In Praise of Sheryl MacKay and the CBC

As I once said to UBC President Martha Piper in a letter, individual listeners have tremendous power to draw clear, powerful speaking out of people. I was referring at the time to students helping other students be their best and how teachers can help that happen. But the lesson came back to me in a very personal way in a radio interview last weekend.

Late last week, Lucretia and I were doing our thing on Quadra Island, working in the garden and pounding rocks and keyboards, when Sheryl MacKay got in touch with us. She’s the host of North by Northwest on CBC-1 radio, early in the morning on weekends. Sheryl wanted to interview me about sculptures and sculpting, and suggested we do it in the Petley Jones Gallery, where I am currently exhibiting. Her idea was that it would be a lot easier for us to talk about sculptures while walking through a forest of them than to do it in the studio. Our conversation was recorded last Sunday morning, and will be broadcast on North By Northwest this coming Sunday morning, June 14, sometime between 6 and 9 a.m. (Here is the podcast of that broadcast.)

It achieved its major purpose as an interview, which was to communicate the Who, What, Where, When, and Why of my exhibition. But it felt like a real conversation. Maybe it’s just good interviewing technique that it should have felt like that. Or maybe it’s magic.

How does it happen? What does it take to interview well? What does Michael Enright actually do when he talks with people? How about Mary Hynes, or Eleanor Wachtel? Or in the olden days, Peter Gzowski? What do these people do (and I include Sheryl in the group), that makes them so effective in relaxing people and leading them to reveal themselves?

One thing was very important to me last weekend. Some journalists enter interviews so laden by their preconceptions, represented by long lists of questions, that they leave no room to move. It feels like an interrogation or examination to talk to them. It feels like a grilling. It feels awful. But not with Sheryl MacKay. Right at the beginning, while she fiddled with her recorder before turning it on, she said “I don’t have a plan. We’ll just make it up as we go.”

Right away, I trusted her. She wouldn’t impose a preconceived list of questions on me. She didn’t have a message, and there would be no pressure for me to have one. We could relax and enjoy each other, and whatever happened would happen through our interaction. That felt good. I felt free.

Freedom. Trust. Relaxation.

No matter what, though, talking with a microphone in my face is not as easy as talking without one. The fact that the microphone led ultimately to the radio made it ten times worse, and my catastrophic fantasies about my performance didn’t help at all. What if I said something stupid or embarrassing; something that turned people off to my work, kept them away from the gallery, and turned them off to art in general? What about the bloopers I was sure to make? What about this and that and the other thing? That sort of internal yakking in my mind can kill spontaneity as effectively as any interviewer’s preconceptions. It can kill creativity, too, and make an interview an absolute drag for everyone.

It took me a minute or two to notice this, but Sheryl was not just asking questions and recording answers during the interview, and that made all the difference. She was right there with me, second by second, in touch with me through her eyes. This couldn’t happen in a telephone interview, and it might not even happen in the studio. But it sure happened in the gallery, and I appreciated it because it reminded me that we were doing the interview together. It felt like a dance.

Just as I could see myself reflected in Sheryl’s eyes when the light was right, her response to everything I said “showed up” right away in her eyes and in the way she looked at me. Silently, mainly through her eyes but also through facial expressions and body language, Sheryl was responding to what I was saying, second by second, and I could tell what was making sense to her and what wasn’t. Sometimes when I began to speak, Sheryl’s eyes told me she wasn’t going to get it. That allowed me to change direction or change emphasis, even during the same sentence. Before long, I could more or less stop listening to what I was saying and simply say it, attending to the quality of Sheryl’s listening for guidance. And when I needed it, she was there with a new question. All of this helped it feel like a conversation, because that’s how it happens in real life when things are working well.

This doesn’t mean I spent the whole time looking at Sheryl’s eyes. I didn’t, and in fact I couldn’t. We were talking about sculptures, remember, and I was looking at them nearly all the time, touching them, or demonstrating the kinds of motions it takes to create them. But Sheryl was there every single time I needed her, responding silently and helping me along.

Give it a listen and see what you think. I’d love to see you at the Petley Jones Gallery, and I’d love to read and respond to any comments you may have about what I say here. It’s a conversation.

Sunday, June 14, 6 – 9 am.
North By Northwest
CBC-1 690 AM/88.1 FM Vancouver
Here is the podcast of the interview.


My exhibition at the Petley Jones Gallery has been extended a week, to June 20, and there will be a special opening Sunday afternoon, June 14, from 2 – 5. I will be in attendance both Saturday and Sunday at those times.