Max Stossel is an Award-winning poet, filmmaker, and speaker, named by Forbes as one of the best storytellers of the year. His Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move takes the audience through a variety of different perspectives, inviting us to see the world through different eyes together. Taking on topics like heartbreak, consciousness, social media, politics, the emotional state of our world, and even how dogs probably (most certainly) talk, Max uses rhyme and rhythm to make these topics digestible and playful. Words That Move articulates the deep-seated kernels of truth that we so often struggle to find words for ourselves. Max has performed on five continents, from Lincoln Center in NY to the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney. He is also the Youth & Education Advisor for the Center for Humane Technology, an organization of former tech insiders dedicated to realigning technology with humanity’s best interests.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
In Words That Move you challenge us to give our “God-given insanity a try.” Are you of the feeling that we're all kind of insane, and maybe it's the really insane ones who don't see it or who claim not to see it?
MAX STOSSEL
I think we have such an intensity in society for trying to push us to all see things the same way. And to try to conform all our vision to one sense of right or wrong. Or this is the way we're supposed to do things, as opposed to letting our unfiltered just like - what's real for me? What wants to happen? And how am I seeing the world?
And maybe I'm totally different and weird and out there and outrageous in this way? And what if that's not something to hide, but something to embrace? And I certainly enjoy in my own life being in a space where, friends and loved ones, where I can just welcome all the weird and welcome whatever idiosyncrasies and quirks are there, and not let them be anything that needs changing.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Writing and the performing arts, they are also really forms of listening. And you have to communicate with people in the language or in the way they will best be able to receive it.
STOSSEL
That's the art of communication. And that's, I think, something that's so hard to do through the screen as well. And that was how I started turning the poems into films initially was - Can I get the essence of this message to land through a screen? And that's actually very hard with spoken word, very hard with this medium, especially in a digital age where everyone is scrolling, scrolling, scrolling and not giving things very much care or attention as we take them in on our screens. And so I really wanted to make things that felt like they were honoring the art itself as I put them into that screen environment.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Both within Words That Move and your other projects, you get us to question our attention economy and technology. One thing that I don't think is addressed so much is, yes, we are doing more reading, but that is reading for information or data. Technology has changed the way we read.
MAX STOSSEL
Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.
It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
Social media and, it must be said, other experiences beyond social media have been "drugified" - the news, the food we eat... Once we learned that we could make anything addictive, then it comes back to poison us. So you have an alternative vision for social media and for realigning these systems with our values.
STOSSEL
So this is the other side of my work, trying to help especially young people figure out how to navigate this digital chaos ocean that they are growing up inside of. And the digital world that I would love to be different is, I would love it if all of these social networks were using their data to literally create new experiences and opportunities that we would later rate as meaningful. To help us find new people in our lives. We're happier there, but to not measure all their success on clicks or time or likes or shares, but like what human value or goal, whatever it might be, are we contributing to with this technology and a social network? That was actually improving our social lives that way. Or even a news network that was so focused on are we helping people be more informed as opposed to what is getting the clicks or the attention or what's the scariest thing?
That's the kind of tech world that I want to live in. And then, when I'm not being an artist and creating things like this Poetry Special, which I'm so passionate about and very much want the world to see, I am speaking with middle schoolers, high schoolers, and their parents and teachers about how social media is impacting their lives and just trying to help them develop some resources and different perspectives to help navigate that impact.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
What kind of like mythologies or collective stories would you sometimes be drawing upon as metaphors for our humanity?
STOSSEL
Nn more recent writing, this is less true of Words That Move, but the next Special will very much draw on basically a religious or spiritual concept that my friend Alice Frank and Derek Hake and a couple of others have really helped instill in me as literally true - that I am literally you. That we are one thing looking through many different eyes. Like one thing having all of these different human experiences. And not as a metaphor, we're all one. No, like actually there's actual, literal oneness. And what does that look like to explore with words? But that is a concept that I will certainly be playing more on in the next Poetry Special.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And you use the metaphor of the boxers when they embrace each other, that they're so close that they can't hit each other.
STOSSEL
"I've felt when two boxers get too close to hit each other / they hug each other, and not because they love each other / because when two people get too close / it becomes too hard to strike each other hard / not to smell the humanity on one another.
It's confusing to see our reflection in our enemy's eyes / helps us start to recognize where our actions might be misaligned / with the identities that we've defined.”
That was one where, as I started writing it, it's fun to be in an analogy, working through a phrase, unraveling and discovering all the new details of truth inside of a metaphor. And that really felt like one of them. There's nothing else to do but hug, we're like right here in the fight. And I just felt poignant for where, certainly where America was at. And I think a lot of the world is really going through, partially because of social media, these very big polarizations of political perspective. And it being harder and harder to just see the humanity in each other.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And as you performed in different countries and your poetry has been translated into many languages, as you distance yourself from your work, have you asked yourself how New York and the English language and grammar have influenced your way of thinking about the world?
STOSSEL
I think I've most been exposed to that when I was in a writing group with another poet, his name is Halim Madi, and he was just writing about his frustration that he was writing in English, and I found that to be really beautiful and moving. And just did help me notice the nature of how much language and culture shape how we literally see the world. And it certainly has influenced mine and my being sadly monolingual. I don't have as much of that understanding, except when I learned Italian in college and spent about a year there. Just as I was getting ready to leave and starting to develop a sense of humor in Italian. And it was like the sense of humor of a five-year-old - like that was what my language was capable of saying outrageous things or silly things in a moment - but I was starting to experience how much it takes to start to build a personality in a language. And that was really fascinating.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
And as you collaborate with dancers and choregraphers, do you also dance?
STOSSEL
I enjoy dancing, but I would not call myself a dancer by any means compared to the people I'm working with here who are so wonderful at it. I worked with a lot of in this piece, especially immersive theater actors and dancers. So there's a show called Sleep No More in New York, which is like an adaptation of Shakespeare's Macbeth. It's immersive theater. You walk through the room and all these different actors have these interactions with the people as they're moving through this entire building. And I love immersive theater so much, and I was really glad to work with these very talented, immersive theater actors as I just think they're such good captures of humanity, and they tend to be very good dancers as well.
There's a lot of dance in those shows. Then Sleep No More and Then She Fell are both just truly spectacular immersive theater programs. And Taylor Myers, Isabel Umali, Jonothon Lyons, and Rachel Berman, they were all part of those shows, and they worked with me on the Aliens piece and on Subway Love.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
You have talked about how you've felt poetry moving through you as a physical experience. Now with Words That Move, we see animation, we see dance. Could you tell us about your different collaborators?
STOSSEL
Erin Richards directed it, who is a friend who was actually just going to work with me on the Aliens poem, which is a piece about helping men see the world through women's eyes through the analogy of: imagine if aliens invaded, and they were giant and super sexually attracted to dudes. And she was going to direct it. And she was like, Well, who's directing the whole show? And I said, maybe you are? And she sort of laughed and was like, Okay, let me see if I can take this on. And she was so wonderful, incredibly creative, and has this second gear that she kicks it up in to get things done. And it couldn't have happened without her. The animation with Ryan Woodward - he's just a spectacularly talented animator. He actually made that animation independently of the poem. I wrote the poem independently of seeing that animation, and they just happened to blend together so beautifully. He was like, Wow. Oh my God, yes, totally. Go use this. Yeah, Matt Freidell is another director who's just was full stack, directing, producing, editing effects. He just had the whole gamut. And Doug Larsen, who edited it, really brought it to life with so much footage. It took a village for sure to make something of that size. And everyone just basically poured it in for the love - I paid people of course - but it we could not have done what we did at the actual cost of what things would have cost. People really just appreciated the messages and wanted to be a part of it. And I'm so grateful for that.
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
As you think about the future, education, and the importance of the arts, what would you like young people to know, preserve and remember?
STOSSEL
I think on a deep level some of my work with young people is really about how I fundamentally believe that life is spectacularly beautiful and that there is so much meaning and so much magic. And I oftentimes can see with them that social media is doing such a number on the way they are seeing each other and seeing the world that they're not even in touch with the beauty that reality has to offer.
And so I guess what I would like them to know is that there's so much more magic and amazingness in this existence than they can possibly imagine. And if they can be open to it, life is going to reward them for that. And I think the arts are a beautiful both transmutation of that expression of that way of taking that in. Art can also be a vehicle toward it. And I certainly love it for that. I'm in the education world because I care so deeply about life and about meaning and about humanity. And I'm hoping to be able to provide perspectives and tools that can help people find their way to that beauty.
This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producers on this episode were Mia Funk and River Zhang.
Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast (Conversations about Climate Change & Environmental Solutions).
