LAURA FLANDERS & FRIENDS

JACQUELINE WOODSON & CATHERINE GUND: BREATHING THROUGH CHAOS & THE “MEANWHILE”

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LAURA FLANDERS: How to keep breathing when life feels chaotic? A hypnotic new film tackles this very question. It’s called “Meanwhile,” and it’s out now from Aubin Pictures. It was inspired they say, by the disorientation of the pandemic and the uprising in response to the suffocation of George Floyd. But it speaks perfectly to many of the feelings I, for one, am experiencing right now. “Meanwhile” was produced and directed by Emmy nominated and Academy Award shortlisted producer and director Catherine Gund. It’s written and narrated by New York Times bestseller and National Book Award winner, Jacqueline Woodson. It follows artists working through questions of race, political violence, resistance, and identity, all the while centering breath as a symbol of resilience and liberation. “It’s not a love letter to the country,” says Woodson, “but to us inside this country.” “We see us, we love us, we make eye contact and nod to us.” Gund’s most recent film is “Paint Me a Road Out of Here” about the work of the late great painter, Faith Ringgold. Woodson’s many books include the aforementioned National Book Award winner “Brown Girl Dreaming” and many more. “Meanwhile,” the film, also features a dreamy soundscape by Meshell Ndegeocello. It’s currently screening in festivals and theaters, and I’m very glad it’s brought Catherine and Jacqueline to our show. Hi both. Glad to see you.

JACQUELINE WOODSON: Hi, Laura.

CATHERINE GUND: Hey.

LAURA FLANDERS: Now I should say for the audience viewing and listening that we all know each other, we are friends. We have been in each other’s lives for many years. And Catherine, you’ve even made an extraordinarily wonderful documentary about my beloved partner, Elizabeth Streb. You’ve been following artists like her and others for years. This film though feels like a huge departure stylistically. You call it a docu-poem in six verses. What do you mean by that?

CATHERINE GUND: It is a huge departure and I think the times demanded it, but you know, to your earlier point, it creates a community of care without us even thinking we’re setting out to do that. You know actually, Meshell and I were at Sundance in 2020 and Meshell said, you know, “We gotta work together.” And we were thinking, “What are we gonna do?” And we started working on this project even before Jackie came on. And then Jackie, just like literally one day, I was telling her about it and she’s like, “And?” And, you know, this is a group that needs to work on these ideas together and produce together. And honestly, she and I have been making things, you know, for 40 years. And it’s often had that feeling of like, you know, Jackie would say to me, just make collages and I’ll put words on it and we can publish it. And I was like, “What should the collages be about?” And she’d say, “It doesn’t matter because I’ll do it.” And you know, I would never pass up a chance to spend any time with Jackie or to make art with her. And I think also, you know, people would have asked me, like, “Did you choose the artists? Are there any artists who said no?” And I thought, “That’s totally not how we went around it.” And the artists, when you say, oh, Elizabeth or any artists, so it’s always the people who are our community, and that’s who came together during COVID. This is the people that I was spending time with that I looked to. They’re almost all of them people that I was in relationship with even before that. But it goes to the point of what we’re telling our kids and ourselves right now, which is we’ve gotta be in person. Like I’m glad there’s ways to reach people and communicate outside of in-person connection but there is nothing these days like getting together. And that’s what happens in the film.

LAURA FLANDERS: Check out the trailer. This is “Meanwhile” just out from Aubin Pictures.

• When you know somebody’s race, what do you know? Virtually nothing. Who gets to be American? What counts as American? And country that is sort of slipping, and burning and volatile. (James Baldwin) I’m not sure I want to be integrated into a burning house. (Jacqueline) Even in the fire, we can’t extricate ourselves. We’re all connected in the meanwhile. (Artist) I wasn’t given the language to understand the society that I’m living in. (Muhammad Ali) The angel fruit cake was the white cake, and the devil fruit cake was the chocolate cake. This is when I knew something was wrong. (Jacqueline) This is not a love letter to this country, but to us inside this country, we see us, we love us, we make eye contact and nod to us. (Doc Rivers) We keep loving this country and this country does not love us back.(Ivy Young) Just try not to panic. Breathe through the panic. (Jacqueline) Hit him again and again and again. (James Baldwin) I don’t believe in White people. I don’t believe in Black people either for that matter. (Speaker C) We belong together because they are the we of me. Freedom to me is not having to worry. That’s me. (Nina Simone) What does freedom mean? No fear, I mean, really no fear. Not something else. (Catherine) I can see both of us. (Jacqueline) And we keep on keeping on in all the ways and always in the meanwhile.

LAURA FLANDERS: That was a trailer from the film we’re talking about, “Meanwhile,” and you can kind of see why it’s hard to describe. Jacqueline, coming to you, at the very beginning, there’s this wonderful screen of the definition of the word meanwhile, which was perfect for me. It pointed out that meanwhile, the adverb, can be understood both in the sequential sense, in the intervening period of time, and in the simultaneous sense, at the same time.

JACQUELINE WOODSON: The choice of course, of putting that word on the screen was Catherine’s, and you know, for me, the whole film is about that. It’s about the conversations we have in the meanwhile, right? It’s about all the stuff that continues to keep on keeping on while the world is doing what it’s doing. And I think the brilliant thing that Cat brings to this is the fact that it’s not what we see on the screen all the time, right? We see these key very intentional moments and we are saying, “Look, all this stuff is happening and it’s gonna keep on happening. In the same way, you know, when our kids are afraid of the world ending, we talk about, yeah, with every ending comes a beginning, right? That all of this is part of a continuum. And so that meanwhile speaks to that continuum.

LAURA FLANDERS: Meanwhile is both finite and infinite. Do I have that right?

CATHERINE GUND: I think that’s right. I mean, the double meaning meant a lot to us. That it’s synchronous time, but it’s also sequential time. So we can say meanwhile, while we’re talking, other people are doing certain things, but meanwhile the world will change or, you know, somebody will make something that will happen after. And I love how Jackie was just describing it because to me, it’s like also not saying we’re ever gonna necessarily get away from chaos. You know, this is not going to end. Maybe it will someday. But it hasn’t and I think there’s enough dynamic and enough history for us to know that the chaos is real. And I love what Natalie Diaz says in the film of, I’ve kept trying to stay still in the chaos. And then I realized that our natural state is not one of relief. And I think what Jackie and I are doing in the film and in the continuing conversations is saying, we are living in this space, in this kind of a simultaneous, it’s not all joy, it’s not all violence, but this is what we’ve got to work with. And if we can reclaim that, embrace that, make it our own, use that as a strategy with other people, then we can continue on.

LAURA FLANDERS: I mentioned at the top that I think in your materials you say it was inspired during the pandemic, and the response to the murder of George Floyd. Does it resonate differently with audiences today or with you today, do you think, Catherine?

CATHERINE GUND: You know, the responses have been remarkable. It’s a different kind of film. It’s hard to necessarily get people to go. Although I think the trailer, I agree with you. People ask me what it’s about and I’ll go, blah, blah. If I show them the trailer, they’re like, “I get it.” You know, it’s like a different kind of film. But once, if people go, people have been saying, you know, especially the younger people, that it’s hard to reckon with COVID. It’s the last thing they want to think about. Any of us. You know, there’re not novels yet coming out that are all about COVID and things like that. But this allows people, I think, to embrace those experiences with some security and protection within a space of safety, within a space of community. I remember one of our interns watched the rough cut and was crying after and said, “I just didn’t want it to end because I didn’t want to be alone again.”

LAURA FLANDERS: The pacing is just gorgeous. It lets you just be for long periods in your own thinking and feeling. But as you say, kind of in accompaniment with others. Is there anything you’d add to that sort of meditation on this moment versus that one, Jacqueline?

JACQUELINE WOODSON: I think that it’s really important to be inside that stillness that is meanwhile you know, and it’s so funny because when Cat and I were working on it, I kept wanting it to be shorter. I’m like, “We don’t need that. We don’t need that.” and you know, Cat will push back on some parts, some parts she’d change, but what I found myself doing is writing toward the length, right? Because once you start watching it’s hard not to be in the rhythm of the visual storytelling. And with the visual storytelling comes my poem, right? It’s this way of like, well, this is still going on. And I think there were points where before the poetry and the music came together with the visuals, I was bored. And I know it was because it wasn’t complete yet, right? It needs the poem, it needs the music, it needs the visuals in the same way that our daily existence needs all of these different forms of art to feel complete. So I mean, who doesn’t listen to some kind of music every day? Who is not speaking every day, who’s not looking at visual images every day, and making narratives in their mind? And it’s so funny because Cat, when you talk about people asking you what it’s about, whenever that happens with me and books, I never know, right? But I do know what it’s trying to say, right? And I think in the case of “Meanwhile” here is a film that’s trying to say it’s okay to be still and engage in this and have your feelings inside of this. I remember writing a poem decades ago about, you know, in this world, in this age, maybe you’ll have an hour to grieve. And this idea that in our country, it’s like, okay, you’ve gotten through it’s over, move on. And it’s like, no, let’s sit in this and let’s have the catharsis that comes with, you know, going through the wall as opposed to like stopping at the wall or trying to climb over it. Like, let’s be in the moments that make us feel and let that be the journey and the catharsis.

LAURA FLANDERS: You got me thinking about grief and then as I was thinking about grief, I thought about the wonderful friend poet Ivy Young, who we lost recently and who you feature in the film. And I wonder which of you would love to introduce Ivy to this audience?

CATHERINE GUND: I’m working actually on a short piece about her now that comes out of some of what happens in “Meanwhile.” But you know, for Jackie and I and everyone in the film, we’ve always been talking about all of these issues. So it wasn’t COVID happened and then we thought, “Oh my god, white supremacy, resistance, art.” It was always a part of it and COVID drove it home, and the murder of George Floyd, he was asphyxiated, his breath was taken. COVID was, as Jackie talks about in the poem so beautifully, was this shared air. And then there was my dear friend of 50 years who was dying, honestly, of lung cancer and couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t breathe, had to have the oxygen all the time. But, you know, said, “I can’t write, I can’t do anything because all I can do all day is focus on being able to breathe.” And that’s what kind of gave us the structure of the breath. And so in essence, for me, I feel like, you know, the film isn’t about a single person. It doesn’t have a narrative. But to me the film is really about Ivy. And one thing I would say about Ivy too in this clip that you’re gonna show is that people talk about the artists and the other people in the film, and we think of them all as artists, because everybody has an imagination. That’s what artistry organizing, you know, envisioning is about. Something you don’t see. Something that doesn’t exist. And we all do that. So Ivy is maybe unpublished, but she was a poet. She was a photographer, she kept a journal. She, you know, was a producer.

JACQUELINE WOODSON: Musicologist.

CATHERINE GUND: I mean, and the [Sweet Honey in The] Rock, like she was-

LAURA FLANDERS: I remember her as a journalist. We knew each other on radio.

CATHERINE GUND: Of course she was. And journalist was sort of her main identity if you had asked her. And I think the baker is an artist. The gardener is an artist. The one painting the fingernails is an artist. So to us, everyone’s an artist. And this was a moment to share a poem that I think is extraordinary. And the last couple of lines to us resonate with the meaning of “Meanwhile” and the meaning of the film if you listen closely to the last couple lines.

LAURA FLANDERS: Here’s Ivy Young.

IVY YOUNG: This was my first published work. My first published poem. Some things do not lend themselves to poetry, certain acts of God, certain ungodly acts. If I write no poem about the clan, it is because ignorance does not lend itself to rhyme, neither alliteration. White cloth hiding white face is putrefied petrifying fear and not poetic at all. Can I write a poem about Atlanta, Greensboro, Barry’s literary device, Buffalo refuses to be sonnet-ized, even free verse cannot contain Miami.

LAURA FLANDERS: That was Ivy Young in the film “Meanwhile” which we’re talking about with its makers, Catherine Gund and Jacqueline Woodson. Jacqueline, coming back to you, and maybe I’m staying with this grief question for a moment. What’s helping you? What’s helping you continue to do your work, continue to look forward as you do?

JACQUELINE WOODSON: Always there’s the balm of writing. I’m working on a novel now that takes place in the ’80s, which feels like an easier time, which is ridiculous because it’s going through, you know, the Bush administration, HIV and all of that. And all of that feels like a long time ago, right? But I think for us, coming from one devastation, to another devastation, to another devastation, and the kind of trauma, the remembered trauma of the devastations is something that, for me, writing it down and remembering it and knowing that I got through that helps a lot. Also, you know, dinner with friends, as cli·chéd as it sounds, it’s just that idea of gathering off of social media, off of, you know, off of places where we feel like we’re speaking into the void, right? Like just getting together with people. Laughter. I feel like there’s a lot more laughter. Like we find things to laugh about. Cat and I have been sharing pictures of ourselves from decades ago and, you know, just remembering how happy we were in that time, and that we still exist together, right? Like the fact that even through all of this, we remain intact. We are different and we’re living and we’re breathing and we are creating art, and we’re like growing families, and finding lots of stuff to find joy in. So just being very aware of what we’re grateful for, what I’m grateful for keeps me going and still being able to write all these years later.

LAURA FLANDERS: You call it a balm. It’s one of the hardest things I know to do.

JACQUELINE WOODSON: What, writing? I always say I don’t like writing, I like having written.

LAURA FLANDERS: There you go. There’s the difference. Catherine, to you, I have to say, we’re neighbors kind of. We bump into each other in the street and I remember saying to you once, “Don’t ever move and don’t ever die.” And I still mean it because it means so much to me to be in this contact over time as Jacqueline said. What else is helping you right now?

CATHERINE GUND: I think it’s interesting that the three of us do share this time of the ’80s. All of us do. and obviously on after that, the nineties and everything else. But I think, you know, having lost people so early and in such quick succession and under such an awful oppressive situation, you know, societal neglect and, you know, humiliation, and lack of attention. You know, to the AIDS crisis, we lost Vito Russo. We lost Ray Navarro. We lost Donald Woods. We lost Robert Garcia, my roommate. You know, they were all artists also, but I think each one of those hits so hard. We wrote and we made movies and we had these elaborate memorials and we did things to process that and to grieve. And I feel like I am really holding onto that approach to death and dying as we get older because I don’t want to ever not care. I never want somebody to die and made to be like, “Oh yeah, that’s sad.” You know, someone who I love and I’ve had three people die in the last, like six weeks. Gai Gherardi who I was talking about today and then other, you know, friends from other parts of my life. And it’s really hard to let myself have the sadness and the grief but if I do, I’m always reminded that it’s a gift to have that. Because if I have that, it means I loved and was loved by.

LAURA FLANDERS: Well, I can’t let you mention Gai Gherardi of L.A. Eyeworks without mentioning that I wear her art on my face every day on this show and thank her and everyone at L.A. Eyeworks. So yeah, I lift it up to Gai Gherardi. And then coming back to you, Jacqueline, you’ve created something gorgeous upstate, a place where people can gather and do everything that you just mentioned. So talk a little bit about the Baldwin Center for the Arts.

JACQUELINE WOODSON: So Baldwin for the Arts was created in 2018. This year is our fifth year and celebrating our 100th fellow. And it’s a space for artists of the global majority, including composers, writers, visual artists, interdisciplinary artists. And in that five years, we also created the Elders Project, which was a project in which we brought together 10 writers from all over the country, including Natalie Diaz and you know, J Wortham, and Denice Frohman, and so many people to go out into the country and gather histories of people who might otherwise be forgotten, including queer people, people who are the descendants of the survivors of the Tulsa race massacre, people from the Black towns in New Mexico. Those towns are no longer in existence because of White supremacy and genocide. When we were working on the Elders Project, there was one thing that we discussed a lot, was gathering the ephemera of the people whose oral histories we were telling, and how do you do that without being extractive, right? Because this is their stuff. and so we ended up taking photographs of lots of stuff, and of course they get to keep it, and also paying them for their stories because it was many, many hours of interviewing. But I do think that it’s so important, especially now in this era of attempted erasure of our histories to know that this was true.

LAURA FLANDERS: It’s so interesting what your film has done, the two of you, because look at the conversation that’s engendered, even just here. How many places we’ve gone, how many names we’ve invoked? And that word ephemera, exactly what I was searching for. It does spark one’s thinking in a way that a typical linear doc wouldn’t, and I thank you so much for it. And Meshell Ndegeocello, whose musical score definitely contributes to the mood and drives the film. Thank you so much, Jacqueline Woodson and Catherine Gund. The film “Meanwhile” is available from Aubin Pictures. It’s in screenings and festivals right now.

There are conventions in mainstream storytelling that the film “Meanwhile” just blows to shreds. One of them is the idea that you have a start point, an end point, and a middle, that you have a single hero and a good guy and a bad one, and they’re always guys. What I loved about “Meanwhile” is that play on the word itself. Meanwhile, as both a sequential thing and a simultaneous one. The stuff that happens while we wait to pause from moment to moment. And often what happens is we make friends and we connect. I look back to that 1980s crisis of AIDS and remember how desperately we wanted an end to come. We wanted an end to the dying, an end to the ignorance and oblivion. And we wanted change and we wanted our lives to take new courses without realizing that that was already happening, that we were already changing, and we were already in connection with community in ways that, well, for many of us has lasted every one of our days. Meanwhile. What’s happening in your meanwhile? You can always get in touch with us through writing to us. I’m Laura at lauraflanders.org and you can find my full uncut versions of every conversation, including this one, which has about half of it left to go, through a subscription to our free podcast. All the information is at our website. Till the next time, stay kind, stay curious. For “Laura Flanders & Friends,” I’m Laura. Thanks for joining us today.

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