THE MUSE #74
In this edition: Tips for navigating life as full-time parents and artists.
Hi Muses, it’s Oscar night! As much as the thought of attending an award show makes me tense with nerves, it makes me so happy to celebrate the stories and artists that defined the last year (and all from the comfort of my plush Joybird couch). To get in the Oscar spirit, check out these articles and videos…
“19 of the Oscar-Nominated Movies 2022 You Can Stream Right Now” from Vanity Fair
2022 Oscar Nominees: The Last Time I Cried at the Movies from Variety
“26 Oscar Records That Could Fall This Sunday, From Will Smith to Billie Eilish” from The Wrap
“Rita Moreno Has A Message For Those Criticizing Actors’ Political Stands” at Award Shows from Deadline
xo
bdh
“Dear Bryce” Advice Column
Welcome to Dear Bryce! This is Nine Muses’ advice column where I (Bryce Dallas Howard) humbly respond to your questions about navigating the entertainment industry and beyond. If you’re wondering how to balance life and work, seeking answers about the storytelling and filmmaking process, or just want to know more about a favorite past or upcoming BDH project, stay tuned for more of Dear Bryce!
A reader writes…
As a mother of 3 (one under 2), it can be very hard to balance writing, editing, and filmmaking whilst trying to have a semblance of life in between all of that. There isn’t enough awareness of parents in film or much help… can you offer some tips on raising children, making time for work and just hoping all that work leads to a more balanced life?! From one mum to another, I thank you!
Last week, the honorable Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson made a powerful statement during her Supreme Court confirmation hearing. After introducing her family in attendance, Jackson turned her attention to daughters Talia and Leila saying, “Girls, I know it has not been easy as I have tried to navigate the challenges of juggling my career and motherhood. And I fully admit that I did not always get the balance right.” I found this public acknowledgment to be so meaningful as a parent of two kids and I share this with you in case it brings you solace.
Now for the practicalities of the balancing act (because “balanced” is a fixed state and let’s be real, there are periods of life that are closer to the dream stasis and other times that are further away)...
1. Invest in Childcare
When I had my first kid, I put so much pressure on myself to do and be everything for my kids — to be the soccer mom, the PTA mom, the home-chef mom, the read-to-my-kids-every-night mom, the shows-up-for-every-school-event mom – and it was impossible to live up to those self (and societal) imposed expectations.
I’ve been open about my struggles with postpartum depression. It took years to feel and function like myself again, and for that reason I had a lot of fears going into my second pregnancy. There was the logistical juggle of it all, but also the pressures to make a living while being a present partner and parent. I realized that my fears consistently boiled down to believing that I wasn’t going to be able to handle it all and also be okay.
So ahead of deciding to try for a second child, I had one condition: that we would send our second child to daycare as soon as we felt she could handle it. Because I knew that without reliable full-time support, I simply couldn’t do it. My husband was supportive of this and my first phone call after giving birth in 2012 was to the daycare center – now that my daughter was born, we could “officially apply.” She was officially enrolled by the time she was 4 months old.
To this day, childcare is one of the best decisions we made as working parents.
Early in my second pregnancy I read a wonderful book by Amy Tiemann called Mojo Mom. I’ll never forget the advice she imparted to “get as much childcare as you can reasonably afford.” Before then, I felt like I failed as a parent if I needed childcare, and even when I did get childcare, I felt like a failure as a business person because we consistently didn’t make a profit as a family because of our childcare expenses.
Though we never want to spend above our means, I follow Tiemann’s advice to this day. My children are now 10 and 15 and every year since having them, the largest expense in our lives is childcare. Sometimes it feels like all my money goes toward childcare. But now I see childcare as the number one investment I can make in my kids. Get as much childcare as you can reasonably afford. There is no shame in it.
2. Carve out Hiding Time
“Hiding time: is my greatest luxury, and while it’s difficult to not feel guilty about it, it’s a crucial aspect of my personal family-work balance. When I start to feel overwhelmed, sure thing it’s because I haven’t had any hiding time.
Whether it’s 2 hours or 2 minutes, hiding time is an opportunity to recharge and catch my breath. What’s key for me is that this time is screen-free, people-free, and interruption-free. It’s time dedicated to being alone with my thoughts – because a family-work balance is about not only finding the time to balance responsibilities, but having the energy to do so.
I often find hiding time when I’m in the bathroom or laundry room, and sometimes I’ll put a sign on my bedroom door that says, “Please do not enter.” These stolen moments feel like my power is being restored much like a video game character. Blip… blip… blip… and now I’m no longer on the last little bar of life.
3. Share Work with Your Family
Granted this is not always possible (and was easier in pre-COVID times), but as much as I can, I like to make my kids feel a part of my work and process as a storyteller. Instead of keeping the spheres separate, creating scenarios in which the two can converge is like getting to have my cake and eat it too.
For example, when I’m in an edit session, I have my kids watch a little bit of the cut. And when I’m filming long hours on set, I take pictures or videos that describe my day and send it to them. I also like to share the challenges that I’m facing at work and then follow up afterward to share how it all resolved. (This is something my parents did with me as a child that I really appreciated and made me feel a part of and invested in my Dad's work and world. My parents were inclusive and genuinely wanted to hear my creative feedback.) My husband will also run his story ideas by our daughter to get her instincts and feedback (she’s gonna make a great executive one day).
Because even if you don’t have a day dedicated to spending time with your kids, little moments add up and make a big impact.
4. Remember It’s Not Forever
When I was struggling with the very question of balance, a friend reminded me that this stage of life when kids are living at home does not last forever. Yes, the parenting marathon never ends, but there are chapters and seasons and they all require different skills and degrees of engagement. The young years are physically exhausting, the teen years are emotionally exhausting, the early adult years (18-25) can run the gamut from frustration with adult children to blissfully enjoying your freedom whilst looking forward to grandchildren (so I hear).
I’m not going to tell you that because this isn’t forever that you should savor it, or appreciate it, or feel grateful for it – that’s happening in the background no matter what. You love your kids. Instead, I’m gonna suggest you do everything you can to nurture and nourish yourself during each of these chapters. You are also human and while burnout is unfortunately common, it’s difficult to recover from and it’s not a badge of honor. Like anything, prevention is the best medicine. Take care of yourself Mama – be your own mother. Ask yourself, “How are you going to mother yourself today?”
So from one mum to another, you got this!
xo
bdh
Have a question for Bryce? Submit it below:
Note: Nine Muses may publish any question you submit, here or in other media. We never, ever print names; all questions will be kept anonymous.
The Calliope Diaries
Here at Nine Muses, we’re big advocates for dedicated journaling time.
Every month, we’ll share a free-response prompt to get your creative juices flowing. This month’s prompt:
In your lifetime, what skills do you want to master?
Let’s imagine you are seeking mastery rather than employment. Some examples of skills and creative endeavors you may want to master are communication, storytelling, camera-operation, calligraphy, gardening, public speaking, cooking, etc. What’s important is that mastery is not about the results, but rather the process you develop and the overall growth you experience.
Recommended Time: 5 minutes
This Week’s Recipe: Chicken, Steamed Fish for Two
Inspired by Jessie YuChen’s recipe for “Special Steamed Whole Fish” for Bon Appetit
A Note…
There are no units of measurement in my recipe. I hope this makes you stop and ask not how much of an ingredient should be included, but rather how much you want to eat. Trust yourself, you’ve been eating food your whole life.
Similarly there is no cooking time — you have the tools to check if the fish is cooked, and that is all you really need. This means you get to be fully present with your food as it cooks. Watch as the skin tightens and the eyes turn from clear to gray — it’s truly beautiful. Don’t worry too much about accuracy or repeatability, simply focus on your ingredients. More or less of any one element will just give you a new dining experience to draw on in the future.
I hope that you change this recipe and find something that works better for you and the people you share it with. Push against the edges and go forth, with vigor.
What You’ll Need…
A high-walled skillet with a lid
A whole fish with scales and guts removed (any local white fish will work wonderfully; in the northeast I recommend Black Sea Bass or Porgy)
As many onions as it takes to cover the bottom of the aforementioned skillet, sliced as thin as you would like to eat
A bottle of sake
Salt & pepper
Ginger, peeled and sliced thin enough to fit in the fish
Ginger, peeled and chopped thick enough to form a bed for the fish
A large bunch of scallions
A bottle of soy sauce
Light brown sugar
Equal parts sesame oil and vegetable oil, enough to give a hearty drizzle over the fish
Garlic cloves, sliced as thin as you would like to eat
Serrano chili peppers, sliced as thin as you would like to eat
Sesame Seeds
How To Make…
Dry fish (I leave it in the fridge uncovered for an hour before cooking. Or you can dry it off with paper towels.)
Place fish on a cutting board and season inside and out with Salt and pepper. Stuff the fish with the thin ginger and then drizzle with sake. Let rest on the board.
Cut each scallion into three pieces, top (light green), middle (darker green), and bottom (white). Cut the middle parts thinly lengthwise, leave the other parts whole. Place middle strips in a bowl of cold water and save the tops and bottoms on the board.
Onto the other type of onions. Spread them out to cover the bottom of your pan. Go heavier on the onions rather than lighter if you’re unsure; it’s fine if they overlap.
Pour soy sauce over the onions with joy and then generously dust them with brown sugar.
Place the thicker cut ginger in the middle of the pan. The idea is to make a platform to keep the fish off the pan’s heat at the bottom.
To help the ginger in that endeavor, place the top and bottom parts of the scallions that you saved on top of the ginger. The platform of ginger and scallions should be roughly the size of your fish.
Take the sake and pour yourself a glass.
Pour in as much sake as you did in your glass, into the skillet.
Pour in an equal amount of water.
Cover the skillet and bring the sake and water to a hearty boil, the steam should be leaking out the sides.
Once boiling, place your fish on the ginger and scallions, quickly returning the lid and lowering the heat.
Cook fish for no more than nine minutes but no less than six. The fish will be done when the flesh flakes easily with the back of a spoon, or when a toothpick inserted near the spine comes out fully warm. Trust your gut.
Try not to remove the lid too frequently or for too long, as you don’t want the steam to escape.
While the fish is steaming, heat the sesame oil and vegetable oil in a small saucepan until it’s shimmering. Kill the heat and add the garlic and sesame seeds.
Uncover fish and admire how far you’ve come. Leave the fish in the skillet for serving, one less thing to wash later.
Take the strips of scallion out of the water, top the fish with it.
Scatter the serrano chili peppers over the fish and the onions.
Pour hot sesame garlic oil over the fish — be careful as it can splatter.
Place fish between you and your dining partner and enjoy.
Lessons & Recipes from the Heirloom: “Tasting the Missing Ingredient”
A guide to making cooking the best part of your multi-hyphenate practice
by Jack Piscitelli Dahill
“Everyone should be encouraged at every turn to develop their own modest yet unique repertoire — to find a few dishes they love and practice at preparing them until they are proud of the result. To either respect in this way their own past — or express through cooking their dreams for the future. Every citizen would thus have their own specialty. Why can we not do this? There is no reason in the world. Let us then go forward. With vigor.” ~ Anthony Bourdain
““Jack!”,
My mother shouts as she stands in the kitchen, her apron adorned with a pomegranate print. Her hair is up and she’s wearing glasses — or as she calls them, “cooking goggles,” — to hold back any stray hairs and protect her eyes. Before her is a large pot, roughly the size of my thirteen-year-old-torso, with bubbling marinara sauce to the brim.
“Jack!”, my mother shouts again.
I come bounding into the kitchen and rush to the closet where the aprons are (my recent growth spurt means that I am finally tall enough to wear one of the old aprons), and with this newfound protection against sauces, spills, and stains, I begin to take a more active role in the cooking of dinner. I’m an extra set of hands that my mother is more than happy to have.
“What do you think this needs?”, she asks, extending the wooden spoon full of sauce to me. I take a sip and close my eyes. I try and think my way through every ingredient, but in truth it tastes just like the tomatoes from the garden.
“I’m not sure… maybe garlic?”
Folding over the top of her newspaper, my grandmother, who supplied half the tomatoes from her garden, shuffles over to the pot. She takes the wooden spoon from her daughter and gives it a taste before sharing her octogenarian advice.
“I don’t think we need more garlic,” my grandmother suggests. “I think it needs more pepper.”
I look over the recipe, a yellowed index card stained from years in the kitchen, describing every step of how to make the sauce: what type of tomato to grow, how to ensure it clings to your pasta (my great-grandmother recommends not adding olive oil to the pasta until after you’ve added the sauce), etc. These are my Ten Commandments of sauce making, and adherence to them ensures the perfect sauce every time.
Unlike many recipes these days that tell the cook exactly how to cut onions — down to the cubic inch — the recipes my family passed down allow for natural variation. For example, rather than calling for 8 oz. of garlic sliced an eighth of an inch thick, my family’s recipe calls for five or six cloves of garlic. This puts the onus on the chef to decide how garlic-y they want the sauce to be on any given day. This flexible container, these loose ancestral instructions, give me permission to taste the garlic, figure out how it transforms the sauce, and understand what I, as the artist, want to do with it.
Much like Remy in Pixar’s Ratatouille when he tries, and fails, to get his brother to be present with the ingredients, my mom and grandma taught me to have that same level of focus and mindfulness. It’s not enough to close your eyes and picture the finished dish. To find what’s missing requires an enormous amount of attention and receptivity.
The same goes for art making.
As artists, we tend to have a strong idea of the art is we want to make. The idea lives in our minds like a dream of warm soup after a long day in the cold. Good art, I think, comes from a sort of necessity, a hunger. It’s a rumble in our bellies and a heat in our aching chests. So we picture it, this thing, this creation, in its idealized, mouthwatering, unrealized state. But when crafting a work of art, be it marinara sauce or a well-told story, we must be present. We must frequently stop and assess, give it a taste, and ask ourselves, “Is this coming together the way we want it to? What is missing?” If we look hard enough, consistently enough, the missing piece just might present itself. This presence is what transforms food from merely grasping at a stab of hunger, to fully realizing our dream.
Tasting the missing ingredient is a skill that every artist needs; it’s the ability to close their eyes and shift through the flavors to find what’s missing. Every chef has different sensibilities when it comes to what they’re looking for. Some will say that finding a balance between all the flavors is the right move. Others will swear by bringing one flavor to the forefront and using the others to support the star. But when I was first learning to cook, while I was developing sensibilities of my own, I followed the recipes of those before me.
During my second-grade snack time, I regaled my friends with stories. However, as I was only eight years old, I didn’t have any real-world experience to serve as fodder for my tales. So I followed the recipes of oral tradition — the tried and true templates of stories I’d heard from others. The story of “a stranger comes to town,” “boy meets girl,” “slay the dragon, save the princess,” and more. These story arcs are told and retold and provide a framework for the artist (or a nonchalant second-grader like me) to explore within. At school, I would mix and match different archetypes, stock characters, and dramatic elements, and in doing so, gained a new appreciation for what each bring to stories.
As wonderful of a guide as recipes are, they are still just that, a guide. It is our responsibility as chefs, as artists, to push against the edges, try new things, and fail wonderfully. For it is in these moments of failure that I truly learned what my art needs. It’s also in those moments of stretching past the recipes that I’ve found things that I truly love to eat, which feels all the better because no one told me how to get there. It gives us ownership over the food we make.
I know how important cooking is to me as a person, but I’m learning more every day about how important cooking is to my artistic practice and how food-making supports and relates to other facets of my life as an artist — because to me, art-making and cooking are one in the same.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of my favorite cooking stories from childhood and early adulthood, each one with a different lesson that relates to being an artist and developing skills as a storyteller. I’ll also include a recipe, one that embodies the lesson of the week, for you all to try at home. Now let’s go forward, with vigor.
Jack Piscitelli Dahill (he/him) is a 2021 Nine Muses Lab Fellow and interdisciplinary storyteller who believes in “following the fun.” His interests lie in twisting traditional archetypes and narratives to shine light on how humor elicits the most profound empathy. He believes that food is the base of shared human experience, and through exploration of the artistry of food we can find a radical connection to each other.
Sage Livingstone Molasky (she/her) is a writer, environmentalist, and theater maker. Her work is rooted in the intersection of food, sex and religion. As a playwright, she draws inspiration from her deep connection to place — from the red rocks of Nevada and the mountains of Colorado to the farms of the Hudson Valley and New York City — exploring the relationships between bodies and the natural world. Sage hopes to increase New Yorkers’ access to free art and free food, making New York a greener, and more equitable place.
“Some people have human muses — mine is a city. I feel a startling ambivalence towards London, but for better or worse my work has come utterly to depend upon it.”
Newsletter run by Nia Farrell, Director of Development & Production at Nine Muses Entertainment
