In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Becky Barsi chat with Shanta Lee Honeycutt, an award-winning visual artist, author, photographer; and Damon Honeycutt, a professional artist across the mediums of dance, martial arts, music composition. Both are also educators. Our conversations in this interview weave between the diverse mediums and adventures of these two creatives. We also discuss their meet-cute story and how collaboration goes from household to the work they do in the world. Shanta is a winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Grant for Poetic Achievement, Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award, and a 2024 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow (New England), and her work has been widely featured in Harper’s Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, ITERANT Literary Magazine, Palette Poetry, Prism, Ms. Magazine, and DAME Magazine. Damon has traveled to over 20+ countries around the world dancing in venues that range from the 2009 Royal Variety Performance in the presence of HM The Queen to the 79th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony. As a composer, Damon has composed music for many including Chatham Baroque, The Power String Quartet headed by Jennifer Choi, The Delgani String Quartet, Ensemble Entelechron, and Ken Thomson’s Saxophone Quartet. Learn more about Shanta at www.Shantalee.com and about Damon at https://damonomad.wixsite.com/damonhoneycutt. Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com. If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax-deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
In this episode of Creative Guts, co-hosts Laura Harper Lake and Becky Barsi chat with Shanta Lee Honeycutt, an award-winning visual artist, author, photographer; and Damon Honeycutt, a professional artist across the mediums of dance, martial arts, music composition. Both are also educators. Our conversations in this interview weave between the diverse mediums and adventures of these two creatives. We also discuss their meet-cute story and how collaboration goes from household to the work they do in the world.
Shanta is a winner of the New England Poetry Club’s Grant for Poetic Achievement, Abel Meeropol Social Justice Writing Award, and a 2024 National Arts Strategies Creative Community Fellow (New England), and her work has been widely featured in Harper’s Magazine, The Massachusetts Review, ITERANT Literary Magazine, Palette Poetry, Prism, Ms. Magazine, and DAME Magazine. Damon has traveled to over 20+ countries around the world dancing in venues that range from the 2009 Royal Variety Performance in the presence of HM The Queen to the 79th Annual Academy Awards Ceremony. As a composer, Damon has composed music for many including Chatham Baroque, The Power String Quartet headed by Jennifer Choi, The Delgani String Quartet, Ensemble Entelechron, and Ken Thomson’s Saxophone Quartet.
Learn more about Shanta at www.Shantalee.com and about Damon at https://damonomad.wixsite.com/damonhoneycutt.
Listen to this episode wherever you listen to podcasts or on our website www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com. Connect with us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Discord. Creative Guts recently moved our newsletter to Substack, and you can find us at creativegutspod.substack.com.
If you love listening, consider making a donation to Creative Guts! Our budget is tiny, so donations of any size make a big difference. Learn more about us and make a tax-deductible donation at www.CreativeGutsPodcast.com.
Thank you to our friends at Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery in Exeter, NH and the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts in Rochester, NH for their support of the show!
[INTRODUCTION]
[0:00:00] LHL: I'm Laura Harper Lake.
[0:00:01] BB: I'm Becky Barsi.
[0:00:02] LHL & BB: And you're listening to Creative Guts.
[0:00:18] BB: Hey, friends, thanks for tuning in to Creative Guts.
[0:00:20] LHL: Today, we are chatting with a multifaceted creative couple. Shanta Lee Honeycutt is an award-winning visual artist, writer across genres, author, and much, much more. And Damon Honeycutt, a professional artist across the mediums of martial arts, dance, music composition, and an educator. These two have an amazing meet-cute story and just got married.
[0:00:45] BB: So, let's jump right into this episode of Creative Guts with Shanta Lee Honeycutt and Damon Honeycutt.
[INTERVIEW]
[0:00:54] LHL: Shanta, Damon, thank you so much for being on the Creative Guts podcast.
[0:00:59] SLH: Thank you. Yeah.
[0:00:58] DH: Good to be here. Yeah.
[0:01:00] BB: Yeah, we're very excited to finally meet you guys in person.
[0:01:03] SLH: Yes.
[0:01:04] LHL: So, I know this will be tough to keep it brief because you guys both do so much incredible work, but can we start with a brief summary about who each of you are as a creative? And we'll start with Damon.
[0:01:17] DH: All right. Wow. I call myself a warrior artist because I have studied martial arts all of my life, and music. So, I've always combined the physical with the sonic. And that started to really accumulate in a real way when I finally left my hometown of Ashland, Oregon, and went to college at California Institute of the Arts and got drafted into the dance department.
[0:01:41] LHL: Nice.
[0:01:41] DH: Yes.
[0:01:41] BB: Was that what you expected?
[0:01:43] DH: No. I went there for music composition, and all the time I'd be training my kung fu in the main gallery. And the dean of the dance department, Cristyne Lawson at the time, would be like, "Oh, you have to be a dancer." And I'm like, "I do not wear tights." Because I wear my baggy clothes, my baggy kung fu clothes. But she talked me into it, and then I just was intraschool. And then after that, I got more work as a dancer than I did as a composer. And then, eventually, I worked at the dance company Pilobolus, and I also worked with 90 Chen, and Scapegoat Garden, among others. And then as I got older and that touring life, I wanted to stop, and then I went back to get my master's in music from the Vermont College of Fine Arts, VCFA. And it's just been an amazing experience, a lifelong experience of cultivating both the scholarly and the marshal, the movement and the sonic into one form. And that's kind of it in a nutshell.
[0:02:40] BB: It's a lot to encompass into a nutshell.
[0:02:43] DH: It is. Yeah. Keep it as elevate – my elevator pitch, you know.
[0:02:47] BB: Yeah. We'll break into that nut a little bit more as we get going, too.
[0:02:50] DH: Yeah, awesome.
[0:02:51] LHL: But you truly are interdisciplinary. And when I say that, I think about myself, where I do like different types of paints and print making, but you are transcending that with different disciplines that are kind of woven together.
[0:03:03] DH: Yeah, thank you. I've always tried to cultivate myself as an equilateral triangle where you have movement. I think of music as a kind of magical construct a lot because of how it plays on emotions so much. And also, then kind of critical academics, those three trying to cultivate them at once, rather than being an isosceles where I'm like only this and my base is that way. And I think it's taken me a long time to fill that triangle out. But I feel well-rewarded by taking my time with it, you could say.
[0:03:34] BB: That's great.
[0:03:36] LHL: Yeah, that's tremendous. Well, we're going to dive into it more in a little bit.
[0:03:39] DH: Awesome. Awesome.
[0:03:40] LHL: We'd love to hear more about your creative journey.
[0:03:42] SLH: Thank you. So, I'm Shanta Lee, or Shanta Lee Honeycutt in this context. I work across different – I like to describe myself as a practitioner of entanglement, pulling from the science term. And I write across different genres, and that also includes journalism. I do poetry. I do creative non-fiction, dipping my toe into fiction. Also, dipping my toe into filmmaking. I'm also a photographer. Those are just a few things.
Professionally, I've done several things across different sectors, art, privates, nonprofits. I started two academic mentoring programs that I ran for three years. And then they went on to run for over 20 years after I left. I implemented a statewide internship program some time ago that's probably still going with another organization. I might be leaving some things out, but I've done grant writing. I've done all sorts of different things professionally. Currently, I am a professor. I teach at Colby-Sawyer, and I also teach at Wilkes University in Pennsylvania.
[0:04:48] BB: Wow.
[0:04:49] LHL: So, you're just – you got plenty of free time, right?
[0:04:52] SLH: Yes.
[0:04:56] LHL: This is tremendous. The combination of both your works, it's just outstanding.
[0:05:00] BB: Yeah. When did you first realize that you're like, "Oh, I've got the creative bug?" When did you realize I am a creative person and this is what I want to explore?
[0:05:07] DH: Wow. That's a good question. Well, my father is a visual artist and he paints very intense figurative narratives on oil. And they're huge now. I've always was raised around creativity. And on my mom's side of the family, they were always entrepreneurs. My great-grandfather started a lumber yard after the depression that our family had for – what was it? 70-something years?
[0:05:31] SLH: It's like just over 70 years that that lumber – and then your grandmother ran it.
[0:05:36] DH: Ran it.
[0:05:38] SLH: Woman-run and woman-owned.
[0:05:37] LHL: Wow. That's great. That's amazing.
[0:05:40] DH: Yeah, for most of it, right? And so I was always around, you could say, people that would – as I like to say, go where angels fear to tread, like the trailblaze. And so when you're kind of raised around that, I think creativity can have a place to rest in, you could say. And then when I was younger, I had really great mentors. And I don't think I made a choice. It just happened. It's not like I woke up and be like, "Oh, now I will create." It came about naturally, but it was fostered by my environment, you could say. Yeah, it's the road less traveled.
But then again, there's many aspects of my family that was the road less traveled and also just early mentors, especially right out of high school. And also, just dedicating oneself to martial arts at a young age, like starting jiu-jitsu at 11, and it being like a life practice, because that was like a safe place. The dojo changed my life. And so having that. And it's not like I just like, "Oh, I wanted to go do something." It became something, and it was huge. Yeah, I guess that's it. I'll probably go into it more.
[0:06:51] SLH: I'll probably piggyback off that because for me – different though. So zigzaggy. Did not have that environment. And for myself, I used imagination a lot. And I didn't necessarily call it a thing, but it was just using imagination. The Sound of Music is always one of my examples, and I would just imagine like, "Oh, I'm Julie Andrews. I want to do stuff like that." Or just – I don't know. I do think I was infected by fairy tales. I think I was infected by a lot of TV culture, movie culture, and just imagining my way out of my environment.
And goodness, I started writing in a journal. I didn't necessarily see myself as someone who would put words out in public. And I knew as an adult, I was like, "I'd love to publish a book." But it's not like I knew the connected pieces for that. And my degrees don't – my undergrad is in women, gender, and sexuality, and my first master's degree is business. I was more focused on, "Oh, I cannot return back home. I need to sustain myself."
And then privately, though, I think I've been writing in my journal since the age of 12 or 13 years old. And allegedly, I called myself a poet at some point. And I did have was the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts. I stick my toe in that for like a year against the advice of a high school counselor. And I found out about the program. I was like, "I have to do it."
So zigzaggy path. Used a throwaway camera to do some photographs while in Africa, but I was in Africa for business, not for – and someone looked at my photos years ago, this many years ago, and they said, "Wow. I think you have quite the eye." And I'm like, "Okay."
[0:08:36] BB: What does that mean?
[0:08:37] DH: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
[0:08:38] SLH: I just didn't think about it. But I did steal my dad's camera. Sorry, dad. Stole his camera, leaving for college, and then broke it, and never got it replaced. But I always had a love for images and storytelling. And grew up hearing inappropriate stories. But nonetheless, people telling stories and being theatrical and dramatic, but there was not quite a name.
And so, fast forward, many helpers later, amazing advisers along the way, but it was so zigzag. It is so darn zigzag. And when I decided to build an artistic or creative resume that I fill, I always say that I'm late to the party, even though they're great examples of other people late to the party.
[0:09:20] LHL: Yes. Yeah. I know. I think there's some impostor syndrome built into that for all of us, as far as when we show up and how we show up.
[0:09:28] SLH: Except for in some cases, you don't have time for impostor syndrome because you're like, "Get on with it. I think this is what I'm doing. And I'm just going to do this and see what happens."
[0:09:38] LHL: Yeah, that's brave. That's part of the guts.
[0:09:39] SLH: Yes, that's part of the guts. Yeah.
[0:09:42] LHL: Very cool. All right. How did you two meet? What's the meet-cute story?
[0:09:46] DH: Oh, this is a great story.
[0:09:49] SLH: Meet-cute. Oh, I love this story. It's my favorite.
[0:09:52] DH: So I turned 40, right? I'm older now, of course. But when I turned 40, I was just like, "You know what? I want to do a birthday concert." And so I did a concert on my birthday, and I got some friends involved. And I did dance works and some musical works of things that were just kind of my own creation in collaboration with some of the people that were there. And so who was it that put it in content?
[0:10:16] SLH: I think it was Cindle. Shouts out to Cindle Ellis for my now husband.
[0:10:20] DH: Yeah. Because it was going to be at the studio, which she ran, and she's like, "Oh, let's get some news out there about it." That's how we first met. I was a client of hers. Yeah. And she got it on radio and stuff. It was cool.
[0:10:31] SLH: I skipped over that. I used to do PR work and do different things for artists or different people.
[0:10:36] DH: She's very good at it.
[0:10:37] SLH: We hung out. Round one was hanging out. And I remember you were at your piano, and I was at your place, and we started a conversation about food.
[0:10:48] DH: Right.
[0:10:49] SLH: And food in connection to race. The description of the Oreo. I was like, "Oh yeah, I'd be described as an Oreo." And I don't need to give anybody descriptions of what an original Oreo is. We'll just go with that. And then you told me your backstage name for the Peking Opera.
[0:11:03] DH: Oh, right. I was one of the few Westerners to train and perform with the Peking Opera, which is – and so my teacher, [Name of teacher inaudible 0:11:11], he didn't speak any English and I didn't speak any Mandarin at the time. And they would always call me the egg. Think about it. Yeah. Do you know what I mean? And so I thought that was –
[0:11:24] SLH: And we were cracking up over it.
[0:11:24] DH: We're kind of cracking up about it. When I think about, they're like – and they'd be like, "Teacher Chi, where's the apprentice, the egg?" That's what they would say.
[0:11:31] BB: Oh wow.
[0:11:31] DH: Yeah.
[0:11:32] SLH: And you suggested we do an exhibition or something. But then at some point, we stopped. Brief romantic hanging out and then went our own ways. Got married.
[0:11:43] DH: Yeah. Got married. I have a son.
[0:11:45] SLH: Yep. And I got married and did some art. Then, at some point, I want to say a couple years ago, three years ago now?
[0:11:54] DH: Three years ago now, maybe three and a half.
[0:11:55] SLH: I don't know why I did this. I started for – actually, even before three years. Maybe for four or five years. Behind the scenes. Because at some point after we stopped talking, I blocked him. He didn't do anything. I blocked him. He didn't do anything.
[0:12:09] BB: He's like, "Oh, it's just a long time ago."
[0:12:11] SLH: And then I refriended him. And then I was like, "I don't know why I did that." I'd start wishing him happy birthday. And then at some point, he was like, "Oh, you have a kid?" And I was like, "No, art. That's my kid." And then we – you were like, "Oh, we should hang out." And I said, "Yeah, come see my studio." And we kept trying to hang out 3 years ago. And then finally hung out, and that's it.
[0:12:33] DH: That's it.
[0:12:34] BB: So you reconnected after –
[0:12:36] DH: 11 years.
[0:12:38] SLH: More like 12, 13, something like that. Yeah, it was a while ago. We reconnected, and it was sort of like, "Oh." And I said, "Yeah, I always liked your stuff." And then when we set up, I guess it was a date. I'm dense. I didn't know you liked me. I didn't know he liked me then. And I didn't know he liked me now. And so I said, "Oh, wait." I think you asked me what do I want. I said, "I want to collaborate." I wasn't thinking relationship. I was like, "I want to collaborate. I want to do –"
[0:13:05] DH: I think we were both kind of done with an idea on what a relationship is. And I think that's why we actually work so well, is because we kind of said like, "Oh, wait a minute." We collaborate incredible as two individual artists. And then we just decided to kind of seal the deal, I guess.
[0:13:21] LHL: The chemistry was there.
[0:13:22] DH: Yeah.
[0:13:23] SLH: Yeah.
[0:13:23] DH: Yeah. And also, we know what we're signing up for with it. And we have a goal and a vision and a good life existence together. And I'm just really blessed for that.
[0:13:33] SLH: Damon, I would say infected my application in a good way for the National Arts Strategies. Because when I was thinking of doing it, we're always like rooting for each other, "Do this. Go ahead. Yeah, go for it." It was about food stories, and I said, "Oh," I was like, "I should tell them the story about some of the seeds." And that was one of many seeds for that project.
[0:13:56] LHL: Wow.
[0:13:58] SLH: I love those stories.
[0:13:59] LHL: I know, I'm beaming right now. I love get together stories. That's just so lovely.
[0:14:05] SLH: And I think it was my friends that helped us tie the knot, too. I got to tell them. They don't know that. But he was sold on us doing life together. They're going to a cookout.
[0:14:15] DH: Oh, right. Yes.
[0:14:16] SLH: A couple years ago, they serenated him. They never serenated me.
[0:14:23] BB: Well, you mentioned the food stories. And that has been a collaboration between you two?
[0:14:29] SLH: Yeah. So, it's a part of my 2024-2025 fellowship for the National Arts Strategies. There are pieces that are collaborative in terms of you're going to be doing the soundscape for the –
[0:14:40] DH: Yeah, I'll be doing the soundscape for some digital stuff.
[0:14:42] SLH: Yeah. For the online digital exhibition. And it's been collecting stories. I got some funding and some support from the Manchester Arts Commission, which is great, and other supports for doing the work in the area. But I also have been collecting stories beyond New Hampshire, beyond New England, all over.
[0:15:00] DH: All over, the people, locally.
[0:15:02] SLH: Yeah.
[0:15:03] DH: Intergalactically.
[0:15:06] BB: I love space ice cream.
[0:15:08] DH: I know. Space ice cream.
[0:15:11] SLH: Well, and you asked the question about collaboration, which it's funny because we collaborate formally on things, but also when it comes to – if I can say this. I'm sure it's okay. Teaching, cooking. Anything that we're doing, we're often –
[0:15:26] DH: Yeah, we're are – we're always doing it.
[0:15:30] SLH: Yeah, we're always doing it. We're always just weaving.
[0:15:33] DH: And it's surprisingly functional.
[0:15:34] SLH: Yeah, it is.
[0:15:34] DH: Because a lot of times, when you think about collaboration can be a very difficult thing.
[0:15:38] SLH: That's true.
[0:15:40] DH: You know what I mean?
[0:15:41] SLH: Or couples may not know when to step away from the actual working part. But we have a rhythm for rest. No thinking except for when one of us says, "I have an idea." Or we're driving and you're like, "I think I know what I'm going to do the concert with my kids." I was like, "Do we have to talk about that? It's not fall yet."
[0:16:01] DH: Yeah. Concert with the kids. I teach at a public charter school. I teach music, I teach chorus, and some high school humanities, and an integral arts lab at the Founders Academy Charter School.
[0:16:12] SLH: Okay. Utopia, dystopia is one of the classes. He's being humble. But I was like, "Ooh."
[0:16:16] LHL: That's an awesome class. Yeah.
[0:16:16] SLH: And then last year, what did you teach? Villains, superheroes, and monsters.
[0:16:20] DH: Villain, heroes, and monsters. And then this year I'm doing utopia, dystopia. I had Asian studies.
[0:16:25] BB: And what grade level is this?
[0:16:26] DH: I teach 6th through 12th grade.
[0:16:28] BB: Awesome. Awesome.
[0:16:29] LHL: All the classes I wish I could go back in time and take.
[0:16:30] BB: I know. Yeah.
[0:16:33] LHL: I wish they had those classes when we were kids.
[0:16:34] DH: Well, it's great that I have the freedom to do that. And they're incredibly supportive with that.
[0:16:37] BB: You come up with amazing ideas, too. Those kids are lucky. With the food stories. I'm sorry. I want to make sure we go back to that, too. What was the impetus of this? I mean, talking about just we all have our own individual connections with foods? What was the drive for this particular –
[0:16:56] SLH: Yeah, that's a really good – what's the drive? There are bits and pieces of data points. There's the data point of our conversation of another level and layer of food. But then there was also things like I remember – God, I was in my 20s going to Boston Market and then realizing I was eating something that my great aunt Mary would make for Thanksgiving. It was a sweet potato bake, and realizing I hadn't had it in years. And then fast forward when I was living in Vermont years later and going to different Thanksgivings, and then at some point saying to someone, "Oh, can I bring mac and cheese?" And they said, "No, we don't really do that at Thanksgiving."
[0:17:32] DH: We had a Thanksgiving discussion, too. Yeah.
[0:17:34] SLH: And I said under my breath, I said, "That must be black Thanksgiving." And they said, "What?" And I said it, and we all laughed. And then I remember the person I was with at the time said, "Let's do it. Let's do black Thanksgiving."
Fast forward, we do – it's tongue and cheek. You don't have to be black to go. It's just about black Southern Thanksgiving, but it's really about the food, memory, and storytelling. And so as I was thinking about food stories as a project, I thought, "Okay, whether it's food you cannot stand." Or your early memory, like my grandma Leola's banana pudding and her making banana pudding, or it's tied to a holiday or not a holiday, whatever it is, I think everybody has a memory or food story. Funny, quirky.
And so right now, Edible New Hampshire. I'm working on a piece for Edible New Hampshire, I think it's okay to say, that talks about the project. And it'll be culminating in a digital exhibition space which, again, Damon and I – even though he's in the music part, I also like to say to him, "Hey, look at this. What do you think?" Because I do that with the filmmaking, too, like, "Hey, what do you think? I want you to just stamp your music on." It's like, 'Does this work?"
[0:18:48] BB: Is it a collection of other people's stories that you are blending together and just presenting, or are you building something from those stories?
[0:18:56] SLH: They're all stories. It's just people's stories. And then I did a call, a national call recently that just closed to artists across the country, asking them for art, or audio, or film. All about food stories. It's basically going to be –
[0:19:13] LHL: Dang. That's so cool.
[0:19:14] SLH: Yeah, it's going to be a digital space. And like I said, Damon and I, behind the scenes, say stuff or mention stuff. And some of the stories are wild. Some of the stories.
[0:19:26] LHL: I was going to ask, is there vulnerability? Are there intimate things connected with this? Because, especially ties to family, or community, or identity, there's got to be some really beautiful light-hearted things, but then probably some heavy things.
[0:19:38] BB: Yeah, I bet.
[0:19:39] SLH: Yes. I've gotten a few stories. Yes. And actually, there's one story I still have yet to collect that someone shared about watching their mother struggle with her weight, and beauty, and food, and hiding eating, and hiding her enjoyment of food. There's a whole range of those stories. Someone shared a story about food can kill you if it's an allergy. There's been the range.
[0:20:05] DH: Yeah. The range. It's been amazing, though. It shows a gamut of human experience like anything else.
[0:20:10] BB: Yeah. My mom's a chef. I have grown up in kitchens, and I've worked in restaurants.
[0:20:18] LHL: She taught me how to cut a green pepper properly.
[0:20:20] SLH: Oh, really?
[0:20:22] BB: There's a correct way.
[0:20:23] SLH: Yeah, he's a kitchen – he's a restaurant person. And even though we both love to cook and you've brought a lot of wonderful recipes to our kitchen.
[0:20:31] DH: Yeah. When I was younger, I used to be like a prep.
[0:20:33] SLH: But he just knows food science stuff in a way that I'm just like, "Okay, all you." Even though we both – I would say we're both good cooks.
[0:20:41] DH: Yeah, we like to cook.
[0:20:41] SLH: Yeah.
[0:20:42] BB: Well, I look forward to reading the collection of work that comes out from that. That's a really great –
[0:20:47] LHL: Do you have an estimation of when it will be ready for public consumption?
[0:20:51] SLH: It's going to be ready for public consumption. It has to be ready. It has to be ready before the end of the year. So, like November, December. And I already bought the website domain for it, and it's being set up. And there will be an announcement. Stay tuned, everybody.
[0:21:07] LHL: Oh, yes. We will share it. Yes.
[0:21:09] SLH: And Damon's soundscape and all that awesomeness. Yes. We're working on that.
[0:21:16] BB: Congratulations. That's exciting.
[0:21:18] LHL: Are you like sick of food – baking puns at this point? I'm sure you must.
[0:21:22] DH: I don't know. I don't think we've gotten – I don't think when we've talked about this project, people have made a lot of food puns, actually.
[0:21:28] SLH: No.
[0:21:32] DH: So, you're doing it.
[0:21:33] LHL: Yeah. Yep. All right. Well, nine more because – All right, let's switch to Damon. We're going to kind of ping-pong. Again, it has been so tough. You guys have so much amazing stuff.
[0:21:47] BB: Going through all of your websites, and links, and things, I'm like, "I don't know where to start." It's amazing what you guys have been able to accomplish individually and now collaboratively.
[0:21:58] SLH: Thank you.
[0:21:59] LHL: You've traveled 20-plus countries from around the world dancing in venues that range from the 2009 Royal Variety Performance in the presence of Her Majesty, the Queen.
[0:22:08] DH: Right. That was when I was with Pilobolus. Pilobolus took me around the world.
[0:22:12] LHL: To the 97th Annual Academy Awards ceremony.
[0:22:15] DH: Yeah, that was also Pilobolus, yeah.
[0:22:17] BB: Wow, that is pretty, pretty cool.
[0:22:19] DH: Yeah, that was an incredible experience.
[0:22:21] LHL: We'd love to hear more about your adventures and how this all came to be. Yeah.
[0:22:24] BB: How you got into that. Yeah.
[0:22:25] DH: Oh. Well, as I said at Cal Arts, I was in both departments. Then when I was studying with teacher Chi when they were stateside with the Peking Opera, I was going to go to Beijing and teach English and study with him over there. That didn't work out, is what I thought, as much. And so I had to leave Beijing. And that was a very difficult decision. And I didn't know what to do with myself. It was a tailspin.
That being said, there's a really famous shoe master named [Name of Shoe Master inaudible 0:22:57], and he was really in old kung fu movies, Shaolin Temple with Jet Lee. He's really well-known and he's highly skillful. My root martial arts style was Danzan-ryū jiu-jitsu, but I eventually, through practice, got to study with a man named Paulie Zink who is well-known for [Name of style inaudible 0:23:13] in Cantonese, or monkey kung fu in English. And so I just wanted to enhance – it's all about the Monkey King for me.
When I was studying with the opera, I was learning the role of the Monkey King, [Name inaudible 0:23:24]. But [Name inaudible 0:23:25] was famous for his monkey boxing too. That's what he did in his films. So I just packed up everything with a bag and I moved to Connecticut, because that's where his school was. I found out he was states-side and I'm just like, "Let's go."
[0:23:37] BB: Connecticut. From Oregon or California?
[0:23:42] DH: Yeah. From Oregon at that time. Yeah. And so from the west side. And totally just transplanted myself. Teacher Chi and the apprenticeship at what was going to be there with – and granted I studied with teacher Chi for like a year, a year and a half or so. I needed the next level of what to do. And so [Name inaudible 0:23:59] was it. I went there and I dedicated myself I was like 25 at the time, 26. And then I studied with him for multiple years, about three years, and then I moved to New York City. Then I was at the – I studied with another man, my final teacher, [Name inaudible 0:24:12]. And that was at the Chinese Cultural Center in Manhattan. And then I had my own kung fu school there. And so I know this is all about kung fu and you won't ask me about dance, but it all –
[0:24:22] LHL: I can see the correlation. Yeah.
[0:24:24] DH: And so when I was doing martial arts and going into the dance world, it was a rarity. Now there's a lot of cross-pollination. But 25 years ago, not so much. And so I started working with [Name inaudible 0:24:37], right? I think she was originally from – she passed a few years ago. But anyway. She would bring me in for her New Year shows, her Lunar New Year shows to teach her dancers kung fu. And so here I come in, they're like, "Whoa." They didn't expect me.
And then I also, when I was in Connecticut, worked with an old classmate of mine who was at Cal Arts, Deborah Goffe, and she has Scapegoat Garden. And she is an amazing artist in her own right and choreographer. And so that was a collaborative process as well. And then how I got into Pilobolus was a man named Otis Cook. I would work with him a little bit up in Connecticut, and then he was just like, "Oh, we need some help for an award show." And I'm like, "Okay."
And then I showed up and he's like – and then he got me on that gig and then the rehearsals are like, "Oh, so what were we going to do for the Academy Awards?" I'm like, "Oh my god. How did I end up –" And then, I stayed on. I just worked hard. And then we did all these corporate gigs that took us everywhere. And it was an amazing experience. And then I was fortunate enough to be part of the team that created their big show, Shadowland. And then that went everywhere. Yeah. And I have a lot of people to thank. Matt Kent was amazing. All the people there were really great. And there's a special place in my heart for all of that. And then once I left that, then I needed to go back to music. But touring in that level teaches you a lot about yourself.
[0:26:10] SLH: You were living out of a suitcase, though, for eight-plus years. Or eight years, right?
[0:26:13] DH: That's what it felt like, yeah.
[0:26:16] LHL: Wow.
[0:26:16] BB: That's hard.
[0:26:17] DH: Yeah. Yeah.
[0:26:19] BB: But seeing the world and so many different venues.
[0:26:23] DH: I think the amazing thing about that is you're working. You're not a tourist. When you go to Switzerland and you're working with the Swiss crews that are there, and you go to Italy, or you go to Spain, and you're working with people there, it's like – and then you're changing stages. Some are flat, some are raked. And then you're performing in venues like the Folies Bergère. And so it's very humbling. And so it takes a lot for me to talk about because the emotions run deep with that process.
[0:26:47] BB: Sure.
[0:26:48] LHL: I can imagine.
[0:26:49] DH: And all of us worked incredibly hard, all of the dancers and all of the directors. And then when I became – I was dance captain for a while, and then that was a lot too. And it taught me a lot about myself.
[0:27:01] LHL: I imagine. Yeah.
[0:27:02] DH: Yeah. I'm very thankful for that.
[0:27:04] LHL: Wow. And the amount of exposure you have to other cultures and other languages and just people, all of these artists and creatives, what a dream.
[0:27:13] DH: Yeah.
[0:27:12] LHL: It's truly amazing.
[0:27:14] BB: Shanta, can you tell us more about your forthcoming anthology? It's a sign and breath voice and the literary tradition?
[0:27:22] SLH: Yeah. I approached Philip Brady maybe somewhere about four years ago, maybe, three to four years ago, to pitch my project, something I was working on. And he says, "Oh, actually, I was going to approach you to co-edit." And originally, he talked to me about talking to poets about choosing the page that sings from within their work. I was thinking how cool would it be to get people from across all the genres, but even outside of that.
And I even pitched, I said, "Well, what about visual art? Can someone choose something that sings out of visual art?" However, printing that with quality and doing the work justice, that was going to be a little harder. So, we didn't quite go that route. But I wanted to include musicians, composers. We wanted spoken word, we wanted fiction, non-fiction. And so what you have is a collection of 49 individuals who are national, international artists, who Damon also is included in this. Because I was, again, very curious about. And there are some areas I wish I had more composers. I wish I had more. I have a couple of dancer choreographers in the mix. Lot of individuals who work across different mediums. And asking them, among many questions, but also what is the one page that sings? And what's different about this anthology is that it is the brainchild of Philip Brady. It is not my brainchild.
[0:28:59] BB: For those out in podcast world who aren't familiar with Phil Brady.
[0:29:02] SLH: Oh, yeah. Phil Brady, he's a poet. But also, he's written uh creative non-fiction. And I work with him at Etruscan Press. And they also are my publisher for Black Metamorphosis, my second full collection of poetry. Has extensive work. And so it was his printing child to do this. And so this is how it's come together. And we ask everybody to choose the one page that sings. And what's unique about it is that they have the one page of work that they've chosen alongside of an interview that Philip and I, we took turns interviewing different people, talking about everything from craft to how do you perceive the creative process writing and beyond it. It's very, very interesting work. Or at least I think it's interesting.
[0:29:52] LHL: It sounds fascinating.
[0:29:53] SLH: Yeah, I think it's fascinating. And so I'm somewhere between that book. And I'm always working on something else. There's another book that's coming out of mine, but it's not an anthology. It's just a hybrid collection of Do Words Dream Themselves Into Riddles Told Into Silence by Harbor Editions. And there's a guest feature of an entity who I'm in conversation with. That's all I'm going to say.
[0:30:19] BB: Oh my gosh.
[0:30:20] LHL: Oh my goodness.
[0:30:21] BB: I need some time to process just the titles and digest it, and trying to interpret it. Oh my gosh.
[0:30:27] LHL: I know.
[0:30:28] BB: It's a really awesome phrase. Does it sing?
[0:30:32] SLH: The page, the one page that sings. What does that mean? And if this concept is ever revisited, I would be so curious to see what that means across all the mediums. Not just the direct, easy to connect to. But even like I said with visual art, what would it look like if you were to look for something that actually sings its own song? What song is it singing? What does it sound like? What does it look like?
[0:31:03] BB: I'm thinking of you, Damon, and we're both teachers. And how you actually teach singing in chorus? And I teach visual arts courses. But to be able to ask that same question is like how do you make this sing? And giving that onus to the kids to like think about what is going to make that pop and stand out and have that flare and the voice that's going to resonate.
[0:31:24] LHL: It's like a kinetic energy when you think of singing and movement and everything. It's like there's the physicality of it.
[0:31:30] BB: Right? Well, even the question of voice. And when I'm working with college students or graduate students. Whether I'm teaching a class this fall about academic writing. But even with that, even with the scholarly approach or media criticism, which is another class, which I'm about all of them, it's about thinking about that question that I think – and we ask that question too. What is voice? How do you even define voice? I used to hate here. And I still do. Hate, where it's like, "What's the voice?" And it's like, "What if your voice changes? It should change."
[0:32:09] DH: Yeah. Questions like that can seem rather permanent when there's a lot of flex flow. There's a spectrum of things, a spectrum of consciousness and action. Yeah.
[0:32:19] BB: Well, I love how all the different – you included, Damon, all the different people had different approaches to their answer to that question and other questions that we engaged them with.
[0:32:33] DH: Right.
[0:32:34] LHL: Wow. Damon, I'd love to dive into your music and learn more about that. And I hate to jump from amazing topic to amazing topic, but I'm just being aware of the time that we have.
[0:32:48] DH: It's all right. We can always come again.
[0:32:50] LHL: I mean, there might need to be a part two. Seriously.
[0:32:51] SLH: Okay. We're down.
[0:32:53] LHL: But tell us about your music journey.
[0:32:56] DH: Oh, wow. That conversation that we just had with sign and breath, there's a old quote from the movie Dune, the David Lynch one, which he didn't – well, there's complications in that.
[0:33:09] SLH: Yes. That's the best way to put it.
[0:33:12] DH: There's the weirding way, right? Which certain – what is the quote? Is it – I hope I get it right. Certain thoughts have a sound that being equivalent to a form. And that's when the main character, Paul Atreides, is going to train these army of desert warriors with the weirding way using sound.
In martial arts, we have sounds. In Japanese martial arts, they call it the [Name inaudible 0:33:33]. You have a spirit yell, right? And so for me, music starts with that process. I have that thought sound, form, things of that nature. And so music for me, I didn't think of making it a career, right? And I thought of it as tapping into something that was mysterious.
And one of my first – well, my first real mentor, who is still a really good friend of mine today, Todd Barton, he was a resident composer at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for years. And so I became his composer's apprentice there. And there's a lot of mentor-mentee apprentice, master relationships through my life, which is different than common school, right? And I wanted to really learn how to notate and arrange.
And he said, "Well, you have to do it." And he's really into medieval music and Renaissance music and then also synthesizers, like Buchla synths and all of that kind of stuff. But when I went to him, even though he had this strong electronic things around him, he says, "You have to do everything by hand." It was like super old school. It's like, "Here. Yu got to start here. You got to start. Do this." And then he's the one who encouraged me to go to Cal Arts.
And when I went to California Institute of the Arts, of course it's like, "Whoa." It's very hard to get into. And it was a great exper – I didn't know that. It was the only college I applied for. I was just kind of like, "Okay. Here we go. Yay." And so I go there. And I had incredible mentors there, Alan Chaplin, Barry Schrader. Barry is still alive. And they just encouraged me individually to go deeper that way.
Never did I get the question, "How are you going to market this? How are you going to do that?" I mean, those things are helpful, of course. And we all need to realize that there is, of course, a relationship that needs to happen in making a career in art. However, I was very thankful that they had me go into myself more. And so I wanted to tell stories with my music. I wanted to transport people.
And the wonderful things about Cal Arts which really influenced me is they have an incredible world music program, what is commonly called as world music. They have a Balinese gamelan, Javanese gamelan, West African. They had Persian music, Indian music, North and South Indian music. And so –
[0:35:48] BB: They should pay you to market.
[0:35:49] DH: Oh my god. I've sent two people there. My student who was my kung fu student, Justin Montalo, he went there for theater. And then Siena Muccioli is going there for voice. And I taught her. She was a kind of my chorus assistant, TA at the school last year, the charter school I'm at. But when you start going into different cultural musics and those languages, some of them, "Is there notation? Is there not notation?" How are you going to relate to that? Sometimes you communicate it vocally, sometimes you – and then [Name inaudible 0:36:19], who is retiring this year there. But he was an incredible driving force for me because he not only taught Balinese gamelan, but he also taught Javanese and Balinese dance. And so he was the one who really started saying like I can fuse this together. And the one I worked with the Peking Opera under teacher Chi, and we didn't speak the same language, like we were like just communic – there was no talking during our lessons. We just had to do it. Use our body. And he would shake his head, "No. Yeah." He would say something [speaking inaudible 0:36:48]. I'm like, "What does that mean?" Now I know it means that's not correct. [speaking inaudible 0:36:52]. I'm like, "What? Oh, okay. Go over there and start again. Okay cool." But he would just kind of point or he would draw on the little carpet. And so when you have experiences that transcend what you're used to, then it changes you. I don't know if that answered anything about music. It did? Yeah.
[0:37:10] BB: It did. I think it did. It totally did.
[0:37:11] DH: But music for me is always that ability to communicate something beyond just what my words can't. I think that's why it's hard for me to describe what music is to me because it's – well, it's what my dad, Craig Honeycutt, says. It's like, "Be not the artist. Let the art be itself. That's like one of the greatest lessons I got from him. And it's very true.
[0:37:33] SLH: You brought it full circle to Dune, too. Because that quote about the weirding way encapsulates the beyondness.
[0:37:42] LHL: That's an amazing story.
[0:37:43] DH: Thank you.
[0:37:43] BB: It really is. Yeah. And the courage and the creative guts to have these journeys around the world and to go and study with these masters and not know the same language.
[0:37:55] LHL: Yeah, that's a barrier. We are very close on time. We need to rapid-fire. But one bigger question that I want to kind of bring this all towards is what are some of the challenges and barriers that you both have faced within your creative practices? Because I think it's really easy to sit here and be like, "You guys have done so much, and it's tremendous, and it's wonderful."
[0:38:18] SLH: It doesn't come without its challenges. It's very true.
[0:38:20] LHL: Right. We need to acknowledge that I'm sure there was a lot to process and go through with different things. So, of course, we don't have time for all of them, but like what are some of the biggest challenges that you've faced or are currently facing?
[0:38:32] SLH: We'll start with creating opportunities for myself. When I've traveled internationally, in a lot of cases it was personal, but I wanted to still treat it like – when I was living in India for 5 months, that was – I went thinking. I'm just going to take a few pictures. I came back with 12,000. Very viable pictures. And that actually gave me my first photo exhibition that I did. I feel like trying to get over this mindset of I'm late to the party because there were things either I didn't know about or I had to get myself, which the story of how I got myself to India and sustained it, that is – I'm not telling that until I'm dead. We're going to have to wait a while. There's that. Or thinking about even writing grants, right?
I've secured personal grants. Or I've won prizes or applied for things, but I didn't always know that that was a thing. Didn't know that it was a thing that you could get someone to fund what you like to do. And it better be good. But I didn't realize that. And I've done it for an organization. But even before then, didn't realize that was a thing. I think is it a barrier? Maybe it's a lesson.
Also, pacing myself. Because sometimes I feel like I'm late to the party. And I'm like, "Okay, get on this filmmaking project." Or be working on this, be working on that, and giving myself some ease that it's okay to take it easy. And I've never faced the I don't know how to do that, so I'm not going to. It was more like I'm going to do it and just jump in. It's just a matter of also a pacing of and being okay with it.
And I've been really fortunate. Emily Bernard, for example, great author, writer, I've been fortunate enough to have her, have that be someone along my path to have as a mentor. But again, late to the party. I've had different people along my path, but it's come kind of late. I think getting over that. We were just talking the other day about what if you had a thousand years to live because of some of the conversations happening about immortality now. And I was like, I would like a thousand years to live because you can check things off your list, get things done. Either that or like I just want more time to get to the things and more expansion. And I think that's probably it for me, possibly.
[0:41:03] DH: The coming late part. There's a saying we have in Daosim where rare fruit ripens late. It's one of the sayings in the Tao Te Ching. And I think that's a beautiful thing to think about. Right? And so it's crisis. Crisis. How I really started going on my dance journey when I began working and touring to different countries and begin working with Pilobolus a lot is I had a crisis in my martial arts. What brought me back to martial arts and music was a crisis in dance. There's these thresholds that – crisis is a kind of heavy-weighted word. I think you go through a process of one thing, and you come to a threshold, and then you have to go in yourself to see how you're going to cross that threshold. And you have to choose what you leave behind and what you can take with you.
It's obvious from my stories and talking to you that my relationships with people are really important in informing my art. And I didn't really think about that until right now and us having this dialogue. It always comes back to kung fu. Now, a lot of people think kung fu means like, "Oh yeah, kicking and punching and all that kind of stuff," but not. Kung fu means that which surpasses surface beauty. That's one of its translations, right? Or human effort. Everyone can have kung fu. It's what you do. It's a thing that you are. It's a cultivation.
If you are cultivating something and practicing something and you don't come to a crisis, you're really not doing it. Right?
[0:42:28] SLH: Did you say Paul Grilley?
[0:42:30] DH: Paul and Suzee Grilley. That was something that they taught me when I worked with them, when I was – I mean, when they taught me, right? When they gave me so much when I was a kid.
[0:42:40] BB: Because you're not learning if you're not challenged, if you're not struggling.
[0:42:43] DH: Right, right, right.
[0:42:44] BB: You need you need to overcome those challenges to grow.
[0:42:46] DH: Right. And you got to eat bitter. There's that term we have, eating bitter. And there's a grit to it. And I think that what defines honing, it's like a sword, like the metal. Or you got to make every part of it like hone the blade, polish it, pound out the impurities in the metal, right? And I don't mean impurities in a bad way, but we don't drink out of lead cups anymore, right? You know what I'm saying? And so there's a process, there's a forging that has to go through, and it's important. And I think those are the struggles, is the waking up and facing the wall.
[0:43:24] SLH: I wish more people talked about this though, because I think – and I started seeing in the business world or in conferences that years ago, where they'd start talking about failure and the stories of failure. But even in that discussion of failure, people are still telling these trauma into triumph stories. But we're not –
[0:43:42] DH: And if I can just interject, they're like, "Failure, success. Failure, success." And it's like, "No, no, no, no." Again, it's the pre/trans fallacy, right? The yes, no, and then the transcendental yes.
[0:43:54] SLH: Because what people, they usually – I just saw something recently where someone told a story, they got to live their dream. They got to create a company. And it still was this whole, "Well, I'm closing it down. And this, this, this." But we need more, especially when it comes to creativity and art making, not just the shiny exhibition. We need to also see – I know for myself, there have been moments where I was like, "I'll quit everything. I'll quit creating anything." Because either I'm not supposed to be doing this right now, or the rejections. I'm getting a lot of rejections. This is hard. Or museums. The shiny, people have an agent. But there are not agents growing on trees. There's a lot of the grunt work, or what I call pay attention to the pipes. It's almost like pipe laying. Or you're in the basement. You're somewhere dark and dank and you're just paying attention to that scut work. And you have to ignore the fact that there's a gorgeous Victorian or castle or whatever that you're attending to in the top.
[0:45:01] LHL: While trying to just be a human that has all these other elements and part of living. And making sure you go to the dentist, and this, and that. And all the things. It's a lot to be a human.
[0:45:11] SLH: It's a lot. And goodness forbid, if you want to look good while being human.
[0:45:15] LHL: Yeah.
[0:45:17] SLH: Which is my challenge.
[0:45:20] LHL: Oh gosh. We could talk to you for literally days, I think, if we had the opportunity.
[0:45:25] BB: Part two may be coming.
[0:45:26] LHL: Yes.
[0:45:28] DH: Awesome.
[0:45:28] SLH: Awesome.
[0:45:28] LHL: Well, it'd be great to catch up with you in a year or two, maybe, and see what – touch base on a lot of these things. So, now it's time for rapid-fire questions.
[0:45:36] BB: Yes. Shanta and Damon, but Shanta first, what creative has influenced you the most?
[0:45:43] SLH: I know. And these are –
[0:45:45] DH: Creative person?
[0:45:46] LHL: Yeah.
[0:45:46] BB: Yes. Yeah. Creative person.
[0:45:48] LHL: And some get easier.
[0:45:49] SLH: Eartha Kit.
[0:45:50] BB: Oh, I love Eartha Kitt. I love that you answered that just like that.
[0:45:54] LHL: Good job. You're rapid. Good job.
[0:45:58] DH: Influenced me the most? Hildegard of Bingen.
[0:46:01] SLH: Good one.
[0:46:02] LHL: What is your favorite non-creative hobby if you have time for that?
[0:46:06] SLH: Breaking into abandoned places, even though I do creative work with – does that count?
[0:46:12] LHL: Sure.
[0:46:12] BB: Yes. We'll call it exploring.
[0:46:15] SLH: Yes. Even though it's illegal.
[0:46:18] DH: My favorite non-creative hobby? Parkour.
[0:46:21] LHL: Ooh, love it.
[0:46:22] BB: Favorite color?
[0:46:24] SLH: Black.
[0:46:24] DH: Ultraviolet.
[0:46:26] LHL: Favorite scent.
[0:46:27] SLH: When my perfume is on point.
[0:46:29] BB: Nice.
[0:46:31] DH: Summer breeze.
[0:46:34] SLH: Makes me feel good.
[0:46:33] DH: – me feel fine.
[0:46:36] SLH: Flowing through to Jasmine –
[0:46:42] BB: Favorite sound?
[0:46:42] SLH: Silence.
[0:46:44] LHL: It's a good one.
[0:46:45] DH: I want to say like distant thunder.
[0:46:47] LHL: Nice. This is good.
[0:46:50] SLH: Poetic. Oh my god. Who's the poet?
[0:46:53] LHL: Favorite texture to touch.
[0:46:55] SLH: I'm looking at his hair. Some really good vintage velvet.
[0:47:01] BB: Nice.
[0:47:01] LHL: Nice.
[0:47:01] DH: I would kind of think the same thing. I was going to say vintage velvet, too. Velvet or – I like, really, sand. Fine desert sand.
[0:47:11] LHL: Ooh, very nice.
[0:47:14] BB: Most inspiring location you've traveled to?
[0:47:16] SLH: Savoca, Italy. Would go back there again. Want to live there.
[0:47:19] BB: Nice.
[0:47:20] DH: Orango in Japan. That's the sword where Musashi wrote his Book of Five Rings.
[0:47:25] LHL: Lovely. What is the last new thing you've learned? Could be big, could be little, could be silly, could be serious.
[0:47:35] SLH: I learned that gum paste is used to apply things to wire that you then apply to a cake to make it stick. And that gum paste takes hours, if not days, to dry.
[0:47:46] LHL: Wow, that's very cool.
[0:47:51] DH: I learned I like to really rest.
[0:47:54] BB: That's a good one.
[0:47:54] SLH: That's a good one. That's true.
[0:47:58] BB: And this is our clincher question. If you could go back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
[0:48:04] SLH: Take more risks and be reckless with it. Be less worried about how you're going to do the practical things. Be a little reckless. It's okay as long as you don't kill yourself or others.
[0:48:19] DH: To not attach myself to other people's emotions or reactions as much as I did when I was younger.
[0:48:26] SLH: Gosh, that's a good one.
[0:48:27] BB: That's very good.
[0:48:28] DH: Yeah, I'm a pretty sensitive guy.
[0:48:29] LHL: I think I need to tell myself that now, currently. It's such a good lesson.
[0:48:34] SLH: Yeah.
[0:48:34] LHL: Shanta, Damon, this was a wonderful conversation. I really value this experience with you two right now.
[0:48:42] SLH: Yeah, thank you.
[0:48:41] DH: Oh, really wonderful to be here. Thank you.
[0:48:43] SLH: Thank you for having both of us.
[0:48:44] BB: We're so grateful to have you both together. And we said we're going to need to have a part two, whether it's together or individual, because there's just so much more to unpack here.
[0:48:53] SLH: Yeah. Probably do individual. We've got both so much. Yeah.
[0:48:58] DH: Yeah. Whatever it was easiest.
[0:48:59] LHL: Thank you again, both, so much for being on the show and sharing your experience and journeys with us. And with that.
[0:49:06] ALL: Show us your creative guts.
[OUTRO]
[0:49:12] LHL: Another huge thank you to Shanta Lee Honeycutt and Damon Honeycutt for being on the Creative Guts podcast.
[0:49:19] BB: Wow.
[0:49:20] LHL: Yes.
[0:49:20] BB: Not enough hours.
[0:49:22] LHL: Not enough words to sum up how cool they are.
[0:49:25] BB: They're so cool. I want to be friends. And I just want to unpack their brains more.
[0:49:30] LHL: It felt like it really was just the tip of the iceberg of all that they create and think about and just put out into the world.
[0:49:38] BB: I'm so drawn to how in tune they are with their process and with their own state of mind and how they've found themselves as creatives, but they continue to evolve and change and aren't afraid to take those creative risks. And it's just inspiring.
[0:49:53] LHL: Yeah. Yeah. I think the creative collaboration between the two, even the way they watch each other when they speak, you can see such respect and excitement they have for each other.
[0:50:04] BB: And support and care. Yeah.
[0:50:05] LHL: Yeah. It just sounds like such a great compatibility they have.
[0:50:09] BB: Mm-hmm. We just needed more time. Each of both, having Shanta and Damon have their own interviews is probably going to be something we'll need to try and work for in the future because they continue to build their craft and present amazing content to our community and to the world. And we just need to learn more.
[0:50:30] LHL: For being so prolific, it's also very profound. I guess –
[0:50:36] BB: It's not surface. There's a lot of incredible depth. And I felt a little bit of feeling naive and like, "Oh, I don't know that. I don't know what they're saying all the time." Some of the references are just so – they're so developed and thoughtful. And I want to be a mentee of theirs.
[0:50:53] LHL: Mm-hmm. And when Shanta was talking about how – the thing that she said about like feeling late to the game or starting late or whatever it may be –
[0:51:01] BB: Late to the party.
[0:51:02] LHL: Late to the party. I feel that, but I also feel like imagine how much time there is in life still for you and all the things. You've already done so much. I can understand and respect her feeling that, but I also feel like we have to give kudos for the wild amount of work that she's produced.
[0:51:19] BB: Yeah. And it's just encouraging. And it's a great reminder that you can create at any stage of your life. And we are our own barriers sometimes. We hold ourselves back. We're saying, "Oh, I can't do that." And you just got to try it. And that was one of the things she mentioned is she just figures it out. She just learns the tools to be able to make it happen.
[0:51:40] LHL: I mean, it's just my perception, but they both just seem very relatively young still to me. That comment also threw me because I'm like you're – but that's, again, just a perception. But I think that they are –
[0:51:54] BB: Age is just a social construct.
[0:51:57] LHL: Well, I think they're both cooking along beautifully.
[0:52:00] BB: Yes.
[0:52:00] LHL: Another, I got to say, cooking stuff. No. But Shanta, Damon, again, truly thank you so much for being here. I don't think we can thank you enough for sharing your wisdom and your time and everything with us. It's wonderful.
[0:52:15] BB: Yeah. Well, we will definitely be listing our guest links in the episode description and, of course, on our website, creativegutspodcast.com, as there are way too many to list right now.
[0:52:25] LHL: Yes. And you can also find us, Creative Guts podcast, on Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Discord. Discord is such a wonderful way to stay connected online without having to deal with an algorithm. So, please join us. You can find that link on our website. And also, if you're avoiding social media, to stay in the know, you should sign up for our newsletter. We're on Substack, and you can go find the link to sign up on our website.
[0:52:51] BB: This episode is sponsored in part by the Rochester Museum of Fine Arts. Thank you to our friends in Rochester for their support of the show.
[0:52:58] LHL: And a huge thank you to Art Up Front Street Studios and Gallery for providing a space where Creative Guts can record.
[0:53:04] BB: If you love listening and want to support Creative Guts, you can make a donation, leave us a review, interact with our content on social media, purchase some merch, whatever you are able to do, we really appreciate you.
[0:53:17] LHL: Thank you for tuning in. We'll be back next Wednesday with another episode of Creative Guts.
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