02: Great Storytellers Break Spells

How can you use creativity to fight the systems that are literally built to stop you from being creative?  How can you make your process as radical as the art you make?

Maddy Clifford, aka MADLines, walks us her music, the importance of political education for artists, and how she uses her creative practice to break the spells of systemic oppression.

––––

Links and resources mentioned in this episode:

Creative Wildfire Artist Cohort

MADlines on TikTok

MADlines on Instagram

Buy her music on Bandcamp!

––––
Episode Transcript

––––

• If you enjoyed what you heard, we invite you to rate, subscribe and review!
• Find us on Instagram and Twitter @_artcoop
• You can also help sustain this podcast by visiting our website art.coop and clicking on DONATE to make a donation.

Transcript

Maddie Clifford:

Especially as people of color, our ancestors’ art wasn't like an extracurricular activity, it was part of the fabric of who we are and how we engaged with each other, and it was a weapon. 

Marina Lopez:

Hello and welcome to Remember the Future, a podcast from Art.Coop where we invite you to remember the future by listening to the stories of artists and culture bears who are returning to practices as old as time to build community and care centered workplaces, where they are their own bosses. There are no landlords, and they decide how money flows. My name is Marina Lopez, and I'm your host. 

Marina Lopez:

In today's episode, we've invited artists, Maddie Clifford, aka Mad Lines, to share a cultural offering with you. And this is a way to invite your full selves body, mind, and spirit into this journey with us so that our learning can manifest as this embodied experience of what liberation can feel like. Maddie is a rapper, poet, educator, intersectional feminist activist and digital content creator. Today we talk about her music, the importance of political education for artists, and how she uses her creative practice to disrupt these systems of oppression. I hope you enjoy our conversation and that Maddie's cultural offering makes you feel and inspires you to move in the world in a different way. Mattie, thank you so much for being with us today. 

Maddie Clifford:

Yes, I'm so excited. 

Marina Lopez:

I'd love for you to start by introducing yourself, anything that feels important for you to share. 

Maddie Clifford:

Yeah. My name is Maddie, and I was born and raised in Seattle, Washington, in the city of Seattle. I grew up on Capitol Hill, and I moved to Oakland 12 years ago to go to Mills College to pursue, um, an MFA degree in poetry and creative writing. Um, after graduating at From Mills, I taught, uh, poetry. I was a poet in residence, essentially at the San Francisco Juvenile Justice Center, which is a short term youth detention facility for the city and county of San Francisco. And so for me, art is really just a matter of, of life and death. It's, it's something that I feel every human being should have access to, and every human being should be able to create for a living. Um, every human being should be able to engage with the possibilities of creative expression. And so I really draw upon both, you know, my Seattle upbringing and also my Jamaican ancestry. So yeah, it's just kind of like an amalgamation of, of all the different parts of me 

Marina Lopez:

I love this wholeness that you're bringing to your work and how you share that art should be something that everybody has access to make, um, and to experience.

Maddie Clifford:

Yeah, absolutely. And it, it shouldn't be so difficult to be an artist, and I think we've kind of accepted crumbs for a long time, and we've accepted the starving artist trope and the tortured artist trope, these are like Western and European and, and colonial ideas that have really been pushed onto us, especially as people of color. Our ancestors, art wasn't like an extracurricular activity. It was part of the fabric of who we are and how we engaged with each other. Um, and it was, it was a weapon. Oftentimes. That's what art means to me. 

Marina Lopez:

Hmm. That's amazing. And I know that you were a part of the inaugural creative wildfire artist cohort, which feels so much like it was honoring that like wholeness, that art is not this separate thing. It's not this like leisure activity that can be added on, but that actually it's really central to culture and that it should be resourced and uplifted in that way that understands it as foundational. So I'm curious, what is Creative Wildfire about and what was it like to be a part of, of that group? 

Maddie Clifford:

Creative Wildfire really came at such a pivotal point for me because, um, you know, collaboration has always been part of my practice. Like, when I first started wrapping, I was, I think I was like 17 years old, and I started with a, with a woman named Hollis Wonk, and together we started like wrapping and doing shows and doing poetry. And so, uh, collaborating especially with other women has always been part of my practice. It's, it's like, almost like my craft is like working with other people. Um, I also like gratitude and, and, and giving is something that that just comes naturally to me when I'm creating and Creative wildfire. What it did was it gave me the resources and the capability to actually focus on creating an album. And it was really life changing for me because of the fact that, you know, when it comes to particularly looking at the climate crisis, I think a lot of people, especially people of color, have been, you know, left out of the conversation. 

Maddie Clifford:

And one of the key components that I think differentiated it from other arts grants was that we were able to take part in online courses and sessions, which were, you know, gave us political practice to help us through our creative process. And I think oftentimes as an artist, you just feel so alone and you, you feel overwhelmed as well because you rarely get time to actually work on the art because you're working on the marketing, you're working on the funding. 

Marina Lopez:

Hmm, that's amazing. So like part of what Creative Wildfire did was it offered community in a community space to learn in, and they called that a cohort of artists, right? So like you came in with a group of artists who were all given this grant and you learned together as community, you created. What was that process like? Did you bring some of what you were working on to the group and have kind of sharing sessions or, I'm just curious. 

Maddie Clifford:

Yeah, we did. We didn't have a lot of time to be honest with you. Like, I feel like that's why it's just the beginning because it was like an experiment. I think people, first of all, artists just need resources. Like desperately, like literally I'm talking about like roof over our heads, food on the table, right? So when we talk about grants, it's, it can be difficult because it's like, at the one hand, artists just need basic resources a lot of the time. And so I think that just gave a lot of us, the, the space to even process. But there were a lot of opportunities within our Zoom sessions to just like, talk about what we were doing, to talk about our challenges, to talk about our triumphs. And then especially the political education for me was really helpful because there's a lot of ways that even though I consider myself an intersectional feminist, there's always so much to learn. And having that support system to learn with other people, and especially with other artists, was just really, um, instrumental to me. And I decided like, I know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna create a short form album. Um, I'm gonna put it out there, I'm gonna do it in a month, <laugh>, and I did it in a month. Wow. So, yeah. 

Marina Lopez:

That is amazing. Especially like for folks who are listening now, if you listen to Maddie's album and think that was created in a month, that's incredible. It's so good. Thank you so much. Every song is so different. Like every song, what you talk about, like you, there's so much depth to it. Wow. Okay. I'm gonna listen to it in a whole new way now. <laugh>. 

Maddie Clifford:

Thank you. Yeah, it was a, it was a specific strategy of short form. You know, there's a, I'm I'm also been doing a lot of digital, um, engagement and communications work, um, because I think for a long time too, I didn't know how to build an audience as an artist. I just thought, Oh, well, if you create great art, people will come to you. But that's not actually how it works. A lot of artists don't get the recognition, not because they're not talented, but because they don't know how to market, because it's a whole skill that you have to learn, right? So I started learning that skill, and I've been able to build a huge audience from that. And I realized, you know, short form, people are engaging with things in, in quicker ways, and people can say what they wanna say about it, but the technology has essentially changed. 

Maddie Clifford:

And so I thought, okay, I don't have the, the capacity to do a full album right now. Like, I just don't. But I do have the capacity to create a short form album. And so what I did is I just, you know, set aside time every day to write, and then I set aside my recording sessions and I just hit the ground running and I was just like, I'm gonna get this done. I still feel like there's more I could be doing to, to promote it, but I, I'm pretty proud of myself for just making that happen. 

Marina Lopez:

Yeah. That's incredible. And so I'm wondering, can you share a little bit about the specific song Solidarity Economy that's on the album that we'll share with listeners today as a part of your cultural offering? 

Maddie Clifford:

Well, one of the things I talk about is they say it trickles down, but it, it rained in a while. So when solidarity economy, I really talk about a lot of the myths similar to the starving artist and the tortured artist tropes. There's a lot of stories, right? We talk about the danger of a single story. We talk about, you know, I, I have a quote up right now. It's says, Bad storytellers make spells great storytellers break them. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And I also identify as a bruja. You know what I'm saying? <laugh> mm-hmm. <affirmative> magic. You know, my people are from St. Thomas, one of the most magical parts of Jamaica. But anyway, so for me, this idea of what are the stories that were told about money, about, um, about wealth? And I think for artists in particular, one of the stories we're taught is like, you know, you start off, you work really, really hard and you get signed, and then you blow up. 

Maddie Clifford:

There's this idea of blowing up. There's this idea of like, you're gonna be a millionaire someday. And what this, this story, um, what it individualizes is, is a lot of different things. For one, most people that are able to be full time artists come from wealth, full stop, right? Um, there's a lot of nepotism within arts industries, right? This is not like necessarily a bad thing. You're not a bad person because you're wealthy. But what's what the problem is, is when we're, we're not shown that, and that artists start to blame themselves. Like, why am I not able to be at this, this level as someone else? Another myth is this myth of like grind, grind, grind, and work hard. What also comes with that is a lot of divide and conquer and a lot of crabs in a barrel and a lot of dog eat dog. 

Maddie Clifford:

And, um, a lot of us have been betrayed by other people in arts communities and have been hurt by other people in arts communities. And that comes from the fact that there's so much scarcity. And there's not just, uh, scarcity in terms of, of monetarily, but scarcity in terms of like, psychologically we're dealing with so much, uh, compounded, like a lot of different isms for, for women of color, in particular in the music industry. We're dealing with a patriarchy. We're dealing with unsafe spaces to record. We're dealing with, um, white supremacy. I mean, we know like there, there's like, I think it's like maybe 2% of the producers are women. Like, when you go to a studio, it's, it's not gonna be women, you know? So there's all these things that we're dealing with. And so I think when I talk about they say it trickles down, that is trickled down economics, um, can be traced to Reagan. 

Maddie Clifford:

Um, Reagan was a horrible, horrible person, and horrible, horrible politician. And we are still dealing with the ramifications of his policies today. And the, and not just his policies, but his, the stories, the spells, the, you know, the things that they, that he taught us that even people on the left have internalized. And one of those is trickle, trickle down. So it's like when we look at these artists and like, Oh, it's gonna trickle down to us, or, Oh, we should be so happy. And, and you know, it's like these people don't care about us. Like they don't, you know. And so at certain point I realize, you know, like I care about, uh, creative ecosystems. I care about, um, supporting other women of color within arts communities, both through financial support, but also through like having real conversations and making sure that we're not being crabs in a, in a, a bucket to each other and, and breaking each other down and things like that. So that was one part. Um, I also talk about in that song, like, people are sipping for the wealthy. And that's, you see that all the time. Like they're just over here like <laugh>. It's like these people, like billionaires do not care about you. Like they really do not. And so it's like, why? And so the solidarity economy really is, is about unpacking a lot of those, uh, myths and, and those spells that we have been inundated with for many years. 

Marina Lopez:

Mm. Amazing. And you do that in one minute in that song. Yeah. 

Maddie Clifford:

<laugh>, it's short. One of the cool things about being a rapper and is like, why I say I'm a bruja is because, uh, I feel that a rap is, is a spell. So it's like you have four counts, which is one bar, and you have to say something in that space. And so you have, it's like you have freedom within the confines, but I think magic is best in a container, right? So you have that container where you have to say a lot, but you also have to say in a way that people understand and you have to say it, uh, in a way that sounds good. Hip hop and rap in particular is, is a black diasporic creative expression and of a form of magic in my opinion. And so when I wrote the short form, um, I did it on purpose to get people to get to the point really quickly. Mm. 

Marina Lopez:

That's really cool. I'm wondering if you would like to listen to the song together. 

Maddie Clifford:

Sure. 

Speaker 4:

Uh, they, it trickles down but ain't rain. You uss against the y'all wealthy classes. Wash color, color glasses, factors. I'm seeing red whole nation in the red and the math ain't mad. Then the song flash. It ain't smacking. That's fool for your contemplate. Stay mad. Quite irate. You can't see panoramic billionaire stacking, cancel food and debt. Let's get a cracking. This race of wealth gap ain't a gap. Its a chasm investing in police. Like we, the target practice Put your money with your mouth is foaming at the mouth to go, trying to outta space. The houses space, the rest, their heads still aint bleed. No oil spill a need a honestly, we need a solidarity economy. 

Marina Lopez:

I love that. It's so good. I have to tell you something <laugh>. 

Maddie Clifford:

Sure. 

Marina Lopez:

<laugh>. So over Covid, during Lockdowns, um, a friend of mine from New York, um, started these things called Movement Challenges. And it was basically a way to just build community while we were in isolation and help people move through whatever they were feeling. And so it was like 15 minutes of movement a day and you would record one minute of it and share it in a group WhatsApp thread. And so right around the time that you started sharing this work publicly, um, I was in another movement challenge and it was like, I just wasn't feeling that motivated. I hadn't moved in a while cause I was recovering from a concussion and I heard this song and I was like, Yep, I can't not move to this song. And it was so fun at just like, it really moved me in this deep place. So it was really beautiful to listen to it and then to just feel it in my body and to like have this shared political practice around what is the solidarity economy, how is it different from this extractive economy? Like why doesn't that extractive economy work and why do we need a solidarity economy? And I just like, I felt it in the rhythms and the way you are delivering, um, this spell that you are casting. So I just wanna say thank you. It really moved, literally moved me. 

Maddie Clifford:

That's why I did it. So I'm glad to hear that. 

Marina Lopez:

Yeah. And I would say that's kind of my last question is just what do you want people to get from the work that you create? 

Maddie Clifford:

So often music is like this background, right? That you're, we're using it, it's in commercials, right? It's, but it is also a lot of the time influencing our decision making, but we don't really realize it is mm-hmm. <affirmative>, um, the words that we're hearing are influencing our ideology and we don't really realize. So yeah, it is kind of like this spell right and it's very powerful and those in power have been using it, um, for a very long time. <laugh>. And, and so for me, what I want to do with my music is I, I don't want it to be the background. I want it to be the foreground. I want it to come to the surface where it, it really speaks to someone kind of like how you talked about this song got me up and made me feel energized to move and I didn't feel energized before. 

Maddie Clifford:

Like, it's like that song that you put on when you're going through heartbreak or that song that she put on when you, you know, when it's Sunday and you, you gotta clean the whole house and it it, and just takes you automatically back to when you were just with your mom on, on Sunday and you guys were hanging out and all of a sudden this memory that you can't even put your finger on, all of a sudden it's visceral and it's right there with you. And I think that's the power of music and that's what I want people to, to gar from it for me. Um, not just music, but literary arts was something that really saved my life. Um, my father was, was murdered when I was 16 years old and it was obviously extremely traumatic for me, but it was like music and, and creativity and, and culture. 

Maddie Clifford:

Using my culture as a weapon, going to Jamaica for three months and realizing that I wasn't alone in the world in my experience. And that even when I talk about debt, you know, Jamaica is indebted. It's one of the most indebted countries in the world. And every time I create music and every time I I do activist work, I think about my family members, I think about the looks in their faces. I think about the first day somebody heard bam, bam, bam, bum di bam, bam. Like, and what did that do? Like, you know what I mean, to the world. It changed everything. So that's, I guess that's what I wanna do with my music. I have, I have very high hopes for it. So <laugh>, thank you so much for having me here and, and for, for talking to me about it. Cuz this helped me even process more about what I'm doing as a creative. 

Marina Lopez:

Mm. Yeah. I think that socializing is such an important piece of our work as artists because it, it allows it to move outside of ourselves and be reflected back to us at the same time. Right. How can listeners find out more about you and support the work that you're doing? 

Maddie Clifford:

You can definitely check me out on social media. Like I have all the social medias, but I am a Tokker. Okay. <laugh> <laugh>. I had to admit it to myself recently. 

Marina Lopez:

You make amazing TikToks though. 

Maddie Clifford:

But like, it's getting to be powerful on some ways is a good thing. Some ways is a bad thing, like all technology. Right. But, um, my TikTok is Mad Lines, m a d l i n e s or you can find me on Instagram at mad.lines. Um, you can also buy my album at band camp at madlines.bandcamp.com. Yeah, that should be good. That should be good. <laugh>. 

Marina Lopez:

Matt, thank you so much for joining me today. I really enjoyed our conversation and getting to listen to your music together. 

Maddie Clifford:

Thank you!  

Marina Lopez:

Thank you so much for joining us for Remember the Future. Special thanks to Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for their generous support of this podcast, and thanks to Creative Study for their ongoing partnership. Remember the Future is co-produced by Meerkat Media Cooperative, Alletta Cooper and Art.coop. It's edited by Justin Maxon and Alletta Cooper with Visual Design by Emma and theme music by Andile Blessing Magwaza and Sizwe Lancelot Mbelu. The show's executive producers are Eric Phillips-Horst and me Marina Lopez. Additional thanks to our consulting editor Caroline Woolard and to my colleagues at Art.coop, Nati Linares and Sruti Suryanarayanan. You can hear more episodes of Remember the Future anywhere you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed what you heard, we invite you to rate, subscribe and review! Find us on Instagram and twitter @_artcoop  You can also help sustain this podcast by visiting our website art.coop and clicking on SUPPORT to make a donation. I’m your host, Marina Lopez and this has been Remember the Future.