Amber Goodwyn on Releasing Perfect Conditions

Amber Goodwyn (: 00:00

I'm a better parent and partner if I have had adequate time to be an artist first. I don't let myself feel badly about that, but I could easily feel badly about that, but it's just true.

Nikko Snyder (: 00:19

I'm Nikko Snyder and this is Parenting Creative, a podcast that explores the places where creative life and parenting collide and all the magic and mess that ensues. In this, our first season, we're delving into the creative lives of parents making art that ranges from theatre and music to poetry, journalism and craft. Our goal is to build community and connection for those living deep in the struggles of caring for others while at the same time prioritizing their own creative lives. If you'd like to hear more conversations about making art while parenting,

Please help grow our community by following Parenting Creative wherever you get your podcasts, leaving us a five-star review with a few kind words, and visiting parentingcreative.com to sign up for our email newsletter.

Today on the podcast, I'm talking to Amber Goodwyn. Amber is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and poet who lives on Treaty 4 territory in Regina, Saskatchewan. In our conversation, Amber describes her music project, Natural Sympathies, as extroverted, performative, high femme. And on her website, naturalsympathies.com, she writes, natural sympathies makes fantastical art pop.

that explores inner life through an alchemical combination of poetic lyrics, inventive songwriting, and lush vocal harmonies within a synth-laden soundscape. Natural Sympathies works in concept album cycles that often expand into performance art and other mediums as each project dictates, often involving other artists and the general public and shenaniganry. In our conversation, Amber and I talk about parenting when parenting isn't central to your identity. The universality of birth and death, clear divisions of labor,

performing parenting on social media, prioritizing art and refusing to feel bad about it, the final deadline, otherwise known as death, releasing perfectionism and the need for perfect conditions, and becoming ready by simply doing the thing. Here's my conversation with interdisciplinary artist, musician, and poet Amber Goodwyn.

Welcome Amber to the podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for joining me. Before we get started, I just wanted to say a couple things about how we know each other. We've known each other not super well, but for quite a while. My oldest and your child are almost exactly the same age, I think.

Amber Goodwyn (: 02:19

me Nikko.

Nikko Snyder (: 02:36

When they were little, we were neighbors and they were buds and went to daycare together. And so there's that part. And when I was living in Regina, I got to see you perform in natural sympathies and have got to experience you in performance and your music over the years. You've also worked with my partner, Jeremy, in your role as artistic director with the Regina Folk Festival. So our paths have crossed in different ways over the years.

Yeah, I guess have been aware of some of your creative work for many years. So I'm really looking forward to hearing about your artistic life and your parenting life and where those two things have collided, I guess.

Amber Goodwyn (: 03:15

Nikko, it's been really lovely to know you in these different ways and you know we all contain multitudes and you know there's different seasons in our lives and it's kind of fun to you know re-engage at different points along the path you know and yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 03:30

For

sure. And I can't wait to hear where your creative voice is taking you in terms of the themes that you work with and have worked with over the years. Before we do that, maybe I'll invite you to maybe just introduce yourself in terms of where you are in the world, your place in the world. And then also, yeah, if you could introduce your art practice and talk a little bit about how that's evolved over time and themes that you are exploring in your work, that'd be wonderful.

Amber Goodwyn (: 03:56

Yeah, so yeah, my name is Amber Goodwyn. For anyone who's not looking at this, I'm a white woman with blonde hair in her early 40s. I'm currently based in Regina, Saskatchewan, in Treaty 4 territory. And I've been living here for about a decade, but I previously lived in Montreal, which I sort of consider my hometown. And then as a kid, I grew up in Nassau, Bahamas, which is sort of a strange little...

reality, truth about me. So I've moved around quite a bit. I am an interdisciplinary artist, so I don't have any one practice. I sort of braid them all together. many people know me for, you know, playing in natural sympathies, but I've also been a writer for a long time. And that's sort of been a lot of my focus lately. Actually, last night, I was just a part of my first poetry reading in a long time at the sound art event.

And what I did was that I actually kind of incorporated my sculpture and performance art background into that. And I had this telephone prop and I told my poems to people on the other end of this imaginary line and had like a costume and everything. so I think the only thing I can say about myself for sure is that I'm an artist. Everything else is sort of, it's malleable. I'm also a parent of a 10 year old child and yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 05:22

When we've talked before, you talked about how art is really central to how you see yourself and how you are in the world. So do you want to, I guess, say anything about that, like the role of art in your life and also maybe the themes? Like, what are you commenting on in your art? What are you exploring?

Amber Goodwyn (: 05:39

So when I say that I'm an artist, I don't want to over inflate that in any way. I just think it's my way of being in the world. I think that other people are natural caregivers or like they like to serve and help people or maybe they're drawn to religion or philosophy, things like this, stuff that's at the core of their identity and the way that they sort of make meaning. For me, it's all about creation and reflection and the sense of play and discovery.

When I'm making work, I don't know what I'm going to make until I start making it. And that's sort of the essential piece of what I do. And that helps me discover what I'm interested in and what I'm trying to express and what's important to me even. And so in that way, I really explore all kinds of themes. But there are overarching themes in my life that I do like to touch upon. For me, I have a strong bent.

toward existential questioning and death. I've experienced a lot of death in my life of people I love and also a lot of change, a lot of death of old selves, ego deaths and things like that. So I've learned a lot about shedding skins and I'm really interested in that. I really am interested in how nobody's ever one thing. There is no final form. There is no resolution ever. The only thing that's true is change and death.

But within that, I like to examine sex and sexuality and gender. The way that sex and sexuality show up in my work now has a lot more to do with performance and discussions of pleasure and bodily autonomy. And once again, the sense of play and joy, especially coming back to the theme of this podcast. As parents, as mothers in particular, sex and sexuality is often not as

prioritized or not associated with mothers and parents. You know, when you talk about mothers and parents, sometimes it's a desexualized conversation. It's almost like taboo. I refuse that. I completely refuse that. How do you think I got pregnant? That's not true. Not everybody who gets pregnant has had sex or has or doesn't always have to do anything with sex. And I totally am just joking. But I just think it's

another way that capitalist patriarchy diminishes and commodifies women's bodies in particular, but their body should be their own, their choices should be their own, and their realities should be respected and nurtured and encouraged. So I don't often start off my biographies by saying I'm a parent or a mother, because as important as it is to me to be an active parent and an active mother, it's not central to my identity. It's like,

you know, my child is their own person. I am my own person. We love each other and I want to do well for them.

Nikko Snyder (: 08:36

Maybe we can talk then a little bit about becoming a parent and the role that art played for you in that transition.

Amber Goodwyn (: 08:44

Sure, yeah. When I moved to Regina, Saskatchewan, I didn't know a lot of people. I became a parent about a year after I moved here. That was not the plan, but it was welcome. But I did find it very isolating and I struggled with some postpartum anxiety, anxiety and depression. Never officially diagnosed, but is in keeping with some of my mental health journeys. And so once again, the way that I've sort of navigated any difficult moment is through

my art. And so I had been really brokenhearted when I left Montreal because I left my beloved band, Cobra and Vulture, which had like my best friend in that band and, you know, two very close friends. And, you know, we had like a lot of momentum going on and it was just a hard decision to move here, but something that opened up when I moved here.

and around the time that I became a parent and when I started to re-engage with music was that I was able to explore my performance and the themes of sexuality and gender in a way I hadn't really done in depth when being a part of a band, like a trio, where the space is held in a different way. I also didn't know a lot of people, like I said, so I didn't have a band to hang out with or practice with. So what I did is I made electronic music for the first time in my life.

I went down into my basement and I made music with headphones on because I had a really sound sensitive child. And anyway, nobody wants to wake up a sleeping baby. Or maybe they do. But my baby was very awake all the time, like epically so. And it was a thing. so yeah, I just made music, called it Natural Sympathies. And then as they got a bit older, as I got more confident with that, I Natural Sympathies like a really extroverted, performative, high femme performance.

thing where I had a lot of dance moves and choreographies. I invited amateur or non-professional dancers to develop choreographies with me. So I'd backup dancers. They're called the mutual affection. They're all close friends now. And that's how I also built community for myself at that time. That was really vulnerable and a lot about change. I was floored by how little there is.

in culture about the hero's journey of becoming a parent, in particular mother, just the physical changes, the mental changes, just this immense responsibility that is just so undervalued or just sort of depicted as dreamy and feeds into all the things that will make you buy lots of baby products and, you know, make beautiful Instagram stories about your experience. But it's just like, how wild is it that you like make a

human, bring them into this world, you know, in blood and pain, and then you like raise this whole other human, you know, and protect them and try to, you know, keep yourself within all that. Of course, not everybody who comes to parenthood births a child. So I just want to also recognize that when I'm saying that I know that there's more than one way to become a parent. I was also amazed by the universality of it. And as I moved through different seasons of my life, and I experienced people with illness,

Both my parents have died. was there for both of them when they died. And then birthing my own child is just like these incredibly human, universal, ancient experiences you go through, you know?

Nikko Snyder (: 12:05

Has that made it into the content of your work?

Amber Goodwyn (: 12:08

Yeah, I mean, I wrote this song called Hello for Natural Sympathies and it was about being isolated and being a parent as well as like being there when my mother was dying. So it was about caregiving for both, you know, my child and then also my mother. Yeah, just feeling isolated in those experiences at that time in my life, just given that I was new to the city and just making friends and my friends and my support network was so far away. Yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 12:36

You have referenced death and that you have experienced loss in your life. When we talked before, you talked about this idea of the final deadline, which I mean, I think that resonated with me. And I'm just, curious, how does that relate to your need to create or desire to create?

Amber Goodwyn (: 12:56

I have an urgency to make the things I imagine. I don't often procrastinate. I really trust my vision. I think that comes with age and experience and practice. And I think underneath all of that is this sense of knowing how precious life is, how short it is, how changeable it is. So...

There was a short time in my life where I had a hard time making things and part of it was I kept waiting for the perfect moment or all the different pieces didn't seem to be quite in place for me to do this thing or I wanted to be more ready. What I've learned since is that you become ready by doing the thing. You practice, you put yourself out there, you make mistakes. Sometimes you just have to go through phases of your art or your life to come out on the other side.

hopefully be more satisfied at some point. I don't obsess about death, but once again, it's always there. And even before people in my life passed away, I always had this sense of I have big things I want to do in my life. And often my projects are ambitious in scope. They have been too ambitious. And so, you know, I've learned to sort of also pay attention to my capacity within that. But I do think of death as the final deadline.

And I know also that when it arrives for me, I won't have everything done. The to-do list goes on forever. Things will be unfinished. And that's something I make a lot of peace with and think about. And I don't think about too much anymore. I just sort of have made friends with. I think that's a nice thing about getting older is kind of having that perspective. I read a lot about Buddhism, in particular, the sense of like not holding onto things, just sort of letting them go.

but also the other side of that is just realizing how precious every moment is.

Nikko Snyder (: 14:52

Can you talk a bit more about, I guess, how your art has been informed over time by the experience of parenthood and vice versa? Like, how does your art come into play shaping you as a parent?

Amber Goodwyn (: 15:05

One thing that being a parent really helped me with was releasing perfect conditions. So I got really good at building schedules, finding little bits of time to make work, just to chip away at things, you know, every day or if I had five minutes or half an hour or two hours, you know, my partner and I were really careful to give each other time alone, because he's an artist as well, to do our work because

you know, we need to be happy whole people. So I learned how to get really efficient and it helped when I got into the studio. Sometimes there was that openness and play, but often it was quite focused because of the time pressure. I didn't love that always, but it was a really good way to learn how to be. It's something that, you know, now I use, you know, having a busy professional career, like able to sort of make art in the interim periods.

Another thing is that, you know, I used to be really shy. used to really like close. It used to be shy in some ways about the early mistake making part of creating anything new. So I used to always need to be alone or someone not to hear something or see something. And I still need the door closed every now and then. But honestly, just having my kid wandering around coloring, you know, making crafts on the floor while I'm like editing takes or something, or it's just a part of my reality now.

And also I really love the way that it helps me to be a better parent. I'm not ambitious in my parenting because I just trust that living by example is the best way that I am when it comes to parenting. And so modeling for my child who's feminine as well, just there's that dimension. Just modeling that my time is important, my art practice is important, thus their time.

and their art and their explorations are also important, just having this sort of mutual respect and also this excitement to share with one another. Not everything I make is appropriate to share with my child, but most things are. And it's really funny, when my kid was younger, every now and then they would pretend to be in a band too or something like this. And they just always assumed that every band had backup dancers.

Just like that. Yeah, of course they would. Of course. Of course they would all have costumes and dance moves. So I think that's pretty fun. And I've also really enjoyed being able to bring some of that energy, some of my work to Girls Rock Regina, formerly known as Girls Rock Regina. Now it's GRR now, but basically it's a rock camp that's here. And my child has been a part of it for four years or maybe five now. And so...

I used to be involved briefly on the organizing committee and then also giving workshops or being an instrument instructor. And now as my child is in the camp, I often come in and do either workshops on songwriting or stage presence or even fashion or whatever. And they're just so proud that mom's gonna be there and they just have this sense of like...

knowing that this is something that is real and important and we're in support of it. And even if they don't become a musician or center art in their life like I have or anything, it just lets them know that anything that is important to them is something that we will support and make time for and that they should do that for themselves first.

Nikko Snyder (: 18:34

And just a quick note about GRR, it's a volunteer based organization whose mission is to amplify and empower the voices of female, trans, two-spirit and gender expansive youth and adults through music, creation, collaboration and performance. You can find out more about this very cool organization in our show notes.

Amber Goodwyn (: 18:52

I have really funny story about poetry, that part of my practice. My child went to this sort of informal artist-led day camp led by the amazing theater artist, Chris Alvarez, and her daughters a year or two ago. And there was this like sort of sharing circle that I couldn't attend, but my child stood up and just decided in that moment that because their mom is a poet, that they too also must be a poet.

and then just sort of like freestyle improvise a poem and kind of got lost in their thoughts. And then Chris like sort of helped them come back and they were like, yeah, my mom was like an award winning poet. And so I'm going to make a poem for you today. And to be clear, I had only won like one very minor local poetry award at that time.

But you know, it was also so touching and hilarious and you know one of the best things about having a kid is like making space and giving dignity for their like, you know, sometimes overconfidence and their exploration of self and and then funny things like that.

Nikko Snyder (: 19:59

Later on in our conversation, Amber read us the poem she's referring to. Toboggan Hill won best hometown entry in the wonderful independent social justice magazine Briar Patches writing in the margins contest in 2022. You can find a link to Toboggan Hill and to Briar Patch in our show notes. Here's Amber.

Amber Goodwyn (: 20:17

So I consider myself something of like a page poet. So not like a spoken word poet, which is such an amazing skill. So I just sort of read these, just keep that in mind for people who pay attention to poetry and that sort of thing. So Toboggan Hill. We climbed the Toboggan Hill next to the refinery at the edge of town. Our eyes squint into the low solstice sun, shadows bluing down the slope.

We turn away and beyond the regular clutter of power lines we glimpse unbroken horizon, great plains, curve of planet. We climb onto plastic sleds and hurdle back toward earth to the small city where every tree has been planted by hand.

Nikko Snyder (: 21:05

Thank you.

Amber Goodwyn (: 21:06

Yeah, that's it. Cool. Yeah, of all different kinds of poems, that's obviously one that's a little bit about, you know, living here in the prairies and yeah, and just sort of like the bigger picture of that. What I really love about my community here in Regina is like just knowing people like Chris and other artists who know how to hold space and make space for silly kids and earnest children and everything in between, you know.

I completely trust a lot of the artists here. They're just so thoughtful. It's a beautiful city for raising kids, you know, in general. families are well integrated. Yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 21:43

Definitely agree. That was our experience as well. You had mentioned, you and your partner, you're really prioritizing your artistic lives and work and this idea of taking care of that and taking care of your energy. And I'm wondering if you could speak to that, how you take care of your energy for your creative self and your creative life.

Amber Goodwyn (: 22:05

Yeah, once again, it's about making time and having solitude. So from what that means for me on a daily basis is that I wake up really early, sometimes, well, usually most days 5am, 5.30am. And I at the very least meditate and that sort of thing, just because that's really important to my sense of well-being just on every level. But also, I schedule band practices, I share Google Calendar with my partner so that they know when that's going to happen.

I have a writing group and I make sure that I attend it. It's very easy to deprioritize some of that for family engagements. the best case scenario is that those things can be held in balance, because I like to be there for my family as much as I possibly can. But I'm a better parent and partner if I have had adequate time to be an artist first or on my own.

I don't let myself feel badly about that, but I could easily feel badly about that. But it's just true, you know, and I don't need to explain it to my child that way. I don't want them to feel deprioritized. I just want them to know, you know, when things like that come up, they just know because it's been there their whole life that, okay, mummy has banned practice. And a nice thing that just happens to be true for my situation is that my partner's creative life is very different than mine. So for me, I need to be continually practicing. Like every day I do something.

For my partner, the process is longer, it's more patient. can be put on, you know, the backburner is the wrong word, but it just moves at a different pace. And he requires solitude also and focus and is less likely to have distractions or kids in the room, you know? So there's like some balances there that we hold for each other that have only been made clear through the actual practice of life, you know?

We found our way here. And it's something that's been really helpful to just for our home life is dividing labor very clearly. So for example, I do all the grocery shopping and cooking, like all the suppers and school lunches and breakfasts and things like this. Because it suits my nature, I like to cook. I have a really clear vision of like what we need and what's doable. And I can cook with distractions around me or just quickly or adapt.

easily to, you know, ingredients that you have on hand or somebody's, you know, whatever's happening in the day. I'm not particularly tidy as a person. My partner is very tidy. And so he takes care of all the cleaning and laundry and everything, everything. So that division of labor has really reduced, has made our lives easier as artists and parents and workers. You know, we're not even mentioning our day jobs and responsibilities we have outside, but just makes life easier. We don't have a lot of family support.

in town. So we don't have, you know, grandparents or siblings or anything like that. So it's been really important for my partner and I to make a system that works well for us. And we're both, you know, we're both eldest children in our family and very responsible people anyway. And so it's worked out well in that regard. Yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 25:11

Curious about your own upbringing and how, you know, what was modeled to you when you were a child and growing up about art, creative life, whole personhood, gender roles. I mean, there's so many things that we learn growing up. Curious at how that, how you were brought up has affected you as an artist, as a parent.

Amber Goodwyn (: 25:33

Mm-hmm. Yeah. I had a pretty untraditional upbringing. So, you know, I come from a family of artists and it was a pretty, you know, in some ways tumultuous childhood as well. So, you know, I think that maybe helps kind of bring some depth from personal experience to some of my work and understanding of other people's lives. So I'm grateful for it. But what I saw modeled was not your traditional family life.

I wasn't in organized sports. I didn't have play dates like in the traditional way of like moms standing around in a park or something or having kids come over after school, like, you know, neighbor kids and, know, I had none of that. And, you know, the way that resolves in me is sometimes I'm, I raise my eyebrows at like an over investment in like,

that kind of thing, but like I really want to be a present parent also. So it's like, you know, there's a learning curve for me just because I didn't see that modeled for myself. My partner is the opposite, know, his whole family are teachers and people who are very family focused and I'm grateful for that because where there's gaps in my experience, his come through. What I appreciate about having sort of an untraditional family where with art at the center of it's

heart is that it modeled to me that being an artist is a legitimate way of being in the world. That pursuing an authentic life for yourself in that regard is possible because I've heard so many people who had those arguments with their families, know, just heartbreaking, you know, differences in value and investment in life paths, things that are so central to everything. So I really am grateful for that. Also, the fact that my parents are pretty hands off.

has been a blessing for me, a double-edged sword to be sure, but the blessings within it is that I'm very self-sufficient and that I know how to, I'm emotionally able to take care of myself and all these sorts of things. And also I don't feel like I need to be a perfect parent because I turned out okay with my parent, the way I was parented and I see...

how well supported my child is. I invest in making sure that they're well supported and I know they're going to be fine. So I don't worry overly much about it. There may be hard years ahead as like adolescence comes along, but like honestly, every season of my child's life is new and different and presents new challenges. And we've, I'm sure we'll navigate those in the future as well, the way we always have, includes like just mutual respect.

and communication that's age appropriate, and then just sort of centering our values as well within all that. What I'm really happy about for my child is that they have a good sense of the world and some pretty strong values, and I've heard them explain pretty complex issues to their peers in ways that they were very confident about, like, you know, for example, you know, why trans kids should feel safe in schools and things like this, you know? Talking about colonial history of anything, like, it's just, you know, I feel like we're doing okay.

You know, and I think just because I don't do things like, I love this when other people do it, but I just don't have the energy to go really hard and decorating or planning my child's birthday party. Like we, you know, we do some things, they're happy, but that's, it's not a creative outlet for me. It's not the way that I express my love to them. It's an occasion that I'm happy, you know, that we're all a part of. But that's just an example. Like, you know, I don't need to make dreams come true every day. I think that enjoying the smaller things in life,

Something I really enjoyed when I had a toddler was really just seeing the world through their eyes and slowing down and paying attention to the details. And I think that's still true now, like, you know, just appreciating the smaller things, not always having to make everything an ambitious event. I saved that ambitious event energy for my art. Yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 29:36

Yeah, that's really interesting to me because I'm curious what you think about parenting as performance almost. Like I feel like there is a performative and comparative aspect of how parenting is. You know, it's like we're putting on this show and there's a desire certainly for, you know, for our kids to be happy. But then there's also the pressure of seeing other people's birthday parties on social media or like it's just, there is this, this aspect of it where we're performing and where we're comparing.

Amber Goodwyn (: 30:04

Yeah, I'm so completely turned off by performing parenthood. Maybe because once again, so much of what is performed is not interesting to me. It doesn't resonate. It's just not my experience of parenthood. Don't find it compelling at all. I am not going to share the crafts I make with my kids too often. know, like every now and then I will.

I don't know. just do not feel compelled by that at all. Just yeah, it's a turn off. It's like because I just have other things that I'm more excited to share about my own life. And especially for talking about social media, which is such a weird platform. It's like a marketing tool. They are unregulated products. They are and they're not good for you, but they, you know, in this like broken world, they are helpful for marketing. Not even helpful. You just have to use them for marketing. They just, you know.

They are what they are and I'm not marketing my effing family life to anyone, you know? Yeah, no interest. I do pay attention to certain things. Like, you know, I'm interested in internet and like social media literacy for my child and technologies and things like that, you know, especially as they get older and they're growing up in a world that is different from what I grew up in. Whenever we talk about social media or why we're taking photos and things like that.

We try to frame it appropriately for our child so that they are not overly invested in whether something is liked a lot on social media or whatever. You they don't have social media for themselves at this time. I do want to note that my partner is like a photographer and filmmaker. So there is a lot of like, there's a lot of lenses in my child's life. So it's just reality. And I'm like very visual and highly feminine. And so I'm sure that seeps into my child's consciousness in its own ways.

I of can't, once again, worry about that too much. I try to present things that are age-appropriate and eventually, once again, in age-appropriate ways, I'll talk about sexuality and sex with my kid and have been doing so for a long time since they were little, just in terms of building blocks and essential understandings. You know, have making sure my child knows appropriate names, like the real names of parts of their body. My child knows that

It's their body, their rules. And sometimes they try to pull the, it's my body, it's my rules when it comes to brushing hair and things like that. But anyway, their body, their rules, and then also consent culture is incredibly important to sort of foster in our home. Especially as my child is, you know, petite and feminine and I want them to feel that they have agency and power in bodily autonomy and that when their intuition is triggered, that something isn't right, that they know to pay close attention to it.

Nikko Snyder (: 32:56

Yeah. I just want to take a second to thank you for tuning in. Parenting Creative is an independent Canadian podcast. If you like what you hear, please help us grow by taking a few moments to sign up for our email newsletter at parentingcreative.com and by following us on social media. We're at Parenting Creative on Instagram and Blue Sky.

I would like to hear about the role of play and playfulness, fun, like in your work and perhaps also in your parenting.

Amber Goodwyn (: 33:25

So to me, making art, it's about finding truth. And often intuitively, there's some kind of guideposts that let you know that you're doing the right thing. And that usually that's like if you feel scared to do the thing that you want to do, or if it makes you laugh, or it makes you just feel like joyful. So I think it's important as artists to...

And as humans, not to resist change and to like, you know, sometimes scare yourself a little to try the new thing, to get to the next idea, you know, to develop or build on what you've made before. And a really wonderful way to do that is through play or the sense of play. Often, you know, when I come up with an idea, I am imagining things like obliquely. I'm not thinking at it. I'm just sort of daydreaming. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, what if I did this? And then if I start laughing at the idea,

or if I can't stop thinking about it, I know I certainly have to do it. So the poetry reading I've referenced a couple of times. I'm a third generation receptionist on my mother's side. And, you know, I love props. love, you know, I love the sexy movie secretary. I love this buttoned up nature, the sort of like a medium between you and your listener. And so I decided that I needed an old school handset telephone to tell my poems, you know. And when I thought of that,

I I I laughed and like, I was just like, you know what? need to, I need to find this today. And so as soon as I possibly could, not that same day, I did that. And my, performance went really well and it really resonated and it helped bring my poems to life in a way I hadn't been expecting. And the audience really resonated, it really resonated for them. And now I've got this wonderful artist, Kat Haines, who's going to be helping me build the prop further, like by having sound effects on buttons and things like this.

And it's just play, you know? But it resolves in these unexpected things. And especially when it resonates with other people, you know, or people want to share in it or engage with it. It's a sign that something, there's something there that's real and fun, you know? You know, at the beginning of the pandemic, we're all stuck at home. I was so filled with anxiety and despair and, you know, grief. I had gone through grief. I knew what grief felt like. And that's what it was.

I had this idea, there's this one piece of music I returned to Tony Conrad, early minimalist composer. He has this famous piece called Four Violins. And it's sort of an early tape loop experiment where you record something and then you loop it and you record over it. you know, this is very, like this is the sixties, if I'm not mistaken. And so he had recorded something called Four Violins. And what he had done is he recorded one note on the violin, maybe two, pretty sure it was just one.

for like minutes and then he made four different loops of that. Each of them have small variations just with like his living and breathing. There's no edits, it's just like the one full take. And I was like, I love listening to that piece of music. And then I was like, I need to cover. I need to, cover's not what you use in classical music, but like I need to cover that composition with my accordion here at home. So I made a piece called Four Accordions.

And the reason it made me laugh is because I had two pieces. There's two elements to it. One is that as soon as I had the idea, I knew it's something I wanted to do. And then I had this insane, I'm sorry to use the word insane, but it was an insane thought where was like, I need to do this before anyone else thinks of this brilliant idea. As if there was anyone else just sitting there being like, God, today's the day I'm gonna do my Tony Conrad cover with like an accordion. So I just needed to get to it.

I needed to see it done. And then the other thing that was so funny is like, it was the period of the pandemic where you weren't even really allowed to walk on the street or go to parks. And so we're all in the same house. My partner's upstairs, like, you know, helping my child with school. And I was committed to recording this four accordions just like Tony did in that there were one take, you know, 14 minutes, four times. That's a lot of time. That's like...

like an hour and a half of an insanely loud inescapable sound in your house.

And so my family was just like, it sounds like a car horn going on for an hour in the house. Anyway, so playfulness.

Nikko Snyder (: 38:01

And just a quick aside, if you're interested in hearing the original four violins written by Tony Conrad in 1964, we'll link that out in our show notes.

Amber Goodwyn (: 38:11

Okay, I guess my last most fun, beloved example of play is when I was making choreographies with the mutual affection backup dancers. So I'd bring a song, sometimes even just a demo version of the song to this group of people. And I would say like, this song feels like a bunch of people in fancy dresses waltzing through a room. It's very formal. And I feel like this is a part where we need to like jump off of something and everybody be like, yes, of course, and just like build on it.

And we felt like 12 year olds or 10 year olds, like, you know, sort of in a basement coming up with these like amazing choreographies to show our parents or something, you know, but we're just like showing it for ourselves. And a couple of times I've made songs or choices in songs where I'm like, well, this will go well with the dance move. So, you know, that sense of play I find really helps other people feel good and play and make them feel creative. It's generative. For me, it's I have a few different

creative impulses and one of them is play. And it's resulted in some really fun things and absolutely those parts of my personality I bring to playing with my child. Every day there's something super fun. Like my kid right now in all their downtime pretends to move like a cat. So they're like leaping onto furniture and like, know, trying to hold a completely normal conversation with me, but like, you know, coming into the room like a cat, it's just hilarious. And why would you want to for any reason discourage that?

because it gives them joy, gives you joy. Childhood is so, so short, so precious, and as much as possible, the best parts of childhood should be maintained and retained into your adulthood.

Nikko Snyder (: 39:52

Yeah, it's interesting. My 10 year old has taken to asking me from time to time what it's like to be an adult. Like he'll say, you know, like, mom, what is being a grownup like? And I'm really, you know, being a grownup is, is really hard. And for me, it's been really hard for the last couple of years. So I'm scared that when I respond to him, you know, I don't want to just say, well, it's, it's hard, you know.

fucking hard. it's like that retaining and nurturing that playfulness as an adult is something that frankly I struggle with and I want to model that better, you know.

Amber Goodwyn (: 40:31

Yeah, totally. And you know, I feel like I don't want to over perform my parenthood as being in any way ideal. And the sense of play is something I value highly. But the reality is I work too hard at my job, on my day job. I'm a chronic over worker. And, you know, this speaks to what you're talking about. My child has is has expressed that they do not want to become an adult because it looks too hard. And so that is something that's been coming up a lot to you. Maybe it's like a natural question in like pre-teenhood.

And that sort of woken me up to the fact that I, for my own reasons, need to stop working too much or like, you know, burning myself out. But also I need to model that better for them, you know, and bring joy and play and balance into other parts of my life. So I hear you on that. And I think there's, other reasons why my kid's a bit apprehensive about adulthood. But I think they've seen, especially in the last few years, they've seen me have to deal with

my parents dying, the pandemic, leading different nonprofit organizations through difficulty, they've seen the stress that that takes and the time that that takes away from them, away from my art even. And so I've been thinking about that a lot too, just how to model that better. So I hear you on that, Nikko. So let's find that balance together. It's like in solidarity for our kids, but more importantly also for ourselves.

Nikko Snyder (: 41:54

Yeah. Yeah. I'm interested in the sort of exploration and also failure and mistake making, how that plays into your creative practice, your life.

Amber Goodwyn (: 42:08

So nobody wants to fail or to make mistakes or to be afraid, but these are like natural, normal human emotions. And I think what's important is what you do when they arise. I tend to be quite an anxious person. It's gotten easier and softer for me as I've gotten older, but it's something I struggle with. And the more that I come up against difficult circumstances, you know, personally,

professionally, creatively. It's not that they get easier. It's just that I trust myself more as I work through the problems, or I trust other people, or I understand the complexity of human nature in a different way. So it gives me perspective and compassion. So yeah, it's sort of what I mentioned earlier in that I just know I'm gonna have to write some bad poems to get to a good one. I don't have to like share them all the time. Moments of breakthrough, they're just gonna happen.

You can't resist them. You know, I have a hard time with this as much hard time as anyone else, but they're just going to happen. You know, if you go with the flow, something I'm learning about, including bravely meeting the barriers or the changes of the hard conversations or the scary thing, you know, you need to learn how to do, whether that's, you know, in your art practice or elsewise, you just, it's good. have to go to the other side at some point, you know.

You can go the hard way or can flow as best you possibly can to that other side. Just like birth, you know, it's just gonna happen. I just remember at different points being very pregnant and I was just like, it's just, there's a doorway I'm gonna have to pass through and it's gonna happen. It's true in difficult conversations you need to have with people you care about. know, it's been really hard for me is admitting to myself that

certain kinds of art practice just don't resonate with me anymore. And I don't want people to be disappointed as I spend more more time with my poetry, for example. Once again, there's the final deadline looming, Nikko, and it's like in order to live a life that is meaningful, I know from my personal experience that you need to meet those challenges as bravely as you can. And to be brave doesn't mean to be without fear. To be brave means to do what's

aligned with your values when you are afraid, you know. So that's where I would leave that.

Nikko Snyder (: 44:37

I guess related to that, when we talked before today, you described yourself as somebody who has had perfectionist tendencies and that you've kind of let that go or overcome it or can you share anything about how you let that go, that perfectionism go and sort of the embracing of exploration and mistake?

Amber Goodwyn (: 44:59

I do have some perfectionist tendencies and I have like a high standard for myself and sometimes for others when it comes to art and like, you know, and all kinds of decisions to be quite honest. It's really hard for me to put something out into the world that I don't feel like I've thought through fully or if it's not ready. And so sometimes the decision is not to put something into the world. It's just not ready. But...

I continue to practice to learn how to do that. I find the most difficult thing about perfection is that it can actually stop you in your tracks, just like envy or jealousy or comparison can. It's rarely helpful. The only time that it's helpful in the case of envy or jealousy or comparison is that sometimes the things that you admire in others are clues as to what you want to do more of yourself, or at least clues as to what you think is lacking in yourself and examining that.

Nikko Snyder (: 45:59

I would like to hear a little bit more, maybe just bringing things into the concrete. What enables you to make your art a priority? What gets in the way? I you've talked about like just really concrete things like division of labor, getting really clear with your partner about what works. You talked about like getting up early, meditation. Like these are just like really concrete things.

Amber Goodwyn (: 46:25

So a lot of what you kind of summarized from really parts of this conversation relate to discipline, which, you know, once again, it's not a fun word. It can be a sexy word. So that's helpful. But I can't remember who it is who said this, but I'm going to paraphrase. You can't always rely on inspiration. have to, you know, you have to show up and do the work. And then sometimes inspiration happens along, you know.

Nikko Snyder (: 46:54

After our interview, Amber did track down the quote she was referring to by the late great science fiction author Octavia Butler, who said in an essay published in Bloodchild and Other Stories in 1995, first forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you're inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won't. Habit is persistence in practice.

Amber Goodwyn (: 46:59

maybe a little more.

Nikko Snyder (: 47:19

In the same essay, Butler also skewers the idea of talent, which might be helpful to anyone out there struggling with imposter syndrome. She says, forget talent. If you have it, fine, use it. If you don't have it, doesn't matter as habit is more dependable than inspiration. Continued learning is more dependable than talent.

Amber Goodwyn (: 47:39

everything that you've mentioned in terms of clearing your mind, you know, with meditation in the morning for me, for example, that helps with that. For me, it's important to do my creative work at the beginning of the day so that I give my best self to my art rather than after I've given all my creative thinking and decision making to my family or my job, you know what I mean? So that like, so I want to come to things before, before I've checked my social media, do you know what I mean? Just like having that clear state.

I love also ideas in the morning because there are studies about how you problem solve in your sleep, like how certain ideas sort of like either deepen or resolve or you have new perspective. You know, this idea of like sleeping on it is a really important one. So if there's something you feel really anxious about, sometimes just sleeping on it is best for every facet of life. When I said earlier, like you need to scare yourself sometimes, that doesn't mean to go against your intuition or to do things that don't

that are not right for you. It's sort of the opposite of that. It's like when you know that the right thing to do is there, but you're scared to do the right thing creatively or otherwise. That's the fear. The other kind of fear that sometimes comes up is just allowing yourself to experiment. And that once again, that shouldn't be an instance of negating your boundaries or anything like that. I just want to clarify that. Other kind of practical hacks as a writer or even just as an artist, use,

Use a notebook, a get paper notebook. I always have them. They're brown, soft cover, moleskin. They come in packs of four. I've been using them for so many years that my family now just buys them for me for holidays and things like this. And everything goes in there. I'm telling you, okay, if anything happens to me and people go through my notebooks, please know that half of it is fantasy.

or unresolved thoughts. And then the other thing I want to say about it is it's like also often the earliest version of a work, the mistake making we're talking about, it's a safe place. There's no lines on the page. It's just me and the pen and the ideas, whether that's a list of actions I want to do in an art, whether that's like me making notes about a situation I'm stuck in that I don't understand, whether that's song lyrics, you know, and then usually I refine that afterwards. I bring it to whatever medium.

So having a place to like a sort of safe place to make drafts, make mistakes, allowing yourself the time. Time is also such like a tool. Just I talk about the final deadline, but that doesn't mean you should rush things. You you need to like give things the time that they take and not to be too results focused. You know, so I have this brown paper book, but often more often I have or readily at hand is my smartphone for better or worse. And so my notes app is

filled with notes, like everything from letters to friends to poetry ideas. I've got a bunch of pinned notes at the top and they're each like, you know, one is like for my job, one is for my poetry chapbook I'm working on, one is for my music timeline, you know? So they're always there. Also, my voice app on my phone has also been really helpful for making and recording melodies. And sometimes when I, sometimes a song comes to you almost fully formed.

But then other times you need to fill in blanks or you just have like a tiny bit of an idea. sometimes I can go back to those old voice memos and like listen and fill in some blanks or just kind of get inspired again. Yeah, I'm a Capricorn. Anyway, I'm really all about the schedule. I'm also in my 40s. So I also make sure I like work out every morning, which sounds so silly, but it gives me the energy to create work as well. And then the other thing is like as a performer of different kinds, it keeps me able to move pretty freely.

So that's another thing. Having my own space where I live, that's not always something that everyone can have. Even if you can't have that, just having like communicating your boundaries about needing to have your headphones on or to be in the bedroom alone for like an hour or so. One of my collaborators, close collaborators lives in a very small apartment with two children and her partner. And so that's true for her. So when we're working on something together, she'll close the door and everyone knows that mommy is like doing the thing, you know?

and they respect that. Another little hack is that my partner and I briefly shared a studio and that was a terrible idea. You don't need to share everything. I have a lot of feelings about enmeshment. Like I think that happens a lot, like too much almost in the way that we've built family structures in our culture and marriages and partnerships. so just having my own selfhood kind of reflected in my own space is important.

Nikko Snyder (: 52:22

Enmeshment, yeah, it's a real thing. It is? Yeah. Pushing, pushing back on that. I like that. Okay. I want to make sure I give you a chance to do any kind of promotion of, you know, current projects, future projects. where can people discover you, your work, best ways to support your work?

Amber Goodwyn (: 52:45

Yeah, thanks so much for that. I, you know, I'm interdisciplinary artist and like most of my, you know, activities or upcoming things are listed on my website, AmberGoodwin.com and Goodwyn is spelled with a Y. So people can go there and see, you know, what's up. People are also welcome to follow my main music project, Natural Sympathies on Instagram as we're most active. I've got a couple of other sites too on YouTube. You can always follow there. I've got an album.

that I'm working on for a couple years now, all about love and sexuality and desire. You know, I've really explored some of those themes in other work outside of music, but for a long time, just because there's so many love songs in the world, I never allowed myself. My collaborators and I sort of prided ourselves on writing about almost anything but for a long time. you know, those kind of weird rules that sometimes help creatively. Anyway, I've allowed myself to sort of really go there.

ly that's coming out in early: 2026

And I received several responses and have written the songs. The songs are very inspired by a lot of the stories that come from those pages, as well as my own life. And I also created an audio art piece called The Love Project at the invitation of Holophone Audio Arts and the Art Gallery of Regina. And so there's like, I'll be circulating also quite soon that sort of compilation of answers, like sort of a selection of answers.

a bunch of voice actors volunteer to read the different responses. So that's a project I would also mention.

Nikko Snyder (: 54:48

If you're feeling moved to reflect on the idea of love and its role in your life, you can still complete Amber's Anonymous Love Project Survey, and we've shared a link to do that in our show notes.

Amber Goodwyn (: 54:58

And I'm working on a chapbook, like a collection of poetry. And I've got a few poems coming out in different things in the next little while. So people can also check that out over on my website. And I also have a personal Instagram that's not private. It's Amber Goodwyn with a Y-X-O. Yeah.

Get in.

Nikko Snyder (: 55:32

Sir.

As a still novice podcast host, I got completely sidetracked visiting with Amber at the end of our interview and totally gapped on recording a formal thank you to her. So with my apologies to her for that, I want to extend an enormous thank you to Amber Goodwyn for her time and for joining us on Parenting Creative to share her insights on art, parenting and life. I also want to thank Amber and give credit to Natural Sympathies for the use of her song, Hello, as the parenting creative theme song. As a brand new nascent podcast creator,

Amber Goodwyn (: 56:12

like.

Nikko Snyder (: 56:12

can

of course only reiterate the song's query. Is anyone out there? And hope that the answer is yes. If you want to hear more conversations about the alchemy of parenting and creative life, please help the podcast grow by visiting parentingcreative.com to sign up for our email newsletter. And if you're able, by becoming a founding member of Parenting Creative, you can find out more information about that on our website or in the show notes. I also want to thank my partner in life.

parenting and podcasting Jeremy Sauer for his audio wizardry to make this podcast sound so good. Thanks for listening. See you again soon. And before I let you go, here's one final tidbit for my conversation with Amber.

kids back in the day when we were both living in Montreal. I don't think we ever actually met, but we were both in the business of publishing zines at that time. And I was a big fan of your zine, Lickety Split. When I was thinking about you and Lickety Split, the reason I wanted to find my copy was because you had that like little list that was published. I was on it one time and that was completely like, I just, was actually like a very formative moment because I was like...

Amber Goodwyn (: 57:12

Ha

Nikko Snyder (: 57:21

I mean, it was like a secret admirer list basically, right? Like, I was just so kind of, it just, had no perception of myself in the world as like having any sort of sex appeal. And it was very like a joyful little moment.

Amber Goodwyn (: 57:35

I think that's great. mean, the way you just described it, the name of the list was the highly fuckables list.

Nikko Snyder (: 57:40

I know, I know.

Amber Goodwyn (: 57:42

I love you calling Secret in Myron. think I'm actually going to play with that idea for something. Yeah, I'm so glad to hear that.

Nikko Snyder (: 57:49

It was, that was really, I thought that was really fun.

Amber Goodwyn (: 57:52

That's that sense of fun that I try to engender somewhere in most of my work, especially the work that's collaborative. Yeah.

Nikko Snyder (: 57:59

Yeah. Yeah. Cool.