Episode 658

Morgan Parker, Georgia Cloepfil, and Rogê

Poet and essayist Morgan Parker (You Get What You Pay For) unpacks the highs and lows of therapy... and how crying in The Gap afterwards is cathartic; writer and former professional soccer player Georgia Cloepfil explains how she hustled across the globe as an athlete, while weighing financial gain with her love of the sport; and Brazilian singer-songwriter Rogê performs his song “Existe Uma Voz” from his first US solo album Curyman.

Morgan Parker

Poet, Essayist, and Novelist

Morgan Parker is the author of young adult novel Who Put This Song On?; and the poetry collections Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night, There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé, and Magical Negro, which won the 2019 National Book Critics Circle Award. Parker is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, winner of a Pushcart Prize, and a Cave Canem graduate fellow. Her debut book of essays, You Get What You Pay For, traces the difficulty and beauty of existing as a Black woman through American history, from the foundational trauma of the slave trade all the way up to Serena Williams and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Website • Instagram

Georgia Cloepfil

Author of “The Striker and the Clock”

Georgia Cloepfil is a writer and former professional soccer player from Oregon. She played professionally for six years, on six teams, in six countries. During that time, the sport became more than a game — it was an immersive yet transient way of life. Living out of a single suitcase, Cloepfil chased better opportunities and the euphoria of playing well. As a writer, her work has appeared in The Yale Review, The New York Times Magazine, n+1, and elsewhere. Her latest nonfiction debut, The Striker and the Clock, is a beautiful examination of the joy and pain of serious athletics and an eye-opening look at the still-developing world of professional women’s soccer. She holds an MFA from the University of Idaho and works at Whitman College. Website • Instagram

Rogê

Samba Sensation

Latin Grammy nominee Rogê is a songwriter, composer, and musician considered to be a principal part of the Brazilian popular music scene revival. He has released seven solo albums and two collaborations with samba legends Arlindo Cruz and Seu Jorge. His latest albums Curyman and Curyman II celebrate the vibrancy of Brazilian culture while tackling the country’s complex history, so that, in Rogê's own words, “we don’t give in to sadness, to laziness, to a lack of desire to move on with life. It’s the certainty that a new day will dawn.” Website • Instagram

Show Notes

Best News

• Elena’s story: “These scientists are building a cat database to understand why they act like that”

• Luke’s story: We’re on the air in New York City! Starting March 29, Live Wire will be broadcast as a part of WNYC Radio’s new Saturday evening schedule (on WNYC-AM, -FM and NJPR).

Morgan Parker

• Luke and Morgan discuss Morgan’s new book of essays, You Get What You Pay For.

Live Wire Listener Question

• When you were a kid, what is the wildest thing you wanted to be when you grew up?

Georgia Cloepfil

• As a part of our Speakeasy Series, Luke interviews Georgia at The Sports Bra, a woman-owned, women’s-sports centered bar in Portland, OR.

• Georgia’s talks about her new book, The Striker and the Clock.

• Luke and Georgia talk about the concept of arrival fallacy.

• Georgia cites Naomi Girma‘s transfer to Chelsea as an instance of the improving status of women’s sports.

Rogê

• Rogê performs the song “Existe Uma Voz” off his first US solo album, Curyman.

Station Location Identification Examination

• This week’s shout-out goes to KUST-FM 88.7 of Moab UT.

• Full Transcript

  Elena Passarello: From PRX, it's Live Wire!

  Elena Passarello: This week, poet Morgan Parker. 

  Morgan Parker: I honestly remember praying to God that the rapture wouldn't happen until after I wrote a book. I'm just like, please, I have stuff I wanna do. 

  Elena Passarello: Writer, Georgia Cloepfil. 

  Georgia Cloepfil: We have this goal in mind. I really just want to get this promotion. I really want to play on this sort of team. And then once we get there, everything recalibrates. And now there's something else that we want. 

  Elena Passarello: With music from Rogě and our fabulous house band. I'm your announcer, Elena Passarello, and now, the host of Live Wire, Luke Burbank! 

  Luke Burbank: Hey, thank you so much, Elena Passarello. Thank you to everyone tuning in from all over America. We have all kinds of, uh, different perspectives and art forms and just a lot of entertainment coming your way over the next 60 or so minutes. But of course, we've got to start things the way we always do with a little bit of the best news we heard all week. This of course, our little reminder at the top of the show, there is good news that is happening in the world and maybe even some here in America. You just have to look for it. We have found it. We will present it to you. Elena, what is the best news you heard all week? 

  Elena Passarello: Okay, Luke. I know that you have been the owner and protector of multiple cats throughout your life. Is there ever been a cat behavior that you completely didn't understand that one of your cats did? 

  Luke Burbank: Oh, I'm multiple behaviors, honestly, like I, I still don't know what's going on in that little walnut of theirs. 

  Elena Passarello: Well, you're in luck, because there is a new study that's getting kicked off this year through UMass's Chan Medical School with scientists at the Broad Institute. It's called Darwin's Cats Project. 

  Luke Burbank: They didn't go with Schrodinger? No, I mean, well, you know, like. 

  Luke Burbank: I guess that's already a study or it's already what a theoretical exercise. 

  Elena Passarello: It's also kind of a bummer. 

  Luke Burbank: Yeah. 

  Elena Passarello: So. We want all these cats to thrive, and basically the plan for Darwin's Cats Project is to create a genetic database that will help us better understand cats' biologies and behaviors. Because you know, cats were domesticated like thousands of years after dogs were. We know surprisingly little about them, and they are so idiosyncratic anyway, like we're just going to do a little bit more research. This comes after, speaking of dogs, the Darwin's Dogs Project, which published its findings in 2022. They collected the DNA of 2,100 dogs, and then they interviewed owners of about 18,000 dogs. And they got a whole bunch of information about breed and behavior. And they're going to do the same thing with cats. And what they want people to do is in fur samples. 

  Luke Burbank: Okay, I thought you were going to say a different kind of sample, but this is a little bit less gross. 

  Elena Passarello: Probably the easiest thing probably to get out of a cat would be its fur. Just wipe your pants and you're ready to go. And they wanna get 100,000 participating cats. So fur and then the owners like mail it in and then there's a survey. And they want to get information about the behaviors of the cats from the survey and the genetics of the cat from the sequencing. Of course, sequencing is a little expensive. So they suggest $150 donation. when you send in the stuff. But if I know anything about the behavior of cat owners, they will pay that money just to learn a little bit more about their beloved Mr. Twiggle Pants or whatever they're calling their cats. 

  Luke Burbank: What do you want to understand about your cats? 

  Elena Passarello: I have two minds, so if I could answer any question about my cats, I would want to know why my cats don't snuggle with each other like all the cats on Instagram do. 

  Luke Burbank: Mhm. 

  Elena Passarello: Over the course of my life, I've always had little groups of three cats and they never like each other. So I wanna know what am I doing to sow such derision? But honestly, I kind of like the mystery of cats. Like I like not knowing exactly why they run into the room, roll over on their backs, act insane, jump into a box and then go to. You know. 

  Luke Burbank: Crab walk out of the room or something. Yeah, I want to know my cat Bubbles, who is a bangle. I don't know if this would be answered by this study you're talking about, but I would like to know how many Generations this bangle has been domesticated since its ancestors were like in the jungles of Indonesia. And then I would like them to add three more generations because Bubbles is not really ready for domestic American life. She is still, she is still somewhere out there in the jungles. And that is why she is very, very annoying to live with. All right. The best news that I heard this week, Elena, and this is, this is not, you know, news that's exactly a headlining the New York Times, but in our world, it's really good news. We are now featured as part of the weekend lineup of WNYC radio in New York City. That's right. Live Wire has made it to the Big Apple. This is this is really exciting for us as a show, actually. I mean, one, because it means we're going to reach a lot more people because New York's a huge public radio market. Also, I just have to say for me personally, as a person who used to work at WNYC, like 20 years ago or something. Back when the radio station was located in a government building down at one center street, you used to wait in line with the people that were there to get married at the city building. I would be late for work and I would waiting behind like seven couples that were on their way to go upstairs to the justice of the peace. 

  Elena Passarello: Because you had to go through like a security checkpoint or something?  

  Luke Burbank: Yes, there was a security checkpoint. I mean, it's New York post 9/11. So there's a lot of particularly down in Southern Manhattan, a lot of, uh, a a lot of security. And it was like, you know, listen, I'm going to be honest with you. The fact that having worked there and done such a questionable job as I did as a cub reporter working for the WNYC newsroom, they have now allowed me and you back on their fine airwaves doing this radio show Live Wire. Like I said, about 20 years later, it is a real full circle moment. and I'm just so So excited that we're getting to reach all these fine people in the five boroughs of New York. So being on WNYC is the best news that I heard this week. All right, let's get to the real show here. Our first guest is the author of many things, including the poetry collections, Other People's Comfort, Keeps Me Up at Night, and There Are More Beautiful Things Than Beyoncé. Her latest work is something that's new for her. It's her first book of essays. It's titled You Get What You Pay For, which traces the difficulty, but also the beauty of existing as a black woman throughout American history. Morgan Parker joined us as part of the Portland Book Festival. at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton, Oregon to talk about it. Let's take a listen. It's so nice to see you again. 

  Morgan Parker: You as well. Thank you. 

  Luke Burbank: Thank you so much. This book is absolutely fascinating. Like, I just went from cover to cover, and this is a book that's written from your perspective. I don't even know if as, like, a straight white male, if I am the intended audience, but it spoke to me in this really deep way. Who were you thinking about when you wrote this book? 

  Morgan Parker: Well, I was thinking about myself. A lot, too much. But I was thinking about all of us. And looking at history, the more that you kind of uncover, the more you see how connected we are by the facts of history and how much has been designed. And thinking about the current world, I just can't help but look back and think about how we got here and what are all the pieces to that puzzle. And I think that it's something that we don't think about a lot as Americans. Are we trying not to? But I think it's a thing that we all feel as Americans, this like heaviness of history. So I do think it is relatable, whether or not it's from a perspective that you have experienced. We all live here together, you know? And we all have seen a lot of the same things and had a lot the same questions whether or now we're able to admit it. 

  Luke Burbank: Um, uh, much like myself, you grew up going to Christian school and not like, uh, Catholic school where there's, you know, mass a couple of times a week, like hellfire, damnation, hardcore stuff. How, what did that do to your young brain? 

  Morgan Parker: Oh my god. Well, the young brain is still in therapy, we'll say that. We're still undoing. 

  Luke Burbank: This is my form of therapy, unfortunately for everyone. 

  Morgan Parker: I mean, but there's, when I think about it, I'm like, I didn't stand a chance, you know? We learned about, we learned Genesis and Exodus, and then we learned Job, which is just like, you must suffer, and that's what life is. And then we learn Revelation. And this is like second grade, my dude. Like, this is, like, and I'm a kid who wants to be a good kid, so it's just like an unhealthy. kind of responsibility to place on a child. And I remember, you know, them asking me, like, are you ready to die for your beliefs? And I'm like, I honestly remember praying to God that the rapture wouldn't happen until after I wrote a book. 

  Morgan Parker: I'm just like, please, I have some stuff I want to do. I've still never had oysters. 

  Elena Passarello: But when you were young young, you knew that you wanted to write a book was like your number one goal. If you were going to bargain for when the rapture happened, that's what you wanted. 

  Morgan Parker: Yeah. Well, it was like I felt that I could do it, which is, you have to be delusional. And, you know, you have be delusion every single time you sit down to write a new book. Because even having written them before, it's like, well, I know I'm able to do that, but am I able to do this? And you just kind of don't know until you finish the last page. But it was always something that I felt that I wanted to. make an offering to the world, you know? And writing has always been my way of communicating, and it's always been an easier way for me to be honest, mostly because of all of that trauma, where it's like, you cannot be yourself, otherwise you'll die. 

  Luke Burbank: Write this, like, both sort of overt and covert messaging to you that the only way for you to be allowed in the world is to make sure that you're not ruffling any feathers and that you are doing everything the way you're supposed to do it, essentially. 

  Morgan Parker: Mm-hmm, which is like totally impossible and and also against my spirit, you know so like trying to figure out rebellion, you you know was really hard and confusing because I Wasn't sure what was allowed for me and yeah, there's still a lot that isn't you know what I mean I I think there's a way that even if I'm able to give myself permission I'm hit with all these roadblocks in society So, part of... this book and being so vulnerable in this book was a rebellion against that of all the times I have felt that I'm not allowed and that I am not heard or that I don't have permission to just be or say and provide permission for other people. 

  Luke Burbank: When we come back from this break, I want to talk about what dating is like with this book now being in the world. So we'll get into that and other things with Morgan Parker. The book is You Get What You Pay For. This is Live Wire coming to you this week as part of the Portland Book Festival. We are in Beaverton, Oregon, and we will be back in just a moment. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank, that's Elena Passarello. We're at the Reser Center for the Arts. It's part of the Portland Book Festival this week and we're talking to Morgan Parker. Her latest book of essays is You Get What You Pay For. You mentioned in the book, you talk about going to therapy and you say in the book that's the least black thing you could do. 

  Morgan Parker: I thought that was the least black thing, and I listened to Andy Rock. That's like the line. Like, this is even less black than that. 

  Luke Burbank: What was it like to start your therapy journey and how has it been for you, I guess? 

  Morgan Parker: It's been long, and there's, the book kind of follows all the different therapists I've had since my first one. Not all of them, but you know, defining like my last white therapist, the therapist that I had in college. 

  Luke Burbank: The therapist that made you basically, like, have a final breakup. [Morgan: Yes.] Heart to heart with them. Exit interview. Which seems deeply... [Morgan: It was really painful.] Also deeply unprofessional. 

  Morgan Parker: A little bit, yeah. I mean, that was a weird relationship because it was also, you know, that was moment where I was like, oh, this is for my blackness also. You know what I mean? And I was able to kind of synthesize that in a new way versus thinking, this is my mental health and this is my cultural health to see how they were interacting. And that essay that took place in, I think, 2016? and Michael Brown had just been killed. And that therapist made me explain to her what happened because she didn't know. This was the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Yeah. And that is when I was like, this doesn't feel good. This doesn't like it's helping me. And yeah, it just made me contend with the purposes of therapy, I think, and how it could help all the different areas of my life rather than just being. very narrow minded about my mental health and seeing it as separate from me and the world. You know what I mean? But that's also a product of having started my therapy journey at a time when it was like, just very separate from everything. Like I didn't tell my friends, it was even like just our family, not extended family. It was very just like, oh this is Morgan's little thing. And as I got older and had all these other therapists and all these life experiences and continued to be American. Have really grown to understand the way that my mental health has been influenced by just being a black American woman. And that's been nice to integrate that into my therapy as just part of my mental and part of that wellbeing. 

  Luke Burbank: To realize essentially you're not crazy. Or you are crazy, but. That part, you're not crazy about.

  Morgan Parker: Yes, I am crazy, but there's a lot of things that I thought was my crazy and it's not. It's America's crazy. And that really kind of blew my mind. Obviously, growing up in Christian school, shame is very familiar to me. So I've spent a lot time just being ashamed of my feelings and taking responsibility for them, rather than analyzing all the things that made me think that way. So this book was an exercise in kind of backtracking. Ok, these are the falsehoods I have believed about myself. Where did that come from? 

  Elena Passarello: Is that made you turn to essays, you have three books of poetry, is that sort of, does analysis make more sense in that kind of a format than poetry? 

  Morgan Parker: I think so. I think, you know, this book, it's not anything that I haven't said in poems. I don't think. But in a poem, I can basically say, big pimpin' video, slave ship, and it's just line to line. And the poem does the work. But this is like I write 20 pages about how the slave ship is like the big pimping video. And it's a practice of connecting all the dots, which then. forces you to bring in other voices and theories and history. So as I was kind of breaking down the kind of themes that I usually work with, I just wanted to spend some time really kind of digging deeper. And yeah, just kind of laying it all out very, very clearly. 

  Luke Burbank: You write in this book that situationships are like a wax fruit in a bowl. First of all, for this crowd, can you explain a situationship? And then can you explained why it's like wax fruit the bowl? 

  Morgan Parker: You know, we're just hanging out, you know, we're talking. 

  Luke Burbank:  Undefined like an undefined, something romantic, but without all that commitment. 

  Morgan Parker: We don't, we're not dating, we're hanging out. We're talking which like was... 

  Luke Burbank: I'm of an older generation, so I'm less familiar with it. Is this now, has this become a fairly common default setting in a lot of ways that people are interacting romantically? How big is the situationship problem in America? 

  Morgan Parker: I don't know. It's a big problem in my life, so I can't speak for the rest of you. 

  Luke Burbank: In the America that is Morgan Parker's life, it's a big issue. 

  Morgan Parker: I mean, I do think younger people are doing less formal dating. I can't tell you how many times I've been like, am I on a date? I'm truly not sure, because they just asked me to hang out. But it feels like a date, but no one's going to use those words. So there is a vagueness in how young people court. 

  Luke Burbank: Yeah. Well, in reading this book, I felt like I had such a view into your life and your thought process and the things that have traumatized you and the things that brought you joy. Like, I feel like I really knew you afterwards. I'm wondering, have you been on a date with someone who has read the book? Because I feel like that would be a real unfair advantage for them. 

  Morgan Parker: I keep saying like you have the handbook like you can know everything about all five books. Oh my god You know more than I do about myself, you know 

  Morgan Parker: Take the freebie. [Elena: Give me your homework.] Exactly, this should be easy. You know, I laid out positives, negatives, etc. 

  Luke Burbank: This is the manual for dating Morgan Parker. Yes, totally. But I don't want to keep going toward, this book is full of the whole range of human experience really, but there are some things that you said that really stuck with me more on the emotional side, like The Gap is the best place to cry in public, why is that? 

  Morgan Parker: In New York City at least, definitely. 

  Luke Burbank: What does The Gap have going for it as a place of public crying? 

  Morgan Parker: Honestly, better than the subway, for sure. Better than, like, Sephora or anyone who's gonna try to give you samples. And Sephora. [Luke: At Sephora, they're gonna come over and try to treat it, right?] They're really non-intrusive. I've cried in many a Gap, and they don't bother me when I'm crying. And after I'm done crying, they're like, would you like to try on these jeans? You know? And it's just like, that was kind of a delightful cry. And I'm glad no one bothered me during my little afternoon cry. But there was one next to that white therapist's office that I would just always kind of like go in there and. [Elena: The Gap.] And then just like come down from the therapy. 

  Luke Burbank: Really? 

  Morgan Parker: It's really calming, just like a lot of white t-shirts and, you know, personal basics. 

  Luke Burbank: Are you gonna continue writing essays? Did you find this, the process of making this book and expressing yourself in that way to be rewarding and something you wanna keep doing? Because you're really good at it. [Morgan: Thank you.] Honestly, this is just so well written. 

  Morgan Parker: Thank you. It's fun for me, though, you know, it was painful in a different way than writing even very dark poems was. I think just like being face-to-face with the sentence, the sometimes. But I really do. did fall in love with the form. And I love being in conversation with other techs, so that was a big deal for me. And just to be able to, you know, I love research. I'm just such a nerd that it allowed me to bring in a lot of other disciplines that I'm interested in. So yeah, but I don't know what the essays may be. 

  Luke Burbank: Well, I mean, this also applies to poetry, I would imagine, but it's like your life is a naturally renewing resource. Totally. Of essays, right? You're gonna keep living and the ideas will keep coming, I would assume. Absolutely. Well, well, I hope you keep doing it because this book is a real revelation. Listen, if you see Morgan Parker crying in The Gap, leave her alone, okay? [Morgan: Leave me alone.] Leave her alone, okay. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah, it's all according to plan. 

  Luke Burbank: She's just been in therapy and she's now doing her come down process. The book is You Get What You Pay For. Morgan Parker, thank you so much for coming on Live Wire. 

  Morgan Parker: Thanks, everyone! 

  Luke Burbank: That was the author and poet Morgan Parker here on Live Wire talking to us as part of the Portland Book Festival. Morgan's latest book, You Get What You Pay For, is available for you to read right now. Live Wire is brought to you by Powell's Books, a Portland institution since 1971. Powell's offers a selection of new and used books in stores and online at Powells.com. Hey, it's Luke. Did you know Live Wire is also available as a podcast? Yes, it is featuring the same engaging conversations, live music, original comedy, all the stuff you love on the radio show. But now you can listen when you want to, where you want to go to livewireradio.org to download the podcast or get it anywhere. You get that kind of stuff. You're tuned in to Live Wire, of course, each week. We like to ask our audience a question. And so this week, inspired by the guest that you're about to hear, her name is Georgia Cloepfil, who had her dreams of being a professional soccer player. Those dreams came true for her. We asked the audience a question. Elena, what did we ask the audience? 

  Elena Passarello: We wanted to know when you were a kid, what is the wildest thing that you wanted to be when you grew up?  

  Luke Burbank: Okay, so here's what we did, we actually collected up answers from audience members at a live taping of Live Wire at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon. Let's take a listen to some of the childhood plans for adulthood employment from Carly, who was at the show. 

  Carly: I wanted to be all at once a ballerina, a baker, and an astronaut simultaneously. 

  Luke Burbank: I feel like that's a pretty strong kid move is multiple different sort of jobs that are usually considered to be unrelated. 

  Elena Passarello: Yes, I wanted to be a chef and a professional cheerleader. 

  Luke Burbank: Okay. I went with Marine biologist. I didn't even really know what they did, but I noticed that it made adults seem to like that response. 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah, it sounds like science. They're like, oh, good job. 

  Luke Burbank: It sounds like something that just showed you early on. I was obsessed with what other people thought of me. Like, I also thought like NBA basketball player, like way further into my life than made sense based on any of the feedback I was getting on the basketball court. 

  Elena Passarello: Can I just say, I think Carly's interest in being a ballerina and an astronaut, I think that would help, right? The microgravity, but being a baker and an astronaut, maybe that would make it worse. 

  Luke Burbank: You're absolutely right. Forget waiting for your cake to rise, right? Uh, let's see what Josh had to say about the jobs that Josh was looking forward to having in adulthood, or at least the wild fantasy about those jobs. 

  Josh: When I was a kid, I wanted to be like a Coast Guard helicopter pilot. And I told my grandma that I would fly to her house and then lower down the basket and pick her up. 

  Luke Burbank: Aww. Immediate court-martial. 

  Elena Passarello: But not from grandma. Grandma, you'd be like favorite grandchild forever. Could you imagine having a little bitty face tell you something that sweet? 

  Luke Burbank: Oh, my gosh. Right. Because it's not a statement about being in the Coast Guard. It's a statement about loving your grandma. Let's hear what Shanae had to say about her dreams in adulthood of the kind of work she might do. 

  Shanae Fly Girl, Living Color, kind of like where J.Lo got her start. 

  Luke Burbank: Oh my gosh. 

  Elena Passarello: Yes, yes, at Sunday nights, me and J.Lo and Rosie Perez, Roger rabbiting with limited success on my part, but God, they were so good at it. 

  Luke Burbank: I wanted to be fire marshall Bill, uh, who was not a real person, but a character on that show in Living Color I feel like if you're of a certain generation that we are and that Shanae might be like we were all taking different parts of in Living Color as motivation for our adult life. 

  Elena Passarello: I wanted to be homey the clown, so, you know. 

  Luke Burbank: All right, let's hear one from Mark, something that Mark thought he might be doing wild and fantastically in adulthood. 

  Mark: I wanted to be a duck because then you could fly and swim. 

  Luke Burbank: Do we think like, I mean, I guess ducks swim. They do. They go, I feel like they're more on the surface of the water or in the air than under the water, but would you call it swimming? 

  Elena Passarello: Yeah, I guess that's, it's more gliding. Floating, float, they float. 

  Luke Burbank: I have, I've told you about this before, Elena, I have something I call intrusive animal empathy, where if I just start thinking too hard about animals in the world, I get a little overwhelmed and I live kind of by this pond and when it's very cold in the winter and I see ducks and geese out there, I get very worried about if they're too cold or not. You've studied birds, you've written about birds. Are they getting cold out there? 

  Elena Passarello: You should do a little fun research project into what their feathers, their down, what it's made out of, what it is coated. I mean, they're basically like north facing their way through like polar fleece. They've got a lot of really great water resistance. 

  Luke Burbank: Okay. I've read that stuff, but I always worry that we're overstating it as humans, just because none of us ever been feathered up and sitting on a pond somewhere near my house. All right. Thank you to everybody who answered our listener's question. We really do appreciate that you are tuned into Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank. That's Elena Passarello. Our next guest is a former professional soccer player who got her start right here in Oregon before playing all over the world. These days, she's a writer whose work has appeared in the New York Times Magazine and the Yale Review. Her debut book is called The Striker and the Clock on Being in the Game. And we thought, what better place to talk to Georgia Cloepfil than at the already legendary Sports Bra Sports Bar in Portland. They only show women's sports on the televisions. So take that Buffalo Wild Wings. All right, let's get into this conversation with Georgia Cloepfil. Georgia, welcome to the show. [Georgia: Thank you.] I'm curious if there was a moment for you where you sort of had a realization that you were like a lot better than the other kids on the field. Is that something that came into you? Did you have a moment of saying, oh, I'm actually really, really good at this? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: I feel like you always have to believe that a little bit. For every year of my life, I probably believe that little bit, but I think really more than that, I went to college at a Division III school, so I sort of chose to go the academic route rather than athletic, and there I really sort of stood out athletically, and I think was the first time I was thinking, you know, I don't feel done. I still feel like I have room to grow, when. and wanna continue and wanna find other opportunities to keep playing, and I might be good enough to do that, but you have to have a sort of arrogance the whole time. 

  Luke Burbank: I'm wondering, in the book you write about years later going back and watching some, like a video of the state championship game or a high school game that you played in, and you said you only watched it for a few minutes. You like actually kind of didn't enjoy the experience. What didn't you like about what you were seeing? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: I mean, I think sports are so, soccer for me, is so imbued with nostalgia. I have, you know, memories of times that I don't think quite map onto the reality of those experiences, and. I, yeah, like you said, I didn't stand out in ways that I felt I did once I grew into myself as a player professionally. Probably at age, like, 26 I was playing. Actually, sometimes still, I think, in my indoor league, I'm still playing the best soccer I've ever played. But, you know, intellectually, maybe not physically. But, yeah. So I think I had a hard time reckoning my memories of soccer and myself and how much space it took up in my soul with the person I was, very small on the sideline of the high school game. 

  Luke Burbank: So you played college soccer in Minnesota. And when that was sort of coming to a close, it sounded like you were really sort of trying to decide what the rest of your life was gonna look like. And you came to this point where you realized, I'm not actually done with soccer. I'm gonna go just kind of enter the workforce. What was it about the sport that you weren't done with? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: I think, again, the path that I followed, for whatever reason, led me to this small school where I really thrived and got to be myself and feel super confident on the team. And that led me feel like I had more to give. My book is all about the relationship between myself as a writer and as an athlete, and I'm surrounded by people who had more than one self, and that made me enjoy. the experience a lot more, because it was just like this quirky Division III liberal arts team. So I think that and the success that I had, and also just being a very lost college graduate like everyone is. 

  Luke Burbank: I don't know if you can do this from memory, so no pressure if you can't, but can you name all the different teams that you played on, let's say like starting in college? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: I played at Macalester College. We were the fighting Scots, now they're the Highland cows. So, yes, then I went on to Australia. I played for Ashburton United, a semi-pro team in a suburb of Melbourne, and I played the Melbourne victory the same year. Then I moved to Sweden, I played for Ravelsen IK, which totally never got a good Swedish accent, so I hope they're not listening. And then I went to Korea. I played for Hwacheon KSPO, K-S-P-O outside of Seoul, in Incheon, right by the airport, actually. Really romantic setting. And then, I went, where did I go? I played in Seattle with the Reign for a few months in their pre-season and training. Didn't get a contract. Went to Lithuania to play in the Champions League with a team there called Gintra. And then I came back. played in Norway. I went to Bergen, played for Arna, Arna Bjornar, Little Bears, and then I went back to Seattle, played for the summer, didn't get a contract, went to grad school. 

  Luke Burbank: What? That's quite a journey. There are a lot of great small details in the book about what your life was like in all of these different places, but for folks who haven't been on that journey, what are some things that might surprise people about playing professional soccer overseas, at least in your experience? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: This might not surprise anyone, but it's not so glamorous for a women's soccer player 15 years ago outside of the spotlight in those settings. I made very little money. I have a page in the, I won't spoil it, but I list all my salaries in every country I played. But I did go to Korea because specifically because I could make a living wage there. I think I made like $50,000 in the year, which felt enormous to me. And that was interesting. I said before about how that changes your relationship to the sport really changed the environment of the team in both positive and negative ways. We were all full-time employees, but the drudgery of that, as we all know, definitely overtook the atmosphere in some ways that I was very surprised by as a just earnest American going out to play a sport and chase my little dream. It was a bit of a reality check with. sort of the relationship between money and joy and work. 

  Luke Burbank: So the more money that there was, the sort of less joy there was. 

  Georgia Cloepfil: Which is sort of terrible to hear you say because I'm here thinking like, no, but women's sports needs more money and female athletes should make more. And I think I try to hold both of those truths in my mind. 

  Luke Burbank: I would say that it seems reasonable to think that female athletes should be just as entitled to being miserable and rich. 

  Georgia Cloepfil: Exactly. 

  Luke Burbank: Other athletes. 

  Luke Burbank: I don't think that should be stuck on one side of the scale. You use a phrase in this book that I had never seen before, but I've been fascinated with it now. Because I think it describes something I've experienced, which is arrival fallacy. Can you unpack that? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: It's some sort of, again, I'm a real lay person when it comes to psychology, but it's sort of the concept that we're all colloquially familiar with, that we have this goal in mind. I really just want to get this promotion. I really want to play on this sort of team. And then once we get there, everything recalibrates and now there's something else that we want. And that is very relevant in the life of an elite athlete, because. you will discover there's no end point, and just for all of us, there's not end point if we're sort of goal-oriented striving like that, which is really a key ingredient in the recipe for success for someone in the field of sports, but it's also part of a, yeah, it's a torturous element. 

  Luke Burbank: You know, I hadn't thought about that, but like, I feel like in a lot of areas of life where the advice is, don't try to be fixated on an outcome. Don't try take it so seriously, just let it be what it is and that's where you'll find your happiness. And like none of that applies to elite sports. You cannot just be like, let's go where the wind takes me on this soccer field. Like you have to be totally goal oriented, I mean, literally and figuratively if we're about soccer. Because you have to set an expectation for yourself and a destination and then try to get there, right? So trying to, you know, have some sort of emotional peace within this thing that's almost designed to create arrival fallacy must be kind of a mind-f. 

  Georgia Cloepfil: Totally. That's why, you know, it was really hard. The whole time I'm playing, I'm thinking about when am I gonna stop playing? What am I going to do next? When should I retire? But there's one more year, one more, one year, and so also, you came writing this book, The Same Problem, which is like, how do I end this when I feel like my relationship with soccer didn't ever have a clean break or a very certain end to it? It just sort of like. faded away, like a lot of the things that we love and grow up away from. 

  Luke Burbank: How does it feel for you to be here where we're recording this conversation in the Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon which is a sports bar where the focus as far as the televisions and the Sports that are shown in this bar are primarily if not exclusively women's sports for you as as a Athlete and as a woman. What's it feel like to see something like this? And how do you feel like the progress is going? in terms of how we think about athletes of any gender. 

  Georgia Cloepfil: I mean, there's so much there. I am so thankful that places like this exist now. I was thinking when I walked into the bathroom and the walls were covered in advertisements and pictures of if the whole world was like this, if I could see this when I was a kid, and then I was just thinking this must be how men just feel like walking into a regular sports bar. Really cool, really uplifting, and also, I mean. it. And if you build it, they will come. It's like everything in women's sports. If you put them in a bigger stadium, it will fill. If you'll put it on TV, they'll watch it. If you build a bar like this, the community will form. More important all the time for women, for queer people to have a place to celebrate women's sport. It's always been like a really inclusive thing. And I feel like a bar this really uplifts that, and it's awesome. I'm super happy to be here right now. 

  Luke Burbank: Do you feel like, more broadly, outside of this little cocoon of equality, do you feel you see tangible changes more broadly that are making a real difference in terms of equality in sports? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: Oh, my gosh. Thankfully, the details of my book will be irrelevant really soon. Yeah, I feel, you know, I think Naomi Germa just got a confirmed million-dollar transfer offer from Chelsea. It's the highest in the world ever. Every week, there's some news like that. There's like a hundred more superstars than they were when it was just me and Ham when I was growing up, you know because they have so much exposure on the internet and TV and so much more access. So much more money. All of these things are amazing. I feel like I really resist the narrative that like women's sports is really having a moment So it's like absolutely not a passing moment, right? It's just a growing thing all the time. It's growing so. 

  Luke Burbank: This book tells the story of kind of your journey in soccer and playing professional soccer. It tells that story in a really engaging way. I'm curious though if there were other conversations that you wanted to start with this book, other stories you wanted to tell, what are you hoping people take away from it? 

  Georgia Cloepfil: I mean, I think the biggest thing for me is that it's not really just about sports. It is definitely about sports, I love sports so much, I have my whole life, but I have really enjoyed hearing from people who are, you know, trying to be a traveling musician, or trying to an actor, living out of a suitcase, you know this sort of like how we. engage with our passions, especially as we get older and how we relate to them once they are gone from our lives and the everyday practice of them. I think everyone would have something like that in their life. So I think that to me is part of the core of the book that really everyone can engage with that I think is most important. 

  Luke Burbank: And that will be relevant even when female athletes are getting paid millions of dollars. My point is this book has some durability to it, so you should go get it right now. It's the striker in the club. Georgia Cloepfil, thanks for coming on Live Wire. 

  Georgia Cloepfil: Thank you. 

  Luke Burbank: That was Georgia Cloepfil right here on Live Wire, talking about her new book, The Striker and the Clock, recorded live at the legendary Sports Bra Sports Bar in Portland, Oregon. This right here is the legendary Live Wire radio show, but of course, even legends have to take a break, Elena, so we are gonna take a very quick one, and then we'll be back with more Live Wire. Stay with us. Welcome back to Live Wire from PRX. I'm Luke Burbank here with Elena Passarello. Okay, we have made it to the part of the show that is arguably my favorite, although Elena, you may have some different thoughts on it. This is where we quiz you in a little exercise we call station location identification examination. This is where we talk about a place in the United States that Live Wire's on the radio, Elena has to guess the place that we are talking about. Are you ready? [Elena: Ready.] All right, this place. that I'm thinking of was sort of considered a yellow cake boom town when uranium ore bearing minerals were discovered in the area, aka yellow cake. So this was a place they found yellow cake and it really, I don't want to say exploded the town. That's a very complicated phrase. But it made the town a lot more populated. 

  Elena Passarello: Okay, so we're in the West. There you go. Probably the Southwest. 

  Luke Burbank: Uh-huh. Let me give you a little more help on this. Um, you're definitely in the right part of the world. Um, the world's largest concentration of natural stone arches. We're talking more than 2000 are located just outside this town. 

  Elena Passarello: Oh, so, so Arches National Park, that town is Moab, Utah? 

  Luke Burbank: You're absolutely right. [Elena: Yay!] Very, very impressive. Yes, we are talking about Moab, Utah, where folks are tuning in on KUST-FM, which is part of Utah Public Radio. I love that town. I love Moab. Well, very nicely done indeed. Thank you. Okay, in a moment, we're gonna get to our musical guest this week. But before we do that, a little preview of what we are doing on the show next week, we are gonna be talking to the poet, Joy Sullivan. Um, Joy's poetry has gotten tons of attention, particularly on the internet. And now she's got a poetry collection out. It's called Instructions for Traveling West. And it talks about relationships and, and following your heart. And also the time that Joy lived in the central African Republic next to a monkey named Mendelsohn. Um, we'll get you the full download on that next week. Then we're going to chat with the writer and podcaster Carvell Wallace. Carvell Wallace's profiles of celebrities have been featured in GQ and Esquire and the New Yorker and now he is turning the focus on himself With his new memoir. It's called another word for love and then last but not least We're gonna hear some music from Nashville based singer-songwriter Danielle Durack off of her latest album, which is escape artists. So make sure you tune in for that next week on Live Wire. All right, our musical guest this week is a Latin Grammy nominee who's been re-imagining Brazilian pop music for over 20 years. He's released seven solo albums and even helped write the theme song for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. His latest albums, Curryman and Curryman 2 celebrate the vibrancy of Brazilian culture while tackling the country's complex history so that in his words, we don't give into sadness to laziness. to lack of desire to move on with life, which is not how it feels here in the States these days for a lot of people. Rogê joined us at the Alberta Rose Theater in Portland, Oregon to play us a song. Take a listen. 

  Rogê: How are you everybody? 

  Luke Burbank: And first of all, I've been loving your music since I was turned on to it a few months ago. And then I was reading your background in Brazil and the incredible accomplishments you've had. What was it like for you to go from Brazil to come to Los Angeles and suddenly be in the US where maybe there's less of an awareness of your career and your music? 

  Rogê: Yes, it was six years ago, I came from Rio. I came with my family, my wife and two boys. And in that day in Brazil is not a good time, you know? There's a very complicated, a lot of crisis, political crisis, economical crisis. 

  Luke Burbank: Well, you got here just in time. 

  Rogê: yeah yeah yeah no and i when i arrived here it was very tough too and so but it was was good it was a great challenge and and i'm happy very happy good 

  Luke Burbank: Um, what song are we going to hear? 

  Rogê: Yeah. Do you want something more upbeat or relaxed bossa nova? 

  Luke Burbank: Let's go upbeat, if you're feeling it. What do you think? 

  Rogê: Upbeat. [Rogê performs his song “Existe Uma Voz”]

  Rogê: Thank you. Thank you, thank you very much. Saúde! Muito amor! 

  Luke Burbank: That is Rogê right here on LiveWire. That was Rogêright here on Live Wire performing a tune called Existe Uma Voz from his first solo album, Curryman. All right, that is gonna do it for this week's episode of Live Wire, a huge thanks to our guests, Morgan Parker, Georgia Cloepfil, and Rogê. 

  Luke Burbank: Laura Hadden is our executive producer. Heather de Michele is our Executive Director and our Producer and Editor is Melanie Sevcenko. Our Technical Director is Eben Hoffer. Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid is our Assistant Editor and our House Sound is by Nate Zwainlesk, Eben Hofer and D. Neil Blake, Ashley Park is our Production Fellow. 

  Luke Burbank: Valentine Keck is our operations manager. Andrea Castro-Martinez is our marketing associate. And Ezra Veenstra runs our front of house. Our house band is Sam Pinkerton, Ethan Fox Tucker, Ayal Alvez, and A. Walker Spring, who also composes our music. This episode of Live Wire was mixed by Eben Hoffer and Haziq Bin Ahmad Farid. 

  Luke Burbank: Additional funding provided by the City of Portland's office. of Arts and Culture. Live Wire was created by Robyn Tenenbaum and Kate Sokoloff. This week, we'd like to thank member Phyllis Fletcher of Seattle, Washington, and Laurie Coleman of Portland, Oregon. Also, a very special thanks this week to the great Amanda Bullock and the Portland Book Festival. 

  Luke Burbank: For more information about our show or how you can listen to our podcast, head on over to LiveWireRadio.org. I'm Luke Burbank for Elena Passarello and the whole Live Wire team. Thank you for listening and we will see you next week.

  PRX.