The Creative Process · Arts, Culture & Society: Books, Film, Music, TV, Art, Writing, Creativity, Education, Environment, Theatre, Dance, LGBTQ, Climate Change, Social Justice, Spirituality, Feminism, Tech, Sustainability

“As a psychotherapist, I've worked with thousands of people over my 53 years of practice, and I have had to learn to love each and every one of them. There is something about opening your heart and stopping judging and arguing, and listening again, inquiring until you find what is most lovable about another person, and that is a very difficult thing to do. We're all inclined to reject one another, even the people we love. It is very difficult to systematically seek to accord the other respect, your attention, your care, your capacity for appreciating and valuing what is good in them and what is possible for them in the future.”
Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, a therapist and a pioneer who has spent five decades mapping the architecture of human existence. Born in the Netherlands and trained in the radical psychiatric wards of France, she came to London in 1977 to work alongside R.D. Laing, only to realize the anti-psychiatry movement had kind of lost its way. She decided to build something new. Today, she's the founder of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the leading voice of existential therapy in the United Kingdom and founded the Existential Movement.
Her work challenges the medical model of mental illness, suggesting instead that our crises are not diseases to be cured but philosophical crossroads to be understood. Her latest book is a distillation of that life's work. Beginning To Live: The Art of Existential Freedom is her first book written for a general audience, offering a guide on how to reclaim our freedom and find meaning in the face of suffering. Emmy van Deurzen, welcome to The Creative Process.
(0:00) The Art of Psychotherapy
(1:39) AI and Artificial Wisdom
(5:40) Practicing Freedom
(8:06) Finding Inner Peace Amidst the Ruins
(16:19) The Yellow Balloon
(22:36) Freedom and the Confrontation with Death
(25:31) Multilingual Roots, Language and Translation
(32:03) The End of One Love, The Beginning of a Love of the Arts
(37:20) The Art of Loving
(45:17) The Canvas of Life
(48:24) The Purified Essence
(1:01:10) The AI Dependency and the Future of Loving
(1:10:22) Radical Psychiatry, R.D. Laing, and The Divided Self
(1:17:52) Awakening to Beauty
(1:24:38) The Art of Living and Existential Freedom
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, a therapist and a pioneer who has spent five decades mapping the architecture of human existence. Born in the Netherlands and trained in the radical psychiatric wards of France, she came to London in 1977 to work alongside R.D. Laing, only to realize the anti-psychiatry movement had kind of lost its way. She decided to build something new. Today, she's the founder of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the leading voice of existential therapy in the United Kingdom and founded the Existential Movement.
Her work challenges the medical model of mental illness, suggesting instead that our crises are not diseases to be cured but philosophical crossroads to be understood. Her latest book is a distillation of that life's work. Beginning To Live: The Art of Existential Freedom is her first book written for a general audience, offering a guide on how to reclaim our freedom and find meaning in the face of suffering. Emmy van Deurzen, welcome to The Creative Process.
(0:00) The Paths to Freedom
(2:03) Emmy Van Deurzen, Philosopher, Existential Therapist, Author
(3:13) AI and Artificial Wisdom
(5:03) Practicing Freedom
(7:00) Finding Inner Peace Amidst the Ruins
(8:39) The Yellow Balloon
(11:17) Multilingual Roots, Language and Translation
(13:31) The End of One Love, The Beginning of a Love of the Arts
(16:11) The Art of Loving
(17:30) The Canvas of Life
(20:20) The Purified Essence
(27:46) The AI Dependency
(30:09) Radical Psychiatry, R.D. Laing and The Divided Self
(33:48) Awakening to Beauty
(37:18) The Art of Living and Existential Freedom
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

Chiara Barzini has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.
In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?
(0:00) Water as Power
(2:17) The Necessity of Illusions
(4:24) Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water
(7:51) The Edge of Apocalypse & Writing
(9:10) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying
(13:13) Translation and the Creative Spark
(14:38) Raising Children in a Crazy World
(16:18) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land
(18:48) Scents and Sounds of Two Cities (Rome and Los Angeles)
(20:43) The Connection with Animals and Nature
(22:54) The Evolution of Love and Compassion
(24:12) The Memory Museum
(27:04) We are in this lifetime together
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Well, I think first of all that in order to have disillusion, you need to have illusion and I really want to sort of take a stand in the name of being a delusional person, you know? I do think illusions are necessary to our sense of creativity, and we need to fall in love with extreme projects, and we need to have ideas that are sometimes unsustainable. We need to dream big in order to be creative and feel alive. The illusions that are a part of Aqua are larger illusions. They're illusions that have to do with my adult life. They're connected to nature and the presence or absence of water, the illusion that we can keep sustaining a city even though the water has run out.”
My guest today, Chiara Barzini, has spent her life navigating the literal and cultural fault lines between Italy and California. Today we will discuss her book, Aqua: A Story of Water and Lost Dreams, and her life as an artist living between two countries. In her acclaimed 2017 novel, Things That Happened Before the Earthquake, she wrote about arriving in the San Fernando Valley just weeks after a catastrophic natural disaster and the illusions of the '90s.
In Aqua, she examines nature, the California water crisis and the broken dreams of the Hollywood machine. We talk about family, film, art as an act of faith and our collective ecological coming of age, where the end of empire meets the end of abundance, and the consequences of hypercapitalism and colonialism. What does it mean to stare our illusions in the eye and find the courage to imagine a better future?
(0:00) The Necessity of Illusions
(1:40) Chiara Barzini, Author, Screenwriter
(4:44) The End of Empire and Ecological Anxiety
(12:15) The Allure and Cruelty of Capitalism
(16:07)   Aqua: A Reading - On Hollywood and Water
(21:02) Screenwriter Robert Towne and the Legacy of Chinatown
(26:20) AI Consumption and Water Bankruptcy
(30:23) The Edge of Apocalypse and Bombay Beach
(33:41) The Etruscans and the Art of Dying
(42:33) Translation and Creativity
(44:28) Raising Children in a Crazy World
(47:30) Poetry, Ruins, and The Waste Land
(57:33) Scents and Sounds of Rome and Los Angeles
(01:04:17) The Connection with Animals and Nature
(01:07:35) The Evolution of Love and Compassion
(01:09:17) The Memory Museum
(01:13:00) We Are in This Lifetime Together
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“I think that Jews have become extremely solipsistic in a way that is embarrassing. It's very much contrary to the way I was brought up, which was not to talk about yourself, which was to talk about other people and to serve other people. That was part of the heritage that I received from the Holocaust and from my family's background as refugees was, “You're not a refugee. You've got it pretty good. You live in America.” We were very much exhorted against that and exhorted to serve other people and to try to do something good in the world. And so I hope this will be one tiny little part of something that will make a change for the Palestinians.”
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Benjamin Moser about his new book, Anti-Zionism: A Jewish History. A book of immense historical and geographic reach, Anti-Zionism conveys its arguments through the lives of twelve Jewish anti-Zionists. From the 19th century Polish-Jewish rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares to the contemporary photographer and activist Nan Goldin, we learn how Jews have fought against the reduction of the traditional, expansive notion of Jewishness open to and in service to the world, to a form of narrow ethno-nationalism, closed off to all how do not subscribe to its genocidal settler colonial logic. We learn how many of these figures foretold precisely the perpetual cycles of violence Zionism has unleashed. One of the reasons Moser wrote this book is contained in this statement. I offer it as a contribution to the movement by so many noble people who are working to construct an alternative vision of Jewish life, one that is free from racism, nationalism, and militarism. It is an attempt to say, especially to younger people, that we are not the first, and that we do not need to start afresh.
(0:00) The Jewish Heritage of Service vs. Solipsism (8:10) Theodor Herzl's Zionist Writings (16:29) The Sensitive Rabbi: Aaron Samuel Tamares (22:16) The Tragic Fate of Jacob Israël de Haan (27:53) Hannah Arendt and the Backlash to Eichmann (41:25) A Spiritual Catastrophe for Judaism
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