Musician Valerie June on Magic, AI, and Her New Guided Journal

Image Source: Photography by Brights Valerie June's work can feel like it's being beamed in from somewhere both far off and strangely familiar. That might be because from a young age, she's been channeling wisdom from the world around her, using it to inform her music, then her poetry, and now an innovative new kind of guided journal. The artist, who is known for her spirituality-infused roots- and blues-tinted folk, has now turned many of the steps on her own decades-long healing journey into a new book called "Light Beams: A Workbook For Being Your Badass Self" ($20), which was released on Sept. 19. It's an interactive book filled with spells, prompts, reflections, and tips on finding peace and connection in a world that can seem dead set on fostering conflict and disconnection. For June, the book was a natural response to the world's strife, of which, as we all know, there is a lot. "We are going through so many challenges, from climate change to worrying about AI and how that's affecting anything from writing to acting to whatever else in this new world, and a lot of wars and things of that sort," she tells POPSUGAR. Thinking about it all, she began asking herself, "'What could I do to share life and to connect people with joy and positivity and kindness?'" The product of that question, "Light Beams," is a repository of insights, practices, and tips that June has cultivated over the years. "A lot of the practices started from me needing to create these little pockets of motivation and joy in my life," she says. Her journey toward songwriting and publishing hasn't been a linear or simple one, as journeys to creative lives rarely are. "I was a cleaning lady for seven years, and toilet cleaning was where I wrote a lot of my songs," she recalls. But as her career has taken off, she's found herself wanting to reflect some of the things that have helped her overcome various struggles back out into the world. She's also well aware of the nihilism that characterizes so many discussions about everything from climate change to AI to mental health and beyond. But whenever she hears people insinuate that their lives, or our collective future, might be entirely doomed, she finds herself looking to the past. "I think about the time when Harriet Tubman was living and the struggles that she faced . . . I think about how she must have had these dreams of life," June says. "She must have had these dreams and beliefs in something beautiful; and if she could do it in those hard times, you can't tell me that we can't do it." "I believe that there's enough resources for all of us to have good healthcare; our dietary needs fulfilled; and clothing, food, and shelter and things of that sort. I believe we have that here on this planet." With "Light Beams," she also wanted to push back against the individualism she's seen suffusing the modern wellness space. She's been doing spiritual practices long before they were en vogue - "I used to be the weirdo witch," she laughs - but she notes that many of the wellness practices in the Western world today are aimed at individual healing, not collective change. "I wanted to share practices that take us deeper, and that connect us with nature, that connect us with the water, that connect us with plants, that connect us with animals, but then connect us with each other, and even to the assh*le we don't get along with," she says. "Light Beams" is fairly unique as far as wellness- and spirituality-focused books go because it mentions social issues, but June sees engaging with these bigger problems as a critical part of healing, too. After all, June says, we're all collectively creating our world whether we know it or not, and June wants to remind her readers that we all have the power to define what we see. When it comes to the internet and AI, which she discusses in the book, she says she wanted to emphasize the fact that we actually still have the ability to shape these tools into things we want. "Every time we click, every time we use our phones, we have an opportunity to use them in a mindful way and in a way that is lifting others up - or we have an opportunity to pour gasoline on fires that are being lit every single time we click on something," she says. "Right here in this time period, we actually have the power to change the rhythms and the cycles of the algorithms in the way we search for things, or in the way we give attention to certain articles and not others." That opportunity may not last forever. "We have a say now, and I don't know if we will in the future," she says. AI, for example, is already showing a tendency to adopt racist or sexist attitudes, but June wants to remind us that this doesn't have to be the case. Instead, she says, "We can write the story of what it looks like. We can write the story of a more equal and just world." AI could actually be immensely helpful, she adds, taking the load off challenging work like the cleaning she used to do. "Then I, as a clea