Kevin Morosky loves being a creative. For anybody who’s followed his career over the past two decades, that shouldn’t come as a shock. Morosky wears many hats: he’s a photographer, writer, co-founder of POCC, and filmmaker, to name a few of his multi-disciplinary talents. His latest venture is his new book, Black Women Always: Conversations on life, culture & creativity.
Black Women Always is the essential guide for getting back in touch with your creative voice and a way to honour the women most important in our lives. Morosky refuses to give you another self-help book to put at the back of your shelf; instead, he’s spent the last few years examining what exactly makes you a good creative and if that’s enough in a world that views Black women as disposable. Black Women Always blends personal essays, conversations and interviews with Black women who have inspired him and hilarious to-do lists in order to inspire the very best out of us.
We caught up with Morosky to discuss how 2020 impacted his creative journey, implementing boundaries, the importance of having a creative process, and the Black women who have inspired him.
What were some key inspirations behind the formatting of the book? It could’ve just been the usual essays on your career and life, but you chose to interview Black women who have inspired you.
Kevin Morosky: Because I’m not a coloniser. I can’t just go in and take all of their feelings and thoughts and pretend as if I made them up. It doesn’t make sense. I felt like I wanted to stand on my own faults but carve out space honestly and openly and show that these are the people who taught and guided me along the way or even simply just loved me.
Across all the interviews and conversations you have in the book, there’s a central theme of your interviewees finding their voice and coming into that moment of clarity where they realise, ‘I was made to do this’. When did that turning point happen for you?
Kevin Morosky: I can’t pinpoint the moment, but I know what the feeling was. I think everyone goes through this journey. Sometimes, I think as a creative when you’re mastering or attempting to master different skill sets, and you’re not really sure how all of it is going to come and bind together, it feels like they're all at opposite ends of the spectrum or in different spaces. I guess it was 2020 when I was being a little bit of a shit on the internet because I could see that lots of filmmakers or people that had made it, so to speak, had access to funds, money, space and talent and were saying they couldn’t make anything on their own. Of course, we were all stuck at home because we were all locked down, but I was like, ‘oh, so because you don't have access to those things and more, are you trying to tell me you can’t make magic?’ I’m gonna be honest, if you’re an artist of any calibre, you’re able to make magic anywhere.
I think it’s interesting that you mention 2020 a few times throughout the book. It’s a year many of us thought would make massive strides for diversity in the arts and real-world change. At the time, did you feel a sense of relief because you were able to be more honest about your experiences as a Black creative? Or did it have an adverse effect on your work?
Kevin Morosky: It felt frustrating if I’m really honest. To keep it 100 with you, I’ve been a talker for a minute. So the things that people finally felt safe to say, I was like, ‘I’ve been having that conversation’. And it was frustrating in the sense that it was like, ‘oh, now it’s OK to say the things that I’ve been saying’. That said, though, I have to say that with humility. I understand that back then, people felt safer to speak up. We’re not all moving at the same speeds, and we’re not all doing the same things because I had privileges that, at the time, didn’t seem like privileges, but they were. I wasn’t fearful of losing my job because being complicit was worse, in all honesty. I wasn’t abiding by the norms of my career, so why abide by the norms of keeping quiet when something felt wrong?
It does seem that the further we are from it, the more hollow any promises of progress, diversity and inclusion seem to be. Have those initiatives stood the test of time?
Kevin Morosky: I really didn’t like the currency of it all. I turned down so many things and opportunities to be in different things because I knew that a year or two from that point, none of those initiatives would exist, or we would start to hear things like, ‘we don’t have the budget for that anymore.’ In those days, I was telling people to please go and get their coin but be wary, like, not everyone’s permanent, not everyone’s going to be here permanently. I remember getting pushback and was like, ‘but this is my role in this whole thing’. Even though a lot of people were asking me why I was complaining and telling me that this was a good thing, it’s clear that a lot of those initiatives have now disappeared, and the help isn’t there.
“It’s not about the numbers and likes it gets on social media. It’s about how much of your essence you were able to transfer into whatever the project was. That is a true marker of great excellence” — Kevin Morosky
You’ve made some incredible connections through cultivating your own spaces, such as the ones featured in the book. The women you interviewed include Shygirl, Julie Adenuga, Candice Brathwaite, and Kelechi Okafor. Even though these are friends and colleagues, was there an interview you were particularly nervous about? Whether it’s the subject you wanted to discuss or the interviewee themselves?
Kevin Morosky: Probably just my mum because I realised we were about to do some sort of therapy for everyone to read. It was really important to do that not just for myself but specifically for creatives who are Black, brown, or part of the global majority. Creatives, in general, always have this conversation where their parents are like, ‘How can you be an artist? Can you please be a lawyer or something steady instead?’ Talking from my lived experience, that was something my mum said a lot, and when you’re much younger, you don’t get why until you see how attached HMRC are to you as a freelancer. You start to understand that they weren’t limiting your creativity or refusing to believe in it – to them, life was hard enough already.
It was a conversation that made me anxious because there’s definitely some healing that has already been happening and more that needs to happen between me and my mum in regard to perception. But for the other conversations, I was only worried I’d be wasting their time or denying them the space to be themselves, which thankfully wasn’t the case.
I think as creatives, specifically Black creatives, we’re perceived as always having our finger on the pulse and being on 24/7. In my career as a writer, I find myself doing it, never allowing myself to switch off because it means I’ve somehow failed to do enough work. Was there a specific situation where you realised you couldn’t switch off anymore, and since then, what has switching off done for your creativity?
Kevin Morosky: It was realising that I’m not a robot. We sit around with all this technology around us, and somehow, we’ve started to believe that we are the phones and have to always be on. When I left the advertising world in 2020 or 2021, I had to reprogram myself in a sense. I spent ages being responsible for million-pound ads and having to jump from meeting to meeting, always managing stuff. When I switched lanes, I ended up repeating those same habits with my script writing where my creative partner Tom and I were taking on four to five film and TV projects at once – and we did get it done because we’re Virgos and we’d be damned if we failed – but once we got through them, we realised it can’t go on like this anymore. I’m proud that I’m able to multitask to that level, but I don’t have to remember every single detail because I have a computer that can do that instead and maybe my memory can be left for experiences.
The work that we do in any part of creativity, whether it’s writing, directing, painting, or wood crafting, is made magical by the individual. But if the individual is empty on that magic and is run down into the ground, what work are you even producing? And it’s not about the numbers and likes it gets on social media. It’s about how much of your essence you were able to transfer into whatever the project was. That is a true marker of great excellence. It will find its way to whoever it was meant to anyway. We ain’t got to worry about that.
What do you hope that Black creatives take away from the book?
Kevin Morosky: I really want Black creatives, all creatives, to pick up this book, read it, see themselves in it, see how much culture [there is]. All of these things are what our world is based on. This is the way that we connect. This is the way that we communicate. We’ve got on this call, and yes, I’m answering your questions, but also, you’re absolutely picking up my references and vice versa. Everything is based on culture. Everything is based on human connection. Everything they are trying to sell, whether it’s in magazines, TVs, cinema screens, whatever. You’re selling it to another human being. You’re selling it to a person with a family. You’re selling it to a person with experience and different emotions.
I just want more creativity in the world because the more creativity, especially authentic creativity, the more we are all talking, the more we realise the amount of stuff that we don’t need and the things that we should be concentrating on, rather than this like false narrative of ‘it’s you versus me’ or ‘I’ve got more in my bank account so, therefore, my worth exceeds yours’. That’s crazy. That’s crazy. That’s not true at all.
I know it’s like choosing your favourite child, but which interview – bar from the one with your mum – stayed with you the most after completing your journey with the book?
Kevin Morosky: That’s so funny. I knew this question was going to come up, and I was just gonna say my mum because who’s gonna fight me over that? But it has to be Kelechi [Okafor] just because we had this running joke, where we say that we’re as mad as each other. We enable each other and somehow are so good but so bad for each other. You see the synergy in that conversation and our little language. That was the first conversation I had, and only just because everyone else was busy, so I was scheduling things in, and I couldn’t do my mum straight away because my sister wasn’t around to set up the camera. But with Kelechi, I was like right, let me text her. I don’t think I asked her, I just said ‘I need to have our talk’. That’s the relationship we have. It’s not an asking thing. It was such an easy, lovely kind of flowing convo. I was like, ‘great, I definitely know that I’m on the right track with this’. So I’m going to say Kelechi, but I loved talking to everyone.
Black Women Always: Conversations on life, culture & creativity by Kevin Morosky is published by HarperCollins on March 14.