Unknown Speaker 0:00
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Unknown Speaker 0:19
Hey, this is Rubin with the City of Stars podcast. Here I'm interviewing up and coming artists in the Las Vegas music scene. Let's get into today's episode.

Unknown Speaker 0:31
Yeah, so now I'm a poet, rather than someone who's just journals. Yeah. So

Unknown Speaker 0:36
how was that transition for you? You out from like, just private writing journals. And now you're like, sharing people hoping might? Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 0:47
It was interesting. Like, I never thought anyone would care about like that stuff. By I have a background in journalism. That's what I have a bachelor's, then I'm on hiatus from it. Because I burnt myself out way too hard. Um, yeah, I just, I just, it's gonna be a minute before I can go back and enjoy that field. I think just working. It was just college. Yeah, trench, running through college to graduate on time, so that I can start making money and survive. Because a bunch of personal finances started collapsing at the same time. And then also trying to work jobs alongside that just ended up breaking my love for journalistic tendencies. I guess. So

Unknown Speaker 1:36
would you get back into journalism?

Unknown Speaker 1:39
I think so. I think I definitely will maybe like, as soon as the end of this year? I don't know. It's something I definitely care about. It's something that I think is a real value to people. And can have a huge positive impact. Accidentally, I've found that I might be able to make similar impacts with like, my, my poetry, yes, well,

Unknown Speaker 2:05
though, you beat me to the punch or house poachy, then

Unknown Speaker 2:10
I think it actually ties ties in with what I learned doing journalism, and in a few ways, like, a lot of the techniques I learned to create creative and engaging journalistic pieces have kind of wormed their way into the way I've been writing privately for myself. Um, and I think when I brought that to an open mic, it accidentally turned out to be really good. Wow.

Unknown Speaker 2:40
All kinds of things are like worming out into your poetry.

Unknown Speaker 2:45
Journal, I think there's this pattern in my journalistic writing, where I would like jump from a story to B story, where a story is a little bit more personal. And then B stories a little bit about the wider concept. So like, if you were doing a story on climate change, you might talk about, like a family affected by some weather event as an a story. And then, like the overall climate and what's going on, but in the region or the country as a beat story. So I kind of do with poetry, we're like the a story is a specific event. And then the B story is usually how it relates to my overall like psyche or my experiences in the world. Oh, what

Unknown Speaker 3:34
are you writing? What kind of themes and stuff i

Unknown Speaker 3:39
i don't I'm not really like an academic poets, not something I really know a lot about. I know, I tend to write more prose. And then like, I tend to write like prose type poetry, or maybe sometimes even free verse, rather than I don't even know what to call it. That's, I'm like, like an outlaw, or something. I have no idea what I'm doing. But I want I want to make like engaging things. I consider myself like, I'm working class revolutionary in a lot of ways. And that feels like a dorky fucking thing to say, but I mean, like, I want to change the world. And what

Unknown Speaker 4:23
does it mean for you being a working class?

Unknown Speaker 4:28
Like, like, I have to wake up and work for the employee in class, basically. Okay, that's, that's like the divide between working class and employee. And that does those in my mind is like, that, in my mind is the biggest socio economic divide is whether you're part of the employing class, or whether you're part of the working class.

Unknown Speaker 4:54
What separates the two for you? So the

Unknown Speaker 4:58
employing class would be like a B business owner or somebody who uses and exploits the labor of workers. Okay, so like if you work for somebody who owns a Starbucks, the Starbucks owner is like the employee in class, everyone he hires to profit from that venture is the working class. But we might be getting too far into something other than art. Well, no,

Unknown Speaker 5:28
because art reflects your beliefs, you know? Yeah. And

Unknown Speaker 5:34
I feel like I'm, I want that to be central in a lot of my work, not just like class struggle and economic revolution, but um, social issues as well. Like, like, I mean, I'm a trans feminine Persian. My dad only came into this country because of a revolution in Iran that was caused by the CIA. It's a whole long, whole long thing, but like politics is kind of baked into my existence in a lot of ways, because everything about my existence has been politicized, so

Unknown Speaker 6:19
So is like,

Unknown Speaker 6:21
would you say maybe your poetry says kind of like, hope you understand? Yeah, it

Unknown Speaker 6:26
definitely it definitely. Um, I feel like when I was writing privately, what I was writing was mostly to help me understand myself and the ways I'd be interacting with the world. Oh, okay. I think one of the first pieces I read in into a microphone was um, when I started writing this I was pulling splinters out of my hand. And it's, it starts off just me asking, why don't I wear gloves? Like why do I forget to protect myself when I'm working in manual labor, but I relate it to other ways that I refuse to avoid pain and harm and what pain overall means for existence and how it informs us and why it matters to be able to hurt and I really just wrote that to understand like that tendency in myself and encourage myself towards it more. So yeah, so very self discovery. Selfish.

Unknown Speaker 7:42
Now you're sharing you with your people saying about

Unknown Speaker 7:51
I try to think too much because people tend not to say everything they feel and mean. So because I just see like the tip of the iceberg sometimes I end up overthinking. Oh, what did they mean by this and this and this. But generally they, they they like its rawness. I like to I like to say visceral because it's a fun word. And I feel like a lot of my writing is very raw. It's It's It's unrefined, when it doesn't need to be over refined. It's how I feel.

Unknown Speaker 8:28
Well, that can't make sense. Because you said before you get the free verse. So you're really restricted by rules or structures

Unknown Speaker 8:38
are for a man. Yeah, I literally do whatever I feel.

Unknown Speaker 8:41
It sounds like it's more. You know, now with poetry tonight.

Unknown Speaker 8:48
The modern poetry.

Unknown Speaker 8:49
It's so much about the rhyming, and neater.

Unknown Speaker 8:54
Yeah, very floral, like structured and sometimes using words that like you don't know that word. You you look through a thesaurus for that. And that's fine. But when every single word is the source, we found word. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:09
I like it. I like it more because it feels more relatable. Yeah, no, I feel like when I read the post, I'm like, You know what? I can't think that sometimes hear me. Yeah, because back then it's all like, nature. I love nature boy. Yeah, after a while gets a little boring. But I love you know, with poetry in order. It's no longer being restricted. constricted by rules and stuff. So they're exploring all kinds of stuff. Maybe back then you just want to think over. How do you write this? Like, I'm

Unknown Speaker 9:46
just gonna write about whatever I want. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 9:49
You know, with you with your poetry. It sounds like you want want to do something bigger with me. Is that what Am I?

Unknown Speaker 10:00
Honestly Yeah, I, I definitely don't want to make art just to make like pretty art or to entertain people. I want to make like, I try not to be geeky about it. But when I when I look at like a movie, or a book or something I automatically separated as, okay, this is like art entertainment. Or this is like true art. And what I consider like true art is is this stuff that you can tell came from someone or someone's like multiple people can can contribute to Jr. Like, there's a lot of fucking movies. There's a lot of movies that are just magic. You can tell that like people's souls went into it. And when you watch it, you experience that and it changes you. And fundamentally, I feel like if art doesn't change you, then it's not real art.

Unknown Speaker 10:57
So you're seeing art moves people are like, Oh, that was a good movie. foamers like that whole Karthus process virus, explaining how our should we should become different people after? Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the best way he said it. And you know, I'm so fascinating. You know, you said before politics as being your life, right? You've been exposed to it, you understand it? You live it firsthand. And now your poetry is like adding a voice to it. I understand more about your voice like, What are you saying about the politics around you?

Unknown Speaker 11:49
Who I'm seeing a lot of things. Um, do you want me to read anymore? My throat? Yeah, tree at some point? Yeah. Okay. Maybe I'll maybe I'll like, think of one or two that is good to be emblematic of something. Um, what am I saying I feel like a lot. Kind of what I said about true art, being pulled out of someone's soul and fashion so that it can affect yours. If you feel like a lot of what I say is just this is this is a moment that I've experienced. And I'm going to capture it an amber and pass it to you, and you can chew on it. And hopefully, when you digest it, you'll understand what that experience meant to me and how it affected my life. And hopefully, you'll come out seeing how we're similar. And how they I want people to be more compassionate. Yeah, well, basically, are you kind of hoping

Unknown Speaker 12:58
for it in your poetry work? Or is there some, like politics you're experiencing right now that you're like, you wish people could be more compassionate about or something?

Unknown Speaker 13:10
I think, um,

Unknown Speaker 13:14
when it comes to what I want people to be compassionate about, I think, I think a lot about this trans pride flag I have on my right shoulder. As I've had to deal with a lot of harassment and threats and bodily harm and bodily threats. I don't want to get into too much. That's what some of the poems are about. And it's literally just because people have this perception of reality that I am somehow harmful to their existence. Because I'm different. You know, I'm separate from gender, like, growing up Middle Eastern. Shortly. I grew up a little bit after 911. I was born in 2000. So that was as I was growing up with that in people's brains and 911 Definitely melted a lot of people's brains and made them terrified of their own shadows and anyone darker than these beige walls. So I had to deal with a lot of people's melted realities, making them look at my skin and identify me as a threat. Just because of my, like, I had nothing to do with that. But I did grow up dealing with people's fear of brown people because of it.

Unknown Speaker 14:50
Wow. So you were experiencing some kind of definitely racism and that transphobia Yeah, and how did you handle it? How did you cope with it?

Unknown Speaker 15:05
I mostly repressed things. Yeah. Um, like, with regards. I obviously I faced bigotry in a lot of forms. For a lot of what I am, but a lot of my response growing up was to repress things just keep it inside. If exposing this makes people mad at me, then I'll hide it. I'll keep it inside. Which is why I didn't come out as a as a as a non binary a woman. Chill, I was 18 Now even then, I wasn't out. Oh, I only came out when I was like, 20 No, no, no. Wait. Irrelevant. I felt way off track there. No,

Unknown Speaker 15:58
no, no. Um

Unknown Speaker 16:05
It took me a long time to come out. Because so many of those thoughts that like told me Oh, obviously, you're not a sky, obviously, you're not masculine. Like, the ways that this gender role is set up, you don't fit into and I just really didn't fit in. But I repressed all those. All those warning signs, I guess you can say everything that would have told me that, hey, just just be queer. Just just just be whatever you need to be. Just be a non binary woman, whatever you need to call it. I repressed in my head. And I wrote about privately to myself,

Unknown Speaker 16:53
was your poetry. What was it? What was it saying? And what were you writing down? And if you look back at it now, where are you getting?

Unknown Speaker 17:04
I've lost a lot of that poetry. Um, yeah, I had it. I had it in. Like, the composition, like the black and white composition notebooks, you know, that type of thing? Yeah, I had, like three of those growing up, and each of them are in a landfill somewhere right now. I'm sure. Yeah. Like, I've asked, Hey, do you saw that like book, I felt that when I was getting thrown away, I'm like, okay, cool. Thanks, mom. Thanks for deleting my history. Back then, it was a lot more raw, like I did not like writing or reading growing up. Um, so the fact that I was writing anyway, yeah, is probably a good thing. But at the same time, everything I wrote was was just like, nonsense. Train of Thought, feelings and trying to make sense of things without admitting that they're real.

Unknown Speaker 18:09
Well, you said, you didn't like reading and writing. What was about poetry? That was different. That's reading or writing.

Unknown Speaker 18:18
I didn't really call it poetry. When I was a kid. I was just like, yeah, it was just like writing things. I've only called the started calling. The things I'm writing poetry. Recently now that people are like, Oh, I like that poem. You read on the mic. I'm like, that was poetry. Okay. Yeah, I was I was just yelling and I didn't know anyone was listening. That is how it felt for a while. I was like, I just want to I just want to read these ideas into microphone and not worry about a grade or anything. I just want I just want to put it out there. I'll see what happens.

Unknown Speaker 18:54
And now you're sharing your posts your people, people are liking it. And you're understanding yourself better. How does it help you understand the world around you create because poetry and just creativeness in general expands our minds on life in general. If it's that within us or beyond us so with you how is the poet chi

Unknown Speaker 19:24
like how is sharing my poetry? Yeah changed me Yeah, I think um like I'm like over conscious that I've been saying I think okay.

Unknown Speaker 19:45
A lot of meaning in life we like get from other people, you know, like there are people who are introverted and are fine being on their own and everything but like, like true meaning in the world usually comes from the ways that we interact act with other people and they interact with us, and we try to change them and they try to change us. And they do by accident we do by accident. So I think by like keeping my most precious art to myself, I was keeping it away from like any meaning that it could have by interacting with other people. Um, so by sharing it and hearing people say, Oh, this impacted me this way, or like, oh, I never know you felt this way. It's like getting extra eyes on a problem, you know, or extra eyes on like something that happened in your life, and someone can go, oh, hang on a minute. That was that probably that was that probably traumatized you or something like, oh, yeah, you're right.

Unknown Speaker 20:50
Does that make sense? Yeah, no, it sounds like, kind of go back. When your true art your definition sounds like? The meaning behind?

Unknown Speaker 21:01
A lot of it's like, it's shared. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 21:05
I think, like making it and reading it to yourself and saying, Oh, this means that, but

Unknown Speaker 21:11
then sharing it with other people having them get different perspectives.

Unknown Speaker 21:15
Yeah. And truth starts coming. Yeah, if it's, if it's if it's real art, and they're processing it. And because everyone's processes are different, everyone like thinks about are different. However, they process the raw material you give them, they're gonna come out with like, a different interpretation, a different like end product,

Unknown Speaker 21:35
do you think for you, like short, should even have be like, what like one phase? Should it be like one sided? Should it be? Something that only has one message by right? So like, you're writing a poem, and just about this thing? And you just want people to think and get this from that? Do you think that's not true? Or? No,

Unknown Speaker 22:00
I think that is real. I feel like, I've made art like that. shaped in such a price. I'd like try to shape it in such a way so that anyone who experiences or sees or or smells, it comes out with this particular message. Oh, but but there's some concept called like the death of the author or the death of the artists, like, after you make something, you might as well be dead like it, it goes on without you, people will interpret it a billion different ways than you could have ever imagined. And there's nothing you can really do about that.

Unknown Speaker 22:36
So for you, it just sounds more like as long as you get something from that.

Unknown Speaker 22:42
Okay, yeah. And hopefully, if I do my job, well, like whatever message I wanted to be there, it's close. Whatever you get out of it is close to that message. Okay.

Unknown Speaker 22:51
So yeah, because you were mentioning earlier with, you're doing open mics, and you want to start having commentaries and stuff. And

Unknown Speaker 23:03
not enough people give me feedback. Yeah, well, no.

Unknown Speaker 23:07
And, you know, there's always resources and stuff to give you the feedback, you know, yeah. And I found

Unknown Speaker 23:15
a lot of like, writers, workshops, and poetry opens where I can talk with other people who write.

Unknown Speaker 23:21
No, and this is cool, because you want to do something more with your art. And as I was like, for a while, kept it to yourself. And then almost accidentally, you started sharing with people and people were like, This is really good, actually. Yeah, no, no, you're always asking yourself, what more can I do? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:40
this seems like something that can be effective. So how can I use it for the things I believe in? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:47
and you know, following up on that, how do you want to make your effective with others? How do you want to start changing comments, your answer anything.

Unknown Speaker 24:00
I think I can only affect, like, the people I affect. So like, anyone who hears my art I want to be I want to be able to like change, at least a little bit. You know, you can't you can't force anyone to change. You can't make anyone change, especially like not through one poem. But if my poem about somebody harassing me on the bus, changes your mind about whether or not gender is real by one degree. That's good enough for me, you know, eventually, eventually, we'll turn the ship all the way around, but one degree at a time.

Unknown Speaker 24:40
So you keep dropping more a poem.

Unknown Speaker 24:42
I just, yeah. I to make it more effective. I just gotta keep writing. Just keep dropping it. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 24:49
That's wonderful. And, you know, for you. It's been a long journey for you with poetry. You've been doing it for a while now. And I

Unknown Speaker 24:59
don't As I know, people have been doing it longer than I've been alive. So it feels it's been long relative to how long I've been alive. For me.

Unknown Speaker 25:12
Has it changed? You? Say, has it changed you?

Unknown Speaker 25:17
Has it changed me? Yeah, absolutely. Like I was definitely a lot more stage shy than when I realized I could say things that make people interested. Um, and that's just given me like a lot of confidence with anything I can express through poetry. It's made me more like confident in the things that I believe and my own identity and by like, exposing these parts of myself, and checking them against like other people and seeing how they react to it. Like it tells me more, it like affirms how real they are to me. Because if they're just bouncing around in your skull, so often, you can just gaslight yourself, he's like, that's not real, or that doesn't really matter. And you show it to someone else. And they're like, Oh, my God, that's, I feel the same thing that matters so much. This affects me. And you're like, Okay, shit, it is real. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 26:17
So now, what are you hoping to change?

Unknown Speaker 26:23
So many things. I want to change people's minds about so many things. But um, if I have to put it into like one sentence,

Unknown Speaker 26:33
because I have to, I,

Unknown Speaker 26:35
how many sentences do I get? What's my budget? How much time we got? We got lots of time. Okay, word. I'll try. I'll I'll try to put it succinctly I won't limit myself but I want people to consider anarchism. Okay, in a word. Anarchism not like in the sense that like, people are like, Oh, this is anarchy. Everything's burning down. Everything's terrible. But like anarchism as in a horizontal way to order society a non hierarchical life is possible. Okay. And that might go beyond the scope, the scope of the single podcast, but we don't need any hierarchy. You know, we don't need bosses. We don't need politicians. We don't need mayors. We don't. We don't need anything other than each other. So why are we organizing things? When all we need is just the people who are doing stuff for each other? You know, I see. Yeah. And, and I can argue about that for hours. But if the single degree is like, what about anarchism? What about a non hierarchical society? What about a horizontally organizing? What about improving community bonds instead of focusing on money or something?

Unknown Speaker 28:11
Yeah. And why? Why is amenable to

Unknown Speaker 28:19
a I genuinely think that a society centered around community with carefree ecology with our place in the world based on mutual aid, and taking care of each other and interdependence? I genuinely think that that is the way that humans are meant to live that that is the most comfortable and the happiest that like everyone on Earth can be. But I'm on Instagram at Emily as year. That's e m i l y, AJ

Unknown Speaker 29:04
thanks for listening. Catch us again every Wednesday at 6pm on the rebel and I 1.5 HD two

Transcribed by https://otter.ai