Episode 378: Artist Camilla Taylor- "My House Burned Down"

Introduction to The Conversation

0:00This is The Conversation, a podcast that takes you behind the scenes of artists and their art worlds. I'm Michael Shaw. Welcome to the show. This is episode 378 with Camilla Taylor. She is an artist in Los Angeles. And in early January, she and her partner Jason tragically lost their home and Camilla lost her home studio in the Eaton fire in Altadena. So on the website,

0:36theconversationpod.com, and I very much do not intend for this to be sensational. You can see images of Camilla's house and studio before the fire, as well as just after the fires destroyed their home and her studio and artwork. And she provided me with these images, so I'm fairly sure she's okay with my sharing them. Especially since, I have to say, as I went through the many photos, you'll only see a small selection on the site. But as I went through the many photos

1:08she shared with me, it clarified and reminded me just how easy it is for us to maintain a very wide distance, a separation from other people's tragic losses, in this case, the fires. And indeed, for me, one of the most interesting parts of our conversation was the things that people have said to Camilla since she lost everything in that fire. How unempathetic many people have been and how hard

1:38it is for us as people generally to express empathy, to be empathetic. And if you're outside of North America, particularly if you are listening to this outside the West, I'm very interested to hear what your own culture's relationship to empathizing with others who have suffered immense losses looks like. You'll hear us wonder about that a bit in our exchange. I suspect that there's not a huge difference between cultures these days, but please refute me if you can.

Update on New Podcast

2:11Before I tell you a bit more about this episode, I have a big update that I want to share with you. So my plan is to soon put out in this feed, for now, an artist advice podcast in which I and hopefully a range of co-hosts will answer listener questions. Any questions you have about being an artist, whether it's pricing or money related, gallery or collector related, creative block slash

2:44motivation related, imposter syndrome or mental health related, really any question that is art or artist related in some way. We want them from you. And you can start submitting them now completely anonymously simply by going to the website, theconversationpod.com and adding slash cranky to the URL, which will take you to a Google form where you can submit your question, like I said,

3:14completely anonymously, unless you want to include your name and or where you're located, which would be welcome as well. The working title for this show, The Cranky Artist, an advice podcast, at least for now. And the idea came to me earlier this summer when I was thinking about how to get listeners like you more engaged with the show, more involved. And even though I am far from fully qualified to give you artist advice, I am, I think, good at

3:46identifying with artists expressing just about any issue or issues they're facing. And I think I'm pretty good at empathizing with them in their struggle. Plus, I plan to regularly, if not always, bring on co-hosts to answer your questions with me. And once the questions have been answered, if not fully resolved on the show, I am hoping that your listener feedback will then become part of the process, part of the show. And in turn, I think that listeners who provide really

4:21good feedback could become future co-hosts themselves. I would also love to receive any questions that you are interested in sharing via voice message, which you can do by recording your message, emailing it to theconversationartpodcast at gmail.com, or via a couple of other ways on the contact page of the website. I have to say, one of the scariest and biggest challenges in launching

4:52this new project is actually getting questions. Because who has the time to go to a webpage and submit a question these days? I really do hope, actually, that you will make the time. And I also hope that having the untraceable, completely anonymous element will help free you up to submit something, even a really quick question, but one you've been wondering about. I've already started collecting questions via a couple posts on social media and through a MailChimp blast, but I'm far more concerned

5:28about having very few questions as opposed to having too many. But you are going to have to participate to make this show happen. Again, it does not have to be long or elaborate, but you do have to go to either the contact page of the website or theconversationpod.com slash cranky to get that Google form where it will take you no more than five minutes, and I think as short as like 15 to 20 seconds to ask a question and hit submit. Thank you in advance. Please God. All right, now back to the

6:05episode where you will hear about everything from Camilla's complicated childhood amidst both her dad's Mormon LDS community and the small organization slash cult that her mom started to her epic story regarding the fire. Driving 16 hours back home from the Sitka residency in Oregon to a wall of fire approaching her neighborhood, to her and Jason and their cats, their four cats, exodus to her life

6:36post-fire, including the types of comments she has received from various folks, including the completely useless mantra that she would or could rise like a phoenix. You'll hear all that and even more on this public feed of the podcast, the first approximately 43 minutes of our recording. But if you'd like to hear the full hour 20 plus minutes of our conversation where she also talks about how despite the massive losses, she's been more fortunate than others who lost everything in the

7:09fire because of the resources and the material items she's been given. The group show My House Burned Down at Track 16 Gallery that she curated, and we get more into the range of responses she's received from people she knows after the fire. And we wrap things up with an extensive exchange about what I have long called the p-word, which inevitably includes talking about language and the words we use to talk about art as artists, and why art speak is so widespread and persistent.

7:45If you'd like to hear the full bonus recording of this conversation, it's available at patreon.com slash the conversation pod, where you can support the show and access full episodes, including this one for as little as a dollar a month. Or if you prefer to do a one-off, you can purchase the full Patreon version of this episode for $15 on the Patreon page. But guess what? We recorded that p-word exchange on video as well as audio, which will be viewable as well as listenable on the podcast's

8:18YouTube channel. Yes, that's right, our YouTube channel, which is linked on the about page of the website. So please have a listen and or a screening of our conversation and feel very free to share your comment there and or on socials at artistpodcast and at michaelshawstudio on Instagram. That is all for now. Just a quick reminder on the back end of where to get the bonus Patreon full episode. In the meantime, thank you very much for listening. And many, many thanks to Camilla for

8:50sharing her story along with so many very thoughtful insights. Here we go.

Camilla's Childhood

9:06Before we talk about the fire and your losing your house in the fire, I want to see if there's anything you had mentioned as a potential topic, your childhood. Is there anything remarkable from your childhood slash adolescence that listeners that we would want to hear about? So my childhood, I grew up in a, my mother, when I was young, started sort of a small religious organization. And depending on how you interpret the word, you may characterize it as a

9:44cult. Give me some rough outline of what kind of things went on in the organization. Well, my family was Mormon up until my tweens. And then my parents got divorced. And my father has stayed LDS, the mainstream Mormon church, the big one that most people know. Yeah. And then my mother started this sort of small religious movement. And it doesn't have an official name, like most

10:16organizations like this. You know, when you hear stories about these sort of organizations, usually the names are imposed by reporters, because as soon as you name a thing, you can quantify it in your head. Hmm. And so it's more common that they sort of remain unnamed or have these sort of amorphous terms like group. Hmm. And, um, you know, people, it was informed by Mormon theology, but not, uh, mainstream Mormon

10:48theology and, um, really kind of hard to quantify what the ethos was. I think that's more a cult kind of symptom that you can't really nail anything down because it was amorphous and would change routinely and not a ton of members and followers and not, um, enough financial exploitation

11:21that that was a motivation for her. Probably. We do not have a relationship. So, um, I don't know how it's doing now. I don't know if it's still going. I don't know what's happening with it. Do you have a relationship with your dad? I do. I do still have a relationship with my father. Okay. He's still, he's remarried. He's in the mainstream Mormon church still. I think we try to avoid talking about religion. I've never been a believer. So in the, in the Mormon

11:52church, in the LDS church, you're baptized when you're eight years old. That's considered the age of accountability when you can voluntarily choose to become a member. And the idea is, is now you're eight, you can choose to be accountable for your actions. Or if you don't get baptized, you are a person who is never informed and so you can't be held accountable. You're sort of morally a child. And I thought that sounds like a great deal. Why would I choose to be accountable? And so I said,

12:26I didn't want to get baptized, but my parents forced me to get baptized. So technically it was never a Mormon.

12:35Was that, uh, uncomfortable to, to use a mild term, the unwanted baptism for you? I just, it's just, uh, I think a synecdoche of the larger force that's always involved in being a small child in a large organized religion that you don't really get to choose it. That, and that's sort of the nature of being a child is you don't get to choose to be a member of these systems that you just are a part of them. And you sort of have to

13:06trust that people have more information than you, but I never really believed in God. So it never quite gelled for me as a system that I could trust. So then when my mother started her religious group, it didn't quite make sense either. It still felt like, um, another, another system of control that referred to thought stopping cliches, you know, like phrases where you

13:42could not think past them. If you can't understand a thing, if you are incapable, if that is part of the dogma that you were incapable of understanding it, then it's almost excusing any, any abuses within

Falling Out with Mother

13:59that system, I think. Mm-hmm. And I'm going to ask you about your mom and your falling out kind of briefly, because we could obviously spend a long time on that, but I do want to point out your first big word, synecduty. We can maybe revisit that later, but I just wanted to acknowledge it. It's there. It went out. Is it a, is it a very complex explanation as to your falling out? Or can you give me just for the sake of our, um, having time for, um, having time for, I don't know. So the problem, I think when you tell someone

14:33a story like this, right, is that it becomes the story. And that's often my concern is I want, is my art is not as tabloidy potentially. Okay. Yeah. Um, but, uh, I was a victim of sexual abuse from another member and had to get an abortion when I was a teenager and I was blamed

15:05for this. Oh, geez. And, um, and then I did leave when I was 18. I didn't leave when I was still a minor. Right. Right. Got it. I'm so sorry that happened. And I had no idea that was coming. So

Leaning Away from Religion

15:22it's definitely not fishing around for that kind of, I didn't think you were. Yeah, no, no, I did not see that. So, and to be, to be fair, I've been very hesitant to tell the story publicly because I'm afraid of her. Wow. But then I thought this is not in any way to discredit the reach of your podcast. I thought only other art nerds are listening to your podcast. Yeah. You don't, you don't have to worry about that unless you share it widely. Um, is part of, and I know this might all, this might be a little too oversimplifying,

15:55but did you lean ultimately lean into either atheism, agnosticism, or, you know, staying away from religion as a result? It already felt abusive to me. And I saw how other people kind of relinquish their will within religion, within the larger, more formal structure of the LDS church. And then within this sort of smaller group and how I didn't want to be

16:29like that. Um, you often hear the cliche in like cult, uh, psychology that everyone can join a cult. You just haven't met the right one. And I don't know that that's true. Yeah. I think most people can, but I don't think everyone, I think that's too much. I think the, the seductive appeal is that you're sort of acceding decision-making to something else and that many people are exhausted by it. You're acceding both importance that something gives you value because you're part

17:02of this larger, important whole and you don't really need to make major decisions and understand the outcome because someone else is taking care of those things for you. And I think art does that for a lot of us on its own. Maybe we sacrifice so much for this and also it gives you importance.

Art and Importance

17:23You find it within yourself and within what you're making. And part of that may be a self-delusion at the same time. That it fulfills a lot of those same functions. I'm not, I think it's, uh, it's too extreme to say that art is a cult also because it's not, it's just, it fulfills those functions. Why, why, why is what you do important? I'm an artist. My art is important. Yeah. You're drawing some very interesting parallels basically. And do you think you do that, uh,

17:58organically or, you know, I, maybe that's not the right question. The question maybe is, um, did it just become very clear to you that there are these crossovers? Uh, I think, I think we, we live in a society that's largely secular, but you can really see these patterns everywhere that people really want to feel like they are part of something larger than themselves and a sense of importance and that they matter. And you see that in like extreme fan behavior, people get so obsessive about celebrities that becomes almost a pseudo religion or, um,

18:36like intellectual properties. Like people become obsessive about their love of a movie franchise. And that, um, like this greater religion, I think as many artists that we find that kind of importance from within what we make, which maybe this is a snobby thing to say. I think that that is a little more organic and fulfilling the quality of importance more because we're not just producing capital through our need for someone else. Right. But, um, some of us are, whether

19:13some of us who are lucky are producing capital. That is fair. I don't know how much capital I am producing. Right. Right. You're producing more than I am, I would say. Um, are you obsessed with anything yourself when you make those comments about, you know, people's various obsessions with celebrities, IP, et cetera? Um, did I use the word obsession? I probably did. Yeah. And, and it's fine. Yeah. If you, maybe you didn't, but I mean, that was the gist of it. Yeah. The gist of it is

19:47yeah. Obsession. I don't think I have anything like that. I don't, I like to, um, experience the thing. And then I don't want it to become a part of my identity. Right. If I can prevent that, uh, you know, one of my favorite authors is Thomas Mann. And to be honest, if, if I found a top, like a magic mountain t-shirt, I'd probably buy it. Right. But that's, that's yeah, but that's

20:17different, but I'm not seeking it out. That's the art. That's the, uh, t-shirt equivalent of an, uh, you know, an, an art nerd podcast. Yeah. Yeah. True. True. Yeah. Okay. Great. Well,

Losing Home in Fire

20:30if any obsessions that you have not, uh, listed other than Thomas Mann occur to you later, definitely jump in and let us know. So perhaps the big subject for us is the fact that you lost your house in the fire. Um, I know you've told this story probably many times. I don't know if countless is even too large an adjective, but would you like to just sort of give us your

21:04kind of practiced telling of the story or, or would you prefer me to ask really specific questions about it? I'm fine with either. I think, um, I have told it countless times because I am really good at, um, compartmentalizing childhood. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've just told you about, I can tell a story and not feel the immediacy of it. Okay. And so I am fine with telling my story

21:40over and over and not needing to feel the emotional impact every time. But, um, let's, because I have told it before, let's, let's do questions instead of just wrapping off. Yeah, absolutely. Well, first I got for, uh, I may need to hire you as a tutor, but what's the short version of how you got so good at compartmentalizing? Uh, do you, do you see things

22:10when you speak, when you think, uh, that's an interesting question and one that I don't know if I've ever been asked? Uh, I would say generally probably not so much. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. I, so I see my brain, the way I feel things as a large house. And I feel like if, if I want to spend time with something, then I, I go into the room that it is in and I got, uh, at first it was,

22:43um, an actual conscious thought exercise where if I did not want to have to be emotionally impacted, I could take the sort of spikiness and put it in a new room and shut the door. Mm-hmm. And then the rest of it was then separate and I could go spend time then with that part. That's great. And that actually aligns with a lot of the CBT exercises that I have come across,

23:14you know, for rumination, the couple, the couple that come to mind, one is you're sitting on the side of the road and you're seeing a bunch of cars come by and each of these cars has the thought that you have and it's just going by you and then it's driving away. And then there's another thought and it comes up, you know, by you and then it drives away. So the idea is that, you know, the thoughts that you are ruminating on that you don't want to keep thinking about, you know,

23:47you imagine them thinking away. Another one is, uh, I mean, they're all, oh, clouds, you know, I mean, there's, you know, there's the river, the stream, the clouds, you know, you watch the cloud that has the thought it goes, you know, it, it, it blows by, et cetera. Probably healthier. I think that I'm very greedy and once I have a thing, I don't want to let it go. So I have this knowledge and I don't want it to pass away. So it's got to be stored in the room somewhere else. I still got to keep it.

24:19Right. But the crucial part with whether, you know, it's healthier or not, it's more effective. I think is that if you do indeed shut the door and your consciousness and even your subconsciousness are not focused on that because the door is shut, you know, once it's behind the door, it's shut in your consciousness and your subconsciousness. That's the crucial part, at least in terms of rumination. Yeah. Okay. Here we go with question number one.

24:51Okay. So the story that I remember as far as the genesis of this terrible experience was that you were away at a residency and you came back from the residency. And I guess you, so my, I guess my question is, did you even get to make it back to your house?

Driving Back to Altadena

25:16I, um, I, so I was at Sitka Center for Art and Ecology at a residency and I left a little early, but I wanted to stay as long as possible. So I drove the day I taught my first day at UCLA of the quarter online at Sitka and that was seamless. That went great. And then the next day I got up really early to drive the 16 hours from Sitka, Oregon back home. You're going to do that in one

25:46day. And I did do it in one day so that I would be home on Wednesday to teach in person. Right. I had cleared teaching online the first day, but my area head at UCLA was not cool with it being two days in a row and I didn't want to really push things. Right. So I drove for 16 hours. Have you ever driven 16 hours in a day before? No, but it's exciting to find out what you're capable of. Yeah. And I, every time I took a stop, like I took photos and I thought I'll make

26:22like a little montage and talk about this adventure. And I thought the biggest story would be how I drove for 16 hours straight nearly just stopping to use restrooms and to get gas. Yeah. And I was not listening to the news. I was listening to podcasts and, um, I made a post on Instagram to, for all my friends to call me if they just wanted to talk. Yeah. And a couple of friends called and said, told me about the Palisades fire. They said that the Getty Villa is on fire. And then another

26:57friend called and updated and said, no, it sounds like they put it out. And so all I knew was the Getty Villa was on fire, but it was put out. So it's okay. And I didn't know anything else about the fire because I wasn't listening to the news. And when the fires started really getting bad and the ones were really bad by then people weren't calling me to chat. They were just figuring things out on their own. And also I think connectivity was really low and poor. So I was driving. And by the time I got

27:34into, um, the San Gabriel Valley to be close where Altadena is, right? Yeah. Um, I descended in and I could see the fire. Oh my God. You described, you, you know, we made that, you made that visual part of thinking. Can you talk about the actual vision of seeing that fire? It's shaped like a, it was shaped like an L like this big L on the mountain side with the apex of

28:05it pointing towards the side of Altadena where I live. So I could see that it was moving and it got bigger. And as I was driving, I was just getting closer and closer and the lights were out through most of the area. So the brightest thing was this massive fire that I was driving towards. And as soon as I saw it, I literally screamed, Oh no, no, no, no, no. Uh, cause it just felt like an impossible thing. Wow. And then when I got off the freeway into Altadena, it already felt like

28:41chaos because there were trees down, the lights were out everywhere and a car sort of following the rules of when traffic lights are out and sort of not. And there were cars abandoned in the middle of the street, but I couldn't get ahold of my partner. So I felt like I had to go home and make sure that everything was okay. And I thought maybe I'll run in. And he left a note for me on the counter.

Evacuating the House

29:11Or something. Cause I couldn't get ahold of him. And then I got home. And when I walked out of the car, when I got out of the car, the wind was so strong, it literally lifted me off of my feet.

29:25And then I ran inside. I screamed his name. And he came out of the bedroom, holding one of our cats, listening to a book on tape on his earbuds. It's like, um, Oh, you're home. I got you pizza. Uh-oh. And I said, we gotta go. We have to leave. The fire is right there. And he said, they haven't evacuated us yet. I packed an overnight bag for myself. It'll be fine. Calm down.

29:56Okay. Wait, I'm going to interject occasionally. And I don't mean to interrupt your flow. Oh, it's fine. It's fine. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So how about you didn't pack an overnight bag for me?

30:07Well, I had just come back from the residency and I didn't, uh, so I had sort of overnight stuff already. Okay. So he knew that kind of. So yeah, well, I guess. And, and was he, and was he in retrospect, was he not nearly as aware as you were at that point? I think he was not nearly as aware because the internet was out. Right. Um, power was out. And you smell the smoke in your place? No, because the wind was so strong. You couldn't see the fire and the fire was big and

30:40it was bright, right? But you could smell nothing. Wow. And, uh, I think also it's sort of, he was there the whole time. It was getting worse and worse versus I arrived and saw it all at once. So I didn't have a chance to start feeling a little acclimatized. And then I got a little closer and you feel comfortable and you figure, oh, they'll tell us when we got to leave.

31:07So then I grabbed a piece of pizza. I started eating it. And he said, you've been driving all day. You just need to calm down, relax. And I said, get in the car. We're leaving now.

31:21And we, we have four cats. We've got our four cats and they're cat carriers. Tell me, tell me your cat's names, please. And what kind they are. They are, uh, in order of age from oldest to youngest, Mulsifer, Albrecht, Lieutenant Commander Jordi LaForge, and Totsky. What do you call Lieutenant Commander for short? Jordi. We call her Jordi. Okay. And what are their ages? Mulsifer is, I think, 13 now. Albrecht is 10

31:52in a little bit. Jordi is, I think, five now. And Totsky is a little, is like a year and a half or two years now. Okay. Have you been a lifelong cat person or more adult or how would you describe it? Yeah, I've always loved cats. Cats are just, like, if a cat likes you, you know it likes you. Yeah. Dogs like everyone. Yeah. Everyone. Yeah. Except for me. Dogs often don't like me. Hmm.

32:22Okay. Yeah. So, so I just, you know, I'm a cat person too. So anyway, so you get the four cats. Continue. Get the four cats. Yeah. Get them in the car. Um, we each have a car. So, and then we drove away. Jason's thinking. What was the plan? Where were you driving to? We drove to our friends, um, Lynn Gaza and Michael Manning. They had reached out to Jason earlier in the day and said that we could go down there. And Jason was worried because we couldn't get ahold of them when we left that they may not be home. And I said, we're

32:54just going to go. And if we have to sleep in the car when we get there, that's fine. Um, but they were home and they took us in. They had a studio space that we were able to stay in. And his thinking was, you know, the smoke will be bad and we should evacuate. I had no thoughts. I had been driving for 16 hours. I just saw, I saw the fire and thought this is not a place we can be. So he did not pack with the assumption that our house was going to burn down and I just had no, no thoughts in my brain and our house burned down that night

33:28and my studio burned down as well. Cause my studio was on the same property as our house and we never got an evacuation order. Our friends in the neighborhood, some of them got evacuation warnings. Um, some of them got evacuation warnings on their phone when their house was already on fire or the cars in front of their house were on fire, just depending on the story. So incredibly late, well past the time when you should be evacuating.

34:03First of all, let me say, I'm really, I'm so sorry that happened to you. I'm sure you've gotten various types of sympathy over time and it probably never feels like enough, but I at least want to say that. Um, yeah, yeah. And, uh, the last thing that you described and just for practical purposes, I mean, there's so many, there are infant number of, uh, angles that we could continue or, or, or, or break this down, but the way you ended it kind of ties into a lot of the

34:38post fires controversies, particularly around budget, uh, fire department, um, you know, logistics and the failure of the city, uh, and the, and the County that did you, is that part of your thinking about the event that, that? Oh, absolutely. I think the failures were massive. I don't think most of the fires could have been put out that that wind was so strong, right? But when they knew that the fire was coming, they, they should have put out an evacuation order to everyone in the

35:12area. Yeah. And if they couldn't do the push notification, the, the, the big warning on cell phones, people should have been going door to door. So firefighters can't put out fires. Why was no one telling people to leave? Yeah. And I've heard that there just weren't enough people. And I don't know. Uh, I know for the Palisades fire, I believe one or two of the trucks from Altadena were sent to the Palisades, which I think is great. I think that's what should be happening. I just, to my understanding

35:47is, is no trucks were sent up to Altadena from LA city or other municipalities. I could be wrong, but from what I last read, that's the case. And I think that seems like a massive failure that they weren't sending personnel up there. And I know a lot of the people who died, died trying to put out the fire on their home, which is a totally understandable thing when all of your material wealth is going up in flames to try to save it makes sense. And we shouldn't expect people to make

36:22rational decisions in that moment of panic. Right. And most of us were not in a position also to go around and be calm and be trained to tell our neighbors that they have to get out. Right. And plus, you know, uh, an evacuation warning going off at three in the morning, as it did for a lot of people, people seeped through that. Sure. Yikes. And a lot of people died who just were asleep in their beds. In Altadena? Yeah. Wow.

36:57The majority of the deaths, to my knowledge, last I checked, were in the part of Altadena I lived in, in West Altadena. And I think a lot of these systems really broke down. Yeah. Yeah. I know in East Altadena, they were going around with loudspeakers telling people to get out. Huh. And there was nothing by the time it got to my part of town. And it could be that everything

37:29just broke down. But genuinely, I don't know why there weren't people going door to door or just with loudspeakers driving around because the fires were coming. You could see them coming.

37:42We got out at about 10. Mm-hmm. And, um, we think our house burned down in the morning, like at five or six, just looking at what we can from like security footage from other people and trying to piece history together. But if we had waited for them to tell us to leave, we would just be dead. Right. Right.

Trauma and Aftermath

38:09Just one question, uh, logistically, which I think refers back to something you said earlier. And I'm, and I don't want to get into it because, um, they're more important things for us. Um, is the gist of your sense of the firefighting logistics that something like the resources within LA County, were in the majority for the Palisades fire and the, therefore the Eden fire got the shorter

38:39stick as it were. I think that could be it that by the time it got severe in Altadena that the people were just tapped out and resources had worn too thin. Right. But I think that there were probably failures within the system that people weren't being called up from nearby areas. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because it's not like the fiery Santa Monica. They were not at risk down there, but someone could have come up. Right. So you were tracking the visuals to whatever

39:14extent you could. Eventually you saw security footage. When did you first officially learn and when did you first get to go back to your neighborhood? So we knew that our house burned down when Brad Eberhard posted a video of the gallery Alto Beta burning down. Cause, uh, I think, I don't think he was there. I think that someone else had posted like a video shot of them driving

39:45down that main street down Fair Oaks where Alto Beta should have been. And then he posted that to say Alto Beta is gone and we live close to Alto Beta. So we could look at the space where Alto Beta was now absent and see into where our house should have been and see an absence there. So we knew then that our house was most likely gone. Was that the next day? That was the next day. Okay. And, um, um, I slept for probably 18 hours that day in that studio of your friends. Yeah. Because on,

40:25on a deflated air mattress, because my, I had driven for 16 hours. I was so tired and Jason drove up and then there was no one preventing people from going in. Um, um, he drove up that afternoon, Wednesday. Wow. And the house was gone. The, the gas mains were all still on. So there were these fires everywhere. And one of our trees, we had this giant olive tree was still on fire. He took a video of

41:01it. It's incredible. It looks biblical because the exterior is intact, but on the inside is a whirlwind of fire. Uh, I taught my class online that afternoon. Jesus. And that fucking sucked. It really sucked. And I tried really hard to keep it together. And then when students were asking for deadlines, like, when is this due? Cause we're online. What are we supposed to be doing now? I really wanted

41:32to say, I don't fucking know. My house just burned down. Can you be cool? Did you? No, I didn't. I just, I wish I had genuinely. So did, but I was going to ask, did even your students even know, did you say anything about it? Uh, I said, I think my house is burned down. Um, Okay. Okay. Okay. Thanks. When's my, when's our assignment due? Yeah. Right. I don't think that they really registered. Yeah. Yeah. You know? Yeah. And then I, I said, I don't know. I will email you

42:05all. I didn't make any of these plans. So yeah. I can't tell you right now. Right. And then the school stayed online for, I felt like quite a bit and teaching online. I hate it. I especially hate it when the school communicates to the students some bullshit about how like, Oh, your teachers are so prepared and have been trained to move their class online. When it's like, you literally told me that we were online at the same time as the students. I've had no time to prepare anything. And I am in a

42:40strange place. I have no materials. Sounds like they didn't even really acknowledge your status either. Um, no, I think, uh, UCLA was pretty trash about the fire. Um, yeah. Did you feel like you missed out by not getting to join Jason at the house with the olive tree on fire and all of that? A little bit, but I'm glad I got to sleep. Yeah. Is that, is that the longest you slept as an

43:18adult? Probably. Yeah. Yeah. They had this extreme drive and then panic at the end. So it was so tired. Yeah. And then I went back, I think it took almost a week before I could go back because the national guard, uh, uh, blocked off access for a while where no one could go up even with ID, they weren't letting people up and some people were sneaking in, but I thought this is not a good

43:49time to risk being shot as a looter. Right. Wow. So it's almost, I think a week before I could go up and see the location of where our house was and everything was gone. The only thing that's left is gone. Now it's been cleared was the chimney. Wow. What has the evolution of your

Evolution of Trauma Experience

44:14experience of trauma been like? I mean, at what point, I mean, it sounds like when you slept for 18 hours, the night that the fire was still going on and subsequently burning your house and your studio down, that that was kind of the beginning of it. But I mean, I guess, let me see if I can be more specific with the question. Um, how do you see this experience in terms of a trauma?

44:44Uh, I kind of go in and out of feeling like it's a trauma and feeling like I've just been mildly inconvenienced and I'm making too big a deal of it. Who or what put that sort of, uh, glass half empty or, or, or, or self judging, self judging kind of vibe. I don't know. Maybe it's me. Maybe that's, that's, I think I have a very Protestant toxic work ethic. Right. And I think we do in America generally. Um, uh, I have said this finally publicly at the, um, Q and a for the show that I

45:22curated about the fire or not Q and a, sorry, the panel. Um, so many people after the fire messaged me and told me to look up Kintsugi, which is, um, insulting on so many levels. First, the assumption that I wouldn't know what it was. I don't know what it is. Sorry. Uh, is, um, a Japanese art form where you take a broken, typically a teacup piece of ceramic and you repair it with resin

45:54and then you decorate the resin with gold. Oh God. And then people misrepresent it and think that is terrible. That, that just to, just to, sorry to interject, but that falls, that is completely analogous to when somebody has cancer, they tell something, you know, a friend and the friend says, you're going to get through this. You're going to be great. You're going to be fine. Or any number one of the worst things that you can say to somebody that is

46:24going through something challenging. Like I'm a, I'm a loser for, for feeling emotions and not feeling like I'm a Phoenix and I'm going to rise above or like using that same, you know, analogy of cancer. Like you're a loser. If you die from a disease that is killing you. Do you think, I mean, this is really, uh, a reach, but do you think the terrible social media stuff coming from way outside the area was maybe being consumed by any of the people

46:56locally who were saying this bullshit? I think it's just really, um, I don't want to universalize it to the world, but it seems like a very American inability to handle emotions that aren't just glee. Wow. That allowing someone to feel pain and knowing that they are feeling pain and that they just have to is really difficult for us. I think I'm part of it is so much of what we do is

47:31always in service of capitalism. And if you are in pain and you just need to stop, you are not producing, you are not hustling, but it's, it is what it is. You know, it's painful to lose so much. And as an artist, um, you know, a lot of people have told me they're just objects. What's important is that you all got out. I just want to hit those people. Yeah. I am objects. I make art. That's who I am. I make things and all of those things are gone. And

48:05my ability to make them is gone. Why is your ability to make them gone? You have been making things. Well, I have been making things, but you know, I had a whole studio. I had a kiln, I had press, I had my equipment. Right. Right. And now all of that is gone. Right. And it's since then I, again, I have said, I have a very toxic Protestant work ethic. I want to make things. That's what I want to do. So I have stitched together a replacement using shared facilities and loan facilities, but it's not the same. Sure. It's so much more

48:42difficult. And I worked really hard to set up this studio so that I could make anything I needed to. Yeah. And now to work at that same level is very difficult. Yeah. Right. But I'm figuring it out. I'm making it happen. It's just very difficult. And that first week it felt like, who am I? I don't know how I can do this. And so many people have reached out and offered me facilities and literally from all over the country, people have said, if you want to come

49:13out to this part of the country, you can come and use this thing I have, which has been very generous, but also I can't afford to quit my job also. Right. Right. I got to stay and work. I lost my house. I can't lose my job too. Right. Does that, I'm not going to put words in your mouth. I'll make it a question. Does it feel, has it felt like a counterbalance to get that, those kinds of offers in contrast to the very judgy slash unhelpful, um, comments? I think, I don't think those are judgy comments.

49:49I think it's people trying to be helpful. Right. Insensitive, I guess is a better word. Yeah. Insensitive maybe. Right. Um, it has been really lovely. And I got to say that the way the LA community at large in the Los Angeles art community have really come together to help people has been incredible. And, you know, I, I almost immediately people were giving me clothes and

50:20tools and facilities. And it's, you know, it's been hard to figure out what I actually need and what I can actually use of what's been gifted to me. Yeah. But people have all have, have tried to help and, and helped. And that has been really concrete and real. Yeah. What are the logistics of insurance

Logistics of Insurance and Rebuilding

50:46and that whole, you know, building things back versus, versus reality? Yeah. Insurance is paying for part of the rebuild and then we're just going to have to cover the rest. And it's a significant part that we have to cover. Um, financially it really is the best option to rebuild for us. And then while we're rebuilding for a certain period of time, they cover our rent up to a limit given the size of

51:20the property they were insuring. So for us, um, they'll, they'll cover the rent in a property that's sort of commensurate in terms of the house to what we lived in. We did not have my studio insured as a big thanks again to Camilla. And again, to hear the full conversation, please go to patreon.com slash the conversation pod. And if you'd like to access the full episode, but want to support the show

51:51another way financially, please email us at the conversation, our podcast at gmail.com. And we will work something out. Thank you very much for listening and ciao for now.

52:07Thank you.