Conk’s Brain Podcast

Fifteen is tempestuous, hurtling through time and space at break-neck speeds - desperately searching for anything you can cling on to. In the back of the library, Spring of 1997 to be precise, I crashed full stop into a solid anchor. Nikki Giovanni - the first poet I ever loved. She metered me to Jones beach, lyric-ed me in lilacs, taught me that poetry did not have to rhyme. It was savage, and primal, and beautiful… a way to put your insides on the outside. I held onto my copy of Those Who Ride the Night Winds so long that I had to pay fines - but I didn’t care. The sky had ripped open and birthed a thousand stars - a beautiful, ethereal fire that burns in my chest even still. for Nikki Giovanni ( June 7, 1943 – December 9, 2024) Thanks for listening! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you would pass it on. Conk’s Brain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber [http://www.conksbrain.substack.com]. You can also support me and share the love by buying me a cup of coffee [https://ko-fi.com/deedreconkey] on Ko-fi. To hear more, visit conksbrain.substack.com [https://conksbrain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access]

Lately, I have been singularly obsessed with Haikus. I’m not particularly adept at writing them and high school me would rather have showed up naked to class than embrace that level of constraint. Maybe it’s because turning 43 did something to my brain, or maybe it’s the impending political apocalypse - whatever the case I am mired in obsession.  No matter how much reckless abandon might soothe our weary souls, there’s just something comforting about a solid boundary. The winds of the universe may howl and blow, but the sun always rises, the moon guides the tides, and a Haiku will always be 7-5-7. Sometimes, this fact alone helps me sleep at night. I have made and broken many promises to myself over the years, fallen short of my own expectations, and found myself screaming into the void - exasperated. When it comes to planning and basic executive function, ADHD is a bitch. I’ve got so many ideas chasing one another through my head like coked up squirrels (as I write this, I’ve just Googled “coked up squirrels [https://unkantelope.com/28121/news/cocaine-squirrels-attack-unk-campus-break-several-laws/]”). As the infamous tangerine tyrant once said, “I have concepts of a plan”.  Leaning into the example set by the restraint of the tenacious little Haiku, I’ve taken a deep breath and managed to form at least a rough outline of what I hope to accomplish professionally. First, you dear reader, deserve a little god damn consistency. I’m going to set a schedule with a time and date deadline for publishing one essay and one poem each week. Then, I’m going to work on upping my paid content game by providing you with a monthly “special edition” newsletter full of bright shiny new things. Lastly, I’m creating a monthly video series called Conk’s Room where I set up my classroom and engage your frontal cortex with a little educational theater. Ambitious, but completely necessary for my sanity and self-respect. Outside of Substack, I’m going to stick to my commitment to get the hell off of TikTok and Facebook and Instagram. I’m instead focusing my attention on Pinterest [https://pin.it/Usp2Xq8dw], BlueSky [https://bsky.app/profile/deedreconkey.bsky.social], and Discord [https://discord.gg/JDMsCCd86h] (sites that feel significantly less shitty for my psyche). For my next acrobatic feat, I will build a simple website using Canva primarily for the purpose of marketing this very Substack and my editing and design services. Gasp and egads! But Deedre, I didn’t even know you did these things! Ah yes my friends, I have skills and it’s about damn time I put them to good use.  Now for the pièce de résistance: I’m going to stop neurotically checking my notifications and catatonically scrolling feeds. Life is for the living, and online engagement should be for supplemental enrichment and entertainment, not the main event. Speaking of which, have you been outside today? Go smell some nature, or talk to some woodland creatures. It’s good for you. Who knows, maybe you’ll even be inspired to write a Haiku. The little Haiku that could inspired a spark this life is good after all. Thanks for reading! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you to pass it on. Conk’s Brain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber [https://www.conksbrain.substack.com]. You can also share the love and buy me a cup of coffee on Ko-fi. [https://www.ko-fi.com/deedreconkey] To hear more, visit conksbrain.substack.com [https://conksbrain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access]

Chaos is truth, control is an illusion. We hold on tightly with both hands to all the things we believe we can control - fretting, worrying, twisting our insides in knots, waking up in pools of our own cold sweat certain that we can conceive every possible future, if we never sleep. But outside of us, the universe is vast unknowable in its infinite expanse. Every contingency is merely speculation, casting bets on a race not yet run. We can wallow in the muck of maybe, maybe, maybe - And lose the beautiful glisten of perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. The future will be. The present is now. Drop the weight of uncertainty, protect your joy fiercely. We cannot control the chaos, and that is ok. Thanks for listening! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you would pass it on. Conk’s Brain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber [http://www.conksbrain.substack.com]. You can also support me and share the love by buying me a cup of coffee [https://ko-fi.com/deedreconkey] on Ko-fi. To hear more, visit conksbrain.substack.com [https://conksbrain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access]

Lately I have been obsessed with death. Not so much the inevitability, but what comes after. I am afraid of not existing, of existing eternally some place terrible, or drifting endlessly through a deep black nothing - concious of the emptiness of it all. But we all die, don’t we. It’s the one certain thing in life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Maybe our disconnection from nature is what’s truly absurd. When my naked toes curl deep into the soil, when my lungs breath deeply of the air, and stars, and sky - I feel the call of my ancestors reverberate in my bones. Every molecule that exists within us, was born in the beginning - part of everything that has come before, returning in the end to everything that will become. The divine unknowable force of the universe, that which we call God, waits patiently for our acceptance, our understanding- that life and death, death and rebirth, is written in our atoms. We are never alone. Thanks for listening! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you would pass it on. Conk’s Brain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber [http://www.conksbrain.substack.com]. You can also support me and share the love by buying me a cup of coffee [https://ko-fi.com/deedreconkey] on Ko-fi. To hear more, visit conksbrain.substack.com [https://conksbrain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access]

Does the thought of Thanksgiving fill you with warm fuzzies and joy or existential dread? I have a feeling that this holiday season is going to be an adjustment for a great many people (and by adjustment, I mean slamming full force into a brick wall without a crash helmet). After the wounds inflicted by this deeply disconcerting election, there’s a hell of a lot of door slamming and name calling making the rounds.  I will be hunkering down with my spouse and our fur children gorging myself on pumpkin pie and trying to fill the void with new traditions. Thanksgiving hasn’t felt the same since the last of my grandparents passed away. I don’t have any human children and my husband works both the day before and the day after the holiday, so he’s not really up for driving hours and hours for a plate of stuffing and coma napping jammed in the passenger seat of my Toyota Prius C (the smallest Prius ever made).  I am no stranger to the art of trauma boxing - putting people and relationships in a box on a deep dark shelf in the furthest recesses of my brain. It’s taken years of therapy to learn how to establish healthy boundaries and feel ok with standing up for myself and guarding my mental health. These skills are being challenged to the utmost degree and I can say with certainty that in this moment, I am not alone. Millions of Americans are facing down the prospect of making incredibly hard choices. This election cycle has finally ripped the table cloth off the table and we’ve been forced to reckon with what lies beneath - greed, racism, homophobia, sexism, and ignorance. This country was built on the back of slavery and genocide, forged on the false premise that all men are created equal when in fact it has been straight, white men of a certain social standing that are “equal”. Women didn’t earn the right to vote until 1920, nearly 144 years after our country was founded and black people were forced to wait until 1965. According to the NAACP, “The 15th Amendment to the Constitution removed racial barriers to voting in 1870, but states continued to practice voter discrimination and continued to deny Black voters a chance to participate in elections…It wasn't until 1965, after years of intimidation, murders, and advocacy that the path to the voting booth was cleared for Black people with the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.” Spanish predates English in the United States, and there were once over 300 indigenous languages spoken throughout the US yet the Average American has no grasp of history outside of the white narrative of the founding fathers. Hell, I still have a lot to learn and I’m actively trying to educate myself. We desperately want to believe that everything we learned in school is the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help us God - what do we have if not this certainty to cling to? In this election we have seen blatant lies and misrepresentation of immigrants, literal Nazis marching in the streets, and men shouting “your body, my choice”. We’ve been divided by hate, anger, and fear. Women are being systematically stripped of their reproductive rights while other women wave Bibles in their faces and declare them to be whores. The rage and indignation are palpable.  Given the choice between an optimistic, hopeful version of America and a dark, vengeful one, nearly 77 million chose hate. To be fair and transparent, more than 2.5 million people chose neither candidate and voted third party and while votes are still being counted, preliminary estimates show that nearly 36% or 89 million people couldn’t be fucked to cast a vote at all.  So what’s up America? According to the Pew Research Center, “For the first time, the 2020 census showed the U.S. had a shrinking non-Hispanic White population that identifies with a single race, down 3% – or about 5.1 million people – from 2010 to 2020. The decline was widespread geographically, with 35 states seeing drops in their non-Hispanic White populations.” I don’t really think it’s a coincidence that a government historically dominated by white men in a country whose corporations and institutions are also disproportionately operated by white men might feel a bit threatened by this statistic.  On top of everything else, our schools fall woefully short in history and civics education (as well as general life skills) and our mainstream media puts profits and clickbait above actual journalism. Despite cries of woke liberals taking over everything, the right wing media machine is alive and well. Right and far right leaning sources such as podcasts, social media influencers, and YouTube channels dominate our digital landscape and our airwaves. We are being spoon fed propaganda from all directions. Americans choose what is easy and loud over what is complex and true. It’s exasperating. All of these things bring us to Thanksgiving 2024 and the prospect of sitting across the table from friends and family we once loved and respected who gleefully rejoice in their chosen candidate, who as we speak, plans the mass deportation of millions of human beings. Spreading lies about Haitian immigrants that led to violence and bomb threats was not a deal breaker. Hosting a rally filled with white nationalists calling Puerto Ricans garbage and stating that America is for Americans only was not a deal breaker. Dehumanizing trans people and other members of the LGBTQIA+ community was not a deal breaker. Being convicted on 34 felony counts, held civilly liable for sexual assault, and inciting an insurrection were not deal breakers.  For far too long in this country we have looked the other way, brushed it off, or stayed silent when people around us make racist, sexist, homophobic comments. We feared rocking the boat at the expense of losing relationships or even jobs. This election has changed everything. We are looking down the barrel of a gun, faced with the very real prospect of ignorance and hate collapsing our economy and stripping away hard won rights and freedoms. Our president elect is currently choosing an administration filled with television personalities, sex offenders, and sycophants whose only qualifications are undying loyalty to a raging narcissist. It’s a fucking dystopian nightmare.  I do not judge those who chose not to show up to the table at all this holiday season. Those who close doors and sever ties and draw hard lines in the sand. When Uncle Bob insists that it’s just politics and we have to agree to disagree after being presented with hard facts and you shove your chair back and yell, “We can agree to disagree about cranberry sauce not human rights and your politics are in fact a reflection of your morals - get out of my house” - I will not hold it against you. We have to come together for the sake of humanity and the future, but coming together does not mean compromising on who is afforded rights. It’s not pie. Equal rights for others does not mean less rights you. Timothy Snyder’s first rule in his book On Tyranny is “Do Not Obey in Advance”. Do not give up and lie down in the face of authoritarianism, even when it feels like the whole world has already complied.  In the midst of this unfathomably dark shit storm, I choose to lean into the words of Jewel, “We’ll fight, not out of spite but someone must stand up for what’s right. Cause where there is a man who has no voice, there ours shall go singing”.  Wherever you find yourself this Thanksgiving, know that you are not alone. I believe our country and our humanity are worth fighting for and there are 75 million plus people who feel the same way. Your voice matters, your heart matters, your hope matters.  Today I leave you with this nugget of light - a new organization fighting the good fight.  Chorus “CHORUS is a collective of impactful voices coming together to end the far-right’s domination of online conversation. CHORUS will organize, support, and grow strong online media by building the infrastructure necessary to retake power for everyday Americans and marginalized communities. With expanded reach and new programming, CHORUS is scaling to meet people where they are and to normalize progressive values and ideas in the mainstream. Supporting CHORUS means supporting independent online voices and building the next era for online news and conversation.” To donate or find more information including where to follow them on social media click here. [https://www.wearechorus.com/] Thanks for reading! If this post speaks to you, I’d be honored if you to pass it on. Conk’s Brain is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber [https://www.conksbrain.substack.com]. You can also share the love and buy me a cup of coffee on Ko-fi. [https://www.ko-fi.com/deedreconkey] To hear more, visit conksbrain.substack.com [https://conksbrain.substack.com?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access]