Poured Over: Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin on My Name Is Jason. Mine Too.
“For me, and perhaps for both of us, I think that our greatest sort of skill set is audacity. It’s so funny the way people sort of negatively connote ego, but I think it’s necessary to have some, because one has to have a little bit of, I mean, like, when we were 20 years old, our whole thing was we’re gonna rearrange and change the way people think of the book, right?” Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin have been friends for 20 years and that friendship has led to an incredible artistic collaboration in Ain’t Burned All the Bright and the now reissued My Name is Jason, Mine Too. Jason and Jason join us on the show to talk about how their collaboration works, how they make art (and when the medium matters), masculinity, the incredible range of artists and media that inspire them both, why paper and pencil is sometimes all that you need, and much more with Poured Over’s host, Miwa Messer. And we end this episode with TBR Topoff book recommendations from Marc and Becky.
Featured Books:
Ain’t Burned All the Bright by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin
My Name is Jason, Mine Too by Jason Reynolds and Jason Griffin
Poured Over is produced and hosted by Miwa Messer and mixed by Harry Liang. New episodes land Tuesdays and Thursdays (with occasional Saturdays) here and on your favorite podcast app.
And here’s the complete video version of this episode on B&N’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/8uw-mbFmrm0
Full transcript for this episode of Poured Over:
B&N: I’m Miwa Messer, I’m the producer and host of Poured over and I am so happy to see these two dudes on the screen. And oh, right now we’re doing video. Jason Reynolds, and Jason Griffin have created a couple of really amazing books. One came out earlier in 22. called Ain’t Burned All the Bright and the newest one is actually a revisited project. But we’ll get there in a second. It’s called My Name is Jason. Mine, Too. So would each of you sort of separately say hello, so we can have and say your name, too. So we have listeners who can key in on your voice as
Jason Reynolds: Of course, of course, hi, everybody. This is Jason Reynolds.
Jason Griffin: And I’m Jason Griffin.
JR: I feel like our voices sound so similar.
JG: I was just about to say maybe I could talk like this.
B&N: You know what, we’ll figure it out. We’ll try to figure it out. It just begs to the depth of your collaboration though. You guys were college roommates. You’ve been working together for a million years. I mean, this new book was published first in 2009. When you first got to New York. Should I admit that it was Brooklyn. I mean, Brooklyn does have more cachet than New York these days. But, you know, so you’re you’re living in Bed Stuy eating a lot of tuna, eating a lot of tuna, and a lot of ramen.
JG: Cheerios.
B&N: Okay, deciding between paying the heat, and eating. Which is a wild way to be making art. I mean, Jason, you are a poet, and a writer and the visual arts are not necessarily the first thing we think of when we think of you and Jason Griffin, we’re gonna get to your audiobooks thing in a minute. But yeah, you’re a reader, but the visual arts are really what drives you. Okay, so this is a collaboration that comes straight out of a deep seated friendship, or what have you. How did that come about in the first place?
JG: I’ll take you back to the first time I saw this guy. I saw him at University of Maryland, Black Student Union talent show, and he was performing spoken word. And I had heard through the grapevine that there’s this guy up there spitting his poetry, and he was only 15. And that really kind of like, shocked me. I was like, What, wait, is he in college? Or is he like visiting from a high school, he killed it, he brought the house down. Even at 15, he has the presence and kind of, I got to know him. And he has this feeling of like a grown man at 15. And the wisdom of one as well. So I went up to him after the show. In the dining hall, we’re grabbing some eats, and just introduce myself, I saw him sitting at the table, you know, struck up conversation, and I, you know, I have my ways of making intros. And I was like, Hey, man, you know, I saw you perform, and I really liked your hat. It’s dope. And it was like this crocheted kind of beanie. Some you’d see like Andre 3000 wear, and he was like, I made it and then I sat down, I was like, Okay, I this is gonna be interesting. I sat down next to him. And we picked up like, we picked up like old souls, you know, it was like, we had known each other for lifetimes, plural. And we were just, we’re just chatting and getting to know each other. I can even fast forward from there was like, you know, we had already known each other and we decided, I was a little bit older, and I had some rank. And we were assigned to dorms. And there was one building that had AC, and that was like a luxury. And I asked him if he wanted to be my roommate the following year. And then we started rooming together. And from there, it was like, I would go to his poetry events, his poetry slams. And he would come to the art studio, he had helped me schlep art supplies to the art search building late at night. And he would just sit there and chill with me while I paint. So it was like this camaraderie early on and recognizing like, not only do I think you’re really cool, but you’re also incredibly talented. And we just had just kind of hit it off.
JR: It was interesting, though, right? And he will because like, like, the other part of that story, right, from my perspective, is that there’s this dude on campus that I saw, right and I’m a young dude, I’m a freshman. I just got to the campus. And so when you just get to university, and by the way, we’re talking about 40,000 students school, right? We’re talking about a massive institution. And so they’re these rumblings around the campus when I first get the about this white boy who dresses better than everybody and he right there’s like this thing there’s like this, this myth around. And this is true. He doesn’t like when I tell you see, he gets it says it’s part of my story, but he doesn’t like when I tell the part about him. So what’s happening at this time is that there’s this strange sort of legend around him, even though he were teenagers, right? But there’s a strange legend around his red hair white dude, who sort of is dressed different than everyone else. I mean, he was wearing like, suits yo, and like, he’s moving and he had all his hair. He’s moving a different way. He’s he all the girls like him all the guys like him, right? One of these, one of these sort of people. You know, we all know those people that the magnets, you know. And so when I meet him and I realized that he’s the guy that everybody’s talking about, everything about him was true except for the stereotype of the asshole. Right? Because usually when you hear about those, right, because usually when you hear about those kinds of people, what’s attached to them is also when you meet them, you’re like, Oh, he’s he also believes this, he believes this hype right? When we started living together. The other thing about him is that he was a business major. So yes, he’s this like, genius artist. But I didn’t know that at the time. Because Jason was a business major. It wasn’t until like I started seeing the scrapbooks I started seeing, right, and our friendship continues to sort of grow. And I’m realizing like, oh, this dude actually has a whole secret life that I’m not sure everyone is aware of. Because he’s spending his late nights in the art and the art studio. He had like an honors art studio, which is something I think there were like eight of them that people got, like, you know, was a very rare memory. They only gave eight people these things. And he wasn’t even an art major, first time. But he got it. But he got an honors, maybe he got this fancy sort of studio and has access to the up to the art department. So I spent some of them in there. And that’s how it started to sort of gel there was like, Okay, this dude actually has, there’s a whole other part of him that he’s not necessarily that he’s studying, but he’s not majoring in. And it was in the midst of our conversation while living together, that I think we both were transforming into who it is that we were becoming, because we both had mirrors. Finally, each of us had a mirror, you know what I mean? He and I could see myself in him, he could see himself in me. And it was then that we decided that one day we would make a book together we said cavalierly, right. We’re gonna make a book together. And a few years later, we started to make that book before My Name is Jason, by the way, there’s book that come before that book,
B&N: There’s a great photo actually, in My Name is Jason. Mine, Too. And Jason Griffin, you’re wearing an ascot, and I started to laugh so hard when I saw that photo, because my dad used to wear ascots on ironically, because it was the, it was a long time. I love that. But I was laughing.
JR: His wasn’t ironic either.
B&N: But it’s a great photo. And you both look like babies. Early on in your friendship, but it’s such a vibrant photo. And it really does represent the work that you’re doing in this book, incredibly well. And there’s a piece called Men Pretend. PAGE 33. And I mean, just the life that’s an every single page. And it’s the combination, obviously of Jason’s words, your art, but I have to ask, Do you have a preferred medium? Like, what were you working on? It looks like a mix of collage and photos and all sorts of stuff. But what are we talking?
JG: It’s such a dope question. So I have to pun intended to paint you a picture of our apartment in Bed Stuy. Because, man, we you know, we moved to New York thinking New York was waiting for us. And we learned real quick that it was not. And you know, funds were definitely tight. And there was decisions being made about you know, spending money on food or subway to get into the city to try to hustle our self published book or, you know, rent or and so a lot of the materials that I was using, we’re actually things that I was finding on the on the street, we moved to Bed Stuy right when, right when gentrification started to hit and so there was a lot of discarded, especially old doors, discarded doors. And so that stands out as as one of the mediums that you know, are one of the materials that I’ve gravitated for out of necessity. I remember I paint it on a checkbook because I never used it. Like, I remember taking white primer and just covering a checkbook. I remember painting on receipts, old artists, journals, it was out of necessity, but I think that I’ve always been drawn to switching it up. And kind of the same way a writer may take a different prompt, my material becomes kind of an artistic prompt of sorts, something that kind of begins a different conversation, you know, using a canvas or a piece of paper over and over and it’s either a square or a rectangle. I don’t know I feel like it starts to actually like limit me a little bit and but by default here I’m using like doors and you know, scraps. And this stuff is all over our apartment that had like very little furniture in a way like we had the coolest looking place because it was like super is sparse, but there was art everywhere.
JR: Our version of the factory, like Warhol’s factory. Our version. It was dope.
B&N: So you’re starting with the image that Jason creates, you’re starting with the words, or does it just depend on the piece? And you sort of say, well, this is what we have. And this is where we’re going.
JR: Nah. So like, this is where I think this is the one thing that is proprietary, when it comes to the two of us, our process isn’t. It isn’t reactionary. What it is, is sort of everything we make is built, is sort of birthed from our relationship. And our relationship is sort of glued by our ability to communicate with one another right. And so we spent a lot of time just talking, and thinking about things and sort of unfolding ourselves in front of one another. And we’ve been doing that since we were teenagers. Right? And so in the midst of those conversations, we’ll hit on something that we think is, you know, particularly poignant, and then we’ll say, Okay, so like, Men Pretend right, like, Okay, well, you know, what is it about men? Why do we posture? Why do we, what does it mean to even be male or masculine or manly, if that’s the thing in this sort of strange nature of these things, and we’re grappling with this as a young people, right? And then we so he had that conversation, and then we go separate ways, right, I make a thing, he makes a thing. And then we come back together, and we just, we just kind of, like, let’s see if there it because if we if we trust each other. And if our relationship is doing what our relationship was supposed to do, then like nine times out of ten, our intuition will lead us to make something that is complementary to each other without us having to say I’m going to write something and you draw a picture, or I’m going to draw a picture, and then you write some words, or I’m going to paint this, right, like, it’s more like, we’ve thought about these things, let’s make our own interpretation of these things, and create a dual narrative that was shared space. And then just by proximity come a singular narrative. And so that’s the process. It’s more like improvisational jazz, and we’re all going to play and we’re gonna see, and we’re gonna see how this thing fits. And just based on having having the meter together, we both know the meter. And we both know the tone. And we’re gonna go from there.
B&N: And that’s how we also have the emotional truth.
JR: And we have the emotional truth, which is the glue for all of it.
JG: I may, at some point be like, okay, J, like, I’m trying to figure out the ending here. And here’s the imagery that I’m using. And we may talk about his text. But J has never come to me and been like, Yo, the that piece, I think you need to rework it. And I’ve never looked at J’s writing and been like, J, you know what, like, there’s 100% trust there.
JR: And by the way, this is something that’s been developed over the course of two decades. And this is what we always try to explain to people like this, we’ve been doing this, this same thing. And we’ve done it many, many times, people have only seen it a few times. But there are many, many, many, many, many versions of this tucked away in drawers that no one will ever see of us trying to work out this and practice this and, and exercise this particular skill set.
B&N: And I want to come back to something you said a second ago about trust, because that’s not something that men are always given space to talk about. I mean, we have, it seems like the definition of masculinity is beginning to evolve. And I mean, we’re making more space for fatherhood, for instance, we’re making more space for men to be able to talk about emotional truth and not just walk around with everything bottled up. But that trust piece, and as you said, over decades, building over a decade, but when did you realize that you were willing to share that trust and your experience and your understanding of each other with people outside of the friendship? And make a book. I mean, this is a really public declaration of art and trust and friendship.
JR: My theory is that everyone is searching for permission. I actually don’t find it that frightening. I think that human beings are always attracted to, to be honest, do you and other human beings, even if even if it activates an honesty in them that makes them uncomfortable. I think we naturally are looking for it. Because we’re looking for validation and permission. I’ll tell you a prime example. Right? When we were in college, I learned how to crochet when I was a kid, hence that hat that I had on right, I was taught by my mother’s friends because I always like I was always a little funky. Right? I was always sort of that kid that was you know, it was like if this was the center, I was a little bit to the left. always. And when I got to college I had a million of these hats and bags and everything that I had made Jason and I hung out with you know neighborhood dudes right to kind of cat to they wanted to go to the bar watch the game and we did those things because they said are also those guys simulia Right at the same time. We were also you know, beer and nachos and football game and right all the things right? And over time, these neighborhood dudes all wanted to and did learn how to crochet. And so what we would do is that Like, it was the most ridiculous thing to experience in the sea, right people will come. We always tell the story about how they were these two girls who came in knocked in a dorm room door. I think they were doing a fundraiser for the soccer team or something. And they walk in this Monday night, was Monday Night Football, we got nachos, we got beer, and she walks in the room, and it’s a bunch of dudes, and they would crochet needles, just getting busy watching the game.
JG: All like this, like, everyone kind of looks up and she was like, Oh, she didn’t know what to say, man. She lost all train of thought.
JR: Yeah. And it’s a wild thing, right. But I think about that moment all the time, because what we were experiencing was just that like, Yo, if we are who we are, everyone will feel comfortable to be who they are. And we can lean into it’s a simple thing. So so how does that work? Was there ever a moment of discomfort to share some of our emotional truths, even the emotional truth of our friendship with the world? For me, there wasn’t because that because it’s the one thing that I trust, more than most other things is that our honesty and vulnerability might free somebody might give somebody else the opportunity to look at their homeboy and say I love you, bro. For real, and give him a hug. I grew up with these incredible friends when I was a kid before I met Jason. But the one thing that Jason did for me was he introduced me to a kind of diversity in maleness that I did not know. And J, please stop me if I’m putting too much of your business in the world. But like one thing, oh, for one of our early like hangout sessions, he, he took me to this gay bar, right, because he was working at a gay bar. And he took me to this gay bar. And this was a new experience. You know what I mean? But this was somebody that I trusted who then so that then I can then open my eyes open my world and like, find my comfort, no matter where I was simply because of my respect for humanity. And that’s something that he had, that I hadn’t honestly been exposed to yet.
JG: I totally forgot that you came through. Yeah. And to totally add to the awesomeness of this story. My mom got me the job. Yeah, great. I got great tips at that place, man. Yeah. And to totally add to the awesomeness of this story. My mom got me the job. Yeah, great. I got great tips at that place, man. And my Dad … So my mom is now married to a woman. And my dad, who was a preacher. He came too, he brought his wife, he brought my stepmom there, they would come just kick it at the bar. Everybody was welcome.
JR: So imagine what that’s like, right? I’m meeting to do for the first time, who has a parent in the same sex relationship, which I had not experienced? And his father’s a religious man, simultaneously. And it all is working. It all seems to be good, right? And I think that alone helped me. It just, gave me access to possibility when it came to just human respect, right. And so it’s easy to do this kind of work, because we’ve been doing it for so long. You know what I mean?
B&N: Absolutely, because there’s also a really lovely gentleness to the story. It’s just kind of like, well, here we are. It was Tuesday. And I think we lose sight of that when we’re, you know, human beings, we’re trying to sort of slot things into boxes and process experience and give it a name. We’re always trying to give something a name. And some things maybe don’t need a name. Some things maybe just need to be a response to a beautiful image, some things. I mean, I’m really lucky I get to walk to work. So I see crazy, beautiful things every single day. And sometimes it’s you know, a leaf on the ground. Sometimes it’s a very cute dog and a very expensive coat.
JR: It makes me think of you know, this the Chef Michael Twitty. Oh, yeah, he’s great. Great. And you know, on Did you see High on the Hog? Jessica Harris’s documentary?
B&N: No, it’s in my queue.
JR: Watch it, because on the second episode, he’s talking about how every single cultural cuisine is named after the culture, except for Black people. Right? Our food is called Soul Food. It’s the only food that is named after something that cannot be seen, but can only be felt, if there was ever a time to call someone a soul brother in the true sense, right? Because even to call someone best is to qualify it. But to say that like for the two of us, there’s an intangible thing. There is an ephemeral ethereal thing that the two of us know exist, that are always necessary to put into words. Right. And I think we knew that 20 years ago, and I think we know and maybe know, more that know that now more than ever 20 years later.
B&N: Isn’t that also what art is supposed to do for us, though, to let us sit in a moment and sit with an idea, whether it’s music or the printed word, or visual art or film? I mean, I sort of feel like that’s the whole point is to give us space to experiment. Mm hmm. And so many people use it to just sort of reinforce where they are in the world. And that’s it, and that’s enough, and that’s done. And it seems to me that both of You really are very intent on capturing change and movement, not just in the visual imagery, but just in general. And those are difficult concepts to capture well. Especially when you’re sort of limited to words. And Jason, you know what I’m talking about when I say limited to words, but you have to make them move.
JR: For me, and perhaps for both of us, I think that our greatest sort of skill set is Audacity. It’s so funny the way people sort of negatively connote ego, but I think it’s necessary to have some, because one has to have a little bit of, I mean, like, when we were 20 years old, our whole thing was we’re gonna rearrange and change the way people think of the book, right? This is what we were really thinking as teenagers, right? And young adults, it was like, we’re gonna make a thing to completely upend what people think a book can be. That was always the goal, right, the change the object itself to literally rejigger the object itself. That is the book. The casing of the book. And so I think I think both of us approach our work, thinking about forward movement, thinking about anyway, no, everything’s been done. Right. We know that, but but we also know that like, we have an opportunity to put our stank on even the things that have been done. Right, that we have an opportunity to, I mean, look Frank O’Hara, right? We know that like there’s been these mashups, right, but we are who we are. And we’re willing to sort of push the line and push the boundaries, the best we can to challenge ourselves and to challenge the people who might be the the people who look upon this work, right to say that, like, what if we, if it is possible for us to push possibility than is possible for you to believe in it? As an artist, J, what do you think, man? I mean, like, because I’ve been around for so long, I take it for granted sometimes that you could do all the things, you know.
JG: No, just everything you’re saying is awesome. I mean, like the one thing that came to mind, while you were talking was just like, you know, our audacity, and looking back and thanking our 20 something year old selves for having that we’ve talked about even, you know, both of us kind of chasing that, that part of ourselves, too. I think that what we create is ever evolving. Not to be cliche, but because we are ever evolving, and we’re trying to share that with each other and level each other up. There’s a desire, and I don’t know, I wouldn’t say, healthy competition. Maybe it’s more like, if he can help me or if I can help him then we help ourselves or if I can help myself, then I’m going to help the collaboration. You know, it’s like…
JR: Rising tide.
JG: Rising Tide. Rising Tide, man rising tide? Come on. Exactly. Exactly.
JR: I don’t compete with him. But but his work and his work ethic, and the thought process behind his work inspires me. How about that? Right? So like, if, and I’ll tell you, me, when we first started, I tell I tell people all the time, my whole people always say like, Jay, you written all this stuff. You’ve done all this work. Thanks to Jason Griffin. So like, my work ethic, right? Had was was activated, if not overloaded by working with Jake Griffin. Because when we were young, and we were living together, you know, I would be working. It’d be like nine o’clock at night, working, working, working have a bag of chips for dinner drinks. Right, like that’s what it was right? And then, you know, and then around, like, chips around. Yeah, you know, I’m around midnight. My eyes are a little heavy. But Jason’s in the kitchen, on the floor and on the kitchen floor. And he’s painting right guys as headphones on or we listen to music and he’s just doing his thing. But it’s midnight, and I’m looking at him and he don’t seem tired. I’m a little tired. Okay, one o’clock comes and he’s just kind of like, okay, you don’t seem tired yet. But I’m really tired now. Okay, J, I’m gonna go to bed. I wake up in the morning. And he’s already down there. And I’m thinking to myself, wait a minute, there’s no way that this person can work this hard on something that we don’t even know is going to bear fruit. But he’s just pouring into it faithful to the faithful to the process in a way that no one I’ve ever seen. And so what did I have to do? I had to tighten up because I refused to be outworked, right. And so then I started doing the same thing. And now 20 years later, this is what it looks like, you know.
B&N: We’re talking about a guy who created 1000 pieces of art. So you could pick 380 For Ain’t Burned All the Bright. I mean that that’s not nothing. And I want to point out too, that you were using the pocket size moleskins for each piece of art and yet, that book, all of the work in that book feels much bigger than a pocket sized moleskin with one hands on it. And I love the fact that you use the line. I mean, how many of us were running around, you know, destroying notebooks, whether it was doodling or drawing or poems or lyrics or what have you. So the idea that that was what you used for that book, and the found materials that you use for My Name is Jason. Mine, Too, it’s really exciting to see that there are genuinely no limits what you’re doing, I think that’s really important.
JG: Yeah, that push but, you know, I also, it sounds kind of romantic, or, you know, Oh, you made 1000 pieces, and you chose through part of it is because like, there’s a bit of kind of stumbling into things in the studio, most of the times, I don’t know what I’m doing. And I use kind of the numbers game as a way to keep myself loose, and to keep myself kind of not too precious. And so you know, against like, by default, you know, when Reynolds would send me something from Ain’t Burned All the Bright. So he sent me a breath at a time. And in the first breath, I put up a bunch of spreads on my wall here. And I just started to almost play like a matching game, where I would take an image and then I would hold it up, and I would have text maybe written on a piece of tape that I put on the piece and I just think about it, I’d be like, Hmm, doesn’t quite match. And then I’d maybe move it over. And, you know, I’d be laying in bed at night not have this idea of like the perfect piece for this one sentence in the book. I’d come in, I execute the piece, I put it up on the wall, I put the words on top of it, and it didn’t work. But you know, if I have enough pieces going on, I can kind of dig around my studio and I can try a different piece. Um, so much of my process is like this. William Kentridge talks about peripheral thinking. And I think this is a great way to describe an artist’s process. And he talks about stumbling through his studio. I think this guy is a master, but like, you know, there is so much kind of happy accidents that happen. You just kind of surprised yourself.
B&N: And also sounds like editing though, Jason.
JR: Totally. I mean, totally.
B&N: I mean, and there’s nothing wrong with a good ad. Everyone needs an editor. Even if you’re Jason Reynolds everyone needs…
JR: Especially if you’re Jason.
B&N: Can we talk about some of the artists who are not each of you, that fires you as well? I mean, you know, there’s some great work out there in the world, but who are some of the visual artists that make both of you kind of say, Oh, right.
JG: That was one of my top ones for sure. William Kentridge. Yep. Um, and when I get asked this question, I hope it’s okay for me to also say like, I’m very much inspired by music in the studio that I’m also inspired by you know, film and television. The Coen brothers are huge inspiration, trying to think what else that comes to comes to mind of visual. Cara Walker’s a big, she’s a big influence. Barkley Hendrix when it comes to like portraiture, Kerry James Marshall is like, tops for me. He’s like, I went and saw his show at the Whitney. And it just like, his understanding of how to move around a painting is incredible. His compositions use of color. Incredible, without about you, J?
JR: Woof, so many people, I mean, I think about for different reasons. That mean, I love Besa Butler, I think that, um, the idea of using fabric, I mean, Jason did write a whole period of his life where he was just use paper. And I like people who are you who are making paintings without paint? Because I think there’s, there’s something in that for me to learn from in terms of like, how do you tell a story without having to tell the story, it all translates to a certain kind of inference to me. So I love visa I love for him who pay cool. I think he’s fascinating because he paints himself over and over and over again. But he but he would tell you that they’re not self portraits, he just uses himself as the model. And that is what I do. In my story is right, these are stories that I use myself and I use my experiences and my background and my childhood and my friends, only as Avatar only as sort of the symbols to put forth to create whole worlds. They have nothing to do with me. And I think he’s the master that I love. Because of Jason, I love Alphonse Mucha, because of the idea around line weight, and I think about what that means, in my own work, right? How some lines are to be heavy in some lines out to be light, That’s all of my writing is about that, right. Like my moderating line weight. And I think so I think about Alphonse Mucha, I think I mean, like, there’s so, you know, these young artists that I love, like geo Suebi. And, and, and I mean, like these young geniuses that are coming up to say that uses just needle and thread or yo yo lander who uses a sort of fresh form of Mosaic work, right? I mean, there’s, I mean, Debra Roberts, who I think is one of the greatest collage artists of our time, all these people, you know, and then Jason, of course, I happen to be around him, and we’ve gotten to come up, see all the versions of his work, you know, I’ve got my favorites, or I’ve got my favorite of all of his styles, right? That I respect his dexterity. And that’s who I want to be, right as a writer is dexterous. And the same with music and movies, right? I mean, what is there a better song than Vienna? I don’t know. For me, right? Is there a better song than Fast Car? I’m not sure. Tracy Chapman. These are quiet tales. These are narrative songs, right that I don’t know if anybody’s gonna be able to outrank Tracy Chapman or Billy Joel. Look, I’m not sure. You know, and I listen to that music all the time. And all the rap music that inspires me in a funk music. Will there ever be a baseline? Like, like, slipping into darkness? I’m not sure. Right, like, I don’t know whether it be a song as sweet as the makings of you. But Curtis may feel, I don’t know. Right? So like, all of these things are things that influenced me every single day.
B&N: I love the fact that you’re talking about textiles, and mosaics, because those are things that were typically created sort of treated like crafts, and they were women’s work, and that they were not in fact, art. And when you look at something like the Alexander McQueen show that the Met did that clothing sculpture that is in the masks and the shoes and everything. But the construction, and we don’t think I also said this is a knitter because when you’re knitting, you get a thing in 3d, when you’re done. It’s a 3d thing. And it changes the way you respond to the thing that’s in your hands. And if you don’t like it, you can undo it, and recycle. And you don’t have to have the ugly thing out in the world. But you can test it theory with two sticks and string, right? And then you move on, but we have such rigid ideas of what’s supposed to be high art and what’s not supposed to be art. And I just want to see the sheer joy even more talking about tough things, right? Even when we’re talking about the pain that comes with just life. I mean, we live in complicated times, you know, although I guess humans have always lived in complicated times, but I happen to be alive in this complicated time. So it feels more complicated than most. But the idea that you can take whatever materials you have, whether it’s cloth, or house paint or pencil, I love a good pencil, a good sharp pencil, I’m happy to be much more than that. And Jason, you were I was an earlier interview where you said you had sort of restarted your work process early in the pandemic, by using paper and pencil that you needed something like that, to really sit and reconnect with the words themselves.
JR: Yeah, I needed tactility I and I still, that’s where I am. And that’s probably where I’m going to stay for the next however many years I when the computer became an obligation for all things. I could no longer do the one thing that is mine on the computer. Right? It robbed me of that, right. And so I went back to the to the to the pad to the paper, and my brain began to work again. And that’s why I’m still on paper. And it’s, it’s amazing. And it makes me happy again, and it feels good again. And it feels like I’m creating because I’m also a nerd, and I’m an archivists nerd. So it also feels like I’m creating an archive, and I’m creating objects that I can give and leave, you know, evidence of my existence and in a different way, you know.
B&N: I think it’s important to have to because, you know, we’ve all got those old floppy disks that no one has any way to play them. I you know, I have some of my mother’s old sketchbooks from when she was a student at Parsons, and I can see the evolution of my mother’s style. I can also see how it influenced her clothing and how our houses were done and how she dressed my brother. All of those things, and I absolutely I love it to bits and you know, the paper has gotten really stiff and really hard and it’s you know, you have to treat it with a little bit of care but to see the evolution of a person.
JR: Yeah, right. Yo, handwriting?
B&N: You know, we need to start teaching handwriting again.
JR: There’s a whole other conversation.
B&N: Now I know you have tiny people, but you know, I do appreciate pretty handwriting. And I’m not, you know, I’ve got older people in my family who did that perfect cursive that they were taught I, at this point I’d settle for legible.
JR: My handwriting is terrible. And it’s terrible. And guess what else it is? It’s mine. Yeah. It’s a fingerprint. It’s mine. It’s only mine. Right? And so I’m even okay with the mess that it is that scratch that it is. Because when I’m out of here, there will be no mistaking it. It belongs to me. It belongs to me. You know what I mean?
JG: I do. My got boxes and boxes and boxes of sketches and things. And every once in a while I’ll pull out I’ll be like, Oh, J, I can tell your handwriting like that.
JR: You know, it’s cool.
B&N: Do you have favorite moments from My Name Is Jason. Mine, Too?
JR: There’s a moment in the process. Not not the book itself? I don’t remember so much of the book. Yeah, I mean, as like the art of the book, but but I’ll never forget the process in making it. But that particular editor we were just told to make. So you know, I know this is a it gets complicated, but we will say her name because she did her name deserves to be saved. And it’s Joanna Cotler. Who Jason is still very close to and as a mentor to him and, and changed both of our lives. But she gave me the best advice that I’ll ever have. Yeah, she was the one who knew I’d be a novelist. Before I did. And she told me that my intuition will take me further. My education never will. And I remember that conversation like yesterday.
JG: Shout out to Joanna Cotler.
B&N: Thank you very much, Joanna. Yeah.
JG: The gem dropper. Dropping gems.
B&N: Jason Reynolds. I know you’re working on an adult novel, which I will sit very quietly and patiently and wait for sure. I’m working on as it comes. When it comes it comes. But Jason Griffin, what are you working on now? Where can people find you? Where can they see your work?
JG: I am working on paintings. I’m still collaborating, I collaborate with my studio mate. Chris Bailey, I collaborate with my friend Travis Linquist Brooklyn are actually he’s in the city. Now, Steven Deluth in The Hague. And we’re trying to put some stuff together. We’re kind of in like, incubator phases right now have like, you know, just finished, this big project ain’t burned. All Burned All the Bright was a big one. A lot of work went into that and kind of coming out of it. I tried to reserve that question, what’s next, and just give myself a chance to explore. And so I mean, you could kind of see why there’s a lot going on in my studio right now. There’s like new projects started everywhere. You know, just messing around with different things, different textures. This is me with spackling spray paint. But I’m definitely just like, feeling around, you know, and just kind of like, seeing where it takes me. This is like my, this is like my diary in here. And I’m just taking notes right now. J and I are gonna drop some prints from the book. Because a lot of people have been asking about artwork from the book. And I don’t want to part with any of the original artwork, that’s got to you know, that’s got to be archived and saved forever. Yeah, just keeping it loose, keeping it you know, trying to do it, me and Jared talking about of like, you know, constantly pushing what’s next, you know, I went from kind of almost a year working in almost exclusively moleskins with materials that you would find around the house because that was super conducive to being in COVID and being in quarantine. And so my first inclination coming out of that stretch was like I want to work big and so I did I started to work big and then it kind of like a jellyfish like expands and contracts and then I went back to super small and then I started playing around digitally on the iPad and then I started sculpting something so I’m kind of in like the mad scientist mode right now.
B&N: It’s a really good mad scientist mode. Yeah.
JR: That’s the best way to describe him.
B&N: Okay, mad scientist, mad scientist, one mad scientist two. I think that’s probably the best place to end because we could keep going for a really long time. But the one thing I do want to shout out on both ain’t burned all the bright and my name is Jason mind to the publisher has done something really smart with both of these books and the age range on both of them is is 12 to 99. So for those of you who are no longer part of the short set, I really, really want you to pick these up because there’s a lot, there’s a lot of beauty and there’s a lot of pain and there’s a lot of growth and movement and change, and they’re just really beautiful, beautiful books, even if you didn’t quite reinvent what a book is supposed to be. That’s okay. Try to. They’re really, really beautiful. So thank you, Jason Reynolds. Thank you, Jason Griffin. This has been a lot of fun.
JG: Thank you so much for having me.