Rupi Kaur

Rupi Kaur is a globally acclaimed poet, performer, and artist. Rising to prominence with her debut collection Milk and Honey in 2014, which she self-published at 21 years old, Kaur became one of the best-selling poets of the 21st century, expanding her voice through later works, including The Sun and Her Flowers and Home Body. Kaur’s achievements extend beyond publishing, with sold-out international tours, multimedia collaborations, and millions of followers engaging with her work across platforms. ------ Thank you to the sponsors that fuel our podcast and our team: Squarespace https://Squarespace.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ LMNT Electrolytes https://DrinkLMNT.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Athletic Nicotine https://www. AthleticNicotine.com/tetra Use code 'TETRA' ------ Sign up to receive Tetragrammaton Transmissions https://www.tetragrammaton.com/join-newsletter

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:02Rick Rubin?

  Tetragrammaton.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Writing the first book, and I mean, I think so many artists will say this, it was probably the most creative, fulfilling experience because you're not really thinking about the outcome or the result. You're like totally swept up in the magic and lost in the moment. And like, you know, that source is just like working through you. And then even when my professor said, like, "Your book is not going to get published." Like, nobody publishes poetry, nobody reads it. I was sort of unbothered because I really, I guess, wasn't interested or didn't really care for it to be read because it was something larger working through me that was like, "Well, I just want to say it." So then I just self-published it and I said it.

• 1:09Speaker 01

  And then what happened afterward was just so beyond my control. This book became like a machine and got so noisy. You know, it was like on the New York Times Bestseller list for 100 weeks, selling like millions of copies. And I was like 22, 23 years old. And it was amazing and then equally traumatizing.

• 1:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:34Speaker 01

  And then it was like all of the outside voices come in and you're like, there was just no, I guess, space. And I was still graduating from university. And I don't know when or how it happened. I think it's always like, not maybe one big thing, but a lot of small things. But yeah, it became about sustaining whatever it was being at the top of that. And, you know, I remember signing. My second book deal was like a two-book deal. And I signed it like November.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  2016 and they said, okay, we'll need the draft of your second book by January 28, 2017. And I was like, that's not even six months.

• 2:20Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  And, you know, I like locked myself in the room and I started to create in a way that was not organic to me because I remember arriving at my, you know, the blank piece of paper for the first time with an intention to write the book and having no idea how I even did it the first time.

• 2:38Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, I'm reading about other authors and Stephen King says, you know, you need to like put these many hours in and these many words. And it was like writing became such a punishing act.

• 2:51Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  And like my body became so sick and I would go through these like 72 hour migraine spells. I couldn't digest food. It was just like pain all the time. But the book eventually came out and I read a lot of it and I'm like, oh, it's like a little rusty. I wish I got like more time to edit it. But at the same time, I'm like, well, if I had unlimited time, maybe it wouldn't ever come out. And then this last fall, I kind of celebrated the 10 year anniversary of my first book and I knew, I was like, okay, we're kind of done with this chapter. And so I decided to take a sabbatical and it's been amazing and it's been so humanizing. And I've been

• 3:38Speaker 01

  definitely getting back into the driver's seat of my life again, feeling good about it and feeling that spark come back and that magic.

• 3:48Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  And it's exciting and terrifying.

• 3:52Rick Rubin?

  Are you still an Instagram poet?

• 3:55Speaker 01

  See, for me, I never saw myself as that.

• 3:57Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 3:58Speaker 01

  Because I started performing, for me, it started on the stage.

• 4:03Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that. When's the first time you ever read poetry on stage?

• 4:06Speaker 01

  I first performed in high school. It was 2009. I think I was like 12th grade and it was

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Something, I see it like a poster for an open mic night. Didn't really know what that meant. I just signed up. I wrote something, didn't know it was a poem. And I was like, okay, I want to share this. And so I got up and, you know, it went against my entire personality to want to share something like this. It was a very bad poem. But I recited it anyway. And it was so electrifying. It felt like the first time that people were listening.

• 4:41Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 4:41Speaker 01

  And so I just kept going back. And my sort of journey in performance comes so much from my political activism work within my Sikh community. And so that's kind of where it started. And, you know, I would perform at all these local events and open mics. For years I did that until my friends were like, you know, you write one poem for one event and then you never share that poem again. You know, you could like put it online where millions of people live and they would love that. And so that's when I turned to Tumblr. And I began to share my work there.

• 5:16Rick Rubin?

  So they all started as performance pieces?

• 5:20Speaker 01

  Yes. And they would do those longer poems that were four or five minutes long, like the performative ones would come to life on stage. And when I first started sharing them on Tumblr, it just wasn't landing. Like I could get such a visceral response on stage. But it felt like nobody was reading it online. And that's when I began to experiment and I realized, wait, there's a difference here. There's like performance poetry and then there's paper poetry. And I need to... Yeah, I got really obsessed with this idea of redesigning what a poem, how a poem could look like visually and how it could come to life on paper. And that's when I began to kind of create these. I call them peach pits.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  So I'll like write a first draft. And then it's about like peeling back the skin and the flesh and just presenting the core of the idea. So that it's like the most concentrated form and it hits you hard and fast, you know, like a shot of vodka or something. And I started noticing that people's response to that was so visceral and powerful. And so that's when I was like, oh, this is interesting. I'm getting two very different formats. Same sort of response. The response is important because that's a dance with the audience as a performer. And so then it went from Tumblr and then years later I went to Instagram. And then years of being on Instagram, this audience sort of grew.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  And then the term Instagram poet was sort of slapped on me and I was like, what the hell is that?

• 6:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. But were you the first one? You're the first one I've heard of, that's why I'm asking.

• 6:58Speaker 01

  I'm the first one that I know who was sharing on Instagram. There were probably other people who were doing it.

• 7:07Rick Rubin?

  We think of Instagram as mainly images.

• 7:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 7:11Rick Rubin?

  So the idea of text on Instagram already is like a disconnect.

• 7:15Speaker 01

  It was so weird.

• 7:16Rick Rubin?

  But it worked.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:17Rick Rubin?

  And maybe that's part of its strength is that it wasn't what everyone was doing.

• 7:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:21Rick Rubin?

  So it was novel.

• 7:22Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Like it was like 2012 on Instagram and I remember thinking, this is really weird because all my friends are using Instagram to share like vacation photos and really ugly photos of their food.

• 7:33Rick Rubin?

  Did you ever use Instagram for anything other than posting?

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Never.

• 7:36Rick Rubin?

  Pieces?

• 7:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like one of those people, I was like, oh my god, I'm never gonna get Instagram. It's like, I don't post photos of that, why would I be interested in that? And then I started using it to share first my paintings and my visual work.

• 7:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  And then I remember I lived with my best friends in college and I had written this poem about alcoholism and like domestic violence and I said to her, I don't know why I decided I wanted to share it there, but I was like, do you think this is super weird? There's no words on Instagram. Should I share it? And I mean, she was like, yeah, go ahead, like, let's see how it goes. And so, yeah, I remember sharing it and reading responses from women saying, wow, this piece makes me feel like such a woman. And I was like, wow, why is that? And really investigating that, yeah.

• 8:21Rick Rubin?

  From the beginning, what was the rhythm of how often you would post something?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  I would probably post like two new poems a week, yeah.

• 8:32Rick Rubin?

  And would you write them and post them? Or would they be things that you wrote over time and then posted?

• 8:38Speaker 01

  Write and post.

• 8:39Rick Rubin?

  Write and post.

• 8:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:41Rick Rubin?

  And were you always doing either open mic nights or some version of getting on stage and reading them the whole time?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 8:47Rick Rubin?

  Never stopped?

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Never stopped.

• 8:48Rick Rubin?

  From then till now?

• 8:49Speaker 01

  Yes, yeah, yeah.

• 8:51Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that, what's it like? First of all, at an open mic night, when you're doing poetry, how long do you go up for?

• 8:57Speaker 01

  So at an open mic, you're up for five minutes?

• 8:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:00Speaker 01

  But then when? Eventually, different organizations were like, "Hey, we want to fly you to Vancouver and do this and do that." And then suddenly I was like, "Shoot, well, if you're flying me out, I can't get away with doing five minutes."

• 9:12Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  So then it became like half an hour. And then the more it grew, I was like, "Okay, what is the format of this look like now?" And it sort of became like a 90-minute, sometimes 120.

• 9:25Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  Theatrical experience of poetry that sits on top of like original music that we were producing. But then there was a narrative weaved through with storytelling and almost like a form of stand-up comedy, which I would kind of use as a self-defense mechanism, you know? And had no really idea what it was, but it just worked. And my audiences would come and, you know, we'd sell out. But nobody really knew what was going to happen. They thought-

• 9:57Rick Rubin?

  What kind of places did you play?

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Any type of performance venue to like opera houses, like Sydney Opera House or, yeah, those kind of, anywhere kind of a musician would perform.

• 10:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then people, you know, at the end would be like-

• 10:10Rick Rubin?

  Typically, people would be sitting in the audience.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  They would, yeah, yeah.

• 10:14Rick Rubin?

  So more like a theater than a club?

• 10:16Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly, exactly. And they would come and they'd be like, "We really didn't know what you were going to do. We thought maybe you'd sign a book or you'd give a talk." But yeah, it's like, it's more like theater.

• 10:27Rick Rubin?

  How would you describe the audience?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  It depends on where in the world we are. But what would surprise people is it's really fun, loud and engaging. It's like half of it feels like a party and then the other half feels like a sleepover on Friday night with your best girlfriends. And it's a dance. I mean, they're screaming and yelling things out to me and we're having a conversation and I'm responding. And so the frequency is just like building and building and building. I always start to show off from a place of, like a tougher place. In the same way the books are organized, the trauma or the difficult moment and the suffering come right in the beginning.

• 11:14Speaker 01

  So we work through that and then we always end up in a place of like celebration. And then, you know, the frequency sort of builds and it's like- Feels very magical.

• 11:24Rick Rubin?

  Do you think of the work as optimistic?

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yes. You know, because people will tell you their, how they experience it, but you yourself will never be able to experience it. So I don't know what it is, but...

• 11:40Rick Rubin?

  Describe the differences between the audience in different parts of the world.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Like in America, it's probably sixty, forty, women to men, or seventy, thirty.

• 11:49Rick Rubin?

  And age?

• 11:51Speaker 01

  I'd say like twenty-one to thirty-five. And then you go to a place like India, and the age just widens. You get a lot of young girls, middle school, ten, twelve. And then you get a lot of like, older couples. And then in Australia, what surprised me compared to other places was like men coming by themselves, maybe in their like sixties.

• 12:19Rick Rubin?

  Interesting.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and for, that was particularly their coming and holding my third book. So it all depends on the themes and what people relate to. But at the same time, every audience feels the same in a sense because what we're exploring together is like human emotion, and that's all universal.

• 12:37Rick Rubin?

  Have you seen anyone else do anything like what you're doing? Because when you're describing it to me, it feels outside of all of the genres and formats that I'm used to seeing.

• 12:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I, I haven't. And that's been the challenge.

• 12:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  But there are other poets, like there's a poet, incredible poet named Alok, who they tour the world with their poetry. We have a different type of show for sure, but they are probably the only poet I know who are touring globally.

• 13:11Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:12Rick Rubin?

  Oh, there's a poet I know named Kay Tempest.

• 13:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 13:15Rick Rubin?

  Kay is incredible.

• 13:17Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. And there's like poets like, I think the ones who've inspired me, Andrea Gibson.

• 13:23Rick Rubin?

  And when you're doing a poetry reading, are you reading or are you performing it?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  I'm performing it.

• 13:28Rick Rubin?

  Are you holding a book or no?

• 13:30Speaker 01

  So for the big poems, like the ones that are like the performance, those are all memorized, they're like six, seven minutes long. And then the smaller ones in between, I have like my book that I'll sort of refer to, just as like a backup.

• 13:44Rick Rubin?

  Cool. The live performance is the most fun part?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. They're actually, it's so different. It's like...

• 13:52Speaker 01

  I don't know which one I like more, but the best moments are yeah, when I'm performing live or when I'm in the flow of writing something that's making my stomach turn. They're so different.

• 14:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Because one is so outward because you're connecting with other people's hearts. And then one is so inward because you're connecting with your own heart.

• 14:14Rick Rubin?

  Would you say everything you write is biographical?

• 14:18Speaker 01

  No.

• 14:19Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 14:21Speaker 01

  I'm most inspired by conversations with people. So a lot of my work is biographical, but then it also becomes about what the people around me, the community around me is going through, what the world is going through.

• 14:35Rick Rubin?

  So if someone tells you a story of a difficulty in life that is emotionally charged for you, you might write a poem from that perspective telling that story?

• 14:48Speaker 01

  I might, but in most cases, it can't just emotionally move me. I have to have some... My life has to have a little bit of that to begin with for me to, I think, confidently dive into that perspective and give my viewpoint on it.

• 15:06Rick Rubin?

  Do you still post two poems a week?

• 15:08Speaker 01

  No.

• 15:09Rick Rubin?

  When did you stop?

• 15:11Speaker 01

  I stopped posting two new poems a week, probably in like 2017. And then I would post two poems, but poems I'd already written. And I was reposting published works for many years. And then in the last year, I kind of stopped. And in this year, I've stopped posting altogether.

• 15:31Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that decision. Was it a decision or did you just stop?

• 15:35Speaker 01

  It was a decision.

• 15:36Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Because it was a weird... It was a hard decision. So much of how I define myself doesn't include social media at all.

• 15:43Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  But so much of how people define me or why they find me valuable is my social media platform because of the followers I have. And so there is always that pressure to engage with it. For example, when I decided to go on the sabbatical, you know, I let go of my team. I sort of shut down all operations. And somebody who has a vested interest in me working...

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Great person said, "Okay, like, all of that's fine, but just tell her, "Don't stop posting online." And I, I just feel like I had nothing left to say. I've been like sharing and engaging with the online space since 2011. And I was probably, I don't know, like 18, 19 at the time. I just turned 33. I just can't keep engaging in the same way because I'm not the same person.

• 16:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  And it was scary because it's so much of the sabbatical has been about letting go of that identity so I can make room for wherever I am and what I need to grow into. But it's been really freeing.

• 16:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  It's been so freeing, but now I'm coming up against this tension that's like, "I know I'm ready to create again because I can feel the book baking in here and I know what it feels like and what I wanted to say." And so as I'm opening myself up to that, yeah, I'm wrestling with the idea of how to redefine that relationship with social media. Because it has to be in a way that inspires me.

• 17:13Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Because that's how it worked the first time and the reality is it's not been inspiring for the last few years. But then there's another part of me that doesn't want to engage at all.

• 17:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  So I'm trying to figure out which one to invest in more.

• 17:28Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I'm not sure.

• 17:29Rick Rubin?

  It also sounds like what you described the first time going on stage, the need to be seen was important then. And now I imagine you feel like you're seen. So maybe your relationship to that has changed.

• 17:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I just don't know if it's a place where

• 17:51Speaker 01

  I want to be seen on a stage because I feel like I can express what I want to express fully. But the platform has changed so much. If we're just talking specifically Instagram, I feel like I can only throw out a little nugget of what I want to say, and even that will be vastly misunderstood.

• 18:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  And so I'm finding myself leaning toward something more long form, whether that's a newsletter or a podcast, while also trying not to create more work for myself.

• 18:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, I understand. How has performance changed from the time you started doing them to now for you?

• 18:24Speaker 01

  I think confidence is probably the biggest thing because when I was first on stage, my knees would be shaking, my hands would be trembling because I'm naturally like a shy, you know, growing up insecure person because that was a voice that was ingrained to me was like, you're not enough and you're always wrong and you're always making mistakes. But it's been amazing. I mean, I started performing in 2009 and I think only in 2022 did I come to the realization or accept that I'm good at this.

• 18:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 01

  And I'm really enjoying it and I don't need to be nervous. And so I started getting on stage without feeling anxiety or like the nerves really.

• 19:05Rick Rubin?

  First time you go to a new country to perform, is that different feeling, any sense of anxiety? Or does it feel like I can do this anywhere?

• 19:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it feels like I can.

• 19:16Rick Rubin?

  That's great.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, because it's weird. It's like different, different races, different languages, different customs. Yet, majority of it, the audience energetically feels the same.

• 19:27Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe because that's just the type of energy that's attracted to the work.

• 19:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, tell me about your relationship with the audience. What do you think they come to you for?

• 19:40Speaker 01

  I mean, I can only try to make sense of it based on like the things that they say. And they'll often come to me and, you know, they'll open one of my books and be like, this one. How did you know? And I was like, I'm like, what are you talking about? And they're like, well, you wrote about my life. How did you know this? And so I think they come to me. In a way, it's to connect with themselves, really. Because it's a very, people have a very intensely emotional bond with the poetry. Because I think a lot of it is about deeply personal things. And so it becomes like a place of healing and connection and a place of letting go. And yeah, I haven't really figured it out yet, but I've stopped trying.

• 20:23Rick Rubin?

  Since you write words and you perform on stage, the jump from poetry to lyrics is not so far. Have you ever considered doing music?

• 20:36Speaker 01

  I have. I've been sort of pseudo, sort of working on an album for the last eight years. But it's never been in the top three priorities. Because like a book or a tour always takes precedence and...

• 20:47Rick Rubin?

  How is working on music different for you?

• 20:50Speaker 01

  It's so much easier because you don't have to do it all on your own.

• 20:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  It's nice to be in the studio with someone else. Because I'm not singing.

• 20:58Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  And it's not traditional.

• 21:02Speaker 01

  Navigating that is kind of complicated. And in a way, it's kind of the same as navigating the poetry space for the first time way back when. But when you're doing it for the first time, you're not really thinking about it. So now, like, the album actually is a priority for me. Because, yeah, I've been thinking about what do I want this next era to look like? And I want to keep performing. That's, you know, my big love and the things that brings me joy. But then I need people to understand, you know, what it is I do at shows. So I think being in people's ears is important.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I'm thinking about how to put this together. But I also don't think it could be an album where it's like, let's just say, 12 tracks of like spoken word pieces. It has to be some form of experimental. Like, I know that which poem should be its full six minutes.

• 22:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 22:02Speaker 01

  And then the rest of it, we need to like play around with it more. So now I'm, again, I guess it's like, well, I don't really need to know what the end result is. I just need to go in and start.

• 22:13Rick Rubin?

  Spend time, yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:15Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your family.

• 22:17Speaker 01

  I'm the oldest of four kids.

• 22:19Rick Rubin?

  Oldest of four, brothers, sisters?

• 22:21Speaker 01

  Two sisters and brother is the youngest. He's nine years younger than me. And then we grew up with both parents. I...

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Was born in Punjab and immigrated with my mom to Montreal first when I was three and a half and my dad was already here because he had left.

• 22:39Rick Rubin?

  Did you remember anything about your old life when you came? Three and a half is early, so.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  No, I'm gonna say no because I think the only things I remember are the things that.

• 22:49Rick Rubin?

  You were told.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  That I was told and then you create the visuals, you know, yeah, yeah. But I think the feeling is the two

• 22:58Speaker 01

  lives feeling

• 23:01Speaker 01

  very different in temperature.

• 23:03Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Do you remember the first time you went back to India?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Ten years after I came.

• 23:08Rick Rubin?

  Did you feel like it was foreign or did you feel like this is home? Or something else?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Something in the middle.

• 23:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  At first it was terrifying because you, I remember I was in eighth grade and we pull up to my dad's village into a house that has no electricity and proper plumbing and it's a concrete, like concrete wall still and I was like, what the hell is going on and where am I? And power is out most of the day, so it's just like a very different reality, but then, you know, by the end of it, you adapt and it becomes a deeply connective place and and then I had a 10-year gap and then I went back in 2016, but when I went back to perform

• 23:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 01

  for the first time was 2018 and it was so magical. It felt like the first time I was performing and I didn't feel the need to explain myself.

• 24:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 24:08Speaker 01

  Because they just understood. That was really powerful.

• 24:12Rick Rubin?

  That's amazing.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:13Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your relationship with your mom and your relationship with your dad.

• 24:18Speaker 01

  My relationship with my dad. Yeah, him and I are.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  I feel like we've been beefing since I came out of the womb, poor guy. I would say I get a lot of my like rebellious spirit from him. He is.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  He's a refugee and he fled before I was born. You know, he's the survivor of the sick genocide that happened in 1984. And so much of what I've learned about revolution and art and politics comes from him. And I can romanticize all of that. But the thing is, when somebody goes through that, it breaks them.

• 24:59Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  In a way that's not very romantic at all. And so everybody says, my dad, I don't actually know the version of my dad that they know. Like the one that used to laugh and the one that was light and warm and all of those lovely things. The man that I met at the Montreal airport in the mid 90s when we got here was cold and distant and mean. Because I think he was probably depressed. God knows a whole bunch of other things.

• 25:29Rick Rubin?

  Probably walled off to protect himself from his situation.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:35Rick Rubin?

  Has it gotten better over time or no?

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it has. I think after I started publishing.

• 25:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. He didn't understand the performing thing. He never came to any of like my performances. He hated that I did it. He was like, anytime you're not spending studying is a waste of time and you're just gonna fail. It all turned when my book first came out, so I didn't tell them that I was publishing a book. But I did, when I got my first copy, I came home and I started dropped it off in front of him. And books is something he could understand. You know, it's something that he respects in his culture. And then the table sort of turned and he was like, oh, how can we support you?

• 26:11Rick Rubin?

  Wow, that's beautiful.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And so it's been, it's been nice. And you know, at some point you're like, well, this is my dad.

• 26:17Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have one dad and so let's work on this relationship. Yeah.

• 26:21Rick Rubin?

  And your mom?

• 26:22Speaker 01

  My mom is, you know, it's like, house is very patriarchal, but my mom is like this, like, young 16-year-old energy who never got to really always explore her life. I mean, when you come from a South Asian home, especially from such a rural place.

• 26:42Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 26:42Speaker 01

  As a woman, your life is really defined by your children and your husband and how you can serve them. And so we've had a good relationship. And now that her... Four kids have left the nest. It's interesting and sad. And there's a lot of guilt involved in watching her make sense of her world. Because she feels very purposeless. But has never been allowed to ask or wonder what is her purpose outside of all of this. You know, I'm the first woman in my lineage who gets to have that privilege.

• 27:17Rick Rubin?

  Did you feel like a second mom to your siblings?

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm like the translator between that generation. And then translating what the siblings say, because these two forces do not understand each other. And I'm like, I'm trying to be the glue and like the bridge. And so I still am that, but also sometimes I'm like, okay, I'm too tired. You guys fight, I'm gonna go.

• 27:41Rick Rubin?

  But you probably understand both sides better than anyone else in the picture.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Because sometimes you're like, oh, you guys are saying the same thing.

• 27:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 27:50Speaker 01

  It's just a different language.

• 27:52Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 27:53Speaker 01

  And then my dad is speaking a very intense language that comes off very aggressive.

• 27:58Rick Rubin?

  Yes, yes.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  But inside, he's just a big baby.

• 28:01Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 28:02Speaker 01

  And then my brother is like me, sensitive and emotional and, you know, very impassioned. And he's saying something else and it's rubbing him the wrong way. And I'm just like, oh, my goodness. So, yeah, that happens a lot.

• 28:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Rick Rubin?

  Would you say your parents are happy together?

• 28:21Speaker 01

  I don't know. They say that.

• 28:24Rick Rubin?

  What do you think?

• 28:24Speaker 01

  I, you know, now I've started to just accept what they say.

• 28:29Rick Rubin?

  Okay.

• 28:29Speaker 01

  You know, I think before that I'd be like, you guys don't even love each other. All you guys do is fight. And then, you know, they bicker so much.

• 28:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:36Speaker 01

  And then every time they're bickering, you know, my mom, she's a soft speaker. So she'll say things that really annoy my dad, but nobody will say anything to her because nobody hears her be annoying. And then my dad will raise his voice and then everyone like, dad, why are you talking like that to mom? And he's like, I'm always like the bad guy.

• 28:56Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 01

  And then we'll just get involved. And the moment the kids get involved, they're like, you guys stay out of it. You guys don't understand. And now I'm just like, oh, this is like some weird way that you guys like flirt and express love. So we're just gonna let you, let you do that. Because sometimes my experience of their lives is very depressing.

• 29:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  And so then I give their lives a very sad. Outlook and then I'm just like, you know what? That might not even be the case, so. They say they're happy together. They say they can't live without each other. So I let it be. It's an arranged marriage.

• 29:34Rick Rubin?

  It was an arranged.

• 29:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, they like. Never met before they got married.

• 29:37Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:39Rick Rubin?

  Interesting. In the culture, that's standard.

• 29:41Speaker 01

  Yes, for their generation, for sure.

• 29:43Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, nobody, I mean, people did get married for love, but that was like. You know, some guy in the village and he runs away with the love of his life and then you never hear of them again.

• 29:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:59Rick Rubin?

  Do you write all the time?

• 30:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 30:02Rick Rubin?

  Do you write when some things do? Or it's something else get you to write?

• 30:06Speaker 01

  So I stopped writing when some things do because I just stopped writing, stopped signing contracts. Because I was like, oh, my God, these deadlines are killing my creativity. And now I think. You know, I don't think I've ever. And I used to be insecure about it. I don't think I've ever had a single process that I know just works. So I'm still trying to figure it out.

• 30:27Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 30:28Speaker 01

  But I think it's seasons. Yeah, because 90% of the book, and I just use the book as like kind of a stand in. But. It happens in here, like in the gut.

• 30:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 30:40Speaker 01

  That's where it's written. And so it tells you when it's ready. It kind of feels like butterflies in your stomach, I think. Yeah.

• 30:46Rick Rubin?

  So the first book essentially was written before you knew you were writing a book because you were writing pieces to do live.

• 30:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:53Rick Rubin?

  And then posting them eventually.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 30:56Rick Rubin?

  And then the second book was on a deadline and it was a very different experience, stressful.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:02Rick Rubin?

  And then. How was the third book different from the second book?

• 31:06Speaker 01

  With the third book. My goal was. Just from like a creation sort of perspective, I was. I will never have the milk and honey experience.

• 31:18Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Because that was.

• 31:20Rick Rubin?

  That was.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  What it was.

• 31:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  But I do not want to have the sun and her flowers experience because I will jump out of a window.

• 31:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 31:27Speaker 01

  And so can I? Have something in the middle? And so homebody was for me, that's something in the middle. I started, you know, I was. Working on.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Getting more in touch with my spirituality. I was healing from depression, anxiety, and you know, bringing meditation into my life. And so I feel like I was able to have that sort of in the middle sort of experience. And with my fourth book, It's Not a Book of Poetry, It's Writing Exercises. And that was really fun because it was the first time I was doing such a book.

• 32:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  But with this next book, which will be poetry, oddly enough, it is feeling closer to the first book.

• 32:09Rick Rubin?

  Do you think the fact that the fourth book was a different kind of book was like a reset?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. You're playing.

• 32:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How did that one come about?

• 32:17Speaker 01

  During COVID, I started doing these online writing workshops, which were a lot of fun. I don't know, I was like in the shower one day and I was like, can I do something? Yeah, like, how can I contribute to the online space, which is like really the only place we can go at the moment? And then I, I used to facilitate them in person. And then when I started doing them on Instagram, sometimes I'd have 10,000 people join.

• 32:38Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And they would stay for the full hour. And then sometimes two hours. And then they'd be like, so like same time next week? And then I did it, a few more weeks. And at some point, I was like, oh my God, I can't do this all the time. Like, I need to figure out how to give you guys something and then also go do my thing. And so then that book was my thing to give people. Because actually, before that point, I didn't know that so many of my readers were writers.

• 33:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  So that was like something new I learnt. And I thought, wouldn't it be cool to create something? Like a tool that I can give them that might help them develop the first draft of their first book?

• 33:18Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Or their album or their songs. So that was really cool.

• 33:21Rick Rubin?

  Cool. So the book is like the curriculum for the online classes you were doing?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 33:27Rick Rubin?

  And tell me about the in-person classes. What were those like? How many people would come? And what was the feeling of it?

• 33:32Speaker 01

  My favorite is probably when it's like 20-ish people. Because it's a small intimate group. I do two or three exercises. And then, you know, in the beginning, everyone's like, well, I'm not really creative. And like, I don't really know. And By the end of it, and everybody goes around, I mean, you can pass if you want to, but I ask everyone to share and you'll hear such amazing work from people who say they're not creative at all.

• 34:00Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Because, I mean, we're all creative.

• 34:02Rick Rubin?

  For sure.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  You know, they are like, "Thank you so much for doing this," and they don't know that seriously, I'm getting so much out of it myself.

• 34:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me about your spiritual life.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  I grew up in a very religious home, so my parents are sick.

• 34:16Rick Rubin?

  And Indian Sikh is different than American Sikh. There's a whole Sikh community in Los Angeles, but I don't know how related they are.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  I don't think they would be divided by geographics.

• 34:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 34:32Speaker 01

  Because it's more so just, I guess, belief system. Philosophy. Yeah, philosophies, and that can sort of exist in pockets anywhere in the world. But at the end of the day, it's the belief in this idea that all of this is just a play. And it's just an acting out in front of us, and the play starts now and it ends now. And, you know, I think there's a belief that we're a monolithic religion, but we're not. Because we don't really even sort of believe in a god. It's this, we believe in this oneness that we are all connected. And so, you know, we are everything and we are nothing all at once.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  And I think the reason I rejected so much of Sikhi, because Sikhi means learning. And so, it was actually anti-religion for the time, because there was lots of things going on in the 1400s in South Asia, where, for example...

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Women, when their husbands died, widows were expected to jump in the fire. And there was a man named Gurunanic, who was like, looking around and he was like, "Well, that feels a little weird and this doesn't feel right." And so there's this idea of, well, we should question everything. And we should always be students of life. And so that's what Sikkhi means. But I think what happens is then human beings come in and then they take something that might be really beautiful and make it maybe not feel so beautiful. And I think South Asian culture can sometimes be very patriarchal. And so the version of Sikkhi that sometimes my parents enforced on me

• 36:22Speaker 01

  was a lot of about, "Oh, you can't do this and you can't do that." But then the Sikkhi that I learned as a teenager, when I was sort of in the community with people, maybe a little bit older than me, but really experiencing my, exploring the artistic side of Sikkhi, was when I began to fall in love with it.

• 36:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  And so I've been on this journey ever since, but also experiencing different modalities. I mean, you know, with different forms of meditation. And I think it all, for me, it just comes back to love and oneness.

• 36:54Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, I would say the sabbatical has given me a lot of space to connect with that. And my entire world is changing because of it.

• 37:03Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 37:03Speaker 01

  Which is really exciting.

• 37:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:06Rick Rubin?

  If you were to read just the Gurunanic writings as opposed to everything that came after,

• 37:14Rick Rubin?

  do you like those words, the original idea?

• 37:17Speaker 01

  So in Sikkhi, we have 10 teachers.

• 37:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  I like, I think all of them are deeply powerful. Like, one of them writes so much about mental health and how to...

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Engage with the mind and the mind being a prison and how to separate and detach. And and all of our texts are actually written in poetic verse and they're musical compositions. And I think it's other people's interpretation of it.

• 37:45Rick Rubin?

  Are they easier to remember because it's like a song you can repeat it?

• 37:49Speaker 01

  Exactly, and they're very much like my, I've actually been so inspired by it. Short and concise and tight verses that, you know, you could sit around with your friends and you could take four words and then you could discuss them for four hours.

• 38:06Rick Rubin?

  Is there a piece of music in that tradition that we can listen to? That's true to the beautiful part of it?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  So all of the six scriptures are then performed as Gitan on harmonium and tabla or any sort of classical Indian string instrument.

• 38:26Rick Rubin?

  Could we find a version to listen to?

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, we can.

• 38:28Rick Rubin?

  Play me something.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  It was Diwali the other day.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  And I was in Ottawa with my parents and we went to the Gordwara. So we celebrate Diwali, but we refer to it as Bande Chhordhivas. And the raggi, raggi is the person who is performing the Gitan. I had a beautiful shabba. Let me see if I can play. And then the whole audience was singing.

• 39:34Rick Rubin?

  And all the words are devotional?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, this one was about just love, loving the world and like the one true creation and source and energy. What I love about

• 39:52Speaker 01

  the rags is there are certain rags that you only sing in that composition in the morning. And there are different rags for the evening. And it's like creatively and energetically, you know, when you're in tune with that, you can really, it's so powerful and so exciting and inspiring.

• 40:10Rick Rubin?

  And when you go to someplace where that is being performed, you would sing along?

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:14Rick Rubin?

  Everybody sings along?

• 40:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can. Sometimes I go to the Gurdwara and no one is singing. And then sometimes I think it's depending on who's performing.

• 40:21Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  They very much invite it. So that was like one of the days where I was like, oh, wow. He was, you know, bringing the audience into that play. And you could feel the frequency

• 40:32Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  sort of rise and it was beautiful.

• 40:35Rick Rubin?

  So it's essentially gospel music.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:39Speaker 01

  It is, yeah. Gospel music and meditation at once. And then you do it together because there's a belief like in many cultures and faiths that when you meditate together, the energy of all of the people together just moves the frequency in a way that not a single person can't.

• 40:58Rick Rubin?

  The whole thing is amplified.

• 40:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:59Rick Rubin?

  For sure, that happens.

• 41:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 41:02Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about your media diet.

• 41:04Speaker 01

  So I started feeling this a few years ago that I can't feel my imagination the way that I used to. Because spending so much of my time on my phone, especially social media, it just takes up so much space. And so, well, I was already not posting. And so I kind of blocked off all of my apps. And since then, I feel like my brain has changed.

• 41:29Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  And my life has changed in a way that I just have my time and my brain back, which feels really exciting and good for the creativity. And so I've been reading a lot more than I have in past years, which is a lot of fun because

• 41:46Speaker 01

  You know, even when I'm reading something that's like inspiring on the on social media.

• 41:51Rick Rubin?

  Yep.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I always leave feeling like I'm functioning at a lower frequency. The dopamine hit that it gives me never really fully lasts and it's always fleeting. But the dopamine hit that I get from reading a book.

• 42:06Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  Sustains. And so I've been doing a lot of just like reading and like in a little bit, I'm also a little bit addicted now, actually.

• 42:13Rick Rubin?

  Nice.

• 42:13Speaker 01

  So I was in the Maldives, I was performing somewhere. And then right after the performance, everyone's going to the party. I'm like, I gotta go finish that book. It was this amazing book on, what's it called? Mr. Penumbra's 24 Hour Bookstore. Yeah, getting lost in like the childlike wonder of those stories is really fun. So that's kind of just what I'm taking in is just.

• 42:32Rick Rubin?

  Do you tend to read more fiction?

• 42:35Speaker 01

  I used to read more fiction all the time as a kid, as like a young girl. And then I probably stopped in university. And then most of what I've read in my adult life has been business books and self-help and a lot of memoirs.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  And I totally forgot fiction altogether. And then I struggled to get back into it, but now I'm getting back into it. And so that's mostly what I'm reading right now.

• 43:02Rick Rubin?

  Would you say you're as fearless in life as you are in your words?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, no.

• 43:08Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that relationship.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  I'm trying to be. I always describe to my therapist, I say, because people are like, what is it like to be on stage? And I always say, well, when I'm on stage, I'm like the woman of my dreams.

• 43:19Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:20Speaker 01

  She's so powerful and she's so confident and she's so funny. Because when I get up there, I don't even know what happens. And, you know, my two younger siblings, my brother and my sister, they're so funny and they're the funniest people I know. And they'll come up to me and they'll be like, holy shit. I mean, something just happens to you up there and you just become this person. Like, good for you. But then I get off stage and I don't feel that person anymore. And so. I'm working on bridging the gap and narrowing that gap between these two people. Because I think that's also a story I tell myself. That that woman exists up there.

• 43:53Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  When there's nobody on the stage to get in her way and in her space. But as I've been doing this work through my sabbatical, that gap is definitely narrowing. And the story is changing and the way that I speak of myself and to myself, which is very exciting because for a long time I was like, well, this is just who I am and it's never gonna change.

• 44:16Rick Rubin?

  How much of it, when you're on stage, is decided in advance and you know what you're gonna do, methodical? Versus in the moment and spontaneous?

• 44:28Speaker 01

  I would say most of it because I kind of have the poems I've picked out and is mental.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  But I leave a lot of room for the channeling. So I'll change things and I'll respond to the audience. I'll throw in poems. If I don't have the poem, I'll ask somebody to throw up a book and I'll like get into that. And yeah, over the years through, I guess, practicing that surrender. It's the moments where you're just letting go and channeling that like the greatness sort of like comes through you. And you're like, whoa, that was so cool. Like, I wish I got to like record that. Like, how did that happen?

• 45:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. And when you're writing, is it thought out or is it more of a download?

• 45:12Speaker 01

  It's more of a download. And I was actually gonna ask you a question about this. Because there are some times when, you know, and it doesn't happen all the time. And Elizabeth Gilbert describes this as big magic. And sometimes, and it's very few times, but you're writing a poem and it feels like that. You know, the conveyor belt that you could just stand on and it just transports you to the other end of the hallway, the long hallway at the airport. Some of the poems feel like that, like there's this one poem, timeless. I don't know where that poem came from. I just know I had a conversation with a friend. And she was talking about, she was in a room with

• 45:55Speaker 01

  women in their seventies and eighties and they were so happy. And she's like, I've never been around women who were that age. And allowed to see that there could be joy and life in that. And I was like, wow, I had same. And I remember we had this conversation and I was writing book number two and feeling really, really stuck. But anyways, we connected over that conversation. And then I remember hung up and then it just came. And this poem, I'd love to read it.

• 46:27Rick Rubin?

  Please.

• 46:28Speaker 01

  It kind of just, yeah, dropped from somewhere and I must have changed maybe

• 46:36Speaker 01

  two or three words, but it was done.

• 46:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:39Rick Rubin?

  And it came all at once?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:41Rick Rubin?

  Like as fast as you could write it?

• 46:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then you're almost like scared it's gonna run off.

• 46:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it's terrifying.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  Terrifying. It goes,

• 46:52Speaker 01

  let's see.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Timeless.

• 46:57Speaker 01

  They convinced me I only had a few good years left. Before I was replaced by a girl younger than me. As though men yield power with age. But women grow into irrelevance.

• 47:15Speaker 01

  They can keep their lies. For I have just gotten started. I feel as though I just left the womb. My twenties are the warm up for what I'm really about to do.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Now wait till you see me in my thirties. That will be a proper introduction to the nasty, wild woman in me.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  How can I leave before the party started?

• 47:46Speaker 01

  Rehearsals begin at age forty. I ripen with age. I do not come with an expiration date. And now for the main event. Curtains up at age fifty. Let's begin the show.

• 48:06Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful, and it is certainly optimistic. Like, it's very empowering.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like one of those, you're like, I mean, I'll take the credit for it, but I don't think I wrote it.

• 48:16Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it just happened.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  It just happened.

• 48:18Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:18Rick Rubin?

  Such a great feeling when it happens.

• 48:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:20Rick Rubin?

  And as we said, it is scary because when you realize you're not in control of it, it can go away. So it's scary.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  That's what's so scary, because like what I'm feeling right now is

• 48:34Speaker 01

  this readiness of like this book

• 48:38Speaker 01

  is baking.

• 48:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  And, oh my God, it's so exciting, like the fluttering excitement is in my hands. Like, you know, when you meditate and you can feel the electricity? That's how I feel this book. It's just like right there. And then sometimes I'll go to write, and then the feeling just goes away.

• 49:01Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  And then I'm like, was that a lie? Or what is that gap? Is that a lack of skill? Or? Yeah, I'm trying to, I guess, make sense of it.

• 49:13Rick Rubin?

  I don't think there's any rule about it.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:17Rick Rubin?

  The two different approaches would be keep doing the same thing until that doesn't happen and it just comes out. And the other one is to just start writing even if the feeling isn't there yet. To kind of get through whatever is in the way. Like, write what's in the way out of the way.

• 49:41Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 49:43Rick Rubin?

  To get to what you want to get to. Bad ideas are helpful.

• 49:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:48Rick Rubin?

  Because you have to get through those to get to the good ideas.

• 49:50Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 49:51Rick Rubin?

  And just allow them. Don't judge them. Move through them.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 49:57Rick Rubin?

  And you can allow yourself, I'm gonna write some things that maybe are not so good, and let's just see what comes out. Low expectation.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, I know. I mean, the majority of it is just not good, you know? And I just feel like, I mean, the more that I, and I think you describe it very well, but the more I'm learning, it's almost like, it's like creativity is like trying to have faith in God or like religion. It's like, I can't exactly put my finger on it, and I can't point at it, and there's absolutely no proof.

• 50:25Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 50:26Speaker 01

  But I just have to have faith.

• 50:27Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 50:28Speaker 01

  I've always struggled.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  With faith, that's not something I've often really connected with. Cause I'm always like, well, up here, like, well, does it exist? And trying to intellectualize it and make sense of it.

• 50:40Rick Rubin?

  It's not intellectual. That's the thing. It's like the intellect gets in the way of it.

• 50:48Rick Rubin?

  There's nothing to figure out.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's so true.

• 50:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. You just start doing it and it reveals itself in time. And you'll surprise yourself at some point, just like you did with timeless. Like at some point, you'll be working on something and you think it's not very good, but you're forcing yourself to do something. And then at some point it's like, hmm, you didn't even know it happened and something really good came out. And then you're just on a roll, but it doesn't happen in the head. It's

• 51:21Speaker 01

  The head just gets in the way.

• 51:22Rick Rubin?

  Gets in the way, yeah.

• 51:23Speaker 01

  And that's the thing, it's like, I know that.

• 51:25Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 51:26Speaker 01

  And I know that I will always think, well, hopefully not always, but I can't, I'll never write another book again, that's it. And I clearly have thought it and then still done it four times. But then the head always just brings you back to that, like, I can't or I won't. And then I'm like, okay, here we are again. But then, yeah, I guess it's the dance of, okay, I'm gonna let you say that. I'm gonna let you be you, head. And then I'm realizing so much of it is in the heart.

• 51:59Rick Rubin?

  Yes.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  That's what Milk and Honey was. It was, it just happened, it was in the heart. Then I got all of this external success and then I became all head.

• 52:06Rick Rubin?

  Yes, I'm guessing heart and gut.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  It's in the body, yeah.

• 52:10Rick Rubin?

  It's in the body, it's not in the head.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  Then the head's like, oh, now we gotta hold on to this and now we've got a talk strategy. And when I started doing that, the results were not great.

• 52:23Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 52:24Speaker 01

  And then, let's see, we're back in the heart again. So.

• 52:29Rick Rubin?

  I would just say, really be kind to yourself.

• 52:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:32Rick Rubin?

  And make things, and without any expectation, no fear. Just have fun doing it. And it won't be a book until you decide it's a book. So, everything that happens up until then is just free play. Lower the stakes.

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. That is something I definitely highlighted. Because I think my stakes were always, well, if it's not doing all of these things and meeting these external things, then it's a failure. I think that early success can like freeze you.

• 53:07Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Sort of in a way. And I am experiencing that. I mean, I think from having that early success, I immediately spent a lot of my twenties kind of trying to run away from this idea of becoming irrelevant. And the fear of irrelevance was like always there. And then now I've entered this quieter space, especially over the last year, you know? And when you're not, I'm not active, I'm not doing anything, I'm not performing, I'm not posting. So like book sales are, you know, they drop and so.

• 53:45Speaker 01

  And it's such an interesting thing because actually every single day, I'm getting my magic back. I'm connecting with it.

• 53:52Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 53:52Speaker 01

  But what's terrifying me is what the well-meaning people around me are saying, which is, you know, it's okay, Ruby, like, we just have to change what our idea of success looks like now. Like, it's just, we're not going to sell these many things and you're not going to be able to this and you're not going to be able to do that. And I know that they're saying it to free me of whatever they think is holding me down.

• 54:17Rick Rubin?

  But it's not helpful.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  But it's not helpful because you're just like, oh, no.

• 54:21Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  You don't even believe in me either.

• 54:23Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But no, their intentions are good.

• 54:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:27Rick Rubin?

  And they're probably wrong.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:28Rick Rubin?

  And it's okay.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  Exactly. It's so funny because it all just goes back to the beginning. Because I'm like, oh, I like did all these things that I thought were going to prove that I can do this. But now I'm feeling like my 19-year-old self when I was publishing this thing. And then everybody was like, yeah, yeah, it's not going to work.

• 54:42Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:42Rick Rubin?

  Which is great. You've experienced people telling you it's not going to work, and it worked.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:50Rick Rubin?

  So why would you question that? You know, like you got to experience that. You know that can happen.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  I think what I'm afraid of is knowing very well the next thing. I know I have to just express the thing I meant to express. But it might not work in the commercial sense. And even as I'm saying this, I'm like, well, then I just go on to the next thing.

• 55:15Rick Rubin?

  You just keep going.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  I just keep going.

• 55:17Rick Rubin?

  You just keep going. That's it. That's all you can do. And it's the right thing to do. Like, that's what being an artist is. You know, you create stuff. You make it to the best of your ability. You share it with the world and then you start the next one. And they'll like some of them more than others. On occasion, one will break through. You had the experience of having that on the first one.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:42Rick Rubin?

  Blessing and a curse. You got to see what it can be.

• 55:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 55:45Rick Rubin?

  But then the expectation is that's what they're all gonna be. Can't be.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 55:49Rick Rubin?

  But that's fine because it's it's a long game. If you want to do it forever.

• 55:55Rick Rubin?

  Just know there'll be ups and downs along the way and it's fine. The key is staying true to that inner voice. Whatever it is, that gut feeling, what you say is churning in you now.

• 56:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:08Rick Rubin?

  That's the truest thing you can follow. There's no strategy in that.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  No, it's not. You can't apply logic and rationale.

• 56:18Rick Rubin?

  No.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:19Rick Rubin?

  No, because really, logic and rationale is too small. This is something much bigger.

• 56:26Speaker 01

  Right. Do you believe that when you're inspired by something, that inspiration always lives in you even if you don't feel it anymore?

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Or if you don't catch it at the moment, it's like an idea that's gone and you can't tap back?

• 56:47Rick Rubin?

  It can't be gone. I would say it's helpful to act on inspiration as quickly as possible.

• 56:54Rick Rubin?

  I think so.

• 56:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:55Rick Rubin?

  Now, it doesn't always go away. And maybe sometimes it goes away in your best interest. Like, sometimes not every signal is a home run signal. You know, we get interested in a lot of things.

• 57:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:13Rick Rubin?

  If you find something that holds your attention for a long time, it's a good sign.

• 57:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 57:19Rick Rubin?

  But sometimes little ideas insignificant, a moment.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 57:25Rick Rubin?

  You overhear a conversation, you hear a few words, think that's interesting. That could turn into something really important. Whereas there's the great work that you put all this time and energy into and that you think is the great work. And sometimes it's the casual work, you know, Mary Oliver, the poet. Her most famous poem, someone asked her, how do you write a poem? And she wrote that as an example, this is how I would do it. No plan of anything, it just fell out of her.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  Right, right, right.

• 57:53Rick Rubin?

  Showing you how to do it.

• 57:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:55Rick Rubin?

  And that is her most well known of all of the poems she's written over the course of her life.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Right, right. It's so funny how that happens.

• 58:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:03Rick Rubin?

  It's like it can completely catch you by surprise.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  There's this idea that, and I think I would deeply subscribe to it, especially in my twenties and seeing my immigrant parents.

• 58:15Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Sort of, you know, work seven days a week, nonstop. Like we glamorize work ethic and you always hear, I think I read something this morning. Nikki Minaj was saying something about Ariana Grande, like all her work ethic and the time she puts in. Is it the hours and the quantity or is it the quality or a little bit of both? Cause I'm in a place where first I was so obsessed with work, work ethic all the time. And now I've loosened the grip and I'm sort of just observing and experiencing. And that feels right to me.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  But then this other part of my brain says, hmm, well, you're not really putting the hours in.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  But maybe just by existing and being present, those aren't the hours.

• 59:07Rick Rubin?

  Yes and no. I would say it's a different phase of the work. So there's a phase of just the growth phase, which is what you're in now. Same like in a garden.

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:21Rick Rubin?

  You know, in the growth phase, you're not picking all the fruit off the trees.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 59:27Rick Rubin?

  You know, you're, you're letting the growth happen, you're letting life happen.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 59:32Rick Rubin?

  You're seeing things, you're getting inspired. If the growth cycle doesn't do what it needs to do, the dedicated putting the hours in won't mean the same.

• 59:44Speaker 01

  Right. Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.

• 59:46Rick Rubin?

  I don't know that there's any version where you're not putting the hours in. Even on the first book, when you didn't know you were putting them in, you were still putting them in. You just didn't know it because you were just coming up with the thing to say on stage and then posting it.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the work felt...

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess it's like when the growth happens.

• 1:00:08Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  I mean, I was writing and working day in and day out, but it's like a devotional love.

• 1:00:14Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:15Speaker 01

  I could be putting in 12 hours a day, seven days a week, but it's so effortless in that it's the only thing you can do. But I guess when you think that you can do that all the time, stops feeling...

• 1:00:30Rick Rubin?

  And you're not in control. That's the other part of it. It's like when it's about the work, you think you're in control of the situation. I could put these hours in and this many hours equals this. It is not true.

• 1:00:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:00:43Rick Rubin?

  The other side of it is if you're not putting in the hours, it won't happen. So it's like where that balance is. If we were working together, I would give you a homework assignment to write a poem a day for 50 days with the idea of they're not good poems. You just have to write a poem a day. I would have you send me the poem every day. I don't care what it says. And knowing no one will ever read these. They serve no purpose other than practice in turning on the machinery

• 1:01:17Rick Rubin?

  of I'm doing the poet job now. I'm doing my poet workout.

• 1:01:23Rick Rubin?

  I'm not making art. I'm not sharing it with the world. This is something else. I'm just doing my reps.

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:30Rick Rubin?

  With no expectation other than I did my reps today. I succeeded. And something happens when you use the machinery and get that feeling of every day, I'm doing it and I'm succeeding. At some point, the poems start turning good without you doing anything. It just has to.

• 1:01:58Rick Rubin?

  Do you keep a journal?

• 1:01:59Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:02:00Rick Rubin?

  Tell me about that.

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Oof, probably like 12 years ago, 15 years ago.

• 1:02:07Rick Rubin?

  Pre-poetry?

• 1:02:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, pre or around the same time. I have my daily journal, not good at writing in it daily, but I bring it everywhere with me. So that's a process I'm still working on. And then I have my poetry journal, much larger, so that it sort of, I could just do a little scribble here and there and there, and then it just catches all of it. But now I'm doing a lot of voice notes. Because when I edit, I edit out loud because it's almost like song-like.

• 1:02:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  And it doesn't traditionally rhyme, but when you hear the performance, you're like, oh, but it kind of does rhyme. So now I'm really enjoying the voice notes as I'm driving. And, you know, now they can be transcribed and everything.

• 1:02:47Rick Rubin?

  So during the course of the day, you're driving, and you have an idea, you speak it into the phone.

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:53Rick Rubin?

  And you collect those.

• 1:02:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:54Rick Rubin?

  And at some point, you'll look through those and see if they're...

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:58Rick Rubin?

  Pieces.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, usually if I'm doing like a writing day, it starts at a coffee shop or something. I'll open my large journal.

• 1:03:08Rick Rubin?

  Are you by yourself?

• 1:03:09Speaker 01

  Yes. And then it's all stream of consciousness and, you know, writing without judgment. And they're either so, so long, or they're just little verses here and there. And I keep going until I can't go anymore. And then I circle the few, if any, that I'm like, oh, this is something, let's see what it can be. Then I transfer that over. And then I start working on it digitally. And I like to keep a draft of every single version. So lots of copy and pasting because then you can over-edit. And then it's like, let's go back. Yeah.

• 1:03:45Rick Rubin?

  That's great that you recognize sometimes the first one, with its imperfections, is actually the best one.

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Exactly. And you can over-edit it, and then the soul of it is gone.

• 1:03:55Rick Rubin?

  Tell me something you believe now that you didn't believe when you were young.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  That great things can happen to me.

• 1:04:02Rick Rubin?

  Isn't that great?

• 1:04:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:03Rick Rubin?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:05Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. How would you say that success has impacted your life? And how has it been different than you thought it would be?

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Oh my god, it's completely different than what I thought it would be. Because I feel like I went through like a midlife crisis at 22. Because it was suddenly like I had all the things. You know, the things that every author would want. Whether it was like coming from a home where we didn't have much financial security at all. Moments you were gonna lose our home. And then you get financial security and then become super financially insecure in the brain. Right? And suddenly I was like, oh, wait, you can have all of this. And the popularity and it all still feels empty. Nobody told me that. So what the hell is the point then? So that I wasn't expecting.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  But I think my favorite part has been able to share with my parents, actually, like, things they would have never seen or had or experienced. I think just giving them comfort has been really nice.

• 1:05:10Rick Rubin?

  Beautiful.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  I remember the first family trip we went on. It was 2017. And that was, I'd just finished writing the second book. And so I was like, oh, I think we should go like on a family trip. So we went to Jamaica. And my mom said to me, we were in this house, kind of in the mountains and looking out. And she said to me, thank you for bringing me here. I didn't even know that a place like this existed.

• 1:05:34Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  And it was a bittersweet moment.

• 1:05:37Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:37Speaker 01

  Because you're just like, oh, like, I know how most places in the world look. And so I think being able to give and share them.

• 1:05:46Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, you've expanded their experience of what they can see in life. That's beautiful.

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:53Rick Rubin?

  When you start a poem, what happens first? Is it an idea or is it specific words?

• 1:06:05Speaker 01

  I think what forms inside is a feeling.

• 1:06:10Speaker 01

  And the feeling is the feeling I want to have.

• 1:06:15Speaker 01

  When I read the thing. And how I think writing that thing is gonna free me. And how it'll feel in my body and. So that is kind of the thing that happens first and sometimes a poem. I like one of my most popular pieces. Was a poem that was on repeat in my head, like an annoying song for months, like three months. And I thought it was so dumb. I was like, I'm not gonna write this down. It's preachy, it's weird, like, I don't care. So I ignored it and I ignored it until one day. I was like, I just gotta write it down. I gotta get it out of the way so I can go do the thing I want to do. And so then I wrote it down.

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  And I see it the next day. I'm like, it's not so bad. And then, and it's probably my most recognized piece, but sometimes it happens like that. Like, right now, I'm working on one about leaving a relationship. But the relationship is.

• 1:07:16Speaker 01

  An island I wanna break away from and so. And it's such a frustrating poem because in my body, it feels so beautiful and painful and lovely.

• 1:07:30Speaker 01

  And I can't crack it for months.

• 1:07:33Rick Rubin?

  So would you say you can picture the scene, but you don't yet have the way to say it?

• 1:07:40Speaker 01

  I have the beginning of a woman. She wakes up. With this feeling of her lover next to her. And he's still asleep and he has no idea that she's awake. And she wakes up with this feeling that says, I'm ready to leave the island of this relationship. And then she slips out the front door, past the porch, through the garden.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  With this.

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  Confidence to finally choose herself. And so.

• 1:08:15Speaker 01

  She's running and running and this time she says she's gonna do it. She's gonna have the courage, but the moment she sees the shore.

• 1:08:26Speaker 01

  The courage slips away and then the fear steps in and the fear sounds like his voice. And his voice says, you can't live without me. And then his voice sounds so confident that she's never been that confident about anything. And so then she confuses that confidence for truth. And she suddenly doesn't know when. But as she gets into the doubting herself and his his voice gets louder, she doesn't know at what moment her body turns around and suddenly she's walking back home again. You know, past the porch, through the front door.

• 1:09:08Speaker 01

  And then she touches him, hoping that this time she'll feel like this is it. And what I can't crack is like she does this again and again, every morning it's like this. But there comes one morning where something happens. Where she doesn't wait and she just dives in and there's no fear of uncertainty. And she just swims and has no idea what's on the other end. And I'm having trouble finding the words for what that thing that happens is.

• 1:09:40Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, it also feels related to the story of writing. Like the fear, the fear of coming back to writing and it feels related to the broader conversation.

• 1:09:53Speaker 01

  It does, it does. Yeah, there there's a gap of what I want it to be like.

• 1:09:58Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  And my ability to do it.

• 1:10:00Rick Rubin?

  Can you tell me the one that was in your head that you didn't love and that nagged you and eventually?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  I couldn't wish I knew it by heart. I should really give my poems names so that they're easier to look up.

• 1:10:15Rick Rubin?

  How do you do it now? Do they have numbers or nothing?

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  They have nothing. They have like sometimes they have footnotes.

• 1:10:22Rick Rubin?

  Right.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. For me, it was like titles kind of get in the way.

• 1:10:26Rick Rubin?

  And it also can.

• 1:10:29Rick Rubin?

  Tell you more than you want it to say.

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Rick Rubin?

  This can be too leading.

• 1:10:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it puts it in a box.

• 1:10:35Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Speaker 01

  I want to apologize to all the women I've called pretty before I've called them intelligent or brave. I'm sorry I made it sound as though something as simple as what you're born with is the most you have to be proud of when your spirit has crushed mountains. From now on, I'll say things like, "You are resilient." Or, "You are extraordinary." Not because I don't think you're pretty, but because I realize that you are so much more than that.

• 1:11:14Speaker 01

  So I just kept playing and playing and I was like, "This is so annoying." And it came from this idea that I, I realized that was the compliment that I valued the most and maybe one that I never got often. I got the, "Oh, my God, you're so smart and you're so this."

• 1:11:31Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  But I very much valued, "Oh, you're so beautiful. You're so pretty." And then the older I got, I was like, "That's weird. Why that? Why this thing that I've never worked on?"

• 1:11:41Rick Rubin?

  Why the surface?

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. And it landed and I had no idea why.

• 1:11:47Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, and I love the fact that it insisted on you paying attention.

• 1:11:53Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:11:55Rick Rubin?

  And almost against your will.

• 1:11:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:11:58Rick Rubin?

  It won.

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:12:00Rick Rubin?

  And the audience was happy.

• 1:12:02Speaker 01

  The audience was happy.

• 1:12:03Rick Rubin?

  Interesting, right?

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so much of it, it's like the practice and the work is getting out of your own way.

• 1:12:08Rick Rubin?

  It really is.

• 1:12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:09Rick Rubin?

  That's it. That's the key to the whole thing. That's the key to the whole thing. Would you say you're hard on yourself?

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  Oh, my God, so much, but learning to change that narrative and the voice. My inner narrator is my dad. And so we're learning to let that go. It's like an everyday practice, but I'm getting better now because I'm doing the practice every day of catching myself. And I'm like, "You're so stupid." Then the other voice says, "You're actually not stupid at all. You're great. You're fine." So now that that's changing, yeah, and I'm allowing more grace.

• 1:12:47Rick Rubin?

  When did the idea of presenting the poems in all lowercase start?

• 1:12:53Speaker 01

  It just made sense to me. I just feel like capital letters are not beautiful. And it just, there was a lack of symmetry.

• 1:13:02Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  And so I love the lowercase, just the design wise visually. I thought it was beautiful and it created a lot of calm. And I think it also came from in Punjabi. We don't have any upper case. There's just one case. And it's all quite symmetrical and there's no punctuation. And I went through a period of being like, I wish I could write poetry in Punjabi. Cause there are things that you can express that you just can't do in English. But I wasn't very good at it. Cause even though it's my first language, you know, now I feel like English has become that. But it became a way of me preserving that.

• 1:13:44Speaker 01

  And I've since with the fourth book introduced capitals because it wasn't poetry.

• 1:13:51Rick Rubin?

  Poetry, right?

• 1:13:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. But I think for the poetry, it still makes sense to me.

• 1:13:57Rick Rubin?

  And line spacing, do you think about that at all?

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Very much so. Cause that's the way the poem dances on a stage.

• 1:14:06Rick Rubin?

  Is it the way it looks on the page or the rhythm of what it sounds like?

• 1:14:13Speaker 01

  More so the rhythm of what it sounds like. And then how it looks. How it looks is important, but it comes second, but it's more so what it sounds like. And so much of the, you know,

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  the poem, especially the ones that are more concise or the ones that people circulate more so on social media. It's about removing everything that you can possibly remove to preserve the original idea. I don't know, I don't want to waste words. Like let every word word work really hard and let it deserve to be there. Yeah.

• 1:14:53Rick Rubin?

  I think the other beauty of having less words is it allows the reader to create the image. The more information you give, the less the reader participates.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yes, I think it leaves room for their own story, right?

• 1:15:10Rick Rubin?

  Exactly.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Probably the biggest critique I get is it's so short. But. It's just, it's a feeling that to me it's the right way.

• 1:15:22Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, whatever feels right is what's right.

• 1:15:25Speaker 01

  The short ones are the hardest to write.

• 1:15:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  Uh, like the spoken word ones, I'm like, yeah, I could do this. I could, I would have like 50 books written. But the, the short ones, you can't cheat your way to writing those. You really gotta, yeah.

• 1:15:43Rick Rubin?

  Would you say for you, the writing is therapeutic?

• 1:15:47Speaker 01

  I would say so. It's always been a way to feel closest to myself. A way to process life and find answers to questions that I have. Writing has always felt like a spiritual experience, which is something I had to accept when I was trying to make it very methodical, like I must wake up at this time and I must write these many words and it must be every single day. That just wasn't my way and, you know, it was more so, it was a spiritual dance for me. And that's not something you could put like a timeline on, so.

• 1:16:25Rick Rubin?

  What type of meditation do you do?

• 1:16:29Speaker 01

  Right now I'm doing a lot of Joe Dispenza.

• 1:16:32Rick Rubin?

  Great.

• 1:16:33Speaker 01

  That's what's been speaking to me. Yeah.

• 1:16:36Rick Rubin?

  Do you listen to recordings?

• 1:16:38Speaker 01

  I do.

• 1:16:39Rick Rubin?

  So it's like guided meditation?

• 1:16:41Speaker 01

  It's guided meditation, but his are like, they're guided, but then there's sometimes.

• 1:16:47Rick Rubin?

  Long periods of time.

• 1:16:48Speaker 01

  No guidance.

• 1:16:49Rick Rubin?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:16:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So when I first did it, I was like, I don't like this. I used to do more like pranayama, lot of breath work. But I started it at a time I was like very depressed and looking for help and anxiety. And when I realized it's working, then I meditated my way into like injuring my diaphragm. I was like so type A and like, I'm like, okay, we're gonna do this right and we're gonna do it really hard. And then I was like, oh my God, no, this is like the opposite. So when I first did Joe Dispenza earlier, he was here, I was like, this sounds weird and his voice is weird. And why does he talk like that? And now I love it. It's so comforting.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  And sometimes I don't, you know, don't listen to anything at all. I'll just be on a flight and we'll just sort of sink in. The body scanning helps a lot. Yeah.

• 1:17:41Rick Rubin?

  Do you remember your dreams?

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  Only the scary ones.

• 1:17:46Rick Rubin?

  Do you write them down or no?

• 1:17:47Speaker 01

  I don't. I find that as I wake up, I remember. But the moment I start to write it down because I haven't had the practice.

• 1:17:55Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  It's like it goes instantly.

• 1:17:57Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. Tell me about your relationship to music.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  I actually find that that the music holds the memories and the inspiration. Because sometimes I feel like, oh, no, the inspiration I felt after like I went to this event or I did this thing, I didn't capture it and it's gone. And then I will listen to a song that I was, you know, hearing or that was on when I went through a certain thing. And suddenly I'm fully there again. And we're back in the, I had that moment while actually on my way here. And there was like tears rolling down my eyes. It's that way in, it's like a road back to that thing.

• 1:18:36Rick Rubin?

  Yeah. What was the music on the way here?

• 1:18:38Speaker 01

  It was called, I Came Here to Leave You, the song by Charlotte Cardin. And it's about just a woman who meets her partner and is like having that conversation. And that's what my next book is about, is that having that conversation.

• 1:18:55Rick Rubin?

  Wow.

• 1:18:55Speaker 01

  Choosing yourself. And I remember listening to that song after I left. And I was just like walking around West Hollywood where I lived at the time, just like a crazy person crying and all that song on repeat because it was so, so, so soothing.

• 1:19:11Rick Rubin?

  Typically are the poems in the books related to each other?

• 1:19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I think that there's poems, but the book is one poem.

• 1:19:21Rick Rubin?

  I see.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Because it's a reflection of one part of the journey or one journey. So the next book is about leaving a partnership. And so all of the poems are related to each other. And then even the way that, you know, they're laid out and organized is like all purposeful. And how the poems sort of dance into each other and create a journey and where they leave the reader.

• 1:19:51Rick Rubin?

  Can you imagine writing a book about a celebratory part of life as opposed to a heartbreaking part of life?

• 1:20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  I think even when I'm writing the heartbreaking part of life, half of it is celebratory.

• 1:20:10Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Speaker 01

  So that's happening. And then I think the other thing cooking is just one. It's a book just on love, which I've never. And actually, I found love really hard to write about. I just feel like I always struggled with it. Doesn't really land, but it's sort of landing for me right now. So I think I'll do one just that.

• 1:20:31Rick Rubin?

  How is a poem different when it's read out loud versus when it's read on the page?

• 1:20:36Speaker 01

  I know a poem on the page is done when I read it. And by the end, it makes my stomach turn.

• 1:20:42Rick Rubin?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:20:42Speaker 01

  And then I'm like, oh, we're done here. Like, we can move on to the next one. But performing out loud is celebrating life with other people. And it's so fun. And that's what I always wanted to be about. So a lot of women come to my shows and they'll bring, you know, their boyfriends. And the guys look so unhappy to be there. And they're just like, what am I doing here? And I just call it out in the beginning. I'm like, I know you think poetry is so boring. Trust me, I know. I believe those things too. I'm like, I promise you're gonna have so much fun. And by the end of it, they're like, we love it. Because they're laughing and they're crying. And I feel like poetry's just been done such a disservice in the West.

• 1:21:26Rick Rubin?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:27Speaker 01

  In the East, I mean, it is a part of everyday life. And every age group is engaged with it. It's given as much space and respect as music and film and more of like mainstream culture. And in the West, it's been, I don't know, put into this corner? Where most people just think, I don't enjoy it. And I don't know if it's because of the poetry we read in school, that we need like 100 literary devices to like dissect and understand. But the poetry of the East is accessible. And actually, quite often, at least in South Asian culture, always performed.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  It was more often than it was written, it was actually performed out loud. So my grandparents couldn't read or write. My grandma was illiterate, but she participated in poetry her whole life. Because it was something that happened as a community.

• 1:22:24Rick Rubin?

  Do people in the audience ever say the poems along with you?

• 1:22:27Speaker 01

  They do.

• 1:22:28Rick Rubin?

  What's that like?

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  It just makes me wanna cry.

• 1:22:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  But when it happens, you're just like, "My babies." I mean, I'm sure, you know, singers experience it. Musicians experience it all the time, but, yeah, there are certain poems that they'll finish my lines for me and it's unbelievable. It feels so, you know, definitely like, that's what I want people to know is that poetry is something that we can all enjoy.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  What I feel is very excited and this deep belief that there is greatness ahead.

• 1:23:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:23:13Speaker 01

  And,

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  you know, as the older we get, uncertainty is scary. So, but to get to that greatness, I can't use the same road that I used that first climb. The road has to be different and I want it to be different. I'm excited for it to be different.

• 1:23:59Speaker 03

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