We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Juan Camillo Garza a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Juan Camillo, thanks for joining us today. How did you learn to do what you do? Knowing what you know now, what could you have done to speed up your learning process? What skills do you think were most essential? What obstacles stood in the way of learning more?
There I was, waist-deep in quicksand. How could innocent dancing lessons over the lovely hills of San Miguel de Allende, Mexico go so wrong? Maybe it was the Curandero I cheated out of $20 in a poker match the night before, maybe it wasn’t. It didn’t matter. All I knew was that my only way out of there was a particularly long, long stick of bamboo just outside my reach. Bad luck.
Fast forward an hour. After retrieving the stick with my shoelace and laying it on the surface of the quicksand horizontally behind me, I worked the makeshift bamboo pole under my hips, slowly shifting my mass until I freed my legs.
You did it again, Juan, I thought to myself. Now you just have to learn to read and write. To share your riveting story with the world.
And I did.
First, I learned the alphabet. Then I learned a couple of words. And then, finally, I was putting together full sentences, paragraphs, and chapters. Unstoppable. A reading and writing machine.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Juan Camillo Garza. If tomorrow I slip and land in a pit of sharp objects, remember me as someone who wrote poems for himself firstly and worked as a hired pen secondly. You can forget the second part entirely — though one pays the bills, the other fills the spirit. We must continually tend to the spirit and identify ourselves with the things that nourish it. Something like that.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
There’s a YouTube video of a Japanese fisherman harvesting Asiatic crabs in -10 degree weather screaming “never give up” that I turn to once or twice a week. I might be serious.
Also, the crossword puzzles on the back of Fruit Loops really made an impression on me. To this day, every time I see a tropical bird I get terribly hungry and need to write. It’s a problem.
Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?
Nourishing Fresh Tangerines? Delicious.
Narrow Flutes Trembling? Don’t be nervous, flute man. Play your heart out.
Nerdy Face Tattoos? Your body, your choice.
National Falafel Time? A great use of government spending.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.juancamillogarza.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juancamillogarza/?hl=en
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/juantwothreefour/