Music & Dance: Musicians, Composers, Singers, Dancers, Choreographers, Performers Talk Art, Creativity & The Creative Process

“When I was younger, I used to draw all the time, so cartoons, comic books, anything visual just got me really quickly when I was younger. And I wanted to be a cartoonist up until I was 14, 15. And then I had this idea to be a rapper, but animation cartoons, these were things that I was super passionate about. It's something that never changed throughout my life. You know, as I grew older, I still had an interest in comics. I still had an interest in animation. And reading comics as a kid

as a lot of my fans know, this Moon Man thing has been kind of my theme from the very beginning. And I think it wasn't until my fourth album, Indicud, where I really started to conjure up a world where this Moon Man character existed. A couple years ago, it kind of got to this point where I was like, man, this is something that I want to actually bring to life. And I thought telling it in comic form would be the best way. Karina, you mentioned Kyle, and I just did my research, and I was like, ‘Yes, he's the guy!’ You know, it was like a no-brainer. I was like–Wow, I really finally have an opportunity to make something that I've spent 15 years of my career building, making it a real thing and bringing him to life.” - Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi

Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro, Ultraman for Marvel Comics, and his creator-owned series Radiant Black, NO/ONE and Deep Cuts for Image Comics. Kyle is the founder and creative director of Black Market Narrative and The Massive-Verse.

Karina Manashil is the President of MAD SOLAR. After graduating from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she began her career in the mailroom at WME where she became a Talent Agent. In 2020, she partnered with Scott Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to found MAD SOLAR. Its first release was the documentary “A Man Named Scott” (Amazon), and she then went on to Executive Produce Ti West trilogy “X,” “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” (A24). Manashil received an Emmy nomination as an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated event “Entergalactic." She also produced the Mescudi/Kyle Higgins comic book “Moon Man” which launched through Image Comics. She is next producing the upcoming Mescudi/Sam Levinson/The Lucas Bros film “HELL NAW” (Sony) and the animated feature “Slime” from auteur animator Jeron Braxton.

moonmancomics.com
https://imagecomics.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Audio of Scott Mescudi courtesy of Mad Solar and Moon Man Comic Book Release and Revenge Of (Eagle Rock, CA, Jan 31, 2024)

What does the future hold for our late-stage capitalist society with mega-corporations owning and controlling everything? How can the world-building skills of the makers of films and comics help us imagine a better future?

Kyle Higgins is an Eisner award-nominated #1 New York Times best-selling comic book author and award-winning filmmaker known for his work on DC Comics’ Batman titles as well as his critically-acclaimed reinventions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers for Boom! Studios/Hasbro, Ultraman for Marvel Comics, and his creator-owned series Radiant Black, NO/ONE and Deep Cuts for Image Comics. Kyle is the founder and creative director of Black Market Narrative and The Massive-Verse.

Karina Manashil is the President of MAD SOLAR. After graduating from Chapman University with a BFA in Film Production, she began her career in the mailroom at WME where she became a Talent Agent. In 2020, she partnered with Scott Mescudi and Dennis Cummings to found MAD SOLAR. Its first release was the documentary “A Man Named Scott” (Amazon), and she then went on to Executive Produce Ti West trilogy “X,” “Pearl” and “MaXXXine” (A24). Manashil received an Emmy nomination as an Executive Producer on the Netflix animated event “Entergalactic." She also produced the Mescudi/Kyle Higgins comic book “Moon Man” which launched through Image Comics. She is next producing the upcoming Mescudi/Sam Levinson/The Lucas Bros film “HELL NAW” (Sony) and the animated feature “Slime” from auteur animator Jeron Braxton.

“When I was younger, I used to draw all the time, so cartoons, comic books, anything visual just got me really quickly when I was younger. And I wanted to be a cartoonist up until I was 14, 15. And then I had this idea to be a rapper, but animation cartoons, these were things that I was super passionate about. It's something that never changed throughout my life. You know, as I grew older, I still had an interest in comics. I still had an interest in animation. And reading comics as a kid

as a lot of my fans know, this Moon Man thing has been kind of my theme from the very beginning. And I think it wasn't until my fourth album, Indicud, where I really started to conjure up a world where this Moon Man character existed. A couple years ago, it kind of got to this point where I was like, man, this is something that I want to actually bring to life. And I thought telling it in comic form would be the best way. Karina, you mentioned Kyle, and I just did my research, and I was like, ‘Yes, he's the guy!’ You know, it was like a no-brainer. I was like–Wow, I really finally have an opportunity to make something that I've spent 15 years of my career building, making it a real thing and bringing him to life.” - Scott Mescudi aka Kid Cudi

moonmancomics.com
https://imagecomics.com
https://www.imdb.com/name/nm3556462/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1
www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Audio of Scott Mescudi courtesy of Mad Solar and Moon Man Comic Book Release and Revenge Of (Eagle Rock, CA, Jan 31, 2024)

"Climate change gives us a chance to re-imagine the world in a way that every single human being can participate in. And so whether you're in a remote part of the United States or some other country, when you learn about climate change, it shouldn't just be the science. It should be the opportunity." –Kathleen Rogers

Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process.
Voices on this episode are:

KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay.ORG

POORVA JOSHIPURA
Senior VP, PETA UK - Author of Survival at Stake: How Our Treatment of Animals is Key to Human Existence

DAVID FENTON
Founder of Fenton Communications - Author of The Activist’s Media Handbook: Lessons From 50 Years as a Progressive Agitator

BRITT WRAY
Author of Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis
Researcher Working on Climate Change & Mental Health, Stanford University

DR. FARHANA SULTANA
Co-author: Water Politics: Governance, Justice & the Right to Water
Fmr. UNDP Programme Officer, United Nations Development Programme

ANDRI SNÆR MAGNASON
Icelandic Writer & Documentary Filmmaker
Author of On Time and Water, The Casket of Time, LoveStar, Not Ok

THOMAS CROWTHER
Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor

DR. SHIV SOMESHWAR
Fmr. European Chair for Sustainable Development & Climate Transition - Sciences Po

PAULA PINHO
Director of Just Transition at the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy

ARMOND COHEN
Executive Director of Clean Air Task Force

MAYA K. VAN ROSSUM
Founder of Green Amendments For The Generations - Delaware Riverkeeper
Author of The Green Amendment: The People's Fight for a Clean, Safe, and Healthy Environment

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode:
“Spring 1” from The New Four Seasons – Vivaldi Recomposed
“Vladimir’s Blues” from The Blue NotebooksMusic is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises,
and Mute Song.

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Photo credit: Valdemaras D.

“The natural world has its own sonic language. Its own fingerprints. And that's one of the beautiful things about being out here. There is another acoustic environment, another sort of sonic fingerprint, and it is always changing. Every day is a sort of a different sound picture. I walk out the door and you do hear it changing over time. The leaves are coming in now, different kinds of bird song. The wind sounds different. It's a wonderful thing to be around and experience.” —Max Richter

Excerpts of interviews from One Planet Podcast & The Creative Process

SY MONTGOMERY
NYTimes Bestselling Author of Of Time and Turtles: Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, Secrets of the Octopus, The Hawk’s Way: Encounters with Fierce Beauty, and other books

MAX RICHTER
Award-winning Composer, Pianist & Environmentalist (The Blue Notebooks, Waltz with Bashir, Arrival, Ad Astra) His album SLEEP is the most streamed classical record of all time. Cofounder of Studio Richter Mahr

MERLIN SHELDRAKE
Biologist & Bestselling Author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, and Shape Our Futures, Winner of the Wainwright Prize 2021

THOMAS CROWTHER
Ecologist - Co-chair of the Board for UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration - Founder of Restor

TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE
Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Master Musician of the Ancient Lakota Flute

ERLAND COOPER
Nature’s Songwriter - Composer of “Folded Landscapes”

RICK BASS
Environmentalist & Story Prize Award-winning Author of “Why I Came West”, “For a Little While” - Fmr. Geologist - Organizer of Climate Aid: The Voice of the Forest

PETER SINGER
“Most Influential Living Philosopher” - Author, Founder of The Life You Can Save

KATHLEEN ROGERS
President of EarthDay.ORG

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

www.maxrichtermusic.com
https://studiorichtermahr.com

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.

Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

Photos courtesy of Unsplash
Photo credit: Kyle Johnson, Sebastian Unrau, Abner abiu Castillo diaz, Deepak Nautiyal

"My most formative TV experience having been Six Feet Under, I tend to want to take a rather conservative approach to score, in that if a scene works brilliantly without music, why do you need music? And that score, especially, is usually there to provide an element that you're not getting fully from the dry–when there's no score, we call it dry. So with the dry footage, that was always our philosophy on Six Feet Under: if the scene works just as well without music, we don't need music. And that just runs a little counter to what was, and kind of still is, the prevailing philosophy on television, which is that everything needs music. Like, people won't know what to feel if you don't score it, which I think is a really very insulting underestimation of the intelligence of the audience. And so there's always pressure to put more music in, and our feeling is, no, if we don't need it, we don't need it. Now, that changes, like when we get to Tokyo Vice because of the genre elements of the show. You know, if you have an action sequence, you need music. If you have a really tense, suspenseful moment, it probably needs music.”

Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What does learning another language and living in another culture do for your humanity and creative process?

Alan Poul is an Emmy, Golden Globe, DGA, and Peabody Award-winning producer and director of film and television. He is Executive Producer and Director on the Max Original drama series Tokyo Vice, written by Tony Award-winning playwright J.T. Rogers and starring Ansel Elgort and Ken Watanabe, as an American journalist in Japan and his police detective mentor. Poul is perhaps best known for producing all five seasons of HBO's Six Feet Under, all four of Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City miniseries, My So-Called Life, The Newsroom, Swingtown, and The Eddy, which he developed with director Damien Chazelle. His feature film producing credits include Paul Schrader's Mishima and Light of Day, and Ridley Scott's Black Rain.

"My most formative TV experience having been Six Feet Under, I tend to want to take a rather conservative approach to score, in that if a scene works brilliantly without music, why do you need music? And that score, especially, is usually there to provide an element that you're not getting fully from the dry–when there's no score, we call it dry. So with the dry footage, that was always our philosophy on Six Feet Under: if the scene works just as well without music, we don't need music. And that just runs a little counter to what was, and kind of still is, the prevailing philosophy on television, which is that everything needs music. Like, people won't know what to feel if you don't score it, which I think is a really very insulting underestimation of the intelligence of the audience.

And so there's always pressure to put more music in, and our feeling is, no, if we don't need it, we don't need it. Now, that changes, like when we get to Tokyo Vice because of the genre elements of the show. You know, if you have an action sequence, you need music. If you have a really tense, suspenseful moment, it probably needs music.”

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0693561
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2887954/

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Scientists, artists, psychologists, conservationists, and spiritual leaders share their stories and insights on the importance of connecting with nature, preserving the environment, embracing diversity, and finding harmony in the world. Music courtesy of composer Max Richter. All voices in this episode are from our interviews for The Creative Process & One Planet Podcast.

00:05 Adapting to Earth: Indigenous Perspectives
TIOKASIN GHOSTHORSE - Founder/Host of First Voices Radio - Founder of Akantu Intelligence
https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org
https://akantuintelligence.org

01:06 The Beauty and Fragility of the Natural World
APRIL GORNIK - Artist, Environmentalist, Co-founder of The Church: Arts & Creativity Center
www.aprilgornik.com
www.thechurchsagharbor.org

02:01 The Importance of Whales in Ecosystems
NAN HAUSER - Whale Researcher - President, Center for Cetacean Research & Conservation - Director, Cook Islands Whale Research
https://whaleresearch.org

03:27 The Importance of Community and Collective Well-being
ROBERT WALDINGER - Co-Author of The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness
https://www.robertwaldinger.com

04:19 The Power of Love, Respect, and Unity
JULIAN LENNON - Singer-songwriter, Photographer, Doc Filmmaker, Exec. Producer of the films Common Ground & Kiss the Ground
https://julianlennon.com
https://commongroundfilm.org

05:05 The Importance of Cultural and Scientific Knowledge
RUPERT SHELDRAKE - Biologist & Author of The Science Delusion, The Presence of the Past
www.merlinsheldrake.com

0:6:18 Mastering Confidence & Human Potential
IAN ROBERTSON - Author of How Confidence Works: The New Science of Self-belief - Co-Director of the Global Brain Health Institute
https://ianrobertson.org

07:01 The Magic of Coral Reefs
GATOR HALPERN - Co-Founder & President of Coral Vita - UN Young Champion of the Earth - Forbes 30 Under 30 Social Entrepreneur
https://coralvita.co

08:06 Lessons from Ancient Trees and Tundra
DOUG LARSON - Biologist - Expert on Deforestation - Author of Cliff Ecology - The The Dogma Ate My Homework
https://experts.uoguelph.ca/doug-larson

09:36 Understanding the Flow of Life
MASTER SHI HENG YI - 35th Generation of Shaolin Masters
Headmaster of the Shaolin Temple Europe
www.shihengyi.online
www.shaolintemple.eu

Max Richter’s music featured in this episode are “On the Nature of Daylight” from The Blue Notebooks, “Path 19: Yet Frailest” from Sleep.
Music is courtesy of Max Richter, Universal Music Enterprises, and Mute Song.

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And so are we fully understanding or do we have a full spectrum perspective of what tools of the Earth really mean? Like a bird we think has no intelligence. It just flies here and flies there, right? But we also understand that that bird is also using the tools as the tools of the Earth correctly or properly when...what does that mean?

Now, if you go deeper into Indigenous peoples, you can see the modernity and then so-called primitive people. You don't need to be in contact, in relationship, and in communication, have a language with all other life-technology taking us away from Earth because we feel like we're elite to anything having to do with Earth. That's why we want to go to a dead planet called Mars. So they're about controlling, getting you and all of us away from being magic...is how to use tools of the Earth properly. Not, you know, we should not abuse water, the air, the land, the food, anything. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth.”

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

How can we learn to speak the language of the Earth and cultivate our intuitive intelligence?

Tiokasin Ghosthorse is a member of the Cheyenne River Lakota Nation of South Dakota and has a long history with Indigenous activism and advocacy. Tiokasin is the Founder, Host and Executive Producer of “First Voices Radio” (formerly “First Voices Indigenous Radio”) for the last 31 years in New York City and Seattle/Olympia, Washington. In 2016, he received a Nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize from the International Institute of Peace Studies and Global Philosophy. Other recent recognitions include: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music (2016), National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship Nominee (2017), Indigenous Music Award Nominee for Best Instrumental Album (2019) and National Native American Hall of Fame Nominee (2018, 2019). He also was recently nominated for “Nominee for the 2020 Americans for the Arts Johnson Fellowship for Artists Transforming Communities”. He is the Founder of Akantu Intelligence.

“If we say Mitakuye Oyasin, we don't really mean all my relations. It's like, no, we're talking about what you can formulate into E = mc2 and beyond. It's beyond what you see. And that energy you don't see with these eyes, which only see a certain range of color and light refraction is what we are also understanding. Our body is, people would say the brain is...there is no disconnection. And so are we fully understanding or do we have a full spectrum perspective of what tools of the Earth really mean? Like a bird we think has no intelligence. It just flies here and flies there, right? But we also understand that that bird is also using the tools as the tools of the Earth correctly or properly when...what does that mean?

Now, if you go deeper into Indigenous peoples, you can see the modernity and then so-called primitive people. You don't need to be in contact, in relationship, and in communication, have a language with all other life-technology taking us away from Earth because we feel like we're elite to anything having to do with Earth. That's why we want to go to a dead planet called Mars. So they're about controlling, getting you and all of us away from being magic...is how to use tools of the Earth properly. Not, you know, we should not abuse water, the air, the land, the food, anything. So when it comes to animacy, I think it's a Western term also, and so we get away from the Western terms. We start seeing that, oh, we are becoming Earth as we're born into this physical dimension. We are becoming Earth. And then as we are living during this time, we're alive. We are becoming Earth. And when we are finished with this body, we are becoming Earth.”

https://firstvoicesindigenousradio.org/
https://akantuintelligence.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Songs featured on this episode are “Butterfly Against the Wind”
And from the album Somewhere In There
“Spatial Moon” and “Sunrise Moon”
Composed by Tiokasin Ghosthorse and Alex Alexander
Music on this episode is courtesy of Tiokasin Ghosthorse.

“It took me some time to understand where I was going to see myself. It’s true that, at home, me and my brothers had a beautiful cultural environment because my father was, not a professional musician, but a jazz lover. He was really into jazz music and really passionate about it. But he was never a professional musician. He was an amateur. My mother, also, was a teacher and a writer, so I think we had this environment at home that got us into music. We were always listening either to opera or to jazz. Of course, we had our preferences when we were kids– we loved The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. But we always had this different approach because of our mother and father. Everything that influenced us came through them, even if we didn’t know it. When I was fourteen or fifteen I started to feel a need to play an instrument. And one thing that helped a lot was the fact that we were four brothers and we started to play music together. We had this small combo happening at home almost every day, every hour. And it was a quick sensation– immediately I understood that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life.”

Bernardo Moreira is one of the most active Portuguese double bassists. He has performed as a guest soloist with Gulbenkian, Metropolitan de Lisboa, and Nacional do Porto orchestras, and gained prominence for his collaborations with international artists, including the legendary Benny Colson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Art Farmer, and Kenny Wheeler. He is a regular collaborator with many jazz musicians in Portugal, participating in formations such as the Maria João/Mário Laginha quartet, the Mário Laginha trio, and singer Cristina Branco. In 2021, he released Enter Paredes, and in 2022, he led Cantina’s de Main and SUL.

www.clavenamao.org
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0Yse2njeXg2XDiQmmxhAc5

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast
Music on this episode:

António Marinheiro, Bernardo Moreira Sextet, from the album Entre Paredes

PROMESSAS MIX V3 ULT from SUL
Courtesy of Bernardo Moreira