Full Expression

Dan Imhoff: A Life in Full Expression

Full Expression

Show Notes

For the first time on Full Expression, we turn the microphone around.

Dan Imhoff has spent his life moving between creative forms—as a writer, musician, songwriter, visual artist, journalist, and, most recently, the host of this podcast. In this episode, Full Expression producer Megan Botel sits down with Dan to explore the creative life behind the conversations he's been having with artists, musicians, writers, craftspeople, and makers on the show.

Dan shares how growing up in a creative family in Pennsylvania shaped his earliest ambitions, why his father's advice to live an interesting life sent him west with a backpack and $500, and how a desire to become a novelist eventually led to decades of nonfiction writing, environmental work, music, painting, and an increasingly multidisciplinary creative practice.

We talk about the discipline of showing up, why Dan believes it can take a decade to become good at something, the importance of making sloppy first drafts and learning to finish, and why working with people who are better than you can transform the work. Dan also takes us inside his songwriting process, his life between California and Spain, and the origins of Full Expression itself.

At the heart of the conversation is a question Dan has spent much of his life exploring: How do we stay creative? His answer is both simple and demanding: keep laying down the bricks, over and over and over again. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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