Shawn Colvin

I've tried not to prepare really so we'll see.

Yeah, it's funny.

It goes one of two ways. People either really think about it or they don't.

I've gone like care from her.

I think it's fine because I think it's all sort of a trigger anyway, you know, for a larger conversation about yeah, life and being here.

I think that's exactly right. It made me think a lot.

Hello, I'm mini driver. I've always loved Preust's questionnaire. It was originally in nineteenth century parlor game where players would ask each other thirty five questions aimed at revealing.

The other player's true nature.

In asking different people the same set of questions, you can make observations about which truths appear to be universal. And it made me wonder, what if these questions were just a jumping off point, what greater depths would be revealed if I asked these questions as conversation starters.

So I adapted Prus's.

Questionnaire and I wrote my own seven questions that I personally think are pertinent to a person's story. They are when and where were you happiest? What is the quality you like least about yourself? What relationship real or fictionalized defines love for you? What question would you most like answered, What person, place, or experience has shaped you the most? What would be your last meal? And can you tell me something in your life that's grown out of a

My guest today is the multiple Grammy Award winning musician and songwriter Sean Colvin. I feel like Sean's song Sonny Came Home, which came out in nineteen ninety six, was the soundtrack to one of the most poignant parts of my life, and so it was probably poignant in yours too. I still find that song to be both beautiful and haunting for all kinds of reasons. She writes what I consider to be pure folk music and has a voice

A few years ago she published.

A really lovely memoir called Diamond in the Rath, and this year she is touring with Kebmo and her tour dates are available at Seancolvin music dot com.

It's so funny.

I've been doing pressed or something, and lots of these journalists have asked me, you know, I'd like to ask you my favorite question of your questions, and I have given the most useless answers. It really on the spot, like really not great answers.

I don't believe you all.

It really wasn't.

I really regretted one of them. They asked me what relationship, real or fictionalized, defined love for me, and I said that it was I used to stand in the rain and watch Daniel da Lewis play soccer because he went to my school and he was older than me, much older than me. He used to come back and play in these old boy football matches, and I loved him so much, and he was related to my uncle who married my aunt, and so I felt like he was family.

That he showed me.

He would always walk back to the changing rooms slowly, even if it was pounding rain. He would answer all of my questions. He had patience, he had kindness, had incredible energy and focus, and I felt like all those things are real definers of love and I've never forgotten it. But obviously the journalist is only going to write about I love Daniel Davis.

Yeah, I know.

It will be good publicity.

You know what you do.

Yeah, there you're going, Okay, Well, I'm going to ask you my first question, which is when and why were you happiest.

I looked up the definition of the word happiness. I wanted kind of a prompt, and that helped me think about it more.

I think safety is a big part of it.

To feel safe is the very happy place, and to me, it comes down to music, playing music, writing music, hearing music, and water bodies of water. I grew up in South Dakota and my father, who was the most fun loving prankster ish, cool, goofy guy loved the water. And we had a late close to us called Lewis and Clark Lake in Yanked in South Dakota. And things weren't always great at home, but being in that lake, by that lake, on the boat, everything was okay. I felt a sense

You know.

I was a kid who didn't like having the door shut to my room and darkness and being alone there, So that was wonderful too.

And body's of water. Just do it for me?

Swimming does it?

Immersing myself in them, It's very important, not just looking at them. There's a beach in Positano, Italy that some of my ashes are going there, okay. And there's a naturally fed springs pool here in Austin, Texas.

I know it bought in springs that is where Texas breeds through Boughton Springs.

It seems to me it is.

It's a miracle. It's a wonder of nature. I don't know any place like it that's in the middle of a city. I go there every morning. I go there every single morning. That's how I start my day.

And I'm having.

Ashes spread there too, but that's a secret because I'm sure it's against the law.

Shania during the recent eclipse, my best friend in the world, Alexandra Valenti and Avid listener.

Of this podcast. She'll be listening now, the photographer.

Yes, she's taken my picture many.

Okay, Yeah, she's wonderful.

She used to live there. Okay, she does, she still lives still.

We went out, we were in we were in the water up you know, there's that jetty where boats can refuel and there's a great kind of general store. We were past there and just between these two bridges and we were in the water with our glasses on for the eclipse.

And it was.

Honestly one of the most incredible moments of my life.

I think I have it on my Instagram.

I have the video which is just a lot of screaming as it goes to pitch black.

Where you Well, I was here? Were you near the water? Will you?

I was not. I was in my home. I was in my home and I just was sitting around, going, well, we'll see. I thought, well, it's going to be crowded out there, and I couldn't wait for it, but I didn't make a big social thing out of it.

And it got a little dark and I was like, yeah, all right, and then it's got pitch black and the screaming.

I ran outside. The screaming started.

All the street lights came on, and one of the I looked up. What happened to animals in the zoos when the eclipse happened. A lot of them herded together, which was interesting. But what I like the most was the ones who were nocturnal came out.

Okay, time to get up, and the ones that.

You know usually went to bed at night just started going to their beds.

Gosh, I mean, that makes a lot of sense.

There was a huge amount of bird and butterfly activity out on the water.

It was what happened.

First of all, everything cleared, all of the birds and all of the butterflies. They all came sort of swarming across the water, and then they just disappeared into the trees and under the bridges. And then as the light was coming back, I assume in their beings they were thinking it was dawn, and so they were swooping and one of the guys on the boat. He was like, I think it's because this is what they do in

It was truly spiritual.

Yea, what it's going to happen in another four hundred years or something?

Is that the k is a long time?

Were they singing like morning birds? Were they tweeting a lot?

Yeah? They were.

They absolutely were making a lot of noise. It was really magical, truly truly amazing. That makes a lot of sense if I lived in Arson and I would go to Barton Springs every single morning and swim, It's fantastic. What person place or experience most ultitude life.

I really have to say the experience of getting so I was twenty seven, so I was very lucky, but I was miserable. As I like to say, I had my share. I mean, it's just that was my timeline. I didn't have to go till I was however old. I bottomed out and in New York City, and you know, you know, lecture everyone about addiction and alcoholism, but it's a disease, and I was very sick, and it's a very tough.

Disease, you know.

It's a disease of denial, and addiction is a rough one. It's an obsession of the mind, the craving of the body. I mean, it's fierce, and not everybody makes it. And for me, it was more than mornings after where I just felt suicidally depressed. And I remember one of the thoughts I had that really kind of made a difference in me having a revelatory moment that this had to stop.

And it was ego driven.

I thought to myself, you know, because in high school I was in all the musicals and debate team and speech team and duet acting.

I had a lot of friends.

I was the girl guitar, seemed to have a lot of potential, right and there was in New York. Yeah, I was doing music and suddenly I thought all my friends in high school are going to find out I'm a drunk.

And that really got me. I really remember that.

It was just kind of a come to Jesus about this is this is real?

This is what's going on with you.

So I got help, and I was so blessed and lucky because it took, and it doesn't with everyone. I just feel like I was really blessed with that. So it transformed my life. Was in a program that really kind of taught me how to live and introduced a spiritual overview to living. All the things that have happened

Have you found what you found through the program all through the people that you met or through that experience. Have you sort of handed that on to someone else? Like have you kind of continued that chain and like what you were given. Have you had the opportunity to kind of.

Have that on?

I mean, I've tried, and I've found that there's not much you can say true. All I can hope for is and I know this because of people that talk to me, because they know me, because of what I do. The other person, you're setting an example, not encouraging it, proselytizing you know what I'm saying.

I do. Yeah.

I think it's just through my actions effected.

People the most.

Yeah, it's doing it because I remember once I was sober for a year or two, had a great friend who was a drummer, sweetest guy, great guy, terrible alcoholic, and I told him what had happened to me and he was like, oh man, I got to do that, I got to do that.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah.

I was just so happy. I'm like, yay, he's going to come in.

He died.

He died before he came in. And that taught me a lot. It kind of taught me a lot, like you can't convince somebody except through your own experience and through their willingness to want to change, yeah and recover. Yeah, so that's the defining experience for sure. I don't know what i'd be doing right now. How old were you when you had your daughter?

Forty two?

Nice? Nice?

No?

How about you? I was thirty eight? Yeah?

Yeah, I mean you know, they called it a geriatric pregnancy, which I thought was so unnecessary.

They did. They did so sad like these labels. But yeah, he's magic.

Yeah, they are magic. Does he have a good sense of humor? That's what he thinks. I loved the most about my kid. She's hysterical. Isn't that very absolutely?

Yes?

Because I think kind, funny, clever. Those were sort of my benchmarks of what I sort of loving a person. I've always thrown that around and thought that everything can actually be distilled into those things.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

Can you tell me about something that has grown out of the personal disaster?

Gray Heir? That is the truth, That is the literal truth.

When I saw the word grown, I was like, oh, yeah, that.

I'm trying to think of something else.

Besides the kind of pivotal thing about giving up alcohol.

Being a single mom?

Was that difficult in the beginning because I was also a single mom, And while it was heavenly in a lot of respects, I love not having anybody telling me what to do.

With vapor misers. No, no, no, no no no, I didn't.

But there were definitely moments where I was like, holy cow, I am so alone in this. Yeah, she's meaning this little tiny baby he can't speak to me, And I remember thinking we were both growing out of this, not disastrous situation.

But it was suddeny not easy.

Yes, that's really applicable here. Yeah, single parenthood and realizing you're making all the decisions and a lot of them are fucking hard. You're responsible, and Calli's had her share of difficulties. You know, she wouldn't mind my saying that. And I had to make decisions. She can now, and thank god she's twenty six and she launched. But yeah,

Wish I could sing like you. I wish I could be it.

You're being creative, honey.

Was it hard being on the road with a little child.

Well, she came along for a while, and then when she started school, she stayed back with her dad and it just sucked, you.

Know, for me to be away like that. Yeah, that must have been very hot.

It was very hard, but I took a couple of years off.

Yeah, it was very hard.

But she's amazing and our bond is ironclad, and it worked out.

Oh, old Henry, he's fifteen.

Oh yeah, has he gone into his cave yet?

You know what, I think he's in the cave, and he's in the cave. He is, he in the cave.

He's fighting the bar right now. He's fighting the bat in the cave. And I just keep handing him supplies. I heard they go into a cave.

They really do.

And I think it's really that initiation and that journey. It's very hard to sit by and watch and not want to make it easier. I got to say, I don't do a great job not interfering. I really tried. But it's agony watching someone being born into adulthood.

It is.

And you know, your instincts to try to avoid controlling and.

Advising and you know, like babying them through it are really good.

You know.

I wish I could say my instincts had been better as far as that went.

I came from a place.

Where I was going to outdo my parents, you know the things that I didn't get. Man, she was going to get it in spades, and I overdid it. There's somebody told.

Me the other day our generation overcorrected.

Huh.

That's interesting. I actually think that's really true. I think that they were so hands off. Yeah, I think I definitely, to his detriment, sometimes been super prescriptive, like too prescriptive. But I don't know what we were talking about this last night, my sister and some friends. Oh you can just it's just the best you can do, right. Oh yeah, And there's no handbook, you have no idea. You often don't realize the things you've handed on to your kids until they've been handed on.

So all you can do is just keep talking about it. And I don't know.

All you can do is keep talking about it, and it's hard to watch them struggle, and then you reach a point where you are over correcting. And somebody said, you've got to give them the dignity of learning.

Oh that's good. I like that a lot.

I do too, and my folks were on the other side of the spectrum. But I figured it out. Yeah, we all figured it out.

So what is the quality that you like least about yourself?

A few, but I'll try to focus on one.

I did kind of an inventory of the things that I do that I really wasn't aware that I was doing, just to cope in life.

I think we all have these things, and I gave them names.

What I was going to say was the quality I like least in myself is I isolate. I enjoy time alone, but I isolate too much. I just do, and I'm trying to work on that. I'm just kind of a recluse, I guess. And I love texting with people and talking on the phone.

But I just kind of stood put.

But this other thing I was telling you about where I started to make a list of my coping mechanisms that aren't healthy, and I gave them names. And one was the contractor. So you know, you meet people.

You fall in love, you have certain friends, whatever shaped you in your childhood, you make unconscious contracts with people you.

Know you do, or at least I do.

If you do do do, then you will get Weah. I just realized how full of manipulation I was, and how I would make these contracts rather than accepting the situation just as it is. Another one was the pontificator. I think I'm an expert in so many areas, and I give tons of advice. I just think I know it. You know, you asked me about mental health, music, fashion, you know, bring it up. So those are just two

What do you get out of isolating? Like, what are the benefits of it?

That's a really good question. I guess I have social anxiety. I guess that's kind of that's really kind of it.

Just more comfortable being by yourself.

I like being by myself, but I can lonely with that in that isolation. So it's kind of a you know, edged sword, because for example, when I get up to go to the pool, I get up when it's very dark, and I get in the car and listen to the music I love and get a cup of coffee and sit in the parking lot in my car at the pool in the dark, and it's my favorite time.

It's day.

And then the dawn starts to break, and I wandered.

That's beautiful.

Well, it's great, but then you know, the day goes on and I live alone. So I've realized that in my isolation there's something to do with pleasing people.

I don't know. I drift away from.

People that are very important to me, that I may have known from the past or worked with, but don't work with anymore. I tend to drift away from the people that understand me the most. It's something I'm looking at. So this isolation is some kind of protection in some way, and I think it's just perhaps some to some degree kind of low self esteem of being closed intimacy.

Mm hmm, I don't know.

I think it's really interesting to not just fill a space because it's empty, or maybe to reframe the notion of emptiness with space. I started doing that with things that were I guess problematic, and that was one of the words I would supplant. So emptiness, this feeling of emptiness, I have it a lot around my son being at boarding school and I don't get to see him every single day, and he is truly the great love of my life. And I started playing around with when I

That just felt one way. Yeah, you reframed, Yeah.

I mean I wonder if like there's I feel like all this. Huxley talked a bit about it, wow, which is I'm totally paraphrasing this idea of if we don't follow along with social norms, that it's somehow wrong and that it's only not beneficial if we actively feel it hurting ourselves. But if it's just something that's different from the norm, maybe so be it.

And there's an.

Exploration of what that is that is pertinent to the human is doing it.

Yeah, there are expectations and rules as we grow up and we get kind.

Of trapped by those.

Yeah, I understand what you're meaning.

With my daughter being gone, I felt an emptiness And for me, filling up the space has been well the opportunity to kind of soul search and realize the things I've been sort of pushing under because I was so busy raising my daughter and how do I get to focus on myself now? You know, it's a great opportunity for me to look inward and reclaim hobbies, interests, more travel.

So I'm trying to kind of turn it on its.

Ear, and, like you said, instead of feeling empty, recreating it into an idea of space where I get to thrive.

Yeah.

I started doing the things that felt good more than once a day. Do you know how you kind of feel if you have like an itinerary in your day, and it's like, well, you know, so I wake up and I get my coffee, and I go for a swim, and then I do this, and I do all these these things just singularly, right, And I started going, I'm going to swim three times a day.

I'm going to go down to the beach and I'm swim oh yeah, oh yeah.

But are you in London.

I am, and I go and swim, and we have these lighters, so we have these amazing ponds all over London.

I work you did.

I went to the Ladies pond last time I was in London.

Yeah.

I gotta find that water wherever I go.

One hundred percent. But it was interesting because I used to feel really sad. I come in from my surf or my swim in the morning, and these are in night, you know, moments that were difficult or hard. And I said that, going, God, you know, my happiest moment has happened. And I've just got the rest of the days stretching out. And eventually I went, well, fuck that, I'm going to

Yeah, you know, I totally relate to that.

I even wrote something about it once, but I had to do with Texas Monthly and Austin and I talked about the ritual that I do in the morning, about going to the springs, get up, have the coffee at the dark, the music, and then on the way home stopping at juice Land and getting my favorite smoothie and talking to somebody on the phone and then and then the best part of my day. So, and you're right, and people have so just go swimming again. You know, that's that's a great song.

Actually, that's a beautiful song, Go swimming again. What relationship, real or fictionalized, defines lovely?

Well, it has to be my kid. Yeah, I know what you were saying about Daniel Day Lewis and the selfless and dear actions of another person and the gift of not being judged by someone and the gift of being accepted and understood.

And treated well.

But being a parent, first of all, you're responsible, you know, from our one And that was totally intimidating to me. I was like, someone's how have I taken on this job?

And I think the.

Only thing that keeps you going on some level is this bond that's kind of inexplicable. I mean, it's been a hard job, you know, it's not been easy, but it's she's the love of my life. It's been the most fulfilling job and it'll never be over. And I'm sure it's a very common answer, so it's hard to describe.

Well, it's a hard one to look away from because it is like for me, it's the most defining relationship of my life, like without a shadow of a doubt, Like I can think of other ones, Like I said, I talked about Daniel da Liz, particularly because I rather talk about Henry all the time. And I was like, oh, let me, I'll talk about something else for a minute. But it is magical and is my greatest proof that

And it's hard to put into words. It really is.

It's deep.

It is deep, and it makes me think about It's funny you said you were talking about the contractor and like these contracts, I wonder about those, the idea of soul contracts, and whether we are playing out these relationships in different forms because I don't know the feeling of connectivity it feels like it goes so much further than even beyond the extraordinary act of giving birth, which, as you'll know, is.

You know, it's otherworldly.

It really is.

It really is. I mean, just did you have music playing?

Oh my gosh, did I have music playing? I sure did. I did have an amazing playlist, I really did. And there's this really beautiful devotional that rummed us sang. It was a live recording and it was on the playlist, and that happened to be as Henry was being born, but I didn't know that Henry was a boy. I'd been told I was having a girl, even though I didn't want to know. So when he came out, and I wanted love to be the first word that he heard.

What the fuck?

So the whole deeply.

Spiritual entry from my kid was a bit it went a bit sideways, but.

Well, yeah, but it's sounds like really great. Well hopefully not when you give birth exactly, hopefully. That's just you know, did you have a playlist going?

Like?

Did you have music? I did? I have a playlist.

I had one song that I wanted played when it was imminent. Oh wow, yeah, I don't know why.

I know.

I was just concentrating on what needed to be done, and.

I would you mind sharing? Would you do?

Is that?

Oh?

No? And it's the song is.

No, I don't mind sharing at all. And it's a little.

Strange, but to me, it's a very transcendent spiritual song. It certainly is not necessarily positive and it's a little abstract, but it's proco hair and whiter shade of pale.

No way, way. I was just just oh wow. Yeah.

For me instantly, it's the movie with Nil and I, which is my son and my favorite movie.

I love that movie.

I'm not thinking of it in I'm not thinking of it in terms of somebody being born into this world, and like hearing that it is it's transcendent.

It has transcendence in it that song, for sure, it does.

And if you look at it lyrically, it's not necessarily the ideal thing for someone to be born to. But that's the thing. That's the thing about music. It transcends a lot of things. The words don't even have to necessarily make sense, you know.

I mean, it's a stream of.

Consciousness, bizarre, bizarre.

Song, but it's just steep, and that's why it feels holy to me.

You know, it just feelt holy to me. So yeah, that's what I did.

I think that's also really beautiful to pay attention to the things that feel holy to us, Like I don't think we I think it's really cool to consciously do that and go whatever that is, whatever that sounds like or looks like this feels holy to me.

That's really wild.

I'm just thinking about as a kid listening to The Cocktail Twins, and you know, for the first like struggling for those first few months of listening, going why why don't I understand what she's saying? Like I can't what is she saying? And then my mom, rather casual, went, she's not saying anything. She's just making amazing sounds and she's intoning like it is whatever you want it to be.

And I was like, ah, what do you mean? What does it mean?

And she, my mother said a much more caustic version of like, stop looking for meaning in everything and just enjoy the way that it feels slash sounds. And I always think that way about music, particularly if there are lyrics that I don't particularly love, Like there's a there's a songwriter whose lyrics I don't love at all, but I love the music. I love the music so much. And my son and I genuinely have like changed the lyrics about four of this song. And do you like

No, it doesn't sound fair.

That's great to rewrite the.

Lyrics and instead of just turn off the music. If you love the voice and you love the music itself.

I know, and I think that sometimes there's a whole bigger feeling at play than what somebody meant in there.

Yeah, but you're reminded me of a funny story, if I may tell me.

Well, I was dating this guy once who was an actor.

Oh god, pol you.

This was in New York and he hadn't reached any big success. He was a sweet guy, but yeah, maybe a little narcissist. But of course, like any actor wants to be a musician, and like any musician wants to be an actor, right, so here, this guy's really good actor and getting.

Somewhere and doing well.

But he's a songwriter too.

He said, Oh, no, so he wanted me to listen to his cassette tape.

That's how long ago it was. And I'm like, okay, you know, tell him what I thought so bad?

And my favorite lyric that he had was he rhymed apocalypse with Picasso lips.

Across?

Is that not a horrible apocalypse with Picasso lips?

Picasso lips? And my best friend, who's a writer.

I said, what do I do? What do I say? You run?

Well, you just find something that you do like, you know, and you just kind of go with that. And I said, he rhymed apocalypse with Picasso lips And my friend goes, what are you gonna do? So I don't know, but I think that's cool. You rewrote the lyrics because you love the old parts so much.

The cool progression is so beautiful, The melody top line is beautiful, The whole thing's beautiful.

It's just this really, it's like.

Very young when he wrote these lyrics, like they feel like a sort of fifteen year old boy fantasy of that means judge, but obviously will.

You get to like you?

I think that's exactly right. Yeah, Oh, Sean, thank you so much, Thanks, thank you.

That's it. That's my seventh Questions. I've made it. You did you made it? Thank you? Oh, thank you, Minnie. It was a pleasure. Great, It's a real pleasure. Thank you so much.

Mini Questions is hosted and written by Me Mini Driver, Executive produced by Me and Aaron Kaufman, with production support from Jennifer Bassett, Zoe Denkler, and Ali Perry.

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