THE SYNCREATE PODCAST: EMPOWERING CREATIVITY
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
HOSTED BY MELINDA ROTHOUSE, PHD
WELCOME TO SYNCREATE, WHERE WE EXPLORE THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN CREATIVITY,
PSYCHOLOGY,AND SPIRITUALITY. OUR GOAL IS TO DEMYSTIFY THE CREATIVE PROCESS,
AND EXPAND THE BOUNDARIES OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CREATIVE.
SUBSCRIBE / FOLLOW US ON SPOTIFY, APPLE PODCASTS, YOUTUBE
OR WHEREVER YOU GET YOUR PODCASTS
EPISODE 3: CREATIVE POLYMATHY WITH MUSICIAN,
PHOTOGRAPHER, AND PODCASTER MICHAEL WALKER
CLICK ON THE EMBEDDED PLAYER BELOW TO LISTEN:
Michael & Melinda
Melinda came across the term “creative polymathy,” meaning interest and skill in multiple creative fields or disciplines, a few years ago at a creativity conference, and it really resonated. The nature of creativity is to make associations between disparate ideas and inspirations, so it makes sense that creative people often have talent and ability in more than one area. Michael Walker is one of these people; he’s a musician and songwriter, as well as a photographer, podcaster, and the Director of Many Things at Positive Energy, a building science consulting firm based in Austin, Texas. Michael recently released a couple of instrumental albums inspired by Palo Duro Canyon, near his hometown of Amarillo in the Texas Panhandle. In this episode, we discuss the creative process in Michael’s music, as well as his influences and inspirations, ranging from Buddhist meditation to the landscape of West Texas.
episode 3 video clips
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full audio episode on YouTube:
episode links
Michael’s Website: sleepyburrito.com
Creative Polymathy
Palo Duro Canyon
Llano Estacato
Dan Flores (author)
Coyote America
Project Coyote
Artists for Wild Nature
Red River War
Canyon Illuminant album
Red River War album
Johnny Greenwood (film composer)
Trent Reznor (film composer)
Ryuichi Sakamoto (film composer)
Positive Energy (building science consulting firm in Austin, TX)
The Building Science Podcast
Terry Allen (artist and musician)
Creative Polymathy
Palo Duro Canyon
Llano Estacato
Dan Flores (author)
Coyote America
Project Coyote
Artists for Wild Nature
Red River War
Canyon Illuminant album
Red River War album
Johnny Greenwood (film composer)
Trent Reznor (film composer)
Ryuichi Sakamoto (film composer)
Positive Energy (building science consulting firm in Austin, TX)
The Building Science Podcast
Terry Allen (artist and musician)
episode transcript
Melinda: Welcome to Syncreate, a show where we explore the intersections between creativity, psychology, and spirituality. We view creativity broadly, and one of our primary goals is to demystify the creative process. I'm Melinda Rothouse and I help individuals and organizations bring their creative dreams and visions to life.
Today on the show, Michael Walker. Michael is many things. A musician, songwriter, photographer, podcaster, a creative polymath. These days, he works for an organization called Positive Energy, a building science consulting firm based here in Austin, Texas. Outside of his job at Positive Energy, Michael continues to work as a musician. He recently released a couple of instrumental albums inspired by the Palo Duro Canyon area in the Texas Panhandle.
You'll hear more about that in our conversation. Michael's been in Austin for a number of years now, and we first met at a local Buddhist meditation center. However, he actually grew up in Amarillo, not exactly a center of Buddhist culture. He's come a long way from his West Texas upbringing, but his recent work revisits the landscape where he grew up. So I started the conversation by asking him to tell me a little bit about his relationship with Amarillo.
Michael: If you've ever been to the Texas panhandle, you can imagine just this flat, seemingly desolate landscape. It's just miles and miles in any direction. The old joke there is if your dog runs away, you can stand up on your tractor and watch everyone away for a few days. Or on a clear day, you can see the back of your own head, you know, that kind of thing. It's conducive to agricultural life. It's a ranching community.
But what a lot of people don't realize is that it’s also the location of the headwaters of the Red River and there is essentially a massive break in, well, there's a couple of things that are happening, right? So as you go north in Texas and hit the Panhandle, you'll hit what's called the Llano Estacado, which is the staked plains as they're called, and it's this massive uplift, right, up onto the high plains. And then the further north that you go, that same geographical formation is connected to the second largest canyon system in the United States, next to the Grand Canyon. And it's a series of canyons, Palo Duro Canyon being the largest of which.
Interestingly, kind of my own journey of relearning about the place that I'm from led me to a lot of really interesting writing from people like Dan Flores, which if you've never read anything by him, I highly recommend it. I think his most famous work is Coyote America, sort of about the evolutionary, spiritual and political history of the Coyote. Amazing book. So his writing really unlocked a lot for me in terms of thinking about the place I'm from and even about creative projects, like how do you tackle a subject? But it's gorgeous. This canyon is stunning.
Melinda: It's stunning. Yeah.
Michael: People don't realize it. It's like driving down this flat place and then it's this massive hole in the ground. And from a geological perspective, from a flora and fauna perspective, and kind of human history, and the people that have been involved in the relatively short timeframe that humans have been here, it has been host to a many drama. And so that idea was really curious for me. Because I left this place, cast it off and I'm done with you. And then as I got older and more mature and started really trying to appreciate the place I was from, I realized I didn't know what I was casting off to begin with, and I wanted to understand that.
And so, reading the writing of people like Dan Flores and various other authors, the first kind of undertaking, I did some photography shoots. I've done some kind of writing about that place to kind of get the gears turning, but I wound up wanting to do an instrumental piece about it, and it was really kind of through the lens of before humans were in Palo Duro Canyon, what did that place look like? Thinking about the animals that were there. I mean, it was full of grizzly bears, and wolves, and elk, and it was teeming. And there are early reports as Europeans were moving this direction, both from the Spanish moving up from South and Central America, and also the Anglo and French settlers that were moving from the east, that account for, I mean, just unimaginable volumes of biomass that are no longer there.
And that was really staggering to me because I didn't grow up thinking about or relating the place that I lived with grizzly bears, right? These are things you think of in Montana. You know, Canada. But they were walking around, you know, where I played as a kid and that really was an interesting concept to explore. So I made an instrumental piece about it called Canyon Illuminant, which was sort of a series of vignettes about each different animal and kind of a scene of their life. And it was really wild to do that through music without words because you just, you're capturing an image or a feeling that is a lot easier to articulate with words. [Music clip from Canyon Illuminant album] From an artistic perspective, it kind of felt like I was doing a little bit of film scoring to something that didn't exist.
Melinda: Yeah, was that a new thing for you? I mean, I know you're a singer songwriter, so branching into the world of instrumental music.
Michael: Totally. Yeah. And the palette of sounds was really kind of simple for that one. It was drums, bass, guitar. I did a lot of kind of American primitivism style guitar picking. So I make music with my childhood best friend Jacob Combs and he's a phenomenal guitar player, wonderful piano player, but he's recently, he has two kids now and he has gotten into synthesizers and his kids love to play with the synthesizers with him. And he has this corner of his house that's just covered in modular synthesizers and it's like a mad scientist laboratory. But when we started blending these kind of acoustic piano guitar sounds with these rather ethereal, kind-of psychedelic, almost synthesizer sounds. [Music clip from Canyon Illuminant album]
So once we released that, it was met with I think, a lot of interest. I wound up partnering with an organization called Project Coyote, which is an advocacy group for predator species. They loved the concept and thought it was kind of reflective of their mission, and I became, they have a program called Artists for the Wild, and since my album touched on several different species, they thought this would be great. And so that partnership's really cool. It's kind of whatever you want it to be. And they're really supportive, and it got, Jacob and I to thinking we're like, we should do a follow up to this, ‘cause I feel like there's so much more to explore.
And so we sort of zoomed in time to this period in relatively modern history called the Red River War, which was the last military battle or series of military battles between the United States Army and the Southern Plains tribes in the late 1800s, in the 1870s actually. And it's not a war a lot of people know about, but it's a really important war because it made way for American society to expand at the cost of, you know, the way of life of many tribes. And the advent of the reservation system as well. So. It's a hard topic to get into and it's really easy to fall into tropes.
We did a tremendous amount of research for this. I spent a lot of time in the Austin Public Library, scouring over, you know, original sources, witness accounts of what happened, and it's just deeply racist, even our recollection and kind of understanding of things in academia have centered on this, I think really unfortunate, deep-seated racism that exists against indigenous people.
So peeling that back and trying to understand like what is the way into this topic that doesn't fall into tropes and that is an interesting story to tell and, and one that, you know, people, when you recount history, people get really upset if it's not the history that they think it should be. And that's true across the political spectrum, so I thought it would be more interesting to tell a story about the people that were involved because there are some really notable characters, leaders from the tribes, leaders from the US Army, and they have a decent historical record to reference. And so you can take some artistic license with what they must have been feeling and going through.
Melinda: Yeah, so how do you tell a story musically without lyrics, purely through composition?
Michael: This is where the film scoring concept really drove a lot for me. I've never composed in that way before. The first album, Canyon Illuminant, was sort of a light touch in this way. It was more like, you know, it could stand on its own and not be about the canyon. And you could say, sure, okay, yeah. This album, Red River War, was much more specific to the events and the place, and so it was a lot of visualization. Like what would this have looked like? What would this have sounded like? [Music clip from Red River War album]
There's a, a really neat tradition of people in progressive music scoring films, right? There's like Johnny Greenwood with, There Will be Blood, Power of the Dog, amazing films and amazing scores. Really different, kind of jarring, playing with tension, unusual instrumentation. Or Trent Reznor, he's done several films. Right? The Social Network was the big one, I think that everybody saw and like, wow, this score is amazing. Or, you know, Ryuichi Sakamoto who did like The Revenant, right, this amazing Japanese composer scoring films. I mean, they were really powerful and they've always influenced me and I like listening to soundtracks on their own.
And so it started to dawn on me that we were creating a soundtrack for a film that just didn't exist. I talked to a lot of my friends who make films and kind of talked to them about their process and how they storyboard things, and that's ultimately what happened, is we were kind of creating this narrative form of like, what is sort of the linear events that occurred, who were the players? What would've been happening, trying to create some narratives.
So we played around with title ideas, right? For each song, and that kind of gives you an entry point to what might be going on. And then the (I guess they're not songs, they don't have words), but the scores, the tunes, rather than having kind of the conventional, here's the intro, here's the verse, here's the chorus, here's the bridge, here's the verse, here's the chorus, or whatever your song structure might be, thinking about it almost in movements, right? On a time scale that followed what we were imagining was happening. So, beautiful process, and I think it turned out better than we could have ever have hoped. [Music clip from Red River War album]
We started playing with a bit different palette of sounds; we were working with a small group of string players from Texas and sort of a chamber orchestra kind of format, but a lot of experimental bowing techniques, right, like really aggressive at times or really languid, kind of wild string flourishes and things like this, and thwacking the strings a bunch. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Melinda: Well, this is something I love about you, that you're always kind of growing and expanding creatively. So I think one thing I want to ask is, I know the creative journey is not always an easy one, right? Is there a particular turning point, crisis, epiphany in your own creative journey that shaped the way you think about your creative work?
Michael: Yeah, I think I tried to do it for a living and failed miserably.
Melinda: Yeah, same here, right? [Laughter]
Michael: And it scarred me. Yeah, I played in bands around Austin and just, you know, I played big shows, and you just, there's just no money in it. I know people who are, you know, by public perception, very successful musicians, and it's hard to scratch a living. There's more music now than has ever existed before and it's all at your fingertips and it's really hard to get people interested in what you're doing. And then you have to go through the grind of playing at clubs and livin’ the late night life and you know, drinking Lone Star in lieu of pay and things like this. And it's just, it sucks. And so that's what did it for me.
Melinda: So where did you land with that?
Michael: Well, when it didn't work and didn't pan out and so, wound up actually because of you, interestingly, meeting up with the co-founders of Positive Energy and I've always been interested in kind of the intersection of science and art and they're a building science company and I have helped them bring the idea, kind of the loose idea, for this mission driven thing that they have, which is to make the planet a better place through the buildings that we live in, right? Like not building stupid buildings. And in order to make that somewhat understandable, you have to really be creative and you have to find channels that you can meet people, so that was a major way point for me to be like, shifting the focus.
Melinda: Yeah, I mean that's a big shift, right from trying to live the creative life a hundred percent, to okay, now I'm going into building science.
Michael: Yep. Right.
Melinda: But you have managed to be very creative within that context, and that's one of the things I'm really interested in is how do creativity and entrepreneurship and business relate to each other? Because I think any kind of entrepreneurial journey, is inherently creative and one of the things that you've done there is to co-create and co-produce The Building Science Podcast, you've been doing that for eight years now. I'm curious, what's the biggest lesson you've learned in that time about communicating highly technical, potentially very boring information to a wider audience, in a way that it matters, that people understand the importance?
Michael: Yeah. Well, there's a couple of layers to this, right? The first is that in terms of entrepreneurship, there is a really unfortunate perception about creative people that they don't have any scientific proficiency, and I wish people would kinda shake that off, because they necessarily need to work together. You know, the whole STEM versus STEAM thing, right? That's in the public vernacular now, and with Positive Energy, it was exactly that. We could get up there and give a scientific paper presentation, but it doesn't communicate ideas that people care about generally because they don't have the frame of reference, they don't understand why they should care about it, and this is something that I think scientists need to get better at doing generally. And so when we started the podcast, it was like we need a vehicle that can deliver technical information in a framework where people care about it.
And our whole thing--we're an engineering firm, we're a science consulting firm, that primarily works with architects, and architects are deeply creative people, and they also exist at this kind of confluence of engineering. It's like art, science, creativity, and making it exist. That, that takes a lot of knowledge from many different fields to work. And so trying to meet that creative drive, like what are the reasons that you got into this career in the first place, Mr. or Mrs. Architect? What is the thing that drew you to this? And a lot of it's like, well, I want to create, I want to make beautiful things, I want to leave a legacy. There are so many ways you can tap into that from the perspective that Positive Energy holds, which is that buildings should be places where people thrive and they should be things that last a long time, and they should be things that are beautiful. So the whole…
Melinda: And places that are healthy and habitable.
Michael: Exactly. Totally. And that form versus function argument that you hear a lot of people discuss in the architectural field. We're making that happen. We're bringing form and function together in a lot of ways.
Melinda: Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So, as I kind of said in the beginning, you know, to me you're somebody that really epitomizes the creative life in so many different forms as we've just touched on. And you have this kind of endless curiosity drive to create an experiment, which is really the hallmark of a creative person. And I'm curious, you know, like in Syncreate, we talk a lot about how to map out the creative process or the journey, you know, so it's not just this mysterious thing like either inspiration strikes or it doesn't. Right. You know, that there are actually some stages along the way. And so one of the things we talk about is how do we track our own creative process? How do we come to understand what works for us so that on the next project we can incorporate that and move through the whole process maybe a little bit more gracefully. So I'm curious, what have you learned about your own creative and artistic process along the way?
Michael: That's a really good question. I think I hold the view that life is art in a lot of ways. My favorite artist is Terry Allen. He's also from the Panhandle. Amazing songwriter, painter, sculptor, playwright. I mean, he's done it all. I've met him, I've talked to him about kind of his creative life and at some point, he's not sure when, but you know, you kind of break down the barrier between what your life is and what your art is. And so then it just becomes a matter of like, how do you live? That's the question.
And so for me personally, my creative journey is not just this endless stream of creativity all the time, I think of it as waves that they kind of come in and crash and I think they're, through meditation practice, I've learned to really pay attention to my mind, and when a creative wave is forming and cresting. I know how to follow it now. And then there are plenty of times when I don't have, you know, maybe I'm deep in, in the business side of things. I'm not feeling that drive or that spark. I've rested with it like it's okay. It's not a problem.
And so in terms of like organizational tracking, when I can feel a wave coming, I try to just capture everything I can, whether it’s sketches, whether it's writing, whether it's music, like record it. Get it down in some form that you can come back to later and you can make sense of, or you can use an idea, a snippet here and there. It's a little chaotic, but it is certainly functional for me. I tend to be more organized when I have a clear idea of something that needs to happen. And then it's like, okay, well what are the steps I need to take? I don't really set myself deadlines too often. The last two albums I released, I got kind of lucky and managed to put together with enough lead time that I was like, I'm gonna release these on my birthday, it's a little gift.
Melinda: Yeah, definitely.
Michael: And so that, you know, that was more happenstance than a deadline, but, I don't know. Maybe I'll set myself a deadline for the next one.
Melinda: Yeah. Well, there's so many things I love about this, you know, this notion of riding the waves of creativity. And acknowledging that there are waves, there are ebbs and flows in the process. And then it sounds like you've learned, you know, when inspiration is coming, you have a space and a process for recording those ideas. And when you're focused on other things, it may be, not that you're not being creative, but you're exercising your creativity in a different way, you know, more toward the business side or whatever it is.
And then the other thing I appreciate here is bringing it back full circle to mindfulness, and one of the things that I've really learned from my experience with mindfulness and contemplative arts practices, for me, it really changed how I approached creativity in general from this more driven, product focused kind of way that would often become very stressful and frustrating, into this more, you know, kind of returning to that childlike sense of play and curiosity and starting from this open space and seeing what wants to arise. I mean, for me, it makes it much more joyful.
Michael: Yeah, I love that. And it's true. When you're in an ebb, mindfulness practice allows you to really see the world for what it is, even if it's mundane seeming or boring, like, there’s joy in all of that. And then when the creative wave comes, you have endless notes, right? From just what you've seen and what you remember. Like I would never, if I was still in the bands I used to be in trying to make it, [laughter] I don't think I ever would've made an album about a canyon. But I did, because I didn't care what people thought about it.
And because you understand how to work with your mind, you can take those ideas and directions that may not fit a model that exists. It may not fit a creative framework that you yourself even understand. But if you're willing to go with it and just kind of see what happens, then it, all of a sudden it's very freeing from a creative perspective. You can just let loose and explore territory that may not make sense until you're there.
Melinda: Well, thank you so much for being here today.
Michael: Thanks for having me.
Melinda: It's always a pleasure spending time with you, and if anyone did want to find out more about what you're up to, where can they find you? I know you have a website called Sleepy burrito.
Michael: sleepyburrito.com. Okay. That's where you can find me.
Melinda: And everything is there? It's all kind of a hub for all your creative work? Okay, perfect.
M Walker: Exactly. Thank you so much. Thanks, Melinda. Really appreciate it.
Melinda: Thanks again to Michael Walker for our conversation. Again, you can find out more about his work at sleepyburrito.com. This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with Production Assistance by Brandon Burke. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
Today on the show, Michael Walker. Michael is many things. A musician, songwriter, photographer, podcaster, a creative polymath. These days, he works for an organization called Positive Energy, a building science consulting firm based here in Austin, Texas. Outside of his job at Positive Energy, Michael continues to work as a musician. He recently released a couple of instrumental albums inspired by the Palo Duro Canyon area in the Texas Panhandle.
You'll hear more about that in our conversation. Michael's been in Austin for a number of years now, and we first met at a local Buddhist meditation center. However, he actually grew up in Amarillo, not exactly a center of Buddhist culture. He's come a long way from his West Texas upbringing, but his recent work revisits the landscape where he grew up. So I started the conversation by asking him to tell me a little bit about his relationship with Amarillo.
Michael: If you've ever been to the Texas panhandle, you can imagine just this flat, seemingly desolate landscape. It's just miles and miles in any direction. The old joke there is if your dog runs away, you can stand up on your tractor and watch everyone away for a few days. Or on a clear day, you can see the back of your own head, you know, that kind of thing. It's conducive to agricultural life. It's a ranching community.
But what a lot of people don't realize is that it’s also the location of the headwaters of the Red River and there is essentially a massive break in, well, there's a couple of things that are happening, right? So as you go north in Texas and hit the Panhandle, you'll hit what's called the Llano Estacado, which is the staked plains as they're called, and it's this massive uplift, right, up onto the high plains. And then the further north that you go, that same geographical formation is connected to the second largest canyon system in the United States, next to the Grand Canyon. And it's a series of canyons, Palo Duro Canyon being the largest of which.
Interestingly, kind of my own journey of relearning about the place that I'm from led me to a lot of really interesting writing from people like Dan Flores, which if you've never read anything by him, I highly recommend it. I think his most famous work is Coyote America, sort of about the evolutionary, spiritual and political history of the Coyote. Amazing book. So his writing really unlocked a lot for me in terms of thinking about the place I'm from and even about creative projects, like how do you tackle a subject? But it's gorgeous. This canyon is stunning.
Melinda: It's stunning. Yeah.
Michael: People don't realize it. It's like driving down this flat place and then it's this massive hole in the ground. And from a geological perspective, from a flora and fauna perspective, and kind of human history, and the people that have been involved in the relatively short timeframe that humans have been here, it has been host to a many drama. And so that idea was really curious for me. Because I left this place, cast it off and I'm done with you. And then as I got older and more mature and started really trying to appreciate the place I was from, I realized I didn't know what I was casting off to begin with, and I wanted to understand that.
And so, reading the writing of people like Dan Flores and various other authors, the first kind of undertaking, I did some photography shoots. I've done some kind of writing about that place to kind of get the gears turning, but I wound up wanting to do an instrumental piece about it, and it was really kind of through the lens of before humans were in Palo Duro Canyon, what did that place look like? Thinking about the animals that were there. I mean, it was full of grizzly bears, and wolves, and elk, and it was teeming. And there are early reports as Europeans were moving this direction, both from the Spanish moving up from South and Central America, and also the Anglo and French settlers that were moving from the east, that account for, I mean, just unimaginable volumes of biomass that are no longer there.
And that was really staggering to me because I didn't grow up thinking about or relating the place that I lived with grizzly bears, right? These are things you think of in Montana. You know, Canada. But they were walking around, you know, where I played as a kid and that really was an interesting concept to explore. So I made an instrumental piece about it called Canyon Illuminant, which was sort of a series of vignettes about each different animal and kind of a scene of their life. And it was really wild to do that through music without words because you just, you're capturing an image or a feeling that is a lot easier to articulate with words. [Music clip from Canyon Illuminant album] From an artistic perspective, it kind of felt like I was doing a little bit of film scoring to something that didn't exist.
Melinda: Yeah, was that a new thing for you? I mean, I know you're a singer songwriter, so branching into the world of instrumental music.
Michael: Totally. Yeah. And the palette of sounds was really kind of simple for that one. It was drums, bass, guitar. I did a lot of kind of American primitivism style guitar picking. So I make music with my childhood best friend Jacob Combs and he's a phenomenal guitar player, wonderful piano player, but he's recently, he has two kids now and he has gotten into synthesizers and his kids love to play with the synthesizers with him. And he has this corner of his house that's just covered in modular synthesizers and it's like a mad scientist laboratory. But when we started blending these kind of acoustic piano guitar sounds with these rather ethereal, kind-of psychedelic, almost synthesizer sounds. [Music clip from Canyon Illuminant album]
So once we released that, it was met with I think, a lot of interest. I wound up partnering with an organization called Project Coyote, which is an advocacy group for predator species. They loved the concept and thought it was kind of reflective of their mission, and I became, they have a program called Artists for the Wild, and since my album touched on several different species, they thought this would be great. And so that partnership's really cool. It's kind of whatever you want it to be. And they're really supportive, and it got, Jacob and I to thinking we're like, we should do a follow up to this, ‘cause I feel like there's so much more to explore.
And so we sort of zoomed in time to this period in relatively modern history called the Red River War, which was the last military battle or series of military battles between the United States Army and the Southern Plains tribes in the late 1800s, in the 1870s actually. And it's not a war a lot of people know about, but it's a really important war because it made way for American society to expand at the cost of, you know, the way of life of many tribes. And the advent of the reservation system as well. So. It's a hard topic to get into and it's really easy to fall into tropes.
We did a tremendous amount of research for this. I spent a lot of time in the Austin Public Library, scouring over, you know, original sources, witness accounts of what happened, and it's just deeply racist, even our recollection and kind of understanding of things in academia have centered on this, I think really unfortunate, deep-seated racism that exists against indigenous people.
So peeling that back and trying to understand like what is the way into this topic that doesn't fall into tropes and that is an interesting story to tell and, and one that, you know, people, when you recount history, people get really upset if it's not the history that they think it should be. And that's true across the political spectrum, so I thought it would be more interesting to tell a story about the people that were involved because there are some really notable characters, leaders from the tribes, leaders from the US Army, and they have a decent historical record to reference. And so you can take some artistic license with what they must have been feeling and going through.
Melinda: Yeah, so how do you tell a story musically without lyrics, purely through composition?
Michael: This is where the film scoring concept really drove a lot for me. I've never composed in that way before. The first album, Canyon Illuminant, was sort of a light touch in this way. It was more like, you know, it could stand on its own and not be about the canyon. And you could say, sure, okay, yeah. This album, Red River War, was much more specific to the events and the place, and so it was a lot of visualization. Like what would this have looked like? What would this have sounded like? [Music clip from Red River War album]
There's a, a really neat tradition of people in progressive music scoring films, right? There's like Johnny Greenwood with, There Will be Blood, Power of the Dog, amazing films and amazing scores. Really different, kind of jarring, playing with tension, unusual instrumentation. Or Trent Reznor, he's done several films. Right? The Social Network was the big one, I think that everybody saw and like, wow, this score is amazing. Or, you know, Ryuichi Sakamoto who did like The Revenant, right, this amazing Japanese composer scoring films. I mean, they were really powerful and they've always influenced me and I like listening to soundtracks on their own.
And so it started to dawn on me that we were creating a soundtrack for a film that just didn't exist. I talked to a lot of my friends who make films and kind of talked to them about their process and how they storyboard things, and that's ultimately what happened, is we were kind of creating this narrative form of like, what is sort of the linear events that occurred, who were the players? What would've been happening, trying to create some narratives.
So we played around with title ideas, right? For each song, and that kind of gives you an entry point to what might be going on. And then the (I guess they're not songs, they don't have words), but the scores, the tunes, rather than having kind of the conventional, here's the intro, here's the verse, here's the chorus, here's the bridge, here's the verse, here's the chorus, or whatever your song structure might be, thinking about it almost in movements, right? On a time scale that followed what we were imagining was happening. So, beautiful process, and I think it turned out better than we could have ever have hoped. [Music clip from Red River War album]
We started playing with a bit different palette of sounds; we were working with a small group of string players from Texas and sort of a chamber orchestra kind of format, but a lot of experimental bowing techniques, right, like really aggressive at times or really languid, kind of wild string flourishes and things like this, and thwacking the strings a bunch. Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Melinda: Well, this is something I love about you, that you're always kind of growing and expanding creatively. So I think one thing I want to ask is, I know the creative journey is not always an easy one, right? Is there a particular turning point, crisis, epiphany in your own creative journey that shaped the way you think about your creative work?
Michael: Yeah, I think I tried to do it for a living and failed miserably.
Melinda: Yeah, same here, right? [Laughter]
Michael: And it scarred me. Yeah, I played in bands around Austin and just, you know, I played big shows, and you just, there's just no money in it. I know people who are, you know, by public perception, very successful musicians, and it's hard to scratch a living. There's more music now than has ever existed before and it's all at your fingertips and it's really hard to get people interested in what you're doing. And then you have to go through the grind of playing at clubs and livin’ the late night life and you know, drinking Lone Star in lieu of pay and things like this. And it's just, it sucks. And so that's what did it for me.
Melinda: So where did you land with that?
Michael: Well, when it didn't work and didn't pan out and so, wound up actually because of you, interestingly, meeting up with the co-founders of Positive Energy and I've always been interested in kind of the intersection of science and art and they're a building science company and I have helped them bring the idea, kind of the loose idea, for this mission driven thing that they have, which is to make the planet a better place through the buildings that we live in, right? Like not building stupid buildings. And in order to make that somewhat understandable, you have to really be creative and you have to find channels that you can meet people, so that was a major way point for me to be like, shifting the focus.
Melinda: Yeah, I mean that's a big shift, right from trying to live the creative life a hundred percent, to okay, now I'm going into building science.
Michael: Yep. Right.
Melinda: But you have managed to be very creative within that context, and that's one of the things I'm really interested in is how do creativity and entrepreneurship and business relate to each other? Because I think any kind of entrepreneurial journey, is inherently creative and one of the things that you've done there is to co-create and co-produce The Building Science Podcast, you've been doing that for eight years now. I'm curious, what's the biggest lesson you've learned in that time about communicating highly technical, potentially very boring information to a wider audience, in a way that it matters, that people understand the importance?
Michael: Yeah. Well, there's a couple of layers to this, right? The first is that in terms of entrepreneurship, there is a really unfortunate perception about creative people that they don't have any scientific proficiency, and I wish people would kinda shake that off, because they necessarily need to work together. You know, the whole STEM versus STEAM thing, right? That's in the public vernacular now, and with Positive Energy, it was exactly that. We could get up there and give a scientific paper presentation, but it doesn't communicate ideas that people care about generally because they don't have the frame of reference, they don't understand why they should care about it, and this is something that I think scientists need to get better at doing generally. And so when we started the podcast, it was like we need a vehicle that can deliver technical information in a framework where people care about it.
And our whole thing--we're an engineering firm, we're a science consulting firm, that primarily works with architects, and architects are deeply creative people, and they also exist at this kind of confluence of engineering. It's like art, science, creativity, and making it exist. That, that takes a lot of knowledge from many different fields to work. And so trying to meet that creative drive, like what are the reasons that you got into this career in the first place, Mr. or Mrs. Architect? What is the thing that drew you to this? And a lot of it's like, well, I want to create, I want to make beautiful things, I want to leave a legacy. There are so many ways you can tap into that from the perspective that Positive Energy holds, which is that buildings should be places where people thrive and they should be things that last a long time, and they should be things that are beautiful. So the whole…
Melinda: And places that are healthy and habitable.
Michael: Exactly. Totally. And that form versus function argument that you hear a lot of people discuss in the architectural field. We're making that happen. We're bringing form and function together in a lot of ways.
Melinda: Yeah. That's great. Yeah. So, as I kind of said in the beginning, you know, to me you're somebody that really epitomizes the creative life in so many different forms as we've just touched on. And you have this kind of endless curiosity drive to create an experiment, which is really the hallmark of a creative person. And I'm curious, you know, like in Syncreate, we talk a lot about how to map out the creative process or the journey, you know, so it's not just this mysterious thing like either inspiration strikes or it doesn't. Right. You know, that there are actually some stages along the way. And so one of the things we talk about is how do we track our own creative process? How do we come to understand what works for us so that on the next project we can incorporate that and move through the whole process maybe a little bit more gracefully. So I'm curious, what have you learned about your own creative and artistic process along the way?
Michael: That's a really good question. I think I hold the view that life is art in a lot of ways. My favorite artist is Terry Allen. He's also from the Panhandle. Amazing songwriter, painter, sculptor, playwright. I mean, he's done it all. I've met him, I've talked to him about kind of his creative life and at some point, he's not sure when, but you know, you kind of break down the barrier between what your life is and what your art is. And so then it just becomes a matter of like, how do you live? That's the question.
And so for me personally, my creative journey is not just this endless stream of creativity all the time, I think of it as waves that they kind of come in and crash and I think they're, through meditation practice, I've learned to really pay attention to my mind, and when a creative wave is forming and cresting. I know how to follow it now. And then there are plenty of times when I don't have, you know, maybe I'm deep in, in the business side of things. I'm not feeling that drive or that spark. I've rested with it like it's okay. It's not a problem.
And so in terms of like organizational tracking, when I can feel a wave coming, I try to just capture everything I can, whether it’s sketches, whether it's writing, whether it's music, like record it. Get it down in some form that you can come back to later and you can make sense of, or you can use an idea, a snippet here and there. It's a little chaotic, but it is certainly functional for me. I tend to be more organized when I have a clear idea of something that needs to happen. And then it's like, okay, well what are the steps I need to take? I don't really set myself deadlines too often. The last two albums I released, I got kind of lucky and managed to put together with enough lead time that I was like, I'm gonna release these on my birthday, it's a little gift.
Melinda: Yeah, definitely.
Michael: And so that, you know, that was more happenstance than a deadline, but, I don't know. Maybe I'll set myself a deadline for the next one.
Melinda: Yeah. Well, there's so many things I love about this, you know, this notion of riding the waves of creativity. And acknowledging that there are waves, there are ebbs and flows in the process. And then it sounds like you've learned, you know, when inspiration is coming, you have a space and a process for recording those ideas. And when you're focused on other things, it may be, not that you're not being creative, but you're exercising your creativity in a different way, you know, more toward the business side or whatever it is.
And then the other thing I appreciate here is bringing it back full circle to mindfulness, and one of the things that I've really learned from my experience with mindfulness and contemplative arts practices, for me, it really changed how I approached creativity in general from this more driven, product focused kind of way that would often become very stressful and frustrating, into this more, you know, kind of returning to that childlike sense of play and curiosity and starting from this open space and seeing what wants to arise. I mean, for me, it makes it much more joyful.
Michael: Yeah, I love that. And it's true. When you're in an ebb, mindfulness practice allows you to really see the world for what it is, even if it's mundane seeming or boring, like, there’s joy in all of that. And then when the creative wave comes, you have endless notes, right? From just what you've seen and what you remember. Like I would never, if I was still in the bands I used to be in trying to make it, [laughter] I don't think I ever would've made an album about a canyon. But I did, because I didn't care what people thought about it.
And because you understand how to work with your mind, you can take those ideas and directions that may not fit a model that exists. It may not fit a creative framework that you yourself even understand. But if you're willing to go with it and just kind of see what happens, then it, all of a sudden it's very freeing from a creative perspective. You can just let loose and explore territory that may not make sense until you're there.
Melinda: Well, thank you so much for being here today.
Michael: Thanks for having me.
Melinda: It's always a pleasure spending time with you, and if anyone did want to find out more about what you're up to, where can they find you? I know you have a website called Sleepy burrito.
Michael: sleepyburrito.com. Okay. That's where you can find me.
Melinda: And everything is there? It's all kind of a hub for all your creative work? Okay, perfect.
M Walker: Exactly. Thank you so much. Thanks, Melinda. Really appreciate it.
Melinda: Thanks again to Michael Walker for our conversation. Again, you can find out more about his work at sleepyburrito.com. This episode was produced by Mike Osborne with Production Assistance by Brandon Burke. Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn where you can also find out more about Syncreate. Thanks for listening and see you next time.
