WEBVTT
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so the where where I'm at and I honestly hyper fixate on it, I it's.
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It's a very creative journey that I'm at like, looking at these different businesses and thinking about what are these different solutions, and it's a very creative process in itself.
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So I feel as if I'm using my creative brain there, but specifically dropping everything to pursue.
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I think I I honestly like to keep my a pure creative area, like I like to keep it at arm's distance because I essentially crave it, I think about it and it makes me, in my opinion, a little bit more creative overall just because I'm not having to.
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I'm not demanding myself to be creative at 24-7.
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Hello, this is Maddox and Dwight You're listening to For the Love of Creatives podcast, and today we're here to welcome our featured guest, curtis Tran.
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Welcome, curtis.
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Thank you guys so much for having me Glad you could join us.
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Sorry, we've been really looking forward to this.
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Just so the audience knows, I guess we've met Curtis at Creative Mornings.
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Multiple times yes.
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But we really met Curtis at the Art Boost here a couple of weeks back, had an opportunity more to connect and talk with him and, yeah, that was where the idea to have you come and be a featured guest came from.
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And so here we are.
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So I think I'm going to lead off with something that's near and dear to my heart and it's a little different than what we normally do.
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But I know that just from talking to you and reading your bio that you're very, very community-oriented and I would love to maybe hear the origin story of that.
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You know we're going to talk a lot about your creative journey, your creative life, but when it came to creativity and community, tell us a little bit about how you.
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I mean I can tell you have a passion for it in your writing.
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Tell us where that was born.
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Yeah, sure, so obviously, through my creative journey.
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I'm typically known as a photographer, right Specifically at Creative Mornings.
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That's how y'all met me and I love that you mentioned that we specifically talked more at ArtBoost, because I didn't have a camera in my hands and so whenever I don't have a camera, you could probably have more conversation out of me, because I feel as if whenever I have the camera, I'm just constantly looking like, oh my gosh, this angle or shot could be nice.
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But so the origin of community a little bit of backstory for me is that a lot of my upbringing, growing up, I was always shown the opposite of that.
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I would definitely say so.
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So I was always the way.
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How I would describe my community was that I essentially was the outcast of the outcast, and the reason why I would say that is because, so, my family came from vietnam three over three decades ago.
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They were the last remnants of the vietnam war and my father, whenever he came here, was actually supposed to be.
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He was supposed to be executed, and because he was one of the last um, the last bits of the vietnam army that was able to speak about democracy and because of the reagan amnesty, he was able to immigrate here to the states and he took me, basically had me and my brothers and my family at, at Nacogdoches, texas is where I'm from.
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So, for the fact, I'm not even a Dallas local, I do live here now, but I spend most of my time in East Texas and, to paint a little bit of a better picture, I specifically graduated with a with a class of around 400 people 450, 420.
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And I was probably like one out of three Asians, and so there was every walk of life except for the one that was similar to mine, and because of that I didn't necessarily.
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Whenever I had a community back there, it wasn't one that looked like me, it wasn't one that talked like me or sounded like me, it was always an amalgamation of different people.
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And in turn I've learned and have been shown what it's like to not fit in, and if anything, I think it's it's now it's weirder for me to fit in.
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If anything, it's weirder to sometimes not have those walls or anything like that.
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But I now make it a journey to where, every time I speak to someone, I automatically look at well, how, how do they carry themselves?
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What is in their heart like?
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What do they bring to to the room and then I will then decide are you my, are you my community, are you my person?
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And so a bit of a long-winded answer.
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Oh, you know.
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I love that, though, curtis, because what you're describing what I'm translating out of what you're saying is you've gone from feeling like you really didn't belong anywhere to now.
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It's a choice.
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You are very discriminating and discerning and you choose where you want to belong and where you don't want to belong, and I've walked that path myself.
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So this I think we've been talking about this a lot in the last few days, dwight and I and I think that we always hear psychologists say that I'm not good enough is pretty much a universal wound.
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Almost all of us have that, and I think I don't belong is a second.
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I mean, it's a runner up.
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I mean there's been so many of us.
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If we're the least little different in any way, it doesn't matter whether we're a different race or we're a different size or we're a different sexual orientation.
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I've certainly experienced a lot of not belonging, and you know, I think the big thing for me was realizing that I had put that in place myself.
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It was an unconscious choice that I had made.
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Well, and, to be fair, it's something that's modeled.
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I mean, one of the first games that we all get to play is musical chairs, and that's just formalizing, edging someone out.
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Yeah, do they still play that in schools?
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think about it.
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Yeah, I remember.
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I don't know if they still play that in schools or not, but I certainly remember it when I was a kid.
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Certainly remember it, yeah, and, and you know if you were yeah, I was never the fast one so so I was the quickest one to get to my chair I can speak to that.
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Well, tell us a little bit more.
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You know that not belonging and now you look at people and you assess it instead of a group thing.
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I get that you're accessing it on a one-on-one person, but how does that affect your desire for community?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I think that I've always have seen the discrepancies within different individuals, like, maybe, like, as like.
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How fundamentally strong is this foundation of this relationship?
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Politically, romantically, it's just, you know, what do we use to base it on?
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And sometimes it could be a hobby, sometimes it could be shared interest.
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And you know, I think what I want to tie back to is that I, whenever I kept thinking about over the weekend who truly is my community and I, and honestly kept going back to creatives.
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Creatives are specifically my community because there's, whenever I go through these different demographics could be sexual orientation, could be race, could be religion, demographics, different job sectors or industries.
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There's always the different nuances.
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You know where you have to balance on this tightrope, on how you navigate that conversation.
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But I think, with creatives, fundamentally, there's this fundamental love that exists and I think it really just goes back to expression and ultimately, I think, being a creative, there is a sense of you you want to express, you want to communicate and there has to be someone on the receiving end to receive that communication.
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And whenever it comes to how I carry this one-on-one conversations, like I honestly like it could.
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Sometimes it could be deeper things, but sometimes it could just be simple things like are you asking me questions or am I just asking, do you do?
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I know your entire life story and you don't even know what's my last name.
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You know stuff like that.
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That's a real thing too.
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I've certainly had my share of one-sided friendships, oh yeah, and and and primary relationships.
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It's, it's a real, real thing.
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You know, you spoke a minute ago about the demographic and I'm going to inject just a little bit because we're all about that.
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You know, we pay attention to demographics, but in a very different way than most organizations or communities do.
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We pay attention to demographics in that we want a wide variety of demographics in what we're building, and so it's not we're looking for, you know, white 40 to 60 year old people or anything like that.
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It's, we're looking for this broad swath of all ages in all demographics, of all ages in all demographics.
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But we do focus on psychographics, and the number one thing we look for in psychographics is and we call it out in all of our marketing and our conversation we seek heart-centered creatives.
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We've both discovered that I've been creative my whole life.
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I was a hairdresser and makeup artist for 40 years and I've done all kinds of creative stuff.
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I've played the piano and I've sang and, oh my gosh, I just can't even name all the things I've done.
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But I never, ever, have been part of a body of people that all said I'm a creative, you know, until the last couple of years, and we kind of stumbled into this.
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I don't really believe in coincidences, I think it's all you know, kind of on purpose, but to us it felt like one day we just looked around and we were surrounded by creatives and we were kind of digging it and we have found that, yes, they are our people.
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But we've also discovered that when you look at creatives, most of the time it is very diverse demographically and they all play well together.
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And I think you were at our speed connections thing we did at you know, I call that out where I said you know, the thing that brings us together is our love of creativity and it's just, it's remarkable.
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I'm not saying that I don't occasionally meet a creative.
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That is not my people.
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I do, I do, but it's the exception, not the rule.
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One of the things that you hit upon when you were just talking about your experience and how you were drawn to creatives was how there is an innate openness, and it's something that you felt, but I've I've discovered that that's something that's confirmed in in science.
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A common trait that creatives share is openness to new experiences.
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I love that.
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I mean there's there has to be new ways to express to.
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I always so y'all know that I have this day job and consulting and so on, and you know we have all these different professions or hobbies that pay the bills, or X, y and Z, but at the end of the day, being a creative I always describe it as like this is what keeps me sane, this is what keeps me in.
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Love is just the experience of humanity in itself, and creatives are people that I will definitely say.
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I'm a big fan of the show, so I love how you guys have navigated different conversations and that I really do want to say that being a creative is someone that just like it can really just be anyone like as soon as you just have a creative thought, you are a creative right then and there, because you're open, you want to create, you are experiencing what makes life so beautiful and and it can be expression through creation, it's awesome I.
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I think that part of what makes us so wonderful is that in order to be really connected to that creative part of ourselves, we have to be really connected to whatever higher source it is that we believe in, and I think that for me, I know that that higher being is a being of love and it just all fits to me.
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You know, because we're so connected, the creativity is the pretty much the conduit between that higher self, or higher power, and self, and along with that conduit of creativity comes a lot of cool stuff, you know, like love and compassion and empathy, and you know I can't imagine now that there's very many people that haven't heard me say it's our belief that creatives are the people that have the power.
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Whether we'll use it or not is another story, but the creative community are the body of people on this planet that have the power to heal humanity I'm really curious about some of the earliest experiences that you've had, uh, being that you had to deal with being different, not seeing yourself, uh, when, whenever you would, you know, just go and try to take part in things that were local.
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Um, how did, how did that play out for you in just finding your way and, um, navigating life?
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What was that like?
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So I love that you asked that because you know I I stayed in east texas all the way through college and ethically it's it's been years.
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So I've I've had so many new experiences to to where it is slowly just becoming not my entire experience but fractional proportionate.
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So so obviously I was in communities to where I mean sometimes it wasn't just being Asian, sometimes I was the only person of color in their room and that would happen like 99% of the time.
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So I was very used to that and they.
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It was interesting because, although these people accepted me in the room per se, but you know, they had all these different stereotypes or stigmas with me and I think something that I hate and I absolutely like will spend probably the rest of my life trying to change this.
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But growing up in there, like in 90% of the conversations I would have, it would somehow relate back to my skin and back in East Texas.
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They they're very, very curious and sometimes it's a place of hate, sometimes a place of curiosity and but sometimes it's naive and we had to go about it.
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But a great example is that it's like oh, dwight, it's very good to meet you, so what are you?
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And it would literally be either the second or third sentence that they would speak to me.
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And so in that it's it's interesting because I essentially became very desensitized to it, to the of my initial reaction to it, but then I became a lot more attuned of basically digging deeper of where does that place come from and where they ask those questions, because I will say sometimes I will definitely say any sexist, it wasn't all hate per se, but it really just they were very naive.
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There wasn't many people that looked like me, so they were just genuinely curious.
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They just did not ask questions like hey, like they'll ask me questions like what kind of of Asian are you?
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What kind of Chinese are you?
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What like what are you?
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And they would speak to me like an animal sometimes, but maybe they just didn't really know any other different way.
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And so I kind of made it my mission in East Texas to really be heavy on education.
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So specifically my alma mater, stephen of Austin, I created an organization called Organization of Asian Excellence and it was specifically focused on educating the communities through my experience and it was actually made in response to COVID-19.
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So it where I was seeing people like me get discriminated, mass crimes and mass murders.
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It says it.
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I was anxious the entire time, and so I.
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My change was that I created a whole organization and led a bunch of asians, like the few asians that that existed at at sfa, my alma mater, and we, we made some change and it's funny because, uh it, you know, everyone pretty much enjoyed me and I was.
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I was part of the office admissions program at SFA and I'm sure you may have experienced this before where, oh my gosh, you were the token person of color, so we're going to put you on all of our promotional material.
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So it's funny because there's you can go all around texas and if you see any sort of sfa material and there's an asian guy on there, 99 of time it's most likely me.
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And it's so interesting because I did all this change in response to how I grew up, and it's it, I would say, like the sfa probably had like 0.01 of of Asians, but as soon as I graduated, I guess it worked because I 0.01 probably wanted to what like 0.05 or 1%.
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But yeah, it's a change, it was something.
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Yeah, you, you were the representation that you needed.
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Yeah, exactly, you were there for somebody else.
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Well, and you never know, as time moves on, how that ripple effect will change things.
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You know, we don't know that ripple effect.
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We know it exists but we don't usually follow it to see exactly how things changed.
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You know, you spoke a few minutes ago, curtis to the curiosity.
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You spoke a few minutes ago, curtis to the curiosity, and I myself have all of my life been fascinated by people that are different than me.
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I'm very curious myself and I love different cultures and I love different traditions and things, and it's just such a fascination and I've learned, you know, to not ask those questions, even though my desire for the answers is from a clear, you know, loving place.
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I just, you know, life is really boring if everybody that is around you is just like you.
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That's what I don't understand about the set of white people that really want everything to just be white.
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Oh my God, I don't get it.
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It sounds horribly boring to me.
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You know, all my life I've had friends from different backgrounds and it's what makes life interesting, but I don't know.
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There's something about it that I wish I could just snap my fingers and have it be different.
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Absolutely I will say I meet individuals like you, maddox, to where you know you grew up around diversity and it's not necessarily a question like when your your questions purely come from a place of curiosity and like for.
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For you it's more of like.
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I see it as like you're just curious about my story, about how I live, versus.
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Sometimes it can be like let's dissect some of these stereotypes or statements I may have about you and let's see how true they are.
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Like let's put them of these stereotypes or stigmatize I may have about you know, see how true they are.
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Like let's put them to the test stress test.
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But you know I wish I met more people like you.
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Max, correct Growing up, but I try to make my entire community down in Dallas to hang out with people like y'all.
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And the diversity all these years has been by my choice because my family was not that way.
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You know, I I just struck.
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I was married to a female in my early 20s and I lived in a small town in central Texas.
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We're talking 1977.
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I married an Hispanic woman, which was something that just wasn't really done back then and my family never even questioned it.
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I brought her home and introduced her and they fell in love with her and of course, you know my family.
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When I brought my first man home, he was Hungarian from well, yeah, no, his parents were from Hungary, but he was not.
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He had grown up in South America, was not?
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He had grown up in South America.
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But my family just welcomed him right in and loved him too, but they were open.
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But if you looked at all my family, they're all hanging out with white people for the most part.
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I'm the oddball in my family that has just embraced all of the differences because I find it so beautiful.
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Yeah, absolutely Dwight.
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What was it like for you growing up?
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Because was it more of an original relationship.
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Was it always like?
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What was that like for you?
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Well, ironically, I grew up in what would become a majority minority city and I grew up in grand prairie and, um, it was still very much like what you would, what's depicted in the, the teen movies, you know, american pie or mean girls, that that was kind of the existence.
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That was real.
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That was my experience.
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So I I felt like there was a lot that was on display and represented, and even the, the more uncomfortable parts.
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You know I'm what.
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I was the black face in the crowd, the, the token black friend, and so.
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So I felt that at a lot, of, a lot of times and it was, it could be uncomfortable at times and there were instances where there was I experienced subtle racism and, uh, occasionally, when I, when I would go back to East Texas to visit my grandparents, um, not so subtle racism.
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So it was it, it was interesting yeah, I mean Dwight, I remember you and I connected of our backgrounds in East Texas, so you know like whenever it's like they, sometimes people would literally open up conferences like oh my gosh, dwight, this is this, this is my asian friend curtis like they, will they like they make it's like it's like.
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Is that all I am to you?
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that.
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You know.
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The sad thing about it is they probably don't realize and don't intend to be that way.
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I think there is intentional racism, and then I think there's racism that's just ignorance, and although it's still racism, let's call a spade a spade.
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But I myself have said some horribly racist things in my life because I didn't know they were racist.
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I literally didn't know, and when somebody enlightened me I was just mortified that that had come out of my mouth.
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I've experienced it on many different levels and it's one of those things where if you're looking for something bad, you're going to find it in anything.
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And there have been those instances where someone would say to me, you know, especially as a child growing up, oh my you, you are surprisingly articulate and thank you, yep, thank you, I think.
00:25:52.351 --> 00:25:57.461
Oh yeah, I've made some horrible faux pas in my life, but um, I've lived to tell about it.
00:25:57.702 --> 00:26:04.609
nobody's killed me yet well, life shouldn't necessarily like whenever you go back to in terms of expression.
00:26:05.550 --> 00:26:29.959
Sometimes our expression really is coming from a place with the limited experience and knowledge that we may have, and I will never I've met, like I'm used to, super conservative rednecks, hicks and so on, like I it's funny because I find a lot more like I'm just so used to them versus like the city folk here in Dallas at times.
00:26:30.150 --> 00:26:41.662
But the thing is is that it is when it it not all mistakes or hiccups have to define you, but the way how you carry yourself after moving forward.
00:26:41.662 --> 00:26:50.029
It is okay to acknowledge that I was wrong and I wasn't educated before and I think that's something that fundamentally goes back to creatives.
00:26:50.029 --> 00:26:51.454
That sometimes it goes.
00:26:51.454 --> 00:27:12.935
You know they will, they will speak and discuss about things and express and portray sometimes events, different mentalities, philosophies and so on, and it's just like kind of like going back to like just the openness and that's something that I think fundamentally.
00:27:12.935 --> 00:27:34.041
Whether or not like if someone can see the most PC thing to me is not what I most, what I care about most typically me as an individual, just because I can't really control, or no one can really influence, what information that they were given previously, but but they'll take this new information, experience and how to move forward with it.
00:27:34.330 --> 00:27:43.316
I think that that's what makes it more important well and and you know how we define pc changes like on a really rapid rate.
00:27:43.316 --> 00:27:47.903
So it's like what you think's pc you find like last week is this week.
00:27:47.903 --> 00:27:49.212
It isn't so pc.
00:27:49.212 --> 00:27:50.957
That really messes me up.
00:27:50.957 --> 00:27:54.866
But so let's shift gears a little bit.
00:27:54.866 --> 00:27:59.115
I want to hear more about the actual creativity part of your journey.
00:27:59.115 --> 00:28:06.172
I'd love to know how old you were and what it was that tipped you off where you went.
00:28:06.172 --> 00:28:09.015
Oh, I'm, I'm creative.
00:28:09.455 --> 00:28:25.531
I that moment when the light bulb went off uh, I don't, I I probably can't think of a time because I think, uh, if you find me on facebook and you like, just scroll far enough, you can probably just find.
00:28:25.531 --> 00:28:27.115
Like I used to draw growing up.
00:28:27.115 --> 00:28:43.185
I remember I my, when my father was a, was a soldier, so I used to be as obsessed with the army I think most kids and most boys, specifically in East Texas, were just like oh yeah, I want to become a soldier and shoot all these cool jets or whatever.
00:28:43.185 --> 00:28:50.901
But you know, I used to draw it and and so, specifically through then I've for me.
00:28:50.901 --> 00:28:56.367
So for for now, people know me as a photographer and absolutely I love it.
00:28:56.367 --> 00:28:57.211
I'm fine with that.
00:28:57.792 --> 00:29:10.250
But my creative journey it's, it's always constantly changing and I never know if maybe tomorrow I'll, maybe I'll become a writer or I'll become like, uh, maybe a cinematographer, we're not sure.
00:29:10.250 --> 00:29:12.415
Like I used to draw growing up.
00:29:12.415 --> 00:29:25.779
I used to do poetry in the in the seventh grade and then I specifically did band, so I was obsessed with music production for a tiny bit and then now I'm really big into photography.
00:29:25.779 --> 00:29:32.337
But in all honesty, I'm getting close to like I want to look into cinematography and and creating videos and, and.
00:29:32.337 --> 00:29:34.602
So you, I just you just never know.
00:29:34.602 --> 00:29:40.157
So when I I think I've just been creative my entire life, I just am not sure.
00:29:40.157 --> 00:29:42.651
What am I going to hyper fixate just yet?
00:29:43.772 --> 00:29:44.414
You know it's.
00:29:44.414 --> 00:29:56.673
It's almost easier to give yourself the label creative than it is to give yourself the label photographer, because you know the creativity covers it all, and then you can do all those.
00:29:56.673 --> 00:30:00.500
I I love the multi-faceted aspect of it.
00:30:00.500 --> 00:30:10.134
I think that's amazing, so you don't ever have time to get bored with anything absolutely my uh, I'm actually currently in the process of doing some rebranding.
00:30:10.193 --> 00:30:33.896
I'm working with this amazing graphic designer and that's helping me with branding, and so they're not, I think, graphic designers such a limited that my basically my brand team essentially and you know, they kept, they kept asking like okay, well, if you do photography, then, like, maybe we need to hone down and like, speak about your niche and say that you do photography.
00:30:33.896 --> 00:30:37.401
It's like, well, you know, I think that's cool and I agree on that.
00:30:37.401 --> 00:30:40.003
Like you know, I talk about that in my day job.
00:30:40.003 --> 00:30:41.224
Like, hey, what is your niche?
00:30:41.224 --> 00:30:42.566
What markets are you in?
00:30:55.609 --> 00:30:57.676
But in my head as a creative I was like but I don't know if I'm going to do photography like forever.
00:30:57.676 --> 00:31:00.748
You know, it's interesting that you say that, because one of the things that I I learned sometime in the last couple of years which was really powerful.
00:31:00.748 --> 00:31:06.419
It was a marketing person that said picking a niche doesn't mean that's the only people you can serve.
00:31:06.419 --> 00:31:12.036
Picking a niche is for the purpose of knowing who you market to.
00:31:12.036 --> 00:31:26.137
You can serve anyone that you want in any capacity you want, but your marketing vehicle needs to be, you know, niched, otherwise it's too broad and everybody wants to work with a specialist.
00:31:26.137 --> 00:31:31.900
You know, if you have heart problems, you don't go to a dermatologist or a GP doctor.
00:31:31.900 --> 00:31:40.836
You go to a dermatologist or a GP doctor, you go to a cardiologist, and that's true for almost everything nowadays.
00:31:40.836 --> 00:31:42.299
We want that specialist.
00:31:42.299 --> 00:31:48.457
So yeah, just because you market to it doesn't mean it's who you serve, particularly you serve anybody.
00:31:50.981 --> 00:31:52.344
So what was that like for y'all?
00:31:52.344 --> 00:31:59.837
Have you guys so for you, maddodox, I know that you're a hairdresser, singer, and now you're doing community creation.
00:31:59.837 --> 00:32:03.332
Like tell me a little bit more about y'all's like creative journey.
00:32:03.332 --> 00:32:04.334
What was that like for you guys?
00:32:06.178 --> 00:32:13.559
well, you know, I guess I got deemed as the creative one in the family when I was a kid because I was always decorating the house.
00:32:13.559 --> 00:32:21.019
You know, I was like mom would say oh my God, you take the same tired Christmas decorations every year and you make the house look different.
00:32:21.019 --> 00:32:22.836
And she didn't know I did that.
00:32:22.836 --> 00:32:29.903
But yeah, I just was always making something, or it wasn't necessarily art.
