David Courtright is a writer, poet and musician based in Los Angeles. Ultra-compassionate, generous, elegant, astute, and charming are a few words that would describe him. I've been an admirer since I started going to the artist's way two way prayer call he created and stewards over three years ago. Some call it spiritual hospitality, some call it creative rigor, some call it spreading serenity. He's got it, he does it. Fangirl is a gender neutral term and I am one.
This interview was conducted on August 1st and has been lightly edited for clarity.
K Hello, David.
D Hello.
K So, how would you like to be known to the people of It's Because It's On? Who are you?
D I am David, son of Paul and Peggy. I was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. As a child, I lived in India, and as a young adult, I lived in Thailand and India again, and I currently live in LA. I'm a musician and a writer and a poet, and was married last fall to a lovely Sicilian boy named Paolo, and we have our final green card interview on Wednesday, so please pray for us.
K Blessings. Blessings. So I read this book called The Lost Children Archive by Valeria Luiselli, and she taught me that enthusiasm has Greek roots.
D With God, right?
K Yeah, well, in God earthquake, in theo seismo.
D That's amazing.
K Yeah. I felt gobsmacked by it. Greek priestesses would allow themselves to be possessed by gods and goddesses, and be trembling. So, yeah, curious if you experience that kind of possession in your creative work, or in your life? or how you connect to what you understand God to be? or the relationship between creativity and God for you, or, yeah, what that etymology sparks? Or in your creative work, what is "your something greater"? Or do you feel like it's a kind of possession, or like, something moving through you?
D 100%.100%. Yeah, it really is the spirit moving through you, I believe. And being a vessel and getting out of the way is the quest. Getting out of your own way is the ultimate, the ultimate odyssey of the artist. I feel that way. And I feel that it's tied to purpose as well. I feel when you're aligned with your purpose, then you feel enthusiasm, because you're with God's plan for you. But when I when I create, I do feel that I'm observing in a way. When I'm writing, I'm sort of in the scene writing down what I see, or what is being told to me. It's like two way prayer. It's like listening to God. For me, with writing, it's the exact same principle and muscle of just listening to what you hear, and, you know playing what you hear, painting what you see.
K How does that process differ? Or does it differ for musical work and written work?
D Music is a little different. I mean, sometimes I'll hear a melody and then go try and figure it out. But a lot of the time, I'm just improvising and something takes shape. And then I'll hear words in my head, I'll hear a melody. The hardest part is translating it from your head into the world before it goes away. Because it creative ideas have a very short shelf life. They're like dreams. If you hear a song, if I don't put it into a voice note, or write something down, it's like a cloud.
K Do you remember your dreams?
D Sometimes. I remember them, if I wrote them down right after, or talked about them right after. But generally, no, I don't. Sometimes I have significant ones that are very impactful. So yeah, I do sometimes. When I dream about my dad, I definitely remember those ones. But that's not super frequent. But I think dreams are really interesting. And there's a podcast I'll send you that I just listened to. It's an interview with Oprah and this end of life dream expert, like doctor. And he talks about how people have these dreams when they're in the last few days of life, and are visited by relatives and ancestors. It was really interesting because the last 10 days of my dad's life, he went into this other plane. He sort of died, but didn't. Some of his spirit, I think, passed, like crossed over, but he was still alive and he kept asking "what am I still doing here? Why am I still alive? Get me out of here. I'm over it." laughs Um, yeah, he said some funny shit. He said, What is my ontological status in the cosmos?
K *laughs* Right
D Which is a question only a religion professor could ask in between life and death.
K I didn't know he was a religion professor.
D Yeah.
K Speaks volumes.
D He was the chair of the religion department at Emory.
K Wow, cool.Smarty pants.
D Smarty pants.
K Okay, question number three is the title. It's from this essay by this poet I love. Can I just read it? It's a quote.
D Read it all.
K And then I'm gonna ask you what you think about it. And also, the quote from the enthusiasm thing is, "she explained that enthusiasm was a kind of inner earthquake produced by allowing oneself to be possessed by something larger, more powerful, like a god or goddess," which I feel like is how you're talking about creative spirit. Okay, so June Jordan, in the introduction to her book, Civil Wars, writes,
"My life seems to be an increasing revelation of the intimate face of universal struggle. You begin with your family and the kids on the block and next you open your eyes to what you call your people and that leads you into land reform into black English into Angola leads you back to your own bed, where you lie by yourself wondering if you deserve to be peaceful or trusted or desired or left to the freedom of your own unfaltering heart. And the scale shrinks to the size of a skull, your own interior cage. And then if you're lucky, and I have been lucky, everything comes back to you. And then you know why one of the freedom fighters in the 60s, a young black woman interviewed shortly after she was beaten up for riding near the front of an interstate bus. You know why she said we are all so very happy. It's because it's on all of us and me by myself we're on."
So I really love this quote. And the question I'm thinking of right now is what is the relationship between your creative work and freedom at the scale of your life or in general?
D Wow. A beautiful question. They are inextricable. They're intertwined. They're the, yeah, the wheel of life. Making things is freedom for me. The way that it feels, and especially when what I make affects someone else in a way that it was meant to, I guess. I believe being an artist, you become immortal, because even if you write one poem in your life, and it never gets published, and no one ever sees it, it still survives you. When you die, that poem will still be, unless the house burns down or something. We leave these things behind that were given through us by God. And in that way, we get to take feeling and put it into an object that lives outside of us. That's completely subjective to everyone else that experiences it. But it also can be an expression of a feeling that feels very personal, but that when other people relate to it so deeply as well, it's an incredibly connective force. And I think liberation is all of us being free to be whoever we want and make whatever we want and be celebrated for it, that is a free society to me. And so I think that freedom depends on, is built on creative work and practice. And even if that creativity is making better government. I see the way that your mayor is mayoring. It's just, I'm so sad that he could never be president, because you can actually have a lot of fun with anything and make everyone happy. It's not that hard to actually care about people and make it cool. I hope that caring about people becomes cool again, because it's not very cool right now. But I just love, you know, I love how good at the fun part [Zohran is], he's just very once in a generation politician. Hopefully those ideals of democratic socialism, (whispers crazy) [can grow], let's give everyone what they need.
K Right.
D Anyway, so yeah, for me, a lot of times when I'm starting to feel depressed, and I survey the past few days: have I done these creative things that I want to do every day, and also have sort of made a covenant with God to do every day. And I usually realize that the reason that I'm so grumpy is because I haven't been in that space. You know it's a human need to create. I mean, we are at, at the very elemental, we create other usses, we create other human beings by doing sex, which is amazing. [Creativity] puts you in a relationship with God, that's very intimate. And, and that intimacy has been so supported by our meeting. And the practice of writing has really made a massive impact on my own ability to write without critiquing the whole to death, out of existence. And artist way, where she's like don't worry about the quality, worry about the quantity, and let God worry about the quality, etc. These things are helpful.
K I loved how you phrased being in a covenant of regular or daily creative practice. How did this covenant become apparent to you? Or how did you decide to step into that?
D Well, I got laid off from my job in May. And because I have bipolar disorder, I'm legally disabled in California. And because I worked for over a year at a full time W2 job, I'm eligible for short term disability, which basically gives me the same income for not working. So I have that right now. And this is the second time I've gotten it. I had it a few years ago, it was amazing. I had a full year where I just wrote my book and hung out with my dad in the last year of his life. It was such a blessing. But I made an agreement with God of God saying, Okay, here's a salary, you are my employee now. I work for God. And your job is to write your book and make your music and do your meeting and do these things that you do. And just take some time and do them and rest. So it helps me to show up for it when I say I'm actually on salary with the big man (K laughs) or the big woman or the big they them. The big non binary, literally God with no gender. One time I called God in a poem genderless operator of desire, or destiny. It was destiny.
K G-o-d, baby!
D Yeah, the covenant is that right now. But also in normal life, I was still trying to do writing and music every day. But it helps me to be like, Okay, this is a grant, you know, this is an at home residency. So make the best of it. Well, it's short term. So the covenant is showing up to work because it is my job, because the universe is giving me resources to wake up and do this right now. And build other things that can hopefully become lucrative enterprises. Maybe I'll make more than $17 next time at my little markets. But honestly, it was so fun. The first time I did it, it was really miserable. And I never wanted to set up and vend again. And even though this one was hilarious, and very random, everyone there was so sweet. And it was such a cute vibe. And then we went to the movies, it was just a fun day. So at the end of the day, I never started all this marbling stuff to like make millions at it. It's more everything is one of a kind anyway, which is the point.
K And can you tell the people about the marbling?
D The marbling is like, here's an example.
K Okay, cute.
D So marbling is an art practice that originates in Japan in the 12th century. And then it spread to Turkey in the 1500s, where it's called Ebru and you take carrageenan, which is a seaweed powder and mix it with water. And you put it in a tray. And then you flick paint on top of it. And then you drag different like things through it. And then you put the paper down on top of that. And then it makes this.
K So beautiful.
D And I like to do it on other things such as clothes and ceramics like and lampshades.
K Love it. So yes, you mentioned this. We love her. The lamp. This is one thing you feel enthusiastic about right now? Anything else you feel enthusiastic about right now? And or have you had any recent experiences of wonder slash awe slash rapture?
D Hmm. Wonder slash awe slash rapture. Yes. I just went camping in the sequoias. And I had many moments of awe and wonder there. The first night we drove five and a half hours straight, not stopping. And we got there and set everything up right before sunset. And it was so hot. I mean, we drove through the Central Valley. So it was like 100 degrees the whole drive. And then getting there, and setting up everything, the sun's going down. And just watching the clouds move across the trees and shift in color from you know, twilight to pink to like dark and then the stars come out and Venus. And I swam naked in the King River and saw this big waterfall named roaring river falls. And yeah, yeah. I love the nature. It's so inspiring. And I've always wanted to camp more. Finally I have my gear situation almost complete. But I bought a really nice air mattress and and I bought an inverter for my car to plug it in. However, the inverter wattage voltage, whatever the fuck wasn't high enough. So usually when you plug it in in the house and turn it on it sounds like a Boeing 747. And we plug the long ass extension cord from the bed inside the tent back into the car turn the car on and turn on the pump and it was (sad weak noise) and it inflated it but it wasn't powerful enough to inflate it past very jelly phase. Hmm. And we just kind of slept on, Did you ever go to summer camp where they had the blob, you know, or like one person jumps on and it like a person gets blobbed off.
K Heard of it.
D It was kind of like that.
K Cute.
D But it was very, very sweet and silly and fun. And I love it. And I also love my shower and my bed.
K Right. Well, thank you. Do you want to say anything else about how creativity slash power slash love - I love slashes - are moving through you right now?
D How creativity slash power slash love are moving through me right now.
K Yeah. And slash or anything you want to plug.
D Hmm. It's a good question. I don't know. I feel that I feel that creativity, having a consistent practice keeps me on earth. It keeps me on the right path, the path of right purpose and self love and care. And it also challenges you because you have to be vulnerable. And even yesterday when we were rolling up to the market, we pulled up and I just sort of had this panic and this crazy urge to just like slam on the gas and keep going and just not do it at all. But we pulled up in the fire lane and I put my hazards on. I was like, I don't know if I can do it. But it was so chill and fun. And I'm so glad we did it. And it didn't feel like a chore. And it was justnfor the bit. And that's all that mattered. And that's kind of yeah. Expectations are everything. Expectations are everything and turning your art into a job. Be very careful.
K Right.
D Be very, very careful.
K Amen.
D Because the job will kill the art very fast.
K Yeah. As we know.
D As we know.
K Cool. Well, that's all my questions.