26 | Success Is In The Moment Of Creating with G

In this episode, Alexis welcomes G, also known as Lowdown G: an actor, writer, musician, director, and creator of the comedy podcast The Lowdown. G opens up about their creative journey, from lucid dreaming scenes to managing a theatre, and how music, plants, and goldfish ground their boundless imagination.

Navigating challenges like mental health and finding joy in imperfection, G shares valuable lessons, including their mantra: “Fail your way to success.”

G has requested anonymity, so there are no socials to share, however, if you’d like to hear more from this talented human, check out “The Lowdown”, anywhere you get your podcasts. 

 

This episode was recorded on 11 October 2024 on the lands of the Woiworung Peoples. We hope that this episode inspires you as a creative person and as a human being.

Thanks for listening, catch you on the next episode.

Psst! We are always on the lookout for creative people to share their story and inspire others. Have you got someone in mind who would love to have a chat? Get in contact with us via Instagram @throughthecreativedoor

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Creative resources from G:

 

BOOKS:

Let’s get social:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/throughthecreativedoor/ 

TikTock: https://www.tiktok.com/@ttcdpodcast

 

CREDITS

Created and Hosted by Alexis Naylor

Music by Alexis Naylor & Ruby Miguel

Edited and Produced by Ruby Miguel

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00:09 - Alexis (Host)

Hello, my name is Alexis Naylor and I am your host here at Through the Creative Door. On behalf of myself and my guests, I would like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on which this podcast is recorded and produced. Owners and custodians on which this podcast is recorded and produced. May we pay our respects to all First Nations people and acknowledge Elders, past and present. On this podcast, I'll be chatting to an array of creative guests, getting a glimpse into their worlds and having some honest and inspiring conversations along the way. I'm delighted to welcome you to Through the Creative Door. Well, hello, G. How are you? 

 

00:54 - G (Guest)

I'm pretty good. 

 

00:55 - Alexis (Host)

I'm so excited to have you here, G. You have touched on so many parts of your craft Voice, actor, performer, musician. You've owned a theatre, you've been a theatre manager, you've I don't know playwright you did so much stuff with plays.

 

01:16 - G (Guest)

 Yeah, yeah, yeah, all that kind of stuff, I'm still a writer, I'm still writing

 

01:21 - Alexis (Host) 

But you are host and creator of this new, what I call it satire comedy podcast. 

 

01:33 - G (Guest)

We're still working it out. Yeah, it's dark satire. Like when I first put it online I said that it was comedy because it didn't really give me enough options. Said that it was comedy because it didn't really give me enough options. You know, and then I don't know. It's just developing. There's a narrative that seems to be developing. It's pretty perverse. 

 

01:55 - Alexis (Host)

I love this. Well, it's called the Lowdown Podcast for those who want to check it out. First question, what does a creative space mean to you and why?

 

02:09 - G (Guest)

It's meant all sorts of things over the years. Look, it is just. It's just a space where my head can run free. So I used to be super tidy. I used to have this tidy space. I had this chair I bought called the pod, that I would sit in and write in, and that was my thing. I sat in the same spot every time and I would get up and walk around and do all sorts of stuff, but that was my space where my mind could run free. Then I had a theatre. 

 

02:42

I love a black space, so I used to love working just in the black, because then your mind can really project on it and I see things very visually. Whatever's in my head, I can literally see it, control it, manipulate it. And if I'm in dark space, like even at the house I live in at the moment I just recently took it down, but I just had a little black thing in the garage so I could just sit in perfect darkness with just the light of my laptop and let my mind go wild. And sitting in that space, everything was so visual so I could examine every element of whatever world I was going into and creating and even when I stepped out of there I'd step out because it had been so intense the film would still be playing in front of my eyes. It was like a reality laid over another reality. 

 

03:42

I can also lucid dream and control my dreams if I choose to. I've been able to do that since I was pretty young. So I would you know, I, when I was writing full-time and I used to write for 20 hours of day and then, yeah, sleep for 10 hours. I sort of lived on a 36 hour clock at one stage when I was writing full-time and I was I getting, but I would wake up in the morning, I would focus in on whatever scene I was writing that day and then I'd go back to sleep and I'd dream it and when I got up, really all I had to do was write it down.

04:22 - Alexis (Host) 

Considering how many things that you've done over the years and obviously your creative journey has not ended, so it's a bit of a hard one to ask, but what is one project or one body of work that you're the most proud of creating, and how did that come about? 

 

04:40 - G (Guest)

I remember when my first major play won some awards and there was a reading at the Arts Centre and I was just curled up in my chair for so long but about halfway through the show I actually managed to listen to the audience and they were laughing their asses off and that was a special moment. But then the theatre. I mean that was the dumbest thing that we could do. We just wasted all our time and money. But the amount of artists that we supported through doing that. There were people doing giant origami, there were people playing music this is the theatre that was feet theatre yes that. 

 

05:23

I did with my partner, Amanda Folson, but also my last band, Sock. That was probably the most liberating thing. We were just a comedy rock duo, except we played sort of a five-piece band. We'd play half a drum kit each. I played bass and guitar and harmonica, played bass and guitar and harmonica, and Ben, my counterpart, played keyboard and Moog and Korg and drums and tambourines and shakers and all sorts of things at the same time. So that was pretty joyful. But then my best work is now joyful. But then my best work is now, um, and it's wild and it's crazy and it's bits and pieces and it's full of mistakes and it's clumsy, um, but through it I'm managing to get out a whole bunch of things that I've always wanted to get out. 

 

06:23 - Alexis (Host)

This is such a great segue into, I think, the next question that I was going to ask, which is what's something that's challenged your creativity and and how did you manage, or how are you managing with that? 

 

06:37 - G (Guest)

I struggled with depression and anxiety for quite a while there and I guess it was when my career started to decline, or at least after my initial successes, which were quite big. You know, I got to. I had a play on at the Malthouse Theatre and I got to play the Sydney Opera House as an actor and I was meeting with all sorts of producers and things as a writer and different studios over, and that I didn't feel comfortable with because I didn't feel like a writer. I never intended to be a writer, although that's what I think I always was from the beginning but when I had my first, even when I was meeting with agents out of drama school, they were like so you're a writer? And I was like no, no, no, I'm just an actor. I just wrote a bunch of stuff because I couldn't find anything that was right. 

 

07:29

And they were like no, no, you're a writer. And so my agent picked me up and managed my writing as well, which was amazing. But then to the mental health thing I was researching. I didn't know whether it was going to be a play or I thought it was going to be a film, and I tried all these different formats and I'm writing as a novel now. As a novel now. But I was hanging out with a bunch of criminals, murderers, bank robbers, all sorts of stuff and I got myself in some pretty wacky situations. But in a terrible situation one day where my life was threatened and I, yeah. Then I got worse. I didn't. Finally, I was diagnosed with PTSD and that took me a long time, a long long time, to deal with. 

 

08:25 - Alexis (Host)

Yeah, is there an object or a thing that you can't live without when you're creating? 

 

08:34 - G (Guest)

My guitars. Really, I always have a guitar. It's my security blanket, it's my therapy, it's my meditation. If I'm stuck with anything, if I'm having any trouble, I just pick up the guitar. I've been playing long enough now that I don't look at my hands, I don't decide what I'm going to do. Most times I just let it play and I guess the emotions or something play the music and and then sometimes the words come out and the words play the music. 

 

09:12 - Alexis (Host)

Do you feel like, as a writer, you know, when you need some something to spark, something like you'll go and play guitar? 

 

09:22 - G (Guest)

Yeah, I mean, music's what I go back to and plants. I'm a a big gardener, and have been since I was a tiny kid, and I, yeah, I love the plants. I also have a goldfish pond with some goldfish in there, and they chill me out as well, yeah, but to me these days it's just more about relaxation and just finding the centre in yourself, and that's the creative space actually that I should have mentioned, which is the calm centre of myself, where my mind's clear and there's nothing fogging me up and then I can do. 

 

09:59 - Alexis (Host)

Well said, well said. If you could give one piece of advice, one nugget of gold to another creative, what would it be, and why? 

 

10:11 - G (Guest)

It's pretty simple and it's actually been said in your podcast it's just stay at it if you want to do it and fail your way to success. I mean, you fail so many times with everything you do. You can paint so many pictures and maybe only one of them comes out. You can write so many things, but then things come out of that. I had a play, I didn't even have a play. 

 

10:41

I was going through my laptop with my partner one day and we were just reading bits and pieces, all this unfinished shit. You know, some of it was super long and there was this one little scene just these two guys looking at a house that they were going to rob, two dumb guys who never grew up, and just hang out with each other and get pissed and play pool my partner's like that's great, that's a great scene. I'd love to see what happens there and I'd forgotten about it. I didn't about it, I didn't recognise it and I was in love and it was new love and now I have two kids from that love. But then I started writing this play and this beautiful love story came out of this simple, dumb piece of writing and we actually performed the Piano Thief a bunch of times and I would like to turn it into a film at some stage.

 

11:57

I'd have to expand it, but the characters are so beautiful and it's just from trying and trying and and putting stuff away as well, like sometimes you think you've got something that you really want to do and you, every time you go out at you, just make a big mess and it destroys you and you know you could just keep going at it until you fall to pieces. But sometimes just putting it away, going all right, I failed there, or maybe I didn't, whatever and then coming back to it and then, and then maybe you find something. Then you know, because we we change as well, like so sometimes there's something you want to do but you can't quite see it. You know you can't quite put a frame on it, you can't quite find the notes, or you can't find the voice, you can't find the key, you can't find the right instrument, and then sometimes it comes back when you least expect it, and there it is. 

 

13:06

And you know, just doing that, like if you I mean not everyone's gonna be successful, but success isn't. You know, there's success and there's success. Success is in the moment of creating think, because a lot of it can be pretty shitty. Like I don't want to be recognised, I'm happy to just do it. I'd like to be my ideas to be recognised. 

 

13:36 - Alexis (Host)

I've said this all along I never, never, wanted fame, never. I mean, I'm not famous, but, yeah, my desire was never to be famous. My desire was for my colleagues and for my peers and people to recognise their work and for that to get accolades. Not yeah, yeah. 

 

13:56 - G (Guest)

I wouldn't mind my work to be famous. Yes, that's what I mean, Because I'd like it to have an audience Like yeah, there are times that I really do have something to say that I think is important and I would like people to get in contact with that. 

 

14:12 - Alexis (Host)

No matter what body of work that you put out, you have all the intention under the sun of how you want that to be perceived, but the reality is, once that body of works out there it that that baby's no longer ours like we can't control what happens with it, and so do you stop yourself from putting that body of work out? Well, no, but it is definitely at the mercy of society. Yeah, to do what it will yeah, yeah, and I like. 

 

14:43 - G (Guest)

I think people are generally smart enough to deal with that. I do worry about the way the internet works, because it is so polarizing and it is based on triggering us. I mean, the whole model is money for your fear you know, we will play on your fear so that we can build our bank accounts, and that's a dangerous model and that needs to be examined, or at least the public need to become more aware of it and more clever about how they use it. 

 

15:22 - Alexis (Host)

Well said, well said. Last but not least, one more question if you could pick another guest, another creative, to come on this podcast and answer these questions, who would it be and why? 

 

15:37 - G (Guest)

There's a friend of mine who is a Melbourne writer, actress Mingzhu Hai, She'd be great to interview. She's a creator. She's done all sorts of crazy stuff over the years. She's in big films and stuff like that, and then she's also just been making art for years in all sorts of things. Nathan Curnow's a playwright who's Victorian at least he's in the rap, I think. Also, well, my cousin and her partner, Jack and Tegan fantastic musicians. I just went to a concert, to an album launch of Vaz the other day for a band called Gold Tooth, Gold Tooth, Gold Tooth and I with a T-U and the what are they called? But they've just released their record so you can check that on Spotify. They're awesome, but they just went to Italy for a year. 

 

16:42 - Alexis (Host)

Oh no, I need to go to Europe to interview them. 

 

16:46 - G (Guest)

Yeah, yeah, but they'll be back. They'll be back, you know, and you'll still be doing a podcast. 

 

16:49 - Alexis (Host)

1. Thank you so much for being on Through the Creative Door. This has been such a blast. ]

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