00:00Hi, I'm Maya Hawk and this is my starter pack of cultural essentials.
00:05I'd love to talk about a book that really changed my life and affected my relationship
00:10to reading was Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping.
00:14That's one of my favorite books of all time and it was something about the kind of magical
00:20realism of the living land, the living house, the way that our environment can reflect our
00:27emotional life, I think really spoke to me in a deep place and I loved that.
00:33And then recently, a book that has changed my life in the last year is the entire Throne
00:39of Glass series by Sarah J. Moss.
00:41I can't believe how good it is.
00:44It's my adult Harry Potter.
00:45I think about it every day.
00:48I think about it as like a mythic language for my life and I'm so moved by it.
00:54I read the whole, all the books in the last seven months.
00:57My husband and I read them together out loud and it was recommended to me by my mom.
01:01She was, she got on this, the romantic C. Sarah J. Moss kick and now we are both out
01:08of books to read and call each other on the phone like, how, how can I fill this hole in
01:14my heart of these books?
01:15We've gone on this journey together kind of the three of us and it has been some of the
01:20the most joyful, bonding, connective reading experiences I've ever, or that I've had since
01:25I was a little kid and like read Harry Potter for the first time.
01:29A movie that really impacted me both musically and cinematically, like something that felt
01:36like it was clarifying to me about my own taste.
01:41I was like, I, this movie I love and I've seen it like six or seven times is Altman's
01:47Nashville.
01:48The first time I watched it, I didn't even pick up on the political through line of the
01:55movie and then the second couple of times I really started to understand the car that
01:59drives through projecting that radio message.
02:03Consider our national anthem.
02:05Nobody knows the words.
02:07That movie and the way that it's told, sort of in this large ensemble where every person
02:13is sparkling so bright as though they could have a whole movie about them and the way
02:18that it changed sound editing and I'm Easy is one of my favorite songs of all time, Keith
02:22Carradine.
02:23I can't put bars on my insides, my love is something I can't hide, it still hurts when
02:30I recall the times I've tried.
02:34In an effort to try to explain to people who I was, I would show them this song.
02:37You know how those pieces of art come up where you're like, if you want to know me, know
02:41this.
02:42And that became, that movie and song became that for me, like an identity calling card.
02:49The bible of my life is Avatar The Last Airbender.
02:55Water, Earth, Fire, Air.
03:01Those first four seasons I come back to when I'm lost.
03:06There's an episode called The Guru that I think about all the time and it basically like
03:15really simply breaks down this idea of unblocking your chakras.
03:18The way that that show deals with bravery and self-actualization and friendship and love
03:25is truly, it is my like scriptural text that I come back to when I'm lost.
03:33Are you excited for the new movie that's coming out?
03:36I'm so excited.
03:38I, I really cannot wait.
03:41I heard someone at one of my shows, I was talking about Avatar at one of my concerts and an
03:46audience
03:46member told me that like it had leaked and you can see it.
03:49I, I won't do it because I respect the creators too much and I want to see it in theaters.
03:54And I really, this year, really love Pluribus.
03:59We feel like we're doing all the talking here.
04:03Are there any questions you might have for us, Carol?
04:06Anything at all?
04:09Uh, uh, yeah, yeah, sure.
04:16I guess to start with, what the fuck is happening?
04:22And kind of, it feels just so relevant with all the different conversations going on about
04:27aliens and about AI, it feels like it really loops them both in and studies the natural
04:37human desire for companionship and how easy it is to believe that something is a companion that isn't.
04:45I think right now, again, like our fundamental loneliness as a species is being explicitly
04:54revealed by our desire to have, to keep company with something that soul existence is programmed
05:03to affirm and support us, to make us feel comfortable and easy and to tell us we're right.
05:11And human relationships are so difficult because you're, the humans in your life will not always
05:17think that you're right and will not always affirm you and will not always be right, but they are so
05:22profoundly worthwhile.
05:24I saw the beach movie.
05:26Is it good?
05:27Was, did they go into Zuko's mom?
05:31No.
05:31No.
05:32That was our, that was our dream story, was like, uh, Zuko finds his mom.
05:36Because it feels like they set it up at the end of it.
05:38Like, Zuko's last moment is, where is my mother?
05:42And I was like expecting a, a where's my mother spin-off.
05:46It's like, uh, Liam Neeson, you know, taken, taken three, but where is my mother?
05:53I have a very unique set of skills.
05:56There are so many records that shaped my music and who I was, but one really important one was this,
06:04this younger artist, Samia.
06:08I went to go see her in concert.
06:10I was like, oh my God, this person brought the house down.
06:15And I got an early link to her album, The Baby.
06:19And I listened to it nonstop.
06:24There's a lyric in Big Wheel.
06:38It hit me like a lightning rod when I listened to it because, I don't know,
06:44I think empathetic people can be really hard to get angry.
06:48I have struggled a lot with getting in touch with my anger in my life because everyone who's
06:54ever hurt me, I always felt like I understood why and what was, what they were going through
07:02that made them make the choices that hurt me.
07:04And it's sometimes, that's a beautiful quality.
07:08And sometimes it's a really debilitating quality because it doesn't let you set healthy
07:12boundaries for yourself.
07:13And it doesn't let you express that anger.
07:17And there's a book that really affected me, two books that I read one year that I
07:23see my reading of them as kind of like developmentally game changing, which is
07:27this book called Burnout and Come As You Are.
07:31I read them back to back.
07:33And they talk about the stress cycle.
07:36When you get through something stressful, you have to run it out and scream it out and,
07:40you know, talk it out.
07:41And if you put a lid on all your anger because you understand why someone hurt you,
07:47you'll never be free of it.
07:48It will just like rot in your stomach.
07:51And so I think that that, that song, Big Wheel, was really important to me because it was about
07:57that.
07:58Your guys' logline is a little bit of a tongue twister.
08:01I have to say, culture, starter pack of cultural essential.
08:06Was it was happening in my mouth when I tried to say that.
Comments