Curious Seeds 09: Solitude in a Colorful, Glittery Cave

Interview with Lauren Bohn

Curious Seeds is an interview series with beautiful, fascinating humans and/or creatures. Suggest someone to interview here.

Lauren Bohn is a journalist, activist, and larger-than-life life-lover. We met about five years ago at a wedding in Kenya for a mutual dear friend. Lauren’s effervescent vivaciousness was immediately terrifying to me and then inspiring. I’ve loved her ever since. She’s reported and lived all over the world, and is dedicated to uncovering the magic and beauty of individuals’ lives even as they exist within monstrous systems of oppression. She roots for women. She loves stickers, astrology, and bright colors.

Lauren! So good to be with you!

Let’s play "this or that, without context." Choose one and share why, or not.

Cerulean or cellular: Cellular wisdom always and forever BUT:

Salt in a wound or a bag of the saltiest pretzels with no water whatsoever: Salt in a wound! For whatever textbook pathological masochistic reason, I enjoy a bit of a sting, a zap of pain.

Milky or flash flood: Flash flood. With a flash mob..

Zombie wizard or demon witch OR (bonus) vampire starfish: Zombie wizard DEMON WITCH.

Raspberry beret, purple rain, or (little) red corvette: Purple Rain! I always think about what that song would have sounded and felt like if Stevie Nicks had collaborated on it, as intended. She apparently received a 10-minute instrumental version of “Purple Rain” from Prince with a request to pen the lyrics but declined. “I listened to it and I just got scared,” explained Nicks. “I called him back and said, ‘I can’t do it. I wish I could. It’s too much for me.” For me, Nicks is serving up a good lesson on the power of saying “no.” I feel like it’s en vogue to push ourselves to say “Yes”— to step into the uncomfortable, the overwhelming, the unknown, but it’s often equally important, if not more, to honor the instinct of “no.”  It’s OK to RSVP No. It’s OK to decline an invitation that might birth another timeline of chances and connections and opportunities. “No” can create space for so much more. You get to decide how to linger in or spend that spaciousness.

Talk to me about “being loud” in ways other than literal volume. Does this resonate for you? What does it mean for women, and/or the world?

Oh, does it. 😅 But what resonates more: “being extra.” I was told I was extra since I was a kid, long before the term was appropriated from AAVE  like so much of our vernacular. I’ve always loved loud, vibrant clothing. I’ve always felt both passionate and vocal about my likes and dislikes. It’s taken me a while to not perceive my own extraness as pejorative. But I still struggle with it. And I think some of my self-interrogation is necessary. As a white straight-passing cis woman, I’m constantly thinking about how much space I take up and my proximity to privilege.  But in general,  it’s a radical and necessary act for women to take up any space under a patriarchy that ensures its supremacy by silencing the voices of those who it systematically marginalizes.

There’s a journalistic trope that really bugs me—this notion that journalism is about “giving voice to the voiceless.” There is no such thing as “the voiceless.” As Arundhati Roy says, there are only “the deliberately silenced or the preferably unheard.” And for me, my life’s work is about abolishing the conditions of voicelessness. 

It all sounds Serious And Intense, but these conditions reveal themselves in the most humdrum of ways. Just the other day, I was doing a long scroll through all the interviews music producer Rick Rubin has done for his newish podcast Tetragrammaton. It’s practically all dudes. The deficit of women’s voices—both subconsciously and intentionally—is so commonplace we hardly notice.

That’s the true horror and danger of misogyny: that it’s so insidious we accept it as an inevitability or a foregone condition of living. 

Women have learned to see the world through men's eyes and learned to identify with men’s struggles, but men don’t have the same glimpse, or interest even, into our interiority.  And this is all especially true of Black women who witness racism, intensified by sexism and sexism, intensified by racism. 

So in terms of myself or women being “loud” or “extra,” I think we all need to stop breaking ourselves down into amenable, bite-sized pieces. As my favorite astrologer Chani Nicholas says, “stay whole and let them choke.”

As a journalist, you’re channeling and outputting. I think mindful consumption and input drive that. Can you talk about your experience of being at the center of taking in and putting out?

I consume a lot. I probably creatively consume more than I creatively produce and it's a ratio I’d like to work on without too much judgment.

When you’re creating art, I feel like you’re always in constant dialogue with what is and what was. Reading and listening is a way to tune into that discussion. 

Both channeling and outputting require me to spend a lot of time in solitude. People think I’m an extrovert, though I’m just an introvert in drag. I charge through solitude. My being an only child is a function of that, but also to operate at the frequency I prefer, I need to retreat. I need to go into my cave, albeit a colorful one with lots of zhuzh and glitter.

Astrologically speaking, I’m a Leo sun, moon, and rising. Leo, ruled by the sun, is the sign of the stage—the most extroverted of heavenly bodies, the largest spotlight in the cosmos. Leo natives are oxygenated by interaction and enlivened by outside validation (shadow side: we must detangle our self-worth from external validation!). I need interaction though I thoroughly enjoy hiding behind the clouds.

Of all the systems of meaning to which you subscribe, what is fun + insightful about astrology?

I got into astrology after a breakup seven years ago because I was seeking a modality, other than talk therapy, to better understand the human psyche and dynamics. Astrology is a fun cosmic dance of delicious metaphors and juicy archetypes. It’s ultimately about storytelling—the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and others. 

The thing that does annoy me is that astrology— like so many wellness, spirituality or self-development modalities—is often Instagrammed-packaged in a really navel-gazey and egocentric way, further disconnecting us from others when the whole point is connection. The connection between the cosmos and earth is inextricably personal and political.  Our liberation is written in the stars and as above, so below. Astrology gives us a compass to locate our true north—where our greatest gift meets the world’s greatest need. 

What is your relationship with suffering?

Like I said, I don’t mind pain. I had a more intimate relationship with suffering in my teens and 20s that was epitomized by a white-knuckled grip on attaining perfectionism. I kind of thought joy and serenity were an easy way out. I wasn’t an ascetic, but I was myopically focused on achievement, on some warped notion of “success.” I remember feeling like an utter failure on my 30th birthday because I hadn’t yet written a best-selling book or won a Pulitzer Prize. And then in my early 30s I realized that I was turning my healing work into another warped Lauren vs. Lauren competition. In other words, I was trying to be perfect at healing my perfectionism. LOL.

Look, suffering and pain can be portals into self-discovery, but I’m much more interested in sensuality, ecstasy, joy and bliss. If it doesn’t feel expansive, it’s not for me. That’s not to say I’m after a constant Lisa Frank tableau of rainbows and unicorns. There’s expansion in challenges; there’s certainly expansion in transformation.

But anything or anyone that doesn’t bring you alive is too small for you. Those are my metrics. Those are my requirements.

I notice that you pump people up. You see people — for instance even your Uber driver or someone helping you at a bakery – and you love on people.

Shine Theory feels as natural as breathing for me. My love language is waking up people to their power. Baldwin said it best: Love, and life really,  is about “mirroring and magnifying one another’s light.” And part of that is identifying and celebrating the goodness of people. But make no mistake: I don’t pump people up for the sake of pumping them up. My weather system is just as capable of thunderstorms if the climate calls for it. 

You’ve said that being a mother is not in the stars for you. What can you share about realizing that? 

From as long as I can remember, I’ve never felt that motherhood is in my curriculum for this lifetime. I absolutely love kids. It’s been such a joy watching some of my best friends raise theirs and I cherish my Arts & Crafts time with them. I love living in my auntie era!

But I don’t want kids. I never felt that urge that others talk about. It’s still a ridiculously revolutionary thing to choose or announce for fear of sounding narcissistic, selfish, career-obsessed, and cold-hearted. We have a long way to go before society decouples  womanhood from motherhood, but there’s growing visibility of the unsung sisterhood of child-free by choice women. Ruby Warrington puts a microphone to it in her newish book “Women Without Kids,” specifically about how this unconventional path can draw a lot of criticism. Being a part of any “out-group” path is an opportunity, she writes, to commit to “radical self-love and establishing one’s own code of ethics while seeking fulfillment and a sense of purpose outside of the tidy parameters of what is deemed socially acceptable.” 

It goes back to Stevie Nicks “No” to Prince’s offer to take on Purple Rain.  Saying “No” carves out a lot of self-defined, sacred space. Those are the rooms I’m interested in exploring and decorating. 

Do you have any insights to share on sitting with grief?

Spending most of my career reporting in post-conflict or conflict societies where loss is woven into the everyday so fiercely has meant witnessing, sitting with, and ultimately befriending grief. No human can escape it. 

The past six months have been particularly heartbreaking and enraging. I’ve had the privilege of spending a lot of time reporting in Palestine, specifically Gaza, and I used to live in Jerusalem as a reporting fellow with the Associated Press. There are many days I’m not OK and I have to keep reminding myself that it’s no measure of health to be OK or well-adjusted to a sick society. I’m hoping we can all be brave enough to stay sensitive to the collective pain without turning numb or cynical. I hope this time can be an invitation for us to remember that “all of us must be chosen,” as poet Aurora Levin Morales pleads. “This time It’s all of us or none.” I hope that we can understand that calling for Palestinian liberation does not mean the abandonment or erasure of Jewish suffering. There is no way forward—no true freedom—if we cannot hold both.

I keep activist Mariam Kaba’s words on a sticky note near my desk: “Let this radicalize you rather than lead you to despair.” This world we share is filled with an unimaginable amount of pain and suffering but also an unimaginable amount of beauty and joy. We must hold both in our hearts at all times. This is our earthly assignment. This is the divine dance.

What’s special about senior citizen dogs? 

During the height of the  pandemic, my mama rescued an elder lab from South Carolina named Gus. I spend a lot of time with him and he’s in a constant state of Now; he reminds me that Later doesn’t really exist.

Something that you can’t live without today that you could a year ago.

My Ayurvedic morning routine!  Last month, I had the deep privilege of participating in a Panchakarma retreat on the sacred Taíno land of Finca Victoria. My introduction to Ayurveda, an ancient healing system from India, felt like a reunion with feminine wisdom. It was more like remembering than learning.  Every herb and ritual felt not just like portals to the divine, but portals back to myself. I think that’s what true transcendence should feel like—a homecoming. 

Something that’s not a part of your life right now that was a year or so ago.

Adding spice and heat to literally every freaking meal!

What have you been pecking at lately?

I’m never not pecking at a book of poetry, a novel, or work of nonfiction. Here are a few new-to-me strings of words that made me really happy.

From Leslie Jamison’s “Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story”: 

From the dedication page of Sasha taqwšəblu LaPointe book of poetry, “Rose Quartz”:

This poem by Terrance Hayes:  

What have you squirreled away for later?

There are many things I haven’t yet written about—grief or pain that I haven’t yet alchemized or transmuted. In my least self-compassionate moments, I beat myself up for not having done so. But another way to think about “squirreling away for later” is what poet Cole Arthur Riley speaks of as “sacred withholding.” 

Anything else to leave us with?

One of the gifts I picked up at Finca Victoria is this yummy recipe for Rose Chai tea!