What changes when you stop treating fun as frivolous and begin recognizing it as medicine? 

In this joyful, vulnerable, and delightfully unconventional conversation, Monick sits down with singer-songwriter, music supervisor, and self-proclaimed cosmic troublemaker Kathleen Smith to explore the healing power of fun, pleasure, creativity, and feminine wisdom.

Kathleen shares how creativity became her way of navigating life from an early age and why music, play, beauty, and pleasure continue to bring her back to herself. Together, she and Monick discuss how women are often trained to disconnect from pleasure, why reclaiming it can be an act of personal power, and how fun helps move us from merely surviving into truly flourishing.

Kathleen also opens up about holding both darkness and light in her music, meeting the love of her life through pleasure practices, and the everyday blissciplines that keep her connected to joy. From singing and bathing to cooking, hiking, painting her nails, lifting weights, and taking spontaneous dance breaks, Kathleen reminds us that pleasure does not have to be extravagant. It can be found in the smallest, most ordinary moments.

This episode is an invitation to embrace the full privilege of being human, including the heartbreak, beauty, silliness, mystery, and joy of it all.

In This Episode, You’ll Discover

• Why fun can be a powerful form of medicine
• How creativity helped Kathleen process the challenges of being human
• The difference between living in survival and experiencing flourishing
• Why fun, imagination, and creativity are resources that live within us
• How women are culturally trained away from pleasure
• The relationship between pleasure and feminine power
• How pleasure practices helped Kathleen meet her husband and create a life that feels authentic
• Why darkness and light both belong in meaningful creative work
• Kathleen’s favorite blissciplines for staying connected to herself
• How a simple dance break can shift your energy, even during an incredibly difficult moment

Kathleen’s FAB Spark

Take a dance break.

Choose one song, 30 seconds, or even a tiny moment to move your body. Dance when you feel happy, when you have been sitting at your computer too long, or even when life feels difficult.

Kathleen shares that she once took a tearful dance break outside a hospital before saying what she believed might be goodbye to her grandmother. That single song helped her reconnect with herself so she could enter the room feeling present, loving, and grounded.

About Kathleen Smith

Kathleen Smith is a singer-songwriter, producer, music supervisor, and creator whose work combines emotional depth, fearless vulnerability, and radiant light.

Her album MEDICINE was largely written and recorded in an old barn in New Mexico, where Kathleen taught herself engineering and produced, played, and sang nearly the entire record herself. She describes her sound as Fairytale Folk Pop, blending angelic vocals, atmospheric textures, folk guitar, piano, and pop influences.

Kathleen’s music has appeared on radio, television, and in films, and she has performed for audiences across the United States. She is also a music supervisor for television shows, films, and productions connected with platforms including Netflix, Hulu, Showtime, and ESPN. She has worked with the music podcast and Netflix series Song Exploder, where she has also served as a producer.

Through everything she creates, Kathleen hopes to help people reconnect with their hearts and feel inspired to make their own art. She also hosts the podcast Freak Flag with Kathleen Smith.  

Connect with Kathleen

Website: kathleenmusic.com
Instagram: @kathleenmusic
Podcast: Freak Flag with Kathleen Smith
Mailing List: Join the Kathleeniverse through her website for music, personal updates, and creative inspiration.  

Memorable Quotes

“Fun is one of my medicines.”

“Fun helps me be myself.”

“Fun to me is part of flourishing, and flourishing is a completely different paradigm from survival.”

“Pleasure and power are married in the female body.”

“Music is one of my medicines. I must take my medicine of music and share my medicine of music.”

“The privilege of being human is all of it.”

 

Episode Transcript

Monick (00:02.272)

Okay, I am so excited to have Kathleen Smith with us. So we're we're before we hit record, we're trying to figure out when we met, but it's 13 plus years ago. And she is definitely one of my funnest friends. And we have such a blast together, and I'm really, really, really excited for this conversation. So welcome.

 

Kathleen (00:29.294)

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here with you. And I have to echo, I think you are one of my funnest friends. So that's fun. Look, we're already going in the fun zone.

 

Monick (00:44.718)

It's what I do.

 

Kathleen (00:47.466)

It is what you do.

 

Monick (00:49.55)

Totally what I do. People ask me, What do you do? It's that I have fun for a living and I help others have fun too.

 

Kathleen (00:56.174)

So good. So need it.

 

Monick (00:58.01)

It's so fun. Anyway, well I wanna talk about you and what you do. So to start, I would love to hear the story of what pulled you into this world of music, creativity, pleasure, and cosmic troublemaking.

 

Kathleen (01:18.638)

my gosh, I love this question. What pulled me into the world of music, pleasure, fun? You said something else and cosmic troublemaking. Creativity. Creativity. I my soul. The car whatever thing makes the universe go round and made me. I think you know, I was

 

Monick (01:35.342)

Ha ha ha.

 

Kathleen (01:48.088)

four when I told my mom I wanted to be a famous singer like Madonna and Barbara Streisand because at that time it was the 80s and we had records and Madonna True Blue and Barbara Streisand, the Broadway album were two of my most favorite records. And I would just I couldn't even read yet but I would pour over them like the liner notes and the pictures and so I had no idea at that point obviously I mean I was four

 

that I would end up where I am today. But I think some of that is the great mysterious fun and play of of a life and how a life unfolds. And creativity has just always been how I do my life. Like it it j like I'm so sensitive and I'm fortunate to not have

 

addiction in my own system. Like so I could never be like someone who was like doing a lot of drugs or drinking a lot in order to cope with the difficulty of life. It was creativity. It was it's just always been creativity. I just I really it's something about how I'm wired. And then and the fun too. Like I just I mean if we're not having fun literally what is the point? Like life is difficult. Like humaning is hard. So fun is important.

 

Monick (03:15.97)

So important.

 

Kathleen (03:17.388)

Yeah.

 

Monick (03:19.278)

Let's talk about fun as medicine.

 

Kathleen (03:21.799)

my God. I love that you just said that because I literally said that phrase to my therapist an hour ago.

 

Monick (03:29.851)

What do you so tell me what you mean by that.

 

Kathleen (03:33.25)

Well, it I know that for me, and I don't know if it's this way for everyone, though I do believe that to an extent it is. But I know that for me with my wiring, fun is one of my medicines. Like I bel I just have experienced so many times, time and time again, that fun is medicine for me to feel like myself and to like feel aligned and harmonious and to feel

 

You know, that sense of well-being and belonging that we feel when we're in that ventral vagal state of like like everything is harmonious in the biological, electrical, magnetic, spiritual, etc. system. So I know that it's fun helps me be myself. And I've also experienced so many times and seen reflected back to me that

 

Part of the medicine that I bring in the field is fun. Like it's a thing I bring to others. And so, you know, like I remember a friend's birthday party years ago at the beach in Pacific Palisades in LA, right? In Southern California. And she didn't bring well, I'm trying to remember what the speci the specific thing, but like I was wearing a little short, thin cotton jumpsuit.

 

And I had my bathing suit under it, and she hadn't brought her bathing suit. And I was Jamie, you could just wear my jumpsuit and I'll wear my bathing suit and we could go swimming in the water. And I like sort of low-key had to convince her, but I just knew that it would be really fun. And there were other ladies there, and they all maybe had their bathing suits, or maybe Jamie and I just went in by ourselves, and it was so fun. And it just like opened up the whole field of the birthday party, which I had no idea that.

 

is what was gonna happen. But that was one of the really for some reason that's one of the landmark experiences I had where I was like, part of my gift is that I bring fun. Because I just like fun and I always want to have more fun. Like if there's a new fun to be

 

Monick (05:46.338)

You do you're a fun fairy.

 

Monick (05:52.398)

everywhere you go.

 

Kathleen (05:55.554)

And then I sprinkle it and it's like I lob it.

 

Monick (05:58.524)

That's true. You have like buckets of it.

 

Kathleen (06:01.055)

Exactly. Totally. It's it's what I do.

 

Monick (06:07.598)

It's delightful, but yes, people shit too. Maybe it's like warning. You will be soaked in fun if you get too good.

 

Kathleen (06:18.252)

Yeah. The the and fun as medicine, like I feel like there are some medicines that sort of we could say in our culture or in these modern times, we we're not not all of us are hit to the depth of their potency. And I think that fun is one like it's underrated.

 

Right. Except for by people like you, you created a whole thing around it, right? Or like Mama Gina, who we both live learned from, I almost said lived from, learn from, created like a whole thing, right? Like she's the one who taught me that fun is a nutrient for women. Like it's an essential vitamin. And that really landed. And so I think that.

 

For all of us, I think, and I'm sure there's science that bears this out. I'm not gonna quote any of it because it's not like I've read any of it. Maybe you know some of it, but that fun, it our brain works in different ways. And I think that we can access different parts of our brain that are more expansive and more creative. And in my sort of worldview and orientation, maybe more harmonious or like entrained with.

 

grander algorithms of the universe. And I'm not I'm not talking about the meta algorithm. You know what I mean? Like the grander algorithms of what created the stars and the earth and puppies and peonies and you and me and fun otters, like little cute sea otters who have their favorite rock. You know what I mean?

 

Monick (07:59.17)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (08:01.964)

I think fun is deep potent medicine and similar to how like subtle flat like I love flower essences and flower remedies and they seem subtle but they're so deep. But it works on you without like kicking your booty. Yeah. It's just nectar.

 

Monick (08:20.992)

Yes. Yeah, it's a s it's a sweet medicine. But I totally agree. I mean that that's a whole chapter in my book about fun and health benefits. You know, mental and physical. So yeah. It it really is medicinal. but our culture does it d like makes it low priority, very frivolous, not productive, you know.

 

Kathleen (08:25.314)

Does it

 

Kathleen (08:33.267)

yeah.

 

Kathleen (08:49.836)

Yeah. Yeah. And these are things I like to think about a lot, the systemic, the systems and structures we find ourselves in. And like who does it benefit if we're always kind of dragging ourselves around in the grind? Not that there's any kind of grand conspiracy or ill intent going on, but what are the

 

larger cultural ramifications of a whole society of people who are just in survival. Like flourish it fun to me is part of flourishing and flourishing, the energy of flourishing is completely a different paradigm from survival. And they don't they're not super they're like different octaves, you know what I mean? So

 

Monick (09:38.178)

Yeah. And think too there's a paradigm around right, it's like how productive how much are you earning? How much you worth like in terms of dollar value with your time and fun isn't can doesn't translate in that way. And so it's not it's not valued. It's they're like, you're not making us any money.

 

Kathleen (10:02.2)

Thanks.

 

Monick (10:07.262)

Back to work.

 

Kathleen (10:08.11)

Exactly. It's kind of fun is kind of anti-capitalist capitalist, right? Like fun doesn't fit into a domination paradigm. It doesn't fit into a hierarchical pyramid shape where all resources flow to the top and only to the top, right? Fun is a thing we can have inside of ourselves. It lives in the realm of to me, it lives in the same realm as like imagination and creativity. Those are things that we

 

without getting into sort of like nervous system states, which depending on what which one we're in, can actually limit our access to those things. But like on sort of a more general level, those are things that live inside of us that no one can take from us that we always have that we don't have to pay for. And so it's it's they're actually infinite resources. And to me that's exciting. To me that's also super subversive. Like what you said about how it doesn't quite

 

fit into a model of like you're making money for us. I'm like, that's that's freaking cool and slippery and trickstery and mysterious and doesn't allow itself to be boxed in by systems that are not generative.

 

Monick (11:29.742)

It's true. So the ironic thing is if you have employees that are having fun.

 

Kathleen (11:34.318)

They're more productive.

 

Monick (11:36.206)

Much more productive.

 

Kathleen (11:37.902)

Say it's counterintuitive, except I don't think it is. It's counter-logical.

 

Monick (11:42.21)

Yes. Yeah. Right. But that that is that's the hack, right? You if you have fun, you're gonna be if you're if you're liking what you if you're having fun doing what you're gonna do what you're doing, you're going to do it. Yes. You wanna

 

Kathleen (11:53.326)

It's so much more magnetic and so much more interesting and so much more creative. And of course, none of I'm saying more and blah blah blah, they're not value judgments. To me, it's just I it's more fun to have more fun at the end of the day. And then your bank account balance can be what it is, but if you're having fun, it matters less.

 

That's not to say that everyone shouldn't have enough to survive and in my opinion, thrive. Yes. And there are enough resources on this planet for that to happen. You know, but there's so much more to life than just the bank account or the promotions at work.

 

Monick (12:35.414)

Yeah, for sure. You've talked about a revolution that will be fun, pleasure filled, and feminine based. So what talk tell me more about that.

 

Kathleen (12:46.894)

Mm.

 

Kathleen (12:50.998)

It's funny you say that and I'm like, whoa, when did I say that? Tell me more.

 

Monick (12:58.924)

Maybe I made that up, but

 

Kathleen (13:01.024)

I mean, that's right up my alley. what did I say? Fun, pleasure-based and feminine. Yeah, that's that's my jam. That in my opinion is the jam. I think that in the thinking and looking I do all the time at our culture and our world. To me, it seems that so much of the

 

Monick (13:07.374)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (13:30.818)

Difficulty and challenge and suffering is unnecessary and created by humans and created from a lack of reverence for and even just understanding of what we would call feminine values and feminine movements of energy and feminine maps. Yeah. And by which I'm talking about things like

 

Relationality, relationships, and care and empathy and emotional labor, and then of course, other octaves of feminine experience like pleasure. My this is one of my favorite lines of literally all time, and my meditation teacher said it long ago, and it just always stuck in my head. And it was this: it's

 

Pleasure is to the body of the goddess. What wet is to water, a primary quality.

 

Kathleen (14:41.356)

I'm gonna say it again because I feel it's so deep. Yes. Pleasure is to the body of the goddess, what wet is to water, a primary quality.

 

Monick (14:56.942)

Mm.

 

That's so true. Then when you when you're talking about the goddess, you're talking about the feminine in general?

 

Kathleen (15:06.988)

Yeah. Yeah. And I try when I'm having conversations like this, I try to keep my language not too religious or spiritual, but sometimes it just cannot be helped. My orientation is what it is. And my orientation is that whatever the big thing is that made all of this, you could call it nature, you could call it atoms or quantum physics or

 

I call it love. And for me specifically, the belief system that works is to orient toward it as the great mother and the goddess and the feminine, which is like in a yin-yang, it's the black part, it's the magnetic, wet, mysterious.

 

like nourishing void.

 

Monick (16:02.87)

Yes.

 

Kathleen (16:04.748)

Which coexists with all the light and the ascension and the, you know, we happen to live in a culture that prioritizes what I would call masculine models. And so for me, sinking deep into the feminine and pleasure and fun and devotion is not only fun and it is fun and pleasure filled and it is pleasure filled, but

 

Deeply nourishing. And to me, I think it's revolutionary. Like I just posted, I like to go on little jags on Instagram where I post a bunch of stuff to my stories, which is cool stuff I've seen on Instagram or random pictures I've taken of things that give me a giggle or thrill me or I think are interesting. And then someone made like a play on the women are from Venus, men are from Mar.

 

Monick (16:40.279)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (17:03.884)

the book Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Yeah. And it was women are from Venus. Men are from women.

 

Yes. Correct. Of course, men are from women and men, right? But like the first world we live in is a female body. Yes.

 

Monick (17:26.646)

so good. I'm gonna go back to this quote, right? This pleasure is to the body of the goddess, right? And as this essential quality of we'll just use the term feminine for now.

 

Kathleen (17:43.48)

Or we could even say life.

 

Monick (17:45.75)

Yes. But I I so I I wanna go back specifically to the feminine because

 

The women are so many women are disconnected from their pleasure. Right. and it's like we're talk me a little bit about that. It's like when women are trained out of their pleasure and what what changes when women bring pleasure back in.

 

Kathleen (18:20.248)

Well, it just it makes me think of a few things. One of the first of which, of course, is our training with Mama Gina at the School of Womanly Arts and how I mean that her body of work, especially when she was doing it, because you were with her from the very beginning. What year was that when you were teaching? Learning in the brownstone? Right, 2005. So 21 years ago. In the last five years.

 

Monick (18:40.364)

Almost two thousand five.

 

Kathleen (18:47.874)

Five, seven years we've seen an explosion of the commercialization of like pleasure and pussy shoot, I shouldn't have said that. lady parts based business and this is going to broadcast, I'm doing my best. we've seen an explosion of a certain sector of the coaching and business industry.

 

Monick (19:05.94)

Ha ha ha ha ha.

 

Kathleen (19:15.626)

explode with pleasure-based business, blah, blah, blah. Right. Like ladies are getting hip to it. But when Mama Gina was starting to teach this stuff in the early 2000s, like she f frankly told in her stories, no one was in that field playing. And she went, this women need to know about this. And we learned from Mama Gina about how women are trained out of their pleasure. And some of it also makes me, and I will dive deep into these couple of things, but I'm going to sprinkle them first and then dive.

 

The book by Rihanna Eisler. I don't know if I'm saying her name right, The Chalice and the Blade, which documents the historical sort of record of the shift from the what it what archaeology seems to indicate at this point is there were many, many years of

 

sort of a feminine paradigm that we lived in way pre-Christ, right? And like in Sumeria and stuff like that. And then there was a shift into this patriarchal, like it was a matriarchal time, right? And then there was a shift to the patriarchal dominator model and part of demoniz demonizing pleasure was part of that shift because true pleasure, you you can't be

 

hurting hurting someone else and be in true pleasure. I'm not talking about consensual BDSM, all that kind of thing, right? So The Chalice and the Blade is a really brilliant book that documents the some of that shift from goddess based culture to monotheistic, masculine, patriarchal culture. And

 

One of the cornerstones of patriarchal culture is that women's sexuality has to be controlled because you can't know for sure who the father is unless you control a woman's sexuality. You always know who the mother is because the human comes out of her, right? So so pleasure got demonized. And and part of I believe, and I think we learned this from Mama Gina, and I see it so much.

 

Kathleen (21:37.314)

Part of women being separated from disconnected from their pleasure is even the word pleasure itself. People go, whoa, because they have an association that there's only one kind of pleasure and it is sexual pleasure, right? And sexual pleasure is only one.

 

Delicious facet of an entire gem of what a human body can experience here on earth. I have occasionally taught women's breathwork classes where I teach a little bit about pleasure and I talk about the pleasure of, you know, when you get lentils at the grocery store from the bulk section, and you know, you get them and you put them in the plastic bag.

 

Just putting my hand like in the lentils in the plastic bag, because they're like cool and it there's it gives me pl it just feels good. It's a cool thing, right? Or like the pleasure of a bubble bath or the pleasure of delicious chocolate. I learned from Mama Gina to be a pleasure researcher, right? We that was a whole thing. And so women being so disconnected, so trained out of their pleasure.

 

Even the word at first is really scary until you start to say, I'm not talking about only sexual pleasure. Absolutely, that's a facet of it. But there's this whole other realm. And going back to that quote, pleasure is to the body of the goddess, what wet is to water, a primary quality. It is my personal belief, and I have had so many direct experiences of this, that pleasure is a massive part of.

 

Feminine power. Pleasure and power are married in the female body. And so training women out of their pleasure keeps them out of their power and makes them much more controlled.

 

Kathleen (23:42.86)

Bliss and fun and pleasure on a certain level are unmanageable. You cannot manage a blooming peony. What is that, right? They're two different worlds. So again, I don't go in for conspiracy theories, but who does it benefit when half of the human population of the world is completely disconnected from and unaware of their power?

 

Monick (23:54.957)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (24:14.944)

A matriarchal society s sees everyone as its child, and therefore everyone is taken care of. And therefore, people who are selfish and greedy and hoard resources, for whom, by the way, I have the utmost compassion because I can only imagine the fear that's running them or the soul sickness or whatever, but they're kept in check because it's not good for the whole.

 

Monick (24:40.418)

Yeah. I wanna ask you about your personal experience with this. How did how did tapping into these like pleasure, fun shift things for you in your life?

 

Kathleen (24:56.049)

my god, how did they not shift things?

 

Monick (24:58.915)

Tell me the before and after.

 

Kathleen (25:00.878)

okay, so of course, opening to pleasure is an ongoing practice. So there are always deeper levels and always more practice available in an infinite universe. Everything can be infinite, right? There's no end. There's no there there. It just can keep going, which is beautiful and delicious most of the time and sometimes really annoying. But so

 

It really was going to Mama Gina to the School of Womanly Arts that opened me to this whole thing. And she talked about desire and pleasure in this way that I think maybe the best way to concisely articulate it is that it landed in me and in my body as this great remembrance of this is true. These are real maps.

 

Kathleen (25:54.262)

We have been trained in only half of the maps available because the other half have been repressed and oppressed and secretly passed down. Right. And Mama Gina hipped us to those. And I didn't have all the language for that at that time, but it landed in my body. And I just felt like I want more. This is something, right? And so over the course even like I met my husband.

 

My the legendary love of my life through the pleasure practices. And I'm literally talking about just the things we learned from Mama Gina, bragging, celebrating what's good in my life, celebrating what's great, doing gratitudes, doing desires. That's it, doing dance breaks. Like I'm at my legendary love seven days after writing on my desire list. I desire an LA Haughty to take me on date.

 

And I just wanted to go on dates. And and then I met my husband and I was never gonna get married. I was going to be single. I was gonna have lots of lovers. My songs were gonna be my babies. And instead I met my husband. And I can't imagine my we've been together. Our 14th wedding anniversary will be in October. I that absolutely, I mean, on one level, I would say happened because of everything I was practicing and learning with Mama Gina. I have a business today that I

 

I help people. I'm a music supervisor, right? And I'm also a singer-songwriter and I make records. But my business takes care of me, gives me my life. I get to work on really cool stories.

 

Kathleen (27:38.35)

Pleasure and pleasure practices and encountering the paradigm of the feminine as pleasure, desire, and fun, and those being spiritual practices and journeys is my life. It was a door, it was a sparkly door. I walked through and I was like, peace out, all this other stuff. And that's not to say I don't get.

 

That I don't have times when I think I should have more money or make more money or get grumpy or sad or tired or crunchy or especially perimenopausally ragey, right? About sexism. But it's just it's it's my life, it's my devotion. It

 

Kathleen (28:32.802)

that primary quality of the feminine that pleasure and fun are.

 

Which I would say I believe, but it's not even that I believe it. I just know it's true. Like I know gravity is a real thing. Yeah. It's everything to me. And and I've seen how how it just opened my life to me living as my real self, I think, right? Like perfectionism.

 

gets turned down, overthinking gets turned like this female body and the way pleasure nourishes it and tunes it and attunes me to everything she knows is so wise and has so much wisdom. And women really are trained out of humans at this time, at least in our Western culture, are trained out of it. Yes. And that's weird.

 

Like it's, I think our culture is like really insane. I call it a death cult. It's like a militaristic death cult that is obsessed with violence and guns. And I'm just like, what are you people doing? We could be having so much more fun. We could be eating berries under the pine trees, singing songs and making plays and running around and swimming in rivers. That that is available to us. Like, why is LinkedIn a thing?

 

Monick (30:13.749)

my gosh. I love you.

 

Monick (30:21.044)

Yeah. Well okay, I could go into a whole thing about I I've had very similar shifts with pleasure. from helping me find the love of my life to being the seed of my business and more. But I wanna talk I wanna switch here so I talk about your music. that your music has been described as emotionally charged, fearlessly vulnerable.

 

And literally as having a quote voice made of sunshine. You've been described that way. The this combination is very fun and bliss to me. depth and light. So how do you hold like depth and light in your creative work?

 

Kathleen (31:07.564)

gosh, I love this question and I hope I can answer it because some of it I think is wiring. I it

 

Kathleen (31:20.846)

For whatever reason, there's a real wide span and capacity in my being for the depths of darkness that can be experienced in a human life and in the world, and the heights of light. And

 

I've cultivated I've cultivated it for sure. I the again going back to wiring, I'm a seeker and a devotional person and someone who has is always wanting to create and like be a better human. I think all humans are good inherently, but like have more satisfying outcomes, we could say, right? To sound real boring and dry about it.

 

So in my creativity, how do I hold that depth as well as light? it that's just how it happens. It's it's just how it happens, but it's like I want to show you, and maybe we'll get into this, but I made sure they were close because my most recent record, which came out, my gosh, that's two and a half years ago, is called Medicine. And this is the front.

 

Monick (32:33.504)

You

 

Monick (32:51.974)

that

 

Kathleen (32:52.896)

And then this is the back. It has a skull on it.

 

Kathleen (32:59.65)

But it's a pink skull because my friend Mason made it for me for my studio. And so in having a plan for the art for this record when I was finishing it and going to be putting it in the world, I wanted to call attention to the beautiful, like the mutuality of Eros and Thanatos, life and death.

 

Right? The life force and death and love.

 

Monick (33:31.592)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (33:33.726)

Yeah. And the again that yin and the yang, right? The bright light and the deep dark and death is part of life. Like you go to Hawaii and there is so much decay on the ground, and then there is so much life just popping out of it. And so that

 

Monick (33:34.616)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (33:58.626)

That essence of like that DNA helix shape of the way Eros and Thanatos dance in this material plane is endlessly compelling and fascinating to me. And the I personally have experienced extraordinary broken hearts, extraordinary depression. I there was many years where I prayed to die in my sleep for about a decade.

 

And even during those years, I would experience highs that were like, I don't know that my body can even contain all of this joy. And so all of that is so beautiful and fascinating to me. And to me, the gift, one of the gifts of life in a human body on this planet. And so it infuses my creativity. Like I

 

It's part of how I see everything. It's part of my lens. But you gotta have the like, yeah, life is hard, hearts break, people die. You gotta fire your accountant sometimes. And you gotta have the little bunny moo moos. Can you see that?

 

Monick (35:04.568)

Yeah.

 

Monick (35:19.523)

They're so cute. Yeah. So for those who are listening, she's showing the the album cover for medicine and she's she has these really cute bunny shoes.

 

Kathleen (35:30.578)

yeah, and I'm in this like like tiered tool skirt and I have like a turquoise guitar and there are these amazing bunny mules that were at the location where we shot. And of course there's a lot of pink because pink is my jam.

 

Monick (35:46.19)

I love it. All right. on this show we talk about blisciplines. So those practices, those ways of being that help you have a lighter, freer, more alive life. what are your disciplines that help you stay connected to pleasure, fun, and joy?

 

Kathleen (36:08.648)

I love that question. And before I answer the question, I just I love that word so much. I love that word so much. And you probably have talked about it on the podcast, but you know, discipline comes from the word disciple. So it's like being a disciple to your desire and then bliscipline, you're being a disciple to your bliss and your desire. I think it's just genius. So what are some of my singing? Big one.

 

For fun and for pleasure. I also have singing for rehearsal and singing for making records, but that also is medicine for me because music is also one of my medicines. Both I must take my medicine of music and share my medicine of music. baths. I take a bath pretty much every night. I just love a bath. I there's something about really water of any kind, hot springs, the pool, the ocean, the bath.

 

Monick (36:55.702)

Mm.

 

Kathleen (37:05.612)

The river. It just immersing in water of any kind is pure delicious for me. Obviously, very tasty dark chocolate. going on vacation, you know, like have just having fun, visiting friends or seeing new places, travel, painting my nails. Like, actually, me painting my nails. Once in a while, I'll get a manicure, but there's something.

 

I don't know. I feel like maybe it's like ASMR or something, the the concentration of like just the ritual of I do my cuticles and then I do the undercoat and I have to practice. I have to be really concentrated a lot when I'm painting my right hand because I am right handed. So I have to paint my right hand with my left hand. And it just it's like really focused but relaxing. And I just love I really, I really love good fingernail game.

 

I call it I call it nail game. And like like when women have like long nails and beautiful art, like I always want that, but it's not super harmonious with my life because I play piano and guitar and I like typing. There's just a lot of things. Every once in a while I'll put on fake nails and it's like my favorite thing. But so the the hikes also hikes being in nature is a really important part of my bliss of plans.

 

Meditating, praying, touching in with silence and my own generative relationship with the divine and creativity of any kind, like writing songs or cooking. Cooking is a big one. I like to read cookbooks and I like to read design magazine.

 

Monick (38:58.723)

Yeah.

 

Kathleen (38:59.606)

Like taking in beauty is a huge part of

 

My holistic bliss plan. Those are a few things. Also weightlifting. I mean I have a lot of that. That's where you're

 

Monick (39:22.702)

That's why you're a fun fairy. You have so many disciplines. One one of mine is is with you. And we like once a week. We've we sit on and we we spring clean.

 

Kathleen (39:26.637)

I hope.

 

Kathleen (39:34.68)

We touch in and we yeah, spring cleaning, which is a

 

Monick (39:37.726)

My gosh, a tool from Mama Gina, but yeah, we basically get to download on a particular topic.

 

Kathleen (39:45.324)

Yeah. She's getting a lot of airtime here. Which is as it should be, honestly. I mean, the her stuff initiated me into a whole different life from what I might have had had I not encountered it. Truly. Yeah.

 

Monick (39:47.99)

Yeah.

 

Monick (39:59.342)

all right. I'm having so much fun that our I'm looking at the time. So that I wanna go into the I'm gonna ask you one question of how and then we'll we'll do our our laser round. And then we're gonna go in into we're gonna have like a little bit more for those of you who wanna join us in the Fun and Bliss collective. We're gonna do a little deeper dive and and keep talking. So

 

You'll definitely wanna join us there so you can hear that.

 

Kathleen (40:30.772)

Join, join, join so you can hang out with all of us and Monique's and Monika's online space. It's so yummy. I can't believe we're already here. Time truly does fly when you're having fun. It does.

 

Monick (40:44.488)

It does, I know. But I've I so I want to invite you to give a well, we you we were calling it a fun spark. Now we're calling it a fab spark, so it's a fun and bliss spark. So it's a little for the someone who's listening, what's one tiny experiment you would invite them to try this week to invite in more fun, pleasure, aliveness in their lives?

 

Kathleen (41:11.662)

Okay, this is the first thought that popped into my head. So I'm gonna go with first thought, best thought. And I'm gonna say dance breaks. I'm gonna say one song, even just one song, or like your button, 30 seconds, you know, 30 seconds to one song of dance, shake your booty, move your body, especially if you've been.

 

Deep in computer land or deep in focusing land, or you're having a really something awful and difficult is happening. Dance. I have done dance breaks. I did a dance break when I was walking into the hospital to go say what I thought was goodbye to my grandmother because I was leaving. I was on tour in Reno. It was in 2016. And

 

Monick (41:51.117)

Mm.

 

Kathleen (42:08.63)

I had to leave the next day to go to Salt Lake. And my grandma went into the hospital and she was in her 90s. And I so I was certain it was goodbye. And I was heartbroken. And I I wanted to go be loving and kind and of service and like one piece in myself, right? When I walked into that hospital room. And so I did a crying, wearing sunglasses, sad song, dance break in the courtyard of the hospital.

 

before I walked in and just that one song, it just like lined me right back up. And that's obviously sad song dance break, but happy song dance break, duh. So that's my that's my fab spark. Fab.

 

Monick (42:57.646)

Fun and bliss. Fab. It's Fab. Thanks. I love that.

 

Kathleen (43:04.13)

Wait, can I say one more thing about that? I guess I have a lot to say on this topic.

 

One of the deepest teachings of fun, pleasure and bliss.

 

Monick (43:13.794)

That thought. We're gonna go we're gonna talk about that when we go into our deeper dive. because we need to do our laser round and wrap up.

 

Kathleen (43:21.514)

Okay. I just want to say the privilege of being human and all of it. All of it. That's it.

 

Monick (43:30.274)

All right, so laser round. What's your go-to when you need an instant joy boost? Mm. What's what's one thing that never fails to make you laugh?

 

Kathleen (43:35.746)

Coffee.

 

Kathleen (43:42.126)

St my husband.

 

Monick (43:45.122)

What's the last thing you did for fun?

 

Kathleen (43:48.418)

This right now.

 

Monick (43:50.062)

This has been fun. finish this sentence. Bliss for me looks like.

 

Kathleen (43:56.451)

Heaven.

 

Monick (43:57.686)

Mm.

 

Kathleen (44:00.856)

Feels like a cone.

 

Monick (44:02.38)

Yeah. All right. So what's the best way for people to connect with you and find out more about what you do?

 

Kathleen (44:10.798)

They can sign up for my mailing list. That's the best way. So Kathleenusic.com.

 

or Kathleenusic.substack dot com or Instagram slash Kathleen Music.

 

Monick (44:26.702)

So Kathleen music is where to go. And that's so great that you got that.

 

Kathleen (44:31.96)

Well, you know what's funny is at the time in two thousand five, when I was about to graduate college and got it, I was annoyed because Kathleen Smith dot com was taken. But it has turned out in my favor. Isn't that just life for ya?

 

Monick (44:51.732)

It is. It's so delightful. all right. Well, thank you so much. That was amazing. so fun. Conversation will be continued in the Fun and Bliss collective. So y'all should definitely join us there. You can go to funandbliss.com for that. And and we'll we'll continue that there. Thank you so much, Kathleen. That's awesome. This has been so fun.

 

Kathleen (45:18.144)

Monique, thank you so much. What a pleasure. It's been wonderful to be here. Thank you so much. And listeners, I love you.

 

Monick (45:26.56)

I love you too. Love you, Kathleen.

 

Kathleen (45:29.562)

also I thought of one other thing. I have my own podcast and it's called Freak Flag with Kathleen Smith. So you can also get more cath vibes anywhere you listen to your podcasts on Freak Flag.

 

Monick (45:43.306)

Okay. And we'll put links for that in the show you know, in the show notes or you can go to fun and bliss dot com and under this episode and find that info.

 

Kathleen (45:53.836)

Yay, yay.