Hitting the perfect note with Louisa Morgan

[Music Playing]

Adam Sockel:

You are listening to Passions & Prologues, a literary podcast. For each week, I interview an author about a thing they love and how it inspires their work. I'm your host, Adam Sockel, and today's guest is Louisa Morgan, author of the new book, The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird.

I have been lucky enough to have several conversations with Louisa over the years. You may recognize her name from her ludicrously popular book, A Secret History of Witches and the books that followed it in that series.

That was what I got to meet Louisa about many, many years ago. And it was such a wonderful conversation that when I saw her name come across my inbox, I was overjoyed to get to reconnect with her.

Today's conversation is about one of Louisa's first passions, which isn't writing, in fact, it is classical music. And I've had many conversations with people over the past year and a half of this podcast's existence, talking about music in some form or another.

We've discussed musical theater. We've discussed different types of music that people love. We've discussed music theory and people who have been in charge of the lighting during live musical moments. But what we haven't had on this podcast yet is someone who is a classically trained singer.

Louisa for many, many years was a concert singer, and it all started with her deep, deep love of classical music that began with her parents having the record of Carmen back when she was a very young child. And this spawned what became her first act of life, her first career, which was as an opera singer.

It's just a wonderful, wonderful conversation to get to hear someone who has been involved in an aspect of life that I really have no connection to. I love classical music. I love music, really, of all kinds, but I have no idea what it takes to create those incredible and iconic notes and sing these songs that 0.0001% of us could ever imagine.

So, it was really, really delightful to get to talk with her about this. It was just a delightful conversation. And the book that we discuss again is The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird, and we talk a little bit about it at the second half of the conversation.

And it's really, really interesting. I love it a lot. It is very much a good, kind of spooky, creepy story that is perfect for this end of year time. And it's all about friendship as well, and obsession and redemption, and a bunch of things that really caught my eye. I really, really love this one.

Speaking of music, this is a good time to offer a book recommendation. This past week I read The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, who has written several other books that I adored including The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.

The Music Shop is a book that she wrote that is very much in homage to vinyl records and their important kind of place in the history of music and how we engage with music. It's all about this vinyl record store that has come on some hard times, but the owner is just this iconic and unique person who can really tell the exact type of music that you need when you need it.

And so, while he has a very perhaps small gathering of people who frequent his store often, the people who do go see him are very, very obsessed with the things that he can do for them. So, he meets this woman who he instantly tends to fall in love with, but he does not know how to open himself up to a relationship.

And that's because of his own past, which unfurls slowly throughout these different chapters that are all broken out by music lyrics. It's just a wonderful story, and again, it's an homage to vinyl records. So, if you are a vinyl nerd, which I am quickly becoming highly recommend The Music Shop by Rachel Joyce, a perfect connecting book recommendation to this discussion with Louisa Morgan.

If you'd like to get ahold of me, you can always find me at [email protected]. Or you can find me on TikTok and Instagram where I'm doing book recommendations and all sorts of things. Again, same name, Passions & Prologues.

Also, want to do one quick plug. You will find a link in this show notes to my Boston Medical Center fundraiser. I'm running the Boston Marathon this spring, and part of my journey is to try to raise $12,000 for the Boston Medical Center. An incredible, incredible organization that provides not just medical relief and medical treatment to children in need, but also housing and education and food and so, so many other things.

So, if you are inclined or are able to and want to donate a couple of bucks, I would deeply appreciate it. It would mean the world to me, and I know it means the world to the Boston Medical Center. That is enough housekeeping. I am going to transition now into my conversation with Louisa Morgan, author of The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird on Passions & Prologues.

[Music Playing]

Louisa, what is something you are super passionate about that you want to discuss today?

Louisa Morgan:

I want to always talk about classical music. If it's not books, it's classical music.

Adam Sockel:

Beautiful. So, take me back to when you first kind of discovered your love of classical music. Was it something that was in the house when you were growing up, or sort of how did you discover this particular joy?

Louisa Morgan:

It's interesting because my mother, the first recording she ever bought with her own money was a recording of the opera Carmen with Rise Stevens. And I grew up listening to that because it was the one that we had.

My dad had other tastes and I always wanted to be a singer and a writer. And so, I ended up being a singer first, and I was a classical singer. So, I sing opera and concert repertoire.

Adam Sockel:

So, how does one go into getting into singing classical music? Because obviously, you mentioned opera it is a very, very unique talent, is something that even people who are “singers” cannot necessarily do. It's a very, very specific thing. So, how did you get into that?

Louisa Morgan:

Well, you're absolutely right. It's very specific, and I know it's a little esoteric for those who aren't involved in it, but just starting with that recording of Carmen and later on in later years, I got to sing the role, which was great. It was fabulous.

I think that to be a singer, you have that same drive somewhere in your spirit that also powers writers or any artist. I think painters, dancers, I think dancers dance because they have to dance. And I sang because I had to sing.

I had a teacher one time when I said, “I'm not sure I'm good enough for this.” And she said, “Oh, if you can go do something else, do it.” I've actually borrowed that several times from my writing students. Because if you can go do something else, it will make you happy, you should do that.

Because every artistic career, probably every career you probably are having the same experience has times when you just think, “Oh, if I could just do something different,” but the drive to do it won't let you go, it keeps after.

So, I didn't have a big voice ever. I'm not a big person. I'm fairly tall, but I'm not big in my body. But I just had to sing. I started singing when I was five years old. And I never, I never stopped until I got to college. And that's when I decided that classical repertoire was for me.

It was kind of hard because I'm not a big person. And so, with my fascination with opera, that meant some roles would work for me, but a lot of them would not, so-

Adam Sockel:

So, is that a situation where it's just like simply where the physical nature of singing these particular roles or for people who may not be familiar, is it just like where the sound comes from? Because like I said, it's something where it's obviously at this point, not even second nature is probably just like inert in you now to understand how to produce specific sounds and those different things.

But so, for you, you mentioned, being a relatively small person, like for people who just might not know, what does that mean from an operatic standpoint and a classical music standpoint?

Louisa Morgan:

Well, I could lecture on this for hours and I'm sure your listeners are not really that interested in it. But as theaters over time have gotten bigger, then the voice needed to fill the theater has to be bigger. And it's not a hard and fast rule, but the general rule is that big voices come in big bodies. It doesn't mean fat bodies. I mean, there's been that joke, that opera isn’t over until the fat lady sings.

But it does tend to be big bodies. So, when you see in particular the singers who do the really big roles, like the Wagnerian roles or the Verdi roles, I'm just not big enough for them. So, in those parts, I sang comprimario roles, which is supporting roles, and that was fine. Magic flute, lots of Mozart, that sort of thing, Rossini. And then I did get to sing Carmen partly because of my figure that was a good fit for me. So, that worked out.

But yeah, in general, and I don't want anybody going away and saying, “Oh, I can never sing this because I'm not big enough.” There are lots of small opera singers. They tend to be sopranos, not always, and tenors, high voices, none of this is hard and fast, so it can be done, but there are limitations.

Now there are other kinds of classical music, and I loved singing concert repertoire, and often they're sung in small venues like churches or chapels or small concert halls.

And in those you don't need such a big voice. It tends to be different kinds of music, though. Earlier music, which I love, Baroque music, even Renaissance.

Adam Sockel:

So, you mentioned the first ever recording you really ever had access to was Carmen. And so, I know what you mean where a lot of a lot of the music I listened to and the type of books I like to read and things absolutely come from A, the things that I heard and ingested around my parents, and they come from them because it was what was available to me as well.

But as you progressed through your teenage years, and like you said, when you went to university and decided I do want to focus on this. What is it about this style of music that draws you to it? What is it about this style and the way that you can tell stories to this music that really fascinates you?

Louisa Morgan:

And this bears on my writing life as well, I think it's about the structure and it's also about the quality of the singing. I love beautiful voices. And I love beautiful voices that are beautifully produced and in pop music, it just doesn't resonate with me.

I can objectively say, “Oh, that's a good voice, but I don't enjoy the way it's produced.” That being said, there are some singers from other areas of music that are not classical. And I find them really compelling, like Aretha Franklin. And that voice is to die for and there are others as well.

So, I think that's what it is. It's about the beauty of the voice and the way it's produced that really got me. I was a folk singer also briefly when I was young. And I loved that music because I like the melodies and I like the beautiful voices that performed them. Sometimes they're not so beautiful. I mean, we have Bob Dylan, but-

Adam Sockel:

It's funny you say that. I was just going to say the music of my parents that I was brought up on and that I am drawn to is ironically folk music. And you mentioned, like you said, the beautiful voices of classical music.

I was going to say, I think the reason I love specific folk singers is and beautiful is the wrong word, but like, unique. There's so many unique folk voices, and those are the ones, even now, like there are modern day folk singers.

There's one that I learned of this year; his name is Benjamin Dakota Rogers. And he has one of those voices where the second you hear him sing, you would never say, what a beautiful voice. But you would say, what a unique voice and it sticks with me. So, it's funny you said folk, because I know what you mean. That is exactly how I feel when I hear a-

Louisa Morgan:

One of my voice teachers, one of my great voice teachers, he would've called that a money voice. Because as soon as you … his name is Benjamin Dakota Rogers, I have to remember. So, the minute you hear it, you know who you're listening to.

That's true of a number of folk singers who've made huge careers. I also love some blues. Like I love Bonnie Raitt's work. So, there are all kinds of things that I do really enjoy. It's just that classical music for me and for my voice, that's where I wanted to be in the end. So, lucky me I got to do it.

Adam Sockel:

You mentioned a few times that there's sort of a crossover between the passion you need for seeking classical music and then also your writing. So, I guess, can you explain how maybe your passion for classical music and how it has affected your life so much has also bled over into your writing, do you see a through line between the two things that you love?

Louisa Morgan:

Well, it's really interesting. Again, I could lecture on this for hours, and I do lecture on this sometimes when I'm hired to do that. You're probably familiar with Greg Bear, the great science fiction writer, he was one of my mentors.

And when he taught the workshop that I went to in Seattle at Clarion West, he went to a whiteboard and he started diagramming a novel, the structure of a novel. And I remember saying, “But Greg, you're diagramming a symphony.” And he was also a classical music fan.

And he said, “That's it, it's the same.” And it is so much the same. So, I always think that I internalized the structure of things like the song form, which is a classical form that many songs have in classical music, which is perfect for a short story.

And I also internalized the structure of an opera or a symphony because I studied them so much and sort of in me. And so, when I'm writing a novel, that structure is the one that I think supports my creative flow.

When it's wrong, there's this little thing inside me that just goes, “No, no, no, no, that's not working out.” And when it's right, I get that feeling of satisfaction, like you know you've done something that works. So, I mean, it's almost exactly the same thing, the music structure.

By the way, I can't write music at all. So, not a talent of mine at all. But knowing that structure, feeling that structure I should say, feeling that structure translates directly into what I do in my novels in particular.

Adam Sockel:

So, along those lines, speaking of feeling that structure, when you began publishing novels, I believe you had already obviously had this career as a singer, and you've been singing for quite some time in your most recent book The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird, which we're going to talk about in just a moment, this is by no means your first, second, third novel, you've been doing this for a while.

But I'm curious, when you first started writing novels, did you already have that feeling of, oh, this feels structurally like a symphony thing? Or was that something that was sort of learned manuscript by manuscript?

Louisa Morgan:

It was learned. I mean, as with every writer, your first ones are, you're learning as you work. I got lucky because I was published early. But I still had a lot to learn, and I did, and I have, and I go on learning. I'm never done.

And I have been lucky to work with some really great editors. And also, my agent, who is very good at helping to develop a project, so I've learned a lot. But I think that that feeling, that sense for it was inside me.

And the other thing is, another one of my jokes is, if you want to write novels, you should first be an opera singer, because what do we know in opera? We know scene, we know character, we know voice, obviously, but voice in the sense of the color of the voice, the timbre of the voice, which has direct bearing on prose.

We know a lot about building to climax and the release of that. I mean, you just learn a lot about drama. And so, that spills over beautifully into fiction. And I do know that there are some actors and actresses who become very good writers. And I suspect it's the same connection that they make.

Adam Sockel:

I mean, it makes sense because thinking about, if I'm listening to classical music or even a musical, or I'm reading a book, there are times when it can feel like it's either dragging or you're waiting for a climactic moment or something.

And it is that exact same feeling when you're like, “Okay, this does need to follow some sort of a structure that is recognizable, or else you just feel lost as a viewer or a reader type of a situation.”

Louisa Morgan:

Right. It's pacing, I think. And there are big pieces of music that are famous that I think the pacing, it doesn't satisfy me. There's a wonderful book about how we listen to music and what pleases us. It's called Music, The Brain, And Ecstasy. And I think it's — I don't know, it's a 30-year-old book. But it's great.

And he talks about in that … it's a Canadian writer. He talks about one of the reasons that we love listening to music that we've heard many times before, even though we know what's coming, we get that little jolt of joy when it reaches us in whatever way. Whether it's a symphony or a song, or an aria or whatever.

And I always think that that's the case. And it's true often in genre fiction as well. We have expectations. And when they are satisfied, we're like, “Yes, that was perfect.” And so, there is that connection.

Adam Sockel:

Speaking of genre fiction, I want to get to the new book, I want to get to The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird. Because to me it sort of defies genre. There's so much going in here. But before we dive into it, can you kind of give my listeners an introduction to the book so they have a reference about what we're talking about, and then we'll kind of dig into it a little bit deeper.

Louisa Morgan:

Okay. Well, I've always been fascinated with ghost stories, and I think you recently did a podcast about … and you were talking a lot, that was fun to listen to. I grew up with them. I have a Native American background. There's a lot of them in my family and so forth. And I always wanted to write a ghost story.

And then I met — I have a dear friend where I used to live who had worked as a psychic, but she had to stop because she couldn't turn off the spirits that were talking to her all the time. She couldn't shut the door. And so, she quit. She had to quit. But that gave me the idea for this particular novel.

And it's fictional, I'm in the process on TikTok of telling real ghost stories, which is super fun. Not just mine, but ones that people have told me. But this one is fictional, but it's about a character who she … it's set in the 60s and 70s and she's a psychologist who tries LSD and it kicks off her intuition, her second sight, until she sees ghosts around everyone, and she can't turn it off.

And then she meets a real ghost and things kick into high years. That's where all of that came from.

Adam Sockel:

And so, you mentioned you've always wanted to tell ghost stories. For people who are listening, I'm sure they recognize your name because of your wildly popular and incredible Secret History of Witches books, The Witch’s Kind, The Age of Witches, and then The Great Witch of Brittany, right?

Louisa Morgan:

Right.

Adam Sockel:

So, you've told over the past several years these incredible books about these, I always say naturalistic witches like my favorite, like your books and like Alice Hoffman, I love those types of stories.

So, what made you want to transition from telling those types of stories where you sort of are so centrally focused in this world of the secret history which is, and then kind of transition to ghost stories. What made you want to make that little change?

Louisa Morgan:

It's no excuse, but I just had the urge to tell a ghost story. And then I was fascinated by this, what had happened to my friend. And I'm fascinated by other ghost stories that I've heard. And I just really wanted to explore it.

And I felt the same way when I started writing about witches. I didn't know when I wrote Secret History of Witches that it was going to have that big an audience, I didn't. The timing was good, I guess. I think people wanted to read about women in history.

Because I think of myself first and foremost as a historical fiction writer. But obviously with witches you have this other magical element. And so, when I wanted to write the ghost story, I wanted to make that historical also.

It's hard to believe that the years of my childhood are now history, but they are. And so, I just had fun exploring what was it like to see something you think is a ghost and then you see something that really is a ghost. So, that's where all of that came from.

Adam Sockel:

So, what was sort of your research process? You mentioned this kind of being somewhat historical and you mentioned — I was laughing because to a lesser extent feel this way about thinking about when I see people writing stories that are said in the 80s and early 90s, and they're like, “Oh, it's a retro story.” I'm like, “Oh my God, this hurts my heart.”

Louisa Morgan:

It's my life.

Adam Sockel:

Exactly. So, what was some of the research process for — because like you said, it's historical base somewhat. So, what was the research you were doing for this story?

Louisa Morgan:

Well, the first part of it takes place in San Francisco. And I grew up in the Bay Area, so I'm quite familiar with San Francisco. And I just got a map that was contemporary at the time, and then worked with a lot of stuff that I knew. And I researched the use of LSD in those years.

Because it was only made illegal, I want to say in the early 70s, maybe at the end of the 60s. I've forgotten the exact year that California made it illegal to use LSD. But up until that time, people were experimenting, and you could buy it anywhere.

I mean, you could buy it in Golden Gate Park, you could buy it on the corner in Haight-Ashbury. It was all there. So, that research was easy. And then there's an island where I set the rest of the story, and I went and visited it. Field trip as we called it. We made a field trip to the island, it was great. So, that was kind of fun research to do.

Adam Sockel:

I was just going to say, what was that experience like visiting that island?

Louisa Morgan:

Well, it's a very small island. There's not very much there. So, we went, and we found everything that there was to see. The story takes place at a time when there was a convent of nuns that ran the ferry there, which is the only way to get … well, boat is the only way to get on and off the island.

And so, the nuns are in the novel as well, which was kind of fun. But they don't even have a hotel, you couldn't stay on the island. So, we spent the day and ran around looking at things, went to the little library, saw the little school and everything. And then we had to go stay someplace else, get back on the ferry and go to another island.

Adam Sockel:

So, something that I really love as part of the story is your main character has a psychology practice. And I think I love stories that kind of weave in the paranormal or the magical realism or whatever you want to say about that adds the genreness of the fiction, but blends it with things that are very, very much part of our own reality.

So, for you when you were talking about all of these physical manifestations and the things that she thinks she's seeing versus the things that she is seeing, how important for you and then to kind of what was the process of putting in that psychological aspect into this story?

Louisa Morgan:

That was a big part of it for me. And I should have said when we were talking about research that I did a lot of reading about psychology as it was being practiced at the time. My character is a PhD psychologist, and I worked with a fan of mine actually, who is a PhD psychologist.

And she told me that at the time that my character, she was like the first, one of the first PhD psychologists to actually have a clinical practice because it was mostly for research psychologists at the time, which is very strange thing.

Also, she was a woman, which in the 60s wasn't as easy as we might think it is now. Anyway, so all of that, I might have lost track of the question. When I start thinking about these things, I go off and distractions.

Adam Sockel:

Tangents are great. No, so that was honestly … I guess, thinking about the psychology of that time period, because I think it's important for people to realize you don't have to go that far back in time to see that the medical field and especially the psychological field was sort of like the wild, wild west. It was very unhinged, I suppose.

So, I guess, what were some of the things from a psychological standpoint in doing that research that you learned about that time period and how did that make its way into the story?

Louisa Morgan:

Well, main thing for me was that the difficulty of a woman making her way in that field. And one of the drama points of the novel is that she does succeed. She has a practice, she works in a free clinic and a private practice, and she's doing very well. And her partner is an emergency physician, and they have this really good thing going.

And then when she experiments with LSD, she breaks it all apart and she has to find a way to — if she's going to be able to rebuild it or not. So, you said something interesting about witches. You said you like naturalistic witches. Which is interesting because I always think that my witches are working witches.

I mean, no magic wands, no wiggle of the nose. And you mentioned Alice Hoffman, same thing. Her witches live in the real world. And that's the way I wanted to write them. And it's the same for my characters in this book. They live in the real world.

And there's another character, she's not the only protagonist. The other one is a younger woman who's fleeing from an abusive marriage, which is very much a 60s kind of theme. So, it was really interesting watching those two lives intersect and how they supported each other.

Adam Sockel:

You mentioned that you've been using TikTok to kind of tell some additional ghost stories.

Louisa Morgan:

I just started.

Adam Sockel:

I love this. So, I will-

Louisa Morgan:

Terrifies me.

Adam Sockel:

What's that?

Louisa Morgan:

I said it terrifies me.

Adam Sockel:

Listen, it's a very unique and fun way to interact with people. But I'm very interested in starting that process, what is one of the more interesting ghost stories and you can kind of obviously truncate it. But what's one of the more interesting ghost stories you've learned and wanted to tell since starting this little fun-

Louisa Morgan:

I've only done two so far. I've started with apparitions. That's my first category. And I have my own story, which is pretty readily available. The one I told last week was a woman who her husband, when her daughter was little, her husband was out running, and he was tragically hit and killed by a car.

And then she raised her daughter on her own. And at her daughter's wedding reception, which was in her home, obviously many years later, everybody's there in wedding clothes and they're having the reception, all the nice food, you know how those are.

And one of her guests came up to her and said, “Who's the man that just ran through the house? And he's wearing shorts on a running shirt.” I know. Isn't that wonderful? So, I take that to mean that her husband is watching his daughter, and that he's still there. He can still see her. So, I love that story.

Adam Sockel:

I was just going to say, I feel like so many people are like, when they hear the concept of ghost stories, they're afraid. And it's to a somewhat lesser extent, over the weekend I stayed at my parents' house with my partner, and we were just spending some time with my parents and my family.

Growing up I had a cat named Phoebe. It was a black cat who is very cranky all the time. And my parents both say all the time, they see this cat still just wandering around their house. And it's been passed away for 20 years now.

And I absolutely believe that type of stuff. I believe that I've seen ancestors who are no longer with us, like out of the corner of my eye and stuff. To me, it's more fascinating that way to have a world that exists.

Louisa Morgan:

Well, so we like this naturalistic world where these, I call them extranormal because paranormal has come to mean kind of fake and I don't feel that they're fake. And to say that they're not real would be to deny our own experience.

Energy, as we know from science, cannot be destroyed. So, it may be transformed, can take different shapes, it can take different forms. And so, I wouldn't be surprised if your cat who was really happy in your house, (even though she acted cranky all the time) left some of her energy behind. Or maybe a lot of her energy is still there. I love that.

I mean, the fact that I can tell so many apparition stories and all of them, my rule is first person or second person stories. I'm not telling fake ones, even though my novel is completely fictional. Well, more or less fictional. There are just so many of them. And I have my own, and it took place in the middle of the day in a sunny garden. So, people shouldn't be afraid of it, I don't think.

Adam Sockel:

So, how are you … you mentioned just having just started kind of telling these stories, I will say for everyone, we are recording this in August. It's a few months until the book comes out, this particular episode, you all hear it, but right around when the book comes out. So, it's very likely that Louisa will have many more of these stories out and on TikTok.

But how are you kind of cultivating these stories? Are people coming to you? I'm always fascinated where people find interesting little stories that they want to share. So, how are you cultivating these stories that you're sharing?

Louisa Morgan:

First of all, I think I'm a magnet for them. So, I hear them probably because I'm interested, but I hear them all the time. And so, the first thing that happened that got me thinking that other people would really like to hear these is that I went to a party.

It's called a CAbi Party. And it's clothes like a Tupperware party, but it's clothes and very nice clothes. And so, there's a saleswoman and she's got her samples. And so, I went to this party and there were 8 or 10 women there.

And the poor saleswoman, we're all sitting around talking and these stories got started. People started saying, “Well, this happened to me.” And somebody else said, “Well, I had this happen,” and the poor saleswoman is standing there for an hour waiting for us to finish so she can do her spiel for her clothes.

And it was interesting, that's where the story about the man who ran through the wedding reception in running clothes, that's where that came from. And there were several others that came from that same group.

I mean, it's amazing to me how many times people say, “Oh, yeah, I've had this happen, or I've had that happen.” We had a poltergeist in our house, and more people want to know about the poltergeist. And it's fascinating. And then when I hear other people's poltergeist stories, so it's one of my categories that's coming up soon.

Adam Sockel:

I feel like it's as soon as a group, like in a group of people, as soon as one person is comfortable sharing something and acknowledging this happened to me. And as soon as the reaction from the group is like, “Oh, that's so interesting.” It's almost like it opens up a floodgate of other people being like, “Oh, okay. I can share … is a safe space to share my stories as well.”

Louisa Morgan:

Right. Isn't that true? And the thing is that for me, it was a part of my childhood. My grandmother, my wonderful paternal grandmother, we always said she was the first hippie in San Francisco. Because she was really out there. She was the painter, quite a wonder.

She was a fairly significant minor painter; I would say for the 40s and 50s and 60s. But she was open to everything. And so, we grew up around her open to everything, reincarnation, ghosts, anything. And she was a really big influence for me. I didn't realize it at the time, of course, but now looking back, I understand. She was also a musician. And encouraged that activity for me.

Adam Sockel:

That's so interesting. I feel like that's getting back to the very beginning where you talked about how classical music was kind of one of the first things you were able to ingest and listen to with relative frequency.

And I was thinking about this, like I said, the week that we are recording this, the episode that I have coming out, it's kind of a nostalgic book. It's called Speech Team, it's by Tim Murphy. And it's these older people looking back on their high school years and these kind of traumatic experiences that happened.

And we were talking about how you don't really realize when you're younger, how many things are going to leave these lasting influences on you. And I'm the same way. I never got to meet my grandmother on my mom's side, but just hearing stories about her, all of a sudden, my mom is telling me how much the things I'm doing now are so similar to my grandma who I never even met.

It's just like through osmosis and stories. And it is so fascinating to me how you mentioned the musical aspect of your life being inspired when you were so young and now, you're talking about your grandmother kind of inspiring a lot of your work and the different things.

I don't know, it's just very, very interesting to me how the things we learn when we're younger end up lasting a lifetime of all the different ways that we produce our art and our work and our life.

Louisa Morgan:

They do. They do. We formed pretty early.

Adam Sockel:

I say that wasn't even much of a question, just me rambling and being like, it's just so fascinating.

Louisa Morgan:

It's interesting because in my Native American background there is a firm belief that family groups, and it doesn't just mean the one like, mom and dad and the children and big family groups tend to return to life together, the spirits.

And so, I grew up just believing that. I mean it was just automatic. And so, when I encounter that sort of belief and other beliefs, like your mother's saying that you're like your grandmother, you could be your grandmother.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah. Possible.

Louisa Morgan:

I mean, but it does make sense that there would be that connection between yourself and someone you never met.

Adam Sockel:

Yeah, absolutely. So, I love that so much. I have one last question for you. I always end every episode by having the author who has come on give a recommendation of any kind. It can be a book, it can be a movie, it can be a piece of music, it can be a TV show, recipe. Just something that you think more people should know about.

Louisa Morgan:

Oh, my goodness, more people should know about. I mean, I'm always telling people what they should do because I'm a very bossy person.

Adam Sockel:

That works too, honestly. I had someone say, go for more walks. Like, hey, you can absolutely …

Louisa Morgan:

Go for more … okay. Well, I mean exercise certainly. I think I just really want to encourage people to consume non-mainstream entertainment. I get frustrated with — I just saw the Barbie movie. And I loved it. I absolutely loved it. I just thought it was great.

And my son who's very savvy about these things, he said, “Yes. But Hollywood has taken the wrong lesson from it.” And I realized, yes, they want to go right back and find another toy they can do another movie about.

And I want to grab some of those people, walk them into a bookstore and say, “Look, here are all these wonderful ideas, these are amazing choices that you have for entertainment.” It doesn't have to be books. It can be music; it can be independent films.

I have a friend who made an independent film and it's getting shown at a festival in Europe. And she did it all by herself, just amazing.

So, I would encourage people to not go to just the best sellers, as wonderful as they are, Alice Hoffman, this is the only bad thing about buying books from online sources, it's not as easy to browse. And I absolutely love browsing libraries, bookstores and so forth so that you can kind of expand your horizons.

Adam Sockel:

I think that's beautiful. Louisa, The Ghosts of Beatrice Bird, it's such a wonderful book. I know people are going to absolutely adore it. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Louisa Morgan:

Thank you. It was great fun.

[Music Playing]

Adam Sockel:

Passions & Prologues is proud to be an Evergreen Podcast. It was created by Adam Sockel; it was produced by Adam Sockel and Sean Rule-Hoffman. And if you are interested in this podcast and any other Evergreen Podcasts, you can go to evergreenpodcasts.com to discover all the different stories we have to tell.

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