The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build

In this episode I'm chatting with Brad Melle - he's a historian, a dreamer, and my favourite guy in the world (I may be biased)! We're discussing the tagline for this podcast, "The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build."

We talk about where the phrase came from, how Brad has seen it throughout history, and what it means for the two of us personally.

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Transcript

Welcome to A Little Bit Unstoppable. This podcast is for artists, creators, and change makers in any industry who have powerful ideas that might just change the world or at least a small piece of it. My name is Brielle Goheen and I am a clutter coach for creatives. I help people declutter their minds, declutter their physical and digital spaces, and hack their habits so that the most important things become the easiest to do. I believe that creativity will change the world, so I want to equip you to release your creativity with power in a way that is effortless and sustainable. One of the small, simple ways that I do this is through my weekly newsletter - Unstoppable Bit by Bit. If you’d like to receive encouragement, inspiration, and an inside look into my life, head over to briellegoheen.com to sign up. Without further ado, let’s get started with today’s episode.

This episode is going to be a little bit different and I'm a little bit excited about it. I just said a little bit three times in a row, but you can tell it's because I'm a little bit excited. The guest that I have on the podcast today is none other than Brad Melle, my husband. So I wanted to have him on the podcast, kind of for a couple reasons. The first reason is that both of our lives, we live so much of them together. We are together, like, 24/7, weirdly except for when we're with other people. Generally when we're with other people we tend to be on our own. So it's kind of this strange dynamic where people know me, people know Brad, but not a lot of people know the two of us together. Which I think is a bit of a tragedy because Brad brings out the best in me and I think I bring out some of the best in Brad.

So we're gonna talk today about the tagline for A Little Bit Unstoppable, and is also the tagline for the course Becoming Unstoppable. The tagline is 'The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build.' This is the tagline that we came up with together, I think? Maybe Brad thought of it and then I claimed it? Something like that. That's often what happens and - we thought of it together one night and it just resonated a lot with both of us. so I thought we could talk a little bit about what it means to the two of us, what this phrase means. So, first, hi Brad!

BRAD:
Hi, Brie. We're just here in the studio, both with our own mics, of course, not sharing one. So yeah, it's really good to be here. I'm working on my radio voice right now as you can tell, but yeah, I'm excited to talk about this phrase. The first time I remember saying it was in a class I was teaching. I'm a scholar of colonialism and I remember talking about it in that context. So it's kind of interesting because it's so different than the context that you use it in.

BRIELLE:
Tell me, what was the context that you used it in initially?

BRAD:
Well, I was teaching a class on colonialism and Indigenous history in Canada and we were talking about the first two hundred years of colonialism in North America in contrast to the next two hundred years. So we were talking about 1600-1800, the first phase, and I was trying to get across to the students that the colonized Canada that we know today was not actually real in any way in the early phase of colonization.

BRIELLE:
What do you mean by that? Like, "not real"?

BRAD:
Yeah, it was "not real" in the sense that the sources would make you think that Europeans had already taken the land and had already developed agricultural economies and such. But I wanted the students to realize that this was actually their imagined world. It was the world that they wanted and longed for. So the land, for example, in the Great Lakes before the year 1800 was Indigenous space. But Europeans would talk about it as if it was their divine right.
What I wanted to communicate to my students was that this was the colonial imagination. What happens is the imagination comes first, a vision is cast, and then once you've cast that vision, that becomes the thing that you work towards. So they imagined a Europeanized North America and that's what they longed for and wanted and so that's what they built.
They realized their imagined reality, so it starts in the imagination because that's what captures our desires. That's what captures our vision and then that's the thing we work towards. But I would say that the settler colonial desires were flawed at their core. Their vision was exclusivist and culturally supremacist and it bore bitter fruit, especially for their former Indigenous allies. But they were still captured by the colonial vision and worked to build that world. However it was often achieved through clear cutting and later through establishing unyielding industrial domination through shady treaties and, of course, through residential schools. So the vision for a colonized Canada had captured their imaginations but it was achieved through violence. So our vision matters, what the thing is that we're building. But it is something that we do inevitably. We imagine a world and we work to build it.

BRIELLE:
That's a really neat take. I love how it's something that you have seen as a historian it's something that you've seen through history. And my guess is that if I asked you to provide more examples of this happening, you'd be able to provide 10, 15, 20 different examples of how we envision the world as we want it to be and then work toward creating that world. So interesting seeing that, in light of where we live, on Indigenous land, and where where you and I live in particular is Indigenous land taken by dubious means. And we live in a culture that was actively imagined and very intentionally built. So these earliest settlers had this very very clear vision of what they wanted to see, and then they set up intentional structures and systems in order to see that world realized, and then spent the next close to two hundred years actually building that day by day, structure by structure.

BRAD:
Yeah, I mean, to imagine southern Ontario as a fertile agricultural land, the forest was in the way. This was a woodland, like a thick deciduous forest. And so while the Haudenosaunee people and the Wendat were agriculturalist, they weren't agriculturalist in the way that Europeans were. They didn't clear cut massive regions. They did it in a more sustainable way where it was kind of a mix of forest and farm. But, yeah, the earliest settlers who were mostly British loyalists and then American expansionists, they looked at the forest and it was their great enemy and they just went to work. But I remember reading about how the Mississauga, who are the peoples who lived here in southern Ontario in the Golden Horseshoe, were just horrified as the trees were ripped out, coming from a completely different vision for what the world should be. But, yeah, the world you imagine - that's where it starts, but that does not mean that what you're imagining is necessarily good. But whatever it is that has captured our vision is what we build, and so that's why it's important to not only be aware of what we're building but what lies at the root of it. What is it that we're excited about seeing? And asking that question, "Is it good?" you know?

BRIELLE:
That's really interesting. It starts at the level of - what is capturing our imaginations? It's important to know what are the things that we're building but also to be really aware of what stories are capturing our imagination. I can just imagine the felling of those beautiful woodlands that were here, those forests, the abundance that that represented for the people that could see that and to the settlers that it was a barrier but to the people that lived on the land that knew the land it represented the abundance. So this is an example that has some really negative things that happened - the world that we've imagined. Can you think of an example of a world that we imagined that we built that is mostly positive rather than mostly negative?

BRAD:
Yeah, that's a - that's a tough question to answer. I mean, I would say I'm more familiar with the negative things but that's probably because I am more aware of large cultural realities and with that in mind it's always going to be a mixed bag . You know, one positive example is in South Africa after the Apartheid regime fell in the early 1990s, certain people - you know, Desmond Tutu and others - envisioned South Africa where European settlers and the different African peoples in South Africa could live a reconciled future in peace. And while South African history since the early 90s has not been smooth sailing, that movement that they initiated - the Truth and Reconciliation Commission where people would testified to their sufferings under Apartheid in public, and be heard, and be able to hear apologies...that imagined future has had a large impact in South Africa and in other countries. That's where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that Canada did in 2008-2015 - that's where that came from. So even though certainly not all positive by any stretch of the imagination that vision for a future that featured reconciliation in South Africa and Canada has injected some new strands of DNA that will shape the future of both countries. And so, yeah, it's a mixed bag at that macro level for sure, but there are some strands of hope.

BRIELLE:
And I think it's that hope that I really connected with when I heard the phrase for the first time. So, I can't remember exactly when it was but, I remember you said it, "The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build." And I immediately latched onto it. I put it in my Mind Sweep tool and I read it every single time I looked through that for a couple of weeks. And then I wrote it on a post it note, stuck it on my wall so that I would remember it. "The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build." And somehow, as we lived life that just became something that we kept seeing in the world. Because we had a language for it now, a shared language around it, we were able to express it together and pointed it out to each other. And I think it's the hope of the statement, even though it can horribly go wrong, there's so much hope in that and that's what I saw and grabbed onto as an artist- is this possibility for hope. Because I think that artists are uniquely positioned to be thought leaders in a real way because we imagine. That's our job. That's what we're really good at is imagining something that does not exist. That's where we live. The artist lives in what does not exist. Which, I think, is really interesting because you're a historian. You exist in what has come to pass hundreds of years ago and I exist in the space of what has not yet happened. And I think that's one of the things that connects us is this, like, learning from the past and then imagining something different. And it's so powerful to see proof of how imagination at work actually does something. Our thoughts, and what we choose to ruminate on, and think about, and flesh out in detail, of what does not yet exist - actually comes to pass, in time.

BRAD:
Yeah, it has become this lens for understanding all kinds of things, even though where it was formulated, allegedly, in my classroom was such a different context. I've learned so much from you over the last two years and that idea that you talk about a lot which is - you know, you help people to get organized. You help people to build systems. You help people to make choices and strategize about how to pursue the path of least resistance. But at its core, underneath all that, it doesn't really matter how organized you are if you haven't really thought about, ruminated on, dwelled on your vision for your life. So bringing it down to that individual level, how important a vision is - something that excites you. Something that is brimming with your purpose, the world that you want to see and the role you want to play in it, it is a hopeful phrase. And, you know, it has made me rethink everything. Just that simple question, "What is my vision for my life?" Actually now that I think about it, there's a lot of different possible pathways that a person can take to cultivating a really robust, thick vision of the future, something that excites them. And getting organized was actually what helped me. You developed and learned about this new system and that excited me so I implemented it my own way. And then I was left with this space and it was in that space I started to think about my future anew and started to think about the the things that were stressing me out and asking questions like, "Does it have to be that hard? Do I have to imagine such a stressful future for myself or could it be different?" And it was that space of getting organized, developing a system that I could put all my inputs into, that made me rethink my vision.

BRIELLE:
I love the phrase that you used: "a thick, robust vision." That's beautiful. Just beautiful. I think the word that I use most when it comes to vision or purpose is 'lucid'. And I think that that shares some similarities with 'thick' and 'robust' because lucid has this connotation of dreaming and it's aspirational. But lucid is also clarity. So it's like, clear but thick. You know? Robust yet dreaming. I think vision is just so central to what our job is as humans, to imagine a future. To imagine a future and create it. And I love how you're also talking about how getting organized actually gave you the space to ask the bigger questions. To actually question if your vision was what you wanted it to be. What you're working toward - was that actually what you wanted to work toward? What I've seen is that getting organized can be an uncomfortable thing for people. Everybody wants it - everybody wants that space, but we're afraid of it. We actually are afraid of it. And when suddenly your spaces are clean and clear and they're not taking up space in your mind, and you have an opening - an opening to imagine something different...that can sometimes trip people up. We don't want to take on that responsibility of imagining a different world. And that I believe is where artists have the opportunity and the responsibility to step up and do it. And I think that's why I'm so passionate about teaching organization and systems and these different skills that other people just seem to have innately and really creative thinkers just seem to not have naturally. I'm so passionate about this because I think what we have naturally is that ability to see a future and, even if we're on our own, to just point to that future and go after it doggedly and be the first one to go after that vision. And that I think is a huge of our job. And if we could just get organized we would be so powerful in pursuing that vision. We'd be unstoppable!
I mean, not to quote my own podcast name, but we would be! We would be unstoppable in pursuit of this beautiful vision, this robust, thick, lucid vision that we see for the world.

I also want to talk about some of our future projects. I know we can't really talk a lot about our future projects. But I think it's really interesting how this phrase, "The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build" are a centerpiece of what I'm working on and what I'm teaching in my course and in this podcast. It's also a centerpiece of what you're learning in your studies - those are now coming to an end. And we're also working on some other projects that this just seems to be a theme and a centerpiece and in our lives in a huge way. I'm working on building the Calcedon Otherworld and I'm actually building another world through art and through other people's art and gathering artists together to create this other world. And this world that I am imagining - and you're a huge part of that - this world that we are imagining together is literally a world that we're building. And I know we can't say a lot about it right now, but I wonder - you also have another project that you have on the go on your mind that's at the very very early stages, and is there anything that you want to say about that?

BRAD:
yeah I I can't say too much specifically, but in reflecting on purpose, those kind of questions, really that teaching is something that I must do, something that I do naturally and something that excites me, and so at this point I'm sort of rethinking what teaching is. If I can go about things in a different way. If I can build communities of people who want to talk about the kinds of things that I want to talk about. Sort of where history meets religion meets magic. And while you're you have your projects you're envisioning and now building, and I'm starting on that process afresh as well, we also do a lot of visioning together of our future and it's really fun to imagine something and then to ask the question, "How would we be realistically get there?" And I think that's something that you've taught me, that your course really offers is the blend of those two things. Where it's not just a pipe dream but it's a strategized dream. Something that has captured your imagination and then you apply those practical questions of how do we get there.

BRIELLE:
I love your emphasis on fun and I think that's something that I have needed to learn from you as well. You bring a lot of fun into my life, where I can tend to become quite focused on goals and serious about life. And you bring in this lightness, this sense of fun. And no journey is going to be enjoyable unless you find the fun in the steps. And I think that's so true that when you find a vision that captivates you, it's so fun. It's so fun to talk about. It's so fun to plan, to strategize how you can bring it from this place where it is a pipe dream into a place of reality.

Thank you so much for chatting today. This is really fun. I feel like I just had a deeper understanding of where this all came from just from talking to you. Very very often you'll say things and I latch on to them and they become my own thought even if it started in your brain and you actually said the phrase first. I will claim it as my own, often, if I really like it. And so thank you for being generous with me in just giving me this phrase, "The worlds we imagine are the worlds we build." And I know that something that we share and I really hope that it's a phrase that can resonate with the listeners as well. You know, any of you who are listening, if you connect with that phrase, take it and make it your own. Imagine the world that is in your view, the change that you  know that you can make in the world, that you want to see come about. And begin building that world. Because it's possible. Because that's what we do as humans. And not only is it possible, like Brad was saying with what he has seen through history, not only is it possible - it's inevitable. It's what we do. Things capture our imagination and we build them. And so I just want to encourage you to imagine something beautiful. Imagine the most beautiful future that you can and then go after it.

When you combine Passionate Purpose and Organization you'll find your unshakable energy source. And the result is that you'll give yourself another vote for the fact that you are at least A Little Bit Unstoppable. There are hundreds of combinations of things that you could choose to do to give yourself a boost when life is tough and you're feeling low. But I've created a PDF guide for you. It's called '100 Ways to Get Unstuck' and you can find it at briellegoheen.com/getunstuck .

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Remember: the worlds we imagine are the worlds we build. So, ambitious creator, imagine something beautiful and take the next step - no matter how small - toward building it.