Transcript for S1E1

David Rios [00:00:08] I'm at work, so it's a little stressful, actually.

Pat McMahon [00:00:15] Hi,everyone. My name is Pat McMahon.

Amy Yoshitsu [00:00:18] Hey,everyone. My name's Amy Yoshitsu. I'm so excited that this is our first episodeof Bring Your Full Self, a podcast of conversations focused on the intersectionof work, emotions, the experience of being a person of color and creativity.These first few episodes will be conversations between two people insideConverge Collaborative.

Pat McMahon [00:00:36] Oh,Amy, by the way, what is Converge Collaborative?

Amy Yoshitsu [00:00:40] ThanksPat, thanks so much for asking. Converge Collaborative is a workers co-op thatfunctions as part creative agency and part art slash creative collective. Thismeans we work with clients to solve their design, digital product marketing,content, media and creative strategy needs. At the same time, we do projectslike this podcast, collaborative endeavors built from our passions and ourvalues.

Pat McMahon [00:01:01] Overthe next three episodes, we will be listening to conversations between membersof Converge as we are all dispersed across the country and still working to getto know each other deeply. We're excited to be sharing our relationship growthwith anyone interested in listening. Amy You're actually the one who's kind ofserved as the center point and organized each of the pairs of conversationsthat we've set up. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Amy Yoshitsu [00:01:24] Yes.Thanks so much for mentioning that. I am the person who currently knows eachperson the best, and I thought about whose energies, passions and interestswould be the most interesting for us to listen to and provide a representativespectrum of what we cumulatively, cumulatively can be within Converge. The twopeople in this upcoming conversation are you, Pat, and David Rios, who oftengoes by Rios. So that's usually what we'll be referring to him as. I thought youtwo would be interesting because you both have engaged in music, radio andsound, and you both participated in radio in your respective colleges. I alsothought you might have overlapping vibes, views and experiences, especiallywhen it comes to work and creativity. Do you want me to re-say that?

Pat McMahon [00:02:07] No,that was great. I'm sorry. I did just chuckle just because I totally agree.

Amy Yoshitsu [00:02:12] Okay,great. That's all good. I love when people respond with laughter because laughterresponds to so many emotions or expresses some of the emotions. So that'sgreat. One, I just want to talk about one of my favorite things about thisconversation. One of my favorite takeaways was when you talk about yourambivalent relationships to the label of musician or artist, I think theconversation speaks to how a lot of people feel about their own relationship,to the concept of creativity. What what does it mean to be an artist orcreative? What does it mean to think of oneself as that? I especially feel likeit's often hard for people of color to lean into their creativity, especiallywhen there's a tension between, for example, if you're doing music or writingand if you're doing it for yourself or you're doing it to share it or sell it asyou to talk about or you really committed to it. And how do you figure out howcapitalist survival fits into that? I really love that you two so beautifullymuse and all these tensions in your own journeys and in building your lives.Another aspect of this conversation I really liked was I thought you both spokeso honestly about how we often feel about expertise. For example, you talkabout APIs, I love that and that you really got into the weeds about the termsthis term and tool and how we're also familiar with this. But many of us,unless you're an API engineer, don't have a level of expertize around it. Andfrankly, I don't want to hear a conversation about engineers talking about APIdetails. I want to hear how you two feel about your relationship to that term.I think a lot about technology and technocracy and hearing non API engineerstalking about their relationship to in their work and in their teaching to howstudents and other people relate to that term, and then how you feel about itis really emotionally and mentally interesting to me and I think it's just sorepresentative of how so many of us feel all the time, but we're not just goingto bring up in a dinner party, Hey, how do you feel about the term API? So Ijust love that and how it speaks to the world of expert that we live in when somany of us aren't experts. But just like combating technology and how weinterface with it.

Pat McMahon [00:04:19] Ihear that so much. That's really sweet. Amy, I really appreciate the way thatyou listen to the conversation and really pulled out some of those things. Youknow, I like your use of the word ambivalent. I think I would probably tend tolean more towards a word like hesitant, like hesitation towards towards callingmyself an artist. But, you know, ambivalence really kind of ties into somethingthat Rios and I talked about, which was, you know, working on the process,whether it's creative or, you know, like a more work setting, working on theprocess and allowing that to be just as important as the results on theambivalence almost towards the end product and looking at the growth and thelearning that comes from doing things, just setting out to do things as, as anachievement in itself. You know, talking with Rios, I really especially appreciatedunderstanding the way he learns by doing new things, particularly in hisprofessional work as a teacher and laying out kind of what his coursescurriculum will be. I came away from that conversation, really seeing him assomeone that carves out a path, whether or not he sees that he's doing it atthe time, he's really he's carving in a lane based on the things that he'shoping to learn. And then wherever that path takes him, the result is theresult. And I just I value so much the way that he has built for himself a setof skills, just as a way of kind of filling his toolkit. So yeah, thanks forsetting that up. I really enjoyed our conversation with Rios.

Amy Yoshitsu [00:05:53] Yeah,I love that. Yay. Well, without further ado, I'm happy to introduce you, Pat,our audio engineer, our marketing expert, and our Chicago born and raiseddrawer and sound artist. He is in conversation with Rios, a teacher, a makerand tinkerer, and a Brooklyn born and raised cat dad. Enjoy.

David Rios [00:06:19] I.I'm at work, so it's a little stressful, actually.

David Rios [00:06:29] Iguess it's. It's not stressful as much as action packed. Like, you know, it'sall mostly good things. We're in the midst of it. You know, I'm not. I'm at acollege, so it's finals period. And my department's really hands on. And Iteach a lot of hands on type of stuff. So as things get closer to the due date,people want to meet and like, can you look at my thing, this thing's broken andwhich I love. Like, that's so part of my job I like the most actually is likethe part where we actually do things and get hands on. Not that I don't loveresearch and prep, but you know, like I could do that on my own.

Pat McMahon [00:07:11] Forsure. Yeah. Can you can you tell me a little bit more about what classes you'reteaching and kind of your general, like what department you're part of.

David Rios [00:07:20] It'sbasically creative technology. So we teach coding, creative coding usingJavaScript. We teach intro to electronics, but not really from like anelectrical engineering standpoint. It's from the creative side. So we useArduino as our foundational platform. And this semester it's because it's fallI teach mostly intro classes for the grad students as well as the undergrads.So all that stuff I just said, that's what I'm doing all semester.

Pat McMahon [00:07:57] Canyou talk to me a little bit more about the the creative coding?

David Rios [00:08:01] Yeah,yeah. We use we use a library called P5 JS, which is like it's a JavaScript,it's front end web, but it's all geared towards learning how to program usingdrawing, using a drawing application, essentially. So like you draw a circle,you draw lines, and that quickly turns into like text and you know, it's prettyscalable. So you can do more sort of semi rigorous, kind of like looking fordata and, you know, making requests to APIs and stuff like that. But, but atits core, we sort of just teach like conditionals, loops and variables bydrawing things on a canvas first.

Pat McMahon [00:08:44] That's,that's all like tremendously interesting stuff. I've worked I mean, I heard youmentioned APIs. That's like something that I that's like a buzz word that I'veheard throughout my time in work and like, to be honest, have never fullyunderstood a lot of the coding, a lot of the back end, a lot of the connectionsthat happen in any of those kind of realms. So it's super fascinating to useone that it's like, I guess the the creative side of it that you're describing,like the, the, the drafts, the early sides where you're able to, like,visualize it. That sounds really fascinating.

David Rios [00:09:24] Imean, you know, I guess I've kind of been in it a little bit, right? Like likeit's programing is not easy, like part of what drew me to this program. So alsolike for transparency, right, like I'm an alumni of the program. So like I wasvery happy with the way I learned how to do this stuff. And actually I didn'teven know that this is what I would be learning when I was coming into it. And,you know, it's hard to pick up like, yeah, it's the creativity comes later,right? It's sort of like you we the way I do it at least, is, is you kind ofjust like kind of practice and try to like get those fundamental buildingblocks down before you can actually, like even conceptualize somethingcreative. You know, I try to work from both ends where I'm like, well, justdraw it with your hands and like, let's take it apart and see like, okay, well,that's a circle, that's a square. If you combine them, you'll get an odd shape,right? Like, you know, there's so much interface to figure out with it. Like Idon't know. It's it's a lot to take on for for anyone who's, like firstlearning. But, you know, it's also kind of amazing because by the end, like, Ilooked at the progress my students have made undergrad and grad and it's like,you know, there's the sparks of creativity. And you can see one student like,oh, like even if they don't get like all of coding, which is impossible, right?Like, you see, like they latch onto the few things they learn and it's like,oh. They in their minds, you see it scale up and now like okay now I get withthe creativity happens it's like this is where things built on top of eachother and this is where I can start to combine other things and oh, now I havebigger questions. Cool. Like that's where I want to end the semester with youhaving like way more questions than you came in with.

Pat McMahon [00:11:12] That'sgreat. Yeah, I guess I really like the way that you describe the building blockaspect of it, you know, like needing to know what the components are that gointo it before you can get creative and unpack or like rearrange.

David Rios [00:11:30] Yeah.Yeah. I mean, well, you know, like, like, for example, like a lot of peoplecome in, like kind of saying what you said before, which is like, oh, I'veheard like the buzzwords, like what's an API, what's, you know, I'm always kindof curious actually, like, what did. Like what was your exposure to that? Becauselike from like from my perspective, it's it's probably like very different.Right. Like what kind of like you said, you worked in an agency, right?

Pat McMahon [00:11:59] Yeah,that's right. So I worked in kind of a few different agency environments. WhenI first got out of undergrad, I was working at a small agency, probably aboutlike maybe 50 people in New York. It was over on like 26th Street in Chelsea.And then from there I moved to an even smaller agency. But kind of the thecapabilities of what I was working on for the most part was primarily paidsearch. So Google ads, a lot of the API stuff that we would be dealing withwould be linking, you know, some of the, some of the performance data on thefront end to maybe a different attribution platform. And you know, even as Istart to talk about it, I realize how little I was fluent ever in it. I justknew that two systems that we were using to report would need to to sync upwith one another to be able to pass information back and forth. Informationreally just being like click data. Impression data. Number of orders that weare driving. Stuff like that. So yeah. So I worked at small agencies for acouple of years and then made a step to a couple larger companies. So yeah,throughout that time, kind of picking up different skill sets, you know, if aclient needed a little bit of social and it kind of wasn't scoped in, I couldhop on those kind of things. But for the most part, I was doing paid search andand search engine marketing.

David Rios [00:13:44] Yeah.I mean, the reason why I asked is because like, like you have the workingknowledge of it, right? It's like you may not have like the tools to like digin and read through like how to actually manipulate any of this stuff. But likesuch a big part of, of what we, what we at least attempt to do, maybe not thefirst year, right? But like over the course of someone's time in this programis to get them to the point where they have like some of that understanding oflike, oh, all I'm actually doing is connecting like one platform to another. Orlike all I'm really trying to do is get like a, you know, a some person's inputand feed it into another person's system or whatever. And it's like that's,that's kind of like one of the bigger hurdles is just like reallyunderstanding, like what you're actually trying to do and then going one leveldeeper and saying, Oh, now I have to actually be literate in documentation.What is all this like garbly syntax, you know, how do I turn that intosomething my brain can wrap around, you know, which is two different skillsets. And we kind of throw that at people like as if they're one, you know,which is not easy.

Pat McMahon [00:15:01] Yeah,absolutely. Man, that's that's super interesting, too, because I find that atagencies, there was a lot of that same sort of thing that you're talking about,where you're you're talking about two entirely separate disciplines that getrouted into sort of one job. So the thing I would always think about would beif you if you don't have a team that is specifically interacting with theclient, you know, kind of an account based team. If you've got one teamexecuting the media dollars that you're spending. In my case, if you've got oneteam executing on whatever the project is, and that team is also supposed to betasked with like full communication of with these clients, particularly somedemanding clients in an agency world. It can it just ended up leading to verylittle getting done in situations where, you know, you've got one team doingboth jobs. But a lot of people, particularly clients, wouldn't think of it as anecessary divide, you know what I mean?

David Rios [00:16:11] Yeah.Yeah, it. I've never worked at an agency, so my, sort of my impression of thatis like, like similar pressure cooker vibes, right? Where you are likemultitasking. You're trying to like, you know, kind of like figure out needversus like deadlines and just like accumulating knowledge kinda thing, butlike with the added overhead of, like. You can't stop.

Pat McMahon [00:16:42] Right.It's like it's like you're trying to fix a car while a car has to keep moving.

David Rios [00:16:48] Right?Yeah.

Pat McMahon [00:16:50] Yeah.That's the that metaphor I always would use during a transition. You know, whenwe're taking on like a new if we're onboarding a client that is was previouslyunhappy with whoever their old agency was, and then they want everything to getflipped on its head while you're supposed to continue moving forward. It was itwas always really stressful, very pressure cooker vibes, like you were saying.Yes. You had mentioned that you you maybe had freelanced for agencies. Is thatright?

David Rios [00:17:23] Idid like super briefly, mostly, like I never tried to market myself as afreelancer because I'm I just don't like that. I'm not I'm not great at it.Like, you know, it's I'm pretty pretty far over on the introvert side of thatspectrum. And, you know, like the constant selling and dealing and negotiationslike that. I know I can do it if I if I really have to, but I'm really happy Idon't anymore. So when I do, when I did client work and when I do client work,it's usually off a recommendation or, you know, someone I trust works there orlike the project seems so cool and there's a person there who I know. Yeah,there's a level of like, you know, this level of, of, okay, this might be likepressure cooker, but at the very least, like there's, there's already like atie in. It's not random. So I've done like a little bit of hardware freelancinghere and there, some minor fabrication like my, I guess my core competency, ifI had to put it that way, is like general like electronics engineering, but I'mdefinitely not an engineer. I'm like someone who kind of puts multiple thingstogether and gets, you know, I build an interactive sort of devices orinstallations, you know, like or I integrate one piece of hardware, like, youknow, like what's really popular right now in this space is sort of like VR andAR XR. Installations that like break the fourth wall. So like something I haddone in the past is like, okay, well, how can we integrate things like, youknow, if you're in a VR space like haptics or actuators or like other elementsthat aren't like the usual, like I'm holding a controller and it vibrates,right? Maybe. Maybe there's a giant fan behind you that blows. Or like, maybethere is like, you know, a heating pad under the seat in your flight flightsimulator or something like that, or like these physical elements that you maynot see in any sort of like normal gaming or showcase context.

Pat McMahon [00:19:37] Therewere a couple of terms that you dropped in there that I was unfamiliar with,and fabrication was one of them. Do can you define digital fabrication for me?

David Rios [00:19:46] Yeah.Yeah, it's it's, you know, like fabrication in general is just building stuff,right? Like, you know, I can get a piece of wood and frame out a door orsomething, right? Or like carpentry or, you know, metal work, weldingfabrication. So digital fabrication is like machine assisted, that stuff. Solike the spectrum is wide. If you've heard of 3D printing or like C and Cmilling, right? It's just like multiple ways of like either cutting or turningthings with the assistance of the machine. So mostly what I do is like I draw a3D thing or a 2D thing on the computer and then I feed it to the machine to cutit out. Usually it's cutting in my case, but I've done 3D printing. I worked in3D printing lab at a previous job. So, you know, like, yeah, but most of thatkind of stuff.

Pat McMahon [00:20:40] Gotcha.And then when you were talking about really taking kind of two separatesystems, putting them together, it reminded me a little bit of the what we'vetalked about before in your instrument building. And I'm curious how you seethose two things coming together, you know, in a in a very work sense, puttingtogether two things and then in more of a creative and passion based area, likeputting to putting things together to make your own instruments. It seems likethat is a connective thread between both like your work and some of the morecreative ventures that you explore.

David Rios [00:21:21] Yeah.Yeah. And I think maybe we're we're kind of similar in this case, too, because,like, I know, like part of the reason why I'm here in the first place isbecause, like, specialization kind of scares me.

Pat McMahon [00:21:36] Yes, I'm totally with you on that.

David Rios [00:21:39] Right?Like, you know, I mean, like I and part of its interests and curiosity. Right?Like, I like knowing stuff and how things work. And usually, like, you get to apoint where, like, things connect to other things. And like I found like thisprogram where like that's kind of like the majority of it and you know, mostlylike if we're talking like creative passions or something like that, like, youknow, for the most part, I actually am mostly driven by like learning the newthing. I still love music. Obviously, I build instruments not as much as I'dlike to, so, but like usually, like, I'll use I'll that's like, that's like,that's like my workflow is like, oh, I need to learn or I want to learnsomething and it's okay if it's needed because you know, usually my jobrequires that, but then I'm like, Well, how do I make this, like, fun for me?Oh, what if you make sounds? Or like, what if this is another way of making aninstrument? And sometimes that's like a really fucking terrible idea. Can Icurse on this?

Pat McMahon [00:22:46] Yeah,I think we're setting the rules. Yeah, we're setting the rules ourselves. Ithink we can.

David Rios [00:22:52] Sometimesit's like the worst idea ever, but like, it's also sometimes the worst idea is,like, the most fun thing you do, you know?

Pat McMahon [00:22:59] So,yeah, absolutely.

David Rios [00:23:00] Itry to let that I don't know. I try to let that kind of just exist. And like,sometimes you got to just throw something away and that's sad. But, you know,that's also part of like learning and building, making things right. Likeyou're a musician, right?

Pat McMahon [00:23:17] Yeah.I have such a hard time calling myself any of the things that I do. Yeah, Isure I really struggle to call myself a musician, but I. I like to make music.I don't know what that is. I don't know what all of that is kind of a struggleto define myself by the things that I enjoy doing. But I think it's tied up inlike, you know, you are my kind of being raised on the idea that you are thething that you do for work, for professional, you know, like. It always feltfrivolous to want to be an artist of any kind. And so I'm trying to allowmyself to to regardless of whether or not I'm able to give myself those kind oflabels, just make the things because the output is far more important to methan like how I can or cannot kind of call myself to other people about it.

David Rios [00:24:24] Yeah.No, I feel you on that. I mean, I don't. I also do not call myself an artist ora musician or any of that stuff, really. Like, I'm not classically trained. I'mnot, you know, I don't have any of that background. It's all it's all juststuff that I picked up. And somehow I just keep going or dropping or comingback to stuff, you know? And. Yeah. I don't know. I always thought that was kindof lame like that. You. You had to be the thing that you do. You know, all thetime, like,.

Pat McMahon [00:24:59] Right?Yeah. I'm totally with you there. And, like, I don't know, just the theclassical training is definitely another part of it for me. I always thoughtlike if you're a painter, it's because you went to school to paint. You know,it's not just. Otherwise you're a hobbyist. That's kind of all the way. Alwaysthe way I looked at it. But, yeah, the I don't know. It's been really freeing tojust do the thing, to practice it, to get better, to like, like you said, justpick up new things, put them down when you're kind of either burnt out oryou've kind of wrung out all that you can out of them. And then just find newthings that you're enjoying to do. Cause like for the longest time, you know, Iloved drawing when I was a kid and for a really long stretch in my teens andtwenties, I wasn't drawing. And I've recently gotten back to it kind of withthe help of someone that was just like, Yeah, man, you just kind of do it andjust do it. Like you just draw. You don't worry about whether or not it's goingto be perfect on the end, which is another big hang up for me is like wantingthe output to be solid or something I can be proud of, as opposed to practicefor practice to just get better. Or even if it's not, practice to get better.Just something to. To spend your time doing that you enjoy. So I'm trying toget back into the relationship of those sorts of enjoyments. Kind of get out ofmy hang ups around a lot of those things.

David Rios [00:26:39] Yeah.Now that's that's super important. That's kind of why I brought it up becausethat's, you know, that that was a big realization for me. And I think itactually and I never really realized it until I started getting paid to do it.But it's like. There's just not enough time. Like, if you're if you're the typeof person who wants to do a lot of stuff, you have to be willing to just liketry and throw stuff away and like, just do it, right? Like the sketches. Like,keep the sketchbook. Throw the sketchbook away, you know, like it is precious.Like, when you go back to it, you know, potentially. But like in the moment, itdoesn't have to be perfect and you don't have to write the perfect song. And it'salmost more valuable just to like, you know. Like, I play guitar, like, and Ihaven't done this in years, but like when I felt most like musician-y, it wasthe kind of thing where I was playing every day and I'd like record 3 minutesof whatever was on my mind. And like, I have not touched or played any of thosesongs since, but I felt like I was making progress and then informs a lot ofthe stuff I do now, even though it's like I'm not really playing anymore.

Pat McMahon [00:27:47] Yeah,that absolutely. I can totally relate to that. Like the progress piece and alsojust the, just the, the jotting down whatever the format is. I'm really tryingto get better about writing things down either like to do lists or little,little like patterns of words or sentences or just random ideas even. Trying towrite things down is something I'm really getting back into because I find thenwhen I flip through my notebook. It'll be an idea that I've maybe entirelyforgotten, but because it was written down, I'm coming back to it with fresheyes. I'm coming back to it at all is probably a huge piece. But yeah, it'slike it's it's been fun to flip back through a notebook of seeminglydisconnected nothings and, like, to see that there's something there, you know,to see that almost to see the forest for the trees. Like you're adding treeshere and there and you don't realize, like, what you've actually put togetheris something cohesive.

David Rios [00:28:58] Hmm.What does that look like for you?

Pat McMahon [00:29:02] Rightnow, it looks like just these really scattered notebooks where it'll be like.Like one page will be grocery list, and then the next page will be like. Youknow, five chords that I think sound really nice together. And then thefollowing page will be a drawing that I've done using just two colors and ablack pen, trying to figure out maybe, maybe multiple different images usingjust those same to marker colors. So just like a very eclectic kind of takingsome of that. I forget the word you used - the preciousness - away from thenotebook, the sketchbook, trying to keep it from being something that needs tobe pristine and presentable and almost by the, you know, filling it out,bursting at the seams. It becomes presentable because it's full, because it'scompleted, even if it's not, even if each idea is not brought to its fullconclusion. It's nice to just like have had enough thoughts that you could filla thing. So that to me is like the progress and that to me is like thevalidation that like the work I'm doing. It doesn't. I don't have to call itart, but it's meaningful to me and I might feel sheepish to call it art toanyone else because I think I have an issue with sort of like you were sayingwith the freelance stuff, like I'm introverted, I don't really like sellingmyself and a lot of art feels like you've got to sell yourself. You got toreally put it out there. And what's nice is that it's like it's just for me. IfI want to put it out there, maybe I will sometime someday in in some format.But for right now, it's just so wonderful to remind myself that I'm able to dothese things that I'm capable, you know?

David Rios [00:31:05] Mmhmm. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I. Yeah, I struggle with that. Right.

Pat McMahon [00:31:13] Thatconcludes part one of a conversation between David Rios and myself. Part two isavailable to listen and can be found wherever you are right now, listening toPart one. Bring Your Full Self is put together through the collective effort ofthe members of Converge Collaborative. A special thanks today to Rios and Amyand to you for listening. If you're interested in learning more about our groupor work, we'd just like to say hi. You can reach us by emailing Converge atConverge Collaborative dot com, or on Instagram at Converge Collaborative.