Miya Folick, Musician
💭 Thoughts on sweet treats, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and feeling fully consumed.
Thought Enthusiast is an AdHoc Project where we chat with fascinating thought leaders across various facets of music, tech, and culture whose work we admire, simply asking “what’s on your mind?” and “why do you care?” 💭
Miya Folick is a songwriter and artist who lives in Los Angeles. Earlier this year, Miya released her second studio album, ROACH.
🎯 Current focus
I am having a delayed pandemic experience in that I just started getting into baking. About 2 years after everyone else! But I love it. It's a fine hobby for days when I'm writing music at home. I can work while the dough is proofing and then take a little break to form it and put it in the oven. I like that it feels alive. Little creatures that you eat.
I am very into quiet right now. And coconut yogurt. And Marie Ndiaye, the French novelist. I just read My Heart Hemmed In and immediately went to the bookstore to find more of her work.
👀 Pay Attention
I I think I feel best when I am paying deep attention, whether that be to something external or to a thought process happening in my own mind. I don't like the feeling of being distracted, but I often find myself distracted by anxiety or my phone or cyclical thoughts about things that are out of my control. So I'm trying to remind myself to just chill out and pay attention. I think that my body needs a certain amount of peacefulness in order to think deeply. When my nervous system is out of whack or my body is in a state of emergency, I feel like my thinking is shallow and that's unsatisfying.
🍊 Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson
I just read Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson. Couldn't put it down. I like reading stories about people coming to understand their own sexuality.
📚 Feeling fully consumed
As you might have figured out, I like to read books. I want to read like I did when I was a child again. Fully consumed! I think it's interesting that we talk about "consuming" content, when I feel like mostly what I'm doing when I'm looking at social media is licking the surface of it like a lollipop and then throwing that lollipop away and immediately grabbing another lollipop. There is an interesting interview on the Ezra Klein podcast with a researcher and author named Maryanne Wolf. It's about deep reading and what it does for your brain. It's a good episode. I think that there is a way in which we can apply a similar type of idea to the internet. I like longer form content. I also like content that links to other content. So you can go deeper on the topic if you'd like.
🍪 A cookie a day…
I cannot live without my sweet treats! I love a little cookie in the morning and a little cookie in the afternoon.