#745: Rick Rubin and Mary Karr

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4:39 No, what is it? My cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoscowing. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, this is Tim Ferris. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is my job to sit down with world class performers. From every field imaginable to tease out the habits.

5:06 routines, favorite books, and so on that you can apply. And test in your own lives. This episode is a two for one, and that's because the podcast recently hit its tenth year anniversary, which is insane to think about. And past one billion downloads. To celebrate.

5:23 I've curated some of the best of the best, some of my favorites. From more than seven hundred episodes over the last decade. I could not be more excited. To give you these super combo episodes, and internally we've been calling these The Super Combo episodes.

5:37 Because my goal is to encourage you to, yes, enjoy the household names, the super famous folks. But to also introduce you to lesser known people I consider Stars. These are people who have transformed my life and I feel like they can do the same for many of you. Perhaps

5:53 They got lost in a busy news cycle, perhaps you missed an episode. Just trust me on this one, we went to great pains to put these pairings together. And for the bios of all guests. You can find that and more at Tim.blog slash. combo.

6:09 And now, without further ado. Please enjoy. And thank you. For listening. First up

6:16 Rick Rubin. Nine time Grammy winning producer. One of Time Magazine's one hundred most influential people in the world. Number one New York Times bestselling author of The creative act, a way of being.

6:31 and host of the Tetra Grammatine podcast. You can find Rick at Tetragramatin.com Where are we right now? We're sitting in the sauna.

6:42 We are sitting in a very hot barrel sauna and I was told that was one of the conditions for having this conversation. And it's Such an impressive Barrel sauna, it's indoors. that I wanted to get the specs when I first saw it. And you have a heater that has to be what, four times the size of the

6:59 Off the shelf. heater that would go into such a heater. Yeah. It's a much bigger heater than for the size of the room. I'm sitting on the floor because I have such little confidence in my ability to withstand heat compared to you. But we do have The

7:14 Alternate which is The bathroom just outside of this door. And uh you and I have gone back and forth, of course, quite a few times. with this type of cycling, but what is right outside of this door? Uh metal tub filled with ice.

7:26 It is a metal tub about four feet. Three and a half feet off the ground, full of ice. Looks like if you were to say what a horse trough times two, something like that. Something like that. Yeah. It's gotta be maximum.

7:40 Low fifties. Something like that? I think it's about today it's probably about thirty eight degrees. Oh my God. All right. So We have two mics on the floor I'm hoping won't explode. Or meltdown. We have the H four and the and the H six. And we have uh water, ice, heat.

7:56 Nothing could go wrong. I'm looking forward to it. So Rick, I was hoping perhaps we could start with a discussion of your physical transformation. And I'd love for you to perhaps just describe to people in your in my mind the picture of

8:10 a fitness in a lot of ways now and we've been paddleboarding before and you Summarily. Whoop my ass every time we go out. I'm always impressed. Yeah. There are a lot of things contributing to my

8:20 My lack of competency and fear there, but Where were you and how did you end up undergoing this physical transformation because you've lost how much weight at this point? How much fat are you saying? I lost At the peak moment I lost uh between one hundred and thirty five and hundred and forty pounds. And I

8:37 Always Thought. I was eating a healthy diet. I was vegan for twenty something years. All organic, vegan, really

8:47 You know. Very strict with what I ate. And Doing that, I got up to three hundred and eighteen pounds. And I I read a book.

8:56 By a guy named Stu Middleman, who ran a thousand miles in eleven days. And I remember reading that and just thinking, wow, it's like I can barely walk. Down the block. This guy ran a thousand miles in eleven days and it just seems so inspiring. So I read his book.

9:11 And in the book he talked about a guy named Phil Mathitome. And he said. In Stu's book, he gets to the part where he said, Well I met this doctor, Phil Maffitone And he changed the way I trained and he changed the way I ate and he changed all these things. And then all of a sudden I was able to do all these things. It's like okay, I want to find Philmethon.

9:30 I found him online, I sent him an email. And he was Living in Florida And I asked if

9:39 You know, I could become his patient. And he said that You just Stopped treating patients and retired from being a doctor. It's like that's terribleness.

9:49 But the reason he decided to stop being a doctor was he decided to become a songwriter. I said, Oh it's interesting. I'm I'm involved you should mention that. Yeah, I'm involved in songwriting and the and the music world, maybe We can trade and maybe I can help you with your songwriting and you can help me with my health and fitness. And he Like the idea and we ended up meeting a few months later.

10:11 Met several times. and became friends and then he eventually ended up moving into my house and lived in my house for about two years. I did everything he said. And I got much healthier. My metabolism got turned on. The hours that I was sleeping shifted.

10:28 For most of my life I stayed up all night. I spent most of the day. When I was in college I never took a class before three PM because I knew I wouldn't I wouldn't go. And this was at NYU. At NYU. So

10:41 I'm used to living a night lifestyle. I remember even in high school I missed the first three classes of school so many times that Yeah, it was really an issue. But it was just I learned to be a late night person.

10:54 And it kinda suited the music life like it worked well with my life. And one of the first things that Phil suggested when we got together was I slept with blackout blinds. And I usually didn't leave the house until the sun was setting. And he said, From now on when you wake up

11:11 I want you to go outside. As soon as you wake up, open the blinds and go outside make it if possible. And be in the sun for twenty minutes. And when he said it, I remember thinking It'd be the same as him saying, I want you to jump off this ledge.

11:27 Like it sounded like the Most Terrifying based on the way I lived my life. That just sounded terrible. Right. What time was he recommending that you wake up?

11:37 Well By the time we started, it kept moving down. It went from three o'clock To probably noon. Two eleven.

11:47 And it just sort of happened naturally. And he knew that if I immediately went in the sun. That Naturally my body would want to start. Waking up earlier. And going to sleep earlier. It was the first time ever that my Cadian rhythm was kicking in.

12:02 I never knew that there was such a thing or knew what that was. So He got me to connect to that. And I did everything he said. Changed my diet, started eating some animal protein. I was

12:13 As I said, a devout vegan, so eggs and fish with a First things that I would eat. And even then I never liked eggs and I never liked fish, so I ate them more like medicine. And Slowly.

12:27 I got healthier and healthier and healthier. And More and more fit. But I was still very heavy. And I was heavy for a long time.

12:35 What age were you when you brought him into your house? Or how long ago is this? Yeah, I'm gonna guess. Those probably Late thirties.

12:46 And how if you don't mind me asking. Ten years ago, ten, twelve years ago. Something like that. So you changing your diet, what were some of the other things that he had you change? She had me do twenty minutes of

13:00 Low heart rate. Exercise aerobic activity. Every day. You had me start wearing a heart rate monitor. And

13:09 My heart rate I would get into You know, for me walking up a flight of stairs would be an aerobic activity. Anaerobic activity, yeah. So I had to Work hard to stay in the anaerobic space.

13:22 Or in the aerobic space, you mean in the aerobic space. Below that's getting here. Take off all your hands my hands burning holding the mic. I tried to wrap them in in that Napkins I did did mention. Sorry, I digress. So to stay within the aerobic threshold, you had to work very hard. Yes.

13:45 And Again, my health changed, but I still Stayed very heavy. And After two years of time.

13:53 I Probably lost a little bit of weight, but not much. But I was much healthier and much more alive and Much better than I was before. And after that period of time, Phil said to me, you know, anyone else.

14:06 Who made the changes you made. out of everyone he's ever dealt with. Ninety nine percent out of a hundred people. You know, ninety nine out of a hundred people. Would have dropped all their weight for some reason. There's something else going on with you that's holding on to the weight.

14:20 So I just accepted that that's how it was, but at least I felt a lot better. My life was a lot better. I was a lot happier. And then A mentor of mine his name is Mo Austin. He's the guy who ran Warner Brothers Records for Thirty five years. He worked for Frank Sinatra.

14:37 Real inspiring. Guy in the music business. He suggested I went out to lunch with him one day and he said, You know, Rick, I'm really worried about you. I know You watch what you eat and I know that you Walk on the beach every day and exercise, um, but you're really getting big and I'm worried.

14:52 So He said I'm gonna get the name of a nutritionist and I want you to go to my guy and I want you to do whatever he says. I said, Okay, fine. Like and I knew it wouldn't work because I knew that my whole life I had a weight problem.

15:05 My whole life I've tried. Every diet. And nothing ever worked. But I you know, I would do anything for most. So I went Again.

15:13 Open minded. But not believing it would work. Willing to try. But not believing it would work. The nutritionist put me on a high protein

15:23 low calorie diet. And I'd never done a low calorie diet before. And Over Fourteen months I lost a hundred and thirty pounds, hundred and thirty five pounds.

15:35 That changed everything. And I will say If I didn't do the work with Phil first, I don't believe that the diet would have worked. It was sort of a

15:45 combination of things in order. It was like The metabolism got turned on. I started being in tune with Cicading Rhythm. I was stimulating my aerobic system every day. I built a base.

15:58 And then with the right diet. was able to drop away quickly. What are things that get in the way of Artists producing their best work.

16:08 Concerned about what other people think. Competition. Wanting to do better than someone else. Self doubt. Ego.

16:17 What manifestation of ego. If someone thinks that everything they do is great. they might not be willing to edit themselves enough or work hard enough at If you write. Ten great songs.

16:30 Five minutes each, and those are the best songs and I'm just gonna record'em and put'em out. Then those might not be as good as the ones that you develop over a longer period of time, for example. I might be an egotistical artist who thinks everything I do is just great. When you have the opposite, when you have an artist who's doubting themselves How do you

16:50 Help them through that. What do you recommend? Just speaking personally, I I have continuous self doubt as a writer. I think most artists do. That's more of a More typically. Self doubt is the case.

17:05 I think if your goal Is to Be better than you were. You know, if you're competing only with yourself. It's a more realistic

17:16 Place to be. You know, if you say, I don't wanna write songs unless I could write songs better than the Beatles It's a hard road. But if you say, I wanna write a better song tomorrow than the song I wrote yesterday

17:29 That's something that can be done. And if you write a better song than you wrote yesterday. Every day. Then You continue to get better and better and better. And

17:38 It really is small steps. And Trying not to think too much. So much of it is more of a The job is It's more

17:48 emotion and heart work than it is headwork. Like the head comes in after. Two Look at what the heart has presented. And to organise it.

18:00 But the Initial inspiration. comes from a different place and it's not the head. And it's not an intellectual Activity.

18:08 It's more inspiration. So the key First. Is to really Do whatever activities you can.

18:16 To tune into inspiration. And You think like meditating helped. And Diving into art. In general. It doesn't have to be even your modality. I mean going to museums looking at beautiful art can help you write better songs.

18:30 Reading great novels. Reading great. Great works of art. Seeing a great movie could inspire a great soul. Reading poetry. So let's say

18:39 Being in Submerging yourself in great art. And the more you can do to get out of the mode of competition. Where you're looking at what other people are doing wanting to be

18:52 Better than them, or be inspired by them. The only way to use the inspiration of other artists is if you submerge yourself In the greatest works of all time. Which is a great thing to do, you know, like

19:06 If you Listen to the greatest music ever made. That would be a better way. work through to find your own voice to matter today.

19:19 than listening to what's on the radio now and thinking I want to, you know, compete with this. So it's more like a Stepping back and looking at a bigger picture. than what's going on at the moment. Speaking as someone who is not

19:34 Very well versed with music. I don't feel highly literate when it comes to music. I enjoy music. But hanging out with you and Neil Strauss certainly I I feel like I'm lacking perhaps vocabulary and a lot of references. Are there any

19:48 For people who feel like they're in my shoes, are there any particular albums you could offer as a as a starting point, not the end all be all, but just as a as a starting point for appreciating Good. World class contemporary music, meaning not necessarily Could be classical music, but are there any recommendations I would I would just start by listening to the greats, which you can look at like

20:09 If you look at Search online for Mojo's top one hundred albums of all time. Or Rolling Stone's top one hundred albums or Any Trusted sources top one hundred albums and start listening to what are considered the greats. It's a good place to start.

20:24 So I'm not sure I ever told you the first time I ever saw the name Rick Rubin was actually on the inside of an audio cassette. It was the first heavy metal album I ever bought, which was Rain and Blood. Oh, it's a good one. And I just remember That's a really good one. Not having is as beef pre-internet, of course. And I was just told by my friends you have to You will love heavy metal, you should listen to heavy metal. And I asked what the hardest heavy metal was that could possibly be found. And Rain and Blood came. To the lips of those I asked. And I just remember. Listening to I think it's Angel of Death, the first

20:57 track on that and going. Oh my God, what have I gotten myself into? Yeah. And just fell in love with that band, but how did you go from Hip hop to say Slayer.

21:08 stylistically so different it would seem. But how did Slayer come about? Because I was coming about it. We've no technical skill. It's not like I knew about hip hop or I knew about heavy metal. I was a fan of music and I loved heavy metal and I loved hip hop.

21:22 So it was more that coming at it from this Appreciation. And as a fan, knowing what I wanted to hear, knowing that Especially in the case of Slayer. Slayer were an underground metal band who had two albums out on an independent label. And we're kinda considered, you know, the heaviest band in the world.

21:39 And when we sign them. There was this terrible fear. That Slayer now doing their first album for a major label. You know, they were gonna sell out the water down. Yeah. Which happens all the time. And then the album that we made, Rain and Blood, was

21:55 Much harder and worse than anything that anyone ever heard before. And it really did come from that. You know, I liked extreme things and They were extreme and I wanted to Maximize it.

22:08 Watering things down for a mainstream audience. I don't think it applies. I think People want things that are really Hashimit.

22:18 And the best version of that they they could be and often the best version they could be. It's not for everybody. The best art divides the audience. Where, you know, if you put out a record and Half the people who hear it.

22:29 Absolutely love it and half the people who hear it. Absolutely hate it. You've done well. because it's pushing that boundary. If everyone thinks, Oh, that's pretty good. Why bother making it? It doesn't mean much. Lost in the s the slipstream of time almost as soon as it comes out.

22:44 I'm gonna do a round of ice if that's all right. Absolutely all right. Let's do some more ice and we'll be back. Yeah. Okay, we are we are back. Do you have a book? Or books that you've gifted often to other people?

22:58 First one that comes to mind. Is The Dow D Jane. This

23:05 Steven Mitchell Translation of the Dow Dijing. What's great about it. is it's eighty one. Short.

23:13 Look at them as poems. That If you were to read the book today, he would get one thing from it. And if you pick it up any two years and read it again, it would mean something entirely different.

23:26 And always on the money, you know, always what you need to read at that period of time. So it's a magic book in that way that It always fits. I actually took God, this is bringing back a memory. I took a c an entire class on the Tao Teaching at Princeton when I was an undergrad in East Asian studies. And it seems on some level that that book

23:46 Does What you do for Musicians meaning It sort of reflects back truths that they were not aware of themselves. Or they could not verbalize themselves. Any other books come to mind?

23:59 Uh another one that's really nice is a book about meditation called Wherever You Go, There You Are. Which is by uh John Cabot Sinn. It's a great book if you've never meditated and if you've been meditating for fifty years, if you read this book either way, you'll care more about meditation, become a better meditator and Just give insight into

24:19 Why we do it. And what the benefits are. When you are working with an artist Cool. believes they can't do something.

24:29 Or it's just hitting that wall. What are some of the ways that you help them get past that? Usually I'll give them Like homework, like a a small doable task. I give you an example. There was an artist I was working recently who hadn't made Mal in a long time and was struggling

24:46 With Struggling with finishing anything. And just have this. It was a version of a writer's block, but it was a I don't know, hard to explain what it was.

24:57 But I would give him very Doable. Homework assignments. It almost seemed like a joke. You know, like man, I want you to write.

25:05 One word. In this song. That needs to Five lines. That you can't finish. I just want one word.

25:12 That you like. By tomorrow. You think you'd come up with one word? Um Usually you'd be like it can do one more.

25:20 Just very quickly by breaking it down into pieces like I learned from Laird and chipping away One step at a time. You can Can really get through any Yeah.

25:32 Breaking it down into the beach we had a uh A zipline. Not a zipline. A uh You know the the beam that you balance on. Oh a slack line. And Laird was pretty good at it in the beginning, but had never done it before and

25:48 He would work for hours. He would just be there hour after hour after hour falling off and getting back on. Falling off, getting back on. And then of all of A group of people, he was by far the first one who was able to do it. And it wasn't because he just naturally was gifted at it. She knows that anything he sets his mind to learn to do, if he focuses and just continues to Not mine formally.

26:12 And not thinking he's supposed to be good out of the box. Learning to be able to do it. That's how you learn things. I also will say that After having the weight problem that I had for so long.

26:23 And then Finally finding the solution. And making the change. It really makes me believe that anything's possible. You know, we can learn, we can train ourselves to do

26:33 Absolutely anything. It's really just getting the right information. We get Get the right information, we can learn to do anything. Whatever it is. Now it doesn't mean we can necessarily Be the best in the world at something. But we can be our best.

26:47 At that thing. The best version of ourselves. Yeah. And do things that never dreamed of as possible for us. What advice would you give and uh I'll ask this for a couple of different ages, but I'll start with uh your twenty year old self. What advice would you give your twenty year old self, if any?

27:04 Try to have more fun. Why do you think you weren't having As much fun as you could have at that point. I think I was more Driven.

27:13 And I don't know, I want to say almost like I felt like I had something to prove. I don't know if I did have something to prove, but it felt like Doing the work was the most important thing in the world. As opposed to Doing the work.

27:27 And enjoying the process and being able to step back and see what it was. Yeah, not just be so Deeply into it. But Yeah, I feel like I missed a lot of years of my life because I was just in dark room working on music.

27:40 You know, seven days a week for Only twenty years. Wow. I recall that makes me think of a story from Neil Gaiman, the writer, when he I think it was with the success of Sandman and he was in a huge line of readers who wanted signatures and

27:56 fans who wanted to tell him stories and Stephen King pulled him aside and just said Enjoy it. Yeah. And he didn't.

28:04 He was too caught up in the In the flow. What about your thirty year old self? What advice would you give to your thirty year old self? I would probably tell myself something that I that still might apply to me today. I wouldn't known it at all, then I know it now. I just still it's not.

28:21 Second nature. But um Sure. Be kinder to myself.

28:28 And beat myself up a lot. Because I expect a lot from myself. Be hard on myself. I don't know the name. Doing anyone any good by doing.

28:38 Uh yeah, that's advice that I need to to give myself. As well, when do you tend to beat yourself up? I've made somewhat of a Sport of it, it would seem. Yeah.

28:48 It can happen, you know, any time. I can come up with anything. That I could be doing. Further something. And

28:59 Didn't already think of it and didn't already do it. I might beat myself up about why you know, why I've had not done that. Something I struggle with that I'd love to get your two cents on. Uh. Is related to this, which is

29:12 On one hand I w I don't want to beat myself up. On the other hand, I feel like the perfectionism that I have has enabled me to achieve whatever modicum of success have it. been able to achieve and I've I've heard stories and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but about for instance Zizi Top and La Futura.

29:29 And How they worked on it with you from I guess I wanna say what, two thousand eight to two thousand twelve, something like that, but How they realised The value of

29:39 you wanting the art to be as perfect as it could be, or the best that it could be. and taking whatever time and pains necessary to make that possible. S Love to hear your thoughts on that because it's something that I continually struggle with. I want to be easier on myself, but I worry that if I do that, I will lose whatever

29:57 Magic if there is such a thing that enables me to do what I do. I think that's a myth. And I think that Your take on things is specific to you and it's not because of your you've It's almost like you've won the war.

30:11 And to accept the fact that you've won the war, you've broken through To now. You have an audience, people are open to hear what you Are interested in what you learn at what you're interested in learning about.

30:23 And what you want to share, you can do that without killing yourself. And that killing yourself won't be of service either to you or to your audience. Yeah. Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. When you're hiring for your small business, you want to find quality professionals that are right for the role as soon as possible. That's why you have to check out LinkedIn Jobs. LinkedIn Jobs has the tools to help find the right professionals.

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31:58 Next up. Mary Carr. Author of three award winning best selling memoirs. The Liers Club.

32:09 Cherry. And lit. And author of The art of memoir. Which breaks down her process.

32:16 Antropic of Squalor Her latest volume of poetry. You can find Mary on Twitter. At Mary Car Lit. Mary, welcome to the show.

32:27 Hey Tim. Thanks for having me. And I appreciate you putting me at ease when I mentioned that I have copious notes in front of me and that's usually an indication that I am nervous and you're not you. You do this all the time. You're gonna kill it. You're it's gonna go great. I'm convinced. Thank you. And you reassured me by saying I make really good waffles. That's what I mean. I'm like a Nona. You gotta think of me as a Nona out here in podcasting.

32:55 Let's rewind the clock as a first step in podcast, Ville. And maybe we can talk about known as in the family lineage of sorts. And I want to talk about or have you speak to. A guy redoing your mother's kitchen and holding up a tile. Could You perhaps elaborate on that, please. Yeah, yeah. Right after my first memoir was published, we were having my mother's kitchen retiled.

33:19 My sister and I were there and that yeah, and the tile dude prys off a tile and he holds it up and it has a little brown toilet and he and he looks at my little fluffy hair Yeah. Miss Card, this looks like a bullet hole and my sister says, Mom Isn't that where you shot at Daddy and she says No, that's where I shot at Larry. Over there is where I shot at your daddy. So people ask me why I wanted to be a memoirist. I'm like, Why would you make stuff up?

33:48 When that's who your mother is. So For those who have no context, I'd like to provide a bit more context, where was this kitchen? Or where is this kitchen for that? This kitchen is in south east Texas. It's a town that I write about to protect the mayor and the school principal and the people who didn't sign off on What I said about'em. I call it Leechfield, but it's really

34:12 East of Port Arthur, Texas, a small town and East Texas. I call it the ringworm belt. Yeah. Which I've also heard you describe as a swampy town. So moisture, humidity, ringworm. As a former wrestler, I can say those things combined to produce ringworm. Exactly. Yes, no, that's it. And industrial, like a lot of oil refineries all around. So not Paris in the twenties, I guess is the way I would Okay.

34:39 Now I'm gonna hop around like Memento the movie, if I must, and I must because that is my way. And You've written extensively about your childhood. You had in many respects an extremely Difficult, painful.

34:53 Childhood and will probably unwind some of that. Now You've written extensively about it and you've also mentioned About writing memoirs. And if this is a misquote, please call me out.

35:06 Quote I've said it's hard. Here's how hard. Everybody I know who wades deep enough into memory's waters drowns a little. And certainly in your book you paint a high resolution picture of just how painful that can be. And certainly an element might be catharsis, but it is Painful.

35:23 And I would love for you to speak to The catalyst for beginning to publish this type of work, write and then publish this type of work. The publishing is nothing compared to the writing, I think. Publishing for me was great because they gave me money and I didn't have any. So that was that was good. But yeah, I think I had a flamethrower on my ass. Can I say ass on your show? You can say ass. Not only are three letter words allowed, four letter are allowed as well. Oh, there we go. You know, I was a weird little kid and I was just

35:56 My mother was capital and nervous and married seven times and twice to my dad and both my parents drank hard. It was Texas. Everybody was armed. And we were uh loud, combative house. So I loved my parents. I mean that's what I should say. It's I don't think anybody who's read anything I've written about'em.

36:16 Challenge that. It had its fair share of blows. I mean I I always you know, look, I was born in the richest country in the world. I'm My skin color is something the whole country privileges I'm You know, I'm a college professor. I've grew up skinny and my teeth came in relatively straight and I have a lot

36:38 of advantages. So Whatever I went through, a lot of people and people I grew up with and loved had it way worse and didn't make it. So I think I was haunted. I was a haunted little girl. I tried to kill myself when I was

36:54 a kid when I was still in grade school, I took a bunch of aspirin, it said pain relief and I thought, Okay, this is what I want. So I didn't have a choice. I was In some ways not having a choice was a lucky thing because I went into therapy very early. I managed to get after Leaving school without a diploma, I managed to Weasel my way into college and had a really kind professor

37:19 And his wife kind of took me under their wing and urged me to go into therapy when I was nineteen and So I was Sitting in rooms talking to, you know, codependent social workers starting when I was a kid and All of that helped, but I guess

37:36 I've been really blessed with a lot of outside help. I'm a big Big fan of the mental professional and the librarians and English teachers and Those kind souls you meet along the way. See if coins. That you meet in person. You mentioned a few.

37:52 And I wanna talk more about weaseling into college in a few minutes, but I've read A lot about your reading. If that makes sense. Yeah, I read a lot, yeah. Some might envision in their mind's eye that childhood you described as a family of illiterates. Nobody picked up anything other than

38:10 People magazine, but that was not the case. No, the huge advantage. Yeah. Describe that a little bit and also if I could tag on an additional piece of that question. I've heard you describe Finding and reading poetry is Eucharistic.

38:25 And uh I would Love for you to just speak to that. As well. Yeah, I started reading poetry when I was a little girl and I you know, reading is socially sanctioned disassociation. You know, you can't they won't let you drink or You know, geese heroin when you're a little kid, but but you can disappear down uh a valley of

38:46 Winnie the Pooh or Charlotte Webb or And In some ways the poets I read, I think a lot of time I think poetry really captured me. early and my my mother had uh who was a painter had gone to art school in New York and was Enormously well read. There were books all over my house in a place

39:06 For the nearest bookstore, the bookstores in my town sold, you know, Bibles as big as station wagons and you know, little dashboard icons, but there wasn't a lot of literature to buy. But I found a home in the The little library was a three block walk from my house and I could disappear down the snowy valley of a book and I was somewhere else.

39:27 And so poetry saved my life. I mean, my best friends were poets. I I think the way People worship saints and you know Have crosses blessed. I felt that way. And if you think about the idea of the Eucharist, we weren't Catholic, we were atheists. My father was a union organizer and said, you know, church is a trick on poor people to to get their money away from'em and my mother was a kind of Marxist

39:54 lady who was very smart and you know, just a loose a little bit of a loose canon. So we were not churchy in the Bible belt. And Yeah, you take some but when you read a poem, you know, you Put it in the meat of your body. I mean you're a body person. I'm a body person. I feel like you take somebody else's suffering

40:14 Into you. And it changes you. It it transforms you. I had this idea of being a poet starting when I was five or six years old. that I wanted to be a poet. It was the strangest thing because

40:27 There were no poets around. No one had ever m no one I knew had ever met a poet. What was the feeling that elicited that desire? Was it Just these tangible brilliance and some type of wordplay? Was it a Kinesthetic reaction.

40:45 to the aesthetics of certain poets. What was it that Well produce that desire. You said it better than You win. I mean it's not a joke that I use the Riverside Shakespeare as a booster seat. That's literally what happened. I sat

41:01 When I had to reach the table, I sat on this giant edition of Shakespeare my mother had that was very water stained. And Uh it was a A book.

41:11 that I read very early and I started memorizing Not Shakespeare poems, but the speeches. From Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth and

41:26 Richard the Third and I would memorize these speeches and say them to my hung over mother and She liked it, you know, it was something she encouraged I got her attention that way. She was a very To say she was dead. Not nurturing

41:42 I mean Lady Macbeth is probably not nurturing the way my mother was not nurturing me she Her disinterest in being a mother was profound. Let's just put it that way. She once said to me when I was Early on when I was getting sober, I

41:56 She was supposed to watch my little boy was then a toddler when I went to an AA meeting and I came back one day and she was like I can't keep I mean it's just too I mean I was gone for an hour and a half. She says don't do kids and I was so mad. I said, Mother, you had four children. What do you mean you don't do kids? You don't cook, you don't clean, you haven't had a job in forty years. What exactly do you bring to the party?

42:21 And she thought for a minute and she said, Um, a lot of fun to be with You know, like Yeah, forgot to do anything for any other hu living human being, but I am fun to be with, which was not untrue. So I guess I had an aesthetic sense. She played music, she played opera, she played blues. Janice Joplin grew up in my home town, or rather I grew up in her home town since she was older or Brother would be in my high school carpool. So there was a lot of music I listened to. And I think poetry was part of that. The form, the shape. You know what it felt like? Tim, I felt

42:56 Лес лонли, а уса лонли. person and I would read these poems and I felt like someone understand me. Someone Knows what it feels like to occupy this Body.

43:10 And I remember trying to tell other little kids in my neighborhood about it. About poems that I like to remember. There's a E E Cummings poem I Once tried to tell some girls about in my school. You know, it's just spring and the world is mud luscious and the little lame balloon man whistles spar and we and Eddie and Bill came

43:29 come running and it's spring and the world is a petal wonderful and the goat footed balloon man whistle sperm we something like that. I can't even remember it, but It's so long ago. That's pretty good for not remembering. I can remember little bits of it. But I remember these girls in my school just going, What are you talking about? That doesn't make any sense. And I'm like What about it does it make any sense, you know, it's about it's being spring.

43:53 And then she's like, Well what is the Mud Lush is like that's not even a word. I'm like, no, it's like muddy and luscious and delicious. And it's like, how is mud delicious? You know, it's like, I'm like, no, like y'all aren't getting it. And I thought they were messing with me. It seemed so obvious to me. How great this was. So I learned to shut up about it very early, you know, by like third, fourth grade I learned just don't

44:20 You like this stuff, nobody else. Your mother likes it, your sister likes it, your daddy likes it, nobody else is gonna like it. You shut up. One expression that I think was in the Art of Memoir. I've read it in other interviews and again I'm probably gonna paraphrase here, but that poetry should disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed. Yes, I wish that were my line. Isn't that a great line? It's so good. Where is that from? Or do you recall where you learned it? Yes, I know I know vaguely where it's from, but I can't remember the guy's name. You can Google it. It's um We'll find it.

44:54 Early twentieth century, maybe nineteen twenties to nineteen fifty. Journalist. Guy. I'm sorry I don't cite him. I wish I could take credit for it, but yeah, all art should disturb the comfortable in comfort that's disturbed, and all therapy should and most foods

45:12 You know. It's not a bad goal. To shoot poor at the beginning of a day. How did you weasel into college? If you could go into call flashback because I would

45:23 Imagine that there's some listeners like me who are Just In their mind's eyes, seeing this Little girl sitting on Shakespeare and out of focus behind her head in the same kitchen are bullet holes in the tile. Yeah.

45:40 Imagining the experience and the experiences, although truly you endured some horrific, horrific things, but wondering how does someone in that position get into college. Uh especially when they're missing. at least based on some of my homework, for instance, eighty seven days of school in the sixth grade, things like this. How on earth does someone get into college? Was it your wielding of words and an essay that just unlocked it? Was it I w I won an essay contest when I was in high school. I remember I think it was from the National Council of Teachers of English

46:17 And I had Some professors. Actually my My mother had gone back to graduate school. And Got me

46:26 A recommendation from this teacher of Chinese history who felt me up. uh sexually assaulted me in his office and then wrote me a recommendation. So maybe that helped. Actually what I think helped when I look back on it was I oppose the Vietnam War and I wore black armbands on Moratorium Day and

46:45 That's the kind of thing that where I grew up You know, I remember my coach the football coach pinning me up physically like pinning me up against the lockers by the front of my shirt. And holding me against the lockers and Threatening me essentially to Take my black armband off. So I did things like I didn't stand up for the American flag. I mean, I don't know. I thought I was Colin Kaepernick or something. It didn't win me any friends, let me just say that.

47:11 But I later found out when I got to my school and I had a had to have a lot of jobs to go there. 'Cause it was a private school. It was it was McAllister College. It's a very good school. And I later found out that the assistant principal of my high school who had thrown me out a lot. For things like my

47:30 Skirt was too short. One time he threw me out for not having a bra on and I said, What makes you think I don't have a bra on? And then he called in the gym teacher to look under my shirt and confirm in fact I didn't have a brand. So I was just I was a pain in his ass. And I later found out that he called McAllister and told these people In the admissions office, that I was a bad citizen.

47:54 that I wouldn't stand up for the Pledge of Allegiance and stuff. Well, they hear this old redneck assistant principal and they hear about this little girl who's doing this and they think, She sounds great. She's perfect. Perfect So I actually think My misbehavier that got me in so much trouble and made him hate me so much. I once had an algebra teacher reveal to me he really is after you, like you're not paranoid. Like he's he's really he wants you out of here. And so I actually think I don't know how I got in.

48:25 I don't know how I got it. It was clearly a mistake. I made a D in art. You know, my senior year all and my mother was teacher. So I mean all I had to do was slap art on something and I would get have gotten You know, a B. And I couldn't Handle the pressure, it was too hard.

48:43 So I don't know how I got to college, but once I got to college, I've gotta say I really Well, everybody else was complaining about their parents and the I don't know that you that you couldn't s weren't supposed to smoke cotton your room or whatever they were mad about. I was like, This is great.

49:01 This is all these people read books and they'll talk to you about them and I made straight A's and I got a scholarship, and it was just shocking. to me that I might succeed at something, you know. What about the environment, aside from people who read books and are willing to listen, if it was the environment, maybe there are other variables. led to the straight A's? Was it being outside of your home environment? Like what was the recipe that contributed

49:27 Two That's sort of conversion of sorts from D for defiant to straight A. Maybe you're still defiant, but you got straight A's. I wasn't defiant. I wanted to please people. I mean I think I had a lot of jobs. Like I had one of those hair net wearing jobs at the food service for I could go in at like four in the morning and like

49:47 cook scrambled eggs and wash dishes and stuff. And so I think in some ways I had to organize my time, but I had been living with a bunch of drug dealers before I went to college out in southern California. We moved out there initially, we lived in cars and stuff and Then we got some Couple of us were slinging dough.

50:08 Mostly Pod and psychedelics, although one guy had robbed a drugstore and It was sk I hitch was hitchhiking one day. From Laguna Beach to San Clemente, where my friends were surfing, and I got picked up by a guy who really scared me. I thought he was gonna rape me.

50:26 and had to jump out. on the side of the road. And it's interesting because there were six of us who lived in that house when I left home. And of the six Four. Went to jail. And two of those were dead before they were twenty.

50:42 And only me and one other guy, my s who's still my best friend, Dooney. Wound up getting sober. And we both kinda made it, quote unquote, him in construction in southern California and Me doing whatever it is that I'm supposed to be doing. So I was scared. I was scared by how Dark.

51:01 things that I brought to darkness with me. You know, you get to Southern California from where I grew up and you're like, Where has all this been? You know, everybody's orthodont and You know, people's teeth are great and nobody's missing any digits or anything. They nobody's Everybody looks so amazing and everything's so beautiful and you're like, God, I've never seen anything like this. Golly. And so you would think everything would have been great, but you know, as you know, when you have a lot of trauma growing up, you bring the darkness with you. So I had this idea after the I was hitchhiking and I got scared. I had to went to jump out of this guy's car.

51:40 was a Volkswagen that had no back seat and had a bunch of garbage in it. And I pulled up on the handle of the door and it just went floppy round and round and round. Like it was locked and I couldn't get out.

51:55 And so the window was open, stuck open, wouldn't go up, wouldn't go down, and I stuck my arm out the side of the window and opened it from the outside and jumped out and went down this Embankment on the side of the road. I was really scared. I was s you know how those moments of trauma are. I was scared like I had been when I was a little kid and there were bullets flying around my house and and I thought I know, you know, I'll go to college in Minnesota and I mean it's just

52:23 That was the other thing. Everybody in Minnesota is so damn nice. Have you ever been there? I have. I have spent time there. I couldn't I used to make a joke about An unkind joke. I'd say if you're not a virgin when you get here, you will be when you leave. It was just everybody was so damn nice. Oh my God, I've never seen such nice people in my life. And it's still I got there and I did extremely well for two years and I won all these prizes and then I dropped out.

52:54 I couldn't handle the prosperity, you know, I couldn't handle the success. It took me a while to Finally start getting sober, I guess. I guess that was a lot of my problem. Which we will definitely talk about. I wanna dig into that. And I also am gonna ask you Just to plant a seed about

53:12 how those mentors initially convinced you Let's go to therapy, but first I wanna bounce around chronologically. Because from these origins I've In the process of doing

53:26 My homework read about Your Graduate seminar. At Syracuse described as hyper selective. And

53:36 You certainly A writer and poet of great note at this point. Lots of people know who you are, lots of people love your work, lots of people love you. describing the craft and process goes into your work. How do you select the students who make it into your graduate seminar, or how did you?

53:54 I mean I do it. It's I wish they would just give me a wand and I get to pick all my people. But interestingly I've been teaching their gosh Thirty years. Something like that. I only teach in the fall and I go and I commute from New York City. So We do it based on the work, we do it solely based on the writing and George Saunders my colleague got George Saunders had gotten so fa has gotten so famous.

54:20 that you know, he attracts a lot of people and have a lot of people who teach there Arthur Flowers. Juno Diaz has taught there We just you know, twelve hundred applications and for twelve positions. You end up with

54:34 These twelve. Gems. Of sort of Colors and kinds. Yes. What is day one, class one? What does that look like? Oh, you're thinking my me when I teach my memoir class. Yeah. Well I used to do

54:47 I used to do this thing. Yeah, that's so funny. I used to do this thing where I would stage a fight In my class. With someone who is opposite from me. So let's say you know, like my colleague George Saunders, who is Just the sweetest guy. I can't even tell you. I I was in the car with him once and there was a bug on his shirt and I was like

55:09 George, there's a big beetle on your shirt and you'd be like, Well he has to be somewhere You know, I'd be like, kill it. And he's like this uh Tibetan Buddhist with this amazing practice, you know, just the sweetest guy. So George comes in and starts arguing with me that my classroom is in fact his classroom.

55:33 And this is in front of all the students. In front of all the students. And it's for them it's the first day of school and it's like having their parents fight. And I script it so that I say only nice conciliatory things. I back up, he walks forward, he's bigger than I am. And then it ends with him like throwing the papers up and you know, telling me to go fuck myself or something. They're telling me to go hang, maybe I don't know if you can say the F word. Can you say the F word? F word is not only allowed but endorsed since I grew up on Long Island. You're in good company.

56:05 I feel so much better. Just telling me to go fuck myself and And then we ask the students to write. So let's say there are Seventeen, eighteen students in this class. Twenty. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty two.

56:19 And they're all smart. And they're all young. They were all incredibly juiced on adrenaline and cortisol. Because they were scared and It's a public scene and they don't really know each other that well and they don't know us that well. So they're all extremely alert. They're hyper vigilant.

56:38 And we ask them to write down what happens and everybody writes something just a little different. Interestingly, people will describe me in very aggressive terms. Like even though I'm the one backing up and I'm saying, Well, I can clear out during the break, George, but like I don't understand why you're so upset and he'll say You don't understand why I'm so I mean and he walks forwards and I'm backing up and my head is down and I'm doing every conciliatory

57:06 gesture I can think of. And people will say, you know, she stood her ground like a bulldog, or she had military strength facing off against him. And One year I did it with my student assistant who was a An undergraduate just a beautiful young Track star Betsy and

57:26 You know, Betsy just threw her papers up in the air and s was screeching at me. Well You know, she's this kid and here I am, this professor with, you know, fancy clothes in a position of power. So people would in that class of undergraduates assumed that I had done horrible things to Betsy that had In one class there was a young woman

57:49 one of the ruses I set up is that I leave my cell phone on so I can start to argue with George before he comes in and then ask the students, you know, how often did he call? How long between each call? and ask them to guess things or remember things about time and some people they he calls three times, some people will say he called once, some people four times. So all those details are very influenced by who they are. The young woman with sickle cell anemia will

58:19 have this enormous compassion for me because I'll say I have to leave my phone on. I'm waiting for medical results. And she'll assume I'm waiting to hear if I have some awful Ailment. And she sees George as a complete beast. And me as this woman, perhaps ill, who dragged herself to class, while everybody else in the class thinks, what a diva. She's answering her phone in the middle of class. She can't wait an hour to get medical results. I mean, come on.

58:48 So There are always people in class who have You have those perfect memories. I remember one kid Often they're musicians. This kid was a jazz saxophone player who was very famous in Brooklyn for giving these amazing

59:03 House parties. I think he made a living giving house parties for like, I don't know, years. So This kid had this amazing memory. He got We had a script and he remembered the script exactly. He remembered what George had on, he remembered where we stood. He remembered that I backed up.

59:21 Every step. And then when he wrote it, he wrote it exactly as it happened. He didn't miss anything. And he said George was the aggressor, but I wonder what she'd done to make him act that way. Акес та перса до ексей Is

59:37 For you to realize that you remember through a filter of who you are. memory is not a computer, it's not a perfect storage system. Obviously we Even these fine minds of these young people, very alert and paying attention in their first class and wanting to get everything right and do well. Misremember and What's more what I want them to think about is how

1:00:03 They are not just perceiving things but beaming the world, the landscape into being with whoever they are inside. It's important as a writer of anything. to realize what kind of filters you're strapping on. That prevents you from seeing what's going on.

1:00:20 I would imagine that is And Opening exercise that A lot of your students remember Speaking of memory for a very, very long time. What other exercises or aspects

1:00:34 Of your teaching. It could be in In any setting. Do Many of your students. Remember.

1:00:41 Or have stick out for them, would you imagine? I think a lot of practice things a lot of I think it's important as a writer, or as an anything. habits. I mean you talk about this and

1:00:56 For our body, four hour work week. You've developed a lot of practices. in your life to shape your life so that you're kind of operating you know, to constantly be growing and developing. And so Things like keeping a commonplace book, just keeping a notebook where you write down beautiful pieces of language. What is a commonplace book? That is where you capture the sort of beautiful turns of phrase that you Encounter.

1:01:21 Yeah, things you read. So you might copy poems. You might copy Something you ever heard on the street. There was a guy standing on my street. This is like a couple of years ago when I first moved into this apartment.

1:01:36 Screaming. Murder or suicide. at the top of his lungs and everybody was walking around the street. Walking around him. And it was early in the morning.

1:01:48 And I walked up to him and I said, Excuse me, sir. He was screaming murder or suicide, murder or suicide. And I went up to him and said, Sir, isn't there like a third alternative? Like isn't there a door number three? And That little encounter I wrote down, but things I overheard. Hold on, hold on. That's too much of a cliffhanger. So what happened when you said that? Well, you know what was beautiful? Uh I went into I was going into

1:02:19 Get a pastry for a friend of mine who was visiting from London. I got him one. I thought he'd bring him a pastry when I came out. But when I walked into the bakery, he was looking at the sky. You know, with a curious look. You know, he was thinking, like, isn't there a door isn't there a door in under the three? Isn't there another gosh

1:02:41 Or might just be a door number three. But mostly what I write down or pieces of language or things poems that I read. Paragraphs. Anything. So that you're just constantly copying. In longhand, you can't type it. You're constantly copying

1:03:00 Things that are beautiful, you're constantly Guzzling beauty. You're guzzling the beautiful language. So that you're kind of steeped in it. Do you know, like A fruit cake. And good br in good brandy.

1:03:14 Yeah. is the value of the commonplace book and using it this way in the writing down, or do you have some approach to review Or

1:03:28 using that later. I mean the great thing about them is that if you get on an airplane or you're going along, you sort of know what you're reading, but I've also been doing this A poet named Stanley Cunitz, who was a poet laureate in like 1978 or something, told me to do this. So I've been doing this since 1978. Also every time I give a lecture I put the quotes I use in the lecture on

1:03:51 Index cards. And so I have like You know, I've been teaching for forty years. I mean, I I have forty years of index cards with quotes on them. It's oddly satisfying. I don't know what it is. It's it's like a sit up you do. It's like a push up you do. It's uh something you don't really I often don't look back on. I think it's in the writing down. I think it's in the practice. And kind of yeah, it's like an altar. You're making an altar. For yourself.

1:04:19 Every day. You know, I wanted to Might as well use this as a segue. Alter. Could you speak to the

1:04:27 Importance. Or utility of prayer in your life. Yeah, I mean I'm a prayer. I was an atheist my whole life and I got sober in Nineteen eighty nine.

1:04:40 And believe me, I drank my share. I did my part. I remember some guy I went to high school with telling me I was when my mother was still alive, I was home and he says, You don't even drink anymore, you don't even smoke pot. It's like no Jack o' Lantern eye. I don't do that stuff anymore. It's like why? I was like, Well it just didn't agree with me, you know, it made me do things I I didn't want to do. And he says, Well I just think you're a quitter.

1:05:05 Yeah. I should think you're a quitter. I just think you gave up. I mean, what is smoking pot gonna do? You're never gonna like rob anybody's television or anything. Well that's true. That's true enough, Jack Lannard. But you have had this job pumping gas since the eleventh grade. Please tell me this guy's name was actually Jack Lantern.

1:05:26 His name was Jack. We call him Jack Lair because of a sad tooth. too thingy hand going on and because we were not ones to stand on ceremony. And he said, uh I said you have had this job since the eleventh grade and you're fifty years old and you have an ambition deficit disorder. Yeah.

1:05:45 Ha ha By my yardstick. So no, uh uh but he would say, Jack Larry said he'd say, Don't call me that no more. I'm like, What do you want me to call you? Like that's your name, dude. That's been your name since you were fifteen. That's your name.

1:06:00 What does prayer look like for you? I think it started off I think poems are my first prayers. The ones that I read, like I said, I felt less lonely. So I started praying not out of any virtue, not I didn't believe in God. I had no religious training whatsoever. When I was a little girl Yeah, people would say

1:06:18 would talk about Santa Claus or the Easter bounty. I thought they were kidding. I thought they don't really believe this horse shit. I mean I figure it out. pretty early on. You know, by the time I was like six or seven people were serious that they prayed when people weren't looking at'em.

1:06:35 I couldn't believe it. It was shocking to me. And daddy would say, Well, you know, folks ignorant, you know what you're gonna do. So I had not a religious bone in my body, but I did notice when I tried to stop drinking that I couldn't. Like that. I tried to stop drinking for two or three years.

1:06:54 And I tried by myself and I tried drinking only beer and I tried drinking only alone. I tried drinking only with other people and I tried drinking only wine. I tried drinking with food. I tried drinking only you know, weekends not I mean I just Somehow I had crossed some line where I just Couldn't stop drinking. And I went to get help and I went to sat in church basements and I hated everybody I saw who was sober. I just hated them. They just seemed like

1:07:20 You know, the guys selling incense at the airport. I just didn't like'em. Um they just didn't look fun and I just They were so nice too. It was like getting them in a center. They're hi, you know, welcome. I'd be like, Oh God, I hate these people. And finally the last time I drank, the last night I drank, I had gotten together for like It was the longest amount of time sober I'd had since I was fifteen, and I'd gotten together ninety days sober by going and, you know, sitting in church basements and talking to people who were sober. And I got a ninety day chip and then I had to give this talk. I had to give a poetry reading at Harvard.

1:07:57 Sorry to interrupt. Just Since I I don't have much familiarity, when you say ninety day chip, is that some like literal token that you are given because it looks like a poker chip. And so like you get one the first day you go and then you get one at thirty days and and sixty days and ninety days. So this was for me an epic accomplishment. I mean, there was no time that I ever ran the hundred yard dash in that was as important to me as that Ninety day chip and I was happy that I was sober. I felt better. I was sleeping better. My kid was better. Everything was better.

1:08:30 And I had to give this poetry reading at Harvard College and I I was nervous. I'd never given a reading without drinking. The reading went okay. I was teaching at a bunch of places, including one class there, and I went out with some of my students and the next thing I know it's three o'clock in the morning and I'm Like car spinning out on store drive and

1:08:50 Boston and I'm going towards this concrete and I somehow didn't crash the car and I somehow got home and And so at that point Everybody had been saying, you know, you've got to get on your knees and pray and there was this great Heroin addict. Recovering heroin addict Janice hit this

1:09:08 Halfway house where I did volunteer work. I drove people to meetings. Basically, and uh would pick people up and drive'em to meetings. A lot of disabled people and Janice said, just get on your knees. And I'm like, Janice, you know, what kind of God wants me to grovel?

1:09:23 And go, Oh God, you're so great. Ooh. And she said, You don't do it for God, you asshole. And that Boston accent. You don't do it for God, you asshole. I'm like, Well, who am I doing it for? She's like, You're doing it for yourself. Just get on your knees, just say help me stay sober. In the morning, get on your knees and I say, Thank you for helping me but stay sober. And so I'd be like, Okay. So I get on my knees, I help me stay sober.

1:09:48 And I'd say thank you for helping me stay sober. Well, some weird thing started to happen. I mean, sometimes I would literally shoot the finger at the light fixture'cause I just thought I hate this. You know what's terrifying praying? Is the loneliness of it. I always tell people, young women I Sponsoring.

1:10:08 You show more face. praying when you have never prayed before, then any nun To sit in that silence. With all your fears and all your self doubt. Is so scary and hard.

1:10:22 If you have a big loud head like I do, and like I have a big inner life and Mine never has anything good to say it. thinks it can kill me and go on living without me. Something started to happen. I would have these moments of quiet.

1:10:39 And the only way I can describe it is it was south of my neck. It was like in the middle of my chest. If I was living my life with my head like yammering at me like a chihuahua all day, do that, ston't that stupid bitch, put that down, pick that up, go over there. I mean, it was just Eat this, don't eat that, call him. I hate him. You know, like just These moments like in the middle of my chest would be like this broad expanse.

1:11:08 Of quiet. And I remember one particular day or Little shitty car broke down. My kid was a toddler and he was I had to pee, we were on the road, I ha it didn't break down, I had a flat.

1:11:20 And didn't have a spare, a working spare. It was rush hour, we were on Memorial Drive, we're trying to get home. And I just in that moment, what I normally would have done, you know, I would have been there, you know, like throwing the Jack around and trying to get the car jacked up and in a state of indignant fury that I didn't believe in God, but I believe that there was fate.

1:11:42 That had doomed me to Misery and that the guy with the Jaguar would always get my parking place right before I pulled in and And I believed I had a head that had memorized the bad news and spewed out all day. And I remember that day it was the sun was setting.

1:11:59 I just got out on the side of the road, got Dev out of his car seat. And The sun was going down and he was looking at me afraid. That I was gonna be like angry. And I just sat there and he said he was hungry.

1:12:14 And I didn't have anything to eat in the car and I'm sitting there and I said, Let's just look at the sunset a minute and then we'll We'll go, we'll walk and we'll get some help. And we were just sitting there looking at the sunset and this truck pulls up. With these Gomba guys from this twelve step meeting. And they have ginger ale, they have a jack, they have a way to tow my car.

1:12:39 They give Deb potato chips. And it was just like You know, all I have to do is just find some space in my body. And just wait. For a minute. And so I started to

1:12:54 Notice. Things happening. When I wasn't the day like a dog over like a bone that was about to be stolen.

1:13:05 Uh you know, like that it when I could just I could just like sit there for a moment and so I began to get a space in my body and I began to get I began to hear not the voice of God, I would call it

1:13:22 I would have some leanings, like I would be thinking I should have just killed myself. Like literally, this is what I'd be I should have killed myself. My husband would marry some nice girl who wore barretes, and my son would have this great mother and his life would be better if I weren't there. And I would hear this voice in my head that was like You need a sandwich.

1:13:43 Why don't you get a sandwich? Why did you make yourself like the biggest sandwich you can make? And I'd be like, Ooh, great idea. Like I just started to have these small good ideas. That were not like anything I'd ever heard when I was afraid before.

1:14:00 Yeah, then I had all these crazy spiritual experiences and like one of the things I had this great sponsor, Joe on the Bone. God, I loved her. She was so great. She was the kind of girl who lived in Alaska and would go to the bar when it was like fifty below in a two to you know she was just like a badass. Like she was just and she was a Harvard social theorist too, I've got to tell you. She was just Joan the Bone. Joan the Bone. All that and a bowl of biscuits. Yeah. Sounds like a mobster. What's the origin of the name? Do you have any idea? I just called her that. That was my nickname for Joan the Bone. Joan the Bone. And

1:14:38 Joan would tell me things like I was such an ingrate, she'd say you have to make a gratitude list. And so she'd call me and say, What's on your gratitude list? I would say, I have all my limbs. She'd say no, okay. Here's what you're gonna do. You're gonna make a gratitude list every day this month. For every letter of the alphabet. And you're gonna call me and read it to me.

1:14:58 I said, Shut the fuck up. I'm not gonna do that. She's like, Yes, you are, or else, you know, like I won't talk to you anymore and I'd be like Okay So I just started trying. I just started trying instead of sitting there with my arms crossed and my lower lip stuck out and my baseball cap pulled down over my eyes. I just started trying shit that people who were happier than me suggested I should try. It was so simple. And so one of the things I said to her is she said, You've got to pray for what you want. What are you praying for? I said, I pray to stand it.

1:15:27 Yeah, not to kill myself. To stand it. Just to get through the fucking day. That's what I'm praying for. And she said, Okay, well you gotta pray for what you want. What do you want? I said.

1:15:40 I made nine thousand dollars this year. I would like some money. Please. She said, Well, why don't you pray for money? I'm like, You can't pray for that. She's like, Well, why not? I said okay. So I would literally get on my knees in the morning and say, Keep me sober, I would like some money.

1:15:57 I'm not even making this up. And I would get on my knees and say, Thank you for keeping me sober. I would still like some money. Three weeks later after I started this a true story and you can look it up. I get a phone call from a guy Who says He's from this foundation. He's giving me thirty five thousand dollars that I'd never applied for or asked for, that somebody just put me up for.

1:16:19 And I so thought it was I thought it was my friend George playing a trick on me and says, You know, fuck you, George, and I hang the phone up and the guy calls back and he asked me on You know, the speakerphone you can hear people laughing. Maniacally. So I've never gotten money from prayer Again.

1:16:37 And then John LeBron says, Well, you must believe that there's some sort of gut. I'm like, No, because They were meeting to give me that prize before. I had stopped drinking and started praying. And she said, Jesus Christ. And I would also talk to her all the time. She'd say, How can there be a God? Because look at the Holocaust. How do she's like, God didn't do the Holocaust. People did the Holocaust. Like, what are you mad at God for? People did that. God didn't do that has nothing to do with God.

1:17:03 So that's how my prayer life started. It's a bizarre story. I like bizarre. So Ignation exercises. Does that mean anything to you? Yes, yes. I became a Catholic. I became a Catholic and I do something, I practice a kind of spirituality called Ignatian spirituality, which When you become a Jesuit

1:17:25 You go away to the Jesuit place or the Jesuit making place. So you you do a qu You you go to chess with School. And then they give you these thirty day exercises. And the purpose of the exercises is to find God in all things. So like this election.

1:17:43 J just turned around to look at my screen to see if we had a new president. So this election, for instance. Just a side note, somebody just sent me a text before we started recording and said the entire country has electile dysfunction, which I thought was pretty clever. Why didn't I think of that? Oh my god, so great. Yeah, it was a clever turn of phrase, yes. Oh my god. No, it really is. We have finding God in all things. So that means, you know, like when the car breaks down, instead of thinking, you know, your cruel fate. You know, his

1:18:21 come to hurt you. You so what you do actually, Tim, is in the morning I do a prayer and meditation thing for twenty minutes. Where I do like Centering prayer for movie I don't know. five, six, seven minutes and then I read a scripture and I meditate on the scripture and

1:18:38 And then I have a bunch of people I pray for. I have a list of people I pray for and things I pray for. Then at night I do something called the examine of conscience where you It's not like going over your day making a list of good things had happened or whatever and them repenting for the bad things. It sounds like that, but it's not that. What it is

1:18:58 Is you kind of press play. on the recorder of your day. So you think, I woke up and so what did I do? Where was I? What mindset was I in? And you close your eyes and you try to Review your day literally like you're watching a movie. And For you see moments of grey.

1:19:18 Or luck, or even something, you know, a good sandwich, something yummy to eat. You're supposed to savor those moments and occupy those moments. And it's a very Body oriented exercise you're supposed to smell. What do you smell? What do you hear? What do you taste? How do your clothes feel? You're supposed to really recreate that

1:19:41 moment in a sensory way. And thank God. for the grace or the gift of that. And then you kind of press play again and you see moments where you turned away from God or you Your best self.

1:19:57 Didn't act and you Say yeah I w I wanna do better next time. Instead of snapping at the Robo Call voice snapping at Siri because she doesn't understand me. I love me for myself alone, you know, to just Mm.

1:20:15 You know, tomorrow I'd like to be more patient. Help me to be more patient. So What it does is it made Those moments of gratitude. And I also keep Kind of a list or journal of those things and a prayer journal. A daily I don't keep a journal journal, but I keep a daily prayer journal and

1:20:33 And I just will kind of highlight Some of those things. Like for me Today right now, Steve Cornaki's haircut, which I know he does himself. I don't know. The guy who delivers the Big map thing on MS NBC. I just like the guy.

1:20:48 I just like him. Every time I see him, I feel like I'm spending the night at my girlfriend's house and he's her nerdy brother who's like secretly hot. I had this flash of panic'cause I was like oh fuck. Here's somebody important. I'm not saying it's unimportant, but I'm just saying oh god, here's another name that I have to pretend I know because I'm on the podcast. So if you're a liberal, you're like a nut and you watch this way, other people watch other things. So he's this really nerdy kind of math goop. guy who wears like khaki's and

1:21:27 a really like a clip on tie and has this really bad haircut and I just have a complete crush on him. I just crush on. I don't even like young men. I don't. I really don't. You have to have some You know, you have to have a It's some hair coming out of yours for me to want to date you, but this guy just does it for me. I just like him. I just like him. So wait a second. Tie that together for me. Is that does that have an anything to do with the prayer journal? Yes. Or were you just confessing that? Oh, No, no. It's it's I have a crush on a ton that this guy who's on TV every day, and it tickles me to see him as kind of a little thrill. It's a little thrill.

1:22:03 To see him, it really is. It's so stupid. But it's also it makes me feel like a child. It makes me feel like a like I'm in junior high school. And so there's something innocent and sweet about it. Also the fact that he's so dorky, I like I just like that. So you have a prayer journal. You have the commonplace journal. Do you have any other journals?

1:22:25 No, that's it. The PR journal I don't really I only write Like actually write and I it's mostly kind of looks like a list. Do you know what I'm saying? It's mostly like the wheels tip things like

1:22:37 The lady at my drug store. who the my pharmacist who uh they were all out of you know, the pneumonia vaccine. I get pneumonia a lot and She went out of her way. to call me and say, you know, I got you the pneumonia. I you know if you can come in right now that we had a cancellation, I you know, I can do the just kindnesses, moments of kindness, but also moments

1:23:01 A presence and awareness. Oh God. Uh a lot of people feel it in nature. I feel a little bit in Central Park, which is all the nature I have. I am Currently in Austin, Texas, which is home based for me. Shut the front door.

1:23:16 Yeah, I've been here for three years. I live in the Republic of Austin. One of my favorite T shirts, not everyone's gonna get this, but is a shirt with the Texas flag, which says most likely to secede on it, which uh which I quite like. Yes, so I'm in Texas, although a lot of Texas people would argue that I'm not in Texas, but yeah, I know, right? Listen, or do you have a weapon? If you have a weapon you belong. I do.

1:23:48 Dog it good for you. What do you have? Can I ask and we talk well as we're gonna have to do it? As far as weapons. Yeah, sure. I uh I have a a seven millimeter Wind Mag hunting rifle. I have a uh Glock Thirty four, which is a nine millimeter guy. I know what it is. I know what a nine millimeter guy is. I'm not explaining it for you. I'm explaining it just like getting on your knees. Not for not for God, it's for you. I'm explaining to the listeners. So nine millimeter Clock thirty four, I have an M and P Forty five.

1:24:19 And a few other Do you hunt? firearms that I don't use much. I hunt, but infrequently. And that started In two thousand twelve, I always had a very negative association with hunting. Uh just given my exposure to it. Kind of a great thing.

1:24:37 Yeah, yeah, I had a very negative association because I saw very irresponsible hunting on Long Island. Yeah. And then in the process of working on the four hour chef and learning to forage. I felt

1:24:51 It was incumbent upon me to Hunt. And if I were to consume animal protein, so I had my first Deer hunt with an incredible hunter. And conservationist named Steve Ranella.

1:25:05 And that really completely shifted my lens on how ethical and responsible hunting could be. Now in Texas you have the whole spectrum from responsible to you know machine gunning hogs from helicopters, uh which I do not partake in, although people could argue it's an invasive species, et cetera, et cetera. But yes, so I do hunt Infrequently. Prob you know, let's just call it once every year or two. You know, those javelina hawks are fun to shoot. I'm sorry to say it. I'm embarrassed to say it. But I've shot a javelina hog. So I'm anti gun but pro hunting.

1:25:42 Ha. But does that make sense? It does. I mean I'm just imagining these kind of backwoods. Kiwis in New Zealand hunting hogs with knives walking into the woods barefoot, which is a real thing. I know one guy who did that. So you can be pro hunting while being anti gun. I think that's possible. No, but I mean I w if I were to hunt, I would hunt with a gun, but I'm It's funny, one of my best friends has a young writer named Phil Lamarche, who's an amaz he's one of those guys who stocks his freezer with bow and arrow killed. Venison. He called me this week and said a very interesting

1:26:17 A deer, and he said. You know, the longer I hunt You know, the only thing I hate about it is the killing. I think there's a lot of shared sentiment. To that.

1:26:28 Yeah. A lot of hunters. Yeah. I mean the most reverent people I know about the natural world are For practicing. Many of them are practicing hunters. Mm-hmm. Tru fact. Well I wanna use this

1:26:43 to Thai. A bunch of things together in the most awkward fashion possible. That's okay. Because I've been uh been trying to force fit a segue somewhere, so I might as well do it here. And that is To hear your

1:26:57 description or explanation of how some of your wordsmithing came to be. Part of what I enjoy so much about your writing is that you have this Let me get this right, time critic Lev Grossman said in his review of Lit Carr seems to have been born with the inability to write a dishonest or boring sentence. That's high praise. Now Love to The least the least boring sentences for me.

1:27:23 And God, I wish I could remember it, but You take this But seems like this sensitivity to language. And poetry to create sentences using cat shit sandwich metaphors and so on.

1:27:39 Which also seems to me, and maybe this is you tell me if this is warranted or not, but to be a very kind of Texan Thing also. It kinda makes me think of like a trial lawyer. in God knows where in Texas, right? Who gets up and just demolishes some slick trial attorney from Los Angeles in a complete mismatch, right? I mean just dismantle someone with these

1:28:02 Really clever. Yeah. Where does that come from, or how did that develop in you? Because I do think it is one of your superpowers. Well, I think growing up in Texas is it's a storytelling culture. You know, I Texas idiom is poetry, as far as I'm concerned, and I had two great practitioners I'm a seventh generation Texan, uh on my mother's side and fifth generation of my daddy's. So

1:28:26 My daddy was a great barroom storyteller. I mean he was He was a labor union organizer for the oil, chemical and atomic workers local, twelve forty two. And um He was just funny as a crutch and

1:28:41 Told these amazing kind of tall tales like out of Mark Twain. But he also spoke in poetry, like he would say, like a woman with an ample behind, he'd say, uh she has a butt like two bulldogs fighting in a bag. And for him that was a compliment. There was nothing insulting about that that he used to call me I'm a little Skinny thing. He used to call me a gimlet ass.

1:29:04 Okay, you need You need some taler on that ass. You need you need you got you a gimlet ass. I don't even know what that is, but it I knew it wasn't good. A little flat butt. Or he would say it's rainin' like a cow pissin' on a flat rock. You can scan that, by the way.

1:29:21 It's rainin' like a cow, pissin' on. Plat rock. Wait, what do you mean by scan, real quick? Well I mean like like uh Shakespeare is iambic Pentameter. Mm-hmm. Or my first love poem that was ever written to me. I saw you on your horse today, your eyes like eggs, your hair like hey. That's like my Italian bit pentameter.

1:29:41 It's da da da da da. That's it doesn't matter what it is, but you can hear it when I say it, right? That It's raining. Like a Cow pissin' on a

1:29:51 Flat rock. And that you hit that flat rock. It creates for one thing, it creates a whole landscape in which cows Piss on flat rocks. And people stand around a marble and go, My goodness. Look key at that.

1:30:09 And then you attribute that to the rain, it's a metaphor. It operates way beyond the bounds of propriety. It's not how you talk in church. You're not supposed to talk like this. So the minute you say this and somebody laugh at it. You have'em. They're in your boat. They have transgressed But by laughing at at your joke. Well, Daddy was just the master of a story. But he was also

1:30:34 a poetic imagery. I mean to me that poetry I grew up I was steeped in it. My mother Who was an enormous reader who read everything Chinese history and and Russian novels and philosophy and Just read everything.

1:30:53 Was just the master of You know, I remember when she was dying she had all these old men she who were always trying to marry her, which Why? But she's dying. She's actively dying, and one of these old boyfriends has come to see her at the hospital in Houston and The nurse bin sufferences

1:31:10 Miss car. Your husband's here to see you. And she says, Well he must look like shit. He's been dead twenty years. And you know, I mean she just can't Stop herself from saying like the most horrible thing you've ever thought. And so I think between the two of them and just growing up in

1:31:30 In Texas, the idiom, the language I grew up with is Epically beautiful. And The need to not be boring when you speak. You know, people will I'm gonna stomp a mud hole in your ass. That is so much better than I'm I'm gonna whip your ass.

1:31:48 It's just like Yeah, right. My friend Dooney got in a fight once with a guy in a bar. And the guy said and he told the greatest story about it. It was actually the guy he decided to stab. He went out in his truck and got a knife and came back with like a Swiss Army knife. And we start facing this guy who was a state congressman, by the way, I won't tell you his name.

1:32:12 But he starts chasing him around this bar. Well, to brandish a weapon in a place where alcohol is served is a mandatory, I think ten year sentence, seven Some big You know, it's not it's frowned upon. And he's chasing this guy around and what if somebody says to Danny at one point. That's a little bitty old knife you got through, you said well notice he don't wanna get stabbed by it

1:32:33 Yeah. And then he runs out and then it we hear the siren. So here comes so here comes all Then he runs out, he gets in his truck, and one of those mall cops Security guys runs out. And do he says he stands in front of my truck in front of my headlights, he's got a belt buckle that will pick up HBO.

1:32:56 And he he holds his hands up and goes, HALT! H And Dooney just puts it in first gear and hits the guy.

1:33:07 I mean he doesn't hit him hard, but he knocks him down. And then leaves. And gets pulled over and is convinced he's going to prison for Brandishing this weapon for trying to hit this guy. But anyway, it turns out he had to call the guy to apologize. The guy's daddy knew Dooney's daddy. And he said all he wants you to do is apologize and didn't like apologize, you know, I'll blow the guy.

1:33:30 Like me? I don't want to go to jail. Of course I'll apologize. But here's the punchline of the story, and this is what makes Dooney my still my best friend since I was fifteen. So he calls the guy up and the guy answers me and goes Uh and Dunny goes, I am so sorry, man, about last night. I am so sorry. And the guy says, You almost killed me. And uh Donie says, Man, I'm so sorry. I didn't know it was you. Don't you wanna say that though, the next time somebody happen I didn't know it was you. The next time you do some horrible thing. Don't you wanna say I didn't know it was you, honey?

1:34:13 I don't know. Only in the state of Texas do you have that story. It's just got all the elements of a Texas story. How could I not love it down there? I mean, oh my God.

1:34:25 Let's talk about Revision. Okay, revision. I'm a big revisor. I'm a big revisor. You're a big revisor. But so you have said, you know, anyone who's read a rough draft of anything I write is just shocked at how bad it is. It's terrible. And What does the process look like? I mean, I know this is a very hopefully doesn't sound like a a really naive question because I know that there's a there are many, many aspects to revision.

1:34:48 I'll lead with just a bit. This is from writermag.com, but car says she takes a hard look at every sentence she writes. Can I make this sentence less boring, more interesting, prettier, more colorful, more true? So that's a teaser. What does your revision process look like? Because I've Read that you threw out. Something like twelve hundred pages. About twelve hundred pages of lit. Yeah. Finished pages, too. That's not draft. And that was written over about I wanna five or six years. And I remember when I threw it out

1:35:17 Tim, I was so upset. I had been well, first off They were about They were about to hang me. I was so late. I was like seven years late on a contract. I mean they And so I finally my agent called me and said. You know, you're gonna have to d I said, you know what? I will sell my apartment and give

1:35:36 The damn money back. If they don't shut up and leave me alone. Th it's just gonna take me a minute. So anyway, so I'd sent them I don't know. I'd sent them like a hundred and thirty, a hundred and forty pages. And my editor at the time estimated that I'd thrown out twelve hundred pages. And let me tell you when she said that they sucked as bad as I thought they sucked. I mean I knew they sucked when they sent'em which I didn't want to send'em. I wanted to keep working on'em, so

1:36:01 I just I went to bed for like Two days. And I watched You know, Doctor Phil reruns and

1:36:10 A lot of cooking shows and I ordered a lot of curry. I think I had a And slopped around in my bathrobe. And then I called Don Dalilo's one of the people I call It's like, you know, the nuclear button, you know, who's like

1:36:26 Just the one of the great novelists who sp also happens to be a friend of mine and I said, Don, I I think I'm writing a He's like what are you crying about? I said, I think I'm writing a bad book. And he said, Well, who doesn't? And I thought about that, and I thought God he's right. Tolstoy's written bad bo I mean, people I read, uh you know, the every writer I know has written a bad book. Okay, so maybe it's just supposed gonna be a bad book, but it's the book that's standing in line to be written.

1:36:55 And I think I became willing to fail. To just Say what happened. Basically what it looks like is Just clawing through a line at a time or a sentence at a time.

1:37:09 I think one example I give in the art of memoir is that when I'm My mother is driving me to college. And I think The sentence I started with was something like Mother drove me to college in her yellow station wagon.

1:37:24 We stopped every night at the holiday inn and got drunk on screwdrivers. I can't remember. Might have said puke and drunk on screwdrivers. I somehow was able to remember being in that car.

1:37:39 The thing about my mother's yellow station wagon Was that it didn't have an air conditioner, so the at that time you could buy an air conditioner that's strapped under The dashboard. Well it would build up condensation and when she turned right.

1:37:54 And I was sitting in the You know, shotgun. The water in the Air conditioner would spill out onto my bare feet. And it was icy, icy cold water.

1:38:07 And I remembered that we had stopped and gotten a bushel of peaches in Arkansas. And she was drinking vodka, driving drinking vodka and orange juice and eating these, watching her eat a peach, you know, when you're seventeen years old to watch your mother eat. And show any desire for anything is just so horrifying. You just want to die. There's just nothing uglier than watching your mother eat a peach. When you're seventeen. You just think, My God, woman, shut your mouth. Take a smaller bite. Jesus, it's not going anywhere.

1:38:40 You know, but I the smell of the peaches and being And suddenly I remembered that I had a copy of A hundred Years of Solitude. That was her book. But I had started reading and she said, Read it aloud to me. And I remembered reading that book.

1:39:00 and driving and I remembered, you know, you grow up around these kind of Texas dirt farms. I mean there's plenty of corporate farming in the state of Texas, but then you get to the Midwest. And it's just so organized. It's just there aren't the rusted cars in the yard and the refrigerator on the porch, you know, it's These rows and rows of corn and these big cinnamon colored silos. And I remember driving into that landscape up to that college.

1:39:29 And Reading that book and thinking I could be a writer. I somehow was able to remember those details and occupy that body. in space and time and remember how disgusted I was. By my mother and how terrified I was that I wouldn't do well.

1:39:47 At school that I would fail. I've been such a screw up, you know, I've been arrested the year before. with a bunch of kids and there was a bunch of dope and some of'em went to jail and I didn't because The judge was a guy who had known my mother when she was a reporter for the local newspaper And I still remember sitting in h she came to pick me up, we're in a leopard She had leopard skin pajamas. It was July fourth.

1:40:14 And she had on a beaver coat with a mink collar. And those leopard skin pajamas in the and this hot Night in Coons County, Texas. And here sits his judge behind us, this liver spotted judge. With these palsied hands and every meal he's ever eaten on his tie. When she came to pick me up and he said, I remember your mother. She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen And she said, Oh, you old fool I mean

1:40:41 It was just like Oh my God, mother, get me out of here. Sucking up is underrated. So anyway, yeah, I think it's memory. It's I do an exercise I just did it the other day for a colleague of mine, Dennis Pietra, a wonderful young novelist I teach with. And she's teaching an undergraduate class and I said, You know, I wanna do this right. There are ninety kids in the class.

1:41:05 I said, I want to do this writing exercise. She well, the writing, you know, it's been uneven and but I said, Lo trust me, everyone will write well. And you have them focus on a room they grew up in and to try to occupy the smell to try to remember a room you're in where your mother's cooking your grandmother wherever you s had a good meal. When you were little.

1:41:28 And try to close your eyes and smell that. Because you know, smell is the most primordial. Memory and the most emotional memory and it's stored way back in that snake brain hypothalamus we have that is where all the trouble starts. You try to get in that memory.

1:41:47 And Interrogate your body about what you can smell, taste, touch. And then finally what you want. What are you yearning for and what's keeping you from getting it? Maybe it's a bite of the brisket or some of the barbecue or daddy's oysters coming up out of the fryer or What's gonna keep you from getting it? It's my big footed sister who, as Daddy said, nothing ever got between her and a Bag of groceries.

1:42:12 You know, she's gonna get all the oysters and I won't get any. And so it's really more about trying to occupy a former self. Казайк аж нож і трама. The body remembers the body also remembers beauty. It also remembers pleasure and love and

1:42:31 Those other things too. So So The body Keeps the score. And

1:42:39 If you go excavating for these memories sometimes There are costs associated with that. Yeah, I s I've you know I've read that While you were working on the Liar's Club that you'd suddenly fall asleep in the middle of the afternoon as if you'd

1:42:54 Driven all night. And You would sob, you'd really suffer. What did you do to cope with that pain? And I should just say You and I were chatting before the recording about

1:43:07 Trauma a bit. And you know, I've recently described some of my childhood sexual abuse and The podcast that I did related to it didn't seem to Exact a horrifying toll, but the process years before of trying to write about it and getting a very, very rough draft.

1:43:29 Brutalized me. And Just left me Paralytic for God, more than six months in some ways. And I just

1:43:39 Yeah. Yeah, thank you for Saying that and I'm horrified by the experience and also fascinated by it in a way because I don't know why those two things should be so different. And I'd just love to hear. You will

1:43:50 Expand a bit on The price that you've paid or or your experience with dredging up a lot of these memories or recalling them, putting them down. And why writing seems at least in my experience to be so different from some other forms of expressing these things.

1:44:09 Well, I mean because you're alone. I mean that's for me where the prayer and the God comes in. I do have a sense now that I didn't have Back in the day, I mean when I s by the time I started writing Liars Club How old was I?

1:44:23 I don't know. Thirty five. I've been in therapy for Sixteen years. And I also had a prayer practice.

1:44:32 For You know, a meditation And prayer practice for some years. I w I hadn't converted. I wasn't a Christian. I didn't I was a Catholic. But I was about to become Catholic and I was very active in recovery programs and I had a sponsor and I also had

1:44:52 Based on all of those efforts I had done a lot of the processing and recovery. I mean Flown down to Texas when I was twenty three years old and got my mother drunk on Margaritas and told her, you know, you tried to kill me with a butcher knife, and it's not because I was a bad kid and it ruined my life and

1:45:12 What the hell was wrong with you? What was going on with you know, I had done A lot of that work. Пофор анайта. When they tell me they want to write a memoir about some horrible stretch of Childhood or some awful period of trauma.

1:45:28 Maybe they don't. Maybe they don't right now. So I think I had a sense of You know, when I was drinking my idea of Medicating myself or anesthetizing myself. That was all I knew how to do.

1:45:45 That was what my parents told me to do. That was all they knew how to do. was try to drink it away. Yeah, my daddy was in the battle of the bulge. I mean he went went in at Normandy and he came out at Buchanwh. I mean that's plenty of trauma, plus being married to my mother would have been simple. Uh there's only one person with a weapon. As opposed to the Nazis.

1:46:07 So Yeah, I think I'm a big fan of A hot bath. I'm a big fan of Nutritious food. I'm a big fan of cardio.

1:46:21 Even now, I mean, I'm sixty five, I don't do five dance classes a week, but I get up in the morning and I walk four miles. And then I do Pilates three or four times a week and I take a dance class a couple of times a week. And all those things keep me in my body and When I'm in a lot of pain, I take care of myself. When I was drinking I felt like I had this screaming baby that I was holding and I was screaming at it. Well the time to shut up.

1:46:48 So yeah, I think I still have Even Writing anything now I find very I'm not dealing with anything like that. I'm so much but I'm also I'm so much happier now than I've ever been in my life.

1:47:03 I mean, I'm sixty five years old. I've never been so happy in my life. I never been less good looking, had less social power, had, you know, Any of the things that you would think would Make me happy, joyous, and free. And I'm just

1:47:22 I wake up every day Really? Feeling lucky to be alive and feeling loved and feeling like Not every day. I mean I wake up plenty of days and um You know, Mad as an old stump pissing it, but

1:47:37 Most of my days are pretty lit up. And it's a lifetime of practice, so I tell a lot of my students, my young students, you know, want to write about sexual assault or Trauma Of various kinds.

1:47:52 Well, maybe why don't you get some treatment for this first? Why don't you treat your heart first, treat your body, treat yourself. With a lot of care and See if this is what you want to write about. Right now. It's something you can write about maybe five years from now or something, you know. What advice

1:48:10 Would you give yourself about therapy? If you were talking to your nineteen or twenty year old self and How were you first convinced? to go to therapy. I remember you mentioning that a long time. You know, I didn't have to be convinced I mean, here's the other thing. Yeah, no, and there were a lot of people saying, Gee, I wish you'd stop drinking

1:48:31 I mean I led a pretty isolated Existence, the way a lot of people who grew up, the way I What? I mean, I think it's a good thing My idea of telling somebody how I felt. I remember right before I stopped drinking, I remember I was teaching sort of all over the academic ghetto around Boston, but I remember

1:48:48 Specifically one day at Tufts I was copying something for a class and I was I dropped my kid off like vomiting out the side of the car before I dropped him off at daycare. I mean And then I drove to Tufts and I was Xeroxing something and somebody said, How you doing, Mir? And I was like, You know, I wanna blow my fucking brains out.

1:49:08 And that was my idea of telling somebody how I felt. Making a glib. Sort of awkward, socially awkward. statement is somebody I hardly knew. And I've been in therapy then for a while.

1:49:22 But I was also drinking. Every day everything I could get my mitts on. So What is good therapy to you? Because therapy is is a term that's Extremely broad. It's kinda like saying medicine, right? Yeah, exactly. There's so many different specialties. What has proven to be good therapy for you? You know, I think it's totally depends on the on the person. I mean The best there is.

1:49:43 The best therapist I ever had, I think. I mean for me the difference in therapy and recovery I think In the The baby and they're the mommy. And that model sort of, especially when I first started, I just felt like I needed a lot of nurturing.

1:50:02 And I had great therapist You know, my first therapist when I look back on things he said and did was Insane. He would have been fired. He told me to go down after he'd been seeing me nine months and confront my homicidal, suicidal mother about all this horrible stuff she'd done to me. And I did it. And he said, I won't see you until you do it.

1:50:24 Well. I mean Nobody's ever penny in for a pound, yeah. I know. I mean I look back on it and I was like he was crazy. Nobody's ever I had a great Therapist when my son was a baby who was a psychologist, PhD psychologist.

1:50:41 And who really helped me Try to learn how to be a mother when I hadn't had one. And all the Feelings that come up around what you didn't get when you were a child, when you have a child.

1:50:54 The protection and stuff. It's funny, my son watches me with his daughter now and just says, I don't know. Sort of gives me nothing but a stroke and I said, Let me just tell you, I was not this good with you.

1:51:08 Like I was crazy about you and I loved you, but I didn't have what I have now. That I have with her that's just I don't even break a sweat going in there. I can do this stuff. It's funny I was in I Babysit one or two days a week. I was in Prospect Park this week. And I had taken her across the park in a stroller.

1:51:28 And a thunderstorm broke out. I mean pouring rain. And I've never shared with somebody this good natured as this baby. This baby Couz, smiles, laughs, never cries. I mean, sleeps, eats is just the best natured kid. I I used to babysit in high school and college. So I've taken care of a lot of babies and she's just the easiest kid. I get across the thing, it's pouring rain.

1:51:53 And She starts screaming crying like she's being beaten. And I take her out of the stroller and I hold her and she calms down. I go to put her back in the stroller and she just starts screaming crying again. Well, it's two miles across a muddy field in the pouring rain and I've got a stroller and a bunch of crap and I've got this

1:52:13 You know. twenty seven pound unit. Screamin' Unit and uh I just had no problem doing it. And when I was forty years old.

1:52:23 thirty five years old, it would have been like being beaten with a hose. I just thought, you know what, Daddy was in the battle of the bulge. This is not that hard. You know, I just had the physical energy. Even at my age. That I didn't know I had.

1:52:41 To do it, and I got back to the house. And I went to fold up the stroller, there was four inches of freezing water in the bottom of the stroller that I've been putting her in. And she was soaked through to her skin. Yeah, there was I she was perfectly reasonable to be s you know, now I understand. I could have just emptied it out and put her in the stroller and wrapped her up in a blanket, but I I didn't know what it was, but I just thought well, I'll get her home and it'll be fine. You know, I didn't feel like oh my God, oh my God, I'm a terrible mother and I'm gonna wind up

1:53:10 trying to stab her with a butcher knife, which is how I felt when my kid was that age. You know, I didn't know that I wasn't gonna be my mother. I wasn't I didn't know that. So scary. That is scary.

1:53:23 Yeah. Super scary. And Yeah. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that you've learned in some form or fashion, or maybe many forms and fashions, to wear the world like a loose garment. I'd love to know if you agree or disagree.

1:53:39 Well okay, so your first confession. Absolutely. Well, I mean I think it's not You know, the problem isn't whatever your mind is telling you the problem is the problem is the fear.

1:53:57 And for me the solution to fear is curiosity. And presence. And I can't be Terrified and curious.

1:54:08 At the same time. was walking the baby across Yeah. Feeled just all I was was physically uncomfortable. I mean I was thinking, gee, can I shove this thing and hold her moose, you know, and Get everything and get all this stuff.

1:54:25 How am I gonna do you know, ha and so I went Crossways across mud fields so I'm shoving the stroller and carrying her. I didn't know physically if I could do it. I was sort of dubious. I was thought, maybe I can't do this. Yeah. But all I had to do was do it. I thought, Well, if I get tired, I'll sit down, it'll rain on me a minute, then I'll get up and go again.

1:54:43 Like that's what we'll do. But I don't know. Here's the way I put it. I tell people it's like I have a trick knee. It's like most of the time I walk fine, I run fine, I can

1:54:55 You know, squat. More than my body weight. And do advanced Pilates for an hour and ten minutes and I'm tough as a boot. But there are days that I don't feel that way, or there are moments where I get

1:55:09 My knee goes out and I fall on the ground. All I have to do is honor those moments. All I have to do is I have a heating pad, I have a weighted blanket. My kids have a pit bull I'll bring to stay with me. Well An idiot.

1:55:23 is uh my little comfort animal. You know, I call people, I still have a sponsor, I still have a therapist. W I don't talk to all the time, but I didn't have to be convinced to go into therapy. I knew I needed it, but when I first started it As you know, it was just so damn painful. And I just for those of your listeners out there, if you're having a hard time, I just want to say it's like you lance a boil. And the infection straining off and if you can just

1:55:50 Get by there. It's gonna tell you that it's endless, but it's not endless. There's a bottom to it. So did you ever smoke? You never did. I was never a smoker. No. Yeah, you're just such a jock.

1:56:03 You're such a specimen. You're such a fast. Well, we're all specimens. It depends on how we look on the autopsy table. But the the uh I was born premature, so I have respiratory issues on my left lung. And that was part of it. So I had a lot of breathing issues growing up. to begin with. And secondly, I was Sports saved me. So sports kept me out of a lot of trouble. Yeah. I you know, I was good at sports and then I quit when I was like

1:56:32 I quit. I'm much more of a jock now than I was then. I was gonna ask you about smoking because when you quit smoking there's a phenomenon that happens. It's also when you quit drinking, but somehow it's more intense when you smoke.

1:56:47 You'll have a craving for a cigarette. А на крайн і атенс. As it was the first day you quit. It's as overpowering, but if you just keep note of how long the craving last. And how many of them there are?

1:57:04 There are Аз інтенс But they're not As long and as frequent. So it's the same thing about suffering.

1:57:15 When you first start therapy or you first lance that boil and you're unearthing some of the painful things you grew up with. It's as intense the first day. And you just feel like oh my God, I'm in the burn ward and I just got snatched out of the fire and I every ounce of me hurts and I wanna run screaming down the street like my hair's on fire. And it just won't last as long as it did the first time. And so it's for your listeners, if they you know, if you're just, you know, looking at hard things that you grew up with or you're

1:57:48 Trying to quit smoking, trying to quit drinking, trying to recover from Trauma. I promise you. I will send you money if this is not true. that it will get easier. It's not linear. And there will be those days when it's as painful as the first day and you'll think, but I'm no better than I was, but you are.

1:58:09 You just it doesn't feel that way. Yeah, excellent advice. Just a few more. Questions. I'm having so much fun. I could go forever, but I can watch it. Do I do I though? I don't know. I mean it's Where in the Western do you live?

1:58:25 Well, I spend most of my time downtown for recording and then live in the burbs outside of that. I love it in Austin. Yeah. Beautiful. expect to be here for quite some time. I wanted to move here right after college. I didn't get the job and uh there was more on They screwed up. Yeah. Well, you know, possibly. I also think that that could have been in everyone's best interest. Really? I think I make it quite.

1:58:51 Terrible. employee in most circumstances. Me too. But at the time. And uh, you know, I didn't expect this to lead here, but At the time that I was not given the

1:59:04 Green light. to get an offer from trilogy software way back in the day. It seemed like a death blow, right? This seemed like the end of the world because I had put a lot of eggs in that basket. I didn't want to do anything that was recruiting on campus really otherwise. And

1:59:22 I listened to and watched your Syracuse University commencement. Speech. Yeah. And then I read

1:59:31 A transcript and I think this is from the speech unless it was sort of mistranscribed, but here's the paragraph. Almost every time I was super afraid it was of the wrong thing, and stuff that first looked like the worst, most humiliating thing that could ever happen almost always led me to something extraordinary and very fine. So my question is, could you give us an example of that that comes to mind? Could be something humiliating. It could be a favorite failure, but anything that'll tell you as it turns out. Well the pr when I first did a kind of moral inventory and recovery that they encourage you to do.

2:00:04 I had a lot of resentments against God. When you say they, this is in a twelve step program. Yeah. And uh Chill the bank. You know

2:00:12 Like one of the things I really resented God for My son, who was Just this little beautiful blonde haired, blue eyed, and a tank. Of a boy. A natural kinda athlete.

2:00:26 When he was little, he was sick. All the time. I mean He would get a cold. And he would get these sinus infections. His fever would go to like a hundred and five. We'd rush him to children's hospital in Boston.

2:00:41 It was terrifying. We're always rushing to emergency rooms because his fever was so bleeding. Hi. And just so terrifying and so I never Slap.

2:00:53 I never slept and I was depressed. I was probably postpartumally depressed and I was drinking. By then I had started I'd decide drinking would help me. Take care of a sick child. Great idea, Mir. It's like the bad mom in the after school special. And

2:01:09 So What? And I remember So when it came time to do Ignati spiritual exercise, you're trying to find God in all things. Where is God in that? Where is God in a sick baby?

2:01:23 I'll tell you secret when I actually looked at my life. And the decisions I was making. I would have kept drinking. If One of those Playboy babies.

2:01:35 you know, that like sleeps twelve hours a night and never is sick and just, you know, coups and cuddles and like the and and I had been able to I would have kept drinking. If I had had my granddaughter Who's like the easiest like twelve hour night sleeper, eats everything you give or laughs at everything you do. I would have kept drinking. I could not

2:01:57 Physically Drink the way a real alcoholic needs to drink and take care of a kid who was sick all the time. Couldn't do it. And work and make a living. I couldn't do all those things. It was too hard. And so I don't think God sent pathogens into my infant son's body. I don't know how any of this works.

2:02:17 But when I ask where God is in this my own physical Discomfort. Forced me. To get sober. So my sister died

2:02:28 This summer, very suddenly of pancreatic cancer in less than a week. Yeah, I'm sorry too. You know We were not In touch we had a

2:02:38 Terrible childhood and we had not been really in touch for uh seven years. And that was My choice. And I remember saying do My therapist, isn't it gonna be terrible when she dies? She said, Yeah, it's gonna be terrible anyway.

2:02:55 And Although it's horrible that she's There's nothing I Feel my love for her.

2:03:05 I don't have to defend myself. Against my love for her. The way I did. When we were estranged. I can cherish and remember.

2:03:17 All the times we were there for each other. All the Age. We were in each other's lives. And I would give anything for her to be alive, but I still think our not being in touch was the best thing for both of us.

2:03:34 You know? I don't regret that. And there's this amazing gift to me of being in touch now with her son and her husband and her stepchildren and I would give anything if she were alive. But there are gifts in this suffering.

2:03:50 that are real spiritual gifts I practice when things happen that I find very disappointing. My son had a film coming out, his first feature film coming out at Tribeca Film Festival. And It's a global pandemic and so there is no Tribeco Film Festival and he's raised somehow all this money and put d years worth of work in and moved heaven and earth. And you know what? The film's being released, he's got a great distribution deal. He

2:04:18 Just one best director at Frightfest. And You know, it's unfolding just the way it needs to unfold. It's getting curious about where the light is, you know, just being curious about where the light is. Getting curious about where the light is and the all powerful

2:04:34 reframe. Yeah. And it is Really incredible. what can happen, as you said, when you

2:04:43 really get curious. I have to say this on air Tim, because I have to say it. I just I have so many young people who come to me about sexual assault. So many young men who've come to me. My students, young writers, young poets. And your being open about this on this podcast has just been

2:05:04 Such a gift. To all these young men. Thank you. So good for you.

2:05:11 So good for you, so a horrible thing. that happened to you that's being used To help a lot of give a lot of people hope and it's gonna prompt a lot of healing. I hope so, and I've seen Seen a lot come out of the woodwork.

2:05:26 And It's been simultaneously and I know you've experienced this certainly It's been simultaneously appalling rewarding

2:05:37 And Brutal in a way. I mean, it's all of those things. I mean, there's a lot of pain and beauty in it. And you know, I'll just uh mention that of my closest male friends, and the there really aren't that many, I don't collect friends like little porcelain tea cups or whatever people collect. I have a a fairly small Ish circle and I would say Thirty percent. Uh.

2:06:01 My closest male friends reached out to me after that podcast to describe their own experiences with sexual abuse that I knew nothing about. And these are people I've known for a very long time. So I hope there's healing. Of course there is. We're living but look, we're not curled up on the backwards of mental institutions. And we both could be. Yeah.

2:06:22 Very true. Well Mary, we're gonna talk again and I want to ask one more One more question. Okay. Which sometimes is a dead end. I'll own that if it is. Okay then. But We'll see where it goes. The question is if you could put anything on a billboard, metaphorically speaking. To reach

2:06:42 Billions of people. However many you want. A word, a phrase, a question, a quote, a poem, anything. What might you put? Oh my god, that's so hardcore.

2:06:53 Oh my god. That is really God, that's a little It's aggressive. It's aggressive. It's hard to aggressive. It really is. It's a little Haveline of hogs as a pack of Havelina Hogs running out of the bushes at Yeah. And it doesn't have to be the one and only. This could just be the first billboard. The first billboard.

2:07:16 You know, put down that gun you need a sandwich. Um Ha ha You need a sandwich and a hot bath. No, I know what I would put. I would put ninety percent of what what's wrong with you could be cured with a hot bath. That's what I'd put.

2:07:31 I love it. I love that. Well, Mary, this has been so much fun. And it is. I've really, really enjoyed this. People can find you at your website. Uh Mary Carr.com, that's Mary K A R R at Mary Carr Lit L I T. Is there anything else you'd like to say, suggest, ask, request? No, just like let's all heal. Let's all heal as a country, no matter how different we think we are. We're all suffering souls, and we all wanna Heal this.

2:08:06 Riven country of hours. So that's what I'm wishing for all of us and wishing everybody a lot of love and light today. And a big nice Cigar. Yeah. Here. Just get curious. Look for the look for the light. Thank you, Mary. But you take care. You go do you.

2:08:25 I will, and to everybody listening, we'll link to everything that we've mentioned in the show notes at team.blog forward slash podcasts. And until next time, thanks for listening. Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Pulit Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend? Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel. It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I've found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It's kinda like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I'm reading, books I'm reading. albums perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast.

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2:12:30 in pursuit of making the best foundational nutrition supplement possible using rigorous standards and high quality ingredients. How many ingredients? 75, and you would be hard pressed to find a more nutrient dense formula on the market. It has a multivitamin, multi-mineral superfood complex, probiotics and prebiotics for gut health, an antioxidant, immune support formula, digestive enzymes, and adaptogens to help manage stress. Now I do my best always to eat nutrient dense meals. That is the basic, basic, basic, basic requirement, right? That is why things are called supplements. Of course, that's what I focus on, but it is not always possible, it is not always easy. So part of my routine is using AG1 daily. If I'm on the road, on the run, it just makes it easy to get a lot of nutrients at once and to sleep easy knowing that I am checking a lot of important boxes. So each morning,

2:13:24 E G one. That's just like brushing my teeth, part of the routine. It's also NSF certified for sport, so professional athletes trust it to be safe. And each pouch at AG1 contains exactly what is on the label, does not contain harmful levels of microbes or heavy metals. and is free of 280 banned substances. It's the ultimate nutritional supplement in one easy scoop. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one year supply of vitamin D and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one. DrinkAG1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out.

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