29 QUESTIONS WITH FRANKIE SIMMONS
Open to see the Internet's Big Sister's oracle-channelling space ☁️
Frankie Simmons is a coach, professional pep talker to millions, and prolific digital creator.
FRANKIE’S CREATIVE STRATEGIES
Don’t underestimate simple, free consistent rituals to practice cultivating a deeper connection with your subconscious. That’s where the inspiration and unexpected creativity bursts forth.
Simplicity can be a source of ingenuity. Going back to basic tools like a pack of crayons or a deck of cards can rekindle childlike creativity.
Recognize that feeling stuck is a natural part of the creative process, unfortch. Often, work is happening on a subconscious level even when we feel unproductive. Resistance is futile-ish. Lean into the sensation, trust the process, and do activities that bring joy or at least chiller vibes.
Hat tip to jealousy and resentment. Use these emotions as cues to find admiration and inspiration. All feelings can be intertwined, and by focusing on the positive, one can be spurred into constructive action.
Foster a receptive state of mind — take in content, nature, ~the world~ with a soft focus. The joke is not to be overly focused on the end result but to be present in the process and open to unexpected turns. Create without attachment to the outcome.
PROCESS (8)
What are your creative rituals?
Unguided meditation, morning pages, backyard sits, river walks, and conversations!
Physical space or mental space?
Currently mental, aspiring to physical.
How do you actually get started?
Usually I stage whisper “ok babe I love you, it’s time” to myself and then put my phone into a drawer. Also helps if I acknowledge what I’m afraid of or avoiding, and remind myself that I probably am big enough to face that thing without dying.
What are your three favorite creativity tools? Please give us specifics, we want to add to cart.
Crayola crayons
the Apple Pencil (especially when paired with the Goodnotes or Procreate app!),
and whichever of my tarot/oracle decks is being nice to me at the moment (currently feeling a lot of kinship with the Monsoon Tarot deck)
What’s on your desk right now? Send us a pic.
Collage supplies have taken over my life and I am not mad about it.
What do you do when you’re feeling deeply, existentially, sand-bags-tied-around-your-ankles stuck?
Honestly, I think I feel stuck more often than I feel momentum, and I’ve learned that the sensation of stuckness, on its own, doesn’t necessarily mean anything is wrong.
A lot of my creative process happens on a subconscious level, so even when it feels like nothing is happening, it is quite possible that I’m exactly where I need to be.
A lot of my creative process happens on a subconscious level, so even when it feels like nothing is happening, it is quite possible that I’m exactly where I need to be.
I try to remind myself of that, and then just do what would feel good next … and by good I mostly mean embodied and centered!
So usually that looks like going outside, or journal dumping my thoughts, or sitting in a patch of sunlight to listen to Day Dreaming by Aretha Franklin.
Do you have a system? Are you Wes Anderson-style organized or are you the live action embodiment of the Tasmanian Devil?
This changes based on the season!! I love a solid system and I dream of having one that I can use for years and years every day.
In reality, I use one for a little while and then, for one reason or another, feel the need to abandon it and just flail around for a while. And then rinse and repeat.
Parts of me find this very frustrating. Other parts of me think I learn a lot from both my system seasons and my formless blob seasons and maybe there will always be space for both!
Tell us about your process. When? How? Are you strict about it?
OK so the actual truth about my creations is that often they do not feel like they belong to me.
Any time I get a comment asking “where did you learn all this” or “how’d you come up with this” or “how’d you get so wise” (these comments are so kind and so nice), I don’t know how to answer it, since the sensation of making that thing likely felt less like making it, and more like there’s a clumsy old philosopher/oracle toddling around in my subconscious, and every now and then a page of her notebook slips through the cracks, floats into my mouth, and then pops out onto the internet.
Like, the things just appear at random and I’m never quite sure when the next one will appear or what form it will take?
But I DO know the things that seem to make my mysterious oracle feel happy, so the process has become: 1. Keep the oracle fed, and 2. Make space to listen in case she speaks.
Take in good content, read good things, listen to songs, be in beautiful spaces (as a Generator, I am lost without something to respond to), and then throw my phone across the room, stream of consciousness journal, sit still and stare at the sky, hold empty space and silence.
And be unattached to the outcome.
Sometimes the next thing appears while I’m reading, sometimes I feel wholly uninspired by what I read but then it formulates itself into something new and exciting while I’m meditating, and sometimes I do the whole process faithfully and feel like a failure who will never have an idea again and I give up and later while I’m washing my dishes I am gifted with the words. Shout out to the oracle.
Any time I get a comment asking “where did you learn all this” or “how’d you come up with this” or “how’d you get so wise” (these comments are so kind and so nice), I don’t know how to answer it, since the sensation of making that thing likely felt less like making it, and more like there’s a clumsy old philosopher/oracle toddling around in my subconscious, and every now and then a page of her notebook slips through the cracks, floats into my mouth, and then pops out onto the internet.
MINDSET (6)
What grinds your gears creatively? What gives you the ick?
The answer to both is probably thinking about who’s going to receive whatever I’m making. Both the dearest inspiration and the most brutal vibe killer, depending on which angle I look at it from.
Name one thing you’ve created that makes you beam with pride.
In early 2020 I started going live on Instagram at a set time at the beginning of each week to lead a 20 minute self connection practice. I had like 3k followers on Instagram, and about half of the time nobody showed up to the live. If 3 people joined one week, I’d be thrilled. But I just truly felt like I was onto something, and so I kept going, every week.
Over 3 years later, The Church of Bread and Roses is a treasured part of the weekly routine of hundreds of people, and I get feedback all the time that it’s changed lives. It feels so precious to go live and watch my greatest dream for that space coming true. It’s so fun to be right about something! And I’m very grateful to the part of me that felt willing to hold a vision even when no one else seemed very excited about it, and then had the resilience to continue holding it long enough to see where it wanted to lead us.
Tell us about your creative nemesis.
When left to its own devices, my brain has a tendency to turn literally every wonderful person I encounter on the internet into my creative nemesis. “Wow so cool that they’re doing that” becomes “wait why am I not already doing that” so quickly, and then out of a very sweet protective instinct my mind finds a way to turn it into “actually it’s kind of embarrassing that they’re doing that and how dare they? I’m so much better than them for not needing to do that”.
I’m always learning how to take jealousy and resentment as a cue to search for admiration and inspiration, they tend to hang out in the same place quite a bit.
Any notes for your haters? What about your lovers?
Thanks for the engagement 😘. My core follower base is a source of unending encouragement in a way that I feel SO grateful for and held together by.
And the hate comments let me know I’m not being boring, and give me some really gritty fiery energizing polarizing things to create from and respond to.
All part of the ecosystem!
Andy Warhol used to change his perfume every three months because we wanted to have scent memories associated with that time period in his life. What scent will you associate with this time in your life?
Petrichor, sourdough baking, and the lavender perfume oil from Nemat.
What’s your current hyperfixation?
Season 10 of Love Island UK. It ended a little over a month ago, so now we’re still in that glorious stage where all the contestants have their phones back and are posting about each other on Instagram, breaking up and getting back together, adjusting to newfound fame and launching their Pretty Little Thing partnerships.
It’s probably my favorite part of the reality tv cycle, honestly. Just yesterday, a newly single Mitch walked a red carpet with ABI as his date?!? After she swore to high heavens she would never ever give him the time of day again? I am blessed and highly favored.
I’m always learning how to take jealousy and resentment as a cue to search for admiration and inspiration, they tend to hang out in the same place quite a bit.
INSPIRATION (7)
Favorite meme (present-tense or ancient)?
I still feel deeply connected to this guy. Feel like this most of the time.
Where do you seek inspiration most?
With the birds, for sure. Birding is my greatest teacher.
Last piece of media that really stuck with you, and why?
The book Pet by Akwaeke Emezi!! It’s the most recent addition to my list of books that I would force everyone in the world to read if I was God.
I love books about revolution and alternative futures and hope, I read a lot of them, but I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that more tenderly and unflinchingly faced how messy and imperfect the act of changing the world is going to be. And the fact that all that exists in a Young Adult novel?? Feels very precious and important. I cried many times.
Who did you look up to as a burgeoning creative person?
Sara Crewe, the main character in A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. I read and reread my copy until it fell apart, and was always trying to slip things Sara said in the book into everyday conversations and pass them off as my own.
What’s a reliable perfect portal place for you? (a place/experience that you know will transport you to a new way of interacting with the world)
The Fort Worth Nature Center and Refuge, specifically the River Bottom trail. I highly recommend everyone find a local nature trail they like and commit to walking it a couple times a month for a year. Watching a place go through all its seasons like that will change your life.
What’s a piece of advice someone else gave you that lives in your head rent-free?
“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time” — Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
What was a canon event for you that you wouldn’t go back and interfere with even if you could?
Reciting pi to the 100th digit to my crush in Junior Year AP Lit class, certain he would be instantly and deeply seduced by my mind. [Editor’s Note: Truly confounded that this didn’t work???]
“It is impossible to get better and look good at the same time”
— Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
PERSONAL STYLE (8)
Night owl, morning bird, or a secret third thing?
Currently a night owl.
If you had to get a tattoo in the next 30 minutes… whatcha getting and where?
As norm core as this is, I know that I am destined to one day have a tattoo of Fort Worth’s area code (817). It’s just bound to happen. So let’s do that and put it on the side of my left hand.
What’s currently gracing your beverage rotation?
Iced oat milk cappuccino (I know many of the hardcore fancy baristas out there insist that iced cappuccinos aren’t even a real drink but THEY ARE WRONG), sparkling water with a packet of Recess lemon lime mood powder mixed in, and a DIY Starbucks Pink Drink recipe I found on the internet and now can’t stop making.
Give us an example of a design, movie, book, experience from growing up that has shaped the way you work and create now?
I truly feel like it all goes back to the artsy hipster side of 2014-2015 YouTube…there was a YouTuber named Emily Diana Ruth who made a Letters To July series every year where she would make little aesthetic video montages with a voice over of her describing the way she was relating to time and feeling herself transform. I loveeeed those videos and I feel like I can still see their impact in the way I like to create now.
As I was typing this up I went and googled it to try to rewatch a few and found that most of the series has been taken down. I hope Emily is happy wherever she is these days.
What’s your relationship to the moon?
I have a healthy respect for the moon, but I am a sunshine girl forever.
On the Freak to Fairy Scale, where do you fall?
Frankie sun, Freak moon, Fairy rising.
You have to change your name to an emoji, a la the artist formerly known as Prince — what do you choose?
🤠. Definitely.
Congrats! You are a guest lecturer at Spacies University. You are teaching a bunch of wide-eyed freshman about your technique and process. What would you call it? [Bonus: What would the final project be?]
YOU ARE EVERYONE AND EVERYONE IS YOU. Final project would be to write a love letter to an absolute stranger that they will feel seen and transformed by, just by calling on the power of the collective and shedding the pretense that you don’t already know what they need to hear.
iconic!!
💕