Sherry Sidoti
Sherry Sidoti is an author and the founder and lead teacher of FLY Yoga School, a yoga teacher training program, and FLY Outreach, a not-for-profit that offers yoga and meditation for trauma recovery on Martha's Vineyard, MA. A certified yoga teacher, labor doula, addiction recovery coach, and somatic therapist, she leads spiritual courses, teacher training, and retreats globally. Her musings, infused by twenty-plus years of practicing and teaching yoga, healing arts, and mysticism have been published in Heart & Soul Magazine, The Martha's Vineyard Times, and Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly. Her essay "Mosaic" is featured in the 2022 She Writes Anthology: Art in the Time of Unbearable Crisis: Women Writers Respond to the Call. A Smoke and a Song: A Daughter's Memoir of Living in the Layers is Sherry's first book. She currently resides on Martha's Vineyard, MA.
Facebook: @sherry.sidoti
Instagram: @sherrysidoti
Are there particular films that have influenced your writing?
Most likely, although I’ve never really thought of it. My favorites are:
Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas (character development, complexity of relationship, heart)
Martin Scorsese’s Mean Streets (story rhythm, soul, and pacing)
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (setting, soundtrack, interpersonal/intercultural conflicts)
Alfonso Arau’s Like Water for Chocolate (mysticism, transgenerational inheritance)
Is there a genre of music that influences your writing/thinking? Do you listen to music while you write?
Music has always been a vehicle for taking me out of my head, and into my heart and body. From old school 80’s HipHop, roots reggae, and some good ole’ Led Zeppelin to give me energy, Joni Mitchell for sultry moody moments, to Tibetan Monk chants for meditation, the genres that inspire me run the gamut.
Music was the glue in our family. My mother had a record collection that was bigger than Nashville, and way more diverse. You name it, she played it. My favorite early childhood memories are the moments when my mom, two older sisters, and I would roll up the rug, throw a record on, turn the volume to a nine, and dance our asses off. Or the many afternoons I spent at my grandma’s studio, me dancing with a broom while she painted and sang along to Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong’s Porgy and Bess. In high school, Mom and I made a ritual of curling up with cups of coffee to listen to the album of the day in alphabetical order— Aretha, Bach, Crosby, Stills & Nash…all the way to Frank Zappa. These memories found their way into my memoir.
A Smoke and a Song was written mostly outdoors, from three to six in the morning, to the soundtrack of the natural world waking, while the humans in my home slept. While I did not play music while writing, I spent countless hours in between making playlists of songs inspired by the stories in my book (the playlists are public on Spotify @Sherry Sidoti, FYI).
My audiobook producer, the great Jimmy Parr, wrote an original score for A Smoke and a Song. We spent some hours in the studio harmonizing vocals over the music and wove the song throughout the audiobook. It’s jazzy with a touch of tribal and a splash of spiritual. Have a listen!
Is your go to comfort food sweet or savory? Is it something you make yourself? Does food inspire your writing?
Why either/or? How about both sweet and savory, they are the perfect pair!
Grandma’s famous potato chip crusted apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream…
Mom’s melted brie atop slivers of Red Delicious apple…
Chocolate covered pretzels…
While writing, I sometimes put a dab of honey on my tongue as a gesture to “keep my words sweet” or a pinch of salt to “add zest.”
Is there a work of art that you love. Why? Have you ever visited it in person?
At age twenty-one I visited Frida Kahlo’s home “Casa Azul” in Coyocan, Mexico. I had been gifted Hayden Herrera’s Frida: A Biography of Frida Kahlo years earlier by my grandmother and was a bit obsessed with the artist’s self-portraits and life for my early years. I was twenty-one, living abroad in Mexico, and had been going through some health issues, so seeing Frida’s painted back brace and bed where she painted by mirror when she was bedridden in person was very comforting.
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
My writer-self is the freedom, while authoring is the form.
Writer-me is the gas and the road. Author-me is the car.
I write from the body, heart, and soul. I author from the intellect.
Writer-me lives in present tense. Author-me shifts between the past (editing, story structure, “killing my darlings”) or future (design, publicity, events, etc.)
Like a Venn Diagram— they are separate orbits, but parts cross over and merge. Both need the other for an inspiration to move from me out into the world. I practice meditation and yoga to switch gears between the two.
