The Desert Will Crack You Open: Finding The Lost Voice
- colin7931
- May 20
- 37 min read
Today Doug opens the container with Greta Morgan.
The open of today's episode focuses on the final days of Doug's father and how in his grief it was nature that spoke to and comforted him.
Doug is then joined by musician Greta Morgan who's new book, The Lost Voice, details her journey of losing her singing voice due to a combination of spasmodic dysphonia and long Covid and the journey of discovery that then unfolded for her in the wilderness.
Sign up for NEWS FROM THE FRONT, Rock Fight's weekly newsletter by heading to www.rockfight.co and clicking Join The Mailing List.
Please follow and subscribe to Open Container and give us a 5 star rating and a written review wherever you get your podcasts.
Send your feedback, questions, and comments to myrockfight@gmail.com.
Click Here To Listen On Your Favorite Podcast App
Or Just Click The Player Below!
Episode Transcript:
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:00:04.080 - 00:08:01.970
Welcome to Open Container. I'm Doug Schnitzspahn. I'm a journalist, writer, and overall lover of the outdoors.
I fought wildfires, reported on national politics, published magazines, and I have come eye to eye with a fisher cat on the Continental Divide.
On this podcast, we're going to have an open conversation about culture, conservation, policy, business issues that matter the most to the outdoor community.
Let's get some when my father was dying, I was spending time in the small mountain town of Green Mountain Falls, Colorado, writing a book about the trails, the art, the people and the wildlife of this community that harbors the Green Mountain Arts Festival, with its installations and a long history of people coming to escape their lives and find peace in the mountains.
The highlight of the town is the James Turrell skyspace, an installation with a retractable roof that opens to the changing sky at sunrise and sunset. The artist designed a light show that harmonizes with the sky's colors. I found such peace in that place.
Lying on my back, watching the slow shift of hues, the colors spoke to me in a language beyond language. They made me realize that our brains are so much larger than our day to day expressions. That's the point of art really, to speak beyond words.
And in those colors moving gently above me, I felt a kind of peace and the understanding of something cosmic. Later I visited another installation, Earth Speaks, but by Osage artist Brook Smiley.
It was simple, just a set of benches shaped like a bear paw placed beside a creek lined with cottonwoods. I had come to town to work on this book, but sitting there, hearing nothing but the water, staring at the bare branches, I felt something.
I knew I needed to see my father and I rushed back for what would be the final time I was with him while he was alive. Cancer was hollowing out his body. He was barely able to speak, just whispers of love. I held his hand. In the morning, he was gone.
Here's the thing about grief. It's both crushing and useless, and yet it compels you to speak, to say something, to sing, to express the fullness of what you feel out in the wild.
We don't need our everyday voices. We don't need explanation. We don't need the dull parsing of AI or academic research. We need expression, raw, full of motion and complexity.
A great professor I once had at the University of Washington, William Dunlop, a lover of opera and literature, told me that music expresses emotion with more detail than words. After my dad was gone, I longed to find that music again in everything.
In the cottonwoods, in the creek, I Returned to the sky, space, the roof open to sunrise. I've had other moments in the wild, during times of pain or uncertainty, when I've heard the most beautiful sounds.
A creek that feels like it's singing in the distance, Wind rattling aspen leaves, the far call of a red tailed hawk along a ridge. In the fog of grief, I wanted the outside world to speak clearly to me, to help me understand loss and remind me of who I could still be.
Shaped by love and memory, thinking on the finality of loss and beauty of being.
I keep finding solace in Rilke's ninth Duino Elegy, one of my favorite poems he writes, but because truly being here is so much, because everything here apparently needs us. This fleeting world which in some strange way keeps calling to us, us, the most fleeting of all. Once for each thing, just once, no more.
And we too, just once and never again. But to have been this once completely, even if only once, to have been one with the earth, seems beyond undoing. In winter, the quiet is a landscape.
My brother came out to be with me and my mom. To mourn my father and help us through what felt like the last chapter of our family's life together.
We took a trip one clear day in late January to Barr Lake, a refuge on the eastern plains where you can see the snowy peaks of the Front Range to the west and the endless prairie stretching east. I've gone there often to see birds. Pelicans, ospreys, small songbirds in the trees. It's always full of birdsong. But that day there were none.
No birds, no sounds, nothing. Just the white frozen lake beneath snow, the mountains rising behind it. So quiet. And in that silence, I felt crushing and beautiful.
The full breath of grief. To know that someone you love is gone, that you can no longer hear their voice, that they can no longer guide you.
That emptiness stood in front of us. And yet it didn't feel crushing. Instead, it felt as if I could see and feel infinity throughout myself. Across time, there were no words.
But still a voice within me whispered that even the most profound sadness could live beside hope. This is what the world tells us if we're quiet enough to listen. That loss and beauty, heartbreak and wonder can coexist.
My guest today understands voice and loss and how to create art where they intersect. I first saw Greta Morgan performing with her project Springtime Carnivore, opening for Jenny Lewis in Boulder.
I was immediately captivated by her lyrics, her voice, her presence.
Later I learned she lost her voice to long Covid and spasmodic dysphonia we had a beautiful conversation for Elevation Outdoors magazine about that experience, about how even in the midst of loss, she discovered new meaning and found a new voice. It happened in the wilderness of the Utah desert.
Out of that journey, she created a luminous instrumental album called Desert Lullabies and a book, the Lost Voice, which comes out today.
Greta Morgan is a songwriter and storyteller who has performed internationally as a touring member of Vampire Weekend and has fronted the musical projects Springtime, Carnivore, Gold Motel, and the Hush Sound. She lives in the Hudson Valley, where she enjoys creek swimming and stargazing.
Her first book, the Lost Voice, is a poignant, tenacious memoir chronicling how she rediscovered her artistic voice after losing her ability to sing. Now let's open the Container with Greta Morgan. Okay. Well, I am overjoyed to have Greta Morgan here today on Open Container.
Greta is a musician and the author of the new book the Lost Voice. Been wanting to get her on for a long time, and so glad to finally see you here today, Greta.
Greta Morgan
00:08:02.210 - 00:08:03.890
Thank you so much for having me.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:04.530 - 00:08:13.950
I think we're going to hop right in and ask you a question. Before we really talk about what happens in the book, I want to ask you, what is voice? What is voice to you?
Greta Morgan
00:08:14.350 - 00:08:38.150
What is voice? The writer John Colapinto has a great definition to me, which is, quote, the self escaping into the open. End quote.
So I think that, to me, I like that definition because it can be both a metaphorical or a physical voice. I do think voice is the way that we move things from the inner world to. To the outer world.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:08:38.230 - 00:09:01.350
I love that.
So I think then to get started, I know you've told the story so many times at this point now, and it's also in your book, but I think that people really need. It's a compelling story, and I think people really need to know your story. You know, what is the basic plot of really your book?
The Lost Voice and how you were diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia.
Greta Morgan
00:09:01.910 - 00:13:12.740
Yeah. So firstly, I had been a songwriter my entire life, basically since I was old enough to climb up on the piano bench.
I was writing songs, and I became a professional musician with a wild streak of beginner's luck with my first band called the Hush Sound. So we started when I was 15, signed when we were. When I was 17. I went on an arena tour as an opening act while I was still a Catholic school virgin.
I was, like, on a rock and roll tour as this incredibly innocent, innocent, sweet darling. So I started very young, and I was a professional musician for 16 years, and by 2019, I had made eight records with three different bands.
As a songwriter, I had also started accompanying other artists. I played with Jenny Lewis. I joined the band Vampire Weekend as a touring member.
And with Vampire Weekend, we were touring all over the world and playing arenas, and I was singing my heart out every night. And all through that time, I never, ever had an issue with my voice. I have never canceled a show. I've never been.
I've never missed a day of recording. Like, my voice was so steady and so reliable, and I never considered that it could disappear in such a sudden and strange way.
But in 2019, I was doing very intensive VOC training to prepare to make a solo record that I wanted to really showcase my kind of four and a half octave ability to sing. And I've been doing really intense training.
And I notice while training, sometimes in the very high part of my voice, there would be these little flickers, little wobbles. And I noticed it the first time when the band was on tour in Australia during one of the worst wildfire seasons in history in Australia.
And I thought, oh, it's just jet lag. Oh, it's just smoke. Oh, it's just. It's just. It's just. It's just. But then when we.
Months later, when we played a festival in Florida during a weekend when all the other festivals had been canceled because of COVID I came back and was very sick with a super high fever, and it appeared to be Covid. It was in a Covid hotspot.
And after that, when I signed on to Zoom a couple weeks later to continue vocal training, there was just this sudden change. Like, the top half of my range was gone. My voice was shaking uncontrollably. When I tried to hold a steady pitch, it was very hard to control it.
And I had been misdiagnosed with acid reflux, which is a very common misdiagnosis. And it took many months to finally get the right care. And I was diagnosed by an ent, by a neurologist, by a speech therapist, by another ent.
I went into all of them, and I didn't tell the second, third, and fourth opinion what I'd been diagnosed with. I just said, can you tell me what's wrong with my voice? And all of them said the same thing. So, yes, Spasmodic dysphonia is.
It's basically a glitch in the limbic system of the brain. So when you're singing, your vocal cords are supposed to stay open.
When you want to hold a note, but when you have dysphonia, your vocal cords slam shut involuntarily. So it makes it very hard to hold even pitches, very hard to project, very hard to go through different parts of the range.
And there's also just, like day to day complete variability. So some days I'll have pretty good access and my voice will sound pretty good.
And then I'll have a, you know, a stressful experience at work, or I'll almost get in a car accident, but just narrowly miss. And then my voice will be totally wobbly and out of control. So the limbic system of the brain is the emotional center.
So it's basically like having a tremor in my voice box that turns on and off depending on a whole number of different things.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:13.380 - 00:13:27.780
And this is, you know, it's like someone else walking up and waking up and not being able to walk or not being able to see. I mean, your voice is such a born in part of who you are and your identity and who it had been for so long.
Greta Morgan
00:13:28.980 - 00:13:43.700
Yeah, definitely. One of my friends who's a visual artist, she was like, that's. That would be like if I woke up and was colorblind. You know, I think everyone has.
Everyone has their own ability or their own version of what it would be like to lose the core ingredient that.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:13:43.700 - 00:14:09.660
Makes you you, and you really get into, I mean, I think all of this and your, you know, your life as a musician really well in the book for people who want to learn more. But then the amazing thing to me about your story is how you were able to move on from there.
And I think a lot of that started with you heading out to the wilderness, specifically to Zion National Park. Right?
Greta Morgan
00:14:09.660 - 00:15:43.810
Yeah. So in the summer of 2020, my voice was wobbling out of control. The world had spiraled out of control.
You know, it was the first summer of the pandemic, and I found out my house was full of toxic mold, Which I thought, well, certainly that could be contributing to what's wrong with my voice. So when you have mold in your house, you have to throw away anything fibrous, which is essentially everything.
It's clothes, it's mattresses, it's books, it's anything into which a mold spore could lodge. So I was pushed into this radically simplified version of self, and I had to give away and junk almost everything.
I kept my instruments and I kept a couple really prized possessions in a storage unit in Los Angeles. But suddenly I could go anywhere, and there was really no reason to stay in Los Angeles and pay top rent when the city was under lockdown.
So I decided at that point I could be safe anywhere. I'm isolating. I'm going to go and live in a hotel in Zion national park right outside in Springdale. Spring down for, for a month.
And I intuitively I just thought if I vocal rested for two weeks, it would go away. Like, I just thought I need to give myself a factory reset. That's it.
So I went there and I went on this kind of self guided silent retreat hoping it would cure my voice. It didn't cure my voice, but it, it completely woke my spirit up.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:15:44.050 - 00:15:49.410
What were some of the. Didn't you had an experience where you met a lifelong friend there as well, Right?
Greta Morgan
00:15:49.410 - 00:15:53.870
So I did, yeah. Yeah. I. In the book she's Sadie Lenhart.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:15:54.190 - 00:15:54.750
Okay.
Greta Morgan
00:15:54.750 - 00:16:20.430
I'm changing names to protect the privacy of people, but she. Yeah, I met one of my really, really close friends who is a wilderness guide and a photographer and just such a wonderful, wonderful person.
And she brought me on my first wilderness fast, you know, like four days alone. And we did it in Bears Ears National Monument. But it was one of the biggest kind of spiritual experiences of my life.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:16:20.590 - 00:16:24.890
And then how did those experiences reflect what you were going through at the time?
Greta Morgan
00:16:25.130 - 00:18:02.290
I think when people. Well, I'll speak from, from my own experience. I had gone through this. I'd had this experience where the thing that made me me had disappeared.
And I had so many questions in that moment. All I wanted to know was, how do I heal my voice?
And when I was out in the wilderness on this solo camping trip, one of the answers that I got was, you'll get your voice back when you figure out what to say. But it felt like a paradox, it felt like a riddle because I was like, what do you.
How am I supposed to figure out what to say if I don't have my singing voice? But that was almost like this little intuitive thread. It was like a little, almost like a little seed that I planted.
And I wouldn't understand it for a really long time, but I do think being in. I think being in wilderness areas is one of the best way to return to the truest, most simplified version of ourselves.
Because we're unmatched from the group energy and we're kind of unmatched from other people's expectations of us and other people's pictures of what we should be doing and how we should be living. And it can be for, for me at least, it's just a sigh of relief and an opportunity to be nothing and to be no one and to just be witnessing.
And I do think it's from those places of a kind of psychological almost like disappearance. Like I don't have to worry about being me for a few days. All I have to do is sit back and watch the natural world.
Counterintuitively, I think that is how I have found the truest version of myself.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:03.330 - 00:18:22.060
Sure. And that's such a switch from the life you've been living since you were 16, right.
Where you were performing, where you were always on stage, where you were always had to put out a form of yourself to the world. Right. An identity. You always had to showcase an identity, broadcast an identity.
Greta Morgan
00:18:22.220 - 00:18:26.380
Yes, exactly. Yeah, right. I always was playing. I was always Greta.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:27.980 - 00:18:30.540
And all the attention is always on you too, right? You're on stage.
Greta Morgan
00:18:30.780 - 00:18:58.240
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think also there's the kind of physiological things that happen when you're a performer also are very powerful.
Like the amount of dopamine that you experience from playing in arena, you know, it's like it can really, really offset the sort of pleasure pain principle in the brain. And so for. For me, being in the wild world is an opportunity to just really reset my body and my nervous system.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:18:58.560 - 00:19:19.310
Well, I think you have a great.
There's a great part in the book where I think a woman who runs a costume store in Joshua Tree kind of warns you, or maybe not warns you, but tells you that the desert will crack you open. Right. Is what she says to you. So how did that happen? How did the desert crack you open? What was inside when you were opened?
Greta Morgan
00:19:19.790 - 00:20:36.660
Yeah, well, I feel like the desert does have an extractive quality. The thing I kept thinking about is bentonite clay, which some people use to draw poisons out of the skin.
Some people take it internally to draw toxins out. The desert had this quality of. Of. Of bentonite to me.
Like, it kept drawing from the deepest parts of my memory, these thoughts, reflections, dreams, feelings, ideas that felt unearthed as if for the first time in many, many, many, many years. So I just felt that kind of extractive quality. I also have wondered, you know, I. When I was in Zion, I would ride my bike through the canyon.
I think it's about 16 or 17 miles all the way in and back down that road. And I would do it in the early morning hours when it was cool, and I would do it around sunset when it was cool.
And I do think also there was something about the motion of being on my bicycle that the embodiment of that act which I had Done so often when I was a kid. It brought through my body this kind of physiological memory of things I hadn't touched since I was like 3, 4, 5, 6 years old.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:20:36.980 - 00:20:48.260
Interesting. And I mean, as a songwriter, you delve into the deep and uncomfortable parts of yourself too, right?
But this was something even deeper, even more different than the kind of thing you would do in a song.
Greta Morgan
00:20:48.740 - 00:21:53.030
Yeah, it was, it was much. It was much more. I think when I was there, all I wanted was to heal my voice. So I wasn't trying to.
I wasn't trying to turn my experience into something I wasn't worried about. Like this needs to become a song or I need to make my next record or whatever.
It was a very rare moment where I gave myself the opportunity to not produce and to just kind of receive and to rest and yeah, the. Again, it's kind of counterintuitive. It's like the moment that I was like, you don't have to make anything, you don't have to do anything. Just.
Just let your voice heal.
It was during that time that I started to hear kind of a narrative voice in my head that was able to tell stories, that was able to find humor in my experience, that was able to notice things. I think being alone and being in silence, I started to entertain myself.
And the voice that was entertaining me at that time is now the voice that's on the page in the book.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:21:53.670 - 00:22:30.340
Sure, yeah. And you took your. I mean, already you were a great writer as a songwriter, which I think personally is probably harder than writing prose or deeper.
And then, you know, you took it and transformed it into this beautiful book, which I have to say after reading it, is really fantastic.
I think for a first time writer where not only is your each sentence is beautiful and well thought out, but I think the arc of the book is really incredible too, where you're able to tell so much of your life story while at the same time this horrible losses going underneath. And then in the end, in the last chapters, you. You bring it together in such a beautiful, lyrical kind of way.
Greta Morgan
00:22:30.660 - 00:23:01.530
Oh, thank you. Yeah. In a way I really thought this book marks the end of this chapter of my life.
And so I wanted to encapsulate the most beautiful and also most horrific parts of having been a professional musician. At the time I was writing the book, that's what I thought. Now I'm like, there might be, you know, I want to make more instrumental music.
I want to use my voice even when it sounds real weird and broken like I want. Now I'm Kind of feeling more musical curiosity.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:23:01.770 - 00:23:25.090
I think there's a point in the book when you talk about, you know, when you were singing with your. With your new voice now, you know, without the range, you were putting a song together.
And you mention how it made you think of the weeping Rock in Zion, that you were all of a sudden, the way that rock is lush and, you know, ferns grow out of it and water seeps out of it, that you kind of saw that metaphor in yourself now, where you were.
Greta Morgan
00:23:25.490 - 00:24:08.910
Yeah, well, I had an experience when my voice was gone where it felt like my femininity, my sensuality, my attractiveness had. Everything had disappeared with my voice. My voice was such a source of nourishment.
And for those who haven't been to Zion national park, there's this formation called Weeping Rock, and it's sandstone, which is very porous. So there's, like, ferns and orchids and all these gorgeous plants that are growing out of what looks like solid rock.
And the way they do it is from sucking the moisture from very deep inside of it. But when my voice started coming back in a way, I was able to sing again, a way I was able to use.
I did feel like this inner nourishment had come back.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:24:09.069 - 00:24:24.100
Yeah. And then you started to create again as well. Right?
I mean, I think when I first met you, first talked to you, you had just released this instrumental album, Desert Lullabies, which is beautiful. And. And that was a way for you to reclaim some creativity, I guess.
Greta Morgan
00:24:24.740 - 00:24:42.420
Yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, that was the first fully instrumental recording I'd ever made, and it's some of my favorite music that I. It's. Yeah, I.
I really like that record. It came so effortlessly.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:24:42.740 - 00:24:52.510
What was, you know, what was the transference? What was the, you know, what you felt in the desert? How did that come out differently in the music that you then recorded?
Greta Morgan
00:24:52.590 - 00:25:49.000
You know, I think when we communicate in clear language, even if it's a poem, which can be intentionally ambiguous, but when we communicate in words and language, we are aspiring to give the listener a certain level of clarity.
Whereas I think when we're communicating in music, it's almost like the part of the body and the brain that is below thought, that is what's communicating and also that's what's responding. So to me, instrumental music is like more body to body or soul to soul or. It's kind of hard to articulate. It's almost like being in a dream.
Like, you don't have to understand it. There's not a clear Narrative logic, there's just mostly feeling. It's very dense with feeling.
So to me, the instrumental music is so highly concentrated with that kind of meaning that is so far below conscious thought.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:25:49.480 - 00:26:00.440
And there's this piece on there called Love is Not a Mystery To Me Anymore. Was that something that you felt when you're out there? Was that a specific feeling you had in the desert?
Yeah, I think that's my favorite song on there, too.
Greta Morgan
00:26:00.679 - 00:26:22.410
Oh, good. That's so sweet. Well, I have to shout out Lucia Berlin. That is a title of one of her short stories, which is one of my favorite.
But it's certainly a feeling that I had there, which is just that love is aliveness to me. That's the answer. Love is not a mystery anymore. Love is anything that makes me feel more alive.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:26:22.650 - 00:26:39.700
And when you were at your lowest out in the desert, what were? You know, were there certain places or things you saw or specific experiences you had out there that really felt. Made you feel okay?
That made you feel that deeper sense?
Greta Morgan
00:26:40.260 - 00:27:23.180
Yeah. Well. So when I was in Zion, I didn't yet know what the true diagnosis of my voice was.
So it was at the end of my time there, I went back to Chicago and was diagnosed and spent months, you know, working with a speech therapist, working with a neurologist, doing all these things to try to access a steady singing voice. And finally, the following year, I went back to the desert, to Escalante for this.
I didn't mean for it to be so symbolic, but I was there for 40 days. That's like how the Airbnb discount crunched.
Like, I didn't mean to do my Jesus time in the desert, but I just so happened I was there for 40 days leading up to my 33rd birthday.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:27:24.380 - 00:27:25.340
The Jesus year.
Greta Morgan
00:27:25.660 - 00:28:20.580
Exactly. Exactly. But it was during that time after my diagnosis that that's when I sort of slowly began surrendering to what was happening.
And it was once I surrendered to what was happening that the really interesting transformation started happening, which was this question of what. What can voice be? You know, one of the things I talk about in the book, like, I. At that point, I redefined voice as any expression of my heart.
And so by that definition, my voice could be the way I listened to someone. My voice could be picking up trash on the trail. My voice could be drawing my voice.
You know, anything that felt like it was a true, direct, pure expression that was my voice. And it was really through that framework that the writing started coming.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:20.740 - 00:28:41.540
And I think one of the things I admire about you as little as I know you just from your perspective.
Professional work is how fast you moved into, you know, not feeling sorry for yourself, but how fast you made desert lullabies, how fast you came out with this book so soon after wanting to write it and got into that process of healing and creating. Right.
Greta Morgan
00:28:41.700 - 00:28:50.430
I'm glad it feels fast to you. To me, I'm like, this has been the most intense five years of my life. Oh, yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:28:50.750 - 00:29:15.310
And I know it's hard too. I mean, it's almost hard for me to ask you these questions because I know someone who's dealing with a health issue right now.
There's nothing worse than having to encounter people all the time and have to tell them what's going on and have to tell the same story again and have to go through it all again and again every time. But does it feel, you know, as you said, this feels like the end of this chapter. Does it feel good in that way?
Does it feel like you've rounded the corner?
Greta Morgan
00:29:16.260 - 00:30:32.150
It feels like everything I thought I was dissolved and then I am now kind of reformed as a version that feels so much more durable and resilient and true. And yeah, in a way, it's almost like I spent five years in. It's like getting a five year PhD in uncertainty and intuition.
I mean, really, I feel like I have just been in the dark, grasping for the next step and just very slowly putting together a new version of life where I'm able to share my voice, I'm able to work, I'm able to support myself. You know, I'm not able to tour. I do. In addition to my vocal issues, I've had long Covid with very intense physical ramifications.
So, yeah, I'm feeling very grateful. I mean, I'm on the other side of the country and I feel in a way like I'm on the other side of this huge chapter of the challenge that I was in.
It does feel like I'm starting fresh.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:30:32.870 - 00:31:04.700
That's great to hear. That's really good.
Maybe to take it somewhere lighter, I did laugh when there was a chapter in the lost voice called no home, no partner, no job, which when I see that, I just think of 90% of the people in the outdoor industry or the way we want to live as a ski bum or something. And that really is dealing with where you were in your musical career at the time, which wasn't good.
But in a way now, having no home, no partner, no job, does that feel liberating or does that feel okay? Or can it at for certain Points in our life, I guess.
Greta Morgan
00:31:05.100 - 00:31:58.770
Yes. Well, I think everybody's journey of healing and discovery is totally different. And at that time I did need solitude as the ultimate teacher.
And now that I'm on the other side, almost, you know, five years later, now the teachers are community partnership, building a home. Now the, the teachers are commitment. Like the biggest teacher for me is, is committing to people, committing to places, committing to work.
But I do think that five year chapter of essentially wandering and being nomadic, that set me up to be able to do this and to be able to want this. I wish everyone could have a wandering chapter in their life, whatever it is, a year, two years.
Like, I wish everyone could just be absolved all of their responsibility for a brief period of time. To be able to have that if they wanted it, if they chose it, it.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:31:59.010 - 00:32:07.810
Yeah, yeah. It's important, I think, isn't it?
That's where you can shed the ideas that other people might want to put on top of you and then find out who you are.
Greta Morgan
00:32:08.290 - 00:32:09.330
Yeah, exactly.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:32:09.730 - 00:32:16.370
When you're out in the wild, what kind of music do you hear in that space?
Greta Morgan
00:32:18.450 - 00:32:48.870
Oh, I mean, I just. I love the soundscape in the Catskills. I love the whoosh of hawk wings. I love coyote cries. I love the bubble of the creek.
I love listening for the slightest sound I possibly can, like the sound of a leaf landing on water. I love hearing owls here. I love the way the wind howls at night. God, the soundscape here is so amazing.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:32:49.270 - 00:33:07.890
Yeah. And that's interesting. I mean, my wife, who's a poet, wanted me to ask you this question specifically.
Was, you know, do you experience nature and landscape sonically? Maybe more so than someone who would experience it just visually or just, you know, tangibly?
Greta Morgan
00:33:08.610 - 00:33:48.530
Well, I do. So much of music is pattern recognition. Basically. The heart of all great melody is theme and variation.
You know, like Beethoven's, you know, dun dun dun dun. There's the theme and then we go dun dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, whatever.
So sometimes when I'm walking, I will hear like a three note bird melody. And a person who's not a musician might hear that and it just. Then it disappears and they keep walking.
But in my mind I automatically start like looping or building a pattern or reiterating it. So it's almost like being able to remix.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:33:49.490 - 00:33:50.500
That's great. Yeah.
Greta Morgan
00:33:50.890 - 00:34:06.010
In my brain, in real time. That does happen to me, but it also happens to me like with the dishwasher, when the dishwasher will go like. So it's not only the natural world.
It's just, I think, sounds and patterns.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:34:06.730 - 00:34:12.090
But do you hear something? When you get out of the natural world, though, you can kind of be more surprised, right, than the mundane stuff in the house?
Greta Morgan
00:34:12.810 - 00:34:14.170
I think so, yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:34:14.410 - 00:34:18.300
Has anything surprised you recently that you've heard or seen outside?
Greta Morgan
00:34:20.380 - 00:34:23.340
Well, I've had some great. I saw a fisher cat.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:34:24.300 - 00:34:25.140
Amazing. Yeah.
Greta Morgan
00:34:25.140 - 00:35:00.230
I mean, I've actually seen two fisher cats, but I saw a huge one in my backyard. I saw. I had a very close encounter with a river otter at my creek spot where I read tons of bears. I mean, that's the thing.
I'm the most excited for spring because I'm excited for the bears to wake up. What else has really surprised me? I've been seeing a lot of foxes lately also, Strangely, I've been seeing so many owls during the day.
Like in the middle of the day, the owls have been out. I just feel like I'm in Twin Peaks now. But that's been really peculiar.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:35:01.350 - 00:35:14.910
And are you the type of person who has a totem animal or puts meaning on different animals you see or see them come into your life at a certain time for certain reasons, or do you just see them as animals you observe in the natural world?
Greta Morgan
00:35:14.990 - 00:36:09.780
I mean, I did actually an entire wilderness vigil with this question which is like, is there a hierarchy of holiness? You know, is a. Is a bear holier than a hawk? Holier than a salamander, Holier than a tick?
And the answer I came up with for myself is just that holiness is. Exists in the. In the interaction between two beings. It's like the magnetic force between two beings.
So someone could have a very holy encounter with a dragonfly, and they might not have a holy encounter with a bear, whereas someone else will have a bear be their holiest animal and not care at all about a hawk or, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I think it's. It's sort of like the way beings. I should say it's like the way human beings have connections.
You know, like you and your wife have a very different connection than the person you decided not to marry, let's say.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:10.020 - 00:36:10.580
Of course.
Greta Morgan
00:36:11.540 - 00:36:21.620
Yeah. So I don't have a particular. I don't have a particular hierarchy of holiness in the wild world. I do think it's just.
It depends on every day and on receptivity.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:36:23.140 - 00:36:28.100
Are there some animals recently that you've had a special communion with or conversation with?
Greta Morgan
00:36:28.580 - 00:38:12.970
Well, so I think about it. I think about nature as a mirror for our own psyche.
And that we can take a question out to the land and if we spend enough time there, we will get an answer. So one example. In 2021 and 2022, I was in a relationship with someone who, you know, was going through a divorce.
I'll keep this very short and not too personal, but basically was not, not quite as available to me as I would have hoped. And I was on a. I was in Utah at the time and I saw this hawk fly across the sky with an egg in its mouth.
Like it probably stolen a jay's egg, stolen egg from the nest. And the knowing in that moment was, there goes my chance to have a family.
Like, if I stay with this person, like the egg has been stolen from the nest, like if I stay with this person, I won't really get to parent his kids. I won't have my own kid. There goes my chance. And it was just this moment. It happened in less than one second.
And I knew as much as I love this person, as good as he is, as wonderful as he is, I can't be in this relationship anymore. So that's more how I experience the natural world. I'll go with a question and I will have an experience that will provide a particular answer.
And I do think, you know, I think signs mean what we want them to mean. Yeah, a lot of times. So we're, we're imbuing our own sense of human meaning onto whatever we are seeing. But. Yeah.
Yeah, I don't know if that's a very roundabout answer to your question.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:38:13.290 - 00:38:22.600
Oh, I think that's a beautiful answer. Yeah, I mean, that's reading, right? That's the same way we read.
You're reading the natural world the same way you would read a, a book or a text, I guess, right?
Greta Morgan
00:38:22.600 - 00:38:23.640
Yeah, totally.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:38:24.600 - 00:38:43.800
So.
And you've gone on, you know, you went on your 40 day pilgrimage for being 33 years old and you know, you've gone on pilgrimages, you know, in other ways, in the natural world. So is, you know, I guess you have a complex idea of spirituality then that's rooted in the natural world or how would you explain that?
Greta Morgan
00:38:44.520 - 00:38:50.930
Yeah, well, firstly, I will say I'm not trying to sell this idea to anybody.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:38:51.250 - 00:38:52.210
No, of course not.
Greta Morgan
00:38:52.290 - 00:39:55.719
Yeah. But I feel like our bodies are just little pinched off pieces of earth.
It's almost like Earth is the gigantic globe of clay and we are all just pinched off little pieces of clay that have been animated and we are now having our own experiences. And that when we sort of tune back into this sounds so cheesy. To put in words like the mother.
You know, we're like when you, when you just go and sit, sit and experience your relationship with the planet that you are from, that. That is a. That is a certain kind of holiness that's so easy and non dogmatic and that so many of our answers can just come from being in that space.
And that it's so simple. It's, it's. It's so simple, it's available to everyone. And I don't think that we need an operator to reach God.
Like for me, it's just sitting by the creek, not selling this idea to anybody. Not selling it. It's just what's working for me.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:39:55.720 - 00:40:07.320
You're selling it pretty well to me right now. I'm on board. And how does that kind of.
How do you think your deeper worldview like that, how does that bleed through into your work, into your creativity, into the music you make?
Greta Morgan
00:40:08.060 - 00:41:26.460
Hmm. I think most of my answers and my clarity come from moments when I'm alone in the wild world. And that's how I know what work to do.
That's how I know sort of how to behave in relationships. That's how I know how to show up in the world. So, yeah, for me, it's really a process of just listening. Like sit. It's really so simple.
If I bring a question to the creek and sit there long enough, I will have an answer. Sometimes the answer is, you can't know that yet. You know, sometimes the answer is, come back in three weeks. But most of the time it's very simple.
And so much of what has gotten in my way as a human being or as an artist or in relationship is static. And it's bullshit and it's false belief and it's other people's projections. And all of that bullshit just burns away.
When I'm alone in a natural environment. There's no place for it to grow.
There's no place for something untrue to grow when you're leaning against a 300-year-old cottonwood tree, like there's just no room for any of it. So to me, that's how I can access a kind of truth very, very easily. And it's free.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:41:29.980 - 00:41:58.910
That's a great point. Right? It is very free and it's easy to do and it doesn't take, you know, it doesn't take the complications of the world you were living in. Right.
As a musician, I think, you know, you have it in the book and you told me before that, you know, there's a Lot of pressure, right, to be a performing musician, to write hits, to be bigger and bigger. I think you said you were, you know, turning into a musician you didn't really want to be. You're.
If you kept going on that path instead of being where you are now.
Greta Morgan
00:41:59.310 - 00:42:26.570
Oh, that's so interesting. I don't remember saying that. There was definitely a moment where I, like, my biggest desire was to be as successful as I possibly could. Like. Right.
Playing with Vampire Weekend lit that intense desire in me because it was so fun playing these huge shows and it was so comfortable staying in fancy hotels. And it was so nice having food, like, really good food backstage. Like, all of a sudden I was like, wait, I want this with my own know.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:26.570 - 00:42:27.010
Yeah.
Greta Morgan
00:42:27.010 - 00:42:52.010
And I really, really started to hunger for and crave that. And it is so wild the way the universe was just like, no way. You're not.
First, we're going to take your voice, and then if you still want to try touring without your voice, we're going to take your. We're going to take all your energy, you know, like, it just.
The last five years has just been like, nope, you sit, sit there, meditate four hours a day. This is the life that you're living now.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:42:52.690 - 00:42:59.330
But look what you've done with it. You know, you've created this book. You're touching more people. You're getting out there in a different way. Right. So that's important.
Greta Morgan
00:43:00.130 - 00:43:11.890
Yeah, I hope so. I really. I really hope so. I mean, I'm still kind of in transition.
I definitely aspire to help more people who are in moments like this where they feel like their whole sense of identity has fallen away.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:43:12.930 - 00:43:20.450
Yeah. And I think that. And people have contacted you. Read. Other people who have suffered from spasmodic dysphonia have contacted you.
Greta Morgan
00:43:20.450 - 00:45:08.300
I. Yeah, well, I've talked to a lot of other singers who have had, yes, singers, dystonia and dysphonia.
But I also have had really great conversations with other friends.
You know, people who have lost their hearing or people who have lost a physical ability that they once used to have, or, you know, we all, at some point in our lives, will lose a very cherished part of who we think we are. And we're seeing it happen faster and faster, like in the fire, the wildfires in Altadena. A dozen people I know lost their houses.
They lost everything they had built. And for many of them, they are working class artists like me, who spent 15 to 20 years saving up just to be able to finally have that dream.
And then, boom, it's gone. So in all of these different capacities, we are all losing and shape shifting all the time.
And so I think that we have to find a way to access the kind of deepest, most core, most resilient part of ourselves that can withstand those changes. Like, for me, one of the ways I've reframed what identity is, is to just ask, what do I love? You know?
And that way it's not like, you know, I'm Greta Morgan, a singer and a touring musician. I'm Greta Morgan, an author. I'm Greta Morgan. I'm Greta Morgan. I'm Greta Morgan. It's more like, well, what do I love?
Well, right now I'm a person who loves the matcha that I'm drinking. Like, right now, I'm a matcha aficionado.
When I was on the phone with my friend right before this and we were laughing, I was like, oh, my God, I'm a laugher. This is what I am. I'm someone who loves laughing. And then when I'm playing music, I'm a musician. I'm someone who loves playing music.
But, like, it changes all the time.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:08.620 - 00:45:23.720
That's beautiful. I think I loved something. It made me laugh.
I think what you've been doing recently and gets back to some of the things we were talking about, talking about sound and music, is on your Instagram feed. Recently, I've noticed you've been posting videos of you doing nothing but stepping in crunchy snow.
Greta Morgan
00:45:24.680 - 00:45:39.880
This the crunch here? Yeah, we call it creme brulee snow. We've had like this soft, plush snow that then gets covered with a layer of ice. And it is so satisfying to crunch.
I just, I need my crunch, like every couple hours.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:45:42.120 - 00:45:46.120
So you just go outside and just take a couple steps just to hear the crunch?
Greta Morgan
00:45:46.440 - 00:46:00.520
Yes. Yeah. Like, if I have a low energy day and I can't really take a long walk, I can go crunch.
And again, I really feel like so many of my favorite things are free. I'm just like, people get out there, get crunching.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:46:01.560 - 00:46:03.000
That sounds like the secret to life.
Greta Morgan
00:46:03.720 - 00:46:35.210
I know, right? Well, the other thing is, if you crunch and then toss the shattered glass ice down the hillside of ice, it makes these incredible sounds.
There's some on my Instagram page for those who are interested. But yeah, there's the poet Sharon Olds has this line I love, which is how I'm gonna butcher it.
But it's about spending her life noticing small beauties. That's like what she was taught at a young age to do. My only resolution in 2025 was enjoy small beauties more.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:46:36.010 - 00:46:36.730
I love that.
Greta Morgan
00:46:37.130 - 00:46:39.770
Like, so. The crunch. Yeah, the crunch is a big deal.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:46:39.770 - 00:46:44.810
The crunch seems like the best small beauty there is. What are you gonna do when the snow melts? You have to find mud.
Greta Morgan
00:46:45.530 - 00:46:55.450
Well, another small beauty is noticing what's blossoming, like, already. There's some green fuzz on some of the flowering trees here, which is exciting.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:46:55.530 - 00:47:08.850
And now you're living in the Catskills, and you've kind of really fallen in love with this landscape, which is very different than a desert landscape. So what is this? What do you love about where you are now and what you're seeing and finding and growing from there?
Greta Morgan
00:47:09.570 - 00:47:32.150
Well, if the desert is extractive, I think the forest is replenishing. Like, this mountain is so deeply restorative and so generous and so. Just soft and inviting and so deeply enchanting. Yeah. I feel so lucky to be here.
Every day that I'm here, I feel so lucky to be here.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:32.310 - 00:47:38.830
And are you composing new? I think you told me once you were gonna create a forest lullabies, kind of a sequel.
Greta Morgan
00:47:38.830 - 00:47:44.470
Yeah, Yeah. I think I'm gonna do Green Mountain Lullabies or something like that. Love it. Yeah. Yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:47:45.190 - 00:47:49.670
And how's that gonna be different? What are we gonna feel in that compared to desert lullabies?
Greta Morgan
00:47:49.830 - 00:48:40.410
Oh, I'm so curious how it will feel different. I won't know till it's finished. I have tons and tons of piano recordings. I've been just getting lots of fragments.
You know, I sort of sit at the piano every day to see if there's anything coming out of the fountain.
And lately, every time I sit down, something comes, which is amazing, But I have, like, 200 rough ideas, and I haven't finished any of them, so we'll see. I also have been doing. This is kind of fun.
I've been doing this one of these, like, one line a day journals, where I write a song couplet or stanza or a chorus every day. And I've kept up with it since the beginning of the year.
So I'm in this place where I have tons of music and I have tons of lyrics, but nothing's really coalesced yet. So I'll see what it sounds like. I'm excited to find out.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:48:40.570 - 00:48:59.050
Well, let's go back to the very first question I asked you, which is, what is voice?
And I think maybe in what we've talked about now, with you learning how to be there in community and help people, how would you tell people who feel stuck or lost how Would you tell them to find voice or tell them what voice is?
Greta Morgan
00:48:59.740 - 00:50:40.710
So I would come back to that definition of the voice as the self escaping into the open, which John Colapinto said. And so I think the first step is just to cultivate your inner world. This is what I would do.
Cultivate your sense of truth and emotion and feeling and resonance in your inner world until you can start bringing it from inner to outer. And I do think relying on everything that feels interesting and expansive is helpful.
So whether it's a dream, whether it's a line of poetry, whether it's like William Blake called them, golden threads, these kind of little moments of emotional resonance that we follow, and you don't pull the thread so hard that it breaks. You just kind of gently follow the thread.
So I think as you're spending more time in your inner world, you start to get these, like, these little threads of ideas and thoughts and resonance and follow them and follow them and start expressing them. And the more you start expressing them, the stronger that muscle becomes. And I think that's kind of the process.
So step one, tune into the inner world. Step two, start expressing it. Step three is, no, you will be wildly misunderstood. And that is totally. That is totally fine. Like, people are people.
You. You write a song, you play it for your best friend. They are. They might totally not get it at all. And that is great. You're in exactly the right place.
I think you just have to start expressing and expressing and trusting that you will find the right people who understand what you're doing.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:50:41.030 - 00:51:02.850
Well, we're running out of time quickly, which is too bad.
But I think one other thing that you mentioned in the book, which I think was really beautiful, and I don't want to spoil it too much in the end, but you also, you talked about grief as being a way to access aliveness, of feeling alive. And I think that must be something that you've experienced over the past five years. And where can you go with that?
Greta Morgan
00:51:03.970 - 00:52:13.970
Yeah, God, that's such a good question. Well, firstly, that concept came to me through Francis Weller's work. He has this amazing book called the Wild Edge of Sorrow.
And he says, yeah, that grief and aliveness are sort of like sisters. I think that it's really easy to push down and reject pain. We're sort of trained to do it from a young age in Western culture.
And, you know, his notion is just that we have to become a big enough vessel as a person to be able to have kind of an alchemical experience within ourselves where we can turn grief into something that becomes beautiful. Grief is like the shadow of love, you know, when you've really loved something, grief is. The grief is the other side of the. Of the other side of it.
And I loved music. I loved being a professional singer so much. Like, it was the great dream of my lifetime. I.
When I see a singer whose voice sounds anything like mine, I immediately start crying like I saw Nico Case play recently.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:52:14.130 - 00:52:14.770
Oh, yeah.
Greta Morgan
00:52:15.490 - 00:52:23.930
She hit that high note and her voice was just like a train whistle. And I just was bawling. I look like the biggest Nico Case fan in the world, which. I love her music.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:52:23.930 - 00:52:25.490
So I'm a big Nico Case fan.
Greta Morgan
00:52:25.490 - 00:52:26.370
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:52:26.530 - 00:52:27.890
I'm a big brand of Morgan fan, too.
Greta Morgan
00:52:27.890 - 00:53:04.460
So, yeah, I'm a big fan, but not in a way where I would be sobbing. But all that to say, like, the. Being a professional singer was the great dream of my life.
And so the grief from having this huge change in my voice, that's the shadow of it. It's like the tax you have to pay for having had the experience.
And I do think that grief is what allowed me to access this new kind of voice, this voice on the page, a voice that I use when I'm teaching, a voice I use when I'm working with people. I highly recommend that book. Frances Weller will say it way better than I can.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:53:05.100 - 00:53:12.960
Well, and I think that leads to the final question, which is the question we ask everyone at the end of this podcast, which is, what gives you hope?
Greta Morgan
00:53:13.760 - 00:54:13.550
Oh, that's such a good question. What gives me hope is, well, civilization wise community organizing gives me so much hope.
The way that the people I love are responding to the poly crisis gives me so much hope. In a way, you know, it's like there's always that moment in the superhero movie where it looks like all is and the world is going to end.
And that is the exact moment where someone discovers an unexplored potential in themselves and they figure out how to save everything.
And I do feel like the situation we are in culturally and politically and climatologically and, you know, in all these different ways, we are at the point where everyone has to access their hidden genius. And I'm watching people do it in real time, and that gives me a lot of hope.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:54:15.230 - 00:54:37.230
I love that. Greta, you're such an inspiration to me.
I'm a big fan of your music, of your writing, of your philosophy, and it's really been great to have you on open container.
I think, just to end, could you let people know how they can find your work, how they can find the book, how they can take songwriting classes from you. So many things you do.
Greta Morgan
00:54:37.900 - 00:55:07.280
Yes. Yeah. Well, the book is called the Lost Voice.
It comes out May 20th on Harper One, which is a branch of HarperCollins, so you can order it wherever you order books. Please join my free newsletter. It's a substack, but I'm not charging for it. That's the best way to find me.
And then I also share a lot of snow crunching and other goodies on Instagram. And yeah, when I'm teaching a workshop, it would be announced one of those places. So you will find everything between the newsletter and Instagram.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:55:07.520 - 00:55:11.600
Amazing. Thank you so much. It's been such a pleasure and an inspiration.
Greta Morgan
00:55:11.600 - 00:55:14.480
Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Doug Schnitzspahn
00:55:48.890 - 00:56:19.330
Thanks for imbibing Open Container, a production of Rock Fight llc.
Please take a second to follow our show on whatever podcast app you're listening to us on and send your emails and feedback to myrockfightmail.com learn more about Greta Morgan and order her new book, the lost voice@gretamorganmusic.com Our producers today were David Karstad and Colin True. Art direction provided by Sarah Gensert. I'm Doug Schnitzbahn. Get some. Thanks for listening.
