What
does Right Livelihood mean in the context of Transformative Language Arts? How does it relate to finding
and staying in conversation with our life’s work while keeping the cupboards
and gas tank full as well as caring for our health, art, soul, and community?
LauraPacker and Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg, between them, have decades of experience. They have teamed up to develop the Right
Livelihood Professional Training, launching in June of this year. This 100-hour
training kicks off with a long weekend at the beautiful Unity Village retreat
center in Kansas City, followed by a 12-week online class, and weekly video
conferencing with the likes of Harriet Lerner, Charles Eisenstein, Gregory Levoy, Patti Digh and other luminaries in the field. More about this
comprehensive training to help you make a living doing what you love here --
https://www.tlanetwork.org/Right-Livelihood-Training
Caryn
Mirriam-Goldberg: When I was growing up, I had no idea how a poet would
make a living, and although people pushed me toward journalism and advertising,
it didn’t stick. I was made to make things, especially out of words.
Now I make
a living in ways that didn’t even exist when I was a teenage poet: I teach in a
low-residency master’s program at Goddard College, traveling from Kansas to
Vermont twice each year to work with students intensively in designing and
implementing their individualized studies and facilitate community writing
workshops for many populations, particularly for people living with serious
illness. I love what happens when mortality is at the table, and we speak,
listen and write from our souls. I give talks, workshops and readings through
the Kansas Humanities Council and University of Kansas Osher Institute, and
mostly on my own, conversing deeply with audiences on everything from poetry
and wild weather to oral histories of people who survived the Holocaust. My
work is a kaleidoscope of gigs and teaching, mentoring and consulting, driving
across the plains in the bright light of early spring and occasionally flying
over the green wonder of the mountains surrounding Lake Champlain to land again
in Vermont.
What is
your work, Laura, and how did you find your way to it?
Laura Packer: While
I was pursuing my degree in Folklore and Mythology I had a lot of people tell
me to practice saying, “Would you like fries with that?” I ignored them and
persevered. Truthfully, I didn’t know what I was going to do with the degree, I
just knew that I loved stories and that my work lay in that direction.
I met the
man who would become my mentor when I was 19. He was telling stories and, as I
listened, I knew that this was my path. It took me awhile to realize I would
have to build the path myself. I worked part time for many years while I
pursued my craft, but now I support myself doing a wide range of things that
all fall under the umbrella of storytelling. I perform around the
world to a wide range of audiences. I’ve told stories in pre-school, at
festivals, universities, homes and so on. I teach, running workshops and
coaching people ranging from storytellers to CEOs to parents to marketers to
non-profit professionals and more. I work with organizations, both for- and
non-profit, helping them understand and refine the stories they tell. I give
keynotes and lead workshops at conferences. And I write, blogging about
storytelling and taking on freelance assignments from a wide variety of
clients.
It’s never
boring. It’s sometimes hard to keep track of. I am always learning, hearing new
stories and remembering that the work I do matters. Everything I do, as diverse
as it is, touches upon story and the ways that our stories matter. I know that
the work I do supports me both financially and spiritually. I also know that
the work I do helps others. It is the right path and one it’s been fascinating
to create.
Caryn, I’m
wondering about the work you do with TLA and what that has to do with right
livelihood. For that matter, could you explain what right livelihood means to
you?
CMG: When
I first heard about the term “right livelihood”—at Goddard College during a
session on making a living true to ourselves—it chimed in me as something I had
been seeking for myself and my community for a long time. After being thrown
out of journalism school (the extremes we will go to so we can land in the
right place!), I earned my BA in labor history, drawing on my concern since I
was a teen about how our work lives infuse the whole of our lives. What we “do”
colors not just our workaday life but how perceive ourselves, our communities,
our world, and our potential to change. If your work entails saying, “Would you
like fries with that?” on regular basis, it’s likely that being a fast-food
worker shapes your identity, sense of self and what’s possible for you, and
even your belief about what kind of work you’re entailed to do in your life.
Right
livelihood is a Buddhist term, part of Buddha’s eightfold path (which also
includes right speech, another TLA concept in my mind), and it connotes work
that does no harm. Stretched out, the term points toward work (both vocation
and avocation, for pay and just because it feels like our work) that serves,
including conversing with our own callings as well as our community’s calling.
I didn’t
realize when I was studying labor history, and later working as a labor
organizer and reporter—all the time writing and reading and breathing
poetry—that all would converge into my own right livelihood. As a
transformative language artist, I draw on the power of our words aloud and on
the page, solo and choral, to herd us toward greater health, vibrancy,
liberation, and connection with the living world. My work—both at Goddard as a
faculty member and coordinator of TLA, and as a working artist facilitating
brave spaces for others to find more of their own voices and visions—is how I
practice my right livelihood. All of this aligns me with the continual
conversation with a calling, but it’s also work that, at best, helps others
articulate more of their own truest work in the world. In the Brave Voice
writing and singing retreats I co-lead with singer-songwriter Kelley Hunt, we
fly on the assumption that opening your voice in one way cannot help but
strengthen your voice in your whole life, and I’ve witnessed many people making
courageous leaps into who they already were and what they now need to do.
Laura, is
that how it is for you too as a performer, teacher, mentor, and writer as well
as someone I would call a fellow transformative language artist?
LP: Caryn,
you hit the nail right on the head. Right livelihood means work that enlivens
and enriches us thoroughly, from fiscal health to spiritual health and beyond.
It’s work that nourishes our spirits as well as our bodies and allows us to
function as contributing members of a larger community, which is what artists
are.
When I
remember the value of my work in that larger picture, as someone who brings
something powerful to a community as well as enriching my own life, it’s easier
for me to be able to charge appropriately, advocate for myself and remember
that what I do, as well as all other artists, matters.
CMG: Absolutely!
I think part of this work, to really put the “right” into “right livelihood,”
entails making paths for and sometimes with other artists. Little makes me as
happy as seeing someone I helped mentor come out with a first book or start
giving writing workshops in their communities.
Laura,
you’ve talked with me before about the importance of charging what we’re worth
as a way to honor those who come after us. The whole issue of what to charge,
and how to ask for what our work is worth, is challenging and variable for me.
I’ll do some things for hardly anything or for free, and other things for a
livable stipend, yet negotiations can encompass lots of gray areas. I find our
system of working this out to be awkward: an organization will often not say
what it can afford until I suggest an amount. I often present what I charge as
a range from the lowest I’m willing to accept to the highest I believe I should
be paid, and if it’s something I really feel is mine to do, I try to convey
that I’m open to negotiation.
Of course,
all these issues speak to our cultural tendency to soil our money relationship
with shame, privilege, hurt, defensiveness and other difficult guests to host.
I’ve had a lot of help along the way to ask for what my work is worth, even and
especially as a poet. Once a representation of an organization I was working
with told me, a few hours before my gig there, that they didn’t have enough in
the budget to pay me what we agreed on, so would I take a cut in pay? The
musician I was collaborating with wasn’t asked to take a cut, so we talked this
over, and together told the organization, “no,” but it was eye-opening for me, re-affirming
my bias against myself that poets don’t get paid or paid much. Having someone
stand tall with me helped me to challenge my self- and poet-destructive
thinking, and hopefully, as time goes on, may have some effect for others too.
How do you
navigate all this?
LP: Oh,
this is a hard one! I feel like I don’t navigate it well much of the time, but
I do the best I can, which is all any of us can do. Money is such a taboo
subject, I try to understand my own prejudices and fears as well as talk about it,
so it becomes less taboo. I use several tools to help me think and talk about
money.
First, I
talk with my colleagues about what they charge. If we remove some of the
secrecy, we can all charge a living wage AND put a dent in the cultural idea
that transformative language art should be cheap and that those who hire us
should pay us less than they would their caterer, organizer, musician or
others. It’s related to your experience with being asked to take a pay cut when
your musician friend was not; if we charge a reasonable amount and know that we
aren’t pricing ourselves out of range of our colleagues but in alliance with
them, it can be easier to ask for. Additionally, by talking about it with my
colleagues we get to remind ourselves that we are charging for far more than
the 30 or 60 minute event, but for all of the time and experience that lies
behind it.
Second, I
do what you do. I often give the representative a range of cost and then remind
them that this is how I make their living. I also tell them that I am open to
negotiation (if I am).
Third, if
I give work away for free or at a greatly reduced cost, I always give an
invoice that reflects what I would have wanted to be paid. This helps lay
groundwork that what I, and other TLA artists do, is valuable and worth paying
for.
Fourth and
last, I remember what a wise friend said to me, when I asked him money
questions. He told me, “You can always negotiate down, you can’t negotiate up.
Think about what you want and then ask for double.” I don’t do it quite this
way (asking for double feels too bold for me) but I do ask for what I want and
a little more. I can lower my rate, shorten the event, barter for other
services but once I’ve set a price I can’t really come back and ask for more
unless they ask for more service first.
When I
remember to financially value my own work I am not only telling myself that
what I do is worthwhile, I am also telling the rest of the world that art
matters.
CMG: That’s
very wise advice, and I love the idea of the invoice for what this is worth.
There’s something magical about saying on paper “this is what my work is worth”
when it comes to inviting in more lucrative work to balance out what we feel
drawn to give away.
I’ve been
thinking of what I do for free lately because in the last few months. I have
one project that I’m grappling with because it’s sort of a “closure” project
with a group of people, a way to share some social capital after working with
this group for many years in the past. In the long run, I know this project is
what I should be doing, but it’s sometimes difficult to balance the volunteer
work with the paid work and still have time (not!) to write.
I’ve also
been editing a book for a wonderful poet in his dying days, and that’s a
sweetheart labor of love through and through. It’s an immersion in grace to be
able to do this for someone I love and whose poetry is so important to share
with others who can find a lot of sustenance in what he has to say about death,
dying and life.
Often
though, it’s hard for me to know the impact of my work and if I’m making the
best decisions about where to put my time. My husband, also a writer and
grassroots organizer, and I often joke as we’re falling asleep that we won’t
know the impact of our work until after we’re dead, and I think that’s true. We
don’t know, and this makes think of a stanza in one of my favorite Rumi poems:
If you are here unfaithfully with
us,
you’re causing terrible damage.
If you’ve opened your loving to
God’s love,
you’re helping people you don’t know
and have never seen.
So maybe
all we can do is to try to be faithful in being here with our people, which
also means being faithful to ourselves, and through our work and being, open
our hearts (whether we use phrase like “God’s love” or not in describing this)
to dropping our pebble in the pond and hoping for the best for what ripples we
make and receive.
TLA
involves bringing together people to make greater meaning and unearth greater
vitality in how we live. It helps us find—through our words, images,
rhythms—our work in this life. Mary Oliver said in one of her poems, “My work
is loving the world,” and I feel the same. What I actually do for a living and
beyond is just a form of that ritual: practicing how to love the world.
To
learn more about the Right Livelihood Professional Training, please visit https://www.tlanetwork.org/Right-Livelihood-Training
To learn more about Caryn and her work please visit www.carynmirriamgoldberg.com.
This
except of a longer interview is reprinted from Chrysalis: A Journal of
Transformative Language Arts, 2016. The full interview is http://www.tlanetwork.net/2016/10/a-conversation-on-right-livelihood-and-transformative-language-arts-by-caryn-mirriam-goldberg/
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(c)2018 Laura S. Packer
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