Ep. 88: "Grotesquerie Ray"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hey, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: My feet are cold.
Merlin: Oh.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm wearing a sweater, but I forgot to put slippers on.
John: You have slippers?
John: Yeah, I have slippers.
Merlin: What kind of slippers you got?
Merlin: I don't live in California.
Merlin: I have slippers.
Merlin: Don't talk that way to me.
Merlin: You've been in my house.
Merlin: You know how drafty my house is.
Merlin: My house has the original furnace from 1922, which means there is a chimney blast coming straight up the middle through one of the ports.
John: I think it's pronounced Chimbley Blast.
Merlin: the better port of heat avails um i have i have a couple of pairs and then nothing comes out of the other ones nothing yeah well you live in california right it's like i wear socks like a gentleman it's like 800 degrees every day oh you kidding me california whoo it's sunny all the time we go swimming i know my dad used to say the the uh
John: Coldest winter I ever spent was the summer in San Francisco.
Merlin: This shit's over.
John: I have three pairs of slippers.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: Why would that surprise me?
John: I have an old pair of elk skin slippers from the old days, from Alaska.
John: And then I have a more modern pair of slippers.
John: They got Wi-Fi.
John: It's a more modern, you know, they have the sort of wishbone suspension.
John: Oh, that gives you better torsion control.
John: That's right.
John: Exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: Better cornering.
John: And then I have a pair of slippers that were given to me as a Christmas present.
John: It's a classic Christmas present gift for a man.
Merlin: It's a fallback, yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Get a slipper.
John: And I have a pair of slippers that are the UGG brand.
John: Oof.
John: But they don't look like the boots.
John: They're just normal slippers.
Merlin: It doesn't make you look like a 20-year-old.
John: Go ahead.
John: Yeah, you don't look like a 20-year-old girl that doesn't know how to dress.
John: You look like a normal guy, but in slippers that are from Australia.
John: I'm so tired all the time.
John: So I put them on when I'm walking around my old house in the winter, but I forgot today.
Merlin: So right now I have a, I've just wrapped a jacket around my... Pretty soon that voice, that dad voice is not going to be affected.
John: No, it's going to be.
John: I hear myself transitioning to it more and more all the time.
John: Just like, where the hell are my slippers?
Merlin: i don't understand how i could have three pairs of slippers and i can't that happens to me all the time i i've started buying multiples of my staple articles of clothing and i still can't find them i have six different carhartt caps and it's unusual that i can find one of them because i just keep losing them or mislaying them your carhartt cap is such an icon
Merlin: It's like the Swiss Army knife of headgear.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It keeps you warm.
Merlin: You know, a lot of the heat escapes, you know, through the head.
Merlin: Through the head, yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And you can take a nap in it.
John: You can.
John: You can curl all the way up inside it.
Merlin: Yeah, you can go into a little ball and rock.
John: There's a ladder in there, and you just keep climbing up into your hat.
John: You know, I was just in New York, and I took the plunge.
John: I'm not even sure I'm going to tell you about this because I'm not sure what your reaction is going to be.
Merlin: I like to think I'm supportive.
John: All right.
John: Well, I took the plunge and I bought some skinny jeans.
John: Wow.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: You're struggling.
John: If I hadn't prefaced that, you might have had a different reaction.
Merlin: Well, John, five years ago, I wouldn't have worried.
John: Uh, well, that's true.
John: That's true.
Merlin: But now, you know, you're in a, you're in a transitional period.
Merlin: You're having a Samuel L. Jackson.
Merlin: No, are you kidding me?
Merlin: Oh, come on.
Merlin: Let's be serious.
Merlin: I sat around all weekend just being envious.
Merlin: I've just been envious.
Merlin: I've been envious of you and all my friends like for a week, not publicly.
Merlin: No, no, no, but privately envious.
Merlin: You guys are, you guys are sitting around talking about dicks in New York and I'm, I'm sitting there watching Chinese movies.
Merlin: It's depressing.
Merlin: So anyway, so skinny.
Merlin: You were the, you were the missing element.
John: Did Sean need comfort?
John: No, Sean was on point.
John: My God, he was hilarious.
Merlin: He's gotten so handsome, John.
Merlin: Giant love fest.
Merlin: Oh, gosh.
Merlin: Can we circle back to that?
Merlin: I'd love to hear more about that.
Merlin: Are they stylistically skinny or are they physically skinny?
John: They're both.
John: So here's what happened.
John: A year ago, Jonathan Colton and I were playing that Christmas show down at the city winery in the lower part of Manhattan at the meatpacking Sohos or wherever the hell.
John: And I jumped up on stage during the soundcheck in a kind of cavalier way.
John: Like, yeah, I'm a 40 something guy, but I'm going to just I'm not going to take the stairs.
John: I'm going to jump up on the stage.
John: And the crush of my pants ripped out.
Mm-hmm.
John: And it was during the sound check, and I'm like, this is what it's come to.
John: I am the 40-something guy.
John: And I'm lucky I didn't throw my back out when I jumped up on the stage.
John: But I did totally destroy my pants.
Merlin: You have just enough cognition to know something is going wrong, and you make the category error of trying to compensate mid-leap.
John: When I felt and heard the ripping, I was like, hernia?
John: Did I just rip...
John: My groin?
John: No, thank goodness.
John: It was just these old khakis.
John: So I said to everybody at the show, I was like, listen, I'm not going to play this show with my pants ripped.
John: I'm going to go out.
John: This is like Manhattan.
John: This is a prime shopping district here, the West Village.
John: I'm going to run over.
John: I'm going to get a pair of pants.
John: So I run out of the venue and I'm going shop to shop through this sort of West Village shopping area.
John: And every pair of pants is $500.
John: Like I run into a Ralph Lauren store, but it's some kind of flagship Ralph Lauren store where all the, you know, and the pants are all from Italy.
Merlin: Oh, it's not like an outlet store.
Merlin: You're not going to get like a $42 pair of pants.
John: No, I was like, where's the sale table?
John: And the guy in the shawl collar sweater was just like, just shooing me out the door.
John: Yeah.
John: No, thank you.
John: Your patronage is not welcome.
John: No public restrooms.
John: So I'm wandering around down there and I'm like, I got to find a pair of pants.
John: And I'm in this strange world where I've grown used to anywhere in America being able to go 10 feet in any direction and find a $10 pair of pants made in China.
John: And now I'm in this world where all these pants were hand-stitched by some Italian grandmother.
John: And I just need a pair of pants.
John: I'm not kidding around.
John: And then somebody says to me, have you been to Uniqlo?
John: Have you been to Uniqlo?
John: And I said, no, I haven't.
John: And they were like, oh, that's your answer.
John: And so I run into this store, Uniqlo, which is this giant sort of H&M style place.
John: But all the clothes are from Japan.
Merlin: It's kind of like Target for hipsters.
John: Super hip.
John: Everybody in there is super hip.
John: And I run around and they have no pants bigger than a 32 waist.
John: But somewhere up in the very back of the store, I find these pants.
John: And it turned out I really liked them.
John: I found a pair that fit me.
John: It was in some dad on a dad shelf.
John: Like for the dad that accidentally got dragged into the store.
John: There's this one shelf where his daughter, you know, where the daughters go.
John: It's like some stores have a section with toys the kids can play with.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It's like, come over and try these on.
John: Like a hardware store with a section of toys.
John: This is a hipster store with one shelf for dads.
John: And like the largest size they carry is 36.
John: So they have to be kind of fit dads even.
John: And I like to think I'm a fit dad.
Merlin: Now, give yourself credit.
Merlin: You are also a tall man.
Merlin: Tall, tall.
Merlin: I'm a tall dad.
Merlin: Tall, fit dad.
Merlin: Your fear of Falstaffian father.
John: Yeah, I'm not quite fit, but tall dad, let's say.
Merlin: What are you like?
Merlin: You're like, why don't you like 6'2", 6'3"?
John: I'm 6'3".
John: And at the most, I have to say, I was over 240 pounds, edging to 250 pounds.
John: That's not that bad.
John: It's pretty bad.
John: Because, you know, I was shuffling around like a golem.
Yeah.
John: Those ain't no Uniqlo numbers.
John: Through the streets of Prague.
John: Enacting vengeance.
John: And that's not how I want to live the next 40 years.
John: So anyway, I'm in Manhattan again.
John: I'm walking around down on the Lower East Side.
John: I'm looking for Todd Berry's house.
John: And I got lost.
John: And then I see the Uniqlo.
John: And I remember, oh, I had a great time in there.
John: So I went in again.
John: And...
John: I'm standing there, I'm looking around, and there's this big pile of skinny jeans, a thing that I have been opposed to.
Merlin: If I could say, it's been a punchline.
Merlin: Uniqlo skinny jeans have actually been a punchline for a year for you.
John: That's right.
John: They've been a punchline, and particularly a punchline when an older dad, even a fit dad, goes into a store like this and thinks to himself, I'm going to get some of these skinny jeans.
John: You know what?
John: I'm a young guy.
John: And I did precisely that.
John: I was like, you know, I'm a young, healthy, fit dad.
John: I'm going to get some of these skinny jeans.
John: And I got them.
John: And I love them.
John: And I'm, and I don't know what to, I don't know what to make of it.
John: You know, cause I'm, we've talked about this before.
John: I'm always trying to gauge like M because I am inside myself.
John: Am I missing some crucial cue that I have become, that I have, I'm verging into self parody.
John: Like M I am.
John: I do not want to be the dad who dyes his hair.
John: Orange.
John: Orange.
John: out of like a tiny ponytail on the back yeah well i mean that that you know the tiny ponytail we all know not to do but the but like this the skinny jeans like you see guys you see older guys who are still wearing like really tailored clothes and you're like that guy looks great but then you look over at the guy over here that's like wearing a nirvana t-shirt and you know and has like a roach clip earring and you're like that guy doesn't look great right he's he's missing he's missed a cue
John: He missed a turn.
John: That's right.
John: So anyway, so I walk out in these skinny jeans and I'm walking down the street.
John: And I'm feeling like I am rocking these skinny jeans.
John: I'm legitimately rocking them.
John: And they're comfortable and they're inexpensive.
John: So Merlin, I feel like I'm on a, I'm on a, there's some, there's some precipice I'm on.
John: I came back here to my house after my trip to New York and I'm looking at the clothes in my closet and I'm like, none of these clothes are skinny enough for me anymore.
John: All these clothes are like, uh, they're all blousey.
John: I don't want, I don't want blousey pants now that I'm one of the skinny jean generation.
John: I can't walk around in these hammer pants.
Merlin: Getting that one pair of skinny jeans has made you – and then you see it has some time away, right?
Merlin: It helps.
Merlin: You get some time away.
Merlin: That's the beauty of travel.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You come back, and now you've got a little bit of perspective.
John: I got a little bit of perspective, and I realized that I have been buying kind of – it's hard to buy oversized clothes when you are already an oversized person.
John: is that really true in most in most stores it used to be the largest possible size they had was the thing that i i needed to buy but now we're living in this triple extra large world there's been a lot of inflation in sizes
John: incredible where you go into a store i mean it used to be in the thrift stores like the the xl section of any rack was like five or six items that you know five or six freakish items at the end of the scale where it's like 17 and a half inch neck and you know as recently as maybe 10 15 i'd say 15 years ago an xl even accounting for shrinkage over the years an xl in a thrift store would be like a large medium yeah right it barely barely goes over your belly button
John: Yeah, you walk around looking like Damien Gerardo all the time.
John: But now, there's quadruple extra larges, and I realized that I have a lot of coats, jackets, like sport coats that don't fit me at all.
John: I bought them...
John: I bought them, they're too large, and I was trying to make my size seem smaller by wearing a too big jacket.
Merlin: That is an error people make.
John: Yeah, and so I look like a little boy who somebody hit with a grotesquerie ray.
Yeah.
Merlin: Come over here for a minute, son.
Merlin: This will only take a couple seconds.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: Like, hey, there's a five-year-old boy.
John: Let's hit him with that Captain America radon.
Merlin: Oh, you get the Vita rays.
John: And then he's just like...
John: His clothes get big too.
Merlin: Can I address the baby elephant in the room?
Merlin: I feel like I've seen some photos of you.
Merlin: We have not addressed this directly as we try to avoid talking about food and fatherhood with generally failing.
Merlin: All that I know now.
Merlin: So with your newfound food paradigm, your new thought technologies about food, have you lost a little weight?
Merlin: I've lost a little weight.
John: Okay.
John: And I have more energy.
John: I'm back to feeling youthful.
Merlin: But the John of a year ago would have been doubly sarcastic because those are jokey pants that you would never even be able to wear, right?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Well, the John of a year ago in skinny jeans would have looked like a blue ice cream cone.
Yeah.
John: and it doesn't sound very good like a blue double scoop ice cream cone and and now like yeah right exactly a denim ice cream giant grotesque but now i feel like you know i'm weaving in and out of in and out of downtown crowds and um you know i like to think that my legs are one of my best features um
John: You've got stems.
John: And so I'm like, hey, I'm feeling good.
John: I want to have some clothes that fit me a little bit better.
John: But you know, this is the funny thing about where I am now, having changed my eating enough that I feel better and I feel like I look better and my clothes fit better.
John: I'm now struggling against this tendency, this radical tendency to be dissatisfied with where I am now and set a new goal for myself, which is totally unrealistic and soul-destroying.
John: If you had told me three months ago that I would look and feel like I do today, I would have said, that's the goal.
John: But having achieved that goal, now I have this creeping body dysmorphia, this sort of addict behavior where I'm like, well, all right.
John: So I've lost some amount of weight and I feel much better.
John: Now the goal is to become Jack LaLanne and to swim across San Francisco Bay towing five tugboats with my teeth or whatever.
John: Now my goal is to become a total...
John: like freakish hard body exercise nut who talks to everybody about gluten intolerance on the, on public transit.
John: And, you know, and, and I, and I catch myself doing it.
John: I'm like, why are you doing this?
John: Why are you sabotaging yourself by taking this good, this good thing, this unequivocally good thing that you've done simple and good and perverting it into, into a mania of,
John: Which then you will fail and then... I will snatch disappointment from the jaws of victory every time.
John: So anyway, I'm trying to talk myself out of that and just be content to be kind of a...
John: you know, fit dad.
Merlin: But you're kind of getting at that there are two things here that are worth just separating.
Merlin: On the one hand, yes, you have lost a little weight, but let's just say it also, you are feeling better.
Merlin: You're feeling clearer, right?
Merlin: You're not feeling as...
Merlin: I'm in the clear.
Merlin: You're less foggy.
Merlin: Let's say I've gone clear.
Merlin: Let's say that you have, for the sake of argument, gone clear.
Merlin: But it's also a little bit like, not to say that you were calcified, but you had made your peace, for better or for worse, like, okay, I'm John, and I don't wear skinny jeans, and I don't want to talk about food.
John: I don't wear skinny jeans, I don't want to talk about food, and I'm going to have a heart attack when I'm 54.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: Biology is destiny, right?
Merlin: But the thing is though now also then that's – but the thing inside of all of that, those two changes, there's also just the fact that now you know now that change is possible, which is like a weirdly risky new proposition.
Merlin: Whereas it used to be like –
Merlin: Think about what you've been talking about fighting all the time for years, fighting, becoming calcified about music and culture and to stop being progressive and thinking about ideas.
Merlin: You don't want to become somebody who's just like stuck in their ways for lack of a better word.
Merlin: But it's also a little bit scary maybe, risky, different because now there's this whole world of possibilities out there that unseat your idea of being a blue ice cream cone.
Merlin: And now you have to take in this new information and you don't have the security of just being a big lardass.
John: Well, that's precisely it.
John: And what I come up against immediately or almost immediately after I begin thinking about this new world of possibility is that there is a hard wall.
John: at the end, which is mortality.
John: And so, so I start to think like, well, then I'll just get in, I'll get in the best shape of anybody and I'll become immortal and I'll live forever and I'll never get sick and I'll never die.
John: And then, then you go, well, no, you're actually still 45.
John: Um,
Merlin: the clock is ticking and you are decaying right before your own eyes it doesn't look as cool as you think like you know you and i like jack la lane was pretty much always an old guy in our lifetime and every year on his birthday he'd do another like feat where you know increasingly less like strictly amazing feats but he's like i'm gonna i'm gonna pull this this locomotive with using only the teeth of my mouth yeah and then the next year he's like pulling a toy train
Merlin: And then he's just able to hold on to the bit, you know, and still amazing feats.
John: But a lot of them involved his teeth, which is weird.
John: Like, that's not a thing you can make stronger, really.
Merlin: But also, I mean, was there ever a point in the like, you know, the 25 years that you and I are aware of that?
Merlin: Was there ever a point where you're like, God, that guy sure is manly.
Merlin: It was more like, oh.
John: aren't you kind of like oh grandpa cool grandpa he's trying both because I think he was 4 foot 11 and also he was always wearing that leotard or that full body like high waisted jumpsuit it was real creepy and shiny
John: Creepy shiny jumpsuit.
John: And I never remember thinking like Jack LaLanne.
John: Now there's a guy.
John: He kind of looks like George Costanza's father.
John: But he's like pulling a locomotive with his teeth.
John: None of that is something I aspire to even as a child.
Merlin: Well, it's kind of like being like a foxy 70-year-old woman.
Merlin: It's like mostly you're a 70-year-old woman.
Merlin: Nothing against – but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like when you watch Jekyll Lane, you go, wow, he's pretty strong for an old guy, but mostly he's an old guy.
Merlin: You don't – in his mind, he is clinging to youth and to vitality and that sprightliness that he was so well known for.
Merlin: But like we mostly just see somebody getting older and older and fighting it.
John: Have you noticed this about... I mean, I'm feeling this way now watching Clint Eastwood age and Harrison Ford age and all those Hollywood stars that were always much older than us, but they were in the...
Merlin: our whole lives they were kind of in their vital middle age they were and they and they persisted in it long past like when they were 60 years old they were still and they were all still like like robert redford you know they were all still to use that phrase in the 70s sex symbols there were still people where you go oh harrison ford it's creepy that he's in this movie with winona rider but he's definitely like a handsome handsome guy yeah
John: Jack Nicholson.
John: I mean, these guys at 60 years old were paired with 24 year old actresses and it wasn't 100 percent cool, but but it also like we still we still were projecting a tremendous.
Merlin: But it wasn't like Helen Mirren and Ashton Kutcher or something.
Merlin: It wasn't something where you go, hmm, that's kind of strange.
John: Hmm.
John: But now, watching them, they are, like, genuinely old people now.
John: Yeah.
John: And it is reflect... Like, it reflects to me, like, watching Clint Eastwood kind of dotter around like an ent, like a small ent, is making me...
Merlin: making me sad like melancholy yeah yeah i just saw a trailer for the new captain america movie robert reverend's in it and you know he's he's he's still a good-looking guy but he's definitely an old guy now his face looks like a chippendale couch and like harrison ford was in that uh jackie robinson movie and i kind of didn't recognize him at first really well i mean i think he's definitely taking that turn around the old lesbian look is he
Merlin: Oh, God, no.
Merlin: I just was looking at that website the other day.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: What is it?
Merlin: It's men who look like old lesbians.
Merlin: Is that the site?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I cannot see that.
John: Pretty rude.
Merlin: But – I'm sorry.
Merlin: I'm taking you off your point.
Merlin: But it is – there is definitely a certain point.
Merlin: Robert Evans, boy, you definitely got this.
Merlin: There's a point that we look at people like, wow, you know.
Merlin: Like, OK, here's an example.
Merlin: Like George Clooney.
Merlin: George Clooney is still an extremely handsome middle-aged guy.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Harrison Ford.
Merlin: What's Harrison Ford?
Merlin: Probably 15 years older?
Merlin: Something like that maybe?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think he's in his 70s, isn't he?
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: I heard today Clint Eastwood's getting divorced.
Merlin: Can you imagine being his age and getting divorced?
John: Oh, so sad.
Merlin: That's a lot of work.
John: When I just said that, when I just said I think he's in his 70s, I made that like scrunchy, scrunchy nose face.
Merlin: Oh, this face.
John: I know.
John: Of like a UK person.
John: He's in his 70s, isn't he?
John: Kind of nose up in the air, like crinkly nose.
John: I don't know why I did it.
John: I never make that.
Merlin: What is that?
Merlin: I know exactly what she, what does it mean when we do that?
Merlin: Yeah, it kind of gets like a rabbit face.
Merlin: It's like somebody handed you a kind of boxed candy you don't like.
John: And it's got cashews in it, isn't it?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Your nose goes up and your teeth come out.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: What is it about that?
John: What is it about that?
John: I don't know why that inspired me to suddenly turn into David Copperfield.
Merlin: Even as they turn into Chippendale furniture, and you know, Robert Redford's always had a certain kind of ruggedness.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: You know, complexion-wise.
Merlin: But there is – I don't know what happens.
Merlin: Even if you don't get plastic surgery, you do kind of start to look like a woman.
Merlin: You estrogenize a little bit.
John: Yeah, well, you know, the first time I really saw that in action was the first time I saw the psychedelic furs.
Yeah.
Merlin: He said he looked like somebody's grandmother.
John: He looked like a skinny little grandma.
John: And I was so astonished at the gender-benderiness of it.
John: Because, you know, as a rock star, you're always gender-bending.
John: But not quite all the way to, like, I'm your grandma.
Merlin: Do you think it's substance abuse?
Merlin: Because didn't Dudley Moore start to get that?
Merlin: Keith Moon, as young as he was, he started to get that a little bit.
Merlin: I bet it's riding hard on the body, partly.
John: I'm still astonished at how young Keith Moon was when he died.
Merlin: I'm amazed to see.
Merlin: Once again, I did my monthly viewing of a quick one while he's away from the rock and roll.
Merlin: That's so good.
Merlin: I watch it once a month because it's the greatest rock and roll performance of all time.
Merlin: It really is.
Merlin: And you watch it.
Merlin: But, I mean, even when you look at something like you watch him with the giant headphones doing, Who Are You?
Merlin: Take to his head.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He was like 32 or something.
Merlin: Incredible, right?
Merlin: He looks 60.
Merlin: He looks so – I mean it was funny though.
Merlin: Like even around – starting around Tommy, I don't know.
Merlin: Maybe – Keith Richards, same thing.
Merlin: Like suddenly they just look different.
Merlin: Like within a period of like two years, they look like completely different people.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: But Keith continued to be, I think, gorgeous all the way through 82.
John: I mean, through that whole, that first initial period when he was- He looked better at one point.
John: He had feathers in his hair and stuff.
Merlin: That was kind of cool.
Merlin: But there was a point, even when they were pretty popular, where he looked like an old witch.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And then he started looking more like a pirate.
John: Yeah, he fleshed out a little bit.
Merlin: Yeah, but he had a kind of cool gaunt.
Merlin: But now he just looks like a land yaeger.
John: Yeah.
John: He looks like a bucket sausage.
John: Yeah, he looks like a cherute that somebody stubbed out in an ashtray.
John: And yet, maybe he'll live forever.
Merlin: I mean, maybe he is the one.
Merlin: Yeah, you think a lot of that's from smoking, right?
Merlin: The smoking gives you that kind of drawn look.
John: Well, and again, it's a physiological factor of him being literally 5'2".
Hmm?
John: He is so small.
John: All those guys in the Rolling Stones are so small.
John: I didn't know that.
John: You could put the entire Rolling Stones in a pint glass and then put probably half a can of whipped cream in like half a spray canister of whipped cream and it wouldn't overflow the pint glass.
John: They're that small.
John: So they were made, you know, I think the Rolling Stones were like bred to chase rats down holes or I mean, they are a different, almost a different kind of human being from the lumbering, like stone trolls that were my ancestors.
Yeah.
Merlin: You're so mythic.
Merlin: It says here Keith Richards is 5'9", but I'll bet.
Merlin: Baloney.
Merlin: Baloney.
Merlin: You think so?
John: He's 5'9 in Prince boots.
Merlin: Boy, Ron Wood.
Merlin: Look at that guy.
John: Have you ever watched the YouTube videos of Ron Wood?
John: on stage, like, shit-faced?
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: I've seen some old Faces stuff, but I've never seen that.
John: No, there's some, like, footage of him in the 90s, I think, where he's on stage and he's just blotto.
John: And he...
John: Even though he's one of the richest and most successful musicians in the world, you can't help but feel sorry for him because he is so dogged by the feeling that he has to wake up and drink four bottles of cognac a day because he's never known anything different.
Merlin: i mean i don't know where he's at right now but there are some videos on on the internet of of ronwood stumbling around and like just i just don't find that as appealing as i used to you know i can see how the like i don't know i have reading um i know you're you're a fan of these kinds of accounts too like reading about the making of um what's the one with rocks off the famous one um
Merlin: Oh, the record album.
Merlin: The one where the French police were raiding Keith's house.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
John: Oh, you're talking about the double record.
Merlin: Why did you do that?
Merlin: You just took the record out of my mind.
Merlin: It's Mean Streets.
Merlin: It's Tumble and Dice.
Merlin: Wow, this is really awful.
John: Exile on Mean Streets.
John: Yes!
John: Come on.
John: Ah, you pushed it.
John: You actually pushed that turd back in my brain.
John: Yeah, I got the turtle back in the shell.
Merlin: I had to like, ugh.
Merlin: But reading accounts of them trying to make that record, it sounds like poor Charlie Watt was always like a pretty, like a normal English guy who drank tea and had a job playing drums.
Merlin: You know, it just sounds like it must have just been miserable to be in an environment like that.
Merlin: Just everybody's just all fucked up all the time.
Merlin: And heroin doesn't make things good.
John: No, heroin is a bad drug.
John: But Charlie, I think, rented a house like 150 miles up in central France or something where he didn't speak any French and he complained the whole time that he couldn't get Pim's tea.
John: I just picture him walking down to the corner store and saying to the guy,
Merlin: no pimps but didn't they like record in the basement i mean it sounds like it sounds like the whole thing was just such a debacle it's amazing the record turned out as well as it did but i just i you know when you hear accounts and stuff like that when i was in you know even in college i would go wow that's really cool it's you know to get back to dessessant it's so decadent like you just you sit around and you know you make rock music and you like don't know what day it is and
Merlin: But man, that is so ridiculously unappealing.
Merlin: There's times to me now – I'm sure my wife feels this ten times more.
Merlin: But I think, oh boy, it would be nice to have a week to just go dick around and not have to be anywhere.
Merlin: But man, the idea of like sitting around in a basement in France doing heroin is like just not my idea of fun.
John: Yeah, well, I come up against this all the time because, you know, I have not had like a substance, like a mind-altering substance.
John: I have not had any alcohol or drugs in almost 20 years.
John: Wow.
John: But I have resolutely refused to live in a sober ghetto of life.
John: And so I spend almost all my time around...
John: people who are on drugs and some of my very good friends are on drugs like like like seriously like still on drugs not just are you shitting me yeah not just like getting stoned sometimes you're not talking about drinking a lot and smoking weed i'm talking about drinking a lot and also taking drugs serious drugs hard drugs and being a drug drug person and being in denial
John: about what being a drug person means for them short term and long term i mean this is true of some very close friends of mine and also a lot of people that i know socially and and so i'm i'm always in the i'm i'm almost every day i am confronted with the question again
John: Like, why are people taking drugs?
John: Do you, John, want to go back on drugs?
John: Like every day I ask myself, would you like to go back on drugs right now?
John: Hey, you tried skinny jeans.
John: There are drugs all around you all the time.
John: Would you, are you interested in taking some drugs?
John: And I took a lot of drugs, so I don't have a – like when I quit drinking, it was right before the single malt scotch revolution and the flavored alcohol, the artisanal alcohol scene.
John: So there are a lot of alcohols that I missed out on.
John: You quit around like Rolling Rock getting popular.
John: Yeah, right.
John: I stopped drinking alcohol in 1994.
John: Yeah.
John: And immediately afterward, like, you know, wine snobbery was always a thing, but immediately, it seems like immediately afterward in the late 90s, it was all that whiskey talk and all the like, oh, you've got to try this.
John: It's from the barrel that Sir Walter Riley once pissed in on his way to, and it's like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh.
John: Well, you know, I drank a lot of whiskey and maybe it wasn't great whiskey, but
John: And a lot of times it was the worst whiskey.
John: It was 10 high whiskey out of a gallon plastic jug.
John: But I did not have very much melancholy about not savoring the great whiskeys.
John: But as far as pharmaceutical drugs go...
John: to whatever degree new technologies have produced new ways of feeling like your hands are like two balloons um i like there's there's no new high that i feel like i missed out on except maybe bath salts or um what's that other that uh that shit that they smell sativa
John: Where you smoke this stuff, not sativa, I think, something, some new, like, super pot?
John: Herbal thing that you smoke and have, like, two-minute long PCP hallucinations.
Merlin: Oh, God.
John: And, and it's, it's really, it's really big with a, with a certain kind of William Gibson adoring cyberpunk.
Merlin: Oh, is that like a special dispenser that clicks or something?
John: I think that's the thing.
Merlin: I think you get a lot of people hooked on drugs if it was more like a Philo K. Dick novel.
John: Yeah.
John: If you had a little, like a, yeah, some kind of how many look like inhalers.
John: Well, all drugs are headed toward inhaler status, I think.
John: Now people are inhaling their weed.
John: And we're just going to be... It's going to be like Dune, where everybody walks around with a tube in their mouths.
John: But in any case, so every day I'm confronted anew.
John: You know, sometimes in the company of people that I don't just admire but adore, who at a certain point in the night are...
John: are like fucked up, pinned eyeballs and like, uh, and, and not falling down, but like not doing good, but like not in control of their faculties.
John: No longer.
John: Let's say no longer.
John: Not a good conversationalist.
John: No longer fun.
John: Yeah.
John: It becomes a rescue mission at a certain point.
John: Like we got to chopper this guy out of the LZ and get him back to Saigon to triage.
John: As Saigon being like his or her apartment where they're going to sit in front of the television until they pass out.
John: But I'm always reflecting internally, like, is there something about that that is appealing to me?
John: Do I pursue this anymore, even in my imagination?
John: Why are my friends, even in middle age, still so attracted to this?
John: And it's not an academic...
John: question because it comes up over and over my relationships with these people are hamstrung not because there's a gulf between us because i don't do drugs but because there's a gulf between them and everyone yeah because they are because they are using these drugs as a substitute for
Merlin: For, you know, for authentic feeling or for growing up at a certain point doesn't matter what it started out as a substitute for because now it's the load bearing wall.
John: Right, exactly.
John: But this question of like, is it is Keith Richards glamorous is is drug taking glamorous?
John: Where is the glamour in it?
John: And when it becomes, you know, when it transitions from like, I'm 22, what are my limits to like, I'm 42 and this is my pattern.
John: I mean, you know, like I say, I see people in all stages of being fucked up.
John: And I know what it feels like from inside, and I honestly don't understand how it retains this hold on people beyond just the physical need that manifests itself in their minds as...
John: An emotional need.
John: You know, I was watching this special the other day.
John: Trey Parker and Matt Stone went to the Oscars in those dresses.
John: Remember that 15 years ago or something?
John: They wore dresses to the Oscars and it was on the third page of every newspaper.
John: But they were on LSD.
John: oh oh yeah and and uh and i was watching the there was kind of a little bit of footage of them like on the on the red carpet uh like and clearly tripping balls and i look at that and i go okay that is that's pretty cool that's a thing to have done it would be cool to have gone to the oscars on lsd
John: But even that, I mean, watching them standing there and like their eyes bugging out and their mouths really dry.
John: And then knowing that the joke was going to wear off when they went in and had to sit in a chair for two and a half hours or four hours or however long.
John: Sit in a chair surrounded by monster lizard people in really expensive clothes.
John: My takeaway was like, even that kind of is only cool to have done.
John: It wasn't probably even cool to do.
Merlin: I think about – I never thought about this until just now.
Merlin: But I think if I look at the way that I dealt with substances when I was younger, I wouldn't have said this at the time.
Merlin: But think about – with most people, just think about like even if you're a dumb frat boy, think about all the competition about drinking and like who's going to drink more or who's going to not pass out.
Merlin: But even in my own case, like –
Merlin: In a way, I think it was me like facing down the substances.
Merlin: Like I could do a lot of this.
Merlin: I could take a lot of that.
Merlin: But it was that adversarial relationship, that frenemy relationship with substances that made it fun.
Merlin: Because it is really no fun to get your ass kicked by taking way too much of something.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But you can have a fun adversarial relationship with weed where you keep pushing it as far as you can until you're almost a crazy person.
Merlin: And that's fun for a while.
Merlin: It's just that I think at some – I'm going to guess that at some certain point, it stops being a social thing and it stops being something where you're a worthy opponent and then the substance starts winning and you sort of are slumped in the backseat while the substance drives in some ways.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Where, you know, when you're young, like you might want to say, oh man, I'm tripping really hard.
Merlin: This is really, really great.
Merlin: I hope I don't trip anymore or I'm going to lose my mind.
Merlin: But then as you get older, I mean, and that becomes more of a, if you like, a habit.
Merlin: It's probably an unfortunate choice of words, but something that you start doing a lot.
Merlin: I don't think it has that same spirit anymore.
Merlin: I think it's become something that you do so much and so often that it becomes the equivalent of a vitamin or of reading the paper or something or of coffee, whatever it is.
Merlin: But I know I don't feel that.
Merlin: When I hear something like, oh, man, can you imagine going out and having a week-long binge and just like, oh, my God, no, I can't.
Merlin: I can imagine that making me want to take a nap just hearing it right now.
Merlin: But I don't know if that makes any sense because it seems to me that that was at least some component of your deal was that facing it down and like you're not going to kick my ass, buddy.
Merlin: I'm going to kick your ass.
Merlin: Like you're going to have to knock me out.
Merlin: You think you can take me alcohol?
Merlin: You're going to have to knock me out.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
John: And alcohol very seldom could knock me out.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: And that's what – yeah.
Merlin: But was that element part of it?
John: I always think of it as a dance with feeling.
John: And I mean, those early experiences with drugs were this tremendously powerful and positive dance with feeling.
John: Because as a young person, my emotions were all completely walled off.
John: And I did not have a way of expressing joy or fear even.
John: You know, sort of this kind of equilibrium or like a sort of sarcasm.
John: Sarcasm was my positive emotion and depression was my negative one.
John: When I discovered these drugs, it was so exciting because I had a relationship with feeling all of a sudden.
John: And you could drink three Bartles and James.
John: And suddenly be available to people and be in a room and feel like a new relationship to positive feelings and then also like a nuanced relationship with negative feelings.
John: And so those early experiences were so amazing to me.
Merlin: Like you could acknowledge the negativity without becoming too involved in it.
Merlin: A little bit of temporary distance from something that used to be consuming.
John: Yeah, or I could yell at my friend about something that he was doing that during normal waking hours, I would never confront him.
John: I would stare at the floor and he would stare at the floor.
John: But as time went on,
John: You know, I picture myself at 23 years old on a couch with my 25th beer in my hand and a pot pipe in my other hand and a dip of chewing tobacco in my lip and a cigarette burning in the ashtray and an eighth of mushrooms wearing off.
John: Oh, God.
John: And I'm thinking...
John: Okay, I've got to... Almost done.
John: And then I'm sitting there like... Just about there.
Merlin: I need something.
Merlin: I need a shot of tequila or something.
Merlin: It's like a graphic.
Merlin: It's like an 11-band equalizer involving your mind.
John: You're trying to tweak the levels.
John: I feel like I'm laying on this couch and I've got a shield.
John: And then I've got a garbage can lid on top of that, and then a blanket, and then one of those silver blankets that keeps you warm in winter, and then a big sign that says, you know, don't touch.
John: Like, how many layers of protection against feeling do I need at a certain point?
John: Like, feeling...
John: So using drugs to reveal feeling to myself and to reveal myself to feeling, then what alcohol and drugs don't do is equip you to incorporate real feeling into your life.
John: And so then those feelings become overwhelming, but you're not developing skills to incorporate them or grow in those feelings.
John: And so then you're surrounded by intense feelings you can't incorporate, and then you're just trying to protect yourself against your feelings.
John: And as time went on, I'm, I'm, I'm on this couch under the weight of 25 garbage can lids, just trying to keep the, just trying to feel safe, you know?
John: And what, what the fuck was that dip of chewing tobacco supposed to do?
John: Like, I'm so fucked up.
John: I can't, I can't put, lift my feet up on the coffee table, but I'm like, I need to chew.
John: I just, you know what?
John: The chew is going to even me out.
John: And I'm already smoking a cigarette.
John: It's like, I'll put a dip in just to like, that's the thing that's going to cut the... I never thought about that feeling part.
Merlin: That's interesting.
John: Yeah, but as time goes on, when you get to be 40 years old and you have been...
John: You've been using drugs and alcohol as your substitution for feeling or as your proxy for your actual feelings.
Merlin: Or as your compressor limiter for feelings.
John: Compressor limiter for feelings.
John: You know, you start to get scared.
John: And I think it happens a lot before you're 40.
John: I mean, you start to get scared pretty early.
John: Because you don't have another way of compressing and limiting feelings.
John: And so consequently, they feel like maybe they have unlimited power.
John: And if you don't have these things to tamp them down or just to look at them through, maybe they will maybe unleashed.
John: They will poison you or destroy you.
John: This, you know, the second they get the chance, that's what it feels like.
John: You know, you feel like, Oh my God, these feelings are going to overwhelm me.
John: And without, you know, without my like garbage can lids, um,
John: I'm just a naked scallop just pulsating on the beach, waiting for the seagull of feelings to pluck me from my shell.
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: I used to really like...
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I was thinking the other day, I had this feeling and this thought that I did not want to acknowledge, but I guess I'm acknowledging it now by saying it, is I used to completely poo-poo what people would say about all the kind of scare stuff in the 60s, especially, about what psychedelics would do to you, how it would fry your brain and all that kind of stuff.
Merlin: I
Merlin: with that said, I, I knew enough people at my college who did ecstasy every weekend to see that it didn't take more than a few months of doing ecstasy every weekend to be a really different person.
Merlin: Like, I don't, I don't even need to do a spinal tap.
Merlin: I'm just here to tell you that you're really, you're really, you've gotten real goofy like as a person, but, but there's the other day I was just sitting there and thinking, and I've only done it.
Merlin: I mean, I've done a lot of really exotic stuff.
Merlin: Um, and you know, and it was all really mostly over four year period.
John: Auto asphyxiation.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Merlin: Got my special Marc Maron belt.
Merlin: I – you know what it is I was thinking – well, I guess what I was thinking was I wonder.
Merlin: I wonder in my heart of hearts if problems I ever have with all the seven dwarves of bad emotions, of like of all the anxiety, fear, worry.
Merlin: I always wonder whether there's things about my cognition that got thrown off of true.
Merlin: Hmm.
Merlin: By psychedelics, and I never wanted to think about it.
Merlin: I don't feel like racked or anything like that, but I do think about that because that's what I enjoyed.
Merlin: The feeling stuff, sure, for me, but more I loved just having the sense of humor that I've got and having the –
Merlin: I don't know, just the dark inner world that I've got.
Merlin: There would be things about tripping and thinking about high school and how stupid something was that just delighted me no end.
Merlin: I smoke pot to laugh at stuff.
Merlin: Not so much for feeling, but there was something about being able to reframe an event and think of it in a different way.
Merlin: Obviously, you start laughing at really stupid stuff.
Merlin: That's what I loved, but that's what I worry now.
Merlin: I wonder if my sights got knocked off to the left or the right a little too much from those days.
Merlin: Do you ever wonder about that?
John: Well, and I think when I say feelings, I mean, that using the drugs to get to that place of even the lightheartedness or the vision of the world that...
John: that the, that the drugs provide, like it's, I, I, I still feel like it's all in the language of feelings, you know, or in the language of like translating your thoughts and feelings into, into like, like a thing that you can approximate, a thing that you can handle.
John: And I mean, I, I still have,
John: I guess what I could only describe as flashbacks in the sense that I revisit a thing that I only ever saw or only ever felt under psychedelics.
John: And I don't feel like it's a flashback like, oh, the choppers, you know, fuck Viet Cong.
John: I mean, all that Viet Cong stuff that I see is in real time and it's happening now.
John: you know, those moments where you realize through psychedelics, like how, how small and inane human, uh, endeavor is, but also how, like how beautiful and how Koyaanisquatsy it is.
John: Um, that, that stuff still happens and I'll still see a certain cast of light that kind of excites the, excites that part of my brain.
John: But I don't feel like I was broken, uh,
John: Or even bent out of true.
John: So much as... Well, by drugs.
John: As much as I was by the...
John: by the punishment that I inflicted on myself during those years, you know, I didn't need to punish myself so hard and it made me a different person by virtue of just the, um, I don't think I have like, um,
John: a cower reaction it's kind of the opposite you know i i like lead with my nose yeah but but but that whole business of scheduling drugs like and and i and i see this all the time particularly now that that pot is legal in washington state this this huge advocacy that people feel that pot is a medicine or that it's a
John: a sacrament or that, you know, pot is, is better than alcohol, but worse than cigarettes, but maybe better than cigarettes or that LSD is better.
Merlin: In San Francisco, you can smoke pot a lot more places than cigarettes.
John: Well, yeah, and now, I mean, there are people that would never smoke a cigarette that are smoking pot up and down.
Merlin: Well, in somebody's house.
Merlin: Like, it's not unusual to be at a party and somebody sparks a doobie, but boy, you light up a cigarette, you're Hitler.
Merlin: Thrown in the fireplace.
John: Yeah.
John: But for me, like, I never... There was a while where I felt just socially...
John: where we all get pressured into thinking of drugs on a schedule.
John: And heroin and crack are somehow way out in the distance.
John: And pot and aspirin are up here in the foreground.
John: And this whole gateway drug idea.
John: But for me personally, I have...
John: I tried all those drugs and had a kind of profound experience with each one of them.
John: And they each have a kind of magical piece of the puzzle to deliver.
John: And I have watched people suffer under all those drugs.
John: And the people that I know in their 40s who are laboring under their marijuana addiction...
John: are at just as much a disadvantage as the people I know in their forties who are still heroin addicts and are managing that problem.
Merlin: And the pop people are like, God love them.
Merlin: They're surrounded by other people who are more than happy to agree with them about how like getting really stoned a couple of times a day is just, they can really, you find a lot of commonality or comedy, you know what I mean?
Merlin: And like meeting other people like that and you can kind of chuck each other on the shoulder and go like,
Merlin: It's cool that we get really wasted at least once a day.
Merlin: That becomes totally normal, and then you surround yourself with that, and that becomes – I don't mean to sound judgy, but I've met some people that just – it just seems like they're in a constant stupor and don't have any way to realize that they're in a constant stupor.
John: Well, and particularly like over the course of 20 years of smoking pot, when like any drug or like any food, if pot is both the reward for a job well done and a good day and pot is also the consolation for a bad day.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Then what pot is, is what you are doing instead of having feelings, what you are doing instead of sitting there and thinking about what happened today and feeling those feelings again and processing it and growing.
John: Right.
John: The pot is at least interjecting itself or you are interjecting it in between things.
John: your real lived experience, and the very necessary sort of proto-dreaming that we all need to do at the end of the day where it's like, today was a bad day.
John: I had a bad day today.
John: And I'm not going to watch TV right now.
John: I'm not going to have a hit of pot or a glass of wine.
John: I'm going to sit here for a minute and I'm just going to reflect on what went down.
John: And if you're not doing that,
John: then you're, then you are in a kind of whirlpool where you're just going back out the next day and hoping that it doesn't happen again, but you're not, you're not, uh, you're not reflecting.
John: You're introducing another element into the reflection of,
John: that is supposed to you know that you say to yourself is calming you or is making you know that glass of wine is necessary to unwind at the end of the day and it's like really is unwinding what you need to be doing or do you need to be like wondering what you know like wondering what happened and and and what to do differently
John: So I, I feel like, like I, I, I know a guy in Seattle who runs a multimillion dollar enterprise and every day he gets up in the morning and he makes a bunch of business decisions that are, that keep his business going and keep the, and keep the money coming in.
John: And then he goes out to lunch and
John: And by 2 o'clock in the afternoon, he has had a handful of pills, four lines off the back of a toilet.
John: He spent $600 at lunch and consumed two bottles of something.
John: And then he goes back to work.
John: Wow.
John: I call that high bottom.
John: That's very high bottom.
John: From 2 o'clock to 6 o'clock, he continues to make business decisions.
John: Right.
John: But now...
John: he is he is basically undoing the work he does every morning and somehow he makes it you know like somehow he gets to the end of the day and he is like borderline some wine to unwind after that yeah he has a little bit of wine to unwind he's borderline date raping his assistant he is like everybody in the town is like this guy oh my god like somebody stop him but of course nobody can
John: And because he's a millionaire, everybody's just like, well, you know, he is a millionaire.
John: He does make it work somehow.
John: And for whatever, however this guy's metabolism works... It sounds like a kind of grudging admiration.
Merlin: Well... Seriously, I mean, we go, wow, I mean, it hasn't fallen apart yet, right?
John: But also a kind of fear that's in everybody of like, well, I want to... You know, it's one thing to confront a guy who is...
John: who is vomiting on himself on the sidewalk in front of the bar.
John: But it's another thing to confront a guy who is being helped into his limo by his two assistants.
Merlin: Especially if you and I can't afford a limo.
Merlin: It seems ungraceful to point that out.
John: Say like, hey, you know what?
John: This limo and these two assistants and all these drugs are just garbage can lids that you're piling on top of yourself on the couch.
John: And maybe you should have a chew.
John: At a party in 1992.
John: Maybe you should take a chew, too, because that's really going to take the edge off.
John: But, you know, I mean, by the same token, I look at him and I go, he's running a business at a level that...
John: That escapes me.
John: I do not get up at five o'clock in the morning and make six hours of really super good business decisions before taking my first handful of Percocets.
John: I got up this morning and drank coffee out of a beer mug in the bathtub reading about Sandra Bullock.
Merlin: You haven't had a single sex crime all day.
John: I have not made an assistant feel weird.
John: about herself in 48 hours.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You're really limiting yourself.
Merlin: I think when – I don't know.
Merlin: I don't want to say when it's younger, when you're younger.
Merlin: But I think there's – if you were going to try and summarize a lot of what makes people unaccidentally do intoxicants, it has something to do with what I would call the possibilities of self.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Like when you're very young, I think it's hard to really understand all the possibilities of self for better or for worse.
Merlin: And in your case, that might make you feel less inhibited to say something or to feel something or to be aware of a feeling that you have.
Merlin: That's a certain kind of possibility of self.
Merlin: But I mean, I think pretty much all the drugs that we're talking about have those qualities to them where, you know, if you do a whole bunch of blow, I'm given to believe your possibilities of self can seem extremely ambitious.
Merlin: Right.
John: You feel pretty good about the future.
Merlin: Pretty self-y.
John: In the first 10 minutes after you do a bunch of blow.
John: You feel like the future's pretty bright.
Merlin: But in my case, you know, LSD could show me possibilities of self that I wouldn't have had access to in such a –
Merlin: incontrovertible like bald way like wow this i feel like i can see this thing with this clarity that i couldn't before absolutely so i mean i don't know when that turns into something that becomes problematic but i mean i think like you're getting at i'm not i i'm not in any way trying to be like a what a prude it's just that like i'm really in some ways i'm really glad that i had a safe place to fuck around with those possibilities of self
Merlin: for a small amount of time.
Merlin: And I'm glad I didn't keep trying to figure that out too much, too often, too much for 20 more years.
John: About trying to come up with a cool drug policy for the future.
John: Because I really do believe that everybody who is curious should try every drug.
John: And
John: And should try every drug more than once.
John: But there is a moment where you are, with every single drug, chasing the dragon and trying to recapture the feeling that you had.
John: And with LSD, if you took LSD a couple of times a week for a whole summer,
John: You would have a whole variety of experiences and it would be mind expanding and I think it would be an overall net positive for you.
John: But at the end of the summer, you would already start to feel like, oh, this trip isn't getting me to the place that...
John: Some of those trips in midsummer did, you know, and with cocaine and with mushrooms and with MDMA and heroin, even like all certainly crack.
John: Like you do it the first time and you're like, holy mother of God.
John: And then the second time it's like, you cannot believe you're there again.
John: And that climb, it doesn't fall off immediately.
John: You keep climbing and the fifth time you do it, it's like, that's why the fifth time you do it, you have a tendency to think, I have found my new band.
John: Right?
John: Like that moment that I had really high when I was driving around to Anchorage with my friend Peter.
John: And I said, and we were listening to Thick as a Brick.
John: And I said, you know what?
John: Jethro Tull is going to be my new band.
John: I'm going to go down the Jethro Tull fan hole.
John: And that's going to set me apart because there aren't a lot of Jethro Tull fans that I know that are like deep, deep fans.
John: And it's going to be me.
John: Jethro Tull is going to be my band.
John: And Peter was like, I don't know.
John: That aren't Druids or Wiccans.
John: Yeah.
John: He was like, I don't know, man.
John: Are you sure about that?
John: And I was like, I mean, we were both pretty, pretty wasted.
John: And I said, I'm pretty sure that Jethro Tull like speaks to me in this way.
John: And then, of course, the next day I was like, oh, my God, what was I thinking?
John: Chathro Toll can't be my band.
John: But everybody has that experience on the fifth time they do a drug where it's just like, this is my thing.
John: This is my jam.
John: And almost immediately after that, it's diminishing returns.
John: So how we could approach drugs as a culture and say, listen, it's like Rumspringa.
John: At a certain point, you leave the village and you go on your drug odyssey.
John: Because I meet people all the time who say, I have never taken a drug.
John: And I go, oh, really?
John: Jesus, man.
John: You should try some drugs.
John: They're astonishing.
Merlin: Well, A, don't start now.
Merlin: But B, what a bummer.
Merlin: You really should have 20 years ago.
John: Yeah, but even like a 40-year-old who's never taken LSD, it's like, okay, I don't think you should take LSD and get on the subway by yourself.
John: Yeah.
John: But if you went out to the beach with... I worry about my neuroplasticity, John.
John: Is that right?
John: You think it might actually zap you?
John: I mean, I've known some people, that one guy in particular, that LSD ruined his life and turned him into a...
Merlin: I think it's probably like chicken pox.
Merlin: Like, you know, do it before you're 35 or there's going to be problems.
Merlin: That's my guess.
John: You think you would come back from a trip and just be like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Barren.
Merlin: No, I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, I just, I just, my body and my, I would like to think my, albeit unformed mind.
Merlin: I definitely had more plasticity and more bounce back in general.
Merlin: So, I mean, I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not trying to deny people the joy and really terror of LSD.
God,
Merlin: Listen, have you not experienced the terror of LSD?
Merlin: You need to correct that immediately.
Merlin: You should be terrified at the Oscars or Disney World.
Merlin: It's really fun.
John: I do fear that.
John: Because I always held out the possibility like, okay, I understand that psychedelics are not strictly an addictive drug.
John: And when I am 50 years old, maybe I'll want to go out to the northern coast and stand on a windswept rock and take some LSD.
Merlin: Go out to Canocti Harbor and see Holland Oates.
Merlin: Just go out and watch the whales.
John: But then I recall those times when I would be sitting on the quad of my college naked
John: wrapped in a blanket and trying everything i could to keep the complete panic oh my god oh i don't miss that and saying like do not panic this is not you know this will not last forever do please do not lose your last toehold with reality and then imagining myself now
John: As you're describing, my complete lack of plasticity now and just feeling... Can you imagine what the recovery on that would be today?
John: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Merlin: Yeah, I just I think of like, like a Wyndham Hill album on repeat that I somehow couldn't get to to turn off.
Merlin: And having one thought in my head, which is that this is the only thought in my head.
Merlin: And this may be the only thought in my head that I ever have.
Merlin: And my brain has stopped working.
Merlin: I used to really be into the fact that I could think.
Merlin: And then I would sit there and I would think this is the last thought I'm ever going to think and I'm going to think it forever.
Merlin: And the thought that I'm thinking is that this is the last thought that I'm ever going to think and I'm going to think it forever.
Merlin: And that's seeming while like Wyndham Hill violin music is playing, just thinking there's no proof in the entire universe to show me that this will ever be any different.
Merlin: I'm going to lose my mind right now sitting here and there's not a damn thing I can do about it.
John: I was hitchhiking and ended up in Durango, Colorado one time and got into a pickup truck with a guy and he was like, want to go to a party?
John: And I was like, absolutely.
John: And he said, want some acid?
John: And I said, absolutely.
John: And we show up at this party and it's like a, it's like a, on the surface of it, it's a cool scene, right?
John: It's like a, it's like a country kind of house on some land.
John: And there's a bunch of cool, cool cats there and, and pretty girls in, in flower print dresses and dogs lolling around on the porch and,
John: And I kind of walk into this party and the acid starts coming on.
John: And I look, and everybody kind of looks at me and there is no welcome.
John: No one's welcoming.
John: And I'm like, hey, hi, how are you?
John: I'm just, I just got a ride with this guy.
John: And now I'm here and, you know, I'm a young person just like you guys.
John: And everybody was like, mm-hmm.
John: And so now I'm out in the woods at this house party, and I'm coming on some kind of strychnine-y acid.
John: Oh, God.
John: And no one is friendly.
Merlin: You feel like your nerves have been lightly toasted?
John: Yeah, and I felt myself on the edge of falling off this precipice of like, this is not going to go well.
John: This is not going to be fun.
John: And I went and I sat in a chair on the porch and I'm petting this dog.
John: And I'm like, dog, you and me, we're going to get through this together.
John: And the dog just walks off.
John: And I'm like, all right, well...
John: Thanks a lot, buddy.
John: And I basically just went like walking in the woods and eventually found another house party and ended up sitting on the living room floor.
John: I'm pretty sure stacking paper clips.
John: for a couple of hours and then the cops came to the party and busted the party and i was so glad to see them i was like so thrilled that the cops were there because i felt like the cops and i had a long-term understanding with one another they wouldn't leave you like a dog yeah it's just like right the cops i mean at least i can talk to the cops you know sure you know they're dependable
John: They're dependable.
John: And you can say like, Hey man, how's it going out there?
John: A lot of parties tonight.
John: And they're just like looking over your shoulder, trying to figure out who's in this place.
John: And it's like, Hey, I'll talk to you guys.
John: I mean, you know, I'm not from here.
John: Want to see my ID?
John: Yeah.
John: Want to see what I've been doing?
John: They're over here.
John: I had to do it kind of out of the way because there's a lot of traffic through this party.
John: But like the whole night long, just like staving off panic and particularly at the beginning of a thing like that, knowing that like, okay, this is an eight hour thing now.
John: For the next eight hours, I'm going to just be chain-smoking camel filters, stacking paperclips, and trying to talk to any receptive pet.
John: And just hoping that the cops come by or hoping that somebody interesting comes around.
John: It was an uncool scene.
John: I still reflect on that sometimes.
Merlin: How did you get back to where you started out?
Merlin: You had to get a ride from a stranger with strange acid, strange acid in a strange land.
Merlin: How did you get back to where you started out?
John: Well, this was the thing about me at that time.
John: There was no back.
John: I ended up coming down off of the acid and I was at some place and I went to sleep on the couch and I woke up in the morning and...
John: that's where i was i mean i had my little bag of my little pack of underwear and socks and i woke up at this new house with these new kind of unfriendly people and you know charmed my way into a cup of coffee and then i started off walking down the dirt road
John: Just like Bruce Banner at the end of every episode of The Incredible Hulk.
Merlin: Only now you can't find your slippers.