Rachel Schwartzmann: Welcome to Slow Stories. I’m Rachel Schwartzmann. I'm a writer, creator, and the author of Slowing: Discover Wonder, Beauty, and Creativity through Slow Living, coming September 17th from Chronicle Books.

For those of you just tuning in, Slow Stories is a multimedia project that began with this podcast and now includes a newsletter on Substack. There, I write about things like time, creativity, and pace—and on this show, I interview artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators who share slow stories—and big ideas—about living, working, and creating in our digital age.

So before we get into the episode, I wanted to share a really exciting announcement: I've spent the last couple of years writing and revising my first book, Slowing, which is out September 17th of this year with Chronicle Books. That said, it's now available for pre-order anywhere books are sold. And for those of you who don't know, pre-orders are incredibly important for all authors—but especially first-time authors like myself. They signal to bookstores and retailers that there's interest in the book and really lay the foundation for my career as an author, which I'm excited to continue.

All that to say, I'll be sharing much more about Slowing in the coming months, and you can follow Slow Stories on Substack for those updates and follow me [on social media] @rachelschwartzmann. But for now, I'll leave you with this: Slowing caters to many literary sensibilities: essay and memoir, creative wellness, and personal growth. Language and lyricism are front and center, but there is also a practical component. There are various ways you can engage with and experience this book. For that reason, I don't know where exactly you'll find it on the shelf, but I'm confident it will fit somewhere in your home. That's where I wrote it, and that's what it means to me. I can't wait for you to read it!

Now, on to the episode, which begins with an opening story from Lexi Kent-Monning, who shares a story that slowed her down and one that also happens to be a perfect preview for today's episode. Here's more from Lexi.

Lexi Kent-Monning: My name is Lexi Kent-Monning. I live in Brooklyn, and I'm a writer and work in tech. My first novel, The Burden of Joy, came out six weeks ago, so I've had a distinct lack of slowness in my life the last few months. The time surrounding a book publication on top of working my full-time job has been very full-on and loud, and I'm someone who's much more inclined to slowness and quiet. So, I was incredibly grateful when this mini-essay by Adam Voith stopped me in my tracks. It's from the new collection, Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears, edited by Brandon Stosuy. I'm a big crier, something I inherited from my grandma Connie, so this collection is kind of catnip for me. It's a whole book about crying and feelings.

Adam's piece is small but holds an outsize impact. I was amazed by his conservation of words that carry behind them full-bodied storylines. The way he distills entire worlds down into seemingly simple sentences is such a masterclass on craft. I'm left wanting more, even though he's already given me almost more than I can handle in just 162 words. He's introduced several robust characters, each on their own journey, and has me wondering what it's like to be each of them. It's also a dynamic portrait of grief and how individual grief can be. Here is Adam's piece from Sad Happens.


Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you so much again to Lexi for sharing. Again, the story she mentioned was by Adam Voith. You can follow Lexi on social media @lexicola and order her debut novel, The Burden of Joy, anywhere books are sold. Now, here's my conversation with Brandon Stosuy and Rose Lazar.

︎

Rachel Schwartzmann: When was the last time you cried? This question is at the heart of Brandon Stosuy and Rose Lazar's illustrated anthology, Sad Happens: A Celebration of Tears. With contributions from a wide range of voices like Phoebe Bridgers, Zeba Blay, Sloane Crosley, and many more, Sad Happens is a gentle offering, reminding us to get to the heart of our own stories—and our own humanity.

Off the page, Brandon and Rose have lent this shared sensibility to various endeavors. Brandon is the co-founder of The Creative Independent, "a growing re­source of emo­tional and prac­ti­cal guid­ance for cre­ative peo­ple." Rose is a visual artist and business owner. And together, they are friends, collaborators, and creatives who truly understand what it means to tell slow stories.

And in this interview, Brandon and Rose shared more about Sad Happens, their collaboration and friendship, the places they've left behind, the processes they embrace in their respective work, and why slowness is a recurring thread in all they do.

In full transparency, our conversation was recorded during a period when "sad" was happening to me, so to speak, but in the hour I spent with Brandon and Rose, I was reaffirmed of one thing: crying means getting closer to yourself. So, without giving too much more away, here's Brandon Stosuy and Rose Lazar, editor and illustrator of Sad Happens.

︎

Rose Lazar: I'm Rose Lazar. I made this book with Brandon Stosuy called Sad Happens. Outside of this book, I'm an artist. I like to make things by hand and slowly, which is akin to this podcast. I enjoy what I do a lot. I don't know what I would do if I didn't do it. So, it's very much a part of who I am. I like to make something every day, whether it's small or large, and I value just general integrity in things. It's the lost art in any process of anything that gets made today, and I think being able to stand by what you do and create in the world is really important. That's all I've got for now. [Laughs]

Brandon Stosuy: My name is Brandon Stosuy. I made a book called Sad Happens with my friend Rose Lazar, and outside of this book project, I started a website over seven years ago called The Creative Independent and publish one thing a day with that—a lot like Rose, [I like] doing [or] creating at least one thing a day, whether it's that or something else.

Outside of work-related stuff: Earlier today, I was organizing a playlist for my and my son's radio show that we do once a month on the lot radio. I value spending time with my family, doing stuff with my wife and kids. I value community and collaboration.

I think one thing Rose and I have talked about is how fun this collaboration was. And we've done smaller things together over the years, when we first met in Buffalo. But this was the first larger and more sustained project versus a one-off or a show or putting on something smaller. So yeah, I value collaboration, and likewise, I value integrity and honesty. I value my time offline. I value my time outside. I jog a lot, and that's the time for me to think and listen to music and not worry about the beeps and all of that from my phone and my computer and everything. So yeah, I value downtime.

Rachel Schwartzmann: It's interesting to hear you guys talk about making something every day. Do you ever get overwhelmed with that cadence?

Brandon Stosuy: It was funny when I first started The Creative Independent; I'd been working at Pitchfork for years, where the publishing schedule was much more robust: five reviews a day, a bunch of news stories and features. It was just so much. And so, in my mind, one thing a day for that site for The Creative Independent was very small and manageable.

My first conversation for the site was with Ian MacKaye, and he raised the question, Hey, isn't that a lot one thing a day? Are you going to burn out? But I think because it was seemingly so much less than what I had been doing and in the early days it was very difficult, actually. But now there are enough freelancers and things that often I'm editing or building. It's not always me doing it all by myself. It's a different kind of creation.

Then, outside of that, I think sometimes making something can be very small, like making a playlist, coming up with a movie idea, or just riffing on things with friends. That feels like creating something as well. So, even if it's not like a tangible object, it can be an idea or a thought. In that way, I don't get burnt out by it because some days there's less output.

Rose Lazar: Yeah, I would agree with that. I don't think I consciously wake up every day and go: I'm going to make something. But I definitely end up doing it at some point, and it can be as small as writing something down—remembering to write it down instead of I'm going to make a masterpiece today. And then also there are so many natural things that can be distracting for you—you're traveling or doing something—to take you out of the mode. It's always kind of nice when you get back into the routine of making something. I guess it's just really a nice part of what I like to do.

Brandon Stosuy: Yeah, I would say too: there were those old Dunkin' Donuts commercials years and years ago where there's that guy that wakes up every day, and he's like: Time to make the donuts. And he is so depressed about it. I never want making things to be like that. So, for me, it's more a joyful part of the day or just a time to think of an idea or have something created. But it's never something where I feel obligated or that I'm forcing myself because sometimes downtime is the most productive time.

Rose Lazar: I never thought he was depressed.

Brandon Stosuy: [Laughs]

Rose Lazar: Because I was like, how could you be depressed? You're going to go make a donut. 

Brandon Stosuy: Well, he seemed kind of over it, right? And his commercial, he's like trying to make good donuts. So maybe he wasn't depressed, maybe he was just over it. Yeah.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Or it's a sugar crash?

Rose Lazar: I know. Yeah, waiting for the sugar crash, maybe.

Rachel Schwartzmann: All of that makes sense. And I guess in terms of just making something that really resonates, I want to talk about your partnership. I'd like to turn my first question on its head a little bit and ask what you two enjoy and value about one another.

Brandon Stosuy: I think what I value about Rose is Rose is very honest and straightforward. We did this entire book that started very small as a small idea, and it was just a couple of tweets. It was almost going to be a chapbook or something, and it kept growing. And I think both of us are ambitious in that way. We're quietly ambitious—we're not out there [saying] we're going to conquer the world. But it's this idea of this project felt like it needed to grow and become something different and bigger. And the whole time, you know, we never had an argument or disagreed or had any kind of bad vibes. It was always very fun to have these conversations, whether it was on a phone or Zoom, or I'd go to Rose's studio, or she dropped something off here. There was always this back-and-forth that felt very much like we could say what we wanted to say about the project. We could talk about who we wanted to be in it if we needed more collaborators or different kinds of collaborators or different kinds of people in the book. So, I value Rose's honesty and straightforwardness.

I think we both tend to be pretty quiet in some ways, where sometimes we want to put our heads down and work. And so it wasn't a thing where we had too many meetings. I've had that with collaborations where someone wants to meet every single day, and sometimes it's not necessary. It's like that thing where you can drive with a friend and be quiet, and if you can have that silence. I feel like Rose and I can share that kind of silence.

And I think Rose is very funny. I enjoy [her] jokes and the humor as well. The other day, we were catching up about [this conversation], and I think most of the time we just spent laughing about things that had nothing to do with anything, just talking about being in Buffalo and whatever.

I also value that Rose has a photo of Drake as a kid on her studio wall, which I think says a lot, too.

Rose Lazar: Yeah. I concur. [Brandon Laughs] I agree with what Brandon just said. It was a very easy time, to be honest, and we came together when we needed to, and we were apart when we needed to. I think that what it comes down to [also] is we're older now, but we're still the same as we were when we first met. A lot of that has to do with being like DIY, punk kids. Even if we get fancier or more modern in our times, we still always are like, how can we make a photocopy of that? How can we take it back to a basic thing and then turn it into the next thing? It's very much this funny [thing of] how do we not do the thing we're supposed to do and then turn that into what it's supposed to be? Because we're still trying to go to a Kinko's somewhere that doesn't exist anymore.

Brandon Stosuy: Yeah. We've known each other for so long and have this shared history that's important and that I value. Something I had mentioned in the book is—I think I mentioned the book, it's hard to remember what's in the book and what we just kind of talked about—but Rose made the invites when my wife Jane and I got married many years ago, and my mother was very sick right before my first kid was born, and she died right before my child was born, and Rose and our other friend came and painted the room and Rose decorated with her own art. And so there's this kind of shared history and humanity that we've seen in each other at our highs and lows. That's also important for collaboration, where we know each other well. That just makes a richer dialogue, I think.

Rachel Schwartzmann: So, I'm sure you guys have shared tears together.

Rose Lazar: I don't know if we have.

Brandon Stosuy: [Laughs] I feel like we have. I think we got teary-eyed once about Chris Farley, actually.

Rose Lazar: Yeah. Something really weird.

Brandon Stosuy: I think because we were touched by Adam Sandler's love of Chris Farley, even though Chris Farley had died a while ago, the fact that Adam Sandler keeps bringing him back up and having these montages about him, I do remember that we both got [teary eyed] about that.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Brandon, I think I saw you mentioned in another interview that "Buffalo is another very prime territory for crying." [Laughs] Could you speak to that a little bit more? [Talk about] Your time there and what makes it perfect for crying.

Brandon Stosuy: I mean, I think there are a lot of things, but one thing that's very fresh in my mind and something that Rose and I spoke about the other day—

Rose Lazar: Oh no. [Laughs]

Brandon Stosuy: [Laughs] I know I said I wouldn't go off too much on the [Buffalo] Bills, but I have a deep love for the Buffalo Bills, and they're the team that has never won a Super Bowl, made it four times, lost four years in a row. I mean, it's kind of an amazing accomplishment to get to the Super Bowl four times in a row, but then losing every time is just a different level—and I think that is sort of bred into Buffalo now. They just lost the other day, their season ended, and just seeing all of the reactions to it and people making these montage videos of the quarterback Josh Allen looking so sad. They asked him how he felt about the loss yesterday. He said, well, on the bright side, I woke up today. That kind of thing. He's been really open about his emotions as well. So I think that's a big part of it.

I think the weather in the winter can be very cold. It can be long winters, and people can sometimes feel isolated because of that. But one thing I loved about Buffalo was there was such a great community there. You'd be shoveling your car out of the snow, and suddenly, three neighbors would show up and start helping you shovel your car as well. It's less of an isolated thing. And so that aspect of it always felt great to me, but I think the tears part of it is just baked into the culture of this team that means so much to the community. And it's hard to explain if you live in New York City or something. People like the sports teams here, but it's not quite as central [as it is] in Buffalo. If a team loses, you can see the city shift the next day. If the team wins, the city reacts a different way. It's very deep and very baked in. That's why I ended up loving that team.

I didn't grow up in Buffalo, but while I was there, it just really affected me to see people caring so much. So, I think that's what I was thinking about regarding the tears.

You know, my son wrote a piece in Sad Happens—my younger son—about crying when the Bills lost to the Chiefs and crying himself to sleep, which he did. And then he woke up, and he was still crying, which is true. The next morning, I woke him up, and he was like, Dad, was it a dream? I was like, no, they lost, and he started crying again. I mean, Rose, do you think Buffalo's right for tears? You lived there longer than I did.

Rose Lazar: Yeah. I think Buffalo's a funny place because it has all this potential, and I have like the sweetest memories and heart for Buffalo. I always am like, if I could just figure [it] out, I would buy that building, and I would make a community. But it's not a place that will change with you. You would have to change it. And I don't know if I'm ready for that mantle for Buffalo.

But yeah, there's something inherently sad about this place that used to be a bustling titan of industry [and] all the industry left, and then they've just been figuring out how to live there still. People age or age out, people leave, people come and go. My brother lives there with his family. They have a lovely life, and they have a wonderful time there. I love it when I get to go there and visit them. But there's just sadness overall to the city.

When it's winter, it can be like three feet of snow, and then the next day the sun's out, and everyone just goes about their day. No one cares that there's snow in the summer. It's the most beautiful place that you want to be. Niagara Falls is not far away. So there's a feeling of [it being] a beachy-water town, but there's sadness around every corner. 

Brandon Stosuy: Yeah. You know, Rose and I did a really amazing reading on Buffalo a couple of months ago, and we decided after the reading just to walk. We walked seven miles or something, right? We just walked and talked.

Rose Lazar: We walked on a fifty-degree evening in Buffalo in December. It's like, you've gotta walk, you gotta go.

Brandon Stosuy: Yeah, we lucked out, but it was an amazing reading. We had a great dinner with her brother and his family before the reading. We went to a really good Indian restaurant place. It was packed. People bought all the books. People got up and spoke. People that weren't in the book told amazing stories. It was incredible. So I think Buffalo is great, and I have a real soft spot [for the city]. You can't see me, but I'm wearing a Buffalo Bills hat as we speak!

I think one thing that's great about [the city] is it's easier to do things if you want to do smaller things—like if you want to put on a festival in a warehouse or something like that, you can find that access. It's a little bit easier than maybe a bigger city. But I agree with Rose: there are certain things where there's so much potential. It's hard to get that potential at times.

Rachel Schwartzmann: So, what took you both away from the city?

Rose Lazar: I went there and did my undergrad program there ... and was trying to figure out where to go next. I'd always grown up on the East Coast in New York State. So I decided to just go somewhere totally different, which was Chicago. That's why I left.

Brandon Stosuy: I finished grad school, I was in a relationship, and I was no longer in that relationship, and I was like, all right, I'm going to go back to New York because it was somewhere [familiar]. My dad grew up in Brooklyn; my mom grew up in Queens; my grandparents were always here. Even though I grew up in South Jersey in the Pine Barrens, it always felt like I'd eventually go to New York. I had a good friend Ben, [so] I just moved and said, all right, cool, I'm going to figure out my plan here. I'd done my graduate work on the writer Dennis Cooper, and his archives are at NYU, so it was a nice thing when I got here and immediately had a job as an archivist for him at NYU. So I had a job lined up and stuff like that.

I think [in] Buffalo, like Rose was saying, there wasn't really necessarily a job there for me. I didn't want to be a professor. I'd been in a PhD thing and then decided to stop with a master's degree because I didn't necessarily want to teach. I actually ended up teaching at NYU anyway, but it was not by mistake but by [because of] some stuff I'd written. I think it was just time to go somewhere else. But I've gone back to Buffalo a few times since, and it's always nice to go back.

When I was in grad school—I'm not really a very good musician—I had a band, and there was this guy who liked the band, and he asked us to reunite. And so I went back to Buffalo to play this one show. And when I brought it up to Jane, she was like, you had a band? It was one of these things I'd never even talked about. And so then, I went back and played.

Rachel Schwartzmann: On the subject of leaving places behind, was there anything you had to leave behind in your respective processes in order to bring Sad Happens to life?

Rose Lazar: I don't think I did. I catered what I did to the project, I guess. But it didn't feel like I was leaving any of myself or my creativity behind while doing it. Our publisher turned out to be wildly supportive of the project. So I was making these weird watercolor drawings, and they were like, great. Some [drawings] are more literal. Some are more abstract throughout the book. They never once were like, Hey, could you do this or do that? I think we were pretty supported from the start and it didn't feel like we had to change that much about who we were with the project.

Brandon Stosuy: I would agree. I think the only things we even had to change were a couple of images that turned out to be copyrighted by Disney or something—and I guess Disney is highly litigious—so it was not worth the risk. That kind of thing. But I do think part of it was that it took so long to find the right publisher. It took so long to get the book done. I think the book itself was in process. I didn't even know how many years, like five years?

Rose Lazar: I feel like we started it a while ago.

Brandon Stosuy: Then we would have these calls with some publishers. We'd go in and meet with the publisher, and it was clear they didn't maybe necessarily understand the book. They would think it was depressing or would say, you should get a therapist to write an introduction, or you should frame it like this. And we're like, no, it's not really that kind of book. We've heard that the book has been helpful for people who are going through things, and there is that element to it. But we wanted the book to feel not just one-dimensional, which is why the colors of the book are so bright, and the cover has these rainbow tears. It's not just supposed to be this depressing collection of things. And so I think it took us so long to find the right publisher that when we did, they really were supportive ... At one point, we were like, we should just make it alphabetical order because this way there's no hierarchy, and it's just like A, B, C. And they were like, Hmm, let's think about that. And then they came back, they were like, yeah, you're right. Let's do it that way. So it's that kind of thing where everything we suggested came through.

At one point, too, we were like, we don't think we need to have blurbs on the back because there are s so many interesting people in the book. Why don't we just list some of the people's names? And they were like, yeah, good idea. So it was that kind of thing where I think we got to kind of follow our impulses. Like Rose was saying, coming from this kind of DIY punk background, we didn't feel like we had to sell any of that out or they weren't like, you really should get like this person in the book, and it was someone we disagree with or something. It was really all of the people that we brought to the table.

Rachel Schwartzmann: I feel like that's really lucky in publishing. [Laughs]

Rose Lazar: Yeah, it was weird. [Laughs]

Brandon Stosuy: Yeah, it was amazing. Shout out to Emily and Stephanie! ... [I said to] our agent Chad, I was like, man, this is such a great experience. Chad is in the book and is a very sweet soul. And so I think having him lead the way as our agent was actually helpful, too, because he's such a thoughtful [and] kind person. I feel like I've actually shared tears with Chad before ... he has a young daughter, I was telling him something about my kids, and he got all choked up. I think our team around the book was kind of all aligned.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, you definitely need that to set the tone.

Brandon Stosuy: Mm-Hmm.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, maybe this is a good place to have you read from the introduction.

Brandon Stosuy: Sure.



Rachel Schwartzmann: I loved the wide-ranging voices that you included. They really slowed me down and got me to think about where I've been in my relationship and how I deal with emotion [and] sadness. And I'm curious, in the vein of this podcast, how you both would describe your relationship with pace.

Brandon Stosuy: I like ongoing stories or things that take a while. In a way, the way these tweets started, I did one, then I did another. And I like this idea of things that just pop up now. Then I kind of keep going, and it's almost like a serial story—like a Charles Dickens thing back in the day or something like here you get one part of the story, then the next week you get the next part of it. But I'm a little more like I'm on a treasure hunt where these things just keep popping up now and then with no real schedule attached to them.

When I was in my teens, I really liked very long books. I would like to read books like Gravity's Rainbow or Ulysses and things like that. And I think [I liked] being able to disappear and have something that took months to go through. Now, those books will probably take me ten years to go through. But I think, at the time, I had more time and now I find I like briefer stories, things with fewer words. Poetry, too. I find that I read more poetry than I used to where [the] language is really distilled down. Some of my favorite writing ever is the ... pieces by Samuel Beckett, where it just gets so spare. There's almost no words at all. I like a wide range of narratives, but I do feel like as I've gotten older, I appreciate things with fewer words, which there's still so much space to think about and so much to think about within those words. But I find it overwhelming now—some of the books I would've liked when I was younger.

Rachel Schwartzmann: I appreciate that. I think a lot of times, people equate slowness with length. There's something to be said for brevity, latching onto a scene in a movie or a moment in a book and being just as moved by that. What about you, Rose?

Rose Lazar: Yeah, I think I've always worked in a slow way. I think about the end game of what it might look like when I'm finished. And I don't know what that is, and I'm excited to see it someday ... I'm a visual artist, and so my day-to-day job is I own a business where, as a creative, I make things and sell them. And so it's an ongoing collection of things that I add to every few months or maybe once or twice a year. I've been doing it now for [about] 14, 15 years, and every time, I'm like, oh cool, it all looks good together. It's like this thing where you can see it starting to create this world around what I'm doing, and it's a slow burn. I'm not trying to become some sort of viral sensation or something. I have no interest in that way of making things. It's more about like seeing it all at the end. I can't wait to have one of those giant 400-page books about my artwork one day. I'm very interested in what it looks like at the end.

I'm not trying to get there fast, either. I don't think there's any reason to. I think we've all lost sort of this ability to sit in what we do and how [we] see it and if [we] should show it to someone else or not because of the way we view things in social media. It's also immediately in front of you all the time that I feel like being able to show or not show something is part of that slow pace that people forget about. Not everything has to be shared, or is a masterpiece, or is for everyone.

Brandon Stosuy: I was actually talking to a class the other day kind of about Sad Happens and [partially about] The Creative Independent and I was saying a similar thing that Rose said: When looking back at like the Instagram of The Creative Independent, I see it as this kind of giant patchwork quilt and I try to look at it from the beginning to the end. The way that the homepage functions as a timeline. If you scroll to the bottom, it's the first piece we did with Eileen Myles, and if you scroll to the top, it's the most recent piece. I do see it as this ongoing thing: a constant curation of thinking long-term versus immediacy.

That's why with [The Creative Independent], I don't pay attention to press cycles. Someone will say, oh I have a like a thing out this date, can the piece run that day? And I say, we don't really do that; it just kind of runs when it runs, and it exists in kind of a separate place, which I think actually is a really good strategy for that kind of stuff. I think a lot of publicists and PR people want everything out the same week, but there's a benefit to not rushing things out at times.

Rachel Schwartzmann: But it's easy to get swept up in the momentum. It really is a practice.

Rose Lazar: I think people come to things slower than they used to. It might be important to you to have something on this date or that date, but I find out about things like two years later, and I'm like, oh my god, that's amazing. Because of the way we do get fed information for those reasons, you know, you're like, ah, I've heard enough about it, I'm not goning to look at it now.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. And there's so much more to talk about with that person now that they've had some distance from the initial mayhem of putting something out. They can come to a conversation with a little bit more hindsight and perspective.

Rose Lazar: For sure.

Brandon Stosuy: Mm-Hmm. There is an interview on The Creative Independent today with someone who's a producer, an MC, and a rapper. He talks about the idea that when people try to rush stuff out and try to keep it at the top of everyone's newsfeed and everything, you can often end up releasing work; that's—his phrase is—undercooked. People are just kind of rushing out as well. I think that's very much taking your time and not feeling stressed. But there's a thing he says in that interview that I really like where he says: the only surprise is left are the creations. This idea that he feels like he knows the system around what he's doing, the industry around it, [so], for him, the only surprise left is making the thing. I think that's a really beautiful way of thinking about making stuff.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. I think it's interesting to look at a project like Sad Happens [and] to think about telling these stories in an age where so much emotion and humanity can become flattened or pixelated by a screen. So, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on the relationship between care and sadness and the digital age.

Brandon Stosuy: One thing that I've thought about is I have two sons, and they're both very emo, actually in a very good way. They are very keyed into people's emotions and stuff. But they've seen it where people can do online bullying or it flattens out people a bit where you can just see someone as like a name on a screen or a name in a comment section. I think sometimes stepping away and closing the devices and just kind of being out in the world is very useful.

One thing I've always thought about this book is that when it first started, I didn't know why people were crying when I saw them. What's been interesting is that some of the stories people told in the book were things I didn't know they'd gone through or things that I didn't know they had cried about. There's a story with a friend of mine who talks about her mother dealing with getting older and dealing with dementia and not being able to remember these arguments they'd had. And she still does, but her mother can't remember, and she's never been able to make up with her. And now that her mother doesn't remember her or these disagreements, it's this painful situation of this person being alive, and you can never get forgiveness or never get resolution. [There were] tings like that I had no idea about. And I think that's something I learned: you don't always know when someone is upset or sad or what someone's housing inside themselves. People can be going through a lot at any given time and it's sometimes hard to see that when we are removed so much and we're online or this or that.

It's even hard when you're in the same room as somebody. Someone could be completely stressed and going through this thing and you don't witness it. I think hearing these stories and having people share these stories—and our prompts were really basic, we were just like, tell us about a time you cried, that kind of thing. think I learned a lot about people I thought I knew pretty well. So I think people that I don't know, you realize just how much you don't know about that person, and it's so easy to kind of flatten someone into a binary or make assumptions.

Rose Lazar: Yeah. And I think both Brandon and I were pretty surprised with how open and willing people were to tell us their stories because we didn't give a prompt. It was just like, tell us a time when you cried or a sad story for you. And some people told us things that were like, whoa. I didn't expect this kind of level of openness in a way. Like how you say, when you're in a room with someone, and you don't know what someone's going through. I think [Sad Happens] is one of those things to me that reminded me to check in. Check in with people. You never really know how someone's feeling until you actually ask them.

That's something I feel like with this digital piece of manufactured emotions or things that people want [other] people to see—but not always. Then all of a sudden, there is this life bomb that they drop on you in their social media, and you're like, you gave no indication that something was going on with you because [they're] doing it for almost like a performative thing. With the book, it became this thing [where] story would come in once a week, I'd get like 10 stories this week or two stories that week, and I'd be reading them and be like, oh my goodness, these people are being so wonderful and like they don't even know what we're doing with these [stories]. And so it was very much a reality checkup, remembering that people are people, and they're all doing something or going through something and you have to remember that when you're interacting with people.

Rachel Schwartzmann: It sounds like such a beautiful exercise of trust, too, to be entrusted with such vulnerability—and secrets in a lot of ways, I'm sure, for people.

Rose Lazar: Yeah, for sure.

Brandon Stosuy: Mm-hmm. People are happy to have their words in the book, but we had a thing where The Guardian was going to excerpt it and just choose like five pieces, and a couple of people were like, you know, I'm happy for my piece to be in the book with all these other people, but somehow it felt too vulnerable to be singled out and to have like that stand up separately. And I think that's interesting too. There is a community in the book—there are 115 people—and so you're surrounded by other people crying, but it feels maybe too intense to have the microscope just on one piece. I think that speaks to how vulnerable, open, and honest people were in contributing to the book.

Rachel Schwartzmann: I mean, I appreciated the wide range of people, but I also was kind of interested [in seeing] a lot of recurring imagery. I particularly noticed a lot of mention of airplanes, knots, and, of course, music. But were there surprising threads that came up for either one of you that you didn't expect?

Brandon Stosuy: One that really struck me was Olivia's [story], who's the zookeeper. The idea of being a zookeeper and taking care of animals and then these animals died; I never thought of that, honestly. So that was really moving to me. I think also ones where people would say, well, I'm not really a writer, but I'd like to contribute. And then the writing is amazing. I think that happened a lot, too, where you realize, yeah, if you're writing honestly and writing your thoughts down, you're a writer, and those kinds of things would pop up.

I think one thing Rose and I mentioned, too, is a lot of the songs mentioned in the book are not songs you think about related to crying in a way, either. The press made a playlist of songs mentioned, and some of them I was like, wow, this is interesting. This is the song that made someone cry. The music is in there, but it's a surprising array of music at times. Or if we were to make our own crying playlist, which Rose actually did, it's very different, you know? So I think that was interesting to me. But as far as patterns, I don't know. Can you think of any Rose? Any recurring images as someone who drew everything?

Rose Lazar: It was hard to not dilute people's stories down to just the same image. I'd read them just straightforwardly and then read them in a different way afterward to try to pick something that would be unique to each story. But it was hard because your go-to [symbols] are like tears, water, eyes, or like music notes, songs. It was like a challenge for me to work around what someone would hope to see with their essay. I've heard from most people, Oh, I love the illustration. But I think the reoccurring thing for me, and I couldn't really illustrate it, was the general feeling of crying: the heaviness, the physicality of crying ... there's a physicality to crying that whether you do it in front of someone or you're in your car at the steering wheel crying or you're in the forest in the ferns crying, there's the physicality to crying and always associate it to those things if it's you the crier.

That, to me, was an interesting part of reading everyone's [stories], the body and crying physicality of where you are when it happens. And I know that seems pretty basic, but when you start reading them one after another, you start to get put in these places with the person crying. That's where my head would always go:  How would you feel there? It was lovely.  It was a really lovely thing to see people talk about it and read about it and get to make pictures for people about it because crying is a cool thing. It's really great. People were so open about it. It was great.

Brandon Stosuy: One time early on, when Rose and I were first figuring out the book, we were sort of organizing things by—I'd totally forgot about this, but now I remember—here's crying that happened outside, here's crying that happened inside, crying while traveling, crying while not traveling. We were kind of organizing [things] in that way for a while. We tried

Rose Lazar: We tried [organizing by] stages of life: start, middles, we were trying to be more clinical with it.

Brandon Stosuy: Yeah. Then we just kind of got rid of all that, and we're like, let's just make it alphabetical.

Rose Lazar: I think we didn't try to force the story or the narrative of crying in that way. I do think that it's a better project because of that.

Brandon Stosuy: I would agree. It was hard too to think about if some crying was the beginning of something or the end or the middle. I feel like crying is always just in the middle of everything because it's not like you cry, and then it's just a grand finale, like something happens and you cry again. I felt like it would be, like Rose said, too clinical.

Thinking too much of it as a book—because it is a book—but I [also] like thinking of it as an archive of tears or some sort of oral history of tears or something ... things loop into each other and kind of bleed through the pages, and it's not just one thing starts and stops and that kind of thing.

Rose Lazar: Yeah.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. Well the physicality piece is really interesting because when I was reading, and this is not a bad thing, but I did feel myself getting tired after going through certain spurts, but I think it's because my mind and body were so in sync and activated by so many of these stories and reflections. So it's interesting just to hear about the process in that way.

Rose Lazar: Yeah. I was grateful that I would get the essays in little bursts because if I'd gotten 115 essays at once, I don't know if I could have done it.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, that would've been an undertaking for sure.

Brandon Stosuy: I think it worked because it took so long. Neither one of us realized how much we had until we kind of stopped and looked at it. At one point, we're like, you know what, 115 would be a cool number. And then I said, Hey Rose, you didn't write anything yet. And so then Rose wrote something, and then we counted it, and hers was the 115th, so we're like, cool, we finished it. Yeah. It was the last one, and it tied it all together.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, Rose, I defintely want to have you read from [your] story, but I do have just a couple more questions ... I mean, you asked, When was the last time you cried? And then on the back of the book, [it says] Was it because you were sad or happy, overwhelmed or frustrated? I think questions kind of run throughout this book, and I'm curious: What questions were coming up for both of you and if there is a question that you hope people start asking more often?

Brandon Stosuy: Like I was saying before, I just realized people were crying for such a wide variety of reasons, and it made me look at things in my own life that maybe I'd forgotten about or conjured up—like older memories or things. I found this even last week when hearing about Pitchfork losing so much of its staff, I kind of forgot how much time I'd spent there, how much I had done there, and all the things my friends and I went through there. It's easy to forget because we're so busy, and you kind of just keep going on with your life and doing things. Suddenly, I had all these friends from Pitchfork texting and emailing me , Hey, remember we did this? I think doing the book had a similar effect where somebody would tell the story about crying on a plane. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember when I cried because I watched Mr. Rogers documentary.  ... So, it made me think more about these situations and more about my own experience with crying, for sure. And also the complexity of it: how sometimes you don't even know why you're crying, which I think is also interesting. You could just be listening to something or seeing something, and suddenly you're like, why is this thing that made me cry, but this other thing didn't? Or why some [story] would stand out to me while I'm editing it, and I would start crying, and other ones wouldn't [make me cry]. That's been interesting.

I would share parts of the book with my family. I shared it with my dad at one point, and he was really moved by the [story] by Nathan, who works in the bookstore. He has this customer come in all the time, and he thinks she doesn't realize he's gay. And then he's getting married, and she says, you know, what's her name? And he says, actually, his name. And then turns out this woman was closeted. It's like this beautiful—this older woman in her eighties—thing. And my dad always says that story really got him. I think it's interesting for me to put it together to see the stories that struck people again, just this vulnerability and humanity and people kind of witnessing that.

Rachel Schwartzmann: For sure. And then, is there a question that you hope people start asking you more often?

Brandon Stosuy: Hmm. I don't know. I feel like people definitely talk to us at least. I've seen it at the readings. People to talk to both of us about their crying [and] maybe are less asking questions and more just wanting to share a story—wanting to know that we hear the story and maybe don't even want us to respond. They just want the story to be told and for us to kind of bear witness to that. 

I guess simple things someone could ask us [could be] how are you doing? I feel like so much of like the quick communication that happens on the internet is often people want something, they hit you up, and then it's like, Hey, I like your thing by the way, can you do this for me? Or whatever. Just having basic communications where someone is checking in and asking how you're doing is important. And I think it's important for all of us to keep this in mind because, as we were saying before, people can be going through so much, and you have no idea. So maybe that's the question: How are you doing?

Rachel Schwartzmann: It's a classic for a reason.

Rose Lazar: Yeah. I think also that some people pride themselves on not crying. So when I would be talking about [Sad Happens], I feel like I would have to phrase the book in a way that [said], oh, it's just not all sad stories. You could see the person physically getting uncomfortable with the idea of sadness or crying. I don't want to force anyone to cry by any means, but I think that getting comfortable with crying is okay. It's a thing that sometimes is a release you don't even know you need, and then all of a sudden, you feel so much better. It's over something so insignificant sometimes, but it just makes you feel better. So I feel like that's something that was interesting for me with people—they would question the book or ask me a question about it. It was always about, oh, isn't it just like a sad book? A book about sad things? And I would be like, no. But sometimes, even in happy things, there's sadness, and so crying is a natural reflex to those things.

Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. Getting comfortable with crying is getting comfortable with yourself.

Rose Lazar: Exactly. And it's a hard thing to do.

Rachel Schwartzmann: I think there's so much more we could probably touch on and questions I could ask about each of your respective work and this beautiful book, but I'd like to close things out by having Rose read from her story.




Rachel Schwartzmann: That was my conversation with Brandon Stosuy and Rose Lazar, editor and illustrator of Sad Happens. You can purchase Sad Happens anywhere books are sold—though we recommend supporting local and independent bookstores if you can. You can also follow Brandon and Rose on social @bstosuy and @cosmicpeacestudio, and learn more about The Creative Independent at https://thecreativeindependent.com/. I'm Rachel Schwartzmann, and you've been listening to Slow Stories. Thank you so much for tuning in.