Return to "Surendering into Method"

Sue—Yeah. Well the thing about this, which we’ve talked about in the past, is the surrender piece.

Jess—Um, for the record, funny you should say that…the tentative…the book proposal that I wrote was tentatively titled Surrender…

Sue—Cause that what it’s really…

Jess—and for me too, from a researcher perspective…it’s like kind of like you set out, because that’s just how you’re taught to learn certain things and ask certain questions. And then there’s a point where ok if you’re going to learn more you’re going to let go of your agenda and just be like…

Sue—Right. Any preconceived notions…let go of the outcome.

Jess—Right…let go of the outcome. Exactly. All of a sudden I find myself asking questions that neither you nor I can answer. Or find myself…or…another thing that’s really changed, that is different than in my world is like there’s certain things that I can’t figure out without you. Like I feel like I need to be in conversation with you to figure these things out. Like especially the stuff about collaboration and that kind of thing that’s an interesting piece to all of this stuff. So in other words it’s like I can’t…I transcribe these…and I sit and I listen to you and type it all out…

Sue—Oh wow. That’s impressive.

Jess—There are these transcription machines so you can play it slowly, but I can do it because I can type pretty fast. So I listen…and then I type…but it’s always good when you burst out laughing, because it gives me some extra time to catch up.

(laughing)

Jess—I still have hours of transcription work to do but I’ve done a lot. But anyway…the process is you collect all this data, you transcribe all these interviews, you take all your artifacts, you know the written texts and the everything…and then you figure out…what do I have here? But what does it mean to say, well, I can’t figure this out by myself? I have all this stuff but I can’t really even figure it all out by myself. So it’s like—here—

Sue—For you to do—(silly/laughing)

Jess—What the hell am I supposed to do with this shit? (laughing)

Restaino and Maute, Interview Transcript (24 March 2014)