Totally Booked: LIVE! Debbie Millman, LOVE LETTER TO A GARDEN
[0:00]Welcome, Debbie, thank you so much for coming to the first ever live podcast for totally
[0:12]booked with Zimmy.
[0:13]Congratulations.
[0:14]Thank you, Zimmy.
[0:15]It's an honor.
[0:16]Thank you.
[0:17]Yay.
[0:18]I'm going to read your bio really quickly for people who are in the audience and listening
[0:22]or watching wherever they may be.
[0:24]So this is Debbie's amazing new book.
[0:26]How cute is this?
[0:28]It's so beautiful.
[0:29]It's called Love Letter to a Garden by Debbie Milman with recipes by Roxanne Gay, who's
[0:35]for wife if you didn't know that.
[0:36]OK.
[0:37]Ready.
[0:38]Debbie Milman, named one of the most creative people in the business by Fast Company,
[0:42]one of the most influential designers working today by graphic design USA and a woman of
[0:48]influence by success magazine.
[0:50]Debbie Milman is also the founder of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual
[0:54]Arts, Partner and Editorial Director of PrintMag.com, and host of the award-winning
[0:59]podcast Design Matters, one of the first and longest-running podcasts in the world.
[1:06]No pressure.
[1:07]She is the author of seven books and her writing and artwork have appeared in publications,
[1:11]including The New York Times, New York Magazine, The Washington Post, The Philadelphia
[1:16]and Quire, and many more.
[1:18]And it is illustrated by Roxanne Gay, and this is the book.
[1:22]Congratulations.
[1:23]Thank you.
[1:24]Thank you.
[1:25]Thank you.
[1:26]All about this little gem.
[1:28]How did this come to be?
[1:29]What is it about?
[1:30]Why are we talking about it?
[1:31]Well, it's about my quest to become a gardener, and I wrote and illustrated the entire
[1:38]book.
[1:39]It came to be, I got completely out of the blue an email from an editor at Heshet Publications,
[1:49]Heshet Press, one of the big four.
[1:52]And it was from a woman who runs timber press, and it's their gardening imprint.
[1:59]And apparently she had seen two things that I had done before.
[2:05]During COVID, I had created some interstitials for the TED conference back when it went
[2:11]completely online, so that they'd have some content in between the talks.
[2:17]And so I made three visual stories that I narrated, so it brought them to life with narration.
[2:24]One on storytelling, so it was called Love Letter to Storytelling, one to traveling, because
[2:29]none of us were traveling, so Love Letter to Travel.
[2:32]And then I made one on gardening, Love Letter to Gardening, because I had so much free
[2:37]time, I decided to try my hand at making a real vegetable garden.
[2:44]And I had attempted over a good part of my life to have a little garden space of my
[2:51]own in various places that I'd lived in Manhattan.
[2:56]Manhattan isn't particularly conducive to a garden, especially if, like me, you lived in
[3:03]a shady apartment with very little sunlight.
[3:07]And so all of my previous attempts had pretty much failed.
[3:11]But at this point, during COVID, I went to stay with Roxanne, who I was engaged to at
[3:16]that point, but not married to, we'd never lived together.
[3:20]And at that point in our relationship, we had just started to think about actually going
[3:26]back and forth from LA to New York where she lived more collectively together, as opposed
[3:32]to, I go there for a weekend, she comes to New York for a weekend, and so forth.
[3:37]At the time, we didn't think COVID was going to go on for as long as it did.
[3:42]I don't know if anybody remembers, but the president at that time was saying, oh, we'll
[3:45]be back outside by Easter.
[3:48]And this was first in March.
[3:49]I love in the book that you said you packed underwear for two weeks.
[3:52]Yeah, Roxanne needed a lot more underwear.
[3:55]Roxanne was like, packed for two weeks.
[3:57]That's what we thought.
[3:58]And I did.
[4:01]And then of course, I needed to go to Target by a lot.
[4:04]You know, the masked and member we were in gloves and go and get the underwear, leave
[4:07]it in the garage for two days to decontaminate and then wash it all and, you know, whatever.
[4:14]So I had a lot of time and we had a lot of sun.
[4:19]And because I had been attempting over the years, I tried again, but this time it was,
[4:25]I had a lot better results and started drawing it, drawing about it.
[4:30]I made these visual stories about what I was doing on Instagram.
[4:34]And so the editor at timber had seen my interstitials for the TED conference, the Instagram
[4:42]stories that I was making about my efforts and a piece that I had done in a farm magazine.
[4:47]I had illustrated a piece about an expedition that I had gone on with Roxanne from my
[4:53]60th birthday to try and see an eclipse on Antarctica.
[5:00]That was my gift myself.
[5:02]And unfortunately, we didn't get to see the eclipse because of the cloud cover.
[5:07]My mother-in-law was like, do you get your money back?
[5:09]That's the best laid plants.
[5:11]She was really insistent that we try to get our money back because we didn't get to see
[5:14]the eclipse.
[5:15]I'm like, mom, it doesn't work that way.
[5:17]But in any case, I wrote about it.
[5:18]But it was still a glorious experience going to Antarctica is one of the most extraordinary
[5:24]places on the planet.
[5:25]It's pure.
[5:26]And so she had seen these two, or really these three different avenues of my work and
[5:31]reached out and asked me if I'd be interested in writing a book about gardening.
[5:35]And I actually thought it was a prank.
[5:38]First of all, I didn't know the press.
[5:40]Second of all, I was like, somebody wants me to write a book about gardening.
[5:44]I have the opposite of a green thumb.
[5:46]I'm a plant killer.
[5:47]Although I did have some success with the latest effort, I couldn't imagine that she
[5:52]foresaw me having a sort of gardening platform, Ala Martha.
[5:57]And so I said I, any gardener would laugh and roll their eyes at my giving them any kind
[6:03]of advice.
[6:05]And I said, instead, how about my quest, a quest to try and become something that you're
[6:10]not?
[6:12]And she said yes.
[6:13]And that's how the book happened.
[6:15]Well, your book is really not about gardening, right?
[6:19]Your book is about life.
[6:20]Your book is about finding meaning, overcoming challenges, learning something new, making
[6:26]the most of the time here are police in the universe.
[6:29]I mean, you pack a lot into a few beautiful pages, but it's enough to make a reader laugh,
[6:35]cry.
[6:36]You have a scene where you took care of your, your neighbor is one of the many teachers
[6:40]that you have in the book who taught you how to garden.
[6:43]And it was just on her tiny little balcony.
[6:45]She had some rota dendrums.
[6:47]And then when your neighbor passes away, you inherit the rota dendrums and then plant
[6:51]them in your own yard.
[6:52]And then you said, but they're still blooming.
[6:54]I mean, it's just so poignant.
[6:57]Thank you.
[6:58]That means a lot to me.
[6:59]I have a very complicated relationship with my biological family in the immediate one.
[7:07]And Maria became my sort of chosen family.
[7:11]She lived two doors down.
[7:13]And I'd seen her for years on my block.
[7:14]She was one of those women that she was elderly but was very sort of confident and would
[7:19]walk down the street and like little shorts and the tube top and a cigarette.
[7:24]I just found her to be the most fascinating person.
[7:27]She seemed to just ooze self-confidence.
[7:31]And I would always sort of wave or say hi because I saw her a lot on the street, but
[7:35]she never ever paid any attention to me until I got a dog.
[7:40]And then when I got scruffy, she suddenly recognized me and was like, oh, look at this
[7:47]little dog, you greek, really wonderful woman.
[7:50]And then she started helping me take care of scruffy because she blocked dogs for a living.
[7:55]And we became very, very close for almost two decades.
[8:00]And she taught me a lot about container gardening in New York City, which is really challenging.
[8:06]And unfortunately, she developed cancer and lost her battle to this terrible disease.
[8:14]And I was very lucky to know her and to have her in my life.
[8:18]And when she passed, I was one of the people that helped sort of organize her things.
[8:23]And I ended up bringing her ashes to Greece for her daughter, but I did get the rotary
[8:28]dendron.
[8:29]And this is the time of year when it starts to bloom and it's blooming.
[8:34]And the interesting thing about it is that I've taken pictures of it over the years, because
[8:42]one of the other women that was also very close to her was somebody that Maria actually
[8:47]nannied over the years.
[8:49]But now she's married and in her probably close to 30 at this point.
[8:54]And every year I sent her pictures of the rotary dendron.
[8:57]So I have this sort of record of how it's grown, which is remarkable, and nothing that
[9:02]I ever anticipated that would end up in a book, because I wasn't taking the photos for
[9:07]that reason.
[9:08]And in fact, most of the photos in the book, which I then drew, and I use them as reference
[9:14]and made paintings, watercolors, collages, was all because I was documenting things, mostly
[9:21]for evidence that I had either been someplace or asking my cousin, Eileen, who's a really
[9:28]avid gardener.
[9:30]What's this mold?
[9:31]What's this fungus?
[9:32]What's this bug?
[9:33]Why is this getting this spot on it?
[9:35]And so I would take, send those pictures to her and she would give me advice.
[9:40]And all of that ended up in the book, even the dead corn.
[9:42]I tried to plant corn.
[9:44]It worked for a while until it didn't.
[9:46]And then it all died.
[9:47]But I took pictures of the dying corn to try to get some help in trying to keep it alive,
[9:53]which was unsuccessful.
[9:55]By the way, I read and showed this to my son last night, who's 10, and I was showing him
[9:59]on the...
[10:00]pictures.
[10:01]He found the corn part of the funniest.
[10:02]Yeah.
[10:03]But at the end we put it down and he was like, I really liked that book.
[10:06]It was really sweet.
[10:07]So it has a very wide audience because all of it is quite universal.
[10:12]You talked about your somewhat difficult childhood, which anyone who has done a deep
[10:17]dive into your apology for a long time knows you've spoken very openly about it.
[10:21]Would you mind sharing a little more about that?
[10:25]Yeah, absolutely.
[10:26]Well, I'm a native New Yorker.
[10:27]That is not the bad part.
[10:30]No, it's not.
[10:31]It's not.
[10:32]I was born in Brooklyn and then moved to Howard Beach Queens.
[10:38]So I've lived in all the boroughs except the Bronx at this point.
[10:42]And then we moved to Staten Island and my parents at that point divorced.
[10:48]And that was difficult.
[10:49]And I think it's difficult for any eight-year-old to go through, especially in the 70s when
[10:53]divorce was much more stigmatized.
[10:55]And then my mother very quickly got remarried to somebody who ended up being really,
[11:02]really, really abusive to me and to my brother and to his own biological daughters.
[11:10]But I was the oldest, so I got it first.
[11:13]And it was sexually abusive, physically abusive, beat us and really tortured us a lot.
[11:21]And so that was four years.
[11:22]I called those the dark years.
[11:24]And that was from like nine to 13.
[11:27]And then trying to overcome that, initially, I think a lot of people that go through that kind
[11:33]of situation try very quickly to rise above it.
[11:36]Like, that's not going to kill me.
[11:38]And if you don't deal with it, it will.
[11:41]And so I very quickly had to figure out how to make a life for myself that wasn't only
[11:47]about keeping myself safe.
[11:50]And how do I live more openly?
[11:52]How do I live able to still love and trust?
[11:55]And that took a very long time.
[11:57]And how did you do that therapy, a lot of therapy?
[12:02]And then just continuing to make mistakes, continuing to be destructive, self-destructive,
[12:08]and then trying to repair that and then just trying to figure, I mean, even come out until
[12:14]it was 50.
[12:15]Because I was afraid of, I had a lot of my own inner homophobia.
[12:19]I was afraid of being judged.
[12:21]I had actually created some success in my life in branding and was running a big agency.
[12:29]And at the time was really worried that my clients would reject me.
[12:33]Some of my conservative clients I was worried would be just really dismissive of this choice
[12:40]that I had made in my life.
[12:41]And that didn't happen, and it never happened actually.
[12:45]But I always, for a long time, I came, and I write in the book that I had had and really
[12:52]struggled with a sense of the scarcity of my life, that I was always afraid, that I didn't
[13:00]have enough, that if I didn't say yes to this thing, I would never have another chance again.
[13:06]This is my last chance for love, my last chance for a book, my last chance for success,
[13:11]my last chance for friendship, and would always get really sort of rigid about being open
[13:18]to sharing or trusting and over the years.
[13:23]And in some ways through gardening, realized that if I had the stance of there being so
[13:30]much scarcity in the world for myself, there would be.
[13:34]I took a class with Milton Glazer several years ago, many years ago.
[13:38]And he talked about this in his own life that if you see the world with scarcity, through
[13:47]eyes of scarcity, it will be.
[13:50]But if you see your life as one that has the potential for abundance, then you can be more
[13:55]open to sharing.
[13:57]And if you're more open to sharing, you'll get that back.
[14:00]And so that mindset has helped quite a lot.
[14:04]I still struggle with feeling like my last chance for anything.
[14:07]Especially since most of my success has come later in life, but I now feel that, and
[14:14]maybe it's rationalization, but I do feel like the longer it takes, the longer it lasts.
[14:18]Well, this is not the last chance that you have for this show.
[14:22]You can come on as much as you.
[14:23]I'll just say that.
[14:24]I'll just say that.
[14:25]I'll be.
[14:26]Thank you.
[14:27]No, I'm joking, but I'm so sorry for everything that you've had to go through, but also
[14:29]just so inspired by your ability to plow through.
[14:33]I mean, in effect, this book is so similar to your emotional journey.
[14:38]So to speak.
[14:39]No one is.
[14:40]I would agree with that.
[14:41]One other thing that I think has really helped, and if this helps anybody else, I will
[14:48]feel very grateful.
[14:50]But I have been working for the last 10 years with a woman named Marishka Hargetay.
[14:58]She's a star of Law and Order SVU, long-time star.
[15:02]The show is the longest-running drama on television.
[15:06]And I got an opportunity more than 10 years ago to work with one of my clients who had joined
[15:13]a consortium of organizations and corporations.
[15:17]She worked at Kimberly Clark, a woman named Christine Mao.
[15:19]She worked at Kimberly Clark, and she had joined forces with Verizon and Avon and a number
[15:25]of other Viacom to create an organization called No More.
[15:31]And that was about eradicating sexual violence in our culture.
[15:35]And she asked me if I wanted to work on the identity and the positioning.
[15:38]She knew my history, and I jumped at the chance volunteer at our agency.
[15:43]We did all the strategy, all the positioning, all the creative work, the identity and
[15:47]advertising and so forth.
[15:49]And through that experience, because Marishka's foundation, the Joyful Heart Foundation
[15:54]was also part of this, I got involved with Joyful Heart after I finished my work with
[16:01]No More.
[16:03]Marishka asked me if I'd be interested in joining the board at Joyful Heart.
[16:07]And that happened about 10 years ago.
[16:09]And so we've been working ever since to eradicate child abuse, sexual assault, domestic
[16:17]violence, and to eradicate the rape kit backlog which has been really an epidemic in our country
[16:23]for decades.
[16:25]And now we're also working on combating image-based abuse because of how much unsolicited,
[16:34]unwanted photographs and also a lot of deep fakes that are going up without a consent from
[16:40]whoever's being abused in this way.
[16:43]And so the work that we're doing is ongoing.
[16:46]And before I had disclosed, that's what we call it, when you share your history.
[16:52]I had been interviewed on the website and when I became a board member and it was like,
[16:58]you know, why did you, why are you doing this work?
[17:00]And because I was doing so much of the branding work with my historian branding, I wrote
[17:04]that it made me feel like my life made sense, having this sort of symmetry to what I had
[17:10]been through and now what I was doing and trying to combat for others.
[17:15]And I was interviewed on the Tim Ferriss Show and in his research, he came upon that
[17:19]interview and I had never really been public with my history.
[17:24]And Tim, on the air, asked me what that meant, what does it mean that it's making you
[17:31]feel like your life makes sense.
[17:33]And so there I was, like a deer in the headlights, do I sort of say something silly and
[17:40]kind of push it away or do I share really why?
[17:44]And in that moment, I jumped in and said it and it was really like scary for me, but
[17:52]that experience showed me, again, holding it all tight was not helping me and no one was
[18:02]going to judge me for this except me.
[18:05]And so letting go of that judgment, I'm damaged, I'm not as good as I'm nothing helped
[18:13]me overcome that in a really, really profound way.
[18:19]And this book is a journey, this experience of my life has been a journey and it's all
[18:27]been about growth and recovery.
[18:31]And I think that is a lot of what I've shared in this book through the lens of what
[18:37]it means to be reborn through gardening and how sort of nature is constantly being
[18:43]reborn.
[18:44]And even when it doesn't get reborn, it creates other opportunities for other self-sowing
[18:52]and propagating and continuing on.
[18:56]The one image that repeats through the book is the sense of time.
[19:00]You have a clock that is ticking our way through the book until the end, the sense of
[19:05]our time here.
[19:06]And then you say, but we are here, we are here right now.
[19:11]What do you want people to know about that?
[19:13]How do you are you trying to wake people up and just say, enjoy it?
[19:16]I don't know if I'm trying to wake people up, maybe I'm trying to wake myself up.
[19:22]I'm endlessly fascinated by astrophysics in another life.
[19:27]I would have been a scientist, but you can't really be a scientist unless you have just
[19:31]a modicum of understanding of mathematics and science in which I have zero, zero.
[19:36]And so I think about it a lot and I read about it a lot, but I just don't have the capacity
[19:42]to really understand any of it.
[19:44]But I think about it all the time and we're here for such a short time and as I'm getting
[19:52]older, I'm much, much more conscious of time.
[19:57]When I was younger, I didn't even think about it.
[19:58]I think I just...
[20:00]Soon that we were all infinite and we would all be immortal in some ways.
[20:04]I never really thought about not being here, but once you get into your 60s, you start
[20:10]to think, well, if not now, when do I start to do the things that I really want to do,
[20:19]but maybe I'm afraid to do?
[20:20]When do I learn that second language?
[20:22]Because I've been saying for my whole life, how could I only know one language?
[20:26]When do I start playing the piano because I've wanted my whole life to be able to play?
[20:31]When do I start?
[20:32]When do I start?
[20:34]And so the idea of this running clock is about how we are part of time.
[20:43]We move with time and that we can try whatever we really want to try if we want to try it.
[20:54]And maybe we don't want to if we don't do it or maybe we're too afraid to do it if we
[21:00]don't do it.
[21:02]And so my life has been this sort of, I don't want to say battle, but this sort of endless
[21:06]struggle between wanting to do things and being afraid of doing them and then doing them.
[21:13]And then wanting to do something and being afraid of it and then tentatively doing it.
[21:17]So it's been this sort of circuitous journey through time which I try to express with
[21:23]the illustrations.
[21:25]And speaking of time, you've been doing your show design matters for 20 years.
[21:29]Yes.
[21:30]You have this giant celebration with all the people.
[21:33]It's so exciting.
[21:35]Tell me what you've learned from that show.
[21:37]You've talked to so many people.
[21:40]The show started as a sort of inside baseball show about design.
[21:44]I was talking designers talking about design, graphic design, big audience.
[21:48]Turns out yes, who knew?
[21:52]Well, it is evolved over the years to a show about how the most creative people in
[21:59]the world design the arc of their lives.
[22:01]How do they make their lives again, sort of fascinated by how does one construct their
[22:07]own narrative arc?
[22:09]How do you create a life of meaning?
[22:12]And I've gotten very lucky because it's been 20 years and sort of momentum builds and
[22:18]you get to interview this person who then introduced you to this person and becomes this
[22:22]wonderful, connective tissue.
[22:25]I have gotten to interview now over 700 of the most creative people in the world.
[22:31]And it's expanded from design to performers, musicians, writers, playwrights, directors,
[22:39]MacArthur winners, Oscar winners, Emmy winners, Grammy winners.
[22:43]And what I've learned is that really the most creative people in the world are always striving
[22:51]to make more things and also have some of the same struggles worrying that their best
[23:00]work might be behind them or worrying that this work might not be as good as that work
[23:06]or wondering if they can make something again with meaning.
[23:11]And actually the only two people of all the 700 people I've interviewed that ever
[23:16]were like, I'm good, as is, you know, why worry?
[23:21]We're too white cishet men in their 80s.
[23:25]That's it too.
[23:27]Moss and Mow and Yelly and Milton Glazer and they had no more effort to give and we're
[23:32]really happy with who they'd been and become.
[23:37]Do you feel like you're happy with who you've become?
[23:39]Are you ready to build more things?
[23:41]I'm always ready to build more things.
[23:43]I mean, I am grateful and I am, I feel very, very, very lucky, but I don't feel like
[23:53]I've peaked yet and I don't want to peak yet.
[23:56]I still have, you know, couple more decades to do what I do and try to get better at
[24:01]it and try to make more things, you know, one thing I have noticed, another thing.
[24:08]I don't know that people are searching for more success as much as they're seeking
[24:16]for more opportunities to make things.
[24:20]And so yes, I'm thrilled that this book is out, but I had the time of my life making
[24:26]it and it made me realize that I am happiest when I'm in the process of making.
[24:35]and that's, I think, something that I want to hold on to.
[24:40]That's amazing.
[24:41]Debbie, thank you so much for coming on the show, love letters to a garden.
[24:45]You think it's just a little book about gardening.
[24:47]It is so much more and it is so beautiful and we are so honored to have had you here.
[24:51]Thank you so much.
[24:52]Thank you.
[24:53]Thank you.
[24:54]Thank you, everyone.
[24:55]Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibi, formerly momstone have time to read
[25:00]books.
[25:01]If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram.
[25:05]at Zibi Owens and spread the word.
[25:08]Thanks so much.
[25:09]Go and buy the books.