I'm really grateful for what I have because I'm not a starving artist. I've been in New York City for four years. When I first moved here, I had $0 in my bank account. I had $1,500 on my credit card, and I was adjuncting at Binghamton University, Upstate, five and a half hour commute one way on Greyhound that I did twice a week for 16 weeks that I got paid almost... I got paid beans. I got paid 10,000 before taxes for two classes. My transportation was not compensated, but I took the job because I needed to make rent. And then I worked at a restaurant on the side.
There'd be times where I'd work at the restaurant, get home at midnight, wake up at 5:00, go to Binghamton. That was what I did when I first moved here. That's the foundation I had to lay in order to even think about doing what I'm doing now. Again, thinking about writing as a way of processing, that's what PhD Waitress is sort of doing. I wanted to of be this unique document that's simultaneously a chronicle, like a documentation and a manifestation of this New York journey.
Charlie Sandlan (00:55:45):
I get it. I totally get it. When I get a group of students, "I want to be an actor. I have this dream of being an actor." At some point, you're going to be confronted with what it's going to take, the sacrifices you're going to have to make. I say to them, I look them on the first day, I said, "You don't understand this yet, but if art is your life, it's going to cost you everything."
Jillian Marshall (00:56:13):
That is so good.
Charlie Sandlan (00:56:14):
And at some point, you're going to understand what I mean by that.
Jillian Marshall (00:56:17):
What sacrifices did you make or are you making?
Charlie Sandlan (00:56:20):
Relationships, financial security. I mean, those are two big ones. Missed weddings, missed funerals, missed birthday parties, missed social events, fractured relationships because of that, culling the people out of my life that didn't add value to it, even though I love them dearly, cutting out the low hanging fruit because I wanted to curate a life and relationships of people that inspired me and respected me and I respected them. I mean, it's like, well, but this is a difficult thing. Going into major debt in order to get the training that I want, because I know I wanted to be well trained and not be scared off, which a lot of people are, by the money, the time.
It's so funny, I'll sit and I'll talk to some prospective students who's 22 years old and they say, "Well, I don't know if I got two... I mean, two years? Two years to train?" I just laugh. I'm like, "You're 22. What do you think you're going to do?" They think, "I got to get moving. I got to start." Nothing's going to happen for you if you don't train. No one's going to take you seriously unless you take yourself seriously first. No one's going to treat you like an artist if you don't treat yourself like an artist first. That's it. That's what I say to them and the ones that stick with it. I feel like... Listen, we're talking so long. We got to wrap this up. Honest to God, we could talk for another hour. I want to end on this, because you're so fucking smart.
Jillian Marshall (00:58:07):
Thank you.
Charlie Sandlan (00:58:08):
If somebody wanted to investigate jazz, what's one album you would recommend? You know what? If you don't know much about jazz and you want to start to educate yourself, what's the first album they should listen to?
Jillian Marshall (00:58:20):
There's two and you need to listen to them side by side. The first one's like... They're both cliche. You need to listen to Kind of Blue, Miles Davis, and you also have to listen to A Love Supreme, John Coltrane.
Charlie Sandlan (00:58:32):
Okay.
Jillian Marshall (00:58:33):
That's it. That'll get you started both directions. You can go backward from Kind of Blue and you can go forward from A Love Supreme.
Charlie Sandlan (00:58:40):
Okay. What would you like to say to somebody who is young, who moves to New York and is interested in a creative life? What would be some advice?
Jillian Marshall (00:58:49):
If its go, go, go, push through. And if you get to the point where you feel like it's going to hurt you more than it's going to help you, you will know and you will be able to walk through this. But if you are just scared, just keep pushing through it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:59:12):
Well, my fellow day dreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe and follow the show wherever you get your podcast. Spread the word. Tell all your friends about CBP. You can go to iTunes if you've got a few seconds and leave the show a review. That would be fantastic. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page. Hit that red button. You speak pipe. You can leave me a voice message, share with me some of your thoughts, some things that you are watching or some things you'd recommend.
You can go to https://maggieflaniganstudio.com if you're interested in getting in my New York City classroom. My next first year class starts September 9th. You can follow me on Instagram @creatingbehavior, @maggiefaniganttudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the music, my man. My friends, if you're scared, just keep pushing through. Okay? Stay resilient. Play for love with yourself and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace. [Singing 01:00:03]
I think it is very important as a creative person to as much as you can surround yourself with people who inspire you, who challenge you to think in different ways, to build friendships and creative relationships with people that you feel are more talented than you, smarter than you, that really force you in an exciting way to level up your game. The more you can do that, I think the more it improves just the quality of your life, but also improves your artistic output. Today, I get to share with you a conversation with one of my new friends who's come into my life, and I'm very, very fortunate to have had many, many, many conversations with her. Jillian Marshall, she has a PhD in ethnomusicology.
What the fuck is that? We're going to find out. She is a published writer. She is a jazz trumpeter, a pianist. She's played at Carnegie Hall. She's rift with Wynton Marsalis. She speaks Mandarin and Japanese fluently. And today, we're going to talk about what it means to live a creative life. Put the phone back in your pocket. Creating Behavior starts now. Well, hello, my fellow daydreamers, friendships, they're really important. When you're young, I'm finding this now looking back, in your twenties and thirties, it's easy to make friends. If you're in class, you're in school, you're training and you've got your classmates, you bond with them.
If you've got survival jobs and you go from one bartending job to a catering job, to a waiting job, you meet a lot of people along the way. You go out after work. You socialize. The next thing you know, you build this kind of community of people. You do a show. You do a film. You make friendships. But I'm telling you, I find as you get older, it's harder to do actually to make new friends. At 52, it's not like I'm making new friendships left and right. All of my friends, my core group that I've known 15, 20, 25 years now, I mean, they're all over the place. They're all over the country. All over the world really. They've got their families and kids and jobs. If you see each other two, maybe three times a year, if that, then wow, it's been a good year.
When Jillian came back into my life recently, I was pleasantly surprised. I met Jillian in 2017 for the first time, and it was very brief. She had a friend who was at the studio and she was in New York City visiting down from Cornell. She was getting her PhD in ethnomusicology, which we're going to talk about. It came up that she had lived a number of years in Japan. I was actually just a couple of months away from going to Japan on a solo vacation, and we just hit it off. After a 10, 15 minute conversation with this woman, I was like, "You're fucking smart." Her use of language, her intellectual heft was just clearly... It was clearly on point and it really caused me to level up. She was saying things to me which were just deeply impressive.
It just stuck with me. Fast forward to just a couple of months ago, I get this email from Jillian. She was like, "I don't know if you remember me. We had this conversation in your office, and blah, blah, blah, blah. I'd love get a coffee with you and just talk about teaching and academia and about art." I just thought absolutely. Why not? Okay. I'll tell you, after a couple of coffees and maybe three or four hours of conversation with her, I was just like, "You have to come on the podcast." She's a new friend for me, and I'm very grateful and appreciative to be able to say that. She's one of the smartest people I have ever met. That's the first thing I'll say about Jillian. I listed off all those things that she was in the open.
I mean, she's got this book called Japanthem, which came out earlier this year. The full title is called Japanthem: Counter-Cultural Experiences, Cross-Cultural Remixes. I highly recommend it. I've just started it. It is really fascinating. It'll certainly open your mind to a different culture, her experience of spending a number of years in Japan. But she's also a musician and she speaks three languages. She's just very, very smart. I really enjoyed talking to her. This conversation is great. I learned a lot from her. I had never heard of Lester Bowie until I started to talk to Jillian. She put me onto his album Duet with Phillip Wilson, a great drummer. I had no idea who Sun Ra was. Great jazz musician. I learned something there.
I didn't even know what Zeno's paradox is. That comes up in this conversation. What the fuck is Zeno's paradox? I know what it is now, and you will do if you listen. This overpowering necessity to create, that's what I admire about Jill. She has an overpowering necessity to create. It reminded me of this great Pearl Buck quote. If you don't know who Pearl Buck is, great author, wrote the book, The Good Earth, which I would say, if you wanted to read 10 books that put you in a culturally literate arena, The Good Earth is one of them. This is one of my favorite quotes. Before I turn it over to Jillian and our conversation, I want to read this quote to you because it's beautiful.
"The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this, a human creature born abnormally inhumanly sensitive. To her, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a God, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create. So that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, her very breath is cut off from her. She must create, must pour out creation by some strange, unknown, inward urgency. She is not really alive unless she is creating."
It's beautiful, and that is how I would describe my friend Jillian Marshall. I'll turn it over to her. And at the top of the conversation, she's explaining what the fuck an ethnomusicologist is. Here's the lovely Jillian Marshall.
Jillian Marshall (00:08:12):
Well, it's funny you say that. On 30 Rock... You ever seen the show 30 Rock?
Charlie Sandlan (00:08:16):
I've watched it a few times.
Jillian Marshall (00:08:17):
I actually have never seen it, but a lot of people that I respect really like it. Liz Lemon, the protagonist, she has a boyfriend. She has a bunch of boyfriends. I think they're all kind of crazy until she finds a real good one at the end of the series, who's like a hot dog seller. He sells to Brits out on the street. He went to Wesleyan and he did a really rigorous degree there, but he couldn't get a job with that major. It's not revealed until I think the last episode what exactly his major was, and it turns out that it was ethnomusicology. I think you're in good company. I think Tina Fey probably opened up a course catalog and was like, "Let's find the most obscure, bullshit sounding major we can possibly find. Ethnomusicology, okay, winner." You know what I mean?
Charlie Sandlan (00:08:59):
I mean, it sounds good.
Jillian Marshall (00:09:01):
Does it?
Charlie Sandlan (00:09:02):
It sounds interesting. Yeah. I don't know. I have no idea what it means.
Jillian Marshall (00:09:07):
Ethnomusicology, the ethno comes from the word ethnography, and ethnography is research that's based in experience. It's based in field work. Anthropology is an ethnography-based discipline. Ethnomusicology is basically anthropology of music, so understanding a culture through a musical lens and immersing yourself within that musical culture, within that musical life world to gather experiential firsthand participant observation, or just straight up participant based data in order to draw conclusions or ask more details, more nuanced questions about a culture and its music through those experiences. As an ethnomusicology, for me, I do have PhD in it and my dissertation was on contemporary Japanese music.
I trisected traditional music with Jpop and underground music. Basically my "research" was taking Buddhist dance lessons with some very sassy old ladies studying a Buddhist dance set is a thousand years old. And of course, dance and music are inextricably linked, especially in non-Western cultures. You couldn't really have one without the other. And then going to raves and parties in Tokyo, Osaka, the mountains, wherever. And then Jpop research was kind of different because how do you really do ethnography with YouTube? That's pretty lame. Anyway, these sorts of questions that these sorts of experiences ultimately opened me up to form the basis of my own ethnomusicology research in contemporary Japan.
Charlie Sandlan (00:10:43):
Is there a bird chirping in your apartment?
Jillian Marshall (00:10:44):
People have been asking that we got a bird feeder this weekend. We put it up on our fire escape and they have eaten the entire thing in two days. It's pretty wild. I'm sorry if that's distracting.
Charlie Sandlan (00:10:53):
No. Now we know where it's coming from. But I'm curious, is it just the pigeons that fucking eat the stuff?
Jillian Marshall (00:10:58):
It's actually the invasive species of European sparrows, the little brown ones.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:03):
Really?
Jillian Marshall (00:11:03):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:03):
They have been very greedy. I actually really enjoy it. It's better this than a siren.
I find what you've accomplished at your age to be actually rather remarkable. You speak three languages, right? Three, or do you speak more than three?
Jillian Marshall (00:11:18):
I speak just the three.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:21):
Just the three. You speak Mandarin fluently. You speak Japanese fluently. You're a doctor.
Jillian Marshall (00:11:27):
Not the kind that can help people.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:29):
Well, that's true. I mean, we understand that. But you are, you're a doctor. You're a musician. You're a published writer. It's not just you're a writer, you're a published fucking writer.
Jillian Marshall (00:11:43):
Thank you.
Charlie Sandlan (00:11:45):
How do you identify yourself? I mean, when you have all of that, when that skillset is so broad, but deep, how do you define yourself? I'm an artist, or I'm a musician. I'm a writer.
Jillian Marshall (00:11:59):
Really, really great question and it's something that I've been meditating on really recently. It's a very timely question as well. I originally was like, maybe I'm just I'm a writer, I'm a musician, I'm an artist, I'm all these things. And then I just realized maybe ethnomusicologist is the catch all for all these things. Because if you are an ethnomusicologist, you probably do speak at least another language, right? So that takes that box.
I've written about my time in Japan and that's actually the basis of my first book, Japanthem: Counter-Cultural Experiences, Cross-Cultural Remixes. Available anywhere books are sold. But if you buy it from the publisher's website, ThreeRoomsPress.com. I get a 50% cut as opposed to a 10% cut. Cut out the middleman.
Charlie Sandlan (00:12:37):
Cut them out.
Jillian Marshall (00:12:38):
Cut them out. Cut them the fuck out. My research turned into this book. It's decidedly non-academic, by the way. It's like fun. One of the reasons I left academia is because I just hated academic writing with a fiery passion. Anyway, the writing, the languages, and of course, the music, all of this is it falls under this broader umbrella of ethnomusicology. And then that to me has been very liberating to just realize like, oh, I don't have to pick one thing. I don't have to float or transition between these three worlds.
Maybe the cohesion between all of them is this weird thing called ethnomusicology, which is also something itself like a work in process, like a definition in process. I'm not even really sure what ethnomusicologist means. For me, it just means being able to live a cross continental, creative, musical, inquisitive life, artistic life.
Charlie Sandlan (00:13:26):
I mean, that sounds beautiful.
Jillian Marshall (00:13:28):
Here's hoping. I'm out on the tightrope here.
Charlie Sandlan (00:13:31):
But I mean, you're in the middle of it. Well, I mean, not in the middle of it. You're just really starting out, right? I mean, getting through school and you're done your academic learning career, I guess.
Jillian Marshall (00:13:43):
Absolutely. Yeah, that's long gone, which is great because the learning doesn't stop, and neither does the teaching. That's been such an important auxiliary journey since I moved to New York four years ago to just wing it and see what happens. I've got this PhD. Let's make it work. Let's just be me. Let's be Bohemian. Let's just live life itself as this creative enterprise, life itself as this improvisatory scheme. I just want to live a life where I'm able to do everything I want to when I want to, which I realize is asking a lot, but I think as a creative, that's the goal that kind of keeps me going. But teaching, it's really nice to be able to teach and not have to worry about giving grades. I evaluate. Right?
Charlie Sandlan (00:14:25):
Fuck yeah. I would not survive in academia. First, I would probably be fired within the first three months. I'm serious. I'm serious. I listen to my friends, my contemporaries who teach with me, but also teach at NYU or they teach at Columbia or other academics, and it just sounds like a fucking horrible mess.
Jillian Marshall (00:14:51):
Yeah, it really... What in particular sounds like a horrible mess?
Charlie Sandlan (00:14:55):
The coddling and the babying of this millennial generation who...
Jillian Marshall (00:15:03):
Or gen Z.
Charlie Sandlan (00:15:04):
Gen Z, I guess. I don't even know. The alphabet is so far down the line for... As a gen Xer. No, I mean, it's this whole idea of we're in this "woke" period, which is a word I don't like to use, although I appreciate the sentiment of it all. I feel like academia is putting for lack of a better word a bunch of pussies into the world who are fragile and are willing to... Especially as artists. I'm looking from an artist point of view, putting so-called artists in the world who aren't willing to look at the totality of humanity, the most beautiful and the most disgusting and ugly parts of ourselves. It's all couched behind, can't say this, can't say that, that's inappropriate.
Jillian Marshall (00:15:53):
Trigger warnings.
Charlie Sandlan (00:15:55):
Trigger warnings. I don't know. I appreciate mental health. I understand that. But I have found that, boy, that has become a great excuse to be lazy, to not show up to class, to not do your work. I need a mental health day. I got stuff going on. Now, as a teacher and a business owner, I'm in that position. We're like, well, okay, you need a mental health day? Take a mental health day. You can't work today because you're anxious? Okay.
Jillian Marshall (00:16:24):
In those moments where you feel like you can't do something, I feel like that's... There are some times where you really do need a break. But even so, in those moments where you really feel like, "Oh, I can't go on," that's oftentimes I've found where the big breakthroughs happen. I remember finishing my doctorate. It was hell. My computer couldn't... By the time I finished writing my dissertation, my laptop, which I wrote the whole thing on, but by the end, it was just so glitchy and it wouldn't save my document. I ended up having to redo my footnotes twice. I had 400 footnotes and it was horrible. After I defended, I had to make a couple edits, my committee said, and I couldn't find the Word doc.
I could only find the PDF. I couldn't find the Word document that was the latest version that I could actually update. And I literally thought... I had almost zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance style. I freaked out. It was 2:00 in the morning. I remember I couldn't sleep. I had just discovered earlier that day I might have to retype my entire dissertation by hand. I might have to just retype it. I had the PDF, but we're talking three languages, all these pictures. Just the act of typing it all would've taken me way more time than I had. I remember it was 2:00 in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I had a full on call it a panic attack, call it whatever you want. I just broke down. I was just crying hysterically.
I wrote my advisor an email and I said, "I cannot do this. Please just accept the pre-defense draft because that's all I have." He wrote back and he said, "I know that you can do it, and we can hire you a typist if you want, but we will figure this out. You have to push through because I want you to produce the document that I know that you're capable of producing." Man oh man did I hate him in that moment. But let me tell you, I pushed through. I did find not the latest, but a later version that I had originally found somewhere in the cloud and I pushed through and I typed it up and I pushed send. Let me tell you, it made the reward of getting those letters, P, H, and D, all the more sweet, because I really had to earn it.
I know I had to earn it and I had to push through something. I grew as a result of that. Because with those moments when you don't want to do something, the breakthrough is growth and that's a souvenir for a lifetime.
Charlie Sandlan (00:18:51):
It is. Especially if you want to live a life in the arts and you want to be artistic, you're going to struggle. I mean, that's what it means to be creative. You're struggling with something. I just don't think in the younger generations the appetite for struggle is there.
Jillian Marshall (00:19:10):
Yes, I definitely agree. I liked what you said earlier, mental health is definitely something that we should talk about. I think it's great that the word trigger, for example, has become normalized to the extent that people can now recognize like, yes, there is such a thing as trauma. Yes, there's such a thing as triggering that trauma. However, I think the flip side of that normalization is that now, like you said, people kind of use it as an excuse. Everything is a trigger, any uncomfortable feeling. I don't want to feel that, so I'm going to take a mental health day. I don't want to feel that. That's uncomfortable. You made me feel it. You are an abusive narcissist, or whatever it is.
Charlie Sandlan (00:19:43):
Right.
Jillian Marshall (00:19:45):
I think that's dangerous. Academia in general... I feel like academia is filled, and this includes myself to a certain degree when I was in it, with people who want to be creative, but are afraid to actually be it because creativity is an act of being.
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:00):
That's an interesting thing you just said there. Could you say that again?
Jillian Marshall (00:20:02):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:02):
Want to be creative, but are afraid to be it. Is that how you phrased it?
Jillian Marshall (00:20:05):
Yes. Instead, they're writing about it. Instead, they're problematizing it. They're proselytizing on it, instead of actually being it. For me too, speaking about creativity, before I went to college, I was actually a pretty serious trumpet player. I played at Carnegie Hall when I was 16. I was digging...
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:26):
That's amazing.
Jillian Marshall (00:20:27):
Honestly, I'm not saying this to pat my own back per se, but it literally is kind of amazing that that happened. At the time, I was like, "Whatever. It's a gig."
Charlie Sandlan (00:20:34):
Yeah, it's a gig.
Jillian Marshall (00:20:41):
Everything happened really naturally. I grew up in Vermont in a very small town. I won this talent show or whatever. I'm not saying like, oh, this is... I'm just talking about the origin of how things kind started... My weird past life as a trumpet player. Weird in the sense of weird and precious, not weird as a derisive cut to myself. I won the Maple Festival Talent Show. I'm from where maple syrup is a big fucking deal. The Maple Festival Talent Show, well, I just went with my little rummage sale cornet and I played a bunch of stuff. It's a small town, a small community. It was actually in the next town over where the talent show was in, Saint Albans, the bustling population 7,000 big city in the area.
People just kind of noticed, "Oh, this trumpet girl. And then by the time I got to high school, they asked me to play the national anthem at games. So I did. And then it was like, "Oh, you're really good." The Dairy Co Op wants me to play. Dairy Co Op in Vermont is a big deal. I'll play the national anthem for a hundred bucks here and there. Oh, the VFW wants me to play taps for all their events. All of a sudden, I had this little career like, "Oh, I'll play this wedding, I'll do this," just as a trumpet player, and then I would just get calls. The Carnegie Hall gig came about when Phish, that hippie jam band?
Charlie Sandlan (00:22:00):
Of course.
Jillian Marshall (00:22:00):
Yes. Trey Anastasio was doing an orchestration project of his favorite Phish songs, and he wanted them to be played by young local musicians. They wanted the best trumpet player in the state. This is in quote. One day my high school band teacher came out to me. He's like, "You got a call and I think you should take it." It was to be in the orchestra that they were assembling to go to Carnegie Hall. Anyway, by the time I went to college, I was kind of caught between these two worlds. This is getting back on track here for the original point about academia versus creativity. Where I went to college, I went to the University of Chicago for undergrad, and this is a school with a motto "where fun goes to die."
It's not exactly the most creative place. It's intellectually very creative, but intellectualism, while it's a certain kind of creativity, it's less vulnerable. By the end of high school, I thought, do I go to music school, or do I go to just regular college? I ultimately chose regular college because I wasn't ready to just go to conservatory. There was something that told me, conservatory might take the love out, at least that was the fear that I had that maybe that was a way of blocking myself. Then I put my trumpet down. I also am a pianist as well. I still played piano, but I put my trumpet down, and then it became this very fraught... I had this very fraught relationship with it for a very long time, and then increasingly with piano as well.
And then when I was in grad school, doing a PhD in musicology, right? I realized I am talking and thinking about music, but I'm not playing it. There was a point in my grad school career where I was like, "I really need to get back into this." I started playing trumpet and piano. I started performing. I'm self-taught on both instruments, but trumpet, it kind of naturally made a lot of sense to me. I didn't necessarily need to fix anything up in terms of technique. Piano, I definitely did. I kind of had a Thelonious M onk kind of flat finger vibe going on. I was like, okay, I want to get classically trained while I'm here and lessons are free and I'm working with world class musicians.
This is my chance. That's what I did at the latter part of grad school. I just realized this is such a different process than intellectualizing something where you're just really up here. You're really in your head. You're not in your heart. You can't bring a piece to life until you become the piece. You have to become what you're playing. You have to feel it. Honestly, going back too to this idea of trauma, trauma is scary, feelings in general. Not everything is traumatic. I think people think everything is trauma. Oh, I'm traumatized. My fucking takeout order, they screwed up my... I wanted sweet potato fries.
Charlie Sandlan (00:24:42):
Well, I think trauma is... Oh my God, that word's thrown around. Outrage, that word is thrown around a lot.
Jillian Marshall (00:24:55):
Outrage. Everybody has baggage. Everybody is fucked up. That's the thing about life. No one makes it out alive. Thank God. I wouldn't want to live forever. This is hard, and it's hard in a rewarding way. Maybe that's what you meant when you were talking about how creativity is like, it's a struggle. It's like a negotiation with that struggle and going inward and confronting these feelings. Because if you block off the negative feelings, well, guess what? Your positive feelings are flattened too. Maybe that's why us, artistic types, I feel things very deeply. It's not mania, and I think that everything too in today's world, as a sidebar, I think so much is pathologized now like, "Oh, you're happy, and then you're sad. That's bipolar. That's manic depress..." Maybe it's not.
Maybe it's I'm feeling really good, and then I feel less good. I just am really in touch with that because I... Since I left academia, really dedicated myself to living a creative life, a creative life, one where I create and one where, again, I'm living life itself as like I'm... Life is this canvas that I'm painting, that I'm living. It's a movie that I'm starring in, whatever it is. It's everything all at once. Being in touch with my feelings is literally the most important thing that I can do in this life as a result. I feel like a lot of people, I don't know, are afraid to have negative experiences.
Charlie Sandlan (00:26:21):
Whether that's their anger or shame or humiliation, certainly as actors, these young students that are for the first time trying to get in touch with their anger to try to break out of the misogyny, the sexism, the abuse, whatever, the traumas of their life and find their voice. I mean, it's scary work. I understand that.
Jillian Marshall (00:26:45):
Especially as an actor, I imagine it's like, so if you don't have feeling, if you don't have empathy for those feelings, it seems like it's absolutely impossible.
Charlie Sandlan (00:26:57):
I mean, you're not going to go down an artistic creative path if you don't have empathy. If you don't have empathy for the human suffering or the human condition, you're probably not going to live a creative life. You're going to go off and do something else.
Jillian Marshall (00:27:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true.
Charlie Sandlan (00:27:14):
I'm curious. How would you define the word artistry?
Jillian Marshall (00:27:19):
That is a big question. The act of being an artist is this courageous leap... This is the definition of artistry, I guess, that I'm tapping into here. A creative leap into being the director of your own life and using whatever tools that you can to realize whatever it is that you want to bring forth, to work through whatever you have to to get to the other side. It's life in motion, artistry. Maybe this is kind of crass, but productive excrement. I think the best artists that I know are people that literally they poop art. They literally can't help it. I'm just screwing around with just... I have this one friend. She's a playwright. She's a poet. She's a dramaturg, and she's a visual artist and she makes doll...
Literally, she'll just be like, "Oh, I just screwed around this morning." I looked and she painted 10 paintings. That to me is productive excrement. Artists, you can't help but leave a trail of things that you've produced in your path. Because I think that for this what is artistry, it's desire to... It's not even a desire, like an absolute need to create to stay sane. Because when you're living in your feelings and when you're living out... I think when you're living out there in a creative life, maybe this is just my experience, but I feel like it could be really easy. What is sanity, right? I think that's almost two sides of the same point. Artistry is a way to stay sane and you're living creatively and you're living with your feelings.
You feel things really deeply. Dare I say kind of triggering. You know what I mean? You feel scared. You feel nervous. You feel angry. You feel happy. But art is like an anchor, artistry is the anchor to make sure that you are still part of this world and you don't get too lost your own feelings or your own perceptions. You're not just doing all the inner research. You don't get lost there. You apply it outwardly and you use whatever tools that you can to do that. I think of it as like casting nets, right? When I'm playing music, that's a very particular process for me that's very... When I do it, I just healed. I feel happy.
Charlie Sandlan (00:29:43):
It reminds me of this Pearl Buck quote that I can't remember completely, but she just talks about the creative person has an overwhelming need to create. It's an overwhelming need.
Jillian Marshall (00:29:54):
It is overwhelming, principle, cardinal.
Charlie Sandlan (00:29:57):
But then finding the way to funnel that into something that has process and craft to it.
Jillian Marshall (00:30:01):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:30:10):
So that it's not just crap and poop.
Jillian Marshall (00:30:10):
Exactly. That ties in with this idea of staying sane, because there's always going to be pain. You don't have to go out seeking it. You don't have to go out making it for yourself. I do agree that being a good artist, you do have to have maybe like a range of emotion, which I think is just being human. I don't think anyone is devoid of that. It's just, again, the artist has to summon the courage to go there. And that's something that I'm just now starting to get hip to because I kind of have silver bullet thinking sometimes where I think once I get through XYZ, whatever it is, it could be a creative process, it could be a kink in a relationship, it could be just any kind of intellectual project I'm working on, once I get through this, then it'll be perfect.
There's no such thing as perfect. Creation is kind of like you're giving something up. It's an act of faith as well. Then you see how it kind of manifests, and that's kind of this secondary joy. Doing a doctorate, it's like I learned how to go as deep in as I possibly could in my mind and take an idea to the end or as closest to the end as I could.
Charlie Sandlan (00:31:20):
To take an idea to the end. That's an interesting thing to say. That just seems overwhelming, an overwhelming idea to take an idea to the end.
Jillian Marshall (00:31:36):
Exactly. I was like, there's a pun there. We should go for it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:31:41):
But what does it mean really to take an idea to the end? What does that mean to you?
Jillian Marshall (00:31:47):
To flesh it out and to connect it to as many other ideas as possible and to have it basically become a star in a broader constellation, to put it in conversation permanently out in the world of ideas.
Charlie Sandlan (00:32:02):
Now, see, I would posit that that is artistry, because there are a lot of people that will create that won't do that. And that's attention to detail.
Jillian Marshall (00:32:12):
What do you mean?
Charlie Sandlan (00:32:13):
Well, I mean, to take something as far as it could possibly go, you have to be so detailed. To me, that's what artistry is. Artistry to me is attention to detail, right? You could buy a pair of Louboutin nudes for $1,500 and go to Payless and buy the same pair of nudes and they're $40. There's a reason that they're $1,500, those Louboutins, the craftmanship, the material, the artistry of it, the attention to detail. To me, that would require such attention, rigor, commitment. To me, that's the top of any art form.
Jillian Marshall (00:32:56):
That is profound and simple. I really like that. It has me thinking about jazz. Even though I'm a huge jazz head, I didn't understand bebop for the longest time. Then I had my aha moment with Charlie Parker, and it was this attention to detail. You listen to a bird phrase and it's infinite. That attention to detail is infinite. It's not just the notes he plays. It's how he plays them. It's the tone. It's the phrasing. It's using a little bit of vibrato here. And that to me is unbelievable. Your conception of artistry is detail is almost entering that infinite space where there's always room to improve.
There's always a way not necessarily improve, but always room to put your own twist on it. It's love. Maybe artistry is love in that way. Love is both infinite and it's all... Infinite is both going inward, like Zeno's paradox, you can always cut in half infinitely, or it's outward and expansive like the universe itself.
Charlie Sandlan (00:33:56):
I don't think you can have the discipline and the temerity if you don't have the love of it. You know what I mean?
Jillian Marshall (00:34:03):
Yes, and the love for it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:34:06):
The love for it, yeah.
Jillian Marshall (00:34:07):
One of the reasons that I admire you sitting in on I think two of your acting classes back in 20... It must have been 2015-'16, which I cannot believe. '17, yeah, around there.
Charlie Sandlan (00:34:24):
It was right before my trip to Japan, because I remember that's where we struck our first conversation.
Jillian Marshall (00:34:27):
Yes, yes, yes. You seemed so like you were in fifth gear, that it was natural to you, and that you were operating naturally on a very high level as a pedagogue and as an artist, which are two related skills, but they're also different. It seemed like you were going on all cylinders in a way that just seemed like you had integrated and learned the earlier lessons of living a creative life and were kind of at this phase of being at the peak.
Charlie Sandlan (00:35:05):
That was five years ago, so now we're talking five years later, but it's all you get to that point where you become unconsciously competent, right? If you read any Malcolm Gladwell, you start off unconsciously incompetent. And maybe over 10 years and 10,000 hours, you're unconsciously competent, where you've made it your own in such a way where it's...
Jillian Marshall (00:35:31):
Part of you.
Charlie Sandlan (00:35:32):
You're in the moment. It's like, I don't have to think. I don't have to think anymore. I was very lucky, and no doubt you have been lucky, to be mentored by masters. Not a lot of artists have that, to really truly be mentored by master teachers and master artists. If you can soak that up and you can take really what they say and make it your own, then you can turn yourself into something really special.
Jillian Marshall (00:36:05):
That's a very good point that reminds me too circling back to this kind of past and somewhat present life now as a trumpet player. I do play. I haven't played out in a while. I think the last performance I gave on trumpet was probably in 2014, and then I put it down again and I just felt this existential angst. And then in 2018, when I was at my last semester at Cornell, PhD, Lalaland, I was the TA for the jazz theory and improv class. Wynton Marsalis, the most famous trumpet player in the world, he came to Cornell. He had a residency there. It's one of the perks of going to a very name brand institution. He came to our jazz class. He came to a bunch of different seminars that I was able to go to.
I was able to meet him several times. Meeting him, it was like this... I was practicing, in particular, this one classical music piece that I played at the Maple Festival Talent Show called The Carnival of Venice, which is considered one of the most virtuosic pieces that a trumpet player can play. I played it when I was 12, and I learned from listening to Wynton Marsalis. Anyway, I practiced all this and I just... The day he came to our jazz lecture, it was a full house. My professor that I was working with, he came up to me and he was like, "Listen, this is about the students. Under no circumstances... You're not going to play. He might ask people to jam with him. It can't be you." I was like, "Okay, I understand."
And of course, Wynton Marsalis, he's there for I think it was an hour lecture. For 55 minutes, he's just talking and everyone's just listening to him enraptured. And then he gets the five minute cue and he goes, "Damn! Why didn't anybody tell me?" He comes up to me, and we'd already kind of like met a few times and I could tell he liked me. We just had a vibe anyway. He came up to me and he smiled. He sat down next to me on piano and he said, "You. I'm an A. Let's hit it." I jammed with him. He was on piano. I was on trumpet. And then he just looked at me, he said, "Stay on your horn." I felt like I melted. To me, it was affirming.
For me, living a creative life also is living a spiritual life, because there are so many acts of faith that we have to make as artists. I have to summon the courage. I don't know what's going to happen, and I have to do this. Certainly living your creative life also too in terms of even just everyday things, maybe especially everyday things like finances, how are you going to pay the bills as a creative? I made the full...
Charlie Sandlan (00:38:38):
That's real life shit right there.
Jillian Marshall (00:38:39):
It's real life shit. Two years ago, actually really last year, I made the full leap into just no more I'm going to work 30 hours a week and then dedicate myself to blah, blah, blah. I am going to just be full freelance me. I'll open up a little LLC for myself.
Charlie Sandlan (00:38:56):
Talk about rolling the dice on yourself.
Jillian Marshall (00:38:58):
Exactly. But hey, I'm not in debt. I have my little savings account. I'm building something. Just to me, that's an act of faith, then meeting Wynton Marsalis. And then when I was waiting tables at this older than old school, cough, cough, mafia connected, cough, cough.
Charlie Sandlan (00:39:16):
Which I know is going to be the subject of another book.
Jillian Marshall (00:39:19):
Oh, it is. The book is written. It's called PhD Waitress. I'm looking for agents now, which is not fun, but that's the other side of artistry. It's not really glamorous. You have to be willing to sacrifice and be like, okay, if I want to make it to the next level, if I need a fucking agent, then I need a fucking agent.
Charlie Sandlan (00:39:37):
I mean, the business side sucks, but it's necessary and it's essential.
Jillian Marshall (00:39:41):
It's essential. To me, it's like the muck of finishing my doctorate. You just got to push through it. If I really want this, I got to push through it. Eye on the prize. But anyway, at this mafia restaurant, the bartender came up to me once, it was a really slow day, and he was like, "Jillian, you got to meet this guy." It turns out he's this absolutely amazing living legend jazz trumpet player named. His name is Joe Magnarelli. He lives in New York. He actually lives down in Bay Ridge. I actually studied with him for a year after that. I was like, okay, this is a sign. It's going back to this idea of spirituality. Having Wynton Marsalis... After we jammed, by the way, he looked at me, he's like, "Stay on your horn."
When Wynton Marsalis tells you to stay on your horn, and then you meet another famous jazz trumpet player, and then that makes the third famous jazz trumpet of player that you happen to cross paths within your life, I take that as a sign.
Charlie Sandlan (00:40:27):
Absolutely.
Jillian Marshall (00:40:28):
Right now I'm kind of just figuring out, okay, where do I go from here? Because of course, then you think this is getting a little specific, but the jazz world is very like... How many of these old standards can you play? It's like I think back to Sun RA. I'm more interested in creating something new, or Lester Bowie for that matter. Real avant-garde. One of my favorite records he put out was called Duet with the drummer Phillip Wilson. Just trumpet and a drum set, a duet, free improv. Absolutely brilliant. That's what I'm really interested in.
But at the same time, this attention to detail, this technique, you can't just go and be a free jazz artist without knowing your technique, without learning everything that you need to learn. Specifically for a jazz musician, your arpeggios, every skill forward and backward, learning and trans... I have good ears. I'm very blessed in that sense. I can listen to something and I can play it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:20):
See, that's interesting, and I think this is where acting and music. I use jazz music as an analogy often, because, yeah, you do have to do all that work. So that when you get in the moment, you're out of your head and you can improvise.
Jillian Marshall (00:41:36):
Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:36):
That's exactly what actors have to do. You have to do all those homework at home. You have to train yourself. You have to have all these skills, fundamental. So that when you get in the moment, you hear action, lights up, whatever it is, you're completely out of your head. You trust the technique, and you can improvise from moment to moment, unanticipated moment to unanticipated moment.
Jillian Marshall (00:41:55):
Like flow, I'm sure.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:56):
Yeah, flow.
Jillian Marshall (00:41:57):
Yeah, exactly.
Charlie Sandlan (00:41:59):
See, this is why most people think they can act. It's not the same with other art forms. I don't think people watch Wynton Marsalis play and go, "Oh yeah, I want to be a jazz musician, or I want to be a rock star," but they watch actors act and they think, "Oh, I could do that," because the virtuosity isn't as apparent as it is in other art forms.
Jillian Marshall (00:42:26):
That's so true.
Charlie Sandlan (00:42:26):
But behind a great piece of acting is such skill and such grace, such clarity that it looks effortless.
Jillian Marshall (00:42:36):
Exactly. It seems like with acting... And by the way, it's funny you say that because I've always, always wanted to do acting.
Charlie Sandlan (00:42:44):
Really?
Jillian Marshall (00:42:45):
When I was a kid, classic...
Charlie Sandlan (00:42:51):
Add that to your list of creative pursuits.
Jillian Marshall (00:42:53):
Like we were talking about, if you're a creative, it's like you... It's not like I do acting, but I won't touch a paint brush. Everyone's kind of interested in everything. It's creation. It's expansive. I mean, Frank Sinatra was a painter.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:09):
Please, George W. Bush is a painter.
Jillian Marshall (00:43:12):
I was just going to say. He's actually pretty good.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:16):
Jim Carey. Jim Carey is a fucking unbelievable painter.
Jillian Marshall (00:43:20):
Phenomenal.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:20):
Jesus!
Jillian Marshall (00:43:21):
Phenomenal. Yes. Yes.
Charlie Sandlan (00:43:23):
Blows my mind. I mean, not only is he one of the most courageous actors you'll ever find, unapologetic, talk about unapologetic and fearless. I shouldn't say fearless, courageous. His art is phenomenal.
Jillian Marshall (00:43:39):
Totally. Just someone who's really spiritually in tune 100%. Exactly. Two things. One, yes, I always wanted to try acting and I think it comes from this creative urge. The cliche is when I was like six, seven, eight, I'd fantasize about my Oscar's speech. I was like in my speech, I remember the fantasy in my head was like, "Oh, I'm also in the Olympics as a skier." It was like I had all these things I wanted to do. But acting, the idea of really almost accessing feelings like a Rolodex kind of, accessing the feelings that you catalog, that you understand, that's so appealing to me.
I feel like it would open up other avenues of creativity as well. But the other thing I wanted to add just real quick is I think you're absolutely right, I just recently watched Marriage Story. Adam Driver, I think...
Charlie Sandlan (00:44:36):
Great, great, great work.
Jillian Marshall (00:44:39):
The best actors are the ones where you can't tell they're acting.
Charlie Sandlan (00:44:42):
That's right. That's exactly right.
Jillian Marshall (00:44:45):
Adam Driver, talk about an artist. Maybe I'm one of those cliches that think like, "Oh, I could be an actor. I could do it." But just as a creative exercise, it does seem like extremely appealing.
Charlie Sandlan (00:44:59):
Yeah, I get it. Yeah, of course, because you're working out the human heart. This is why I think... It's a permissive art form. As an actor, if you're working at a high level, you get to really function from the parts of yourself that you spend most of your life suppressing.
Jillian Marshall (00:45:20):
That is deep.
Charlie Sandlan (00:45:22):
And it's a thrill.
Jillian Marshall (00:45:24):
Are you ever scared of what you might find inside?
Charlie Sandlan (00:45:28):
I am not anymore, because I've done all that hard work on myself. Nothing scares me. But when you come to training, absolutely scare the fucking hell out of you. It's the students that can work through that, can work through their fear and find the resilience to unpack and unlock all of the resistance and all the blocks that keep them from being open and free and in the moment, they're the ones that really put the work together. But yeah, no, it terrified them. And rightly so.
Jillian Marshall (00:46:06):
A question I have is, how do you think being an actor has positively impacted your life, your emotional life, your personal life?
Charlie Sandlan (00:46:13):
My emotional IQ is off the chart for sure, and my empathy for human suffering and my ability to listen and to be able to hear how a person is talking to me and what they really mean, what they're really saying, because that's what acting is. It's a subtext exercise. The Meisner technique, which is what I teach and I'm a master of, has to do at its fundamental level with teaching you how to really listen and to hear what's being said to you. Because the lines can mean anything, a script. I love you can mean go fuck yourself. But when you can really be attuned to subtext and in the moment respond for how you feel in every moment, which is what an actor needs to do, I mean, this work makes you, made me, just more present and more just open.
Jillian Marshall (00:47:10):
Yeah. Do you find that you can pick up on people's BS like in an instant?
Charlie Sandlan (00:47:15):
Oh absolutely. Are you kidding me? 100%. 100%. 100% absolutely.
Jillian Marshall (00:47:22):
I love that.
Charlie Sandlan (00:47:24):
Students try to unload their bullshit all day long. All they have are excuses. When you're in your twenties and you're starting out in the world, you've done just enough to get by, right? You spent your life... I think most people do. And why not? If doing just enough gets you by, you're going to do just enough. When they come to me for the first time, many of them are being told, "No, no, no, that's lazy and that's unacceptable and that's horseshit what you're doing. Let's look at going beyond trading on your looks and your personality and your charm and see what hard work can do for you." The students that respond well to that are the ones that stay. Those students that don't respond well to that, they quit or they go off and do something else with their life.
Jillian Marshall (00:48:11):
That's part of the process.
Charlie Sandlan (00:48:12):
Absolutely.
Jillian Marshall (00:48:14):
It's part of the process. You see that too. I mean, obviously with acting, it's so immediate. To me, it's so raw. That's one thing I really respect about certainly you as an artist, because I feel like acting is almost like this ultimate training ground, you know what I mean, for just the skills that any artist would need. Like you said, it's learning the human heart and understanding the subtext with stuff, with life, the subtext of what everyone is saying, what everyone is thinking and feeling. Those are necessary skills for really everything.
It's something too that I find as a writer, which I guess we haven't really talked about and that's probably my most accomplished at least in terms of being established on the world, as being a published writer. Japanthem. Just put it out there again.
Charlie Sandlan (00:49:06):
Again. Right, right. I'm finding the cliche, everybody's got one book in them, but you have multiple.
Jillian Marshall (00:49:14):
Well, it's the same thing. It's the compulsion.
Charlie Sandlan (00:49:15):
A compulsion. You have a compulsion to write.
Jillian Marshall (00:49:18):
I have to. If I don't, it's like... I know I keep using excrement in my analogies here, but to me writing is like pooping out the stuff. It's like clearing my brain.
Charlie Sandlan (00:49:29):
But don't you have a compulsion to play the trumpet? Don't you have a compulsion?
Jillian Marshall (00:49:32):
I have all these compulsions. Let me tell you, the things that I want to write about are different than the things I want to play music about, the things that inspire me. For me, writing is a very particular creative exercise of meditation for me. It's a way for me to process my memories. It's a way for me to process events. A lot of the books and stuff that I find out there in the world recently, a lot of, "I'm so sad. This shitty thing happened. This is hard. Here's my memoir. I'm so sad. This is traumatic." Okay, it's not that I don't care. It's just I don't really need that.
Japanthem, for me, the first book, that was a way for me to process this other life that I have across the Pacific. I was in a multiple year relationship with someone there. It was the only place I had ever lived as an adult up until I was 30, 31 years old.
Charlie Sandlan (00:50:31):
And you spent what, four years there? A little more?
Jillian Marshall (00:50:33):
Four years cumulatively. Yes. Yes. Two years I was in a fishing village on an island, twice we moved from the mainland. That was my first job. It's the only nine to five I've ever had.
Charlie Sandlan (00:50:46):
Teaching English.
Jillian Marshall (00:50:46):
Teaching English at two rural middle schools, which was amazing. My students were... That was my anthropological training ground, going back into this conversation about ethnography. And then doing the PhD was really just a way for me to stay in Japan and to be able to go there and obtain visas easily. Because Japan, if we want to talk about systemic discrimination, Japan is really good at that. If you're a foreigner renting an apartment, forget it. It's really difficult to. If you want to get a career that's different than teaching English, then that's really difficult. Being a PhD student allowed me to have this more broad, open relationship with the society.
Every time I was there, as long as I was producing my re... And life was research for me. I think that's really where the seeds of living a creative life were planted was this life I had in Japan where I've done all this stuff there. I was a Bohemian drifter. I was a researcher. I was a student. I was a cake baker at a champagne bar run by a woman that used to be a hostess, which is someone that gets paid by the hour very handsomely to basically flirt with people. I have this crazy life in Japan, going to Buddhist dancing in the mountains in Northern Japan, go to raves with DJs that I'm going out with, all of these experiences juxtaposed especially at that time with this mild mannered life that I was living as a PhD student, an Ivy league institution in the US was so different.
Charlie Sandlan (00:52:18):
It's a double life.
Jillian Marshall (00:52:21):
It was a double life. I had to really reflect on, okay, how did I get myself into this double life situation? It's probably not the most healthy thing for me. How do I stitch these worlds together? The book that I wrote is actually... It's the non-academic part of my doctoral thesis, because I basically produced these two mirror documents that I presented as a whole, one-half being your standard theoretical stuff, like my analysis of XYZ, and then just stories. The stories are just me. It's like I wrote it like you're talking to me. I needed to put them out there. As I was writing, this process of what I was actually creating became clear to me and I thought, I want to actually try to publish these as a real book.
That's what I did. Writing for me, it's a way to stitch together these worlds. PhD Waitress, same thing. It's a way for me to make sense of this time I had working at this restaurant in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn that closed in 2020 after 84 years. They just were like, you know what? We're not cur... This was a social club where people went in four times a week and bumped into people from the avenue. Anyway, the second book is about stitching together these experiences to make sense of them, especially when there's some kind of disparity in my life. If there's something that I don't understand, I write and it helps me understand. But if I'm trying to understand my feelings or to release feelings, music.
If I'm trying to just get inspired to just be more playful, visual art, painting, collaging. These days I've actually been painting quite a bit. Paint is great because it moves. You only have so much time before it dries if I'm working with acrylic. And then if I'm working with watercolor, as soon as I put it to the paper, it's out of my control, and I love that. Visual art allows me to be free. It helps me... If I have a visual art project in the midst, it just helps get my creative juices flowing. Writing helps me stay mentally organized, and playing music helps me release feelings. The work for me is not writing or playing music or whatever the work is getting to a point where I'm able to do that.
I don't really have a survival job anymore. Making this transition into this lifestyle, obviously there are sacrifices to be made, but I'm really grateful for what I have because I'm not a starving artist. I've been in New York City for four years. When I first moved here, I had $0 in my bank account. I had $1,500 on my credit card, and I was adjuncting at Binghamton University, Upstate, five and a half hour commute one way on Greyhound that I did twice a week for 16 weeks that I got paid almost... I got paid beans. I got paid 10,000 before taxes for two classes. My transportation was not compensated, but I took the job because I needed to make rent. And then I worked at a restaurant on the side.
There'd be times where I'd work at the restaurant, get home at midnight, wake up at 5:00, go to Binghamton. That was what I did when I first moved here. That's the foundation I had to lay in order to even think about doing what I'm doing now. Again, thinking about writing as a way of processing, that's what PhD Waitress is sort of doing. I wanted to of be this unique document that's simultaneously a chronicle, like a documentation and a manifestation of this New York journey.
Charlie Sandlan (00:55:45):
I get it. I totally get it. When I get a group of students, "I want to be an actor. I have this dream of being an actor." At some point, you're going to be confronted with what it's going to take, the sacrifices you're going to have to make. I say to them, I look them on the first day, I said, "You don't understand this yet, but if art is your life, it's going to cost you everything."
Jillian Marshall (00:56:13):
That is so good.
Charlie Sandlan (00:56:14):
And at some point, you're going to understand what I mean by that.
Jillian Marshall (00:56:17):
What sacrifices did you make or are you making?
Charlie Sandlan (00:56:20):
Relationships, financial security. I mean, those are two big ones. Missed weddings, missed funerals, missed birthday parties, missed social events, fractured relationships because of that, culling the people out of my life that didn't add value to it, even though I love them dearly, cutting out the low hanging fruit because I wanted to curate a life and relationships of people that inspired me and respected me and I respected them. I mean, it's like, well, but this is a difficult thing. Going into major debt in order to get the training that I want, because I know I wanted to be well trained and not be scared off, which a lot of people are, by the money, the time.
It's so funny, I'll sit and I'll talk to some prospective students who's 22 years old and they say, "Well, I don't know if I got two... I mean, two years? Two years to train?" I just laugh. I'm like, "You're 22. What do you think you're going to do?" They think, "I got to get moving. I got to start." Nothing's going to happen for you if you don't train. No one's going to take you seriously unless you take yourself seriously first. No one's going to treat you like an artist if you don't treat yourself like an artist first. That's it. That's what I say to them and the ones that stick with it. I feel like... Listen, we're talking so long. We got to wrap this up. Honest to God, we could talk for another hour. I want to end on this, because you're so fucking smart.
Jillian Marshall (00:58:07):
Thank you.
Charlie Sandlan (00:58:08):
If somebody wanted to investigate jazz, what's one album you would recommend? You know what? If you don't know much about jazz and you want to start to educate yourself, what's the first album they should listen to?
Jillian Marshall (00:58:20):
There's two and you need to listen to them side by side. The first one's like... They're both cliche. You need to listen to Kind of Blue, Miles Davis, and you also have to listen to A Love Supreme, John Coltrane.
Charlie Sandlan (00:58:32):
Okay.
Jillian Marshall (00:58:33):
That's it. That'll get you started both directions. You can go backward from Kind of Blue and you can go forward from A Love Supreme.
Charlie Sandlan (00:58:40):
Okay. What would you like to say to somebody who is young, who moves to New York and is interested in a creative life? What would be some advice?
Jillian Marshall (00:58:49):
If its go, go, go, push through. And if you get to the point where you feel like it's going to hurt you more than it's going to help you, you will know and you will be able to walk through this. But if you are just scared, just keep pushing through it.
Charlie Sandlan (00:59:12):
Well, my fellow day dreamers, thank you for sticking around and keeping that phone in your pocket. Please subscribe and follow the show wherever you get your podcast. Spread the word. Tell all your friends about CBP. You can go to iTunes if you've got a few seconds and leave the show a review. That would be fantastic. You can go to https://www.creatingbehaviorpodcast.com Go to the contact page. Hit that red button. You speak pipe. You can leave me a voice message, share with me some of your thoughts, some things that you are watching or some things you'd recommend.
You can go to https://maggieflaniganstudio.com if you're interested in getting in my New York City classroom. My next first year class starts September 9th. You can follow me on Instagram @creatingbehavior, @maggiefaniganttudio. Lawrence Trailer, thank you for the music, my man. My friends, if you're scared, just keep pushing through. Okay? Stay resilient. Play for love with yourself and don't ever settle for your second best. My name is Charlie Sandlan. Peace. [Singing 01:00:03]
