Ryan Rado: Being Willing to Fail and Somehow Not Failing | Morse Code Podcast #211

Morse Code Podcast with Korby Lenker

Happy New Beginning!

One quick important creative announcement: I have new music coming! Meet Me at the End of the World was written by me, live on a series I do called the East Nashville Songwriting Workshop, where I write a song live on the internet, start to finish. Usually it’s a co-write, but this particular time the scheduled guest didn’t show up so I was left by myself. Not ideal but the show must go on so I thrashed around in front of God and everybody and after 3 hours I’d made a song. The bigger surprise was that the song rang true and I really loved it and have wanted to share it ever since. It’s a love song filled with wild emotion and exploding asteroids and an oblique reference to Melville (Moby Dick) and Steinbeck (The Pearl), shot through with bottomless thirst I equate with the feeling of being in love. The track was produced by Morse Code Podcast alum Anthony DaCosta and we’re shooting a very ambitious music video for it directed by another podcast alum, Mila Vilaplana. Powerhouse Randa Newman is producing it while somehow nursing Baby Zuzu to the delightfully chunky condition we find her in today (Zuzu not Randa).

Meet Me at the End of the World drops February 14 and I’m playing a full-band release show Feb 15 at the 5 Spot in East Nashville. More info in the coming weeks. It’s been a while since I put some new music out. Cue feelings of excitement, and nervousness. Which is an appropriate segue to introduce this very special guest:

Ryan Rado is a painter, musician, ontological coach, and host of the Make it Perfect Podcast.

Don’t worry about it. I also had to look up what an ontological coach was. And to be honest, I didn’t do that until after taping our conversation, because I was moved by this conversation and wanted to know more about Ryan and his life and work. The way he was in the room, how he shared so freely, not only his creative philosophy but his battle — that might not be the right word — maybe relationship is better — with Tourette’s syndrome, made me want to dig into what he’s doing and why. Just how damn vulnerable he was and yet, firm. Is that the word? Enigmatic things are hard to put words to.

I met Ryan at a screening of the Morse Code Pilot this summer. It was brief, but let me see if I can convey a little of the piquant nature of that exchange: see, I opened the evening by playing a few songs in the theater, just, totally acoustic no mics or PA. Which is my favorite way to perform or witness live music (there just aren’t many situations where it can work).

I played a couple of of my songs — one of them, Northern Lights, got an audible sigh from somewhere on the left side of the room, a couple rows back. Hearing that gratified me like a baby on the boob. All I ever wanted to do was make somebody sigh okay?

Not only did I take the compliment, but I noted that a grown ass man was publicly responding — audibly — to another grown ass man sharing his heart. Unusual. Also indicative of an integrated being.

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I filed that nanosecond feeling away, and retrieved it the moment I opened an email from Ryan asking if I’d be interested in swapping guest tapings. I checked out his art and CV and it was clear this guy was exactly the kind of person I’m looking for in a guest — a person whose commitment to self-expression extends well beyond the act itself. As I read some interviews Ryan had given and learned more about how he came to paint, it was obvious to me that the lines between active expression and active living are, in Ryan’s court, blurred.

What I’m trying to say is that this is one of the most interesting and moving conversations I’ve had on the podcast to date. Ryan’s transparency — with his past trauma, present joys, and his infectious desire to be fully himself — in what I might call a gladiatorial humility — was both challenging and moving. We looked at works of his art together, while he described not only what he was trying to achieve in them, but how they made him feel while looking at them in that moment. He talked about the Tourettes, even in realtime describing how hard was trying to resist the desire to lick the microphone while we talked. He got emotional talking about his young son’s ability to punch right to the center of his art with the tossed-off remark flung with the precision of a 4th century Ketana.

If you think I’m trying to get you to listen to this episode, you’re right. Ryan is a special person. The goal of the Morse Code Podcast is to infected you with inspiration and bravery by presenting people who are inspiring and brave. It’s a simple goal and I hope it’s working.

Listen to the episode and then look up Ontological Coach. That’s the order I did it in.

Happy New Year. Big changes coming for all of us.

Korby

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