Art, Creativity and Authentic Expression: An Interview with Emarcea G. Forest
Hey guys,
I’ve been following Emarcea’s blog on here for a few months now. Initially it was her writing and general aesthetic that caught my eye, but I quickly learned that she is multi-talented and works in many different mediums from writing, music, painting and more. She’s a smart, talented young woman and I think you guys will enjoy her work. She was good enough to answer some of my questions, so enjoy the read and support independent artists.
1) Hi Emarcea. First off, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions. Would you like to introduce yourself to the Beautiful Monsters audience. How did you get started with music and writing?
My pleasure! I love to talk about art! I am currently living in Michigan. I've lived here all my life, but I am moving for the first time to a different state (in America) in a little over a month. I’ve not traveled much in the past five years, so this is very exciting for me. I’m looking forward to seeing where my creative journey extends itself. Eventually I would love to leave this country, but for now I am here and I want to make it count.
Both the muses for writing and music came to me at a very low point in my life. I had just dropped out of art school, after having gone through a series of extremely traumatic experiences. I had no idea if I was still an artist, I didn’t know that being in school or not being in school matters not for any reason except to learn. This does not hold power over who you are. I taught myself how to play guitar and I re-taught myself piano. I remembered the voice that I have, and realized that we all have our own unique voice within, we just have to summon it somehow, allow it to come forth and be present with us. My lonesomeness was the cataclysm for creating music and poetry; they were my outlets, my therapy. They still serve me this gift, but I am more whole, healed in a way, and they no longer serve as a crutch but as a purpose. I’ve always written; poetry, essays, stories, that was something that never stopped, but the more I wrote, the more I realized that this is what I wanted to do. Music is something that brings me great comfort. I don’t really do it for anyone but myself, and if anyone likes it and wants to listen to it, then all the merrier. I like that music and writing are forms of telepathy where we can share thoughts and emotions in a digestible way. Like music, the written word often exudes a kind of power that fuels my entire body, but writing is what I am most passionate about. I also like the process of it much more. It is more satisfying. I love storytelling in both music and writing, but the written word, existing inside of a tangible object that rests between your hands, hearing someone speak inside of your own mind, that is the difference, spoken word can be extremely powerful. I want to pass that along which is why I share it. And I think it is extremely important to share the human experience in this way of creation. Creating art, by any means, is a sacred process. I am still struggling to remember the sacred within my drawings and paintings as I have been working with my shadow self to deconstruct the conditioning I have faced. Most of it was my own doing, but we are all a work in progress, just as our art.
2) Can you walk us through your creative process? Do the songs come first or the lyrics?
It is a symbiotic experience for me. Lyrics, words, sonnets float through my head, both in poetics and for musical projects quite often, it seems I am never short of words. The music comes to me when I hear the call to pick up my guitar, I allow her to be a vessel for this.
Eventually something happens, but I cannot force it, ever. I am always practicing, but that is completely different than channeling a work of art. I guess this is my process; to let it come to me and to allow myself to be the channel and the vessel to express it, in whatever means necessary. I’ve dabbled with electronic projects too, but I appreciate the simplicity of a voice and a guitar, so that is mainly what I do now. I also appreciate the history and authenticity that comes to existing with an acoustic musical instrument. When I feel comfortable enough in what I’m creating I will record it. I’ve recorded hundreds of songs, only a few I’ve released for the public eye. The songs that are out there in the aether are what I feel most strongly about, they are the songs that make me feel something. That’s why I share it: when I know it exudes an emotion, something someone else can hold onto.
3) Who are some of your main musical and/or literary influences?
I am inspired most strongly by nature and the source of life first and foremost, but I see this inspiration and this flow in other humans as well, so I am inspired by them too. Some names that come to mind for musical inspirations are Beirut, Foxygen, Enya, Slowdive, The Brian Jonestown Massacre, Patti Smith, Price, The Cranberries, Neko Case, various jazz and folk albums from older generations, and so many others but I’ll stop myself there. Other literary folk who inspire me are Lucie Brock-Broido, Louise Gluck, Dylan Thomas, Sylvia Plath, David Foster Wallace, T. S. Elliot, Maya Angelou, Emily Dickinson. I love anything that is mystical, or appreciates the mystical.
4) You have self published a collection of your poetry and prose: Oranges and Lemons. Do you want to tell us about the collection? Where can people pick up a copy?
Yes! I have! This is a collection of poems I wrote during the entirety of my mania after leaving college. I started the collection outside the door of a class I was ditching. It went on from there. I kept a notebook with me at all times through the year or so I spent writing them.
This practice has stayed with me; if I go anywhere without a notebook or journal I feel odd, like a piece of myself is in the wrong place. After a while I realized I had a shit ton of poems and so I compiled them together and put them into a book. This collection is my first collection and it had a few rough go’s, but I am confident as to where it stands now. However, I am no longer the lost girl who wrote these. That might be apparent when compared to my more recent work. I do love this collection though, and I would be happy to know my poems are being read and felt. At the very least, the girl who wrote them would be ecstatic. Oranges and Lemons is available on the Barnes and Noble website. If you live in Grand Rapids, Michigan, you might still be able to find it at Argos Bookstore. Further, I am in the works of publishing a second collection, which will most likely also be on the B&N website, and soon they will both be on IngramSpark. One day, I hope to have them in actual stores. Finding a book in a used bookstore or your local B&N feels better than just ordering it online. I know.
5) What are your thoughts on AI? Do you think it poses a threat to creative people, or is it just another tool at our disposal?
AI is neither a tool or a threat. It is what you make of it. If you use it I feel no remorse for your decision, but I believe that if you want to write from the heart and the soul, or in the betterment of your intellectual mind, then you must do that, there is no other way. If you are writing for a school/work paper, or for something you don’t necessarily want to write, then I understand using it as a means of a crutch to get you through that, but I must acknowledge that there is something to be found in doing this work; you might find strength, perseverance, the will to do something more. You might understand the reason why you chose to do it in the first place; there is always a choice. I personally do not use anything of the sort. When it first floated around the internet I was curious, but my distaste toward technology overpowered my curiosity.
Technology is not apt to liking me anyway, so I prefer the more traditional ways of creating. If you want to start a war between artists and AI, then go ahead. I won’t dictate that, but I will advise you to steer your anger somewhere else. . . maybe into your art? I am a pacifist so I care not to behold any grudging matter that could cause such a thing. This conversation of technological advancement and AI goes hand-in-hand with social media, it is oversaturated with blah, and I just don’t care for it. Substack might be different, but it can still be extremely overstimulating, especially for someone like myself who is easily overstimulated by the media. We are obsessed with what technology can do, but the Earth and all she can do is immeasurably more interesting. She is entirely mysterious. Take a walk, see what you can find; maybe the inspiration for the paper you just can’t get around to doing will strike you whole.
6) Are new forms of expression possible, or has everything been done already?
We are always inventing new forms of expression, in small or large ways of being. There is always something left undiscovered for us. God, or Source is infinite of this, so by no means do we know everything there is to know about expression. That is what makes the creative journey most interesting, discovering something new. It may have been done before, in the ancient past, or by another person also walking this earth with us now, but that doesn’t defeat the purpose for the individual.
7) You have posted some pretty revealing pictures of yourself in the past. What would you say is the importance of Eroticism in Art and Creativity? What if any is the distinction between Erotic Art and Pornography?
Erotica is a useful tool when expressing oneself, although it can become an overbearing aspect of a toxic relationship. There is a distinction between erotic art and pornography, but it has become blurred in our world of modernity and sex-obsessed culture. What we might view as erotic now can be pornographic or art; that might be up to the interpreter. I think we are dangerously close to becoming overtly and completely numb to this distinction between what makes something erotic and something pornographic. The distinction for me is most often a variant of explicitly. While a painting of a feminine figure in an erotic position might be erotic in nature, that does not make it porn. I think porn is a mindless false-expression of a sacred intervening of souls. It is soulless. It is distasteful and it is rotten. You can tell when something embodies this if you pay attention. It has become important to maintain a safe distance from pornography myself, but I do greatly appreciate the erotica in the arts, it makes things interesting, tasteful. But again, it is a blurred line. It needs to become definitive. I would also like to mention how sacred our bodies are. They can certainly be appreciated in an erotic way, and that gratitude is often returned. The importance of erotica in art is this appreciation of the sacred body, all its changes, all the deformity, the imperfections, all the mush. When it is disrespected for the sake of money or clout, it becomes rotten. Maybe the distinction lies within intention. Do you intend for your body to be seen as a work of art, appreciating all that it is, acknowledging that it is a temple, or do you want to use it as a vessel to attract money, power and glory?
8) I really liked your story The Old World is Gone, which is part of a novel/novella you're working on. How is that project coming along?
Thank you! This project is my baby right now. Corpse Flower has slowly morphed into a novel over time. I have not written any novels before, and I don’t think I have tried to. Corpse Flower is the first and so far successful novel journey for me. It is a commentary on our current world fears and aspirations. It explores the parameters of global consciousness and the effects of religious idealization on prophets, evolution and science, as pertaining to apocalyptic personage and the venture towards God. I am working on the second part of it, which will be more closely defined as a journey through space and time to find oneself, what it takes to embody love within the self and how to use that power to shape the world that surrounds the self for creating community. I have so many other ideas in the works for larger stories like this one. It is intimidating to start writing a novel, but once you start, I’ve found, if it is meant for you, there is no stopping.
9) A lot of your writing is semi-autobiographical, which offers your work an air of authenticity. How personal is too personal? Should art offer a means of escape from the monotony of real life, or should it serve to make real life less monotonous?
The beauty of living right now, in this time, is that we can virtually share anything we want, as personal as we want. Authentic creation is important, it makes the writer real, but it is also if not equally as important, to use imagination. Using fiction as a means to exhibit some terror or personal experience can be a very insightful thing for the artist, just as well for thereader. It can be an escape, sure, but it can also be a powerful tool for processing. More than anything it is a form of ‘entertainment’ so taking a work of fiction or a personal essay to escape from reality is a possibility. I think what it really asks for is connection and community. To know that you are not alone in the monotony. Authenticity has had its fair share of hatred, atleast from what I have noticed, but I think this comes from an inability to recognize that each individual is unique, and that we are all whole within the realm of love. These people do not know the love within, the places where authenticity comes from. Writing personal or semi-autobiographical pieces gives me the freedom to explore my own mental parameters and stand as an example for authenticity, and maybe I can even stand for the necessary change that our society needs. What I do is important and it matters, and I want everyone who speaks for authentic love to know this too. However, I must account for your question on something being too personal. I’m not sure this really matters, because creating something for any reason you might have is reason enough to create it, but writing an essay for the sake of writing an essay is a fine line to walk upon. This means you must only be writing to publish it, to see it done and to be recognized for it. I see and read various essays and ‘stories’ on Substack that are soulless and just existing for the sake of an ego and clout. This is inauthenticity parading around its mask for attention and pity. Sometimes, this is what we think we need, the attention to keep going, but most of the time it never feels as good as we expect it to. What I would say about personal essays is that sometimes these thoughts and ideas are better left in a journal. A journal is a profound tool to have at your disposal, and I think everyone should keep a journal, even if you are not a writer or whathaveyou. Everyone has some kind of baggage, and compared to a therapist, a journal is much more affordable. Even so, you must ask yourself if you are willing to have the entire world read your work, if you want it to be private and personal, or if you can use it as a foundation for a larger idea; a story to share and mimic your experience behind a fictional story and the characters that live there. This might be a bold thing to do, but again, it can be immensely impactful and powerful. Sometimes a story is better this way, and sometimes it should be left to the discovery of an archivist.
10) Thanks again for your time. Feel free to drop any links you'd like where people can read, listen and support your work.
It is a great pleasure to be able to share my ideas, thank you for asking such insightful questions!
Here is a link to my debut collection of poems Oranges & Lemons!
I have music available on all the main streaming platforms, but here is a link to my Spotify artist profile :>
I regularly post videos on Youtube for fun, so here’s that too!
Because I also have a background within the arts, I have original work for sale on my website!
I also have an INPRINT if that is more interesting. . .
And of course, here is a link to my Substack
My gratitude extends beyond the sun and the moon, for you!
thank you again 😇