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Rachel Schwartzmann: Welcome to Slow Stories. I’m Rachel Schwartzmann. I'm a writer, consultant, and the creator and host of this podcast. For those of you just tuning in, I interview artists, entrepreneurs, and innovators who share slow stories—and big ideas—about living, working, and creating in our digital age.
This episode begins with a story from Tree Abraham, who shares more about her book, Cyclettes, and how a new practice has helped her stay in the present moment. Here's more from Tree.
Tree Abraham: My name is Tree Abraham. I'm a book designer and the art director for Mindy Kaling's new book studio at Amazon Publishing. I am also the author of an upcoming creative nonfiction book called Cyclettes, out November 1st with Unnamed Press.
Cyclettes is basically a mixed media collection of vignettes about cycles and this grappling between my desire to make home but also to wander—and what pace and place in my life might achieve that balance. I reference the book Staying Put written by Scott Russell Sanders, who examines the proliferation of transience in our rapidly globalizing world. He says: "If you are not yourself placed, then you wander the world like a sight-seer, a collector of sensations with no gauge for measuring what you see." Sanders argues that all there is to see can be seen from anywhere if one stays long enough that the stillness becomes a holy center.
The themes in my book reflect a nagging that I explore daily. For me, living meaningfully requires great intention to the present moment—and attention to my present environment. I think this can only be achieved through slowing down. One new addition to my home that is contributed to this is a clear acrylic bird feeder gifted to me recently by a friend. I suctioned the feeder to my bedroom window so that in the mornings, I wake to a myriad of birds that I lie and watch up close. I've spent the last week being absolutely delighted in observing how my backyard habitat adapted to the introduction of the feeder.
The feeder is quite small, so for long stretches of time, I've been curiously tracking the different species of bird discovering how to access the seed. Some are quick studies, and others remain eternally confused. The friend also gave me a field guidebook to Birds of New York, which I've been using to identify their breeds and quirks over a slow breakfast. It feels sort of like the comfort of having a pet without the guilt of keeping them caged. It's kind of amazing how the most simple interventions can command our focus if we let them.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Thank you so much again to Tree for sharing. Again, the book she mentioned is Staying Put by Scott Russell Sanders, and you can order Tree's book Cyclettes at Unnamed Press. Now here's my conversation with Ella Frances Sanders.
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Rachel Schwartzmann: How do you define beauty? Where does it come from? Why is it important? For Ella Frances Sanders, these questions take center stage in her latest book, Everything, Beautiful, an artful manifesto and guide that encourages readers to "find hidden beauty in the world."
It's easy to get lost in Ella's artistry. With elegant prose and calming illustrations, Everything, Beautiful provokes deep inquiry about how we've come to understand beauty and the potential we have to see it anew. But, off the page, and like most of us, Ella also understands that at times, it's difficult to envision where beauty fits into our demanding schedules, grief, and longing, but Everything, Beautiful ultimately makes the case to pay attention to and embrace the little things that make life beautiful—even when it seems impossible. As Ella writes in the book: "Beauty leaves us because we are resting our heads on the wrong shoulders. It leaves because we are always rushing to cover up discomfort and pain because we try to fill in all the gaps–in walls, in feelings, in other people, in endings. It leaves, but luckily for you and me, it doesn't necessarily go very far–and so we stand an astonishingly good chance of finding it again."
And in this interview, Ella shared more about her path to making Everything, Beautiful, how beauty manifests for her online and offline, and the importance of reflecting on questions and answers.
It's rare to engage in a conversation that's so openly vulnerable and honest, and I couldn't be more honored to share Ella's story with you here. There's so much to get into, and I don't want to give too much more away. So on that note, here's my conversation with Ella Frances Sanders, author of Everything, Beautiful.
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Ella Frances Sanders: Outside of books is something that is almost a bit strange to think about because sort of lines between my creative work and the rest of me—they're either very blurred or they're possibly non-existent in quite a lot of ways. My sort of daily existence feeds hugely into the things that I am writing about, and thinking about, and painting. But I suppose in a very, not ordinary, but a factual version of me is outside of work [Laughs]—there is an outside!—for somebody who spends a lot of time at their desk and in front of the computer, I also like spending as much of my time as possible outside. ... especially over the last three years [that] has become a very important aspect of things.
I suppose I am sister, [that] features quite heavily, I suppose, in terms of identity and the day-to-day. I'm a three times over sister; I have three of them. [Laughs] Sometimes that seems like a lot of them, to be honest, but they're all lovely. I guess the older I become, the more I think about that in terms of identity.
What else do I do? I read a lot, I think a lot, I ask a lot of questions, but you know, that's all things that again feature in creative work. I guess overwhelmingly; I would define myself as somebody that thinks a lot and probably worries a bit too much. I enjoy a lot of quiet, which is harder and harder to find, it seems. So, yeah, something along these lines.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Me too. Would you say that the household you grew up in was quiet?
Ella Frances Sanders: I would say that. I mean, aside from having four daughters in the house, my childhood was not really a loud one. Both my parents are quite quiet, thoughtful people, and nobody was ever kind of told to turn the volume down or to take their noise or their games elsewhere. The imagination was always very... it felt very free, I would say.
Yeah, it was quiet, and I grew up in fairly quiet places. Cities didn't really feature that much really at all for kind of a couple of decades. I would say that whether it's just sort of my natural ways of being—the kind of disposition—or the kind of childhood bringing up part, silence and quiet are very comfortable places for me.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Did your sisters teach you anything about silence or stillness? Quiet?
Ella Frances Sanders: This is making me laugh, but I think I'm definitely the quietest one. So I think if anything they maybe notice that about me. Any kind of sibling, any kind of sibling relationship—whether it's good or bad or somewhere in the middle—you end up learning a lot from those people and also who those people become, I think.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, it's interesting. I'm an only child, so I'm always interested in that dynamic. It seems so otherworldly to me, almost. [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, I can appreciate that. I can appreciate that. I had a couple of close friends growing up who were only children. I remember spending time with their families or where they lived, and it was a different kind of silence in those places because there weren't other siblings around. I feel that maybe ... as I get older, this is going to become somewhat of a theme or a preoccupation: siblings, sibling relationships, and the order of siblings. That seems to factor in a lot to who people are. I'm the second daughter, and I think there are plenty of people who would have a lot of psychological comments to say about that. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: [Laughs] Yeah. Not quite the middle, not quite the eldest. It's like a protected space almost.
Ella Frances Sanders: Mm-hmm. Protected, and you don't have to be the first one to do things! So I've always liked that. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah, well, that definitely factors into the slowness and taking one's time. Just having this looming societal pressure to rush to fill the space and to always sort of be moving has been a through-line in at least the conversations I've had with people on this show for the last few years.
But I want to go back to worrying for a minute ... I mentioned this before we started recording worrying and anxiety; it's been top of mind for a lot of people. It's something I've been managing [and] struggling with for my entire life. But in terms of identity and even beauty, I thought it was really interesting in your Instagram bio that you said you're "good at worrying," but mainly that you're a writer and illustrator of books. And so I've been thinking a lot about the connection between worry, and anxiety, and hope, and beauty, and I'm wondering if you found any sort of tether or through-line with those things? Worry, for me, has become a form of awareness, particularly self-awareness.
Ella Frances Sanders: That's so interesting... You mentioned tether and through-line, and those are definitely things that I've felt at various points. Obviously, this a huge, not elephant in the room, but for people who I suppose are maybe naturally quite anxious or do tend to worry a lot—the last three years have, I think for those types of people, thrown a lot more into view.
I definitely have found myself during the pandemic... there was a kind of shift—and I think it's starting to shift back—into more cyclical types of anxiety or worrying that wasn't necessarily going anywhere. Whereas usually—and again, now more so—those things, I find them feeding quite naturally into what I'm doing, or thinking, or working on. ... I find I have to practice quite hard at it—turning into not necessarily linked with productivity because that can get a bit kind of sticky feeling, but just putting them into something. It's hard to describe, and it sounds like maybe you are very familiar with this feeling, but when you leave the ends of anxiety and worry unattended, they don't usually end up anywhere good. So weirdly, the books that I worked on for the last few years, I worked on during probably one of my most intense periods of anxiety and worry. And you mentioned worrying almost as a way to notice things, which I feel hugely.
It's funny that you mentioned that Instagram bio. I thought if I introduced myself as good at worrying, then it gets that out of the way! The other thing is it took me such a long time to realize that not everybody worried as much as me. I just kind of assumed that everybody else was as worried about the small, delicate things as I was. But that's not the case. So it sounds like you are also familiar with this feeling.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's all-consuming sometimes.
Ella Frances Sanders: Mm-hmm.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I mean, [over] the last few months, if I'm being completely honest, I've experienced the most debilitating forms of anxiety that I've ever had as an adult. It's humbling, you know, it's a humbling thing—then to ask for help, which I've done, which is also probably a whole other conversation. [Laughs] But I really appreciated that sort of transparency in a space that doesn't always allow for it or promotes one version of how to be.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah. I think that people who are prone to anxiety and worry are so important because I feel like they're the people who can sense or notice most immediately—or most intensely—where things are painful, where things are wrong, or where things don't feel right. ... I can't imagine being somebody who didn't worry about things because you would miss things that needed to be changed or that needed to be different or that wasn't right, whether that was in a personal context or in a much wider one.
Rachel Schwartzmann: This might be a big stretch. So let me know. [Laughs] But do you think worrying can be a practice? Is there a productive way to worry?
Ella Frances Sanders: I mean, I'm not sure what the people who know me would say about this. And for a lot of people, I mean you use the word debilitating, it can be hugely damaging to worry in certain ways—for your body, it depends on your stress levels, [but] it can have a very negative effect.
If I'm speaking for myself in terms of work and the things that I find myself doing, I wouldn't be making things in the same way if I weren't worrying. But I also think about times in my life when I may be worried a bit less, and that was also good in a different way. It wasn't that I wasn't worrying; it just wasn't quite so much at the forefront of everything. So I do think that I might be trying to get back to a version more like that. But it feels productive when you can link your worrying to noticing things. For example, I worry about houseplants and if they're doing okay and if their leaves are okay... and then I'm noticing them because I'm thinking: is that new leaf gonna be okay? Do I need to water it? There are lots of examples.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Yeah. Yeah, I know it's kind of a tricky question, but I think that's my own version of asking questions in an attempt to reign in some of that worry and channel it into something good or nourishing. But also, I've just been thinking about slowness as a lifelong practice—and worry kind of factors into that for me; when I can slow that down and think of it and channel it in a way that's going to fuel my curiosity or empathy.
Ella Frances Sanders: That's actually very interesting that you say maybe there's a way of worrying more slowly that is more nourishing than worrying really fast-paced. Hmm. I will think about this.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Me too. [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: That's very interesting... questions is a big [idea] for me, and it is very linked to worrying. So maybe, at some point, we will end up having some thoughts about questions. This [interview] is all questions, though. That's what's so nice!
Rachel Schwartzmann: I mean, I think it's all connected, and it's slowing down to recognize the relationship between all of these things and that we don't have to silo certain parts of ourselves or how we're thinking. I don't know about you, but I've gotten really good at compartmentalizing, which I think is necessary to a degree, learning to let things be a bit more fluid [and] go with the flow.
I want to make sure we talk about your book because I feel like, again, there is this connection between beauty and worry. Before we get into that, you recently wrote about seasons, and that's something I'm also very interested in in terms of having these visual markers of time passing and of people growing. And you wrote:
"Working as a lone creative person often feels most heightened in the autumn, the solitude of it more noticeable somehow, followed around by some kind of unnamable longing for everything to be easier, more bearable, for everyone. You can't think properly with other people around, but you need them around nonetheless, and regardless these early autumn-to-winter weeks leave me feeling better than all the other ones—the springs and the summers don't promise me things, but the autumn does and I can't ever thank it enough."
I just started writing about fall for my book, and I love this. I think it's so true, and I want to hear more about fall and what it promises—and what makes you worry less in the fall. [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: This is a big interesting piece for me, and it's lovely to know that you think maybe some of the same things. But yeah, it can be hard to put it into words, and I think actually that newsletter was maybe surprisingly one of the handfuls of times where I was interested in trying to [put it into words]. Because I think—I'm going to briefly tie it back to worrying [Laughs]—I'm somebody who worries mainly... I wonder if this will make sense; maybe it's outward rather than inwards. So I'm less prone to trying to define things in terms of who I am. It's kind of the ways in which I think or the things that I believe; they're all there, and they're all circulating all the time, but ... there's not a huge amount of talking about myself, so that has led to not necessarily trying to dissect a lot of it.
But yeah, in terms of autumn and fall, I think mainly what I noticed: now, for example, it's early autumn here where I live, and there's been a few really windy nights, and there are suddenly a lot of leaves on the ground, and the green is suddenly starting to disappear. Although there's quite a mixture of evergreen and broadleaf trees—so there is some, you know, there's some year-round green—the colors are just, they always seem quite shocking, and it always seems shocking that something can let go so swiftly and so decisively. I think I really like that. I think to me that seems like a sort of invitation, offering, or an opportunity to look at things that I've maybe been holding onto for the last year that I don't need to. Weirdly, this autumn has been the first one for a few years now where I've felt enough kind of internal space has become available to really, really notice the changes. This works in combination with the fact that we've recently moved somewhere new, so this is the first autumn I've experienced in this particular place.
It's definitely about the changes, the transition—those aren't original autumn concepts. But yeah, when it comes with the shortening of daylight hours, I'm quite far north here; I'm kind of in line with northern Denmark, so we're getting ready for quite a dark winter. Waking up to the dark, [and] it becoming darker earlier and earlier in the evenings, that is a very reflective time. There was something I wanted to mention, actually, which I'll try to remember; it was about kind of mornings and then late night kind of times.
But yeah, working alone for me definitely, as I wrote in that passage, for some reason, gets highlighted. Perhaps also that is to do with knowing that the things around me that are changing in terms of the natural world. That's all happening in a very linked and collaborative way between those species and those trees and all of that. This is something that I need to think about a lot more.
Rachel Schwartzmann: It's almost a gift. As much as the world is changing, unfortunately, affected by climate change, there is sort of a dependency on seasons and this opportunity to come back to them and think about how they fit in the context of our lives and who we are. All of that resonates with me.
I think there's merit in talking about things that are maybe even cliché. I feel like we need to hold on to some of those simple things. We don't always have to reinvent the wheel.
Ella Frances Sanders: No, it's so true. People are very quick to dismiss things that are viewed as cliché or as kind of just worn very thin. But those things come back up again and again for a reason. This is something that definitely I've thought about a lot because there is huge pressure, of course, to say things differently or say things in a more interesting way or to stand out, but a lot of what we are surrounded by in terms of the natural world ... these individual species or individual plants they're not trying to spend the energy standing out. Energy gets spent on growing and, in a lot of cases working with others, which is interesting.
Rachel Schwartzmann: There's something beautiful about that. And I think beauty overall—whether we're talking about art, the natural world, online, offline—it's such an interesting idea in a construct in a lot of ways. And I kind of want you to share a little bit about your path to this book, but specifically through the lens of accidents. I believe your first book wasn't planned, and you know, not all accidents are "happy," as they say. But I'd love to hear a little bit about your relationship with accidents. Have you had any beautiful accidents artistically, personally, or romantically lately? [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: Well, I just want to say that I would be completely fine if we spent this time talking about worrying! But yes, we will talk about the book, and I'm glad that you enjoyed it. Accidents—I'm trying to think. There are a lot of different ways that you could approach accidents. For example, I'm actually a very—it may be shocking—careful person. I think this comes with worrying, probably, but I'm a careful person. I would say there's probably a somewhat unfortunate kind of perfectionism streak. But I think alongside that, I'm very quite free of expectation, which leaves a lot of room for things to be unexpected or accidental.
As you mentioned, my first book came about somewhat accidentally, it wasn't planned, and this was over ten years ago. I had to decide between continuing with some study or working on this book, and I'm really glad that I did choose to work on the book because this has somehow been my job for more than ten years, which still seems strange to say and I'm really thankful for that.
But it is—especially in a creative context or producing creative things—slightly odd to start from a point that wasn't particularly intentional. The books following the first one, I wouldn't say they were accidental. There was intention, and they were desired things, and I could have chosen to do something else, but there was so much figuring out that I needed to do. It really only feels as though I'm beginning to do some of that now, which is again a kind of slowness because I couldn't move any faster. I couldn't figure out things that I wanted to say any faster. I couldn't sort of grow or adapt the ways that I wanted to paint things any faster.
But accidents—hmm, particular accidents. I don't think there have been any overwhelming accidents, personal or professional. But I mean, a lot of the last three years have been plenty full of things that feel like accidents in terms of physically moving to places and making decisions. I think for many people, they've probably ended up in—I don't know—relationships or cities or jobs, a bit surprising to them.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Was it challenging to work on this book knowing what was happening in the world? How were you, and where were you working?
Ella Frances Sanders: Well, I think it was both a kind of salvation, I guess overwhelmingly that, but the whole process from its very beginning to where we are now—you know, still in a pandemic, still dealing with ongoing consequences—the book has kind of been contained within it, which in some ways is really odd to think about.
So, for example, the proposal that I finished up for this book, I finished it in a tiny place in the UK that I'd traveled back to for a funeral. This was in the summer of 2020, and at the time, I was living in France. So the first lockdown is in March; I'm in France at that point. The first lockdown happened [and] that was probably the most isolated in terms of the three years and different physical places.
We'd come back, and I remember finishing up this proposal for the book. I'd set up a tiny temporary desk that looked out of a window onto a kind of roof, and I remember painting kind of the types of illustrations [and] paintings that are in this book. That time was kind of ... weirdly where I felt more sure in what I was doing and more sure in the kind of visual vision. Then a year and a half following that, I actually lived in Ireland. So I think probably 99% of the book in terms of the manuscript—and then also all the painted pages—was in Ireland, which I think about now, and it seems quite far away. Already from this small distance, it feels quite dream-like because I wrote these things and painted these things in places that I'm probably never going to go back to. It's sort of wholly contained in this globally unusual—but also personally unusual—and quite disjointed period. It was definitely keeping me tied to something working on this, which I'm very, very glad for.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Why do you say you'll never go back?
Ella Frances Sanders: I won't necessarily need to. But there are kind of two layers. One is a very, I guess, factual layer because my partner and I have moved back to the UK. We're now in Scotland, and that decision was made to be closer to family, which started to feel very important and much more necessary with the pandemic. So one layer of it is very factual because I don't think there are any personal reasons to return to the places where we lived.
The other one is more intangible because (I think people will be placed variously on this kind of scale) for me, it doesn't necessarily benefit me to return to things. Definitely, in a book and in a kind of written context, I feel that lots of people would maybe say similar things ... it's hard to describe, but I suppose it's that I'm very conscious of the fact that I'm never really the same person one kind of week to the next.
This is something that goes back to a previous book of mine because it was this piece that talked about the idea of self and how you could never sort of be yourself in this really long, sustained, unchanging way. When I put that alongside some kind of creative work, it's a type of letting go of things. Maybe it's coming up because [of] autumn, and the trees are dropping their leaves.
Yeah, Everything, Beautiful wouldn't be the same had it not been the product of the last three years. It feels, I don't know, not like I can't handle it too much in terms of turning something over and over again and looking at it and looking at all its sides. But just the conditions were so unusual that I'm not really sure how it came to be that book exactly because it was also unusual.
Rachel Schwartzmann: So it was an accident in some ways!
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah! Actually, that's a good thought. Maybe it was some kind of accident. Yeah.
Rachel Schwartzmann: This is a good place to have you read a section, particularly from "Beauty You Can Translate, And Beauty You Cannot."
Ella Frances Sanders: I'd love to.
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Rachel Schwartzmann: I love that passage. I think it's so true. We're in a culture now where finding answers or solutions is the norm when really learning to just live with the process or the nature of something that's so elusive, like beauty, is so hard for us, even still. You would think over the last couple of years [that] things would've shifted, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
Ella Frances Sanders: No. I think there was a kind of recognition of that quite early on in the process, which is where a lot of the book could grow out of—because I remember one of the things that I wrote in the proposal for this book, and wanted to highlight, was that I felt there was this global thirst. I think [that] is what I said, a kind of global thirst for beauty, which is maybe odd to think about given how much we use that word, how much emphasis we place on it, how quick people are too kind of talk about things that they might perceive as being beautiful. But to me, it felt like there was a kind of deeper thirst for the types of beauty that are genuinely nourishing.
Yeah, that was a real kind of starting point for the book, and the passage that I just read comes from this section about beauty in the context of language and words. It felt really important to include because, for most of us, naming things and putting words to things is how we make sense of them and offer them to other people even and remember them in a simple way.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, you explain beauty in what I thought was a really honest and generous way. And all throughout the book, I also noticed that you listed out moments of near misses, for example, "a rabbit getting across the car streak road just in time" or breaking for a bird." These are really beautiful, miraculous things, but I wonder how you've arrived at this place where you're able to hold space for bad and beautiful things at once.
Ella Frances Sanders: Well, I would say that I'm not always very good at it. It takes a lot of work to try and balance those [things], but I'm also very, would be very quick to recognize that they often come alongside each other, so that a lot of the things that maybe are narrowly or genuinely terrible, it's also really important that we see or recognize [the] beauty within those things.
How have I arrived at this place? I suppose in a kind of basic way; I notice both types of things. So yes, noticing beauty feels really important, and a lot of the time now, I can't really help it. That's just where my attention falls ... So there's that kind of piece. And then maybe this also comes back to worrying because if you worry, you will inevitably notice things that are bad. So maybe a lot of it is just kind of two sides that are kept so close together [and] that need to be kept so close together. Maybe also it's about appreciation because—and this is something that is repeated and retold and reimagined—this idea that you can't have one without the other, that you need sadness to highlight the times when you're feeling really good, is the contrast, I guess. Yeah, I would say that. The contrast is definitely somewhere I sit in a lot.
Rachel Schwartzmann: How does it show up for you online? Because I feel like that contrast is really present when we're talking about beauty in the digital space. And given the nature of how volatile it can be to be online, I think it requires slowing down to be able to recognize that those things can coexist. I'm thinking specifically about a section in the book where you talk about kind of buying into the advertised standards of beauty and consumption and curation. I'm curious to hear about your thoughts on beauty in the context of the digital age. Do you think there is a difference between beauty and aesthetics (which is something that's so prevalent in how we curate online)?
Ella Frances Sanders: I suppose the kind of reality versus internet problem, for want of a better word, is something that I definitely am pretty preoccupied with because I think that a lot of creative work is just really inherently slow. I don't know if many people, at least personally, whose ideas—the ideas that they're most proud of, I guess—aren't shaped or at least informed in some way by types of slowness. So to me, that kind of involves turning certain volumes down. And those things that I feel need to be turned down definitely include any kind of online, any kind of online social spaces because it feels like all those things are just there waiting for you to say really anything that kind of comes to mind, which seems of really at odds with the way that a lot of creative professions would naturally move.
A lot of the time, the internet definitely seems like the antithesis of anything slow, and I personally definitely struggled to kind of consolidate these things or incorporate the digital into my professional anything because having that or maintaining that is for most of us quite non-negotiable.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, it's how we connected too, which is such a funny thing.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, absolutely, really connected. But it's hard to feel like you can put it aside, I guess, for any real length of time or aside for long enough to let your imagination really sink into something—not that it means something exactly, but a lot of the time, it seems really at odds. This is definitely something that I have not resolved or probably found a great balance with, but I think about people who maybe don't maintain any kind of internet presence or maybe don't even have computers ... I like to imagine they're doing really, really interesting things. Your brain works in different ways once you are perpetually, routinely engaged in digital stuff.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Oh yeah. Slow Stories was born in reaction to that. My life before was very online. I came up in the style blog era and had a site that was kind of in that first wave. There are remnants of that life in my digital presence now, but what you're saying is so true; it's just a constant willingness to unlearn all of those habits and those expectations. But it's hard. I've found a lot of inspiration and even relationships from those spaces. So it's always interesting to have these conversations and to see where people are at in terms of how it can serve them because I think, for the most part, it's not a good space, but it's necessary, and there is good that's being done.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I have no answers. [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, no answers. But you're right; it's also really important to recognize or remember the good things that come of it and definitely in terms of connection. People that might otherwise be really isolated have been able to find community, and so I agree. It's very unsolved and very interesting. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: How has it impacted your relationship with pace? Has there been any sort of direct correlation with how you start a project—and how would you describe your relationship with pace overall?
Ella Frances Sanders: Hmm. I suppose in the context of Everything Beautiful—the most recent book—there was a kind of complete absence of pace in a lot of ways because it spanned very different countries and a lot of external turmoil. But in a more bedrock pace context, I definitely would say that I find myself not battling with things like the computer and other ways in which I'm kind of promised maybe a more easeful working practice... Really anything that suggests I might have an easier time of working or thinking I'm a bit skeptical of, and I have to be quite conscious of shutting those kinds of things out very unapologetically, at least in the first parts of the days. I actually read something recently—I'm someone who forgets details within the space of about ten minutes, but I'll do my best!
I was reading an article, it was an interview with the writer Celeste Ng, and I think it was on The Atlantic, but towards the end of it, she was talking about how the times of day that she was writing at had had to change after she'd had a child. She was saying how previously she'd chosen to write really late; it was kind of between 10:30 and might have even been something like two in the morning. And what she said was that it was almost like getting ready to dream. It was the sort of dream-like state because it was so late. I've thought about that a lot since reading it. It was talking about technology and pace that kind of reminded me because she went on to say that since having a child, she's had to move her writing to the morning, which sounded more precarious.
I remember her saying you can very quickly get, say, stuck in emails or sucked into emails, and it was something about—I think she used the word burning—kind of burning off the morning or morningness. I thought, "oh yeah, that's it," because if you get up and you immediately turn to your phone or your computer, and you look at emails, or you look at your to-do list, you lose that intangible dream-like state that you sometimes can find maybe late at night or early in the morning.
So in terms of pace, to go back to that, I always, always find it best to not really be doing anything in particular first thing and to kind of leave expectations for later in the day because I don't think I do very well if I have set out a kind of—not a rhythm exactly, but just a plan.
Sometimes there are things that you have to do by a certain time, and that is great, and I procrastinate a lot with those. I'm in denial about a lot of them. [Laughs] But yeah, I guess I maybe don't understand people who pace themselves really well. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I don't really have an answer to that. But I think for me, and this is actually a lot of people now, my kind of personal, at-home life is so mashed in that I kind of move from my desk to the kitchen or whatever it is. It doesn't feel like an interruption, but for a lot of people, it would. So I think pace is often just the things that happen in the day, which sounds a bit odd, but I think that is maybe the case.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I love that. I would agree with that. In terms of my current setup, it's very fluid. I think that's probably one of the most tangible answers I've heard in terms of how people describe pace—because pace is life. It's just movement and choice. Yeah. Yeah.
Ella Frances Sanders: I'm glad that made some sense.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, I think it goes back to trying to find the words or define [them]. Sometimes we can't.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, people are very quick to provide answers, I guess, or provide answers that are maybe the expected answers. I'm definitely a proponent of both questions and answers that maybe sound different from what people might usually expect.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I want to get into questions—more of the liminal space between questions and answers, but I think it might be good to have you read another passage from Everything, Beautiful.
Ella Frances Sanders: I would love to. Okay, so this is a passage from a chapter called "Beauty Should Not Have Ceilings."
PASSAGE READ BY ELLA FRANCES SANDERS ︎ PURCHASE EVERYTHING, BEAUTIFUL ︎︎︎
︎
Rachel Schwartzmann: I always get chills at that last line.
Ella Frances Sanders: I was reading down the page—and so my head was turning like my neck was folding over, and I thought, soon you're not going to be able to inhale. I just kept my neck kept folding down, and my head was, ugh! [Laughs] But I'm glad.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, take a breath. It's funny, you know, we've been talking a lot about beauty online and the digital space, so I kind of want to refocus us back to our bodies. I'm curious: How does beauty manifest for you first in terms of the senses? Do you see it? Do you hear it? Where does that begin?
Ella Frances Sanders: I think it's definitely visual primarily because although that is very quickly folded into things like a smell or a sound, I think for me, being a quiet person, it's often noticed visually because it's maybe from a distance. It's often very, very small and maybe doesn't make any sound or doesn't smell a particular way. But then I think it can also be just those things: so it can be just a smell or just a sound, and that's enough even without a kind of visual accompaniment.
Rachel Schwartzmann: When I was going through Everything, Beautiful—this may be a very specific detail, so bear with me—I noticed that it doesn't have any page numbers, and I actually thought that was really beautiful because it really forces you to pay attention to where you are in the reading experience. Was that intentional or is that just something I'm hyper-aware of? [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: No, it was a conscious decision or choice, I suppose. Primarily, I really liked the idea that somebody might feel a bit lost inside it, hopefully in a good way—but also, we are really quick to want to point things or reference things or tell people about things, and there was this part of me that liked imagining the sort of inability of people to mention a page number or mention something on a page, and that if they couldn't do that maybe somebody else would have to go and find it for themselves.
This has definitely come back to haunt me because speaking about the book or referencing things in a kind of interview or publicity context has become very difficult because nobody can reference a page number, and I can't find it either! I'm very glad about the decision overall.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I felt like it was probably intentional, and I think it just speaks to the themes that you're exploring. Beauty is something we try to hold onto, but in this way, you're almost asking us to hold it and then let it go.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, yeah. Because if you find something in a kind of literal way to explain what you just said, if you find something you like on a page, it might take you a while to get back to it—which I kind of like as an idea more broadly. I think that maybe it takes a while to return to things that we need to or that we want to. Otherwise, it's very easy, you know?
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, it goes against the culture of immediacy, and it, you know, puts us back in a headspace of discovery and curiosity. You might think you're going to find something on that page, you're trying to reference something else that might catch your eye, and then it leads you down a whole other unexpected path. So I definitely appreciate that.
Ella Frances Sanders: I'm glad. I think it will be infuriating to plenty of other people. [Laughs]
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, they might not be ready for the book. I'm also a really big believer in books coming into our lives at the right times. I don't know if you are. [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, well, I think I am ... I know there's that saying about not being able to step into a river twice something like this, or you'll never step in the same river twice. I'm strangely somebody who doesn't often reread things or rewatch things—or maybe that's not strange, but I think that is maybe one way in which I adhere to the things arriving when they need to arrive. Or just that we're ready at different times to pay attention to different things.
It was definitely something that a part of me worried about with this book because I kind of thought, I'm writing all these things, I'm trying to define these particular ideas in a slightly different way, and I'm trying to hopefully get people to reconsider some or a lot of what they're thinking. And there was definitely a worry that maybe this is so slow and so quiet that people just won't hear it, or they won't notice, or maybe they're not going slow enough to even absorb it.
As you say, I think people read things when they're ready to, and it never feels right to rush people into reading anything. So I'm happy for it to land where it lands.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Reading generally can be a very solitary experience, but there is space within Everything, Beautiful to explore in that way. You're almost inviting readers into the conversation or into the practice of finding beauty in the world. And I'm curious: in shaping our own definitions of beauty and really just owning or finding the agency to feel confident in what we deem beautiful, what is the relationship between community and beauty? When is it okay to invite other people's perspectives in?
Ella Frances Sanders: That's a really good question. I think this is a very individual thing. I think it would be nice if people felt more able to hold things close to themselves and not need to share them. I'm conscious that we were trying to drift away a little bit from the digital, but that is definitely a way in which people are held to a kind of sharing standard. I find myself really wanting to resist that.
There's a quote—I cannot for the life of me remember who said or wrote this—but they're saying something about kind of witnessing astonishing things or observing beauty and telling nobody about it, which would be so difficult for a lot of people to do now. There's such encouragement when anything interesting or beautiful happens to us; the feeling is that we need to tell somebody about it.
I think it would be interesting for people to hold more and hold more, more closely. But also, there's a kind of trust that has to be explored when you share something that you've held closely with somebody else. I think that's very beautiful in itself. The kind of trusting that somebody else might be interested in what you personally find to be beautiful or letting somebody else see it through their own senses and experiences. A lot of that feels very tender to me.
Yeah, kind of feelings of tenderness and protectiveness. I think it can feel really, validating is the wrong word, but when somebody responds genuinely and positively to something that you have noticed or pointed at, I can't really put it into words, but it feels like a very important human type of connection or recognition and something that can be between two people or maybe more. But I do think to me, at least, a lot of the most powerful or potent types of beauty—or the kinds of beauty that I'm encouraging people to notice more—are very small and often very ephemeral, which is maybe why it's difficult to translate that to a kind of sharing.
Rachel Schwartzmann: I think it's so interesting, though, to link trust to part of this. I never really thought of it in that way.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, I think it's the kind of vulnerability as well that you are carrying around when you have seen something, and it's affected you or meant something to you personally. I hope that people will perhaps come away from reading [the book] knowing or believing that they don't have to explain their beauties to anybody else. And that even if they do, and the reaction maybe isn't one that they had hoped for or imagined, it doesn't necessarily mean that that thing that they found beautiful isn't beautiful anymore.
Rachel Schwartzmann: And trusting that's okay.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, absolutely.
Rachel Schwartzmann: And that they're not wrong for that. I think there are a lot of expectations about right and wrong. There's a right way to tell a story; there's a wrong way to receive it. So maybe changing the goalposts or the boundaries around that is part of this process.
Ella Frances Sanders: Yeah, I just think it can be much richer and much more nuanced than we are encouraged to believe or accept.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Absolutely. And I think navigating that process requires asking questions. So let's talk about questions. You mentioned questions are really integral to your work and your practice—and this is something that I ask all of my guests on this podcast, so I'm really, really excited to hear what you have to say—but at this point, is there a question that you hope people start asking you more often in the context of beauty, attention, slowness or even worry? [Laughs]
Ella Frances Sanders: That is exceptionally difficult to kind of funnel into something specific. It feels, to me, like we kind of societally have been asking a lot of the same questions, and this maybe doesn't seem obvious at first because you can ask the same question in a lot of different ways, but I do think that the questions are going to need to change quite a lot and that people are going need to be more open to the answers looking different. So it seems like an impossible thing that you have asked me to do. [Laughs] I want there to be a nice, neat something, and I'm not so sure that there will be.
I mean, the same way I said earlier that it took me a long time to realize that other people weren't worrying as much as I was, I also was kind of surprised that people weren't necessarily asking as many questions as I did. I mean, I do, I fall asleep, and I'm still asking questions which is not always appreciated by other people, and I have to limit my questions. [Laughs] But I think that's an important piece: people ask questions differently, and they also answer questions differently. So I suppose I'm excited by the idea that other things can be answers: a book can be an answer, or a painting can be an answer, or even just leaving the house to go for a walk can be an answer. Then all those things can also be questions. So I've realized I'm not actually narrowing this down; I'm actually widening it a bit.
I would like to think we can ask more of the types of questions that most people think are unimportant or aren't worthwhile. This makes me think about the kinds of questions that young children ask because they're not questions that we ask after a certain time. They're often really important, and often, as adults, we can't answer those questions, which I find really interesting. The kinds of questions that I don't know people would dismiss...
I wish that I could give you a nice, neat question or answer, but it's the questions too that are a bit uncomfortable and that challenge things that we've thought for a really long time. A lot of people are very quick to run away from those kinds of questions. So I think maybe just more uncomfortable ones. There's a kind of insensitive uncomfortable, and then there's a sensitive uncomfortable, and maybe some combination of both. I'm not sure; this theory needs some refining.
Rachel Schwartzmann: Well, our conversation has covered so much, it's kind of hard to put into words how much I've taken away from it, so thank you.
Towards the end of Everything, Beautiful, you remind readers that beauty is both a beginning and an ending. And in terms of leaving readers and listeners with a new take on beauty, pace, and everything in between, I'd love to bring our conversation to a close by having you read one final passage from Everything, Beautiful—specifically from the section "The New Beauty."
Ella Frances Sanders: I'd love to.
Rachel Schwartzmann: That was my conversation with Ella Frances Sanders, author and illustrator of Everything, Beautiful. You can purchase Everything, Beautiful anywhere books are sold—though we recommend supporting local and independent bookstores if you can. You can also follow Ella on social @ellafsanders. Stay tuned, as we'll be sharing highlights from this episode on our own channels @slowstoriesofficial on Instagram and @slowstoriespod on Twitter. I'm Rachel Schwartzmann, and you've been listening to Slow Stories. Thank you so much for tuning in.