The June Monthly | Airport Quesadillas
Or: Authenticity, A.I. and the Art of Personal Reinvention in Liminal Spaces
I want to write about all these things, and I’m honestly not sure it’s all gonna come together. Nevertheless, as I draft and improvise my way through this, I think there’s a payoff at the end of this post where your WTF is rewarded with something thoughtful that gives you insight into your own journey of personal reinvention. Ready? Let’s go.
I’m in Cedar Rapids waiting for my delayed plane to start boarding to Chicago eating some of the best quesadillas and fresh-fried tortilla chips I’ve had outside of my husband’s kitchen, or Mexico City.
Not upset about the delay. More time to write, which I would have done anyway if I was leaving later. At Eastern Iowa Airport, I’m in a liminal space which liberates me from the responsibility of marching forward to anything but the ticking hands of time.
LIMINAL SPACES = TIME TO BE CREATIVE
Reflecting on my massive sprint through Spring to the start of Summer, which comes late and ends early this year as it is, I’m realizing that actually, this is my first break since January. This year was the first that I’ve taught Spring terms at both University of Chicago and DePaul, and they overlap such that I didn’t get a Spring Break week to recover between finals and the start of the new terms. And with the whirlwind of energy the transpires at the end of the school year, celebrations, soccer tournaments— I didn’t have much downtime between Spring finals and the start of the Iowa Summer Writing Festival workshops. I had a few days here and there as the overlapping workloads eased, and I devoted those days faithfully to moving the ball downfield on my creative goals.
Summer Slowness is thought experiment and, as I’m fond of writing about here, a mindset shift. This is the first time in awhile that my brain has had some time to slow down for long enough to pause, and really be still. Whenever we wrap a big project, I think we all need that downtime to mentally recover, recharge, and reset. Liminal spaces allow us to do that because in them, we’re no longer beholden to our quotidian obligations.
During the pandemic, Tamika and I put personal creative projects on hold to collaborate with the Chicago Teachers’ Union and Fox32/My50 on producing We Still Teach TV daily, and then weekly from May to December of 2020. Tamika and I often discussed how, when you’re intensely “on” for a long time on a project, the breaks and reprieves tend to be a really fertile mental window to plant seeds of creative potential. Ideas come rushing back to fill the void your last project left open, clamoring for your attention to be next in line.
As with most things, consistent creative practice, even shifting specific creative practices— writing, painting, embroidery, knitting, cooking— keeps that creative momentum strong. Whenever I’m in a liminal space, I always feel more inspired to take this time to create. Liberated from restrictions and responsibilities, I also find the spaciousness to discover and explore revision mode— which might be a rewrite, or it might be a reinvention or drafting something new.
2001: A Space Odyssey. Warner Bros. // Zoolander. Paramount.
AUTHENTICITY AND A.I.
Before I dive into the Art of Personal Reinvention, I want to take a minute to establish the stakes of this moment. A.I. is like Hansel. So hot right now. I think A.I. is here to stay, and am hopeful that the intersection of A.I. and art proves abundant and generative— like how the internet created opportunities to collaborate with artists around the world. If we can adapt to the pervasive use of A.I., and regulate it to be used responsibly (two big concerning IFs, I know, and we need definitions of responsible use) then… okay. I’m curious. Let’s see where this goes.
As a storyteller and teaching artist, my present interest in A.I. is exploring the ways in which I see human artists and their art maintaining relevance. Storytelling is ancient, but the ways through which we express those stories has changed over time, and embraced the various technological evolutions of our era. What feels different about A.I. for many storytellers, I think, is this fear and feeling threatened by the fact that A.I. is a new storyteller on the scene. Not a new type of storytelling or medium or platform — but a new voice.
In Hollywood, voice is what sells screenplays. The collective voices of many artists become the vision that eventually makes hits at the box office, sensations at festivals, and/or garners critical acclaim. When I teach about voice, I define it as perspective applied to form and content. When it comes to comedy, I define that perspective as your “weird” connected to your “why” — and I think that’s a concept easily applied to voice in any genre, including branding. It’s about identifying what makes you unique, and how you share that truth in perspective in a way that communicates authenticity.
What we say isn’t terribly unique. Why and how we say it makes all the difference.
Granted: the learning model ChatGPT has been recently exploring asking for user input on tone and which versions of responses folks like more could be an attempt to bring A.I. more into that space, and perspective and voice can certainly be imitated.
So the challenge I pose to us is one of faith in our humanity and human experience. As A.I. becomes more pervasive, and the boundaries of reality blur and become harder to discern, what can we do to challenge ourselves to discover and explore the depths of our authenticity and what makes us human?
Something that I read recently suggested that part of this shift can be found in trends in consulting practices: that we may be moving away from paying for expertise and placing more value on lived experience, energy, and enthusiasm. Maybe that’s the human component that A.I. cannot replicate.
Maybe authenticity — as defined by lived experience, and the unique energy and enthusiasm one brings to experiencing the moment — is the new frontier.
THE ART OF PERSONAL REINVENTION
On that note, one of our readers, a former student and colleague, and one of my Iowa workshop writers pointed me to the news that Accenture is shifting from consulting to offering “Reinvention Services”. As businesses and entrepreneurs seek to leverage A.I. to optimize and maximize their productivity and delivery, I think one consideration for artists and writers is about what we can discover in doing the same— maybe even as a way to buy ourselves more time for slowness. Can we leverage A.I. to tackle some of the more administrative or tedious tasks inherent to our creative output to give ourselves more mental bandwidth to go deeper or broader into that creative liminal space where — unencumbered by the tedium and tasks that our creativity demands in order to create in the medium or platform… we actually have more time to explore the purely expressive?
On the flipside, is there something to be discovered in the art of going slow, of resisting the urge to optimize, maximize, produce, deliver? Is that idea connected to process over product, and more about the journey than the destination?
As one quick example of this, I’ve found that the AI-enhanced meeting summaries issued by Zoom as a recap of my 1:1 coaching sessions save both me and my clients the time and energy of transcribing the meeting notes ourselves— allowing us to shift our focus from capturing “everything” to remaining more present, listening, and taking notes limited to the realizations we may want to emphasize. I tend to edit those notes anyway, because they invariably capture things not exactly as intended. And, sometimes, those errors illuminate areas where clarity of communication could have been improved, and so I’m able to focus my energy more profoundly, accordingly.
Maybe the art of personal reinvention has more to do with taking our time to be intentional about the shift we seek to make, than the shift or reinvention itself.
BACK TO THE AIRPORT QUESADILLAS
Sitting there at The High Porch Sports Bar at the Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids at 10am, waiting for the food service to start and my own appetite to crave an early lunch, I was delighted to discover amazing quesadillas served with a side of fresh fried tortilla chips, seasoned with something that was just… *chef’s kiss*.
This seems to be the story of American cuisine, in many ways. Authentic ethnic restaurants and dishes pop up wherever folks settle and can find a way to share their cultural heritage through food. Their voice on a plate.
The crowd-pleasing quesadilla has also been appropriated by fast food chains and sports bars and kids’ menus throughout the world. Imitations are ubiquitous. It wasn’t until we went to Mexico City and took a cooking class, and learned a bit more about the techniques behind these street vendors’ approach to quesadillas that I even developed an idea as to what I thought defined an authentic quesadilla.
… which led me down a little rabbit hole about the History of the Quesadilla. The A.I. summary shares that its origins are unknown. Light research suggests the quesadilla seems to have originated in pre-colonial Mexico in the state of Sonora (and Mexico City is not in Sonora). In the 16th century, Spanish conquistadores introduced cheese to the Americas. The original quesadilla is considered to be simply corn tortillas and cheese.
The Airport Quesadillas were definitely flour tortillas, and filled with more than cheese— so maybe it wasn’t precisely authentic in a historic fashion but I think it was the flavor profile of the fillings, the way the tortillas and cheese crisped, and the uniqueness of the salsa and how tasty it all was that reminded me of our travels throughout Mexico that made me feel like — these are the real deal.
Authenticity can be found anywhere, but our ability to recognize it is highly subjective. Subject to further revision, I’ll offer that perhaps authenticity is about our human ability to evolve, and to perpetually reinvent ourselves in a way that feels true to us and reflects truth to others. Maybe our authenticity is a vibe. And maybe A.I. evolution and perpetual reinvention has its own vibe. And somewhere deep within our ancient memory, the human in us can tell the difference.
With creative fire, Kat
CURATED CREATIVITY | COLLABORATIVE COMMUNITY
At least once a month, I hope to feature a curation of cool events and workshops for you to note on your calendars. Here’s what’s on(going) and coming soon, as of June:
Leadership Lounge Network on YouTube
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Earlier this month, I had the privilege of being the guest on Episode 64 of the Leadership Lounge Network: Write It Like You Mean It! You can check out the full episode here, and the main subscription page features some juicy highlights.
Iowa Summer Writing Festival - July 2025
This is a must-do for every writer - professionals, hobbyists, and creative tourists alike. The community cultivated by the ISWF is like none other — there’s something uniquely special about the vibe where folks from many different writing backgrounds can come together to workshop their material in a supportive environment. After teaching two Spring online sessions, I was excited to go for my first-ever summer festival on campus, and the experience was truly a midsummer’s dream. I can’t wait to go back. Check out my IG @katobrienwriter for the highlights capturing the vibe of my weekend and weeklong workshops last week. This letter from Festival Director Amy Margolis says it all. Browse courses and sign up for July workshops here.
The Cinema Femme Short Film Festival will be live at the Music Box July 17-21, 2025 and streaming their Virtual Festival July 22-29, 2025. Cinema Femme is a 501c3 non-profit that supports female and non-binary filmmakers and this annual 5-day fest is a great opportunity to support indie film, and network! Check out the Program Announcement on IG @cinemafemme_community for the line up films. You can get your VIP Festival Pass which supports this incredible non-profit organization, or buy your tickets to the events at the Music Box in Chicago here, and/or the Virtual Fest where you can stream the films from anywhere, here.
THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING REVISION MODE!
Thank you so much for supporting this creative project, readers! If you want to throw me a one-time tip, my virtual tip on Venmo supports my creativity habit— memo: “Writing Tip” and I’ll know it was you.
