Cosmic Cheeto Podstack 4: Kiana Fitzgerald
In which we discuss: Black/ND mysticism; the curious case of Ye; bipolar mania and Southern hip-hop as religious experiences -- and much more!
We’ve arrived in July, dear subscriber, and by gum I’ve got a lot to show for it! A few longform projects firing (more on that to come), and also some exciting content for our little Cosmic Cheeto community, including some truly fabulous podstack interviews.
And here is one of those interviews — a very special one with someone I’ve known from long before my podstacking days. I spoke to cultural critic, music journalist, and mental health advocate Kiana Fitzgerald for a marathon interview in which we nerded out about many of our mutual interests, from psychosis as a window into the antipodes of the mind to the need for a Touched with Fire-style Kanye West biography (I personally think Kiana should write it, and that a Big Five publisher should give her a contract to do so) to the endless multifariousness of hip-hop as a genre. It was truly one for the books!
For those of you not yet familiar with Kiana’s oeuvre, she just published Ode to Hip-Hop (Running Press, 2023), an illustrated collection of micro-essays on the history of the genre from 2 Live Crew to Cardi B. She’s also got a witty and emotionally vulnerable TikTok on which she shares her experience with bipolar disorder with a community of over 20,000 subscribers.
I encountered Kiana years ago through her brilliant essays on Ye, such as this one in which she explores the interplay between his sense of the divine and his bipolar and this one in which she discusses the complexities of his subject position (a Black man in America who is publicly mentally ill, very commercially successful, and surrounded by yes men), and the deficiencies of a discourse that wants to paint him as either pure villain or pure victim.
Kiana’s thoughts on Ye led me to dive down a delightful rabbit hole of her writing, as I am wont to whenever I discover the work of a new writer I like, and I found this beautiful essay on Solange’s A Seat at the Table (a stunning album in its own right — I realized I was long overdue for a rewatch of the “Cranes in the Sky” music video) and some great career advice for the neurodivergent and journalistically inclined. In early 2020, I invited Kiana to SIU, where she gave a lecture on memoir and music to my creative nonfiction grad class and led a very well-attended music criticism workshop open to students, faculty, and staff alike.
A lot has happened for both of us since 2020 — not to mention for the world at large! — but we kept in touch nevertheless, even doing an event together in Austin for the release of Bugsy. It was my favorite of all my Bugsy events thus far, chiefly because Kiana went delightfully hard in the paint during the Q&A with the kind of questions about the book that I’ve always wanted to be asked, including: “In the title story, Bugsy says she feels like she’s ‘had sex with God.’ The feeling of a divine communion during psychosis, erotic or otherwise, is one I can relate to: what about you, and do you think mania can be a window to divinity?” and “What do you think of ‘mentally ill’ as a label, and do you think stigma around mental illness is tied to race, class, and gender?” (Anyone who’s read the title story of Bugsy probably knows how I’d answer these questions, but no interviewer had yet given me a chance to expound like Kiana did.)
Our onstage conversation was so fun that I invited Kiana on the podstack to have a more in-depth, recorded version. And it’s that version, dear subscriber, that I present to you here in all its nerdy, goofy glory. If you enjoy what you see, please be sure to buy a copy of Ode to Hip-Hop, check out Kiana’s essays online, or subscribe to her TikTok — she’s truly one to watch!