Ep. 139: "Building a Lung"
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Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Good.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: How are my packets?
Merlin: Your packets are handsome so far.
John: Good.
John: Good.
John: I like to have my packets arrive 100% packed with no loss.
John: No loss of any kind of the content.
Merlin: Yeah, way back in 2014, that was one of my resolutions.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: That would keep my packets tight.
John: It's so hard because I don't know, you know, it's like they say, don't let somebody else pack your parachute.
John: That's what they say, you know.
John: But I feel like every time I go on the internet, somebody else is packing my parachute a little bit.
Merlin: I hear that, sister.
John: You know what I'm saying?
John: I do.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And I don't like it.
Merlin: Whenever people say things like that, though, I can't help but have this thought go through my mind, which is, what if they're way better at packing it than you are?
John: Ah, good point.
Merlin: Not you, not your parachute, not all parachutes.
John: If you had a professional parachute packer, and then you yourself was just some kind of like one-time Charlie,
John: Which one would you want to have pack your parachute?
Merlin: That's a great point.
Merlin: I think maybe it's definitely less catchy, but maybe what we should say is don't let one time Charlie pack your parachute.
John: That's right.
John: Well, and you know what?
John: I have jumped out of an airplane.
John: You're kidding.
John: And let me tell you who packed my parachute.
John: A professional parachute packer.
John: Not me.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Because they didn't even offer me the option.
Merlin: Let me go ahead and just take care of that for you.
John: Tell you what, we've been doing this a long time.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And I was glad for it.
John: It opened just fine.
John: So you did skydiving.
John: One time, when I was, what, 22 years old, I was going to the university, and I was trying to figure out the kind of woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
John: Do you understand this conundrum?
Merlin: Yeah, I think it comes up from time to time.
Merlin: You think, hmm.
John: I feel like I've gone through several experimental phases.
John: I feel like I am now comfortable saying that I am heterosexual and I'm interested in women.
John: I'm glad you're finally willing to admit that.
John: Yeah.
John: So who is my other?
John: Who is my woman partner?
John: And I went through several iterations of like, well, let's see, you know, I feel like I want her to be confident and strong and capable and her own person and all the, you know, there were so many examples in college of people that I didn't want to be that kind of man, I didn't want to be around that kind of man, I didn't want to be with that kind of woman, etc.
John: And there was a gal in one of my classes who had blonde hair braided in this braid that was as thick as a baby's arm.
John: And it went down past her hand-tooled, turquoise-accented leather belt.
Merlin: You paint a picture.
John: And she sometimes... She always had, like, dusty, rough-out cowboy boots on.
John: And sometimes she wore a kind of, let's say, gaucho hat.
John: Well, she knows who she is.
John: She really did.
John: And this is, you know, what, 1991, 91 or 92.
John: And so I was so I sidled up to her.
John: Oh, and she was also like always was really engaged with the professor.
John: Always, you know, sitting in the she always sat in the front row so I could see her braid because I was sitting in the back, of course.
John: Because I like to survey the class.
Yeah.
John: I asked her out.
John: We went out on a few dates.
John: It was sort of middling, if you know what I mean.
John: Because it turned out later that I did not really want a Santa Fe artist type.
John: That's not where I was headed in life.
John: But at one point, she was like, let's go skydiving.
John: And I felt like this is the kind of adventurous date that I always dreamt of.
John: Right?
John: She proposes that we go skydiving.
John: Of course I'll go skydiving.
John: We went up.
John: We spent the whole day skydiving.
John: And you have the option of going where you're basically wearing an actual skydiver as a backpack.
Merlin: Right.
John: Or going by yourself.
John: And I was like, I don't want anybody humping me on the way down.
John: We're going to go ourselves.
Merlin: Especially if she didn't want that option.
Merlin: Did you feel a little undignified if you were like, can I have two people?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Can we all go together?
Merlin: Can I have a backup person too?
John: And it was pretty amazing.
John: You know, I've spent a lot of time in small planes, so I wasn't uncomfortable.
John: I wasn't anxious.
John: Being in the plane and we get up there and they're like...
John: Okay, who wants to go first?
John: And kind of look around.
John: There's like five of us in the plane.
John: Not even.
John: Not even.
John: It was a small.
John: It was like there were three of us, let's say.
John: I don't even remember.
John: It was so long ago.
John: But I remember the part.
Merlin: There would have to be four of you if you had a grabby guy.
Merlin: But you're saying you elected not to have a grabby guy.
John: Neither of us had a grabby guy.
John: And she, in the moment, she looked at me and she was like, you go first.
John: And I was like, I'll go first.
John: And I was not feeling any, like, anxiety at all.
John: This was all very familiar sight and smells.
John: And so I stepped out on the wheel.
Merlin: It's like every other plane trip you've ever taken, except you jump out in the sky.
John: Yeah, except I'm wearing a parachute on this one.
John: Yeah.
John: And there aren't really seats in the plane, right?
John: You're just kind of sitting in a, it's an empty plane.
John: So they're like, put your feet on the wheel.
John: And I'm like, I'm very comfortable doing this.
John: I've put my feet on the wheel a million times, not in the air.
John: But not feeling weird at all.
John: Put my feet on the wheel.
John: And then they're like, reach out and grab onto the strut with your feet on the wheel.
John: The strut's the thing that holds the wing up?
John: That's right.
John: Because we're in a 185 or something.
John: It's a high wing airplane.
John: So I reach out and I grab onto the strut.
John: And I'm feeling very confident.
John: And then the guy says, now just slip your feet off the wheel and hold onto the strut.
John: And it seemed like it was the, like, obviously that's the next move, right?
John: And my vision was that I was going to slip my feet off the wheel and my feet were going to, like, fly back behind me.
John: And then I would be hanging on to the strut.
John: like Superman, with my body straight behind me, and then I would have the opportunity to decide whether I was going to jump or not.
John: And, of course, you slip your feet off the wheel, and your feet don't hang behind you, and you're not flying like Superman, deciding whether to jump or not.
John: You're more like Harold Lloyd hanging off the face of a clock.
John: That's exactly right.
John: You slip your feet off the wheel, and all of a sudden, your whole body weight plus the weight of the air...
John: And the friction is pulling at you.
John: The gravity is hungry for you.
John: You're holding onto this strut with your cat claws.
John: And I was like, what?
John: No, wait.
John: And there's no deciding to jump.
John: You cling to this plane until you are swept off of it.
John: Oh my God.
John: And it's a genius move.
John: It's a, it sounds like a skydiving hack.
Merlin: They don't really tell you that that's, that's the trick.
John: Yeah.
John: There's no, like they've been through this a million times.
John: You don't stand in the doorway and the guy's like, okay, whenever you're ready, you know, or, or the light turns green and you jump because they've been doing this for years.
John: And I'm sure people just stand there in the doorway paralyzed, like, yes, no, yes, no.
John: So he walks you through this, like stand on the wheel.
John: Okay.
John: Grab the strut.
John: All right.
John: Now just slip your feet off.
John: And the decision is made.
John: Oh, my God.
John: And so there's this picture of me holding on to the strut with my tongue completely out of my mouth like a golden retriever sticking his head out the window of a car.
John: Because I opened my mouth to stick my tongue out in the style of the times, like a shaka bra, like, woo!
John: Woo!
John: and the wind grabbed my tongue and stretched it to my ear and uh it's just i was only hanging there for it could have only been a couple of seconds before i was swept off the plane oh my god and uh is it open in that kind of i mean it sounds like you haven't had any kind of training for this this is where it opens automatically when you jump out the plane right
John: Yeah, it's like parachuting onto a D-Day beach.
John: It's connected to the plane with a cord, and as soon as you fall away, it rips your... It sounds like a horrible, horrible way to do that.
Merlin: So it only works on the first guy, right?
Merlin: Because you can't trick the other folks.
Merlin: They go, here, put your feet on the wheel.
Oh.
John: Well, you know, for the people that are in the plane, it probably looked like I got out there, did the whole thing, and then was like, I'm ready.
John: Couldn't you, like, hit your head or something?
John: Well, no, because they have you away from the plane because they have you reach out and grab the strut kind of far away.
John: As far out as you can, as far out as you can reach.
John: I wouldn't jump into a pool that way, let alone the sky.
John: And what was incredible was during the training, which is a couple of hours of like, here's what's going to happen.
Merlin: You're going to fall.
Merlin: Just kind of a walk and talk as you go through the gift shop.
John: We've got professional parachute packers here.
John: Don't worry about it one time, Charlie.
John: They talk about the fact that a lot of people black out.
John: That the experience of falling from an airplane is so unfamiliar.
John: That your body just like... Such a terrible idea.
John: Your body just reboots.
Merlin: That's what I was thinking.
Merlin: I mean, to do like actual real parachute skydiving where you pull your own cord, I mean, don't you go through like weeks and weeks of training?
Merlin: Yeah, you have to do this where... Is that just I Love Lucy?
Merlin: I'm pretty sure you have to actually have lots of training and jump off a little block and stuff and learn how to roll.
John: All of that.
John: And then you have to do multiple skydives where the cord is pulled for you.
John: Right.
John: Because...
John: As I was going through the training, I was like, there's no way I'm going to black out.
John: Like, come on.
Merlin: Back to the pool, though.
Merlin: It seems a little bit like having somebody take swimming class for eight weeks without ever actually getting into the water.
Merlin: And then say, here's how you do it.
Merlin: Here's how you do a breaststroke.
Merlin: Ready?
Merlin: Let go of the strut.
John: Go!
John: Right.
John: Sploosh.
John: Well, so I'm like, there's no way I'm going to black out.
John: But as soon as I let go of the strut, or as soon as I was swept off the wing of the plane, to be honest...
John: I have very clear memory of the... Because I'm falling backwards, right?
John: I mean, like I fall away and I'm not looking down.
John: I'm looking up because just the nature of the way you're pulled.
John: And I see the plane getting rapidly smaller as it goes away from me.
John: And...
John: I get total tunnel vision, like everything collapses.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And I am on the absolute verge of blacking out.
John: All I can see in the very center of my perception is this little, like, kind of like the end of a Looney Tunes.
John: And it just goes whoop.
John: And I can see the airplane in the center of this little hole of light as it falls away from me.
John: And I managed to fight off completely passing out, but just barely.
John: And then the parachute, and then all of a sudden you're hanging under a canopy.
John: And only then do you realize that you're hanging under a canopy like 6,000 feet above the ground.
John: And that is a completely outrageous feeling.
John: Because, you know, your feet and your butt keep trying to find the chair.
Merlin: You're just like, where is the... It seems like every impulse, I mean, you know, you watch people do it in movies and they look cool and stuff, but it seems like every impulse your body would have at that point would be asinine to a spectator.
Merlin: Because first of all, I would shit myself, I'm pretty sure.
Yeah.
Merlin: I would shit myself in the plane, I would reship myself on the strut, and then I would probably just periodically continue to shit as I fell through the sky 6,000 feet.
John: It ended up being totally fantastic.
John: I mean, you do definitely at first feel like...
Merlin: I mean it's got to be a complete – I mean I'm just thinking it must be – you think about like waterboarding and what makes waterboarding so awful is that it's forcing you into this situation that your body – they are capitalizing on something that your body does like autonomically, which is to try and stop you from choking.
Merlin: And they can emulate the feeling of drowning in a very controlled way, which is horrifying.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And it seems like every instinct, you've never experienced anything like a free fall that ended with anything but horrible injuries.
Merlin: It seems like every second of the way, at least at first, your body and your mind would just be reeling with what to do.
Merlin: Except just fall, I guess.
John: And then when you're under the parachute, your instinct is, like I say, to get back on.
John: You're kind of like bicycling.
John: You're like, now I'm hanging by a harness, and I would like to get back on the chair that I fell off of.
John: I would like to get back up on the thing that I left behind.
John: And then you look up, and you see this little insect of a plane, which is now miles away.
John: And you're like, oh, right, there's no getting back on, so now here I am.
John: What I'm on is this parachute.
John: And it was great.
John: They didn't give you any training for the parachute, but it was one of those parachutes that was maneuverable.
John: It had handles on both ropes on either side that you could pull and make the thing turn.
John: And that actually works?
John: It's amazing.
John: It's like a little plane.
John: The problem being that the more maneuvering you do, the faster you descend.
Yeah.
John: So I was really enjoying being up in the sky.
Merlin: Oh, because you're slightly compromising the canopiness of it in order to steer.
John: Right.
John: And then you drop.
John: Then you drop.
John: You drop to give yourself, you know, to carve turns or whatever, but it's a faster descent.
John: So you have to balance the amount of goofing around you want to do with the amount of time that you want to spend in this extraordinary state, which is like...
John: Yeah, flying.
John: It's as close as I've come to flight, extended flight, because there's no sound.
John: Wow.
John: You're just up there.
John: You hear some flapping fabric.
Merlin: Do you know how long it took to get from the plane to the ground?
John: No, but it was... Five minutes?
Yeah.
John: Well, let's see.
John: It probably wasn't 6,000 feet either.
John: It was probably 4,000 feet.
John: And I mean, it lasted a couple of minutes, but they were peak minutes or five minutes maybe.
John: I mean, who knows?
Merlin: And then how do you land?
Merlin: I mean, isn't rolling a thing?
John: Well, so then as you come in for a landing, you pull down on both sides of the rope and it kind of stalls you.
John: And I made a pinpoint landing right on the circle and stayed on my feet.
John: You're kidding.
John: No, it's not like World War II where you land and maybe break your leg.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Well, because they need to fall fast, right?
Merlin: It isn't part of the idea when you're dropping troops into Normandy.
Merlin: Like, you need to get them out of the sky as fast as possible.
John: Get them out of the sky, and also those parachutes were not maneuverable.
John: So you were falling at a steady rate, and you had no control over how fast or how to steer.
John: Those parachutes were just going to drop you where they were going to drop you.
John: Wow.
John: And that's why all those guys ended up in trees or hanging from church steeples.
Merlin: Well, that's what scotched the whole program.
Merlin: They ended up going to and landed in a whole different town and then having to catch back up, right?
John: They had to catch back up, and that was... They had to use their whistles?
John: Half of them didn't have their guns and their clickers.
John: Clickers.
John: That's not whistles, clickers.
John: But these modern parachutes, and I'm sure that modern parachutists, special infantry guys, I'm sure they have some control over their parachutes.
John: Although I'm not sure if you dropped 400 guys out of the back of an airplane and every one of them could steer his parachute, I think that would be a clusterfuck.
John: Right?
John: Because every single guy would be like, oh, I want to go over here.
John: And then they'd all get tangled.
John: Like asking kids where they want to go to dinner.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: It would be like a petri dish of sperm or something.
John: So you made it.
John: And how did she do?
John: Did she jump?
John: She jumped.
John: She did great.
John: She was very much like, you know, she maintained total confidence throughout the whole thing.
John: And then at the end of the day, on the drive back, we had some kind of...
John: some kind of argument in the car.
John: I don't remember what it was about, but it was clear that that was our last date.
John: Jumping out of the airplane was our last date because... It just wasn't going to work out.
John: It felt like, in a way, it's better that we went parachuting to try and save our relationship than having a baby.
John: Yeah.
John: But it was one of those, like, all right, well, let's, you know.
Merlin: Maybe it seems easier.
John: Let's go jump out of an airplane and see if that, like, bonds us.
John: And, in fact, what it did was it just broke us apart.
John: And then later, that summer, I was down in Seattle's, like, ritzy neighborhood area.
John: walking past a kind of a ritzy French restaurant with outdoor seating.
John: And she jumped up and she was like, John, hey, I want you to meet my fiance.
John: And he was some really preppy, rich-feeling, rich-smelling guy.
John: And that summer was kind of the phase.
John: I was going through a phase there where I was like, what am I?
John: Am I like a grunge loser?
John: Or am I like a straight guy who should get a banking job?
Merlin: I'm so glad you finally settled that self-doubt.
John: Yeah, thank you.
Merlin: Realized who you are, what you do.
Merlin: It was worth it to get through that.
Merlin: It was.
John: That was a tough time.
John: I'm glad it was just that summer.
Merlin: It's so awkward when you first meet an ex.
John: Yeah, well, and the thing was, I was just like, oh, good luck to both of you.
John: Like, hooray for you.
John: And I just felt like, right.
John: Yes, I am not...
John: At least that whole part of college where you're in college and you're kind of looking for your mate and then you're going to go off on your life's path together.
John: I'm not sure whether I, this is one of those big questions.
John: Did I decide through trial and error?
John: Or did trial and error decide you?
John: Exactly.
John: Did I learn that that was not who I was?
John: Or did it end up that I wasn't who I was?
Merlin: Because it never worked out.
Merlin: The worst part is when you think you know and you're probably wrong.
Merlin: I mean my wife and I met – we were both on the rebound from a long – each of us had been in a long, serious relationship.
Merlin: And so of course when you're kind of bonding quickly in this new relationship, you talk a lot about the other person.
Merlin: And I don't – I think we've been together maybe a week, a week or so when we're walking past a coffee shop and she goes, oh, there's –
Merlin: Him.
Merlin: That's him.
Merlin: Whoa.
Merlin: One week.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But what was funny was I felt like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, like when he meets Wallace Shawn, where Annie used to talk so much about this ex of hers.
Merlin: It might have been Manhattan.
Merlin: And he's like, I wasn't expecting this little homunculus of a man.
Merlin: She made this guy sound so virile.
Merlin: He was a really nice guy.
Merlin: But it's so uncomfortable.
Merlin: I hate that feeling.
you
John: Well, and then you decided to get married, you guys.
Merlin: Yeah, eventually.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: See, I never decided that.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: I wonder what that would be like.
Merlin: You'd probably have to change the house a little bit.
Merlin: But then, you know, I would have said that for having a kid, too.
Merlin: And you probably did some basic baby-proofing, or maybe not.
John: Put the poisons on a higher shelf.
Merlin: But she's still free to go look at the Braille Playboys.
John: Absolutely.
John: How's she going to get an education otherwise?
John: How's she going to learn Braille?
John: Find out which Fisher stereo system to buy.
John: Yeah, I don't... All of that college experimentation, I feel like a lot of people...
John: They can look back at their college experimentation and feel like it was part of a project that delivered them somewhere.
John: They can impose a structure or a plan on it in retrospect.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: That's when you're still young enough to think things happen for a reason.
John: Yeah, and the problem is that none of that, for me, ever seemed to add up to a path.
John: There was all this college experimentation, and it was just like different little nobules inside of a lung.
Yeah.
John: I was just building like a lung architecture.
John: You were building a lung?
John: I was building a lung of experience.
John: An existential lung.
John: Yeah, it was sort of lung shaped.
John: Just the one?
John: A lung shaped experience.
John: But what it turned out was that I didn't even need a lung.
John: I was building a lung.
John: I was having lung shaped experiences.
John: And what I needed was a different kind of organ.
John: I needed a liver or maybe I wasn't even bioengineering.
Merlin: I bet you needed a liver.
Merlin: You know, the other thing is that, you know, sometimes just because the pattern looks like a lung, it doesn't mean it's a lung.
Merlin: Well, so, okay, that's true too.
Merlin: No, that's what I'm saying.
Merlin: I'm saying like that's to finally get to our age where you are really broken by life and you stop seeing those patterns.
Merlin: You know, you don't realize at the time how chaotic and misshapen your life is and how much, like at least for me, like how much I was always reacting to something that had happened in the past.
Merlin: I don't want to make this about Scientology.
Merlin: But on some level, I always felt like, ah, I'm fixing this thing about life.
Merlin: And then, of course, I was kind of unfixing 50,000 other things at the same time.
Merlin: And there's not really any pattern to it except that you stayed alive and isn't that weird?
Merlin: That's kind of where I end up.
Merlin: It's like, eh, you didn't die.
Merlin: If you try to take too many lessons out of life, you turn into a crazy person.
John: He didn't die.
John: He didn't die.
John: And ultimately, I guess what a lung architecture is, is fractals.
John: Mm.
Merlin: And so... The nobules are fractal.
Merlin: They're like miniature lungs inside the lungs re-replicating.
John: I think that's true.
John: I think if you get down inside of a lung and you get really microscopic on it, it's just a forest of lungs.
John: It's lungs all the way down.
John: It's lungs all the way down.
John: And what I was building was like fractal lung...
John: And what I needed was a different, or maybe I didn't, maybe the need is the wrong word.
Merlin: If there's anything you take away from the show today, please just let it be this.
Merlin: Make sure that you're actually building an organ.
Merlin: You may not be building an organ.
Merlin: You may not even need to build an organ.
Merlin: But if you're going to build an organ, understand the organ that's being built.
Merlin: And you might need two of them.
Merlin: So you're probably never going to get that project finished.
John: That's right.
John: If you get down inside of a heart, I don't think it's hearts all the way down.
John: Oh, no, no, no.
John: Hearts are made of ugly things.
John: Right.
John: Not nobules.
John: No, hearts are made of valves.
John: In, out, in, out.
John: Hearts are made of valves.
Whew.
John: So are car motors.
Merlin: Is that right?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: But an engine doesn't beat.
Merlin: I guess it beats in its way because it's got the cylinders.
Merlin: The cylinders move kind of like the, what do you got?
Merlin: You got the arteries and the ventricles?
Merlin: Is that what it's called?
John: Ventricles.
Merlin: You got four chambers, right?
John: That's right.
Merlin: Aortas.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Am I saying the right words?
Merlin: I honestly don't remember any of this.
John: There are a lot of scientists listening to the program who have the answer readily at hand.
John: You think?
John: But I feel like aorta is the main vein.
John: Here's the difference between us and you.
Merlin: Here's the difference between us and you, listener, is that we're just saying words and you're listening to this while you're looking at Wikipedia.
Merlin: That's the difference.
Merlin: That's how much smarter you are, is that you're looking at Wikipedia and we're not.
Merlin: Corpuscles.
Merlin: No, isn't that what makes bruises?
Merlin: When you pop a, what is it, when you pop a valve, when you pop a, what's a bruise made of?
John: Pop a corpuscle.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: No, I think a corpuscle is what sticks onto the outside of a boat.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, it's like a cow catcher.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Or a heart.
Merlin: We'll see you next time.
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Merlin: I used to.
Merlin: Very much so.
Merlin: Now it's – I would consider myself a secondary or tertiary member by other people maybe.
Merlin: I don't – I used to think of myself – I used to consider myself, as you know, a seasoned technologist.
Merlin: And now I don't think that at all.
Merlin: Just to answer the question quickly, there's many kinds of people, but one way to break down how much of a tech person you are, I think, is how much you are into the technology kind of for its own sake.
Merlin: versus the 50 million other reasons and like i am increasingly perplexed perplexed by the people who are genuinely interested in things like chip speeds because i i'm not i'm not trying to be disparaging but there's a time i used to think i was a tech person but i think i've always been a little bit of a content person oh i see content content i hate that word uh when i look at pictures of you when you were in college
John: With your – I looked like a pan man then for sure.
John: With your Dread Pirate Roberts mustache.
Merlin: You know, there's three people I used to be compared to in terms of looks.
Merlin: This is so implausible now.
Merlin: But Cary Elwes, Michael Palin, and who was the other one?
Merlin: But people used to think I looked like Cary Elwes.
Merlin: Cary Elwes, like on my best day, I looked a little like Cary Elwes.
John: I feel like you're... Sorry if I just spoiled Princess Bride for you.
John: Back when you were a smiler.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Back when you were a young guy and you were in the New York City subways in your army jacket with your big shit-eating grin on.
John: Oh, I got it all figured out.
John: And your little blonde mustache.
John: You were very Carrie Elwes.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: With that hair.
John: At that point in your life, did you feel like you were a member of a community?
Yeah.
Merlin: Yes.
John: What was the community?
Merlin: I feel like at that time I was a member of a few – I mean the thing is I can't help but think of it this one way, which is like when you ask this question – it's a really interesting question.
Merlin: The technology one too is like my first thought is do I consider myself a member of that community?
Merlin: But conversely, does that community consider me part of that community?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Which I think is a pretty different kind of thing.
Merlin: But no, at that time, I was really, I felt, I went to a very small school and I had a lot of friends.
Merlin: So I, you know, I was in, I felt very connected to several music type communities.
John: You were a member of the Dead Milkmen fan club.
John: That's right.
John: And they considered you a member in good standing.
Merlin: I saw them live in Tampa.
Merlin: Hi, Dean.
Merlin: Back in the day.
Merlin: I saw Dread Zeppelin, same venue.
John: What?
John: So I used to love going to see Dread Zeppelin.
Merlin: Oh, they were right.
Merlin: Oh, the fun times.
Merlin: We had some times, didn't we?
Merlin: And then the other ones were just the, not stony, because I don't think of myself as a stoner dummy, but I was very interested in things like Church of the Subgenius, just what would become the super annoying research magazine culture.
Merlin: I did consider myself part of it.
Merlin: I was very interested.
Merlin: I was interested in extremity.
Merlin: I was interested in Walter Hudson, the heaviest man in the world.
Merlin: I can still tell you what he ate for lunch every day.
Merlin: Four Big Macs, four double cheeseburgers, eight large orders of fries, and a quart of Coke.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: He weighed 1,400 pounds.
Merlin: And so these kinds of things attracted me.
Merlin: And partly it was stony stuff.
Merlin: But I was just very interested in extremity.
Merlin: And of course, I was a cheerful paranoiac being a half-assed Marxist person.
Merlin: Post-Marxist.
Merlin: I was very interested in all things paranoiac, not strictly conspiratorial, but very much like how hegemony was sometimes deliberately being used to manipulate us.
Merlin: That right there, that was a huge part of college for me.
Merlin: So yeah, I thought I was part of all of those communities.
Merlin: It seems like you never consider yourself too much of a community guy.
John: Well, you know, I was a member of a lot of different communities that didn't interact with each other.
John: And I felt a kinship with that community that you're describing.
John: And...
John: And before there was a term for it, before that was called alternative culture, it just seemed like all of those different things were sort of swirling around on the punk rock side of culture.
Merlin: No, I wasn't going to say it, but basically the Big Venn diagram, there's many, many circles, but almost all of them have at least 70% of their circle inside of punk rock.
John: Inside of punk rock, right.
John: And when They Might Be Giants first arrived on the scene, they were clearly coming out of that culture.
John: They kind of embodied a sort of... You never knew what punk rock was going to produce next.
John: And it was like, oh, now it's producing this.
John: There was an excitement about weirdness, an excitement about extremity.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, like DIY, for sure.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: Which you could cachet that into something like independence.
Merlin: But if not strictly anti-authoritarian, very skeptical of people with the answers and a method for implementing it.
John: I was driving here today and I saw a poster for a band on a phone pole.
John: And it was using sort of Soviet typeface, Soviet font, like fake Soviet iconography.
Merlin: Maybe like the poster for the interview, like that style.
John: Right, except not so watered down.
John: Like in the style that we used to do, where it was like we didn't actually have access to those typefaces, so we were kind of making them ourselves or whatever.
John: And that referencing...
John: referencing the Soviet Union in a way that was like, or referencing sort of communist totalitarianism in a way that was maybe a little admiring, but not completely certain.
Merlin: No, but I totally know what you mean.
Merlin: It's like weirdly tongue-in-cheek.
Merlin: Like one thing my wife and I bonded on early is we both really like Maoist.
Merlin: propaganda art i mean it's endlessly interesting it's it's unbelievably gorgeous especially given that it's about the cultural revolution or the great leap forward and so looking at these especially even in the 70s it got where it got much more almost like norman rockwell like almost photo real but what's funny is like you know it isn't so much that you're saying oh rah rah uh communism what you're saying dude is that oh how different is stalin from reagan
Merlin: Right.
John: Absolutely.
John: Absolutely.
John: It was a response to Reaganism.
John: Yep.
John: And some of that Maoist art makes for some of the best Rule 34 porn, if you're interested in searching for that.
John: I had no idea.
John: Because... I'm still working on that leather luggage strap.
John: Yeah.
John: If you take that hyper-realistic but cartoony Chinese revolution art and you make it into porn, oh, it's top shelf.
Merlin: I don't think of China as a nexus for porn.
Merlin: There's a lot of Japanese porn, John.
John: I don't think that it's the Chinese that are making the porn out of it.
John: I think that's being offshored a little bit.
Merlin: Yeah, they're outsourcing.
John: Anyway, I always felt a kinship with that culture, but I never thought of myself as a member of it because then I would leave that party.
John: And I would go across town to the party where everybody was wearing that first generation of Patagonia fleece jacket.
John: Yeah.
John: And they were all talking about waxing their boards.
Merlin: And I felt also that this is before it became the NPR look.
Merlin: This is this is back when people are actually wearing it to stay warm outside.
John: Well, when that was technical gear, that first generation or second generation of Patagonia North Face was all meant to just be... It hadn't become college kid clothes.
John: It was meant to be worn when you're getting some fucking bodacious hair.
Merlin: There was a time when you could count on this gear.
Merlin: You're hanging, hanging by a thread.
John: You're hanging by a thread.
John: Sorry.
John: And so, you know, so I was a member of that community just as much the people that were, you know, that were like living on their long boards.
John: But I wasn't, I also wasn't a member of that community any more than I was a member of the research.
John: But you're welcome to visit.
John: Unsane community.
John: I mean, I was welcome.
John: I hope I thought of myself as welcome everywhere.
Right.
John: And I still do.
John: And that's part of, you know, what I hope is considered my charm.
Merlin: I'm going to write that down.
Merlin: But it seems like at certain points in your life, and I've certainly been this person, where you arrive somewhere and you're pretty sure that, at the very least, the party has now officially started.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: It's everything but in name, like a tribute to you.
Yeah.
Merlin: It's not quite a birthday party or a roast, but you are always the guest of honor wherever you go.
John: I used to be like that.
John: I feel like I absolutely, for a long time, would maybe even walk in the door and say...
John: It is started.
John: Who wants coffee?
John: It is fucking started.
John: Where is the canned ravioli?
John: Let's get it out.
John: Until I met my match, a guy I used to know, I was standing in the kitchen with him at a party, and he was like, this fucking party's boring.
John: And I was like, yeah, sort of.
John: And he reached over into the cupboard and pulled out an industrial-size gallon of honey.
John: Oh, no, this is not going to end well.
John: I was like, what's going to happen now?
John: He just grabbed the honey, and he opened the honey up and poured it on his own head.
Merlin: Oh, dear.
John: A gallon of honey in the center of the kitchen.
John: And it was like, well, the party just got really interesting.
John: And I'm glad I'm not the guy covered in honey.
John: Like, this guy took one for the team.
John: He made the party happen.
Merlin: Who's that going to be good for, including him?
Merlin: It wasn't good for anybody.
Merlin: He's covered with honey at a party.
John: Yeah, it wasn't good for the homeowners.
John: No.
John: It's a lot of honey.
John: The 15 of us who were standing around and watched it happen, it was unforgettable.
John: He could have taken a shit on the floor, too.
John: That would have been memorable.
John: He basically took a sweet shit on the floor.
John: And it took the party to another level.
John: And I'm still talking about it 25 years later.
John: But, you know, I also was a member of the, like, I was doing improv then, like theater sports.
John: I don't think I knew that.
John: All of those people in my theater sports troupe were completely...
John: Off of whatever your normal reservation would be, right?
John: I mean, a lot of them were religious.
Merlin: A lot of the people at that time that I knew in theater improv and that kind of stuff – again, this is just anecdotal – but a number of the people I knew who were into that were into it.
Merlin: Like, you know, there's the people who read the Keith Johnstone book.
Merlin: and skip the section on masks.
Merlin: And then there's people who really, really read the section on masks.
Merlin: Like, I'm more like, I want to be the Del Close guy.
Merlin: I want to go be the Upright Citizens Brigade guy.
Merlin: And they're more into, like, no.
Merlin: Like, this goes deeply into something about my mind and my psyche.
Merlin: And the people I knew in theater in the late 80s were also very into things like psychoanalysis and, like, having uncomfortable... Their kind of improv was more like they come in your house and ask you the most uncomfortable thing in the world.
Merlin: Which seems like kind of your deal, too.
Merlin: You're really good at that.
Merlin: A little bit of that.
Merlin: I used to introduce you to people and say, this is John.
Merlin: Be careful, because in the next couple of minutes, he's going to try and find the thing you don't want him to know about that's most going to make you cry.
Merlin: Just so you know, you can't prevent it.
Merlin: It's going to happen.
John: I just want you to know what's coming.
John: The key was that I don't try.
John: It just is there.
John: The thing that they least want other people to know about is just there on their face.
Merlin: It's written on their face to you.
John: And I wish that I did not have that ability to see.
John: I wish I did not have that sight.
John: I wish I could blind that eye because it often is not a friend.
Merlin: That's interesting, though.
Merlin: That is all very interesting overlap.
John: Yeah, right, and my theater sports troupe, especially given that it was at a Jesuit college, had a lot of those people, and all of that psychoanalysis and all of that hyper-thinkiness was tied up in their 20-year-old wrestling with their religion.
John: You know, they were, a lot of them, deeply Catholic, and
John: And really, really engaging their Catholicism through these, you know, like going into psychoanalysis with Catholicism as your guide is,
John: Oh, God.
John: It's a heavy trip.
John: That's a lot of doors I wouldn't want to open.
John: The conversations that we would have and the journeys we would go on, because it's theater sports or improv, so we would go on retreats together.
John: How do you rehearse improv, right?
John: You just do it over and over and you just get inside one another's minds.
Merlin: Well, it's more like rehearsing tennis.
John: Yeah, right, right, right.
John: And we would, you know, I would leave my, like, stoner metal party.
John: And the thing was, I never revealed any one of my groups.
John: I never revealed my membership in these groups to one another, right?
John: I never tried to bring friends from one place and take them to another place.
John: So I'd be, like...
John: stoner metal land and then i'd be like all right you guys see you later i'll just fucking gotta get it going bros and then i would like shake it off get outside in the cold air take a deep breath shake it off walk across town and then you know into some uh brightly lit lunch room and
John: Where all these like super earnest intellectual Catholic kids were doing theater sports and be like, hey, guys.
John: Wow.
John: Give me an animal.
John: All right.
John: Great.
John: Give me a U.S.
John: State.
Merlin: Theater sports was like – of the various genres, all the different kung fu schools of improv, I feel like theater sports was really – was more serious.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, they all like to think they're serious.
Merlin: And like Del Close, you know, famously said, you know, you want to go for like what's real in this in the in the moment, not don't go for the funny.
Merlin: And memory serves theater sports takes that to kind of an extreme.
Merlin: It really does.
Merlin: You're not supposed to be funny.
Merlin: Don't do bits.
John: No.
John: And the people that the people that would come into the come try out for our group who are like, whack a whack a whack.
John: It was like, nope.
John: We were all like really trying to – every time.
John: They're like cults though.
Merlin: They're like – my niece does UCB in New York and like you come in and like you pay to take class and they're great.
Merlin: UCB is great.
Merlin: I mean no question.
Merlin: Please don't hurt my family.
Merlin: But like you come in and you pay fees to take classes and pretty soon you're teaching classes and it's kind of like Arthur Murray.
Merlin: It's not a pyramid scheme.
Merlin: It's an inverted comedy pyramid triangle.
John: And this is what happened to me.
John: Like after the first year, our theater sports group was really, really popular in Spokane because there wasn't a lot going on in Spokane.
John: And people were – I mean we were selling out sort of the big theater at the college and selling tickets to the town, not just to the college.
Yeah.
John: And the guy who came into town who was 24 and started this theater sports group.
Merlin: Was it called Guts when you were there?
John: It was called Guts.
Merlin: Look at that.
Merlin: Gonzaga University Theater Sports.
John: That's right.
John: Wow.
John: So I was in that first year of Guts.
John: And then he, this 24-year-old guy, and I think he was from Canada,
John: We had a meeting at the end of the year, and we were all just so thrilled with ourselves.
John: And he was like, I have to tell you that now that Guts is going, now that this project is off and is flying on its own, I am leaving you.
John: and going on to the next place and starting another theater sports somewhere else.
John: And I'm leaving you here to grow.
John: A kind of Johnny Appleseed Lone Ranger character.
John: That's right.
John: And we were all like, what?
John: No, don't.
John: I mean, because we were terrified of changing any one element of it.
John: Sure.
John: Because it was working.
John: And we were all getting somewhere, you know.
John: And so he said, so he appointed me, his successor, as, like, leader of guts for the second season.
John: And...
John: Right away, I became a monster.
John: Like, immediately.
John: I... He had this... You mean like a despot?
John: In a way.
John: In a way, I became a despot because...
John: He had this beautiful thing which I'm very attracted to in other people and which I'm always trying to discover the secret of, which is this open, friendly attitude and a feeling where people are doing hard work.
John: But they don't resent the work because every time they look over at you, you are smiling patifically at them.
Merlin: It takes a certain kind of personality.
Merlin: Very few people can do that authentically.
John: Yeah, it really does take a certain personality, and it is a kind of magic.
John: Yeah.
John: He somehow managed to keep that initial group of people that started this theater sports group.
John: He kept people out of it as much as he kept us together.
John: Part of keeping us together was that he curated it.
Merlin: That's interesting.
Merlin: It's like having a small company, right?
Merlin: If you've got to spend all that time with these people, that chemistry and ability to not necessarily get along but be able to work together is important to maintain.
John: It's culture.
Merlin: It's a little culture.
John: There was a lot of love between us, and there were inner competitions.
John: There were definitely people that were –
John: um that had rivalries but well it also had a real family vibe and in that second year it seemed that the mandate that had been handed me was now open it up and make it bigger and invite everyone in and and turn it into something you know to spread the love or whatever he was steve jobs and you were uh john scully
John: Right.
John: I think that's a technical reference.
John: And I did the John Scully thing, which was I ran it into the ground or tried to.
John: And I didn't, you know, we started having auditions to bring new people in.
John: And because it was successful, it attracted all the attention starved.
Merlin: I see you as Michael Douglas in a chorus line.
Merlin: Sitting there.
Merlin: Just the shadowy figure with curls of smoke around his head, and everybody's just, God, I hope I get it.
Merlin: I hope I get it.
Merlin: God, I hope I get it.
John: That's who I thought of myself as, but the problem was... Did you have Joppers?
John: Well, we had... Because we were such an egalitarian group before...
John: That our leader had been this outsider, this guy with a mustache who came from Canada, and he was one of these people with a big smile who just sort of made you feel like it was your idea, but kept the thing on the rails.
John: And all of a sudden, I was sitting in the back of the room with a beret, shrouded in cigarette smoke, going, next!
John: Next!
John: And these people were coming out like, I want to be in theater sports!
John: I was meant for the stage!
John: And it's like, next!
John: And the other people in my original group were... They felt like what I was doing was not in the spirit of...
John: of the magic and i was like i'm trying to preserve the magic by keeping all these dorks out of our out of our special place and they were like no we need to have we need to invite everyone in and so i was like all right well fine then well how about these six guys they seemed like you know they could join the group or whatever and they were like yay and then those six people just like came in and
John: And we're doing jazz hands all over the place.
John: And I was like, no, jazz hands, no.
John: And eventually, let us just cut to the chase.
John: Eventually, I was deposed.
John: There was a coup.
John: There was a coup.
John: I arrived at a meeting.
John: that had obviously already been going along.
Merlin: I bet you're really good at knowing when you're walking into an intervention.
Merlin: I bet over the years you've gotten really good at that.
Merlin: Yeah, but at the time... Oh, I know what's going to happen now.
John: At the time, I had not had so many interventions yet, and I walked into the room, and I was like, huh, everybody's here already.
John: Hmm.
John: And it seems like everybody's... Now, you know, I walked in, and of course, the conversation stopped, and everybody turned and looked at me, and I was like, oh, I see where this is going.
John: Yoko Ono's sitting in your chair.
John: Ha, ha, ha.
John: And so, you know, I was given that choice.
John: We would like you to just be a member of the troop again.
John: Oh, boy.
John: And not be our fearless leader.
John: Oh.
John: The American apparel guy.
John: It's time for you to go, buddy.
John: Time for you to go.
John: And so the leadership is going to switch over into a democratic form where there are going to be four...
John: Oh, what could possibly go wrong?
John: And I was like, I would rather burn.
John: I would rather burn.
John: I would rather burn this theater with all of us in it than be a member of this garbage, this garbage arrangement.
John: And so I stormed out, I ran out into the snow, and one of the girls chased me out into the field.
John: Shane!
John: Shane!
Merlin: He said, I need a job!
Merlin: Give me an occupation!
Merlin: Okay, pizza!
John: At one point, I might have even tripped in the snow.
John: Oh, John.
John: And I fell in the snow.
John: Yes, and?
John: And she came and tried to console me.
John: It was all very dramatic, but we were artists.
John: Yes.
John: We were theater artists.
John: And then I stayed away.
John: And then the final show of the season of Guts, year two, I watched the show from high up in the rafters above the... Like the Phantom of the Opera.
John: Like the Phantom of the Opera.
John: Exactly like the Phantom of the Opera.
John: And at one point during a scene, the girl who had chased me out into the snow, my love interest on Guts, was doing a scene and somebody said, you know, like...
John: give me an animal and it was like an eagle and she looked up and you know pointed up in the middle of her of a scene and like there goes the eagle and she pointed at me and then she saw me oh no she saw me hanging up in the ropes yes and and she looked and she made eye contact with me and big smile and i smiled down to her from five feet five stories up
John: And it was just like, my life really is a movie.
Merlin: You slunk back to your organ room.
John: I'm idiots.
John: I rolled a sweet J up in the rafter and I was like, I'm a member of no group.
Merlin: Everybody's talking at me.
Merlin: There's – I don't know.
Merlin: I'm just thinking of this now.
Merlin: But I saw something a few weeks ago, turns out, this story about where cliques are more likely to form and where they're not likely to form.
Merlin: And the turns out part being that there aren't nearly as many cliques in high schools as people would have you believe.
Merlin: And it changes based on the size of the high school.
Merlin: But I have to say there's this part of me that feels like –
Merlin: so much of my idea this is so obvious and so dumb but it's so much of what i think something like high school was supposed to look like i think was kind of largely based on john hughes movies or things you know the things the movies that became the preceded it you know that they're really or even you know shoot reading the outsiders or whatever but i really got this idea of the different groups and the thing is when you look back in retrospect there's a lot more subtle subtlety to it than you realize at the time
Merlin: You know, that's why, again, like a show like Freaks and Geeks really captures that, really captures the idea that, no, you may be striving to have these cooler friends, but you still got your less cool friends.
Merlin: And even that can change.
Merlin: Like suddenly your friend gets a gross spurt and becomes a sports star or something.
Merlin: There's all these ways where it's much more fluid than I remember it seeming at the time.
Merlin: It all felt very carved in stone.
Merlin: And in retrospect, I realized what a clusterfuck the whole thing was for everybody.
Yeah.
Merlin: Do you know what I'm saying?
John: Does that make sense?
John: Absolutely.
John: Absolutely.
John: And in high school, my high school experience was very John Hughes-y.
John: My college experience was where I got very confused, and I really didn't understand where I belonged.
John: And in fact, the college friends that I have still, the people I knew in college that are still friends of mine,
John: were the guys that I wasn't friends with in college, really, or it was very fraught.
John: Because I was in school in Spokane, there was a whole component of the people that came to that school who were from Montana and North Dakota and Idaho.
Merlin: Mostly Catholics?
Yeah.
John: All Catholics.
John: And by Alaskan standards, they were clearly wild kids, right?
John: They were from these towns, these tiny western towns, where you would drive for seven hours to get to Billings.
John: Like, oh, we need a new part for the tractor.
John: Well, we got everybody in the truck.
John: Yeah.
John: and throw a couple of hay bales in the back for the kids, and then we're going to drive for seven hours to get to Billings.
John: I mean, that...
John: We'll do a job on you as a kid for sure.
John: And, you know, it's these one-horse towns, right?
John: Like a western town with a main street.
Merlin: I mean, you have such different expectations and such different – what's the word I'm looking for?
Merlin: But it's like if you – you know, I remember the first several times I went to Manhattan immediately experiencing –
Merlin: Experiencing.
Merlin: Having that feeling of, I fucking hate that word.
Merlin: I experienced something.
Merlin: Kill it with fire.
Merlin: Stop saying that.
Merlin: Anyway, I was heavily impacted.
Merlin: By that feeling of option anxiety.
Merlin: Like we open up the Village Voice and, you know, whereas back in Florida, you'd plan ahead, you know, about what band you would see three weeks from now.
Merlin: And you open up a paper and like just in the Village Voice, like just within walking distance of where you are, there's like 10 of your favorite bands playing.
Merlin: And the result of that is, if you're like me, is you just go, I'll just sit here and watch Golden Girls or whatever.
John: Right, your brain turns to mush.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And I mean, I wonder if people, that must have really felt like the big city for somebody who was used to driving to Billings.
John: So I went back with, so anyway, these guys, I thought of them as the Montana boys.
John: And they all had gray cowboy boots.
John: They all sort of dipped snuff.
John: At a distance, you would think that they were just...
John: Just ignorant dummies.
John: But then you would meet them and you realize like, oh shit, this kid is the smartest kid from his town.
John: He is the kid from whatever town that got to Spokane to go to college.
Merlin: And he achieved not to be unkind, but he achieved escape velocity in a way that must seem impossible to a lot of other people.
John: Yeah, astonishing.
John: And so these guys were wise and they were they were sharp.
Merlin: Probably somewhat grateful.
John: Uh, yeah, well, and also, but also, like, again, coming from a pretty religious background and from a very small, initially a very small world, in which Spokane was, like, a big, big world.
John: And, um, and so there was a lot of culture clash between us initially, because even coming from Alaska, I was much more worldly, and honestly...
John: And their initial take on me was that I was a fag.
John: Right.
John: I mean, you know, I showed up in school and I was like, hey, everybody, come on, let's go.
John: And I was wearing a bow tie or whatever.
John: And they were just like, no, thank you.
John: This guy is a queer.
Mm hmm.
John: And it was only through my willingness to throw myself through a plate glass window over time that they were like, huh, he's a pretty rowdy queer.
John: I was like, that's right.
John: Rowdy queer.
John: That is pretty much.
John: You got that right, cowboy.
John: That's my drag name.
John: Watch my bow tie spin.
John: And so it ends up now that we're really good.
John: I'm still really good buddies with those guys.
John: Because our relationship evolved over time in a way that they had a lot of suspicion about me.
John: And I had a ton of... I thought I knew them, too.
John: I thought that they were just hick, Republican... Right, right, right, right.
John: You know, nobodies.
John: And now I've...
John: Like, they're the ones that I still am close with.
John: And I had that weird time.
John: At one point during college, I went on a road trip with these guys to Sun Valley, a car full of the Montana boys.
John: And they were bringing me along kind of like... Like a mascot?
John: Yeah.
John: Like, hey, we're going to... Guess what?
John: We're all going to Sun Valley and we're taking the queer.
John: What could happen?
John: Anything could happen.
John: We got to Sun Valley.
John: One of these guys had an uncle who lived in Sun Valley who took us into his house.
John: He's one of these guys that walks around the house smoking a cigar, took us into the house, and he had a walk-in safe full of machine guns.
John: He was like, you guys want to see my guns?
John: And I was like, yes.
John: And we walked through the bedroom and there's a vault, like a fucking vault.
John: And the door opens and you can walk in.
Merlin: It's not just a heavy locked door.
Merlin: It's like a solid, it's a room, an impenetrable room.
John: It's basically a bank vault.
John: a bank vault or a panic room, but there's an arsenal in there.
John: And that was just the one, that was just the one, that was just the aspect of his house that he was willing to show his nephew's college friends.
John: Can you imagine what you didn't see?
John: Woo!
John: But as part of this road trip, we went to Butte, Montana, which you could charitably describe as the asshole of the universe, right?
John: I mean, it's pretty bad there.
John: I bet Richard Hugo liked it.
John: Hey, I'm sure he did.
John: I think he did.
John: That's a Richard Hugo reference.
John: My second favorite American poet.
John: At one minute exactly, or one hour exactly, Richard Hugo.
Merlin: When I want to let you know it's about an hour, so don't start talking about politics, I'll mention Richard Hugo.
Merlin: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: That'll be our code.
Merlin: So anyway, you got the gun safe.
John: You're the mascot.
John: So we go to Butte, and we go to visit one of these guys' house in Butte.
John: And a lot of them were from Butte, which, you know, I wouldn't call it a big town, but it's a big town in that part of Montana.
John: Anyway, this kid was from one of the best families in Butte.
John: And their home was a beautiful home, like with columns.
John: Columns like stone columns.
Merlin: So like old money.
John: Old money, right.
John: Gracious living room and the family, very elegant family.
John: And like maybe there was silver money there.
John: And yet this gracious home, which in San Francisco would be a $40 million home.
John: is two blocks from the Berkeley Pit in downtown Butte.
John: Downtown Butte, which I still believe an enterprising software person could buy the entire town.
John: Like, the whole place just has a feeling of, like, that a bomb went off in the center of the town, which it did in the form of that silver mine.
John: And this contrast of like, oh, this guy that I thought was just kind of like a western town ding-a-ling is from this incredible place.
John: This like beautiful, this elegant, gracious family in a gracious home in a town of a few thousand people.
John: really perched on the lip of the world, and I have no way of understanding where he's from, right?
John: You know, like, there was no...
John: way for me to really get my head around just the contrasts, just the study and contrasts of that one kid's experience, let alone that his uncle had a safe full of machine guns.
Merlin: But, you know, it's funny.
Merlin: Yesterday I heard just a little bit of Jesse Thorne interviewing, what's his name, Offerman, you know, Ron Swanson.
Merlin: yeah keith keith keith i don't think that's it keith offerman no keith that's the rest of the sports guy but you know i mean ron swanson from uh but kerf kerf uh his name is uh ron swanson and he um nick offerman gary gary nick gary he was he was interviewing nick gary who's kind of famous he's talking about how he's you know like there's has this rep for being you know this manly man guy and
John: He's got the mustache, right?
John: He's the one.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: He looks like an angry cat.
Merlin: So he was raised in rural-ish, I guess, Illinois.
Merlin: And long story short, it's like, you know, and everybody's talking.
Merlin: He's like, it's pretty funny to him because, you know, he, yes, he does own and have employees that do woodworking.
Merlin: Like he actually does, you know, make furniture and stuff.
Merlin: And he is like a manly man.
Merlin: But also like he's the only one in his family that went to school for theater and took two semesters of ballet.
Merlin: So it's the kind of thing where like – I guess what I'm trying to say is that – Rowdy queer, you're saying.
Merlin: He's a rowdy queer.
Merlin: He's probably jumped through his share of plate glass windows.
Merlin: But I think part of it – and this just shows you how reductive I am, I guess.
Merlin: But sometimes it seems like except for the most tolerable people in your life, you will have like a one-bit description for almost everybody.
Merlin: There will be this one-bit flips and you go like, oh, he's a football jock.
Merlin: Or, you know, she's a theater nerd or, you know, he's he's a nerdy programmer or whatever.
Merlin: And so most I think that's in order to survive, you know, with many, many people around us, like the older we get, the more we're instantly making one bit decisions about people about going, oh, you fit in this box, you fit in that box, you fit in that box.
Merlin: And there may be people where you get one bit plus a little bit of an axis where you go like, oh, like, you know, he's he's an I get it.
Merlin: He's a manly man actor, but he also is taking ballet.
Merlin: Ha ha.
Merlin: Isn't that interesting?
Merlin: But I think what happens is when you get too much past that one bit thing, especially with strangers, you quickly go from I get you because you're in this box to you are weird.
Merlin: And weird is when you don't understand what feels like a conflict into your apprehension of somebody.
Merlin: Like if you look at John Roderick and go like, wow, he drinks a lot.
Merlin: He dresses like a preppy.
Merlin: He does theater sports.
Merlin: And he was really trying to like make it with this girl in a turquoise belt.
Merlin: Like, you know, that just makes you weird because there's not one narrative that runs through all of that apart from the fact that it was you.
Merlin: This isn't insightful, but I think that – I think the – I feel like the way you get raised in most mainstream American culture is to quickly go from, oh, I get your one bit to like, oh, you're weird because I can't grok the multitudes within you.
John: Well, and that's why I ask –
John: If you are not a member of the tech community now, if you are a member of the post-tech community, what community would you describe yourself as most a member of?
Merlin: I used to think of myself as a blogger.
Merlin: I have thought of myself as a podcaster.
Merlin: And what's interesting or useful about those is it both describes what I do, what I like, and who I want to hang out with, which I think is what a lot of those kinds of names mean.
Merlin: So just going as a blogger.
Merlin: That used to kind of mean something because I had a pretty popular website and I knew people who had popular websites and who fucking cares, but that's that.
Merlin: And so I think that's still true today kind of with podcasting.
Merlin: I'm not super into it.
Merlin: I'm not at all into the technical aspects of it.
Merlin: I find that fatiguing.
Merlin: But I really do enjoy the genre.
Merlin: I like the people who do it by and large.
John: You don't like packet loss.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: See, that's the kind of quality issue you got to actually worry about.
Merlin: You know, I got a new modem.
Merlin: Oh, really?
Merlin: I should tell you about it later.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Three times faster than the other one.
Merlin: Can't wait to hear about it.
John: Let's talk about that offline.
Merlin: And now what about you?
Merlin: Because you seem –
Merlin: not willful, but you seem like you're pretty, well, and you've heard me say before that one reason I admire Bob Dylan and Neil Young, you name it, the kind of people who are like, as soon as somebody puts a label on them, they're like, oh, you have no idea.
Merlin: And they go and do something else.
Merlin: I really admire that even when it's self-defeating, I really admire people who are reluctant to be labeled by others.
Merlin: And that seems to me a big narrative for you is you don't like people telling you you're a fan.
Merlin: You don't like people telling you that you're this or that.
Merlin: So it must be hard sometimes to be part of a community because you seem resistant to commit to one community.
John: Yeah, and particularly because I always – after three days or five days with any community of people –
John: I always go, okay, you guys, get out of here.
John: See you later.
John: And then I go and I join another community for a little while.
John: And this experience I've had in middle age of being embraced by the nerds has been the most... Because the nerds embraced me in a way that was...
John: It was very different than indie rock.
John: Indie rock and rock and roll don't really embrace you, or at least I didn't feel embraced exactly.
John: Indie rock and rock and roll are things that you try to gain admission to, and every step of the way you feel like, every time you start to get a little comfortable, like, hey, I kind of belong here.
Merlin: But unless you're some kind of like doing outsider art and getting name checked in interviews with rock stars, it's difficult to say, you know, unless you are really being propped up by the industry and the monies in that industry, it's difficult to say you've been embraced by the community.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Or, I mean, if you're John Doe, and everywhere you go, you just feel like every rock and roll situation you walk into, you feel like you belong, right?
Merlin: I mean, Debbie Harry.
Merlin: It also helps that he doesn't mind if you don't know who he is.
Merlin: That's a wonderful quality about him.
John: And the amazing thing about John Doe is if you have no idea who he is, he looks amazing, right?
Merlin: He does, and he's genuinely super nice.
John: Super nice.
John: And so John Doe, everywhere he goes... He talks to my daughter.
Merlin: When I see him, he talks to my daughter way more than he talks to me.
John: Of course, right?
John: It's understandable.
John: I'm going to be like, oh my God, you do that Los Angeles record.
John: In a way, he's like the Sam Shepard of rock and roll.
John: Right, right, right.
John: Right?
John: He's from another era.
John: And so he belongs.
John: And I never felt... When I would walk into a rock and roll scene, and I feel like there's something just inherent in the machine of rock and roll.
John: It's not meant to embrace everybody.
John: It's an aspiration.
John: Yes.
John: But with the nerds,
John: I was like, no, no, thank you.
John: No, thank you.
John: You know, like walking through an airport and the Hare Krishna.
John: Trying to put beads on you.
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm like, no, thank you.
John: Thank you.
John: And yet they were relentless.
John: And eventually I was like, oh, I guess I am here.
John: I am a member of this.
John: That's such a great way to think of it.
John: I have so many fucking beads on me now.
John: It's a little disingenuous to claim that I'm not a part of this gang.
Yeah.
John: But, you know, every week I have three or four gatherings, even in Seattle, where I'm with a group of people that I consider my friends.
John: There's five or six of us.
John: We have a long history together.
John: We sit and talk about the old days and we make plans for the next thing that we're going to do.
John: And those people do not know anything.
John: really anything about the people that I'm going to go visit next and have that same experience with.
John: So I still am a person that is extra community and that the community, whatever community it is I'm a member of, I'm kind of the only member.
John: And that's not really the description of a community at all.
John: Not really, no.
John: So it's a, yeah, and I wonder about it, I wonder what's next, and I wonder because of this idea of the artist, and of the fact that I want to make art, and I want it to be, and I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm not a genius, but I want my art to be good.
Yeah.
John: And that was a problem for years because what I wanted to be initially was a genius.
Merlin: And to be recognized as such.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And just to make the thing that you're there to make and have people be like, this is fucking genius.
John: And when you make the thing that you're there to make and people go, hmm, that's pretty good.
Merlin: What else you got?
John: Yeah.
John: And you realize like, oh, okay, I'm not a genius.
Merlin: That's very much how it is today.
Merlin: What else you got?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, you know what I mean?
Merlin: It isn't like you can spend two years working on your latest Magnum Opus and then ride on that.
Merlin: Like, more and more, it's like, well, what are you doing in the last three months?
John: Yeah, that was pretty good.
John: That thing they made one time, that was pretty good.
John: What else you got?
Merlin: Yeah, you're like, you know, I like your stuff.
Merlin: You're three for five.
Merlin: So what are you doing next?
Merlin: You're like, wait a minute.
Merlin: Wait a minute.
Merlin: You're supposed to be lionizing something I did ten years ago.
John: But the challenge, and it seems, you know, this has handicapped me.
John: But I'm starting to recognize that really that puts a lot more emphasis on the work that you do.
John: And it makes it so that you have to really work hard to make the best thing that you can.
John: And there is a line somewhere, and I feel like I'm on it, where if you do lazy work, then what you're making just doesn't get over the hump.
Merlin: if I do lazy but there's also the sirens call and I don't want to sound cynical or like I'm being critical which I probably am but the other thing to be careful of we joked a few weeks ago about like oh you know make sure you got a big philosophy for what you're going to do before you ever fucking make anything I mean the problem is that it's become extremely easy to have a community around anything which on the face of it certainly that's a great thing it's better than the other the you know opposite but you could and I'm always you know
Merlin: having fun with the seduction community, those guys, those kinds of groups.
Merlin: But you can find yourself extremely involved in a very unproductive community, especially if it's something like, as I like to say, a Facebook group about creative productivity.
Merlin: That's a really interesting community, and every second you spend with them is taking away from what you're nominally there to be doing.
Merlin: Every time you're sitting there talking about how to neg chicks so you can bag an eight or whatever, you're sitting at a fucking computer talking to other men.
Merlin: You're not even good at the seduction community.
Merlin: What the fuck is wrong with you?
Merlin: I'm so confused.
Merlin: You don't know about nagging?
Merlin: No.
Merlin: You should join my seduction community.
John: I don't know what a seduction community is.
John: I feel so much like I know everything that somebody is going to say and then you come out with something that I just have nothing that you just said have I heard anything about.
Merlin: You should sign up for the forum.
John: Seduction community.
Merlin: Once you put it 10,000 times, you're officially a salami commander.
John: Negging chicks.
John: Yeah, I...
John: I think about the Ramones, right, who just did the same thing over and over for 40 years.
John: Right.
John: And that thing was so great that it was just – they could just keep doing it, and everybody wishes they were still alive.
Merlin: It was so elemental that the less they added to it, the better it got.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: I mean, even adding one or two minor chords is fine, but we don't need a rock opera.
Merlin: What we love about this is the two-minuteness of it.
John: Yeah, two minutes and don't get fucking too heady and don't change your clothes.
Merlin: My favorite Ramones song is a minute and 34 seconds long.
John: Right.
John: And the last four seconds is fade out.
Merlin: Now I want to have something to do.
Merlin: Now I want to sniff some glue.
Merlin: Now I want to have something to do.
Merlin: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight.
Merlin: And then they play a different part, and they go back to the first part.
John: Anyway, you're saying.
John: Well, so, but, so, I just feel, I feel increasingly like the group that I want to be a member of, the, the,
John: The real culture or community that I want to be a part of is the community of people who are making good things that no matter what you think about them or no matter what you think, and there's no pretense that it's genius, but that you look at it and you go, that is fucking well-made, good job.
John: Right.
Yeah.
John: And that is a community that I guess is like across all spheres.
Merlin: But you don't have meetings.
Merlin: That's one of those invisible ad hoc backstage before the show.
Merlin: You say, oh, yeah, I like your stuff too, all the great shows.
Merlin: But you might actually mean it because you go, oh, fuck, you did that thing?
Merlin: That was you?
Merlin: Like, wow.
Merlin: I mean, that's the greatest reaction you can get from somebody.
Merlin: I can't believe you did that.
Merlin: Right, right.
Merlin: It's not like there's meetings and do's and buttons and shit.
Merlin: You don't arrive.
Merlin: You don't get to stay there.
John: That kind of community is very informal.
John: You don't sit around every Saturday either.
John: It is very informal, and it's kind of where I have felt I've been living a little bit on the fringe of for a long time.
John: Yeah.
John: So, yeah, so this year I really hope to focus on that and focus less on feeling excluded and more on just making a place for myself.
John: in uh in the community of uh of my aspirations that's pretty good you should make that a facebook group the community of john's aspirations listen the community of john's aspirations just come on over we won't neg any chicks there is no rank of salami commander well you have to be an eight
John: If you get to be an eight on that community... Do you bring your wingman?
John: You get 24 cockblock experience points.
Merlin: Oh, happy January 19th.
Merlin: Oh, what a good day.