Breaking the Cycle of Overthinking ![rw-book-cover](https://img.youtube.com/vi/lj8wBAJV4p0/maxresdefault.jpg) 🔗 **Source:** [Breaking the Cycle of Overthinking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj8wBAJV4p0) This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana. Making buying a car 100% online with real, transparent pricing and customizable financing that fits your budget. Browse thousands of cars and get yours delivered. Visit carvana.com today. Delivery fees and terms may apply. I'm going to be honest with you. Putting out this podcast every week means that sometimes we can get stuck in the creative process, agonizing over whether what we're making is good or right or meaningful, wondering what you all will think about every episode. Maybe you've been there, too. Too paralyzed by a perfectionist complex, unable to get out of your own way. If this sounds anything like the inside of your brain, well, this episode is dedicated to you. Every time I've sat down to write and not been able to write, it's because I've been thinking about what the 18 internet socialists who hate me are going to say about this or that or the third. Every year I get a little closer to throwing my phone into the sea. It's got to go. >> This is Brandon Taylor. For you longtime IBAM fans, you may have heard him on the show before, which means you also already know he's one of my favorite authors. And his novel, Minor Black Figures, is all about the joys and the horror of creating. Minor Black Figures is about a painter, Wyth. We encounter him at the start of the novel in 2022. He's in New York. He's in the midst of a really bad artistic block and his friends suggests that he go look at some art that they know he will hate and he does that and in the course of that evening he meets another man Keading who he very quickly discovers is a priest and then they spend the whole summer doing one of my favorite things to do which is to sort of walk and talk about God, about life, about art, about literature. uh and in the course of that talking maybe falling in love a little maybe. Maybe maybe >> obviously I love this book otherwise I wouldn't be sharing it with you. But I loved it not only because it was beautifully written but it made me think about how to push past my anxieties to create this show. Yes. But also how to show up more fully in my own life. Brandon, welcome back to It's Been a Minute. >> I'm so thrilled to be back. Hello. Hello. I'm Britney Loose and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR, a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident. And a reminder, if you love It's Been a Minute, which from the sweet comments y'all have been leaving, it sounds like maybe you do, be sure to follow or subscribe to the show on your favorite podcast app. That way you get new episodes the moment they drop. This is definitely a book about art and figuring out what it means and how you can make it freely if you can make it freely. Um, you know, our main character Wyth is a painter and when we meet him, he doesn't really paint anymore at the beginning of the book because he's so caught up in how he thinks he's going to be interpreted and what that might mean and how it's going to affect his life. Talk to me about how the culture around art sort of preempts how people, I mean, including yourself, make it. >> Yeah. I mean, I think that there are a lot of artists who get hung up on that question of reception almost at the the very outset of of setting out to make anything, right? I know that act of publishing and making my work public that process invents an audience that then lives in your mind. An audience that is no longer necessarily purely hypothetical. You're like, "Oh, I hope I get read someday." Suddenly people are reading and they are having opinions and they're talking about you and you are suddenly aware of the the social reputation of your art >> and you become not just the artist separate from the world but like a person whose work has become a thing that people consume. And it does sort of engender a lot of anxiety around like why am I doing this? Am I writing this because I want to write this or am I writing this because I know that there are 30,000 people who will read it and like will give me snaps on the internet. Right? M >> it can be incredibly tricky to parse out like your motivations for writing a thing and then once you begin to question your motivations for why you're making the art all is lost because that's all you that's all you spiral over because honestly the answer is unknowable like why am I is my motivation pure it's like there's no sufficient answer to that question and then you know suddenly you're no longer an artist you're a person who is anxious about your reception and it can become really destructive to the art making itself. >> Oh, that reminds me of something that that you wrote um in the book from Wyatt's perspective. He says like when I'm working, I don't want to be thinking about how someone is going to perceive what I'm doing. I don't want to be thinking about well they think I'm being insular or elitist or whatever because of my subject or technique. I want to paint and I want to paint things that matter to me and I feel like everything is too mediated now. I feel like I'm living my life at a totally dehumanizing scale against my will. It's some of what you're talking about. They sound like that dehumanizing scale. >> The dehumanizing scale at all. I mean I I mean I think most often of social media which is how a lot of these things are relayed or experienced in my own life. The sort of intense mediation of life where like you could say something like I love pancakes and someone's like oh so like waffles are like the the worst, right? Yes. >> And so the response to that is to kind of internalize it. And so I mean the weird thing is we all have double consciousness now. Like we all kind of are walking around constantly with like the self and then like the self who's being watched, right? It's like that Margaret Atwood quote like inside of every woman is a man looking at a woman. >> Oh yeah. Totally. Totally. The the exact quote is you are a woman with a man inside watching a woman. You are your own voyer. >> Yeah. And so like there's something about that, the sort of abstraction of our own experiences fed back to us that feels really dehumanizing in which people aren't even people. They're they're widgets of like identity and like personalized history and like little cubits of trauma. um where everybody is reducible to a narrative and you are the narrative that you carry around with you and that you dispense to others via your Instagram or your Tik Tok or your whatever. And I find that like really hostile to the human spirit. There's something about it that like really like um really really estranges me from from human reality. It must be really hard for painters and and other artists to sort of make art when they have the person in them that's looking at an iPhone. You know what I mean? >> But do you feel that though? I imagine that you feel similarly or you experience some of that same dynamic. >> Definitely. And it's so hard to to to get away from it. I mean, the truth of the matter is that I do in fact feel that way for large amounts of time. And I find it a little harder each time I have to like fight for a little modicum of internal privacy. >> Yeah, it's interesting how that shows up in the book. I mean, for example, there is this Southeast Asian art collective called Mango Wave, and they're kind of doing a little bit of a race grift or like race art grift where they are kind of mining their racialized experience to make art of very little depth um but art that they also hope will make a lot of money. >> Yeah. >> Or or even people that Wyth talks about in the book who paint black figures rather than black people. Like I feel like there's uh kind of sometimes like like a know it when you see it kind of race art grift. I know I've seen it before. I'm sure you've seen it as well. But but what's the difference there between maybe black figures and black people? >> Yeah. Yeah. That's like one of the things that the book is constantly turning over, right? And and and I think it has a lot to do with like when black life has become so abstracted and has been so detangled from any kind of social reality or any kind of like personal lived human experience and instead becomes this set of social extrapolations where you're talking about black people as though they were objects that engenders like a kind of like a black figure not like a black person and to me it has to do with the social reality and the interpersonal reality there. I was trying to think through like like my own feelings about race grifting because there is a part of me that is like it's all a grift. It's all these people like wielding race in service of like commercial interests >> or do I resent them because I think other people are going to think that I'm doing what those people are doing >> but also what is the unique and particular difference between what I think I'm doing and what I think they're doing >> what other people are doing. Yeah. Is there a kind of like internalized bias there where I'm kind of ashamed to be associated with the artists of my ethnic peers? Is the very notion of an ethnic peer an absurd racist idea in and of itself? Right? So the book is constantly turning over all of this and like every time Wyth thinks that he comes to like an answer on which he can rest, he's like, well, are they the racist? Am I the racist? Is society the racist? Is the question of is this whole question an illusion that's like meant to like derail me like Tony Morrison said like >> Tony Morrison said >> Tony Morrison >> it's the greatest distraction >> and it I mean it kind of is but I did know that like one way to sort of fall in the trap was to write a book that took racism like so seriously that you couldn't appreciate the absurdity of like a 30-some black painter in America who's had some modicum of success being totally derailed by the very question of like why am I doing what I'm doing? Like there's something kind of inherently like funny and absurd in that experience. Like that sort of duality where you're just kind of like minding your business, living your own life, and then like something happens and forces you to contend with the fact that your personal particular experience to an outside viewer is like a black experience. And you're like, I I didn't sign up for all your feelings about what you think black people. >> I wonder if that's how my goldfish felt when we took it outside of the tank to clean it. It's just like I didn't even know I was in water until you took me out. >> Like what is this? I >> take me back. >> Coming up. >> Do you want the points for being right? Do you want it in the tally or are you there when someone needs you because you've promised to be? >> Stay with us. >> This message comes from Thumbtac. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtac knows homes so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtac, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Why does AI now appear alongside nuclear war as one of humanity's biggest risks? I think it's the scale of it that makes it sound absurd. >> Episode two of Are We Doomed? explores simple steps to get there. And uh we might all need to hear this. If it's going to happen, it might happen very soon. Are We Doomed? Understand our biggest problems and what we can do. Part of the NPR network. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. >> This message comes from the United States Postal Service. In business, there's no room for guesswork. Every shipment and deadline matters. When you're trying to keep operations running smoothly, the last thing you need is uncertainty. That's why reliability is at the core of USPS Ground Advantage. Each package moves through a secure nationwide network tracked from dock to door. It's delivery you can depend on. Visit usps.com/ground advantage to learn more about how you can start shipping with confidence. >> This message comes from Jerry. Many people are overpaying on car insurance. Why? Switching providers can be a pain. Jerry helps make the process painless. Jerry is the only app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes and helps you switch fast with no spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Before you renew your car insurance policy, download the Jerry app or head to jerry.ai/npr. I want to talk about faith because this is a book there's a lot of god talk. I mean there's a literal you know hot former priest that we mentioned earlier. Uh and there's a lot of talk around these you know which explores how to reconcile the suffering of the world with the existence of a good benevolent god. I mean that very idea is something that is discussed over and over again with between characters in this book. the, you know, the hot priest kind of lost his religion during the pandemic, you know, which is a horror that >> we are still unable to reckon with as a culture. I don't know. I I I I wonder what does it mean to have faith >> during bad times? >> O, I mean, as I think as Kading says in the book, people have fought wars over over that question. Um, >> um, >> not an exaggeration. Yeah. And I mean truly not which is wild to contemplate you know like I wanted to write this book because like you know we are all familiar with that phrase a crisis of faith right um and I think we we often you know it's often now taken as a sort of tongue-in-cheek secular thing. I'm having a crisis of faith about my email job. I'm having a crisis of faith about like am I going to ask this person out or whatever. having her crisis of faith >> um about my my political allegiance to to various parties in this country. But I wanted to sort of take it like very seriously like what happens when there is an artist who is having like a crisis of faith about his vocation, his like secular vocation, the thing that he feels called to do. And what happens when there is a priest who had a literal spiritual calling and he also had to >> to struggle with that. And so how do these two men in sort of very different walks of life like make their way through this crisis in their faith? The sort of fundament questions about the fundamental thing that they feel they were called to do. And what does that look like in a world where everything feels so relativized and like there's no like nothing means anything because anything can be anything. And so I I wanted to take very seriously this question of like faith, right? Because faith is another one of these like tricky propositions where to have it requires making oneself vulnerable to >> to forces that are subsequently unanswerable to you. You know like God doesn't owe us any answers. >> The world doesn't owe us any answers, right? And we are expected to believe to put ourselves on the hook >> and just to take whatever comes, right? It's such a vulnerable position to find oneself in. Um, I think but at the same time, I mean, and to me, like I as a millennial who like grew up with financial crisis and like the sort of Obama of it all and the Obama backlash of it all and the drone strikes and all that, >> like I find the very notion of like believing in anything like deeply silly and like suspicious. I'm like, why would I ever believe in anything? That's so horrible. Um but at the same time I think as I've matured as a person I've felt the need to imagine the other side of that that there are reasons to have faith in the world and in our community and like if that isn't something worth having faith in like what is right cuz otherwise the only answer is like despair to sort of sit in abject despair and to believe that nothing will ever get better and that we'll never be able to overcome things and like that certainly is not what the ancestors did. Um, and I think if you look at my books, if you look at them in publication order and they grow increasingly optimistic about this project of like what is it that we're all on this planet doing to each other, doing for each other, doing with each other and I think, you know, I don't have answers, but I one answer I do know is that like we are better together and that we will that we can get through anything together. And I think like it feels impossible to go on living if I don't have faith in our betterness together somehow. Like that that to me feels crucial. And I think like each of the characters are working toward an answer to the question of like what do you have faith in? What can you have faith in? >> Yeah. I that makes me think about um like this one passage I really loved in the book where Keading the former priest recalls how he explained the concept of God's grace back when he was teaching children in Sunday school and he said grace makes it so God is always on your side. It doesn't mean you weren't wrong. It means that God is on your side in hopes that you will come to see what you need to see in order to make things right. I mean, it's it's a very simple way to describe a very complex idea, but what you're talking about like our betterness together, it feels like God's grace is something that we can extend to each other. >> Yeah. I mean, as a sort of exaptist gay atheist, I do I do feel that way. I do feel that grace is a thing that we can offer each other. I was asked recently in an interview to sort of describe what grace feels like to me. like how would I articulate Grace? And the way that I explained it was that my dad taught me to ride a bike. And it was 3 weeks after he'd had ankle surgery cuz he'd broken his ankle. And so he was like hobbling in a cast still holding my bicycle seat as he was like pushing me along until I got the courage to sort of keep going. And he said, and I said like, "Don't let go. Don't let go. Don't let go." He goes, "You can do." I'm like, "Don't let go." And so he didn't let go. And then eventually I was like, "Okay, I got it." And I sort of like rolled on a fair distance and looped back around. And I saw that I'd run over his foot when I was like like pushing up, >> but I didn't know that I had run over his foot because he didn't say anything. He was still holding the bicycle seat. I had no idea cuz he didn't yelp. He didn't do anything to alert me to this fact. And to me, like that is what grace is. Like grace is holding on to the bicycle seat because you've promised to be holding on to the bicycle seat. That to me is grace somehow, right? That thing that let my dad hold on to the bicycle seat after I run over his foot is still healing foot. Right. >> It's like, do you want to be right or do you want to be helpful? >> Yeah. >> Do you want the points for being right? Do you want it in the tally? Right. >> Yeah. >> Or are you there when someone needs you because you've promised to be there? Like that to me is grace is it doesn't matter that you get the point. Like what matters is that that person is okay and that you've helped them to be okay, right? >> Well, I felt it. I felt it and and I am excited um for for people to read this and feel it themselves. Um Brandon, thank you so much. Thank you for writing the book and thank you for coming back on the show. >> Oh, it's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. >> That was novelist Brandon Taylor. Minor Black Figures is out now. This episode of It's Been a Minute was produced by >> Corey Antonio Rose, >> Liam McBain. This episode was edited by Nina Puk. >> Our supervising producer is >> Barton Gerwood. >> Our VP of programming is Yolanda Sanguini. >> All right, that's all for this episode of It's been a minute from NPR. I'm Britney Loose. Talk soon. This message comes from Designer Shoe Warehouse. You know that feeling when you find shoes you love at a great price and want to tell everyone about it? Find something to brag about at Designer Shoe Warehouse, like the latest styles from brands you love, the trends everyone's obsessing over, and shoes that make you feel like you. Head to a DW store or dw.com today for shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. DW, let us surprise you. >> This message comes from Jerry. Many people are overpaying on car insurance. Why? Switching providers can be a pain. Jerry helps make the process painless. Jerry is the only app that compares rates from over 50 insurers in minutes and helps you switch fast with no spam calls or hidden fees. Drivers who save with Jerry could save over $1,300 a year. Before you renew your car insurance policy, download the Jerry app or head to jerry.ai/npr., Breaking the Cycle of Overthinking, YouTube, 01krgmwbjh9nedsjqtvmenaqga.