Class of 2008 Marshalltown High School (MHS) graduate Zach Thompson, who went on to play baseball at Marshalltown Community College (MCC) before relocating to his current home state of Ohio, started the Scatter Joy Project in Columbus as part of an effort to destigmatize conversations around mental health and highlight the intersection between mental health and the creative arts. On Friday evening, Thompson — flanked by his friend, Los Angeles-based content creator Blake Kasemeier — returned to his hometown for a free “Studio Stories” event at the Arts + Culture Alliance building on West Main Street with a free will donation box benefiting YSS of Marshall County.
After a brief introduction from ACA Executive Director and MHS classmate Amber Danielson, Thompson reflected on what it meant to be back and how Scatter Joy, which derives its name from a line in a Ralph Waldo Emerson poem, came into existence.
“We call ourselves the creative mental health company. I don’t think there is a better connection with mental health than the creative arts. Artists do a really great job of showcasing the human experience within their storytelling,” he said. “They tell stories about joy or sorrow and struggle, and they paint the human experience in between. They give language to us when we maybe don’t have it for the heaviness that we are carrying. It’s the reason why we go to a poem or a song or a film or a book time after time after time when you lose a parent or a friend or a breakup happens or a tough time in your life hits, and you turn to that… It speaks to the human soul and the need of the human soul.”
Scatter Joy operates a storefront in Columbus with apparel for sale to help fund the organization’s work. Thompson then introduced Kasemeier, a former touring musician who then spent over a decade in the corporate world before leaving that behind to pursue writing and creating short-form videos, some of which have been viewed millions of times.
The story he led with was, in his own words, “very L.A.” as it pertained to a strange celebrity encounter with the late Seth Binzer, better known by his stage name Shifty Shellshock and for his role as the lead singer of the rap-rock band Crazy Town, famous for their 1998 hit song “Butterfly.”
As it turned out, Kasemeier watched Shellshock, who died in 2021 after years of struggles with drug addiction and four stints on “Dr. Drew’s Celebrity Rehab,” have his car repossessed in a grocery store parking lot, but the musician cracked a joke at Kasemeier and smiled before they carried on a five-minute conversation. After he passed, Kasemeier made a video about the experience.
“I had a choice to make. I can make a video about the man that people like to punch down on. I can make a video at Shifty’s expense, and I know that video will do very well on the internet. People love to punch down. Or, I could make a video about the man that I met in the parking lot, which is what I choose to do,” he said.
The video, he added, initially tanked compared to most of his others, but it did reach members of Shellshock’s family — including his sister noting that it was the only nice thing she had seen anyone say about him that day — who loved it so much that they asked for it to be played at his funeral. At the service, other stories of how Binzer/Shellshock had quietly helped others in their darkest and most challenging moments emerged, and the man who had been little more than a punchline upon his death was being remembered for his generosity.
Both Kasemeier and Thompson read poems of their own on everything from hyperspecific millennial cultural references to the more universal experiences of grief over the loss of a parent, choosing to feel hope even when it is difficult to do so, loneliness, creative compassion and parenthood. While acknowledging its potentially negative effects on society at large, Kasemeier also sought to highlight the positive impact social media can make if used correctly.
Later in the conversation, Thompson and Kasemeier engaged in a Q&A session of sorts, and Thompson explained that the impetus for Scatter Joy was a desire to create more of what he wished existed in the world.
“It’s like ‘OK, I wish I had this thing. I struggled with this thing. How do I now take my story and my skillset to create the opportunity on the backside of that for someone else struggling?’ And so I think, for me, Scatter Joy is everything I wish I had growing up,” Thompson said. “I wish that there were people talking about mental health in a really cool way. It wasn’t culturally acceptable… It’s still maybe not culturally acceptable. People think now (that) mental health is this cliche. There’s a lot of cliches attached to it. So I think, with Scatter Joy, it’s like, how do you make it as approachable as possible? How do you make it cool, and then how do you make it unassuming (and) unalarming for people to be involved in?”
Contrary to how he thought as a younger man, Thompson advocated for anyone struggling to see a therapist, and he shared examples of various creative outlets he has utilized including a variation on a book club called an album club, where a group listens to a musical album together and discusses it.
With several of Thompson’s friends, family members and classmates in the audience, the duo wrapped up by taking questions on a number of topics and reminiscing ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend. To learn more about Scatter Joy, visit https://thescatterjoyproject.com/.
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Contact Robert Maharry at 641-753-6611 ext. 255 or rmaharry@timesrepublican.com.