Ep. 102: "The Birkenstock Point"
John: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hi, Merlin.
John: How's it going?
John: Good.
John: Good.
John: Super good, except that I thought I had more coffee than I have.
John: Oh, what do you mean the raw materials, the beans?
Mm-hmm.
John: I had, you know, one of the things about having people stay over at your house is that you're not anymore in charge of any aspect of your stores.
Merlin: You got to just keep relearning that over and over.
Merlin: You know that, right?
Merlin: It's one of those things you know.
John: Yep.
John: You know, when I had the Game Changers up here, at some point after the Game Changers weekend, I went into the pantry thinking I had X number of...
John: certain items mostly coffee seltzer cuban cigars yeah bacon and it was all gone it was like uh it was like locusts had come through and i felt like richard gear out i should have just started a fire in my house and burned them all you're like elizabeth taylor you open your closet expect to see all those beautiful gowns and underpants and it's just just moths laughing at you
Merlin: The moths are gone.
John: So, yeah.
John: So I flew a little bit close to the sun, letting other people in my kitchen.
John: And now I went downstairs.
John: I was like, time for a pot of coffee.
John: And what I found instead was a refrigerator full of ice cream.
John: um well first of all freezer full of ice cream a refrigerator full of ice cream would have been a disaster uh but you know my um i i went to a birthday party and then somebody got somebody got the idea that the leftovers were going to go with me but only certain leftovers and what that ended up being was like four gallons of ice cream is it good ice cream
John: Yeah, it's fine.
Merlin: Like kid ice cream?
John: Yeah, no, no, no.
John: It's not ice milk.
John: It's ice cream.
John: There's no carob in it.
Merlin: Well, you know what they say, God never closes a door without opening some ice cream.
John: Oh, I love God.
Merlin: God is, you know, I, uh, this is probably just from my background and my fear of privation, but like, I don't like running out of things.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: And I think, I think my lady and I, we don't disagree on this.
Merlin: It's just that it's, it means a lot to me to make sure that there's another, I always got one in the chamber, right?
John: Well, you're a guy who drinks 20 cans of carbonated water a day.
John: Or have you cut back?
Merlin: Well, the problem is I've been using the SodaStream thing where you buy a big tank.
John: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And I've been out of that for a while, and I've been real lazy because you've got to take in your empties.
Merlin: Each one of those things weighs a few pounds.
Merlin: You've got to take it in and trade them in.
Merlin: So I've fallen back into my old ways, and I've been getting 12 packs of cans.
Merlin: And my wife does not like the cans.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Because I drink – seriously, I do drink over a 12-pack of those a day.
John: Well, and the thing about the cans, I mean, I haven't been to your house in a while, but I remember the can era.
John: The thing about those cans is that there's, you know, which end up with this like six or seven cans with some carbonated water in them kind of lying around.
John: That's me.
John: There's like half a can of carbonated water here, half a can of carbonated water there.
John: It loses its carbonation pretty fast.
John: And then it's just pop cans full of water.
Merlin: Yeah, okay, sure.
Merlin: What I do is, what happens with me is, I usually slam them.
Merlin: Like, I usually, I'll down a 12-ounce count pretty quick.
Merlin: I might start another one, and that's the one I forget.
Merlin: It's the second or third one.
Merlin: Yeah, they accumulate.
Merlin: And you can pretty much, you know, there's that sense of, like, you're going to walk into a room and you're like, I just know there's going to be, in this case...
Merlin: a can of seltzer in there.
Merlin: And there is.
Merlin: There's one by the bed, one by my daughter's bed, there's a couple by the couch.
John: That's how you know you have a problem when you're leaving your cans around your daughter's bed.
John: She thinks she's better than me.
John: She's not better than me.
John: I mean, I understand slamming a can of seltzer water if you're just about to get into a burp fight with somebody.
John: But I don't like slamming one.
John: It seems like the opposite of what seltzer is good at.
Merlin: Oh, it feels so good.
Merlin: It burns.
Merlin: Oh, it burns.
Merlin: It's like drinking beer, you know?
Merlin: i think i started drinking seltzer more around the time i stopped drinking beer i used to drink a lot of beer and i think i like the um it's kind of like my ethernet cigarette i guess i i like i like these things a lot and they refresh me anytime i get up sometimes get in the middle of the night to urinate as you do and i'll just go boom go have a seltzer yeah right and it's not it's no calories no fuss no muss you don't owe anybody anything
John: But then I crush it and I throw it against the wall and wake everybody up.
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: Fuck you.
Merlin: That's how I'm living.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think I told you this.
Merlin: One of my all-time favorite professors in college, it was on my committee, my poetry professor who was my sponsor most of the time I was there.
Merlin: He was one of those people where like I just don't know how he dealt.
Merlin: His life was really complicated.
Merlin: You don't make – even as a full professor at a Florida university, you don't make that much money.
John: You're getting paid in seeds and stems.
Merlin: And he had his, uh, his mom who is, you know, completely like needed total, total care, live with them.
Merlin: His, uh, his son who is developmentally disabled, live with him some of the time he taught at other places, uh,
Merlin: At the same time, multiple.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And this is a guy, you know, who went to Princeton and was one of the first professors at the school.
Merlin: He's a great guy.
Merlin: Like anybody who went to a new college will remember Mac Miller.
Merlin: He was just the best.
Merlin: But you could tell how stressed Mac was.
Merlin: Macklemore.
Merlin: Macklemore.
Merlin: Macklemore Miller.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: With Ryan Lewis.
Merlin: And what he would do is, though, he was always smoking.
Merlin: Two things about Mac is first of all, like you had never actually seen Mac drink a beer.
Merlin: He would bring a, bring a, sometimes he'd bring a case of beer to class and, um, and you would, you'd only hear the beer.
Merlin: Those were the days you'd hear.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: You'd hear, you hear, and you'd look and it was like, again, it's a Dr. Who reference.
Merlin: It's like the, uh, the weeping angels.
Merlin: You can't actually see them move.
Merlin: You don't see anything.
Merlin: Y'all hear it was.
Merlin: And then you look back here and he's crunching the can.
Yeah.
Merlin: And it was the same thing with cigarettes.
Merlin: And he's one of those guys, like a Matthew McConaughey smoker.
Merlin: Like, he really, each one was like a little conjugal visit.
Merlin: Like, he smoked the shit out of a cigarette.
Merlin: In front of a classroom?
Merlin: Everybody smoked in class.
Merlin: It was the style at the time.
Merlin: Okay.
John: I told you about my school.
John: You can make up your own classes there.
John: And, yeah, it's kind of like, I don't know if you ever saw The Grateful Dead.
John: I was, you saw them?
John: Shit, no.
John: I was fortunate enough to see The Grateful Dead.
John: I like rock music.
John: I was fortunate enough to see them live three times.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: Back in the early 90s, you fell in.
John: You fell in with the deadheads.
John: Late 80s.
John: Late 80s.
John: By the early 90s, I was already transitioning.
John: Touch of grace spoke to you.
John: It really did.
John: Well, you know what it was?
John: It was that I couldn't afford Birkenstocks.
John: They were costly.
John: They were expensive, and all the cool kids had them for that one summer.
John: I think it was the summer of 88 years.
John: They got big fast.
John: Oh, and it was Birkenstocks everywhere.
John: You know what?
John: It was Birkenstocks and mountain bikes.
John: They both became popular that same summer.
John: Malcolm Gladwell's got a whole chapter about that.
John: Is that right?
John: Before 1988, there were no mountain bikes.
John: I'd never heard of a mountain bike.
John: If you wanted to ride your bike off-road, you got a BMX bike.
John: You got a big BMX bike if you were a full-grown person.
John: But all of a sudden, mountain bikes were invented.
John: And everybody was wearing Birkenstocks.
John: And I was like, I can't pay $90 for a pair of sandals.
John: I don't have any money.
John: And I don't have any money to get a mountain bike.
John: And I'm getting left behind here.
Ugh.
John: And I feel like that was also the summer that everybody was wearing Ray-Bans, not Wayfarers.
John: They were wearing aviators, Ray-Ban aviators.
John: And so I'm looking around.
John: I'm looking to my left.
John: There's a guy in Ray-Ban aviators with Birkenstocks.
John: He's riding a mountain bike.
John: I look to my right.
John: Same story.
John: And I got nothing.
John: So I was like, I'm going to start going to see the Grateful Dead whenever I can.
John: Just to try and even the playing field.
John: But one of the things about seeing the Grateful Dead was Jerry Garcia.
John: You call him Jerry.
John: Jerry.
John: Jerry.
Merlin: What do you call him?
Merlin: Papa?
Merlin: What's he got a name?
John: Jerry.
John: Jerry.
John: Jer.
John: I think Jer, if you're really into it.
John: Jer.
John: Jerry would, like, in the middle of a solo, boodalip,
Merlin: You can't have a middle to something that's never ended.
John: He would walk kind of around behind his amp.
Merlin: To go to cocaine craft services.
John: The solo would keep going somehow.
John: And there would be, and then from behind the amp, there would be a cloud of smoke.
John: And I don't mean like, I don't mean like somebody took a puff off a cigarette.
John: I mean like somebody, I mean like a cloud of smoke like they release when the Pope is chosen.
John: Like, like, boosh from behind the amp.
John: Like, oh, holy shit, Jerry Garcia just caught on fire.
John: He just spontaneously combusted.
John: And then he'd come up, come back out from around the amp.
John: The solo never stopped.
John: And I don't know what all went on behind the amp.
John: But I think about it still, like, I think about, and at the time I was like, no, that's living.
John: He goes back there, he probably goes into one of those John Travolta bubble boy tents, and all the drugs are in there.
John: And he just, he infuses them through his skin.
Merlin: Yeah, isn't that a dream job, though?
Merlin: I mean, the idea that, like, set aside the whole, like, playing in a rock band.
Merlin: That's awesome enough to begin with, a pseudo-rock band.
Merlin: But just the idea that you could still keep doing your job, disappear for a while into a puff of indeterminate smoke, and everybody would still be just as satisfied with their job.
Merlin: That's the dream.
John: You go around behind your amp, and you and your drug valet have, like, a... I bet he had, like, a bong wrangler.
John: I'm sure he did.
John: And he's still playing his guitar.
Doop, doop, doop, doop, doop.
John: People are sticking needles in him.
John: People are like chipping shit up his nose.
John: You're saying it's like the Indy 500.
John: It's a pit stop.
John: That's right.
John: They're changing his tires.
John: They're putting a suppository up.
John: Give him a fresh liver.
John: And then he turns back around, never even stopped.
John: Oh, man.
John: It was extraordinary.
John: And anyway, to finish that line of thought, I never have owned a pair of Birkenstocks even to this day.
Merlin: Boy, it's super frustrating to me as a contrarian.
Merlin: I really – I hate how crazy it makes me feel when something suddenly becomes more than popular.
Merlin: It just becomes something that everybody gets, which is fine.
Merlin: That's called a fad.
Merlin: But then we act like – second, then we act like it's always been this necessary.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And, and we, nobody ever acknowledges how bananas it is.
Merlin: It's suddenly it's 1999.
Merlin: We don't know why, but suddenly everybody needs a Bronco.
Merlin: Like everybody needs an SUV.
Merlin: And it just suddenly became this thing where like, well, of course you, you go, I can't afford a Hummer.
Merlin: So I got, I got a Bronco.
Merlin: It's like, you know, what are you doing with that?
Merlin: Tyler's soccer gear will fit into a country squire just fine.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But that's not the point.
Merlin: That's not the point.
Merlin: It's just that suddenly everybody's got to have that.
Merlin: It's like the Calvin peeing on something stickers or the stickers of like how many kids you have in your family or whatever.
Merlin: It's like it suddenly becomes a thing and you got to do it.
Merlin: Baby on board.
John: Fully 60% of the vehicles on the road are SUVs.
John: I mean, I don't know if that's accurate, but it sure seems that way to me.
John: Everywhere you look, every single car make has an SUV.
Yeah.
John: It's kind of the cowboy hat of driving.
John: It's really infuriating because they're terrible cars and they're bad trucks.
John: Right, right.
Merlin: I mean, like a lot of those, they've never been in fourth gear or they've never been in four-wheel drive in their entire existence.
John: They've definitely never been in fourth gear in four-wheel drive.
John: Right.
Merlin: Not unless their son took it out.
Merlin: Not unless I was driving it.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: But even as a contrarian, and I've called it macrame.
Merlin: It's a phenomenon that I simply call macrame.
Merlin: Because that to me in my lifetime is the canonical example of like, what is happening?
Merlin: Why do we suddenly have macrame?
Merlin: And why is it suddenly something everybody's doing and not acting like it's weird that everybody's got jute?
John: It's weird.
John: Yeah.
John: Listen, macrame has a special place in my heart.
Merlin: Are we going to go back to the old topic of home crafts?
Merlin: And their place in the artistic pantheon?
John: Without macrame, how would you suspend your terrarium?
John: How would you have a terrarium in a giant glass globe hanging in your living room?
Merlin: See, you've got a use case.
Merlin: As a terrarium owner, you need a hanging solution.
Merlin: You do.
Merlin: And macrame is it.
Merlin: I don't think that's how most people do it.
Merlin: Well – All I'm saying is my family – my paternal grandmother was for her whole life a crafty person.
Merlin: Like she had like an area of the – what they called the utility room where she would make Christmas ornaments.
Merlin: She would make decoupage.
Merlin: Like every single one of those things that you've seen people make in the last 50 years, she did it.
Merlin: She was good at it.
Merlin: Scrapbooking.
Merlin: Well, that's just – that's hoarding with a trip to Michael's basically.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: But yeah, right.
Merlin: You ever met a scrapbooker who wasn't a hoarder?
John: I still have stuff around here.
John: Sorry, no offense.
John: You know what?
John: My whole house is a scrapbook.
John: My mom, every once in a while, will divest herself of another box that she feels is keeping her from being able to fly.
John: She's like, I don't want this anymore.
John: And she hands me a box and I'll open it.
John: Every once in a while, it'll contain some...
John: item of incredible lace or you know uh super super like detailed handwork needlework that you would never ever you wouldn't be able to buy at any price and she's like you know my grandmother made that or my great-grandmother made that and you're just imagining the the skill involved in the patriarchy training the women in
John: to be that involved in such a useless task so that they don't have uh political power that's extraordinary but you got to keep their hands busy you do you have otherwise they're going to call meetings and stuff you have to keep them thinking about something you think about lace is what you think about you think about lace and you talk to each other about lace let's talk and more doily and meanwhile meanwhile we're buying your father's farm
Merlin: She turns around and there's a guy with a twirly mustache.
John: Too late.
John: Yeah, I always think about that late 80s time because if you recall, this is a very difficult thing to explain to young people.
Merlin: Who love having things explained to them.
Merlin: Tell me about those African necklaces that De La Soul wore.
John: That moment in 1988 where the nostalgia for 1968 reached its apogee.
John: And we basically, the summer of 88, we relived the summer of 68 except dumber, lamer, shittier in every respect.
John: I don't know where you were on the... I was pretty hippie.
John: Yeah, right.
Merlin: And even – I was a fake Marxist, fake hippie, fake punk rock, but I was a happy guy.
Merlin: But I mean I was heavily invested in what you could very loosely call alternative culture.
Merlin: And alternative pop culture hadn't coalesced yet.
Merlin: But also at my school, not to interrupt you, but my school, there were scientists of hippies there.
Merlin: You'll remember, you may not remember, the harmonic convergence was coming.
Merlin: And it was like science for hippies.
Merlin: Like there was going to be some big shit going down.
Merlin: This is going to be whatever the age after Aquarius is, the age of Libra.
Merlin: I don't know what it was.
Merlin: But something serious was going to be going down.
John: 1990 is going to make 1970 look like... No, what was it?
John: It was a Dennis Hopper quote from the movie 1969.
John: No, no, no, it wasn't.
John: It was a Dennis Hopper quote from another movie that he starred in with Kiefer Sutherland.
John: 1968?
John: No, but it wasn't a retro movie.
John: It was a contemporary movie where his quote was, his big pull quote was, what was it?
John: 1989 is going to make 1969 look like 1979 or something like that.
John: 1989 is going to make... We'll check the source.
John: 1990 is going to make 1970 look like 1980?
John: No, no.
John: 1970.
John: 1990 is going to make 1969 look like 1950 or something like that.
John: It was a real put down.
John: I'm glad I didn't have to take that whole SAT test.
Yeah.
John: Yeah, you just got to the coloring portion.
John: The point being that there was really, and I remember seeing that movie.
John: That was maybe the one year where I went to see every movie.
John: And that 1969 with the one Winona Ryder and the junkie that plays the superhero now.
John: Oh, Robert Downey Jr.
John: Robert Downey Jr.
John: You know, like, I teared up in that movie.
John: I teared up as Crosby, Stills, and Nash's Wooden Ships played, and they got in their, the two main characters got in their Volkswagen bus and headed out across America.
John: Like, I was like, and I was being spoon-fed 60s nostalgia.
John: And I was allowing it to be my own youth.
John: Like, I was 20, and I was looking at this movie about 20-year-olds from 20 years before, and weeping that I didn't have a Vietnam to be mad about.
John: Where's my Vietnam?
John: Where's my Vietnam?
John: And that lasted, honestly, until...
John: a grunge i'm sad to say but like that sense of that sense of the 60s being this being this shadow on our youth that our generation just was like laboring under this 1960s cloud and
John: and yeah i was a hippie and what the fuck was i looking for i was looking for i and i partly i think it's because the 60s generation never produced anything after the 60s you know they were stuck in a in a in a complete retro nostalgia trip about themselves and there were so many of them they were so powerful
John: That's weird.
Merlin: It's almost like the 60s ended in 1968, but kind of didn't really end until 1980.
Merlin: Go watch Boogie Nights or something like that.
Merlin: People really thought stuff was going to be really, really different.
John: I would argue that it lasted until 1990.
John: In the same kind of... In the same...
John: Like frozen state.
Merlin: Oh, because it was like enough time for that generation, the baby boomers to come into power and purchasing and political power.
Merlin: Like there was this latent period where it should have just gone away.
Merlin: But then right about the time it should have gone away, they were the ones out there who were like, you know, you get the big chill culture coming around again.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Kind of.
John: Well, yeah, there's that.
John: I mean, that all through the 70s, I think they were still, I mean, most of those people were, like, really into buying hi-fi, hi-fi stereo systems.
John: I mean, I'm just basing this on old copies of Wii Magazine.
John: But starting in 1980, like they were.
John: So let's think about the baby boomers for a second, as much as I hate to do it.
John: In 1980, let's say the average baby boomer was 30 years old.
John: And they are a little bit taken.
John: They're taken by surprise by punk rock, new wave and disco.
John: I mean, disco, I think they were they were on board.
John: But punk rock, new wave, that's brand new.
John: And it doesn't involve them.
John: It's not about them.
John: And so they, even at 30 years old, that generation starts to turn back and look at themselves as a, you know, they start to circle the wagons.
John: And that's the beginning of when you start to see this, like, well, really nothing ever happened after the 60s.
John: Like, really, the 60s were the peak.
John: Like, 1968, that was the peak.
John: You started to hear that idea in American culture.
John: And...
John: And that natural thing, I mean, in 1999, at every point along the way, you look back 10 years and go, boy, things really sucked 10 years ago.
John: And then 10 years after that, you're like, wow, things were amazing 20 years ago.
John: You know, there's that strange... Like skips a mini generation kind of.
John: Yeah, and you can't... I mean, do you remember how much shit we talked about the music of the 70s?
John: We talked so much shit about the music of the 70s in the late 80s, early 90s.
John: I mean, I had multiple conversations with people where everybody accepted the basic premise, which was that the 70s were the worst decade for music.
Merlin: It could only be enjoyed, ironically.
Merlin: It was only 20 years.
Merlin: But I mean, I remember, for example, when the Have a Nice Day collection came out, which is full of AM radio hits that I loved as a kid and still really like today.
Merlin: But it was very ironic.
Merlin: from a remove.
Merlin: And I remember though... Look at this garbage.
Merlin: Think about when Delight got popular and around the time that house music was starting to really get big and raving was like a pre-raving kind of age.
Merlin: But still, the whole idea of these massive dance parties was coming around that were very, in some ways, very influenced by a certain 60s kind of vibe.
John: As you said before, De La Soul.
John: That first record.
John: Very, very 60s
John: It's the Daisy Age.
Merlin: It's the Daisy Age, y'all.
Merlin: It's the Daisy Age.
Merlin: Y'all.
Merlin: But think about this, though, also.
Merlin: Like how in 1990... Let's say in 1992, like clothes from 1972 look so preposterous.
Merlin: So you'd see like Susanna Hoffs, like ironically wearing bell bottoms in a video or something.
Merlin: Or you think about the Delight video, which is having a lot of fun with that iconography.
Merlin: But the thing is...
Merlin: Stuff from 1972 looks timeless compared to what people were wearing in 1992.
Merlin: Go watch it.
Merlin: Go watch an early Seinfeld.
Merlin: And you're like, oh, my God, people.
Merlin: I mean, the 90s is so much more 80s than the 80s ever was.
John: Yeah.
John: Are you hip now to the to this new?
Merlin: Normcore?
Merlin: That's like artisanal toast.
Merlin: I think that's got to be a prank.
John: People are wearing mock turtlenecks.
John: And dad jeans.
John: And the thing is, you know, I read a couple of articles about it where it's like, is this real?
John: But I mean, I know some kids and it is real.
John: The kids are rocking not just Cosby sweaters, but like to the next level of...
John: uh yeah right just scott simpson was ahead of this all along yeah he was wearing mock turtlenecks the entire time before it was uncool so i don't know i i still i still feel a little bit of of of resent resentment like a little bit of of residual resentment about the way the 60s
John: the way the urine smell of the 60s was all over the music of the late 80s.
John: I'm still mad.
John: That's why I'm grunge.
John: That's why I'll be always grunge.
Merlin: And the Birkenstocks.
John: Yeah, that whole, I mean, you know, I feel like I dove into drugs with at least a certain amount of expectation that
John: I mean, the way the 60s subculture looked back on itself and the way that drugs had freed their mind and the way that drugs were, you know, what separated them from the squares and, you know, that whole division that might have been... And I think probably was pretty poignant in 1962 through 64.
John: Like, we're doing drugs.
John: No one else has ever even heard of them.
John: This is, you know, like, we are really...
John: But by the time the mass culture got a hold of drugs and it was just like, yeah, all right, you're a bunch of spoiled kids.
John: But when I was 17, 18 years old, that was back in the... And I'm not even saying it was in the top level of the culture, but it was...
John: It was throughout the culture, this winking between baby boomers like, remember?
John: Remember the shit we saw?
John: Remember the drugs and the times and all the sex?
John: Remember?
John: And at 17 and, you know, perceptive of subtexts, I was like, well, yeah, I want to...
John: do the drugs and have the sex and run away in a Volkswagen bus and protest the war.
John: I mean, we had, of course, Ronald Reagan that could stand in for a lot of the... He could stand in for 50s suburban culture that we were rebelling against.
John: But, yeah, I would have liked to have... The one regret I have at not being punk...
John: is that punk legitimately was a subculture of my time that I could have participated in more actively, and it would have felt like it belonged to me.
John: And instead, I rejected punk
John: For a handful of valid reasons.
John: But instead, I was sampling from this buffet of other American cultures that none of them belonged to me.
John: And they were all kind of lies.
John: And, yeah, I look back at that time, let's say 87 through 91, as a time of, like, I just, I feel a little bit ashamed, even.
John: Because I feel ashamed that I went to the Grateful Dead.
John: Not because of the music, but because I went there looking for...
John: I wasn't looking for a party.
John: I was looking for enlightenment.
John: And that seems idiotic to me now.
Merlin: Yeah, I could see that.
Merlin: I felt that way going to see U2 in 1985.
Merlin: You were looking for enlightenment?
Merlin: A kind of enlightenment.
Merlin: They were transcendent in a lot of ways.
Merlin: Oh, I mean, look at the charts, dude.
Merlin: Your beloved Phil Collins, you got Whitney Houston, you got Billy Ocean, you got Sade, and then you got them singing about Martin Luther King.
Merlin: I mean, it really seemed very important to me.
Merlin: And their shows were very – I'm not going to sit here and act like I'm super wise or anything now, but I think I understand a little bit more about stagecraft today than I did then.
Merlin: Understanding stagecraft is probably part of what allowed you to enjoy the Miley Cyrus thing and go like, oh my god.
Merlin: Now that you're officially an old man, you're allowed to go to things and go, how did they do that?
Merlin: That must have been expensive.
Merlin: Did you hear about the lawsuit?
Merlin: Miley Cyrus has a lawsuit?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, who's suing her?
Merlin: One of the guys who worked on the tongue got injured.
John: Oh.
Merlin: Yeah, isn't that a bummer?
Merlin: Oh, the tongue.
Merlin: One of the tongue builders.
Merlin: See, my experience is so vastly different because – and just to finish the story from an hour ago, in some way, you could tell when that professor was getting really stressed out because he'd start a second cigarette.
John: Oh, and the first one was still burning.
Merlin: Yeah, and then on a couple occasions, and these are the days when he said, let's sit here and go through the pile and talk about what everybody did wrong today.
Merlin: When he was really stressed out, he would actually sometimes get a third cigarette lit.
Merlin: And that's when you just sat very quietly because you knew it was going to be a bad class.
Merlin: It was going to be a tough class.
Merlin: It's called pathetic fallacy.
Merlin: Rose can't have an angry thorn.
Merlin: It doesn't make any sense.
Merlin: It literally doesn't make any sense.
Merlin: That was me.
Merlin: That was me.
Merlin: That was me.
John: Rose's angry thorn.
Merlin: Rose's angry thorn.
Merlin: Oh, I got called it twice that week.
Merlin: It was bad.
John: Every rose has an angry thorn.
Merlin: This is before that, I think.
Merlin: Was it?
Merlin: I don't even know.
Merlin: I can't even keep track.
Merlin: But the thing is, this school was such a little funky Petri dish.
Merlin: It's in Sarasota, Florida.
Merlin: There were 520 students.
Merlin: I mean, I honestly can say, partly because my memory was better, but I knew at least the first name of every person who went to the school.
Merlin: And I had talked to well over a majority, probably 80%.
Merlin: I was an RA for a year.
Merlin: I knew everybody.
John: Hi, Marge.
John: Hi, Ben.
Merlin: Yeah, everybody knew everybody.
Merlin: I went through periods where I was barefoot for a while.
Merlin: Did you ever go through a barefoot phase?
Merlin: That's something you could do at this school because it was a total – it was this little – speaking of terrariums, it really was like a terrarium.
Merlin: It's funny to admit, but even at the time, I was aware of stuff like all the campus cops were by and large retired New York City police officers who had moved to Florida.
Merlin: One of the guys had worked on a boat that dragged the East River.
Merlin: Another guy had been a homicide cop and they moved to Florida.
Merlin: They retired to Sarasota and they got all fat and they worked at this college where essentially they protected us.
Merlin: They didn't bust us.
Merlin: They would – I mean if we were egregious and dicks, they would bust us.
Merlin: But by and large, they protected us from the community.
Merlin: If people came to these parties who weren't the enlightened drug users that we were, they'd roll them.
Merlin: And it was just strange, though, to have four years in that environment at that time.
Merlin: So think about, you know, it's funny.
Merlin: I just looked up Big Chill.
Merlin: I would have guessed Big Chill came out in, like, 86.
Merlin: It came out in 1983.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: See, that's what I'm saying.
John: That's the beginning of that response to New Wave.
John: Where, I mean, in 83, those Big Chill characters were in their early 30s.
John: Right.
John: And they're already, like, getting back to the reunion.
Merlin: That's 31 years ago, though.
Merlin: Jeff Goldblum was in a movie 31 years – well, he's in Annie Hall in, what, 1977?
Merlin: It's bananas.
Merlin: But anyway, I'm just saying, like, I know – I try to always leaven this by remembering that my experience is, if not unique, very different.
Merlin: And for me, it really was like that first month in Hate Ashbery before the heroin arrived.
Merlin: It was a really amazing environment.
Merlin: And the parties on the weekends, like, the mixtapes that really were a hit would be, like –
Merlin: white lines talking heads um like uh scratch perry like just this crazy mix of music i had never heard in my entire life and then you might hear like institutionalized or something but which nobody wanted to dance to but it was a lot it was a lot of like hippies listening to like reggae and hip-hop a lot of people from new york that came to the school brought along this culture with them i learned about def jam uh artists around the same time and
Merlin: Anyway, it's just strange because I felt like just for that one four-year period, it was such a great time for me, even though it was tumultuous like it is for anybody in their early 20s.
Merlin: But then I think about what it would be like to go somewhere where you just had a ton of weed all the time, like outside the terrarium, and it scares the shit out of me.
John: Well, and this is the thing.
John: Pardon me.
John: there was a handful of colleges that i and i had never heard of the new school of sarasota florida it's really really small it's it's it sounds amazing but the ones i was aware of uh were you got reed reed santa cruz santa cruz colorado college um what's the other oh like um evergreen
John: evergreen i never considered but yeah evergreen is there on the alternative colleges yeah and then you've got the ones like colby the kind of preppier ones that are still kind of small but but um oh they're like like like but like liberal liberal arts colleges yeah your classic liberal arts antioch
John: And so there was this little constellation of schools that intrigued me.
John: And I think probably Reed was the one that I imagined myself at the most.
Merlin: That's in Oregon, right?
Merlin: It's in Oregon, yeah.
John: And all of those were places where the combination of smallness...
John: And exclusiveness, and they were expensive, and they were places where young people could go and really explore.
John: And the adults that were in charge felt like that was kind of their mandate.
John: Like, this is a place for young people to explore.
John: But all those places were outside of my, I could not reach them.
John: And so I was then in the, I was basically like out in the world.
John: I mean, Gonzaga University was also small, but was not a, I mean, what, what Gonzaga was, was a place for young Catholic people to meet each other and get married before they graduate.
John: Um,
Merlin: Remind me how Jesuit the Jesuit part of the school is.
Merlin: I mean, was it mostly just going through the motions or were you expected to be a person of faith?
John: No, no, no.
John: I think that the compromise that Jesuit colleges make and that I think all Catholic colleges make is that Catholicism is widespread and diverse enough that you're always going to have half the population are just sort of affluent people
John: practicing Catholics, but not real thumpers about it.
Merlin: It's not like going to a conservative Christian university.
Merlin: Not at all.
Merlin: You've got a reason for being there because of that one thing.
John: If you want to go to Notre Dame and be a real grind and spend all day in chapel, they're certainly happy to accommodate you.
John: But those places are really a place to learn to drink
John: In an adult way, you know, like you to learn to be a polite, wealthy alcoholic and and to meet and marry a respectable member of your same family.
John: order, right?
John: I mean, this is where you send your kid to find a mate who is of your same creed.
John: And, you know, and obviously get a good education.
Merlin: It's like pre-qualification, right?
Merlin: Because it's probably going to be somebody Catholic.
Merlin: It's going to be somebody whose family has enough money to go to a university.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's got a built-in
John: Catholic and respectable and prosperous.
John: Yes.
John: But there's no... So the Jesuit component at Gonzaga, yeah, there was a house where the Jesuits lived and a lot of them taught the classes.
John: But the Jesuits are going through their own internal...
John: I mean, they're having relationships with each other that are their primary relationships, you know, or their on-again, off-again relationships with God or whatever.
John: So there wasn't a sense at Gonzaga, like, here we are.
John: This is a giant sandbox where we're going to let these kids, like, discover the world.
John: If you wanted to discover the world, they had God there.
John: That was available if you were philosophical.
John: But if you weren't philosophical, you weren't encouraged to be philosophical.
John: The basketball team was what most of the students cared about.
John: But I think that was probably an experience that was common to every small college in America at the time, which is that I was looking for an experience like the one you're describing at New School.
John: New College.
John: And...
John: And making it for myself with a small group of friends out of whatever pieces we could find.
John: And usually what that meant was we all climbed into a car and we drove down to Riverfront Park in Spokane and found some guy on the street that was selling acid.
John: And half the time it was just paper dipped in arsenic.
John: And half the time it was like the most amazing acid you ever had in your life.
John: And how the hell did some guy on the street in Spokane have this stuff?
John: And then we would go...
John: you know, take acid and go sit by the river and watch the water and think to ourselves, whoa, we are, we are changing.
John: We're not just changing internally, but we are somehow through this process, we are going to make the world a better place.
John: I don't know how.
John: We're not doing anything but taking drugs.
John: But somehow that is supposed to make the world better.
John: You're raising consciousness.
John: Right.
John: Somehow my personal consciousness being changed is an act of resistance and an act of political activism.
John: And, you know, in fact, it's really past a certain very brief threshold.
John: It's none of those things.
John: But I didn't have a... You know what it was?
John: I didn't have a God.
John: The only God...
John: The only mentor I had was like I think most people was television or mass culture and and trying to trying to figure out what the what trying to understand what counterculture was just by watching its reflection in the glasses of mass culture.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: I think so.
Merlin: It was from a certain remove, or almost through translation.
Merlin: You were trying to find something authentic, and you were watching the shadows on the cave wall, sort of.
John: Exactly, yeah.
John: If I had ever met a 30-year-old punk rocker who said, hey man, I know that this seems really stupid to you,
Merlin: but there's more to it than that come with me and let me show you a couple of things you know i but but he wouldn't have had to have been a punk rocker if i had ever met a 30 year old anything that could be somebody who runs a video store it could have been somebody who runs a video store that can be a that can be a real like life chain in a small way a real life-changing experience somebody say hey go check out this you know it's in french you got to read but like it's you're going to learn some stuff here
John: but i never had that no i never met and i think some of it is luck of the draw and some of it i think maybe is that maybe i was personally unappealing to 30 year olds when i was 20 but to whatever degree that that gesture of taking a young person under your wing even for a moment and saying like hey i see where you are let me let me give you like let me read this book or whatever
John: The only exchanges like that I was having were either with peers or with much, much older adults, but nobody that was helping initiate me into the simultaneous culture that's happening beneath and beside the visible culture.
John: And it took me many years to win my way through those corridors and find it myself and feel like a member of it myself.
Merlin: That's really interesting to hear you say that.
Merlin: Because it's...
Merlin: I think – so can you understand then – you could look at something like punk rockers or people who like new wave films.
Merlin: But can't you on some level also look at somebody who goes to like a Midwestern Christian church and –
Merlin: and understand that it isn't just that they believe in the wizard in the sky.
Merlin: There is an element of community to it, for example.
Merlin: I think that's what's common to all of these things, is you finally found a place where you don't feel like an outsider for a little while, and you found somebody who – and so much of it has to do with timing.
Merlin: That's the other part, whether you talk about your 30-year-old person or your however person.
Merlin: I mean, in order to be a good teacher, one of the basic tenets of expertise is understanding that in order to be a good teacher, you have to understand the material extremely well.
Merlin: But you also have to understand the level of expertise of the person that you're talking to.
Merlin: Otherwise, it's pointless.
Merlin: If you're the greatest calculus teacher in the world, then you're going to have to modulate what you know to talk to a three-year-old.
Merlin: And it's unusual to find –
Merlin: I think it's unusual unless you're like Forrest Gump.
Merlin: It's kind of unusual to meet more than a handful of people in your young adulthood who hit you at the right time with the right message to help you understand something that used to seem really opaque.
Merlin: So, I mean, and that's when things like the punk rock or whatever.
Merlin: I mean, there's a lot of people.
Merlin: Look at the Castro.
Merlin: The Castro is not just about intercourse.
Merlin: It's about a place where people came for the first time in their life and felt like they weren't an outcast.
Merlin: And that there was somebody else in the entire fucking world that was more like them than not like them.
Merlin: It's the first time if you came here from, not to be disparaging, but if you came here from Missouri or something, you probably had not met a really super out guy who like danced on a parade float and was proud of it.
John: Who are you being disparaging against Missourians?
Merlin: I was theoretically slagging Missouri for its lack of dancing float love.
Merlin: Anti-Missouri ping pong.
Merlin: I can think of these people, specific people, somebody who made me a tape that I met a couple times and gave me a tape of music that changed my life.
Merlin: Or people I went out to dinner with a couple times, friends of my mom's who were a little younger that just knew all kinds of stuff about no-wave music.
Merlin: I had no idea what they were talking about.
Merlin: They were so cool and they were so nice and they didn't talk down to me.
Merlin: and they treated me like a peer, and they made me feel like there is something understandable in this opaque culture.
Merlin: The problem with opacity is that opacity reads as danger to most of us, and sometimes for extremely good reasons.
Merlin: But anytime there's something out there, whether it's something lots of people are into or not many people are into, I think if we don't immediately grok it, it's not unusual to go like, oh, that's not for me.
Merlin: That's weird.
Merlin: That's dangerous.
Merlin: That's too mainstream.
Merlin: That's whatever.
Merlin: But it's just – I feel –
Merlin: I feel blessed, I guess, to have people come across my path where I wish I had more of them.
Merlin: And I always want to be that person to somebody without being an asshole, without going, oh, here, listen to Pixies.
Merlin: Like, you know, no, that's okay.
Merlin: I got plenty of music.
Merlin: I'm good.
Merlin: But, you know, no, seriously, really, this is really good.
John: Well, I think you were blessed.
John: And, you know, I'm reflecting now.
John: One time I had hopped a freight.
John: And I'd gotten off in Missoula, and I'd made a mistake.
John: The train pulled into Missoula and stopped, and it sat there.
John: And I'm sitting on the train, and I didn't understand how freight trains worked at this point yet.
Merlin: Is this contemporaneous with pitching your tent in a dump?
Merlin: No, this is after that.
Merlin: Okay.
John: You're learning.
John: I'm learning.
John: I mean, I'm now successfully choosing freights that are going where I want them to go, and I'm able to pick the train knowing its destination or having a general sense of its destination and get on it in more or less a safe way.
Okay.
John: But the, so the train comes to Missoula and it just, it sits and it sits here in the yard and sits here for 10 minutes.
John: It sits here for 12 minutes.
John: And my, my brain starts turning and I'm like, uh,
John: Oh, I must have gotten on the wrong train.
John: This train was just going to Missoula and now it's done.
John: And I'm sitting here in the hot sun, cowering, hidden, you know, on this flat car full of beams or whatever it is.
John: And...
John: I guess I should get off this train and find a better train.
John: I was still too... I was more anxious than I was knowledgeable.
John: So I jumped down off of the train and I kind of run across the yard to find some shelter, find some shade.
John: And then immediately the train that I was on starts moving and pulls out and heads off to Denver or wherever it was I was trying to go.
John: And I was like, oh, fuck, you know, like there it goes.
John: See you later.
John: Like if I had just stayed on it for another two minutes, I would be out of here and on my way.
John: And now I'm stuck in Missoula and I got to go through this whole process of finding another train and getting out of here again.
John: So I walk into town and I know, I know somebody at the college.
John: I mean, I know, you know, I knew somebody that was going to school there.
John: And so I walk over and I'm like kind of doing that thing that I would do at, uh, when I would be in a strange town, I'd go to, first thing I'd do is go to the college and,
John: and try and find the common area, the dining hall or the student center.
John: And I would just go find a couch there and tuck my bag behind the chair and just kind of sit and wait for something to happen.
John: And more often than not, something did.
John: More often than not, somebody would come along and say, can I help you?
John: And I would say, oh yeah, I'm looking for this person.
John: And I swear to you, 85% of the time, no matter where I was, even at Rutgers,
John: somebody would say, the first person to walk up to me would say, oh, yeah, I know them.
John: Come with me.
John: And if they didn't know who I was looking for, they would say, oh, let me ask this guy.
John: And the next guy would know.
John: Anyway, I'm sitting in the lobby, sitting in the student center at University of Montana.
John: And this guy comes over and sits down next to me.
John: And he's like, hey, how's it going?
John: And I'm like, good.
John: And right away, he starts talking to me about Jesus.
John: And I'd been through it a thousand times already.
John: I'd been through every process.
John: The process of like, I'm actually going to sit and talk to this guy about Jesus.
John: Or I'm going to bait this guy and act like a dummy and have fun with him.
John: Or I'm going to tell him to fuck off.
John: I had done everything that a young person can do.
John: And now I was just in a place where it's like, I don't have a strategy with this guy.
John: And frankly, I'm, I've been, I'm tired and I'm kind of feeling a little bit lost.
John: And so I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna talk to this guy.
John: I'm just gonna engage him just as a human being.
John: I'm not gonna try and, I'm not gonna try and like mind, mind meld or mind fuck with this guy.
John: And so we sit in the student center and he's, he is, he's talking to me about Jesus and
John: And there's this simultaneous narrative in my head where I'm asking myself, are you vulnerable right now to this?
John: Like, what would happen if you just said, if you just abandoned your cynicism and just went with Jesus?
John: Like, what would that feel like?
John: And I was conscious of being...
John: able to make that choice you know like and up to that point my history as a as a child of my own parents my history as a kind of inhabiting the identity that i had spent my whole life building had would have always prevented me from being able to
John: Don't take somebody like that seriously.
John: But I was sitting there, and of course, you're also asking yourself the questions based on their received narrative of like, is this what it means to have your heart opened?
John: Is this what it feels like when God...
John: touches you and opens your heart because I am feeling as disposed to this philosophy as I am to any philosophy right now.
John: And I had a very nice couple of hours with this guy where he was really excited about his faith.
John: And I was just as, it seemed as reasonable to me as anything.
John: And I spent probably six months after that walking around going,
John: He's still feeling like Christianity was a cult, but wondering whether or not I was like a cult, maybe a potential cult member.
John: Like, maybe this is what I should do.
John: Maybe this is God speaking to me.
Merlin: If you can say, what was it about that particular exchange or your state of mind or whatever?
Merlin: I mean, it wasn't just as simple as like he hacked in with the magic phrase.
Merlin: What was it about that particular time that made that resonate with you?
John: I think it was...
John: That I was very starved for meaning.
John: And had been for years.
John: And had sought meaning everywhere I went.
John: And had found none.
John: Like the philosophies of all of the people I admired...
John: None of them were revealed to be really philosophies at all.
John: They were faking it until they made it, or their philosophy was too general.
John: There did not appear to be any meaning.
John: And I think the idea when I was a teen and in my early 20s was that there was meaning and it was discoverable and it was just hidden from us because we couldn't handle it or we weren't smart enough to detect it.
John: Uh, and that, you know, at a certain point it was like, there doesn't appear to be any meaning.
John: It isn't a question of there being a plan that we aren't, uh, that we don't see.
John: It's a, it is really just that every one of us is doing their own thing and, and, uh, it only looks like a plan later.
John: And I didn't want that.
John: I really didn't.
John: I wanted there to be a secret.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I wanted to be both smart enough and also creative enough or smart enough and also sensitive enough to be the person that discovered it or was capable of hearing it and knowing it.
John: And so at that moment and for a while after that, I was just like, I was open to people
John: Open to people proselytizing what I had already rejected.
John: Like I gave it a new hearing.
John: And that was the last time I considered that there was really a plan.
John: And when I came out the other side of that, and I mean, I felt very vulnerable.
John: I felt like if one more person had come up to me and put their arms around my shoulder and said, and had seemed smart and funny and gentle, that I would have said, you know, like the other option for me tonight is sleeping in a boxcar.
John: So, yeah, I'll come have, I'll come have Hare Krishna dinner with you.
John: But on the other side of that, I never again really believed that there was any kind of orchestration to life.
John: And I don't think I was ever vulnerable again to being brought into a fold or accepting a doctrine, I guess.
John: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: Yeah, you seem disinclined to give yourself over to most things in general, but especially to things where you are – I can't speak for you.
Merlin: I'm going to speak for yourself.
Merlin: But it seems like you're disinclined to go into things where you're expected to check out, intellectually stop asking questions and be a good German.
John: Well, and that's the thing.
John: Even if I had done – I don't know how – I don't know at the end of that three-day weekend where I would have been.
John: I don't think there's ever – there's no narrative.
Merlin: You might have been super-duper ten times more disappointed.
Merlin: I mean you might have been enraged because you might have realized something that was basically fundamentally hypocritical or something about it that you needed to get a little bit closer to the center to be able to see it.
John: And that's what happened to me with working in nonprofits.
John: You know, I went back east on that same trip and ended up getting a job working at the National Environmental Law Center, which was a Ralph Nader organization kind of connected to the public interest research group.
John: And I spent...
John: Four months really, really, really engaged in the idea that you could... That there were liberal...
John: organizations that that were paying for lobbyists and that lobbying the government for liberal causes was god's work you know that that was yeah it's a way to throw yourself upon the gears in some ways right i mean you really put your money where your mouth is you to get out there and actually do that and be forced to confront people who don't agree with you
Merlin: That takes stones.
John: It was, and I was successful at it, and I was promoted within the organization, and I got up to the point where I realized, A, that the people who were really...
John: running this organization were all young lawyers from ivy league schools and i was 21 and they were all probably 27 but they were you know yalees and they believed they knew what was right and they believed they knew what what they had to do
John: And they were working within the system.
John: And I felt a certain amount of class resentment because there was a – although they were older than I was, they weren't that much older than I was.
Merlin: The ones who can afford to work at those places are often, to use an unkind phrase, trustafarians.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: The people who can afford to make $12,000 a year working 60 hours a week are not people with college loans to pay.
John: Yeah, right.
John: With a Yale Law degree.
John: Yeah.
John: But they were, yeah, exactly.
John: They were smart, they were beautiful, they were rich, and they were politically on the right side, and they were devoted to the cause.
John: Like, all of that is very, very appealing from a distance.
John: You know, I imagine that that is what, like, hanging out with Ronan Farrow looks like.
John: It ticks all the boxes, right?
John: And the fact that they were born on third and thought they hit a triple, they're also liberal enough to know that analogy and to use it against themselves.
John: But they still believe that they hit a triple.
John: But sitting there within that organization, and I was in a position where I started asking, where I was conscious of the money we were raising, and I started asking where the money went.
John: And I wasn't in a real position to see like...
John: nuts and bolts where the money went.
John: But we were raising a lot of money and we were raising it because we were raising it by saying to people, by sending this army of canvassers out, knocking on people's doors and saying, the Clean Air Act is under assault.
John: We need your help.
John: And here's where your money's going to go.
John: It's going to help to pass this legislation to support the Clean Air Act, to support the Clean Water Act.
John: We were raising a ton of money.
John: And then what that meant was that money all got put into an undifferentiated pot.
John: There was no, like, the money that this person raised about the Clean Water Act and the money that this person raised about the Voting Rights Act or whatever, it all went into the same pot.
John: There was no, it was not targeted money.
John: And then from that pot, what they did was pay lawyers and lobbyists.
John: And lawyers and lobbyists took congressmen out to dinner and lobbied them.
John: And the disconnect between the righteousness of those kids on the street who were going door to door and like, you've got to help.
John: Please, Mr. and Mrs. America, write a $50 check.
John: We need your help.
John: The ragamuffins who are working for Fagin.
John: And then you trace that $50 check and it just ends up, it's just steaks and cigars.
John: And within that organization, there was a real...
John: Like, the response to me was, listen, do your job.
John: You don't need to know about this stuff.
John: That's not... Which makes it feel like a cult.
John: It felt like a cult.
Merlin: I mean, that's such, to me, a defining characteristic of a cult.
Merlin: You're taking people for what they believe is going to be a good, life-affirming, life-changing, positive for them change.
Merlin: You subsume them into the group.
Merlin: You work them...
Merlin: Really, really hard until they're too exhausted to ask questions.
Merlin: I don't know.
John: And the thing is, I supported everything that that organization did.
John: I admired everybody involved.
John: But again, I felt like the moment I recognized myself as a cog and the moment that I recognized my own idealism and enthusiasm for this as just a thing they were utilizing to accomplish something
John: Their goals, which I wasn't really privy to.
John: You're not even allowed to know the real goals.
John: Not even allowed to know.
John: Not even, you know, never going to be invited into that room.
John: Right.
John: And these guys are not even the ones, these guys don't really even have access to the room, the real room.
John: I just felt like, oh, well, this isn't for me either.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And...
John: And I think reflecting back, what I recognize is that I wasn't ever meant to be a member in that way.
John: And what I really missed was a mentor at some point early on saying, don't look for what you're looking for in these things, kid.
John: You're not going to find it in punk rock or in Ralph Nader's organization or in a corporate environment.
John: There are some people who don't belong.
John: And I guess, as I say it out loud, I'm realizing there isn't a mentor like that.
John: The people who don't belong discovered that path on their own.
John: And that it sucks.
Merlin: There's not many institutions that have half a dozen people like that in them.
Merlin: Right.
John: And it's only luck...
John: I was on a boat one time crossing from Morocco to Italy.
John: And I was considering, I was at a point in my life where I was considering giving it all away.
John: Like, abandoning my life and my history.
John: And moving, transitioning into a new existence of, like, constant... Like, actually following...
John: my own footsteps in a way.
John: Like I was going to walk.
John: I was going to walk off this boat.
John: This was a long time before I walked across Europe, but I was going to walk off this boat and I was going to walk into a new life where I did not have a past.
John: And I was not going back to America.
John: If I went to America again, it was going to be that I went to America, not back to America.
John: And I was going to become a citizen of the world or something.
John: I was sitting on the boat and I was really thinking about what it would...
John: what it would take to cut all those ties.
John: And I'm not constitutionally a tie cutter.
John: You know, I loved my family.
Merlin: You've stayed in touch with your family a hell of a lot more than most people I know, to be honest.
John: And in a way, like, I am...
John: One of my characteristics is nostalgia.
John: I carry nostalgia and a warm feeling for nostalgia around with me.
John: And it's one of the things that keeps me from being truly a radical is that I nurture nostalgia in myself.
John: But I'm on this boat and I'm thinking, I'm going to just, I'm just going to like do it.
John: I'm just going to burn.
John: I'm going to burn my old life and I'm going to walk off this boat and I'm going to walk into a new life.
John: And there was a guy on the boat who sat down, you know, who like saw me from across the dining room and came over and sat down at my table and he looked like Mike Mills looks now.
John: He was an older guy, long gray hair.
John: And it was one of those weird encounters where a guy did sit down across the table and say, what's going on with you, man?
John: And I was like, well, I'm thinking about not going back.
John: And he was like, I thought so.
John: I saw that in your face.
John: And I was like, what, man?
John: Like a really weird encounter.
John: And for the length of this ferry trip, he sat there and he was like, do it.
John: Don't go back.
John: Do it.
John: You know you should.
John: And you can't know what the future holds.
John: But it's going to be amazing and you just need to do it.
John: And, you know, I'm sitting there like...
John: are you a wizard?
John: But, but feeling so empowered by this guy's attention.
John: And I think I said some, you know, some version of like, will you be my guide?
John: Can I come with you?
John: And he was like, no, no, no, no.
John: That's not how it works.
John: You, you go like, I'm,
John: I'm on, I'm on my own thing.
John: You, you have to go and do your thing.
John: And I was like, and I wanted to go with him.
John: I wanted to spend like a month at least, please just take me home with you for a month and tell me more.
John: And you know, the boat docked and I walked off the boat and I was like, I'm done.
John: I'm not going back.
John: I'm not going back to America.
John: I'm not going back to, I'm not going in reverse.
Um,
John: But I didn't have a clear picture of what that meant.
John: And it didn't take, you know what I mean?
John: Like it was a hallucination.
John: And when winter came and I got cold and I got hungry, you know, four, five months after that, I bought a ticket back to America.
Hmm.
John: And bought a ticket back to America like, please take me back, America.
John: And that was a moment.
John: That was a crossroads that I took the road less traveled by and I went about a mile and a half up it.
John: And then I turned around and I ran back to the crossroads and took the road more traveled by.
John: And that has made all the difference.
Merlin: Wow, I like.
Merlin: I had some follow-up, but I'm fine to stop right there.
Merlin: That was great.
Merlin: Oh, no, no.
Merlin: I want your follow-up.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: I don't think as profound as that, but I think you'll tell you what frustrates me and it took me a long time to realize this.
Merlin: I could have called out some of the bullet points of what bothers me about people who proselytize or people who are evangelicals.
Merlin: But if I had to summarize it in perhaps a slightly glib way, it's that when you go to somebody and you proselytize a point of view, you seek them out, you find a stranger and start talking to them about something.
Merlin: On the one hand,
Merlin: Yeah, obviously it matters what it is that you're talking about.
Merlin: But, you know, there aren't that many people who haven't heard of Jesus.
Merlin: They've at least processed it a little bit on some level.
Merlin: They've thought about not drinking today, whatever it is, good, bad, indifferent, whatever it is.
Merlin: As I sit here today, I think the thing that bugs me about it the most is that the biggest takeaway –
Merlin: from someone who proselytizes, if they're not really, really awfully good at it and awfully humane about it, and the thing that makes it feel a little culty, really across the board, is that the impression you are left with is that if I join up, I will become mostly an ineffective salesman for whatever this thing is.
Merlin: Because that's what this person is.
Merlin: What this person is really doing is sales.
Merlin: And they're doing like entry-level sales.
Merlin: Yeah, right.
John: And if you have any real questions, they're like, let's go talk to my manager.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And whether that's in an institution or whatever, wherever you decide to hang your hat, beware of any place where you're not allowed to ask good questions.
Merlin: But that's, I think…
Merlin: And I say that because I don't think I would have put it that way.
Merlin: I would have said, oh, man, don't tell me what to do.
Merlin: It would have been more my way of looking at it.
Merlin: But now today, just in terms of the impression, in that case, you've got this guy who came up to you on a boat, and it was kind of not the opposite of that.
Merlin: But unless he was doing some extremely advanced reverse psychology, it's pretty different from, hey, have you heard about gravity?
Merlin: Can we talk about gravity?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Have you thought about cleaning your ears?
Merlin: Do you know how many people die each year from not cleaning their ears?
Merlin: There's a simple solution.
Merlin: You got someplace better to be?
Merlin: I didn't think so.
Merlin: It's like they're not at the Skull and Bones Club trying to recruit people for this.
Merlin: They're at the bus station.
Merlin: They're at the commons.
Merlin: They're at all the places where people are vulnerable and looking for answers without potentially knowing it.
Merlin: But the problem is, part of it is, I don't know, is it a branding problem?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: Part of it is that what you come across, you come across as a desperate salesman.
Merlin: And that's not what anybody wants to be.
Merlin: Nobody wants to be a salesman.
Merlin: Nobody wakes up going, I want to be a salesman or a manager.
Merlin: People want to be cowboys and astronauts.
Merlin: And cowpersons and astro individuals.
Right.
Merlin: I want to be an astro individual.
Merlin: It's a pretty glib take on it.
Merlin: But to this day, you know, it's why, man, I like, I'm not, I have, not that it matters, but I have a panhandler that I sponsor.
Merlin: My program is, I pick a panhandler and every time, at a given time, and if the person disappears for whatever reason, I pick somebody else.
Merlin: But it'll always be one person, and when I see them, I give them five bucks.
Merlin: That's my entire approach.
Merlin: I don't give anybody else any money.
Merlin: I don't give Girl Scouts money.
Merlin: I don't like begging.
Merlin: I don't like going places and having people stop me and my daughter walking down the street to ask me something, to tell me something.
Merlin: I don't want to participate in that.
Merlin: They just need a fan belt.
Merlin: to get their car running.
Merlin: I have a job interview and my son's in the car.
Merlin: So, I mean, I hope that doesn't sound... Well, you know what?
Merlin: I don't care.
Merlin: I don't care if it sounds unkind.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And the thing about... When I have reflected back on that Mike Mills guy on the boat, my sense is...
John: My sense is that he was like me.
John: He did recognize me.
John: Because every once in a while, I'll see somebody out in the world, and I will recognize them as like me.
John: Is Mike Mills a time traveler?
John: There was actually a real Mike Mills at the time.
John: So if this was future Mike Mills coming back, he would have been... Oh, he crossed his streams.
John: He would have been risking a lot.
Merlin: Yeah, tear the space-time continuum.
Merlin: You have to be pretty coked up to not care about that.
John: And if there's a guy that's going to fit that bill.
John: But I feel like what this guy, what was in fact happening there was that this guy recognized me as him and now he was trying to give me the advice he wished somebody had given him.
John: He hadn't, you know, he was no more off the grid than I was.
John: He was on the same fucking ferry boat from X to Y. But
John: And he was trying to make a difference in somebody's life.
John: And I think about that a lot now when I see people.
John: And I try not to give people advice that I wish I had taken.
John: you know i try to i try to if you time it wrong you really fuck it up you really do and and in a way like you don't know what was gonna happen because you didn't do it either like you're you are trying it's a kind of it's a way of trying to live vicariously and he walked away from that encounter he was like i fucking made a difference today and i set that kid loose on the world
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Well, it's a self-involved – I'll speak for myself.
Merlin: It's a self-involved version of pseudo-time travel where you wish you could have had that conversation with yourself when you could have used it at the right time, the right person, the right words, the right everything.
Merlin: All the stars aligned and something happens and you avoid wasting five years of your life.
Merlin: But it's impossible.
Merlin: You can't do that for you.
Merlin: You can't do that for them.
John: Right.
John: And the fact is nobody knows what would have happened if I had – if that guy had when he was 22 just –
John: gone off the grid and we when we don't know what would have happened if i had because neither one of us did and it might have been it might not be great i mean i do know guys who have gone off the grid and it isn't great uh for for them or for the world so those pro those profound moments
John: What that did was it gave me 15 years of another thing that I felt like I had failed.
John: That guy gave me everything I needed and I should have just walked off that boat and into a new life.
John: And I chickened out.
John: Four months later, I chickened out and I went home.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: You really feel that way?
John: Well, no, I don't now, but I did then.
Merlin: You gave yourself a white ribbon for that one.
John: I did.
John: I did give myself a white ribbon.
John: And, you know, because I was always, that was that era where I felt like, if you are using money, if you are using human money, you are a sellout.
John: If you need to buy your food at a store, you are not truly alive.
John: And the only way you can think that way is if you are, if you do not understand anything, you know, but I didn't understand anything.
John: And I did believe that, that transact, that I, that I, that somehow transactions were a thing I couldn't participate in.
John: That I had to, I had to find a new currency and my currency was going to be song.
Merlin: But you sound like an angry Buddhist monk, where there's the certain kind of monk... It's not that inaccurate.
Merlin: You're the kind of monk where you got your bowl, and you have to go out and beg for your food each day, but then you're not allowed to, like, squirrel anything away.
Merlin: You have to start fresh every day.
John: Right.
Merlin: Empty bowl every morning.
John: Except I was angry, defeating the entire purpose of the exercise.
John: That's rung 17.
John: Which is a purposeless exercise, so... Realizing that's rung 18.
John: Ha!
John: I hope somebody's writing down all these rungs.
John: We've got a lot of rungs.
Merlin: In comics, we call it retroactive continuity.
Merlin: We might need to go back and adjust some of the numbering a little bit.
Merlin: I think there were five or six sevens.
Merlin: LRH did this with all the OT levels.
Merlin: Yes, he did.
Merlin: For a long time, can you believe there was a time when they thought OT3 was as high as you can go?
Merlin: I cannot believe it.
Merlin: And then all of a sudden, he's got OT levels like crazy-go-nuts.
John: Well, are they subsets of OT3?
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: Well, OT3, I think, if I remember.
Merlin: OT3 subset A?
Merlin: Oh, no, no, no.
Merlin: I think Tom Cruise might be a seven.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think five, I think, I'm trying to remember because I read that book last year or so, but I think four, three is when shit gets real.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I think, I think four, maybe there's the one where it's like the dark night of the soul one.
Merlin: It's the one where they like, you realize how horrible everything is.
Merlin: And then you get into the Xenu after that.
Merlin: But rungs, rungs are friendly.
Merlin: Everybody loves a ladder.
John: I like to climb.
John: Yeah.
John: I like to climb.
John: The thing about me is I'm still climbing.
John: I'm still standing.
John: After all these years.
Merlin: Looking like a true survivor.
Merlin: Beating like a little kid.