Ep. 99: "White Ribbon"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
John: Pretty good.
John: I just did the thing that I do, which is I know I have a thing to do.
John: And I stayed in bed until absolutely the last minute.
John: And then I got out of bed and I came in here and I sat down.
Merlin: That's also good because it makes it harder for people to track your movements.
John: That's true.
John: That's true.
John: Unless you're tracking my movements by looking in my bedroom window.
Merlin: Even still, I'm guessing you probably threw away the covers and just jolted out of bed.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: And I ran past the thermostat on my way and I went.
John: And I turned up the thermostat so that by the end of this podcast, it would be warm in my house.
Merlin: John, you're a life hacker.
Merlin: There's no question about it.
Merlin: Life hacks.
Merlin: You've hacked your sleep.
Merlin: You've hacked your waking.
Merlin: You've hacked your stat, as we say.
John: What I haven't hacked is preserving batteries in the little blues driver that's sitting on the floor that I just noticed has been plugged in all night.
Merlin: Is that the heavy guy with the harmonicas?
John: That battery's dead.
John: Oh, Blues Driver?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: You got a vest?
Merlin: You got a vest for that harmonica, mister?
John: I went to one of his concerts because I knew a guy who was his keyboard tech.
John: And after the show, we went onto the Blues Driver tour bus.
John: And it was, I think there were two buses maybe, one for Mr. Blues Driver and one for the crew.
John: There's a separate popper mobile?
John: There's a popper mobile.
John: I don't know.
John: I'm not sure.
John: I forget.
John: I forget.
John: I didn't actually meet him, but I met his whole band and crew.
John: And on the bus, they had more kinds of marijuana.
John: They had Tupperware containers with like 20 different kinds of pot.
John: Wow.
John: And they were headed to Canada the next day.
John: And the tour manager was saying, you know, talking about the plan and very matter of factly was talking about the fact that they needed to stop in Bellingham and rent a hotel room for all the pot and guns.
John: And they're just going to they're going to leave the potting hotel, go to Canada and then come back the next day and get the potting guns.
Merlin: You really need a manager who can think that stuff through for you because you're smoking so much pot.
John: Yeah, you don't want to hit that board and be like, oh, shit.
John: Man, pot and guns.
John: Pot and guns.
John: And that was a long time ago.
John: That was 10 or 15 years ago.
Merlin: I think, in fairness, the blues driver guy has lost a disturbing amount of weight.
John: Well, he got the stomach stapling.
Merlin: I think that still counts.
John: It does, but I think, well, does it?
John: It's a form of body hacking.
John: I guess it does.
John: But I think he gained the weight back, too, and then he's up and down.
John: Fluctuates a lot.
John: That sucks.
John: It does.
John: It's got to hurt.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, sometimes it just seems like you're destined to have a certain, you know, like you got the beard-shaped face.
Merlin: I think some people are destined to have like a certain body shape.
John: Yes, I believe that that's medically documented.
Merlin: But I've met people who are like big body people.
Merlin: They work out constantly.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: they lose every ounce of body fat that they've got on them, and they just look like a tan canoe.
Merlin: It looks wrong.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: They just don't look right.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It looks less healthy in some ways.
Merlin: I don't know one way or another.
John: A pear-shaped person should remain pear-shaped and not try to become a peanut-shaped person.
John: With a top hat and a cane.
John: Ha, ha, ha.
John: Yes, God has made us in all the many splendorous ways, and we should celebrate every one of our differences.
Merlin: Oh, I totally agree.
Merlin: They are cause to celebrate, Merlin, not cause to... It's all just one big drum circle.
John: Yeah.
John: It's just, yeah, one planet.
Merlin: Do you think Mr. Peanut even explored any other lines of work before he became like a professional promotional cannibal?
John: You know, I have to think that Mr. Peanut was actually a titan of industry.
John: Otherwise, why would he dress that way and be so cocky?
John: He seems pretty fancy.
John: Yeah, and you know, that actually Mr. Peanut probably rose up, probably came to prominence during the era of the peanut.
John: There was a, you know, in American history, an era where the peanut was really the ascendant legume.
Oh.
Merlin: But still, to the end of his days, he spent every day wondering, will George Washington Carver be around the next corner?
Merlin: Will he make me into something a little too interesting?
John: Yeah, I mean, Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer.
Merlin: That's true.
Merlin: And a nuclear engineer.
John: Oh, right.
John: Of course.
John: On submarines.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: I think he was a submarine.
Merlin: I think he was actually like an engineer, wasn't he?
Merlin: Yeah, on submarines.
Merlin: And a peanut farmer.
John: You know, a man of many talents and also a man of a lost era.
John: A gentleman.
John: A gentleman.
John: That's right.
Merlin: You know, I don't want to start a whole thing.
Merlin: First of all, I have to say, I realized about 10 minutes ago that my daughter has given me a slow motion cold.
Merlin: And it finally just officially became a cold like 10 minutes ago.
Merlin: My mouth tastes funny.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
Merlin: I don't like that phrase, family farm.
Merlin: I think it's a red herring.
Merlin: Because what if your family is really, really fucking rich?
Merlin: oh i see what you mean you know what i mean yeah doesn't that seem when you say family farm you think of something from um uh who's the dust bowl photographer guy you know you think of like if you think of family farm you think of like ma and pa kettle out there in their in their tin roof shack right you know with a borrowed rake right wind blowing yeah 40 acres and a mule
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Are you hearing the term family farm used in a disingenuous way where corporate overlords are masquerading as family farmers?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I mean, you know, I don't follow this stuff closely, but I think it's one of those thought terminating cliches, as Orwell says.
Merlin: You know, it's one of those when you say family farm, like you're kind of not allowed to say anything because it sounds like you're going after the guy with the overalls.
John: Right.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And you can own – your family can own a lot of very, very large, stinky, polluting, yucky farms.
John: This is the thing about sort of central Ohio, western Ohio.
John: And it's also the thing about central Germany and Bavaria.
John: In those places, the farmers are the richest people in the community.
Merlin: Well, they own the most land, right?
Yeah.
John: Well, they own the most land, but also it's very fertile land, and over the course of hundreds of years, they've built up those properties, so they have these beautiful barns and multiple big houses, but also the crops that they're growing are expensive.
John: The farmers are the prosperous, conservative burgers of the community, and
John: Growing up, I guess, in the 80s, I had this same idea that farmers were hard-working, hard-scrabble people to be... Certainly, you didn't pity a farmer, but you felt a lot of common cause and American empathy with a farmer.
John: They were the salt of the earth, etc.,
John: And you go to these places where the, where the farming is good and you realize like, oh, farmers are, farmers can be the real Cadillac driving, uh, like kind of fat cats of a, of a particular place.
John: And in, uh, in both of those communities, that part of Ohio and that part of Germany, the ones that I, that I know, uh,
John: The farmers are the political obstacle to change, and the farmers are the social obstacle to change, and they're conservative and not at all like John Cougar sucking on a chili dog somewhere.
John: They're wearing three-piece suits, white linen three-piece suits even.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I want to stipulate.
Merlin: I don't think there's anything wrong with being successful and having lots of money.
John: Oh, my God.
John: No, no.
John: No.
John: Oh, we should all be billionaires.
Merlin: And dressing like Mr. Peanut, there's nothing wrong with that.
Merlin: It's something about that word family where it's become in the last maybe 20 or so years, 25 years, I'll say.
Merlin: Definitely since some time, post-moral majority maybe, but definitely –
Merlin: I think something maybe about the George H.W.
Merlin: Bush era, maybe in my head that's where family started to become this heavily charged word about family values, whether something is family-friendly, family-owned businesses like say Walmart.
Merlin: uh, family, family farms, like the ones that own giant, you know, parcels of, of our, of our great United States.
Merlin: And it's nothing, nothing against that.
Merlin: It's just that it's a family is one of those cop out words where like, once you say it, it ends the conversation.
Merlin: Cause now you're talking about their family, dude.
John: Well, and it's, it's the, uh, I think it's the, the corollary to, uh, the way that urban became synonymous with black, uh,
John: it becomes euphemistic family is a euphemism for white christian nuclear family or white christian code word it's a code word right yeah yeah that's a good point because this is the whole this is the whole argument now like uh
John: And gays are trying to extend the franchise of family.
John: And so, I mean, everybody on the left is trying to say, we are also a family.
John: We are a polyamorous family.
John: We are a family of Zoroastrians.
John: We all want to be included in this kind of family family.
John: definition and all the rights that go with that and all the pushback from that makes you recognize that oh what family the reason we see family all the time is it is a code for it's it's one of those codes you know when people who are part of the evangelical world they talk about like code words that other evangelicals recognize but the rest of us maybe won't
John: And family is not one of those, but it's at a higher level a kind of political code word for white people.
Merlin: Yeah, and it has the – to me, in the way it's been used over the last 25 years, it also has the implication of important distinctions that we don't even need to talk about anymore.
Merlin: Like black people have broken homes.
Merlin: We stay married.
John: Mexican people have like four or five families living in one house.
John: And God knows what they're getting up to there.
John: So family is like, yeah, right.
John: It's like mom, dad, grandma, grandpa.
John: And then other grandma and grandpa who live in Florida.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I had that.
Merlin: Oh my God.
John: Wait a minute!
John: I was Bruce Willis the whole time.
John: I never knew either of my grandfathers, and I only met one of my grandmothers, but she died before I was two.
John: So I had no grandparents.
Merlin: Is that your mom's mother?
John: My mom's mom died in the 30s.
John: Oh, okay.
Okay.
John: Not in her 30s, in the 1930s.
John: And my dad's dad died in the 50s.
John: And my dad, my mom's dad, I guess I did meet when I was an infant.
John: But he died in the 80s.
John: And then my dad's mom died in like 1971, I guess.
John: 1970 maybe.
John: So yeah, didn't know any of them.
John: And I'm none the worse for it, right?
John: No, you're doing great.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: People love me.
Merlin: I have friends.
Merlin: You passed on those family values to your family.
John: Yeah, my family values, which are, thank you for visiting.
Merlin: Don't let the doorknob hit you on the way out.
Merlin: We're done here.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, people didn't used to live as long, that's for sure.
John: People did not used to live as long.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think people used to ride a lot harder.
Merlin: I'll say that.
Merlin: You look at pictures of celebrities, movie stars, whatever, and it's amazing how people in their early 30s looked – I mean part of it was the way they dressed and carried themselves.
Merlin: But like my mom – I've said this before.
Merlin: My mom's yearbook.
Merlin: My mom graduated from high school in 1954 at a fairly diverse urban high school.
Merlin: But I mean everybody in there looks 50.
John: Yeah, right.
Yeah.
John: Well, they're all trying to look 50.
John: You know, as my mom used to say, because she graduated, you know, my mom was 20 in 1954.
John: And 1954, arguably, is the birth of rock and roll.
John: Right?
John: 54, 55?
Merlin: Yeah, a little early, but that's the, I think that's the proto, definitely the proto rock and roll.
John: Yeah, let's say 56 is the birth of rock and roll.
Mm-hmm.
John: So my mom's 22 at the birth of rock and roll.
John: Now, right now, if you were 22 years old at the birth of a new kind of music form or new art form, you would be a soldier of that form, right?
John: I mean, the kids that were 22 when indie rock was ascendant are like my lifelong fans, right?
John: And yet, at 22 years old, when rock and roll came in, my mom was contemptuous of it.
John: It was music for children.
John: And she was already listening to jazz music and being sophisticated and drinking little, you know, drinks out of cocktail glasses and
Merlin: Yeah, why would you give up any of that hard-earned adulthood that you'd finally achieved?
John: Yeah, you had arrived at your majority and you weren't going to go back to hanging out with Bobby Soxers.
John: Right.
John: That's so different from now where we're living, I mean, honestly, I feel like you and I are both living a kind of prolonged childhood and everybody I know is.
Right.
Merlin: Yeah, there's a thing on the radio this morning about, I always forget every February, March, noise pop comes around.
Merlin: And I mean, there were a few years, not that long ago, where, I mean, a couple years we bought season, not season passes, but, you know, all show passes, stuff like that.
Merlin: And, you know, that we're in our 40s doing that, you know, and it's kind of hard to imagine your mom doing that in like, like going to like an all day rock music festival in 1974.
John: yeah although now uh she loves you know she's come full circle of course loves rock music she just doesn't want to be in the business but that's it but that sense of like you look at the old you look at the old high school yearbook photos and you feel like half those people are 40 already part of that is yeah right that they only live to be 50 yeah and so they they were in middle age at 25 and
John: But, you know, and some of it maybe is that we're not so gaunt anymore because we have that layer of sugar fat that makes us all look young and beautiful.
Merlin: Well, thank God for those energy drinks.
Merlin: We're finally getting some things accomplished now that everyone has the energy.
John: Rock star.
John: Need I say more?
John: But I keep looking at Jennifer Aniston.
John: She is my lodestone.
John: Is that right?
John: She is my... I want to check your spelling on that one.
John: She is my star caster.
John: She is my... What is it?
John: Lone star.
John: No, I don't know what I'm trying to say.
John: But Jennifer Aniston is about my age.
John: And...
John: And she was somebody that I always understood.
John: She certainly was considered a sex symbol and a very attractive girl in the culture when I was in my young 20s.
Merlin: She kind of came out of nowhere.
Merlin: She came out of nowhere.
Merlin: I think she'd been on like three different pilots for shows before Friends.
Merlin: But none of us had ever seen that.
Merlin: No, no.
John: And she was a little bit, you know, she had a little bit of chubby face like chipmunk cheeks.
John: And she had that iconic hair.
Merlin: She looked a little bit like Jennifer Grey.
John: She looked a little bit like Jennifer Grey.
John: Thank you for connecting the dots.
John: Anyway, I had that feeling where I was like, I should be more attracted to her than I am.
John: You know that feeling where you're like, everything lines up with this girl.
John: Yeah, this should be my type.
John: Yeah, I like her face.
John: I like her moxie.
John: I even like her silly hair.
John: Like, this girl should be...
John: should really get me should really get me going but for some reason she doesn't she doesn't she doesn't completely and i remember watching friend i would be over at somebody's house then friends would be on that's a code for i didn't watch friends because i didn't have a tv because i don't read comic books
John: But I would be over at somebody's house and friends would come on and I would watch friends and I would, I would be like really zoomed in on Jennifer Aniston because I wanted to, I wanted to understand this.
John: I wanted to find some reason, some clear moment where I was like either, yes, I am now, now I'm totally into her or you know what?
John: No, she doesn't do it for me.
John: And I could never find the breaking point.
John: And part of it was that because of the fashion of the 90s, they always dressed her in clothes that were just baggy enough that you couldn't quite get a picture of the silhouette, you know?
John: Like, what's under there?
John: I know she's a young gal.
John: She's a cute gal.
John: What's under all that?
John: all those baggy sweatshirts got some length of bone you know and i could never quite i couldn't get a picture under the under the silhouette you know like courtney cox you look at and you're like she's a skinny girl she's a skinny girl with big boobs and i and i've past experiences has taught me to you got to be careful with the skinny girl with big boobs you just can't trust them
John: But Jennifer Aniston, she had to, you know, she had to, maybe she's a, maybe she's a little bit.
Merlin: She was intellectually vexing to you.
John: Maybe she's a little bit thicker.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Maybe she's a, maybe she's a small busted girl.
John: That's a little bit thicker.
John: Like that's a girl you can trust.
John: You're calling her pear-shaped?
John: Anyway.
Merlin: You're saying she's a petite?
John: She might, yeah, somewhere in that, you know, she might be a size two.
John: I didn't mean to interrupt you.
John: Jennifer Aniston's clothes were vexing you.
John: Vexing.
John: And so as time has gone on and Jennifer Aniston has evolved, but dare I say it, alongside me, really simultaneous to me, Jennifer Aniston's been growing up.
John: I've been growing up.
John: We've been growing up together.
John: And I'm always looking out of my side mirror at Jennifer Aniston saying, does she do it for me yet?
Merlin: The ball's still up in the air.
John: Now she's 35.
John: I'm 35.
John: Are you...
John: And, you know, and over time, you know, you see enough celebrity beach photos of her in her bathing suit that you no longer have to guess.
John: And now Jennifer Aniston is 45 years old.
John: She's still a very attractive woman.
John: And I still cannot decide.
John: Oh, my gosh.
John: And it may very well be one of those things where if you're in the room with somebody and you realize they just don't photograph to your liking, or it just might be that we just have a chemical thing that prevents us from ever being together.
Merlin: But you still can't tell.
Merlin: I don't know for sure.
Merlin: You still got to sneak a peek in the mirror.
John: I was asked at one point to audition for a film that she was making in Vancouver where it was like some indie rock movie or there were indie rock bands as part of the plot.
John: And maybe her romantic lead was an indie rock musician.
John: seems like a little bit of a stretch you know right who's gonna fall in love with one of those but i i seriously considered uh auditioning for the film but at that point in time i was missing one of my teeth and i felt like i just don't see myself getting cast not only as the lead that's that is self-awareness john you realize sure you could have a career as a character actor but maybe it's not quite time for you to be a leading man
John: Yeah.
John: Well, and also, when I went through that process, I started thinking about other films.
John: And you really don't see a lot of guys missing a tooth in any role, even as like henchmen.
John: And if a henchman is missing a tooth, it's usually a side tooth.
John: It's a side tooth, so when he smiles, he kind of pulls one side of his mouth back, and you're like, oh, he's even missing one of his teeth.
Merlin: I think you only see that with makeup in Hee Haw.
John: Oh, yeah, maybe.
Merlin: I think Hee Haw had a high tolerance for tooth spaces.
John: Tooth spaces.
John: But I was missing one of my front teeth.
John: It was very prominent.
John: And I was missing it for a couple of years.
Yeah.
John: And I think at the time, I just didn't... Maybe I didn't register how profoundly that was sending a message to casting agents that I wasn't quite ready.
Merlin: Maybe, you know, just the right role never came along.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, yeah, that's right.
Merlin: There was a point, though, where it started to become clear that that was just a thing that you were going to do for a while, was not have a tooth.
John: Yeah, well, I think it was that I objected to, you know, the cabal of dentists.
John: Oh, God.
John: And the way that they run our culture.
Merlin: Hollywood and the banks?
John: They just assumed the dent... Excuse me.
John: The dent...
John: The dentists just assumed that I was going to wear some kind of flipper tooth that was basically like a peanut butter trap.
John: It was a whole metal apparatus that was going to just sit there and collect peanut butter all day.
John: And I was like, I'm not going to wear that.
John: That's a torture device.
John: They were like, well, your other option is to walk around without a tooth.
John: So yeah, you are going to wear it.
John: I was like, oh, really?
Merlin: Well, watch me now.
Merlin: They are so smug, John.
Merlin: They've got it all figured out.
Merlin: They got a solution, and here's what it costs.
Merlin: Yeah, I'm so mad at them.
Merlin: The goddamn dentists are so frustrating to me.
Merlin: They're really frustrating to me.
Merlin: I don't know why I can't just go in there and get my teeth clean without a lecture.
John: Well, you know, I think what it is is they have done miraculous work.
John: When you think about people in the past, people that we were just talking about who looked prematurely old,
John: A lot of them were suffering tooth pain, and a lot of them died early because they had tooth infections.
John: And now, basically the reason we all live to be 100 years old is that we have dentists.
John: They are our life givers.
Merlin: We just went a little Malcolm Gladwell on me there.
Merlin: Is it a knock-on effect of the dentistry profession being widespread and heavily insured, or is it just because they're there?
John: Well, no, they have improved their technology so that we are not walking around anymore, all of us with a low-grade infection in our mouths.
John: Or a big white bandage tied around our head.
John: Yeah, right.
John: We no longer have to sit bracing ourselves on the public stocks in the town square while someone attaches a tooth to a team of horses.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: So, yeah, we do owe them our lives, but it has bred in them of smugness that they are indispensable.
John: And I suppose they are.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I see maybe a tick above optometrists.
Merlin: Nothing against optometrists.
John: I got a terrible lecture the last time I went in from a young dental hygienist.
John: Where I, I honestly, I, I, I got snippy with her.
John: I said, I know how to brush my teeth.
John: You don't have to show me.
John: Like she was gearing up.
John: She was getting her, she was getting her demo mode.
John: Yeah.
John: Getting her little cup and her demo toothbrush and her, and the fake mouth of teeth.
John: And she was like, let me show you how to brush, brush your teeth.
John: And I was like, are you fucking kidding me?
John: I'm 45 years old.
John: I know how to brush my teeth.
John: Get out of here.
John: And she was like, oh, well.
John: She acted a little bit like a stewardess.
John: Oh, I'm sorry, sir.
John: Well, I'm just trying to do my job.
Merlin: Save your fucking life.
Merlin: Can I ask you one thing, if it's not too personal?
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: How is or was the juice fast?
Merlin: You were on day three of that last time we visited.
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: Let's say 90% completed the juice fast.
John: 93%.
John: Because in the afternoon of the third day of the juice fast, I realized that a juice fast is a terrible thing.
John: It's a terrible idea.
John: And it does not suit me at all.
John: I've spent the last six months weaning myself off of sugar and
John: And then I went on some crackpot scheme where for three days I just drank sugar water, like concentrated sugar water.
John: because that's what juice is.
John: Even kale juice is just the sugar out of kale.
John: And, uh, and so by the, by the end of the third day, I mean, I was on this, I was in this terrible cycle of like, I would drink a glass of juice.
John: I would feel great for 20 minutes.
John: And then I would almost completely shut down.
John: I was like the scarecrow in the wizard of Oz.
John: Like my limbs would go limp.
John: My head would, would drop to my chest and I would like sort of,
John: drag myself over to the couch where i would lay in a kind of half comatose state until it was time to get up and make another juice and then i would feel good for good for 30 minutes and then it would just like the the sugar went right through me and it just felt like poison and so by the end of that third day i was like what am i doing to myself like i'm only i'm only
John: I'm only trying to see this through to notch three-day juice fast off of my belt somehow.
John: The world's saddest bucket list.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Got that.
John: Three-day juice fast, yep.
Merlin: Visited Judy Garland's gravesite, check.
John: I did the artist's sway, check.
John: Morning pages.
John: And so I was just like, I...
John: I protest this juice fast now.
John: Like, I was really into it day one.
John: I was pretty solid in it all through day two.
John: Even day three, I was like, yes, I am.
John: This is just gonna... This is the thing.
John: And it was not hunger.
John: It wasn't...
John: It wasn't a question of willpower.
John: It was a recognition that I was... That by day three, I was just poisoning myself every time I drank a glass of juice.
John: And so I just said, this is terrible.
John: And I went and had some food and felt immediately better.
John: I have... In the plus column...
John: I did quit drinking caffeine and now I am completely off caffeine.
John: And it took me really like it took five days for the pain to go out of my joints.
John: So as I get older, it is just, you know, like I'm not a complete case study, but anecdotally it is taking longer to wean myself off of caffeine when I quit now.
John: It really hard.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It used to be three days in and out.
Merlin: But so you honestly, I mean, not exaggerating, you have been drinking a fair amount of coffee each day, like more than a couple of cups.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, you know, the thing that not drinking alcohol and then eliminating juice and soda pop from my diet.
John: The number of interesting drinks I can have is really low.
John: And I can drink fizzy water with lime in it all afternoon.
John: But come on.
John: You don't want to become a tea person.
John: Well, I don't.
John: And also, in my nature, I am a substance abuser.
John: Like, I want to abuse substances.
John: It isn't a thing, like, I don't have a spiritual beef with it.
John: I want to do it.
John: And if you give me a substance to abuse, I will.
John: And in college, it was Mountain Dew.
John: I would drink 64 ounces of Mountain Dew every afternoon.
John: Wow.
John: And I felt amazing.
John: Mountain Dew is delicious.
John: No scarecrow for you.
John: You can't be.
John: That's right.
John: I was the cowardly hippo.
Merlin: Pay no attention to the quivering man running around the living room.
Yeah.
John: But you can't be a 45-year-old and drink 64 ounces of Mountain Dew a day.
John: And so what I did have was coffee.
John: My good old friend coffee, old reliable.
John: And so it wasn't just that I drank like three large cups of coffee in the morning.
John: It was that then I went out to lunch and I had a couple of cups of coffee with whoever I was having lunch with.
John: And then at dinner, I would get a cup of coffee.
John: And so throughout the day, every day, six cups of coffee, sometimes more.
John: And it was just my, my, my only friend, my reliable little, uh, because I quit smoking cigarettes too.
John: So I don't have that like little friend.
John: And as a substance explorer, to have a little friend, to have a little crutch, somebody that's always there for you when your mind starts to get away, when your fingers start to move, fidget, fidget, fidget.
John: Where's my little friend?
John: I need a little friend.
John: And I was realizing this the other day.
John: I was talking to Chris Ballou of the presidents of the USA.
John: And he was not chastising me, but he was admonishing us that we hardly ever really talk about the spiritual things.
John: You're talking about the program?
John: Well, no, not at all.
John: That Chris is... Oh, that you and he never talk about it.
John: No, no, no, that you and I never do.
John: He's a religious listener of the program.
John: And that we never talk... We are not... You and I are not Buddhists, per se.
John: Like, we don't... And I reflected on what he said and thought about, like, I am not generally trying to transcend my ego.
John: That is not...
Merlin: Well, that's not really on the first page.
John: That is not what I am.
Merlin: That's a little bit of a Buddhist in a barrel.
John: That's not the lead.
John: I know, but you know, I was introduced to these concepts many years ago, and I always imagined of myself that I would be pursuing a spiritual life.
John: I'm not against rock music.
Merlin: I've heard a great deal of the rock music when it first manifested itself on the...
Merlin: Are you doing Mark Twain?
Merlin: I'm doing the John Roderick one-man show.
Merlin: John Roderick explaining to you, I'm not unfamiliar with Buddhism.
Merlin: It's a tenet with which I'm well-informed.
Merlin: Merlin Mann as Hal Holbrook.
Merlin: Merlin Mann is Hal Holbrook, is John Roderick.
Merlin: In any case.
John: But, you know, I always thought that I would, at some point in my life, pursue a spiritual path that was Siddhartha-like, where I would go sit on a bridge and study the river.
John: And, you know, and just then a year would pass.
Merlin: I just have a quick public aside to Chris Ballou.
Merlin: Chris, there's a really, really good reason we don't talk about this on the show.
Merlin: What you're hearing now is the part that you can hear about why.
Merlin: What you don't hear is a couple episodes I will be happy to send you.
Merlin: Do you want me to send him the marathon?
John: He can learn how you feel about religion.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: Let's leave that in the salt mine in Utah.
John: With all the ET cartridges.
John: Where the Roderick on the lines that have never aired are just waiting for the historians.
John: Trying to lose their ego.
John: But I think that our Dominican friend in the hills of San Francisco...
John: is up there probably in a cold cell half the day.
John: He spends a lot of time on his iPhone, John.
John: He does, yeah.
John: Have you noticed that?
John: I don't know what's going on with those Dominicans these days.
John: I don't think that they are flagellating themselves like they used to.
Merlin: Yeah, I wonder if he's got some kind of e-flagellation app.
Merlin: In-app flagellation purchases.
John: Where he swings his iPhone over his shoulder and it makes a sound of a crack.
Merlin: You have leveled up, too.
Merlin: Hair shirt.
Merlin: Silver.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Bing bong.
Merlin: We have fun.
Merlin: We do.
Merlin: We kid, but it's in a spirit of egolessness.
Merlin: Yeah, I wish that we could be less egoful.
Merlin: I'm fine to talk about those things.
Merlin: Yeah, I know.
John: I know you're level three Shaolin monk.
Merlin: Yeah, I have high dexterity, pretty good charisma.
Merlin: Quiet walking.
Merlin: I always love that thing where monks could fall down a wall.
Merlin: It was like four feet per level, something like that.
Merlin: Do you remember that?
Merlin: Monks had a power where they could – they also had the quivering palm.
Merlin: You remember that?
Merlin: I remember reading about it in the Dungeon Masters.
John: Yeah, me too.
John: I didn't actually play D&D.
John: I just read about it mostly.
John: That's the tragedy of that.
John: I never played the game enough to get out of the let's go to war stage.
John: I think that real D&D players spend a lot of time getting water from the well.
John: I go to get water from the well.
John: Somebody rolls a seven-sided dice.
John: Oh, uh, on the way to the well, you see a leaf on the ground.
Merlin: No, I'm the same way.
Merlin: I mean, but the funny part is I'm like that with, uh, with everything.
Merlin: Uh, whether that's, whether that's movies or well, movies be a weird example, but with a rock and roll, uh, with D and D, uh, with history.
Merlin: I mean, there's all kinds of stuff where I, I did, I haven't participated in it as much as I've read about it.
Merlin: Well, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: No, I, but, uh, no, I was definitely like that.
Merlin: And I have discovered that, uh, in terms of at least the D and D stuff and yeah, rock and roll stuff too.
Merlin: There are a lot of people who just read about D and D a lot.
John: Oh yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, I think this is the same thing with Buddhism.
John: We just want to get to the good part.
John: Just get to the part where all your cares melt away.
John: Oh, boy.
Merlin: What a salesman Buddhism has in you.
Merlin: You just climb up to the top of the ladder, right?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: You got to go up the Buddhism ladder.
John: Yeah, you get up to the top of the Buddhism ladder, then you're looking down on everybody.
Merlin: Yeah, it's an analogy.
Merlin: They call it the nine-rung ladder.
Merlin: You've got egolessness.
Merlin: You've got pissing from the high ground.
Merlin: You've got acting all fancy, talking about vegetarian food.
Merlin: That's number four.
John: Watching the river.
John: Not watching the river.
John: First there is a mountain.
John: Then there is no mountain.
John: And then there is a mountain.
John: Then paradoxes, right?
John: Seven is paradoxes.
Merlin: There is no number seven.
Merlin: Number eight, you do not talk about Fight Club.
Merlin: Number nine, location, location, location.
Merlin: Location, location, location.
Merlin: That's the tenets of Buddhism.
Merlin: Number ten, were you just not listening to number nine?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: See, I don't understand why you can't just eat all the vegetables and fruits.
Merlin: Why you got to juice them?
Merlin: What's the point of the juicing?
John: That's the thing.
John: As you said before... See what I did there?
John: Yeah.
John: You got away from there pretty fast.
John: That's number 11.
John: As you said before, you throw a mast of spinach into the blender and you get a thimble of spinach juice and you say, wow, all that spinach went into this thimble.
Merlin: And isn't the fucking spinach fiber where all the good stuff is?
John: Isn't it in the leaves?
John: You're forgetting that there's a huge hopper.
John: There's basically a dumpster behind this juicer where all the spinach actually is.
Merlin: It's like a Chinese food buffet gets left behind.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Exactly.
John: It's the cooked green matter.
John: It's like ground up Hulk.
Merlin: thank you for that yeah i've read comic books yeah you had a boy uh but but no seriously seriously so the juice but part is but i mean setting aside that it maybe it is some nutty balls thing about privation but it is supposed to be it's a cleanse the idea is that you're not adding to the junk you've got in your body and with certain kinds of cleanses the idea is you're only taking in new stuff that's helping you get rid of
John: whatever let's call it toxins rather than adding new ones is kind of the notion right and it gives your body a chance to stabilize and kind of like reset the faders is that kind of the idea i guess but i feel like i feel like there there uh there are two there are two cultures at war here and maybe maybe we're back to talking about the humors oh i'm into that well let's talk about the humors but there are people who are talking about your blood
John: And the relative, like, viscosity of the sugar in it.
John: And then there are these other people talking about your gut.
John: And, like, oh, you need to get all of that hardened fecal matter out of your bowel.
John: So you need to take all this juice.
John: And then it's like, oh, well, now I'm hypoglycemic.
John: But somehow I've cleaned out my colon.
John: Like, I know that there is a holistic way to approach living that involves the nine...
Merlin: Steps.
Merlin: I think at this point, just in the last couple minutes, we're up to 13 now.
Merlin: It's a 13-rung ladder.
John: 13-rung ladder of Buddhism.
John: The 13th rung is... Get it?
John: Yeah.
John: You just reached the Tori, bitch.
John: Make it Santori times.
John: Tonight is kind of special.
John: The 12th rung is colon cleanse, and the 13th rung is bell.
John: But I don't want to sacrifice the hard-won gains I've made in my blood to flush out my ass.
Merlin: Or the heavily impacted little friends that you have as a substance abuser.
Merlin: You have old friends down there.
Merlin: You don't want to make them leave.
John: Ultimately, for me, the substance abuse...
John: uh gene in me it just sits there and throbs all the time like is there something that you can do i mean honestly i feel like for a long time magazines were oh they magazines that sounds real stupid but it's true you could i can i've accidentally become a magazine person sometimes i know i was definitely that with comics for a while i was just buying an inch and a half of comics a week and it's just a thing i did
John: Yeah, and they scratch that same itch where it's just like, what do I do?
John: What do I do?
John: Oh, I've got this.
John: I've got a magazine.
John: I'm going to sit and read this magazine.
John: And it got so that I was reading magazines six hours a day.
John: And the magazines, you know, they give you this, they lull you in.
John: Now I'm picturing that little clippy icon from Microsoft Word.
Merlin: It looks like you want to spend $40 and lose an afternoon.
John: Would you like to read The Atlantic?
John: Hello.
John: And so you feel like, oh, yes, I would like to read all this stuff.
Merlin: Oh, especially if you're getting might back in the day, right?
Merlin: Or you're getting The Atlantic, you're getting Harper's, because that's brain food, right?
John: Yeah, brain food, and you come out of there all informed and stuff.
John: But you're just informed.
John: You're informed at a superficial level about stuff that is...
John: That is interesting, but non-essential.
John: And really, life is passing you by.
John: That was six hours that you didn't go rollerblading or whatever.
John: That's 14.
John: Right.
John: There was the normal 14 hours that you weren't rollerblading and then another six that you're not rollerblading.
Merlin: You know what's funny though?
Merlin: In this rambling – I'm sorry that I'm sick and my brain is not working well.
Merlin: But in all of this stuff, there are a couple of threads through all this stuff we're talking about, perhaps not accidentally.
Merlin: And it's about how our body is a lot – our body and our mind, our soul, like whatever part of it – part of us that makes us us is such a black box.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It really is because we know that there's certain kinds of stuff that we put into our black box that makes us feel good at the time, makes us feel terrible later.
Merlin: There's other kinds of stuff, as you've learned over the years, that you put into your body and you're not sure how it makes you feel, but you're pretty sure it's not making you feel better.
Merlin: You're talking about a function machine.
Merlin: Like a – I guess like a Schrodinger cat box kind of thing but something where there's a process that happens inside in any black box theory or effect you're talking about.
Merlin: There's – something goes in.
Merlin: We know that.
Merlin: We know something comes out over here.
Merlin: But we have no way of even knowing what happens inside of the box.
Merlin: But we know something happens, right?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So I don't know.
Merlin: It's just interesting because sometimes I think one appeal of something like – I'm not saying you're Juice Fast, but one appeal of whether it's the crazy diet or the – forgive my saying – cult-like religions or the get-rich-quick scheme or any of those kinds of things is that they make it seem like the black box –
Merlin: can be understood, and that there should be a way that a steady stream of this going in will cause a reliable, confident stream of this coming out.
Merlin: I mean that exactly as abstractly as I'm putting it.
Merlin: So if you simplify your life, you stop sinning,
Merlin: you pray more, you do good work, you tithe, you can pretty much expect that whatever's going on in that black box, there's going to be a good life that comes out on the other side, even if it's not in this world would be one.
Merlin: If you simplify your diet enough, you quit eating all that shit you eat and all those cheeseburgers and malteds and get down to something as simple as the juice of natural organic plants, then you can expect that your health will improve.
Merlin: Whatever's going on in that black box, there's going to be stuff that happens.
Merlin: You don't need to know.
Merlin: Don't worry about that.
Merlin: But what will come out of that is that you will feel better.
Merlin: Your body will operate better, right?
Merlin: There's something really appealing about a way to like try and – I mean I'm sorry this is so obvious.
Merlin: But I think it's when we stop understanding – like we'll never really understand the black box.
Merlin: But when it's hard to go, like I'm sick of feeling like shit.
Merlin: Like I'm so tired of being tired all the time.
Merlin: I'm tired of being the scarecrow.
Yeah.
Merlin: I'm tired of juicing things.
Merlin: I'm tired of reading the Bible, whatever that is.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I think that's the eternal quest, whether you're a substance abuser at any level or not, is like trying to reach that equilibrium to where you stop notice it being bad, you eventually notice it getting better, and eventually, God willing, you stop noticing anything happening at all and you just feel normal.
John: Yeah, I –
John: I have been reflecting a lot on the attitudes that I carried with me for many years that I see in people all around me that are in some ways the opposite or the response to what you were just saying, which is the...
John: I remember a time when I would say to myself, what is the point of life if I can't have a cigarette?
John: Like, I don't want to... And I meant that.
John: Like, I don't want to live in a world where I am restricted from anything.
John: Like, I don't want to live not only...
John: like in a world where I am being, where my experience is truncated, but where I am measuring my food or I'm in any way apportioning experience to myself in a restricted way.
John: And so living fully meant living without limits, right?
John: And I hear that in various forms from people, from fully grown people all the time, you know?
John: And it's a kind of response to any attempt to really control oneself.
John: To control oneself beforehand, right?
Merlin: Like, you hear it from people like... So it's like, mindfully reject something that you think is not good for you?
Merlin: Well...
Merlin: Or are you talking about guns?
John: No, it's the logic of like, if I couldn't eat steak, why would I live?
John: If I couldn't eat steak, my life would be miserable.
John: If I couldn't drink alcohol, my life would be miserable.
John: If I couldn't eat pizza, my life would be miserable.
John: The presumption that these...
John: that foodstuffs or experiences or something are the source or are the key of life they are the prize they are the reason they are the like without being able to eat steak where is the enjoyment in life really is the logic mostly talking about uh variously various forms of intense sensory input most of the time
Merlin: Well, and I know things like if I man, if I if I can't go to IMAX movies anymore, if I can't eat a giant steak, if I can't have a cigarette, if I can't take a shot of whiskey.
John: But the ultimate one is when you look at a priest and say, how could you how could you live a celibate life like giving up sex before you've even had it?
John: Like, what would be the point of it?
John: What would be the point of why would you live?
John: Like, I remember thinking that very clearly, imagining that the worst thing that could happen to you would be that you would get injured in such a way that you were.
Merlin: You'd be deprived of, like, the primary reason it's awesome to be a young man.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And the primary, like, why interact with other people if you aren't, you know, if you're not trying to have sex with them or their sisters?
Yeah.
John: So as you get older and particularly in my own experience, like, Oh, the more stuff that you, the more stuff that you just kind of dispense with, like, Oh yeah, I don't like, I don't need to eat pizza.
John: Pizza is great.
John: I'm not, I'm not anti pizza, but pizza isn't central to like today being a good day and not being able to have it.
John: And not being able to have sex.
John: None of those things are central to having an enjoyable human experience.
John: And a profound human experience.
John: And I guess it's part of when you imagine somebody who is...
John: like Stephen Hawking, you know, confined to a chair and not even really able to communicate without great effort.
John: And yet he still is deriving great pleasure from being alive.
John: He, you know, he wants to be alive.
John: He is like living a full life and it's all happening in his mind.
John: Um, um,
John: And then you contrast that with... Every one of these experiments I take, I go out in the world, I talk to my friends, I get a lot of pushback, particularly from rock and roll people, where it's just like, you know what I did today?
John: I ate a cigarette just to spite you.
John: It sounded like Jason Finn.
John: Jason would dip a cigarette in liquid cocaine and stick it up his ass just to spite you.
John: Guess what I'm wearing?
John: Nope.
John: But you don't want to be a drag either, and you don't want to follow this path so that you're outside of everything you ever knew.
Merlin: But I've never gotten that from you.
Merlin: I mean, I feel like I never...
Merlin: If we're talking dude to dude, you can say candid things that you believe about the world, including things like substances.
Merlin: But I've never in any situation ever seen you looking like scowly, even around drunk people.
Merlin: I don't feel like I've ever seen you – which I think is really amazing.
Merlin: Like when I'm around people who have decided to stop doing substances, I still feel kind of funny.
Merlin: Like I feel like – I feel not guilty.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But I feel weird about it, and I'm conscious about that around you, but in situations where it's way more than me, where it could be like a whole backstage area with everybody running around or at a club, right?
Merlin: Somewhere like maybe where we could do a show and people are having drinks or something.
Merlin: I don't see you looking out of the corner of your eye in a judgy way.
John: Oh, no, no.
John: I don't mean a drag that way.
John: I mean a drag the other way where –
John: where like I am so into my trip that I'm just boring to talk to or, or interact with.
John: Not that, not that I'm looking at other people and saying like, Oh man, you need to get with the program.
John: You need to find the, you need to eat, just drink press sunflower oil.
John: Like I've been doing for the last four years, but, but no, just that I would be, that I would be taken out of life and,
John: to the extent that i'm no that i am no longer able to participate and the and the honest truth is like having uh eliminated almost all vice with the exception of like you know interpersonal vices um i couldn't live without those interpersonal vices are are all i have now and it's very tough to bottle it
John: That's why you need your loads.
John: But all the other chemical vices and material vices, I've eliminated most of them, and yet I still am able to be right in the center of a...
John: Bacchanalia, and not feel either that I'm disincluded or that I'm bringing anybody down.
John: You know?
John: Like, people all around me are high all the time.
John: And they know how I feel about it.
John: They know how I feel about them.
John: And yet...
John: I guess I don't feel that I inhibit them.
John: And partly it is that having cut all those things out of my life, I do not register any fewer problems in my own life.
John: You know what I mean?
John: What I've done is I have eliminated the following problems.
John: I no longer wake up in jail.
John: I no longer like hacking cough for 20 minutes when I first wake up in the morning.
Merlin: I like wake up with an injury.
Merlin: You can't explain that sucks.
Merlin: I almost never have that.
Merlin: Although I was not, I've had that though.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, isn't it?
Merlin: That's, that's a terrible feeling.
Merlin: I mean, even just waking up for me, like it used to be like just waking up somewhere and going like, I'm not quite sure how I ended up here and what the hour before that looked like.
John: I was having this conversation with a good friend the other day, and she said, you have a really amazing memory
John: And I was like, well, it's hard for me to say because I don't know what it's like to be inside other people's minds.
John: But for years and years, I assumed that people were lying or faking when they said they didn't remember stuff.
John: Sometimes like stuff that just happened recently.
John: Like, what do you mean you don't remember?
John: I mean, this is a bone of contention with people where they would say, oh, I ran into Maisie Glotts.
John: And I would say, oh, what did Maisie say?
John: Oh, she said that everything's cool.
John: No, I mean exactly what did she say?
John: Like you said, hi, Maisie.
John: And she said what?
John: Oh, I don't remember.
John: She said that everything was cool.
John: And it was like that inability to remember conversations.
John: To remember conversations as though they were scripts for a play.
Merlin: God, I find that utterly magical.
John: being able to do that and and i can barely remember the gist of a conversation i've ever had let alone the names of the people that were there and for me like when i meet somebody on the street i am recording our conversation in my in my memory like it is yeah like it's a screenplay and i'm very excited about it when i talk to somebody later and they're like and and and sometimes months later
John: uh i can recall the conversation and the and the whole arc of it and what the salient point of it was and and also like what i thought that person was thinking while we were talking i mean you know i'm recording that stuff and i'm not doing it intentionally it's just happening and i always assumed that happened for everybody so i was i was i was stunned when people would
John: relay conversations to me it's like having perfect pitch where you would just go like oh well why would you not hear that that's an f sharp right and so even when i was the most fucked up on on drugs and alcohol i never really blacked out and i never woke up in the morning and failed to remember why my pillow was covered with blood
John: Like I would wake up in the morning, I would go, oh, right.
John: And part of that, or some of the fallout from that is that I cannot forget some of the episodes that I would most like to forget.
John: And I think people who don't have that kind of memory are blessed because those psychic injuries that happened to them when they were young fade quickly and fade to just become kind of a smear thing.
John: And I can really go back to every bad episode and just relive the whole thing in technicolor detail if I allow myself to.
John: And that is not – it's not great.
John: It's not fun.
John: So that's like one of the bummers of being built the way I am is this ability to recall.
Merlin: You're like somebody from Greek mythology.
Yeah.
Merlin: No matter what horrible thing.
Merlin: It's like, you know, oh, I have eternal life.
Merlin: Yay, I get to watch everybody I ever loved die.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: For years.
Merlin: I can read anything.
Merlin: Oh, I broke my glasses.
Merlin: Time enough at last.
Merlin: Billy mummy.
John: So I feel like...
John: I feel like the substance abuse thing in my own life, like cutting out all the drugs, cutting out all of the, I mean, everything that could potentially, everything that I could take refuge in against reality, eliminating those things has eliminated all the side effects of them.
Merlin: Yeah, all the problems that are somewhat unique to that, the culture of being somebody who does all of that.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And all of the side effects that are specific to each individual drug, like the hangover that you get from gin is different than the hangover you get from wine.
John: You remember them all.
John: I remember them all.
John: But what...
John: What continues to be true is that I have all of the problems with reality that I always had.
John: I have all the problems integrating with the world that I always had.
John: And the challenge has been... The challenge with the... Or the story of the black box that you're describing is that...
John: Not only if you join Scientology are you going to stop being an alcoholic, but also all the root problems are going to go away too.
John: And that is true of kind of every religious cult of every diet plan.
John: I mean, nobody ever says, go on this crash diet.
John: You'll lose a bunch of weight, but you'll still be a depressed, miserable, bitter, angry son of a bitch.
Merlin: It's a magic way of seeing the world that leads to a magic way of solving your problems through like a magic way of fixing all the things that you came in with.
Merlin: And it's all magic.
John: And for me, there has never been a thing, either a drug I took or quitting doing that drug, that really made it any easier to get up in the morning.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, no, I mean, quite the contrary.
Merlin: And that's why people drink.
Merlin: I mean, that's the fucking point.
John: Yeah, that's why speed is so tantalizing.
John: It does make it easier to get up in the morning.
Merlin: This one's for Chris.
Merlin: There's a Buddhist parable called the Parable of the 84th Problem.
Merlin: That's a Jay-Z song.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: That bitch ain't one.
Merlin: Guy goes into a bar.
Merlin: He goes up to the master that's always in one of these stories, and he says, I got all these problems.
Merlin: It's like he's got the life of Job.
Merlin: Everything's just tits up in this guy's life.
Merlin: His wife's cheating on him.
Merlin: His crops are dying.
Merlin: He's got problems.
Merlin: His kids are assholes.
Merlin: And he just goes on and he says, what do I do about this?
Merlin: And the master guy says, well, you know, the thing you don't realize is that you've got 83 problems.
Merlin: And everybody in the entire world will always have 83 problems.
Merlin: Like as soon as you solve in your mind one problem, you'll find another problem.
Merlin: You'll never have a day where you don't have 83 problems, right?
Merlin: I'll get back to this in a second.
Merlin: He said, but you also have an 84th problem, which is that you think you shouldn't have 83 problems.
Merlin: I, I, I'm telling you, man, that, that story has more resonance for me every couple of years because I realized how true the eight, especially the 83 problems part is.
Merlin: It's another thing to think that, you know, you should be above having problems in life, but it might, for me, like I'll always, I've talked about this a lot on the other show I do, but I'll always do another show.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's here on the internet.
Merlin: And I, I've discovered that like, I, I, I'm, I'm,
Merlin: I'm unhappily coming to realize and accept – I don't have an answer yet – that I think I might just always be an anxious person in the sense that I will always find a primary thing to worry about, several secondary things to worry about, and then a seemingly endless collection of tertiary things to worry about.
Merlin: And getting rid of – even getting rid of the big number one, well, you know what that means?
Merlin: There's a field promotion for one of the secondary problems.
Merlin: Guess what?
Merlin: You get to go to the front of the line now.
John: Hey, kid.
John: You made it.
John: You made it to the show.
John: You're Merlin's number one problem right now.
John: How do you feel?
John: Thanks, Cap.
Merlin: But, you know, a silly parable maybe, but I find that to be true.
Merlin: Why do I say that?
Merlin: Because what you're describing is if you – there's something very comforting about certain kinds of problems.
Merlin: And you don't have to get into like the crazy family dynamics and abuse and stuff like that.
Merlin: But there are certain things where if you have to choose between the devil you know and the devil you don't know –
Merlin: Even if you're not aware of it, you might continue to seek out the problem that you're familiar with and the problem that you're comfortable solving or more often not solving.
Merlin: And sometimes I really honestly believe that somebody can be more whatever.
Merlin: I'm not going to say happy.
Merlin: I'm not going to say comfortable.
Merlin: But more...
Merlin: Okay, with just not solving the same problem for a really long time.
Merlin: And if that problem is taken away from them, if that comforting anxiety that they've developed a relationship, that little friend goes away, that can be a really crazy thing.
Merlin: That's the whole foundation.
Merlin: And yes, and I mean almost along the lines of like – you talked about the dentist and like having a tooth removed and you feel like it's not your mouth anymore.
Merlin: That tooth – that problem is like that tooth.
Merlin: Even if it's a rotten one, it's one that you recognize and now it's gone.
Merlin: And now you're in a different kind of anxiety because now you don't even know what your next thing you should worry about should be.
Merlin: And this doesn't sound like you, but all I'm saying is like if you – if not you, but if you're some like Otis the Drunk and like you have the same five problems.
Merlin: I loved Otis.
Merlin: Remember he'd lock himself in and out of the cell?
He's great.
John: He was always trying the doorknobs on all the bathrooms.
John: My problem is – You take my point though, right?
Merlin: Yeah, absolutely.
Merlin: Just getting rid of all the problems that come around because one is addicted to narcotics doesn't mean you don't have problems anymore.
Merlin: It's just you have more subtle and ultimately kind of difficult problems that now you've got to really do the real work.
John: Yeah, I mean, you're looking at them instead of running away from them.
John: And I don't mean running away.
John: I mean, the language of recovery is so fraught.
John: And you say something like run away and automatically I...
John: I'm like impelled to say, I don't mean running away in the sense of being cowardly.
John: You know, this is one of the things that so many, uh, alcoholics are like, it's a, it's like a knee jerk response to like, they feel like doing drugs and being drunk is heroic and that they are not running away from their problems.
John: They are, they are fighting, you know, they're because, because their lives feel like,
John: full of strife and heroic fight and contest, you know, because they stumble out of the bar at night and they run into some street person and they have some, they go on some adventure and it all feels like very Greek to be living the life.
John: And you get nightly quests.
John: You do.
John: You have nightly quests.
John: And sometimes that quest is just like, can I get home in this condition?
Yeah.
John: Because I can't drive or I can't find my car and it's raining and there are no cabs.
John: Can I even get home without passing out in a doorway?
John: And that, when you do get home the next morning, it does feel a little bit like a quest.
John: And certainly you're giving yourself some obstacles that are both life and death and also pretty easy to solve.
John: But you're still proud of your experience points.
John: yeah exactly like kind of right my armor class is pretty high i got good hit points and the reality is since i stopped drinking the number of times that i walk in the front door of my house and go and collapse on the floor and go i made it home like a lot fewer because it's not that big of a deal to get home rest well good so nice you know that's not the uh that's not the the big quest
John: Um, and, and I, and that is something that I miss the, the daily kind of excitement of, um,
John: of triumph and uh conquering adversity that you just you put into your life uh but you put into your life with drugs and alcohol and honestly with food and with sport and all this stuff you know all this kind of action that seems very uh that seems very heroic and then in the end all it is all that happened at the end of the day is that you made it home and that was actually pretty easy to do
John: For me, the ghost that haunts me or my main brokenness, I guess, is that I do not have a definition of success.
John: There is no success in my life because I do not allow there to be
John: I have not defined success, so therefore everything is a failure.
John: And my greatest triumphs are still failures.
John: And that is this puzzle box that no matter what I do, no matter what I quit doing, no matter what advice I quit doing, no matter what new...
John: exercise program i go on or what what studying i do or what new new exciting adventure i go on i don't have a simple definition of success for myself and so i i i never congratulate myself i don't accept congratulations and at the end of the day
John: I look up at my wall at my blue ribbon wall and there are no blue ribbons on it.
John: There are like three white ribbons that I have allowed that I deserve, you know, like, okay, good job.
John: Third place.
John: You know, the greatest events of my life, I have allowed myself to award myself a third place ribbon.
John: And so I have this tattered little bulletin board that has like three or four white ribbons on it.
John: But you're like the Russian judge.
Merlin: You're not going to let anything up there that didn't really, really irrefutably deserve to be there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And maybe that's a third place.
Merlin: Maybe that's a bronze or a white ribbon.
John: Well, you know, like my walk across Europe, for instance, where I very definitely for months on end was in constant combat with myself.
John: And then...
John: actually you know walked the last three days of that walk even though every voice in my head was screaming at me you know just get on a fucking bus you're there you made it to istanbul just get on a city bus and take it to the airport and go home um i you know i fought those voices and walked all the way to the haja sofia and so i cannot there is no part of me that can rob myself of that
John: But I also can't give myself a first place ribbon.
John: I can't give myself a blue ribbon because of the fact that I spent the whole time fighting myself instead of walking on a magic carpet in Buddhist bliss or whatever.
John: I shouldn't have been fighting myself.
John: I shouldn't have been arguing with myself.
John: You lost points on the technicals.
John: That's right.
John: That's right.
John: He didn't nail the finish.
John: My form was all fucked up.
John: I should have had no possessions, and I should have just walked from loving stranger to loving stranger, basking in the glow of my humanity, and I should have arrived in Istanbul, and then they should have made me Pasha of all the infidels.
What?
John: But none of that happened.
John: So no blue ribbon, but, but, but, you know, but white ribbon for, for, for effort for getting there, you know, and that's like one of the, one of my big adventures, right?
John: That's like a, that is a thing that I will, the whole rest of my life, I'm going to be reflecting on the fact that I once walked from Amsterdam to Istanbul and that I only gave myself a third place finish.
John: And that's crazy, right?
John: It's crazy to me.
John: And as I'm talking about doing this weekly show up here in Seattle, my very close friends who are aware of this problem have kind of leaned in and said, what does success look like for you in this?
John: You're about to do this.
John: It's a big risk.
John: What do you hope to accomplish?
Yeah.
John: And I have no, I mean, not only can I not answer them, but I'm rushing into a new project and I haven't even sat with myself and, and digested this possibility.
John: Like, are you doing a new show and you're just going to do it and every day is going to be a new opportunity for failure?
Yeah.
John: So that haunts me.
John: It haunted me when I was a little kid.
John: It haunted me all the way through school.
John: It was a big part of why I turned to drugs, I think.
John: And then quitting drugs and alcohol was a thing that I hoped would be a triumph for
John: that would break that, break the back of that forever.
John: But I really only give myself a white ribbon for quitting drugs and alcohol too.
John: You know, it's just like, it's the ribbon that you think that you get as a kid when, when like you showed up, it's an attendance ribbon.
John: Right.
John: Right.
John: Near perfect attendance.
John: Yeah.
John: Near perfect attendance.
John: And so, so I cannot, I guess I cannot delight in my achievement and it, and I, I don't even, I wouldn't even ask to delight in achievement.
Um,
John: But just not to have my instinct be to denigrate my own achievement at every turn.
John: And I don't know.
John: That's the Welsh troll.
John: Yep.
John: And I don't know how to solve it.
John: I don't know what... And over the years, people have put a thousand black boxes in front of me and said, if only you accept this black box...
John: You'll go in one side, you'll come out the other, and it'll be, you know, and psychology is one of those boxes, and Zoloft is one of those boxes, and... Exercise and nutrition.
John: Exercise and nutrition is one of those boxes, and the power of positive thinking by Norman Vincent Peale is one of those boxes, and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
John: And I just have never... I've tried a lot of boxes.
John: I have...
John: I've denied a lot of boxes just on principle.
John: But, you know, I honestly don't know.
John: And I feel like maybe I should write post-it notes and put them all over my house that say, do it!
John: Exclamation point.
John: Go for it!
John: You're the best!
John: You know, I see that stuff in thrift stores all the time.
Merlin: People's, like... A big picture of a thumbprint says, your thumb body.
Ha ha!
Merlin: Yeah, stuff really that's hanging on the walls of dentist offices.
Merlin: You're an awfully harsh critic.
Merlin: You know, I mean, this is nothing that you don't know, but you do think a lot.
Merlin: You could think any idea into a fine dust.
Merlin: And... The problem's your white ribbon.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You do, you think.
Merlin: You think and you are...
Merlin: I don't know if you'd ever want to shut your thinking off, but I think you think sometimes way beyond when it's useful to you.
Merlin: I'm trapped in ego.
Merlin: You need to get into my special 17-point ladder rung system.
Merlin: Hi.
John: Well, and tell me, like, give me one of your patented Merlin dressing down.
Merlin: Dressing's down.
Merlin: Dressing's down?
Merlin: I can give you a dressing's down.
Merlin: Well, no, I wouldn't.
Merlin: You can't be helped.
Merlin: But the...
Merlin: Where's my bell?
Merlin: Oh, it's under my thimbles.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean... I don't know.
Merlin: I'm kind of surprised.
Merlin: I don't want to jinx you by saying this.
Merlin: I'm kind of surprised that you've had such good success getting on stage and rocking out.
Merlin: Because you seem to find a kind of unselfconscious...
Merlin: rocking outness on stage that is somewhat at odds with your obsession with white ribbons.
Merlin: Not obsession, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, like you don't, it doesn't seem like you're up there going like, do I look, do I look cool doing this right now?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, I'm sure that goes through your mind on some level.
Merlin: Like you, you have stage presence.
Merlin: You're not, you know, retarded, but you, but you also like, it doesn't seem like you're overthinking stuff as much in the middle of a guitar solo.
John: There is something about the guitar that,
John: There really is something about the electric guitar and the acoustic guitar, different things, that provide a psychological bed that for the length of a show...
John: I feel safe with the guitar.
John: And I know as the years have gone by, I know what they can do.
John: I know that...
John: That they create a kind of bubble around me that playing the guitar, it does.
John: It creates a bubble.
John: And within that bubble, I'm critiquing my own performance.
John: When I walk off the stage, if you talk to me in the first five minutes after a show, I will tell you that it was the worst show that anyone's ever seen.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: But while I'm on stage and in that bubble, I just, I feel very safe.
John: And that's, you know, the storm of a rock band.
Merlin: Do you feel competent?
Merlin: I mean, I don't know if it's even a thought that would go through your head, but you're not doubting your competence while you're on stage.
John: No, I am for sure.
John: I mean, in particular because... Assuming John Hodges is not interrupting you.
John: Playing guitar is a thing that a lot of people do.
John: So when I'm playing guitar, I am conscious of the fact that there are people in the room who are better guitar players than me.
John: And yet I know what I'm doing and playing guitar is individual enough that I feel like
John: If I do a good job of playing guitar like me, it's unassailable.
John: You know what I mean?
John: Some of the best guitarists I've ever...
John: have come up to me after shows with just an unmitigated look of pleasure on their face and gone, that was an amazing show.
John: And so I've had the experience of like, that guy is complimenting me on my guitar playing and he is by all metrics a better guitar player than I am.
John: But what he's saying is that I communicated my guitar to the room
John: in a way that he not only admires, but, like, is impressed by and wants to be able to do himself.
John: You know, he's a better guitar player than me, but he's complimenting me on this, on my guitar.
Merlin: Yeah, and the, I don't want to say character, that's probably the wrong word, but the style with which you presented that performance.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And, you know, did it hang together?
John: And that's a thing that I'm,
John: That's the thing that I can't say anything other than that's the thing that I've practiced.
John: And practice gives you that confidence, I guess.
John: There is something magic about the guitar.
Merlin: But something like writing lyrics...
Merlin: That does not make the self-critical voice go away by a long shot, I'm guessing.
Merlin: It must be hard to disappear because you're sort of famous or infamous for writing what turned out to be awesome lyrics at the last conceivable moment, right?
Yeah.
John: Yeah, and there are lyrical turns that I've put down that are immune to my, like, Nazgul of self-criticism.
John: They can just stand in the open and the Nazgul fly over and go shriek and they don't have to run.
John: You know, they don't have to cower in a hole.
John: And there are, there are more of those even than I would probably publicly admit.
John: Like those are some of the things I'm proudest of that.
John: I just say, yeah, that stands.
John: And yeah,
John: And I don't know where it came from a lot of time.
John: I can't claim it, really.
John: But it came from me, and I admire it even as something I've done.
John: But that doesn't get me writing lyrics tomorrow.
Mm-mm.
Merlin: Yeah, it is a – It's almost like you save – on more occasions than you would even want to count, you've somehow at the last minute, even full of fear, managed to save a child from a building.
Merlin: But like it doesn't make you look forward to having to do it tomorrow.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Kind of.
Merlin: Like it's a –
John: It doesn't make you look forward to doing it tomorrow.
John: And also, there's that thing about art where you cannot quite claim it because it came from this admixture of luck and...
Merlin: Oh, an influence, an experience, timing, what you ate for breakfast.
Merlin: If it isn't actually unintentionally a Bo Diddley or Pretenders song, if it actually is kind of its own thing, it's really difficult to not sound like a total asshole to say anything but, well, I'm not sure how that came out, but it did.
John: Well, yeah, and I mean, in contrast to the conservative response to Obama during the last election where they were all touting like, I made that, I made that.
John: That was so obnoxious.
John: It was so obnoxious and so childlike.
John: The critique of that argument is just like, did you not drive on public roads?
Merlin: Did you not drink public water?
Merlin: People born on third base who think they invented baseball.
John: But just what it takes, what kind of person...
John: Stands and says, I made that strong.
John: I mean, it's a it's a three year olds idea of like ownership and pride like that isn't any kind of pride that I recognize.
John: I made that.
John: The best thing I ever made... Like Obama's trying to write his name on your birdhouse.
John: But I mean, seriously, the thing I'm proudest of, the first thing I would say about it is like, well, I couldn't have done it if X, Y, and Z hadn't lined up.
John: And so...
John: that if you think too much i guess it's only natural that you start to think like well i didn't really ever make anything and i mean i guess that's why that is that is oh man way to turn it around god damn it and that's what the conservatives are so upset you get a white ribbon for that one john
John: The conservatives are angry because they think that we are trying to steal from them.
Merlin: And their family.
John: Steal their family and their pride.
John: Their family pride from them.
Merlin: Family pride.
Merlin: That sounds like the grocery store at the Black People Mall.
John: Come on down to family pride.
John: And the thing is, we're not trying to steal their family pride.
John: It's just that we don't have any family pride ourselves.
John: And we're trying to smear everybody with it.
Merlin: With our gayness.
Merlin: Our big gay penis is rubbed all over their family pride.
John: Big, gay, black penis.
John: Polyamorous penis.
John: Somebody accused me of being polyamorous.
Merlin: Oh, no, that is low.
John: I said, don't you talk like that to me.
John: And they were like, well, polyamorous means loves a lot of things.
John: Oh, that seems pretty broad.
John: And I was like, that does seem pretty broad.
John: Polyamorous has become a way of saying I am a furry.
John: But I love a brony.