A short bonus episode showcasing a few standout moments from this week's guest interview with Melissa Castan  ~

Daring Forever. Podcast with Radim Malinic

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Radim: Hey, welcome to this bonus episode of the Daring Forever podcast. As you know, this is my opportunity to zoom in on a few standout moments from this week's interview and find those moments that deserve a second look and to dig deeper into what makes them special. This week, I spoke to another Barcelona resident, this time a Mexico-born animator, illustrator, and community builder named Mel Castán.

In our conversation, we talked about her experience of growing up in a military family, about how ADHD can be a source of creative obsession, and many of her experiences that changed her path. The episode published a few days ago was titled "Dare to Let Ideas Have a Home", and it was one of those conversations that I felt really privileged to bring to the world.

That was because Mel is a wonderful and generous human being that the world needs to hear about. If you haven't checked out our full episode, let me share with you these four standout moments.

Mel: Probably yes, and maybe it was, this was a whole day feeling. I started walking around the Born and Gothic in the center of the city, for three days I would just get lost. No map, no mobile, and just be like, " I'm gonna figure out and I will learn this city," like the palm of my hand.

 So that was the way for me to physically actually get into it, go deep, and figure out by being, like, in the center of a city without any connection or way of connecting myself. Because I didn't even have a, a mobile connected to the Wi-Fi back then. I didn't have a SIM card, so I was like, "Okay, this is how I'm gonna learn.

I just gonna get right into the Gothic, try to figure out all these little cute streets, and walk until I know where I am." 

Radim: This moment was fascinating. I absolutely adore it because when you think about it, we arrive in new cities, especially now with our smartphones. I mean, maybe my parents had maps of the city. And in Mel's instance, when she moved from Mexico City to Barcelona, she had no phone, no SIM card, and no plan, and decided that she actually wanted to learn the place to just to wander around it.

So she walked around Born and the Gothic Quarter until it became familiar, not just in her mind, but also in her body, It was a lovely, let's say, slightly rebellious way to meet the city. You can trade the illusion of a control for real physical knowledge, and I think there's something really remarkable about being in that moment because what do we do now?

Take photos, look on a phone, try to Google Maps, go left, right, left, right, and there's something truly magical when you just look up and really take it all in and slow down. And I guess in Mel's instance here, it was about how now she approaches everything. She doesn't need certainty before she moves. She trusted the knowing will come from fully being inside the experience.

 Those three days of not knowing where she was, it was a strange confidence that she's now using to build communities and build her business, build her career. In the book, Daring Forever, as you know, is inspired by, this season of the podcast is inspired by the book that's coming out in October.

I have a chapter called Permission. It's one of the earliest chapters because I believe it's not a curiosity that necessarily guides us, it's how we allow ourselves to go after it. So the permission is about the now versus how, and this very much summarizes how Mel used her moment. It was the now. Like, she didn't know how to navigate a city.

She didn't have the plan. she didn't have many ideas whatsoever. And this element of getting lost, getting to find, you know, the how in a way of discovering a city is a fantastic, parallel and, reference point to my chapter Permission from the book.

Mel: I think that part we change so much and there's a lot of possibility when we change identities, right? Like, when we made big changes in our lives. So, when coming here and making your identity being so moldable in a big transition moment, I think that's the part that has more potential to do whatever you want.

So I, I love that, part in general of figuring out life and being creative. Like, when you have big transitions, you have all the potential to change paths completely and take, drastic decisions probably that will take you right where you should be,

This is a wonderful moment when Mel offers a really useful way of thinking about identity. Keep the essence of who you are and let everything else, the job title, the city, the medium, reshape itself around the essence as you move forward.

The rejection of the idea that reinvention means starting from zero is about the fact that She's moved from Mexico City to Barcelona. She's gone from advertising to animation to community building, and none of that reads as a drift because 

 there's a constant that she's holding onto underneath it all. What's nice about this framing is how much pressure it takes of change. You don't need the next five years mapped out, just a sense of what's essential to you, the curiosity to see what matches it, and it's far more forgiving way to build creative life than just chasing a fixed plan.

Yes, I guess we can go back to her three days being lost in Gothic Quarter to remind us that, you know, it's the way that, where the nose takes you is where the magic always happens.

Radim: Probably, I think that as well fun is a spiritual percent. stuff that make me feel something. That was something that I, I just wanted to explore. So for example, when I came here to Barcelona, I was so into mapping because I saw this beautiful, like, mapping show from Amon Tobin this Brazilian artist.

He's fantastic, just really intense techno, and I saw this amazing show made with cubes. Back then, I think it was 2012 or '11, I don't know. And then I, I saw that the producer, like how it was made, and I just got so inspired and I was like, "Wow, I wanna be like her.

I wanna do this type of work. I wanna do this, amazing setups and, mapping." So I guess that I find references everywhere of where I would like to be, but not only about the work, but, what type of person I want to embody in the future, because that's part of being creative, right? Like, we are building ourselves as we move forward through life.So it's about, I think, 14 years ago where Amon Tobin has had this incredible 

cube mapping live show, and I've never seen it live, but I heard enough of it to then recognize it in our conversation with Mal to know what she was talking about. She was describing the show that even though she said, "No," she's seen it twice, even the second time she's seen it on crutches with a broken ankle because she didn't wanna miss it.

 that sort of moment when she realized that it looked so impressive and it made her to become the kind of person that makes things like this. this is one of those moments where most creatives would like to say, "Look, if I inspire one person with what I do, then that's my job done."

It's a kinda interesting question, like why do we need to inspire somebody else? Because it's nice payback, I guess. it's a nice return on our effort. Why do we want to do that? Because in this instance, whoever worked on Eamonn Tobin's show very much may have cared about getting someone to be inspired, and so much so that they wanted to go into moving cities, moving countries, moving continents, and becoming that way.

Mel was very much inspired by mapping and motion graphics, and mapping she's hasn't really done so much, so she got into illustration and animation instead. But what's really magical here is that the references that are worth chasing aren't just the output, they're identity behind it. And again, we go back to previous two points.

It's like finding that moment, getting lost, finding it, and finding home for your creative ideas is one of those incredible moments.

Mel: I do agree. that's exactly what I unintentionally created. I've been wanting not create a physical home for people that, uh, want to share their ideas, but as well as a person, embody somebody that can be a home for people to share their ideas, their paths and the stuff they feel most afraid of sharing or feeling that they don't belong.

So I've created in myself a space where I feel that my creativity belongs, and if I can create that feeling towards others, that makes me feel so, fulfilled and that I have a path still in progress. 

Radim: I just love the way Mel generously, beautifully, and eloquently described the way she not just observes her own ideas, but wants to create home for ideas for herself, for her friends, for the community, for others, physically and spiritually.

And I met Mel at one of my workshops at, of Barcelona when she talked about the fact that she was running something called Frames by Friends and, wanted some a-advice on how to improve community building, how to im-improve engagement. And this is one of these things, like you're not going to make anyone do anything until they want to.

You know? You can't make a toddler move. you can pick him up or pick her up. But you know, if someone is stubborn, no amount of talking, no amount of anything will do, you know, will make them to make the action or make them-- will make them to make that first step. But in Mel's instance, she's radiating That goodwill, that generosity, that just incredible positive karma that, she embodies that statement, you know, "Dare to let ideas have a home," because she keeps moving, she keeps reinventing, she keeps going where, you know, others would be not willing to go.

And I can use that quote from Dan Martell who says that the last mile is hardly ever crowded because not many people are prepared to go that far. She's very much there as one of the few people on that last mile doing things because her latest community titled Side Project is very much a culmination of everything she's learned in life so far, from learning from her military grandad turned spiritual, seeker into meditation, into understanding of mindfulness, how we all work, is very much how people like her become young elders passing on this knowledge to people who very much need that in their life because, you know, we are all more extraordinary than we realize and hell are more complicated than we understand.

Thank you for joining me on this bonus episode. as you can tell, I absolutely adored my conversation with Mel Castan because she's incredible human being. I hope you can check out her full episode. There's so much more to learn from her, and I look forward to catching you next week on the next one.