Celebrating the power of possibility.
I'm Rhea Carmon and I believe anything is possible.
This is Anything is Possible. I'm Halloran Hilton Hilt.
Thank you for letting me join you again for another episode of Anything is Possible.
These are great stories about great people whose lives prove possibility.
Part two of my interview with Rhea Carmon, but we also know her as Rhea Sunshine.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
You've been through a lot.
Yeah.
But even the way you said, yeah, is interesting and artistic, it's almost like an acceptance that we all are going to go through a lot.
It's just my turn, right?
Yeah.
So we were talking about muscular sclerosis, that diagnosis, and we kind of walked through maybe what the tough days are.
And we were talking about your partner and how he's just got your back.
What else has, and do you define it as an illness or do you put it someplace else so that it's not mentally debilitating?
Yes.
I don't ever say that I have it.
I say I live with it.
That's big.
Because I'm not going to own it.
Because you don't want it to have you.
Right.
And it can't win, you know?
So if I'm going to win, then I just live with you.
And we'll live together, that's fine.
Where does that defiance come from?
Where does that resilience come from?
Where does that...
My parents showed me that.
Wow.
My dad was military.
And so he always just taught me to get back up.
You know, nothing ever keeps you down.
You fight until the last, your last breath.
So my dad passed away in 1996 of Lou Gehrig's disease.
And literally until four days before he passed, he still walked.
He still went to work.
He did everything.
How old was he when he passed away?
60 years old.
Yeah.
And...
How did that impact you?
He was my best friend.
That's probably one of the hardest things I ever had to go through.
This is nothing.
My dad and I were like kindred spirits.
We love music.
We could sit up.
We sang together.
My dad...
What kind of music?
Any kind of music.
Did you...
He taught me to love all kinds of music.
What was the first music he introduced you to?
Sam Cuck.
Wow.
Change Gonna Come.
I sing it when I do my full-length show.
And I sing it before I talk about how much I love the word.
Because he taught me to love numbers and the word and music.
And those three things are probably what gets me through most days.
I am a geek when it comes to numbers.
I will listen to music all day while I work a calculus problem.
And I am going to write some poetry.
Because all those things just make me feel grounded.
You know what is interesting about those three things?
Words, numbers, poetry.
It all is symmetry and math.
Right?
It all is figuring out timing.
It's all that.
And when you hear a great piece of music,
you are getting all of that at the same time.
Right?
And the deeper you go into it,
the more you hear all the little inside jokes and references and things.
You are like, oh.
So what is interesting about this father-daughter relationship though
is the fact that he affirmed your intelligence.
And he, I like the phrase I use over and over again,
is logs and lighter fluids as parents.
We see a passion.
We see the spark of a passion.
And we squirt some lighter fluid on it.
We throw a log on it.
And it sounds like that is what he did.
He did.
They both did.
My mom was all about education.
She is an educator herself.
And so it was constantly, you know, she is putting books in my hand.
She wants me to read.
And so I got it from both sides.
So my dad was constantly, you know, showing me number tricks
and teaching me the different ways that numbers will always be the same
and always be consistent.
And he is also teaching me about music and sports because he was a boxer.
And then my mom is teaching me about education and how to take care of the house
and how to be resilient.
The things that she went through in life and still made it out.
My mom is 82 years old, still kicking.
She lives by herself.
She drives her own car.
She cooks all of her meals.
She is doing it.
And so that's resilience.
And I watch her go through so many things.
And she lost my dad.
My dad was a love of her life.
And she still is bouncing.
She bounced back.
She drove up here from Huntsville on a whim and teed me in college.
She's been to every important event that I've had.
She shows up.
Like I was put in the Hall of Fame.
She's here.
She's drive by herself.
She's coming.
You know, I put on my very first fifth woman show.
She's there.
She's been the biggest support.
She's always supportive.
So you were bracketed by these two parents that loved you to life, right?
Yeah, always.
Losing your dad though, what was that like on the inside?
It took a big part.
I didn't write.
I wrote all throughout high school.
And I didn't write for three years after that because I came to college and I just kind of
was going through the motions of life because I wanted him to experience that with me.
You know, you should be here.
You should see.
I'm doing good.
I'm going to be an engineer, you know.
And so that was really hard.
I didn't even visit his gravestone until three years after his funeral.
And then I went and that's the first time I visited it.
And that was the first time just kind of having a conversation with him after three years and
saying, hey, you'd be proud of me.
And so now every time somebody says your dad will be proud, that's what I need.
He's always been empowered by Covenant Health, Home Federal and the Knoxville News Sentinel.
Coming up.
But it's a healing process for me.
So I heal my pain with my pain.
Your father passes away, you're in school, but you're going to school for engineering.
You are so off the beaten path right now, Rea.
You went to school to be an engineer and ended up as a math teacher and a poet.
Yeah, that's what happened.
But that's quite all right, though, isn't it?
It is, yes.
It's all a part of the journey.
If I had not chosen biomedical engineering, I would never have come to Knoxville.
I had not been to Knoxville.
I would not have met this wonderful man.
If I had not met that wonderful man, I wouldn't have my two beautiful sons.
I wouldn't have been a poet, Lariat.
It's what God, it's the path he had.
It is beautiful.
When you trust him with your life.
Yeah.
And you say, okay, what's steps next?
Even if I don't understand that step, then you start to see his plan unfold.
It's beautiful to see.
Have you always been in that space with God where you were willing to trust the unfolding?
Well, yes, because I was nine years old and paralyzed.
I pretty much been like that since I was nine, because I was like, you got to have a plan.
Who's nine years old and can't go running around with their friends?
I think that's crazy.
I love to go roller skating.
Every, I was at a, what was the roller skating rink in Huntsville?
I was there every Saturday.
I was at that skating rink.
Every Saturday I was at that skating rink for the four hours.
Nine years old, I can't go skating.
That broke me.
I wanted to go roller skating every Saturday.
And that was the one thing I told my mom.
I was like, when I can walk again, I need to go back to the roller skating rink.
Wow.
I love the beautiful arc of your life and your story, which brings us to the art.
The art of being, but also the art of poetry.
What's your process?
Now, I write every day.
So do I.
Yes.
Just to put something on paper every day, it might be the beginning of a poem.
It might just be a rant, you know, just to get things out.
But it's a healing process for me.
So I heal my pain with my pen.
Do you write, are you digital or are you analog?
I'm both.
It just kind of depends on my mood.
Sometimes it's this, I have notebooks upon notebooks.
And so most of the time, if I finish a piece, it's in a notebook.
And if it's just a little blurb, then it's a digital.
Gotcha.
Do you have a defined process for how long it takes to finish a piece?
No, I don't.
Because a lot of my pieces are life.
In my life, sometimes it's just when it's ready to come out.
And so I have a poem called After the Black.
And it's in a visual book.
And that poem took, I'd say, three, four years to write.
And it just kind of just kept welling up in me.
And I would be in situations and I would be like, what are you going to do after?
After you see my skin, after you see and make your judgments, now what?
You know, what happens now?
And then the Ahmaud Arbery shooting happened.
And the whole piece poured out.
Yes.
Yeah.
And the whole thing just came out.
I started this process of writing every day.
And somebody was asking me about, well, do you write something good every day?
The first thing I did this morning was a sketch.
And I said, no, what I'm practicing is availability.
I want the muscles warm when the inspiration strikes.
Because it's always around.
The inspiration's always there.
I don't know when that moment is going to be, when that thing happens.
But if I'm in the regular rhythm of responding to.
Yeah, it just comes.
I think one of my poet friends, Shane, she said, the inspiration is always there.
It's just when do you want to reach in and grab it?
And is your spirit available?
Yeah.
Have you practiced openness or availability?
That's, do you write in a specific space?
Yes.
No.
Sometimes.
I write in my desk a lot.
But I also have a beautiful porch.
So sometimes when I want to be outside in the nature, I write out there.
Right out there.
Do you have a.
I've also been known to pull over on the side of the road.
And just, yeah.
And write in my car.
I love the fact that when you are given over to inspiration and you surrender, it doesn't matter where it is.
It's just like, and it's such a joyful thing to feel it come through you.
Do you have particular things that you need?
Like, do you like a cup of tea?
Do you like coffee?
Do you like, are there things that you have to have in your environment?
A candle?
Something to set the.
I think because it just kind of flows.
I just.
Whatever it is.
Wherever we are is what happens.
Now I do like a good cup of tea, but it doesn't have to be there.
Your son has autism.
One of your children has autism.
Art has this wonderful way of jumping over behind whatever that is that would keep most of the world out.
Art just goes, nope, I'm going in there.
I'm touching.
You need this kid.
You will.
He's a drummer.
Okay.
At six months old, he started keeping perfect rhythm on his high chair with a spoon.
And as he grew up, he would pull bowls out and he started making his own drum sets.
And we have videos of him, like when he's still in pull-ups and he's watching famous drummers on a tablet.
And then he's mimicking what they're doing on his drum set that he's created.
And he's got his head cocked to the side and he's in it.
I mean, a year and a half old, two years old.
Now, he's my drummer.
When I perform, he plays for me.
And we have a duet that we do together.
How does that feel?
It's called The World Is His Drum.
It's the most amazing feeling to be able to perform with him.
I told him, I said, one day you're going to charge me before right now.
Right now.
You are an indentured servitude.
Because he's an amazing drummer.
I would imagine.
And when I say that, people always think you just say that about your kids, right?
And I'm like, no, here, let me show you a video.
And then when they see it, they're like, oh, no, he's a for real drummer.
Yes, he's not playing with it.
And so it allows us to connect.
We connect on music all the time and he plays for me.
I'll go out there.
We'll just have a jam session.
I do a poem.
He's playing the drums.
It's a happy place for us.
My youngest son hops on the piano and he plays.
It's just our way to connect all of us.
First of all, it's echoes of you and your dad, right?
But autism in sometimes is a superpower.
Because you get this ability to focus that is unreal, which accelerates the learning
and all of you get really technically good because you're not, you're right in there.
I can't wait to hear him and see you guys perform together.
I would love to wrap with you giving me another of your favorite pieces.
Oh, wow.
The one that makes you feel great.
Okay.
I can definitely do that.
This is a point that I always close with when I do features.
So I have to sing.
Is that okay?
Oh, I love it.
Because when the gold inside your soul is locked in chains and the world done told you that
ain't gonna change and your dreams are now a goal so close and range and you're excited,
so excited, so excited now.
Can I make it?
Can I handle it?
These are the words that filter through the mind of an emitted poetic, schizophrenic genius
trapped in mediocrity.
I'm supposed to be more than just dust.
All else is formed from words, but me, I'm woven into existence from rib and dust and air from the mouth of a creator who knew once set free, I would be continuously learning new things about myself.
I'm never meant to fit into any box.
I see your lines as restrictions on my spirit and then I color outside them.
The finding sight and all I write with open eyes, I'm listening to the cries of the world seeking coverage.
I've got points.
I haven't even written yet.
And still I seek for greatness in the eyes of someone or some crowd not worthy to judge me.
See, great is the Lord and worthy to be praised.
I'm just glad that I'm saved and I'm learning new things about myself every day.
I'm a praiser and a worshiper.
I find comfort in the presence of the Lord in the midst of doing yoga and meditation.
So yes, I'm weird, but I can teach a few things to those willing to listen because my inclination for the word urges me to learn more than what's set before me is true.
I need more than just to listen to you.
My spirit connects and intersects with a plan set in motion before time existed.
Don't get it twisted.
I got points.
I haven't even written yet.
Exposing demons with spiritual enlightenment, laying down a new testament of what woman, mother, daughter, lover should be to man, son, father, comfort.
You see, I grow like weeds, constantly learning new things about myself through scriptures laid on papyrus.
I reject conformity.
I realize that my greatness is my individuality.
So I don't even need a mic.
I whisper and you come closer to hear these words, drench you with spiritual awakening, urging you to stop and read, learn who you are and then love that person.
You are who you believe you are.
Rather than what you've been programmed to believe, I come to relieve your mind of social tension.
Gather your attention like a black hole sucks in light and more than just I am the Adam created to be like the most high and he teaches me, opening my mind to all that's been denied me.
So that when the gold inside my soul is locked in chains and the world and told me that ain't gonna change.
And my dreams and now a gold so close in range and I'm excited.
You're excited.
We're excited now.
I remember that we all have points.
We just haven't written them yet.
So go and write your point.
Boy, boy, boy, boy, that's so good.
Man, that's like a ray of sunshine.
Thank you.
How do people get your work and access to all that you and the fifth woman are doing?
My website is simply rheacarmon.com.
You can follow me on social media, Rhea Sunshine poetry.
And then everything with the fifth woman is the fifth with a five th woman.com. That's our website. That's our social media handle.
So we have some big things coming up this summer.
So make sure you're paying attention that you get on our mailing list and buy some books.
I'm going to buy some books.
I'm going to be in the audience.
Thank you for being there today.
Thank you so much for having me.
This has been a blessing.