Ep. 307: "My Lipstick Girls"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Merlin.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Merlin.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: Roderick.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: John.
Merlin: Oh, you're way ahead of me.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's fine.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: Puts a stink on it.
Merlin: Oof.
Merlin: Minor 7th coming down, minor 7th in your face.
Merlin: Oh yeah, minor 7th with an added E-string dingus.
Merlin: You can't stop this Skype jam.
How?
Merlin: How?
John: Wow, you're full of beans.
John: Yeah, people don't give you enough credit for your singing voice.
Merlin: Oh, thank you.
Merlin: I have a very problematic voice.
Merlin: How so?
Merlin: Well, I'm glad you asked.
Merlin: My voice, I've got a weird, like when I record and stuff, it's really, it's kind of sharp.
Merlin: But I know in my head what Kia's song is in.
Merlin: This has been remarked upon by people.
Merlin: That when I do sing a song with my terrible voice that sounds like a broken soprano saxophone, which it does, because I've got sinus issues, it's not funny, it's a health condition.
Merlin: That is not, no.
Merlin: I usually know what Kia thing is in.
Merlin: I used to tune my guitar by knowing in my head what a song sounded like.
John: Oh, you could just find an A just out of the...
Merlin: Yeah, like if I... Okay, so I'm just going to try this.
Merlin: I don't know if this is right.
Merlin: I'm going to say is a D. All right, let's check it out here.
Merlin: Oh, fuck me gently.
Merlin: I might have done a G.
Merlin: It used to be.
Merlin: I've got a lot of health problems, John.
Merlin: I don't have the ears and the nose that I used to.
Merlin: But thank you for saying that.
Merlin: I listened to a lot of Smiths this weekend.
Merlin: Did you really?
Merlin: I did.
Merlin: I watched a bunch of documentaries and now I've been listening to the Smiths.
Merlin: What is it our friend says?
Merlin: Andy, what does he say?
Merlin: He always sings the second.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
John: He sings the second.
John: You can't unhear that.
John: You know, Johnny Marr just played here in Seattle, and I missed him.
John: With Eddie Vedder?
John: I don't think Eddie Vedder was there.
Merlin: Oh, they did a cover I saw on YouTube.
Merlin: I didn't.
Merlin: They did.
Merlin: There's a light that never goes out together.
John: Oh, isn't that sweet?
Merlin: Take me out tonight.
John: He came here to Seattle and did that?
Merlin: Eddie Vedder showed up?
Merlin: I'm going to look up Eddie Vedder, Johnny Marr, one of my all-time favorite Smith songs.
Merlin: Rolling Stone 20 hours ago.
Merlin: This was at the Ohana Music Festival in Dana Point, California.
Merlin: There it is.
Merlin: Not here.
Merlin: He seems like a good sport.
Merlin: Who, Eddie Vedder?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: He seems like a gamer.
John: Well, you know, Eddie Vedder, things worked out for him.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: His history's written by the Vedders.
John: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: Yeah, typical.
John: It's like he, I get the feeling that he's living his best life, which is a phrase that I had never heard before this year, and now I say it all the time.
John: Living his best life, do you think he's speaking his truth?
Yes.
John: i can't tell whether he's speaking his truth or not that's harder for me to gauge if uh if i look at somebody and i feel like they're speaking their truth that's really not a that's not a thing i feel i feel qualified to assess about another person i understand from a remove also based on one episode of portlandia he also seems to have a little bit of a sense of humor about himself because he was on portlandia and it was very funny
John: Although it's not entirely clear whether in a situation like that it is the Carrie Brownsteins who have written a thing that gives the impression of one being self-aware.
John: I don't know.
John: Trader Joe's!
John: My feeling about Pearl Jam in general around here, knowing a few of them...
John: And having interacted, I think, with all of them, the exception being, weirdly, Matt Cameron.
Merlin: I don't think I even know that name.
Merlin: Well, he's the drummer.
Merlin: Oh, okay.
Merlin: You got Eddie Vedder.
Merlin: You got the guy with the hat.
Merlin: You got the other guy.
Merlin: Jeff and Matt, right?
Merlin: Yes.
John: Yep.
John: But it's funny because you would think that Matt Cameron, being the drummer for Pearl Jam and Soundgarden,
John: that uh that i would have had some interaction with him i've certainly seen him but every one of the other members of the band i've had you know more than just encounters all the way to interactions hang not hangs exactly you had you have anecdotes but vet vetter and i have hung we've hung i walked into a room one time and uh eddie vetter turned and said john
John: Hmm.
John: How's that?
Merlin: How do you like that?
Merlin: He knows your name.
Merlin: That's nice.
Merlin: You know, isn't that nice?
Merlin: It's super nice because I don't remember names.
Merlin: Bono wouldn't remember my name.
Merlin: I almost exclusively choose friends named John just to deal with this.
Merlin: Well, it's easy to do.
John: But when I think of Pearl Jam and their fans and the entire operation, the entire grouping of
John: That falls under the heading Pearl Jam and Associates.
John: Yes.
John: Everything that's Pearl Jam adjacent.
John: The first word that comes to mind is not...
Merlin: funny i've been sitting on this because you were talking i'm sitting i'm turning it over my head i've been turning it over and over why they did not connect with me hardly at all most of the time and the thing that kept coming into my head while you were speaking and i was listening was i think they seemed a little too serious
Merlin: Now, I'm not against serious music.
Merlin: I'm not even against pretentious music in the good way.
Merlin: You love serious and pretentious music.
Merlin: I do, la la la.
Merlin: But I don't know if Morrissey seems to have a little bit of a sense of humor about himself.
Merlin: But they seemed at the time a little too serious for what they were doing.
Merlin: I don't mean it as a slam.
John: No, no, no.
Merlin: No, not a slam.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But you got to do that.
Merlin: You got to walk the walk of whatever your genre is.
Merlin: Like Joe Strummer doesn't want you to know he's pretty like solidly upper middle class.
Merlin: That's not on brand for The Clash.
John: No, it is not.
Merlin: No.
Merlin: Only time he got lost in the supermarket is when his mom took him there.
Merlin: Am I right?
Merlin: It was.
John: Mm hmm.
Merlin: Heard that.
John: It was extremely difficult at that time in that place to know exactly how to be.
John: I have to I have to say that because as we've talked about before, I was there also.
John: I did not know how to be.
John: They had a lot of a lot more pressure on them than I did, although it's really hard to gauge how much pressure a person feels.
Merlin: Well, you're opening the books on the things that you don't or can't know, and I want to send you aloha for that.
Merlin: Yeah, I cannot know how much pressure they felt.
John: I can only know how much pressure I felt.
Merlin: but i remember at the time feeling like everyone in seattle was too fucking serious about what they were doing you know it's just like murder city devils where were they from they were from seattle murder city they seemed very like on the one hand they kind of when i saw them i saw them up on the hill one time and i remember thinking like like they were like okay who was that band that i liked in the 90s they did the girl you're a woman now
Merlin: Oh, it's an urge overkill.
Merlin: A band like that, they pretended they were being serious about themselves, but they were basically silly.
Merlin: Sure, you can't be serious about yourself in those outfits.
Merlin: Well, I think they were having fun with it.
Merlin: They were sort of... That's not anywhere near their best song, but that's okay.
Merlin: They didn't even write that song.
Merlin: No, no, it's Dusty Springfield?
Merlin: No, that's your man, Neil Diamond.
Merlin: Neil Diamond.
Merlin: I should know that.
Merlin: We haven't cursed.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the line is brought to you in part by Slack.
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Merlin: It's been hugely useful to me, and it's a lot of fun.
Merlin: I use it for podcasts that I do.
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Merlin: Where did that bell come from?
Merlin: That's like a hotel bell.
Merlin: That is when the text is read.
Merlin: In the read, it is said, one must hit the bed and not curse for 30 seconds.
Merlin: On either side.
Merlin: I think we're probably good.
John: Um, now see, no, I don't have, I don't have, I feel like we just went on a Nantucket sleigh ride and I don't know whether I'm the whale or the boat or the rope.
John: You could be the squid.
Merlin: Um,
Merlin: You could be the chestnut on the open fire.
Merlin: I don't have a unified field theory about this, but you take an urge overkill, they act like they're serious, but they're having fun with it.
John: I saw them in a small club early on in their touring life, and they showed up, and they were wearing jumpsuits and big sunglasses and high-heeled boots and the whole thing.
John: And they the entire night, you know, it's a small bar.
John: Sister Havana.
John: That's the song I like.
John: That's the one you like.
John: I like that song.
John: They, you know, they hung out in the bar and then they got up and they played their show and there was a nice crowd and everybody was very appreciative.
John: And the entire time they never broke character, which was that they were kind of like.
Merlin: really really um uh cool i i think there's a double turns out i bet the double turns out is they're a little they're they seem serious but they're acting silly but i bet they were ultimately very serious and i wouldn't be surprised if they did drugs uh i think that they did drugs when i was in ken stringfellow's band and this is a time when you and i met one another this is literally when we met uh on that same tour um
John: That's a good album.
John: Still a good album.
John: Yeah, it's a nice album.
John: That Ken Stringfellow touched album.
Merlin: Was it Down Like Me?
Merlin: Is that that song I like?
John: That was a great song, Down Like Me.
John: That's such a good song.
John: Urge Overkill came to the show.
John: Nash Kato came to the Ken Stringfellow show in Chicago.
John: And it was a very funny scene being on tour with Ken at that time.
John: Because when we played in Minneapolis, all of the Babes in Toyland gals came.
John: And then when we played in Chicago, the Urge Overkill dudes.
John: And it was just like a slice of life scene.
Merlin: of bands that had been popular, but not that popular in 19... But the Posies, weren't the Posies, when you say a little bit of a band's band, I mean, they got big with that one record and kind of with that other record, but they were always kind of like a band that bands like, right?
Merlin: I mean, they were very accomplished.
John: You know, I don't know.
John: It's hard for me, you know, from my perspective...
John: which is the only one I can really speak from.
John: Oh, God, I love this new John.
Merlin: It's October John.
John: I did not see the Posies as a musician's band as much as I saw them as a band for people.
John: Let's see.
John: I saw them as a band for gals that wore flowery
John: dresses, high-waisted dresses and combat boots, but not exactly the kind that I liked.
John: The other kind where the dresses were rayon and the girls... John, that is nuanced.
John: The girls parted their hair in the middle and wore their hair straight.
John: You know, I liked a cotton dress.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Where the girls had kind of... And a big shock of curly hair.
John: Yeah, like Lola Brigida hair.
John: Yes, yes.
John: And the posies had... The girls that liked the posies had really straight hair, like really like ironed, and they smoked...
John: Not like Marlboro's, which is the kind of girl that I like, but they smoke like some kind of fancy cigarettes.
John: What's that one?
John: American Apparel?
John: What's the one everybody smokes?
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, no.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, American Spirit.
John: Yeah.
John: And those came along right about in that era.
Merlin: They got big.
John: And this is before menthol got popular.
John: No, menthol's never.
John: No.
John: I mean, menthol's always been.
Merlin: Most people I know smoke menthol did it so nobody would bump cigarettes off them.
Merlin: It's a prison trick.
Merlin: Yeah, that's a terrible trick, though.
Merlin: Dishwashers.
Merlin: Dishwashers always smoked.
Merlin: They call them Newports.
Merlin: Yeah, it's like smoking that gasoline weed.
Merlin: So you got over here, you got the Posies fans, which are gals in rayon dresses and straight prep school hair.
Merlin: And then over here, you've got the combat booted Jewesses with the tangle and totally, totally different cigarettes.
John: Yeah.
John: The, the girls, uh, the tangled girls, like the, uh, the girls that I liked wore their lipstick was too red.
John: Whereas the posies girls wore lipstick that was too purple.
John: You know, it was too dark.
John: Both, both lipsticks were too dark.
John: But my lipstick girls were... It was too bright.
John: It was like 50s red.
John: I know.
John: It's a very bluish red.
John: They were trying to throw something at us with some 50s red lips and dyed black curly hair.
John: And then the Posey's side was like...
John: like, like purple magenta lips.
John: And so it was a whole different scene.
John: Whole different scene.
John: Okay.
John: Um, but so the, but the bands that came out to see Ken when we were on tour were obviously bands that had, that they had run into each other in the world during the era when everybody was looking at that kind of music and trying to squeeze it for whatever they could get, you know?
John: And and so those bands all like I think they felt a common bond in that they'd been they had been squeezed.
John: But also, you know, like who had who'd really well, how much juice had anyone really gotten out?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's kind of like a rock and roll support group.
Merlin: Like you might these are bands that you might have seen at Lollapalooza and really liked and maybe seen on 120 minutes.
Merlin: But there was probably not a poster of them like on your block anywhere.
John: Yeah, maybe there was a poster for that one movie that had all those bands on the soundtrack.
John: That one band?
John: I know the one you mean.
John: I know the reality sucks.
Merlin: The reality fights.
John: If you had that on your wall, then effectively, like Ken could come into your dorm and say, oh, I see you have my poster on your wall.
John: And the girl would go, huh?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's a vampire loophole.
Merlin: If you have put up a poster that features, it could be Austin Powers, anything where he's had music that appeared in the movie, you technically do not have to invite him in.
Merlin: He could just slide in through your window.
John: That's right.
John: And you wouldn't know in the morning.
Merlin: Why is there dirt in my bed?
Merlin: He sleeps better that way.
John: My band on your wall.
John: But everyone was so fucking serious.
John: But there's different seriousness, right?
John: Oh, sing it, sister.
John: Nirvana had what you would call, I think, a sense of humor about themselves, although not really.
John: But definitely more than you would have said Pearl Jam had a sense of humor.
Merlin: I think very much so.
Merlin: I mean, I think the on-brand music video version of them might have been kind of serious, but they did not shy away from a certain amount of a remove, whether that's Chris Novoselic having a baseball on his head or the spinning mirror ball at their concerts.
Merlin: They were having fun with it.
John: Well, yeah, except nothing was fun.
John: No.
John: Remember?
John: I do remember it wasn't allowed to be fun.
John: No, we weren't allowed to have fun.
John: And so all of that was ironic, ironic.
Merlin: fun it looked it was supposed to look like what fun was supposed to look like the matador bands this is why i this is why i like the north carolina bands like they were they were silly and they were fun like there was a whole bunch of like bands like dressed like robots like there was all kinds of people having fun in the 90s but it all got like it was all obscured by these by these guys you know with fur hats i know you were front and center at the aquabat show i was i
Merlin: High woe is there was Manor Astro Man that used to come through town all the time that was consistently super-duper fun.
Merlin: Like, really good musicians, but a great stage show in this tiny little bar we used to go to.
Merlin: I'm sorry, I'm taking off your tap.
Merlin: Aquabats are also really good musicians.
Merlin: Aren't Aquabats a kid's band?
Merlin: Oh, Aquabats.
Merlin: Who am I thinking of?
Merlin: Am I thinking of Wiggle Man?
John: Who am I thinking of?
John: Yeah, the Wiggles.
John: Oh, that's it, Wiggles.
John: You know, maybe the Aquabats turned into a kid's band.
Merlin: Wiggle Man or Astro Man.
Merlin: They were not a kid's band.
John: Oh, and remember Dread Zeppelin?
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: I saw Dread Zeppelin when I was in college.
Merlin: Dread Zeppelin.
Merlin: Dread Zeppelin.
Merlin: They were having a little too much fun with it.
Merlin: That was pretty fun.
Merlin: That was an interesting time.
Merlin: The late 80s were a really good time.
Merlin: I'm not going to talk about it because I don't like telling you about bands that I like.
Merlin: I've recently discovered this band from New Zealand that I'm utterly obsessed with who writes just...
Merlin: I said on Twitter yesterday that this album would have been my favorite album in 1990, because it's almost everything I love, pretty much everything I love about late 80s, early 90s indie pop.
Merlin: I mean, just unapologetic hooks, but so much fun.
Merlin: Great voice.
Merlin: And I miss that time.
Merlin: You see this if you ever look at my Spotify list I make for the show.
Merlin: I miss that time.
Merlin: I miss...
Merlin: I miss throwing muses.
Merlin: I miss the breeders.
Merlin: Don't you think the breeders were having fun?
Merlin: No!
Merlin: Well, I mean, they had the heroin.
Merlin: No, they were so on drugs.
Merlin: But apart from the drugs, wasn't there fun?
John: No.
John: I do not believe that.
John: This is my critique of Generation X. All right.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Are you ready?
Merlin: Yeah, I think so.
Merlin: I'm going to have some more coffee.
Merlin: Okay, John, as much as you can say, in your newly revealed, nuanced, open books, October mode, tell me a little bit about the times.
Merlin: What was going on back then?
John: Well, Merlin, let me explain a little bit of the Generation X backstory.
John: You were there for this.
John: I was.
John: I was right in the thick of it, and I feel like I can speak to this.
John: You've got some time, some distance from it.
John: I have, and I've spent a little time with it.
John: I've met other Generation X people and talked to them about their experience, strength, and hope.
John: In the wild, man on the street.
John: I run into them.
John: I recognize them because of our secret signals and because of the brand.
John: Hold up a copy of Might magazine.
John: I do.
John: I squeeze a little lemon juice on them, and you can see their runes.
John: No, Generation X never... Generation X, our entire philosophy, our entire way of looking at the world was 100% reactionary.
John: All we did was react to what had come before with either disdain or fear or contempt or really...
John: all reactions in that family we did not we were to to almost to a person we were totally fine to live down to the lack of expectations that people have presented for us well that but we were also i think traumatized by the cold war constantly nuclear the the nuclear and the nuclears are always poised and so we did not believe that there was much of a future there was no hope for the future yeah
John: We did not believe in capitalism.
John: We saw through capitalism and realized that it was a dead end and like life destroying force.
John: But we also watched the death of, you know, the global death of what had been international communism.
John: It seemed like a like a dead end.
Merlin: We were there for the the wide rollout for the rise of irony.
John: Yep.
John: It was we were we were front and center.
John: We saw the baby boomers had created cool things and.
John: Cool music and cool ideas, but then we watch them squander it, just squander it, and turn into the worst, most bloated, dead-eyed generation in history.
John: So although we had the legacy of their great music and their great sort of cultural moment...
John: We also sort of felt nostalgia for a time before they'd come and ruined everything with their fat, stupid faces.
John: We lived just in the shadow.
Merlin: And they wouldn't go away.
Merlin: They wouldn't go away.
Merlin: They kept sucking up all the air.
Merlin: Yes, but I mean, not to shoot fish in a barrel here, but just the Rolling Stones alone.
Merlin: It's like, guys, how can I love you if you don't go away?
John: Knock it off.
John: We love your music stuff.
Merlin: I want to love you.
Merlin: I want to paint it black.
Merlin: I see a red door, and I want you to stop doing albums, please.
John: We don't want these steel wheelses.
Merlin: No, keep your wheels.
John: We do not want them, Sam.
John: We came just after Kennedy, Martin Luther King.
John: We came just after the Civil Rights Movement, just after all the excitement of the mid-20th century.
John: After all of those things had been ruined and murdered and set on fire.
John: And so we never developed a forward motion or a philosophy of our own.
John: Our philosophy as a generation was just that everything else sucked or was ruined.
John: And so we came into middle age feeling like that was sufficient and
John: Like we still were wise somehow because we knew that everything sucked.
John: And the latest generation, the millenniums, did not have that...
Merlin: baggage and the millenniums have developed a philosophy of life and of the world like they it's a fundamentally different view of the world that we did not were never capable of coming up with as a people they have what i can what i perceive to be forward motion they have a plan and they have a they're not they're they're like part of the defining feels like from a remove part of the defining characteristic is not counting on the past or the present
Merlin: To help you with pretty much anything.
Merlin: There's so little that we can count on.
Merlin: The things that historically we've been able to count on.
Merlin: And that goes in a million different ways.
Merlin: But just basically whatever.
Merlin: Like what's on Spotify now, I'll never own a house.
John: And what intrigues me is that they have a lot of the same contempt that we have for past processes.
John: But they don't have the resignation that we had.
John: They don't have that feeling that we had, which was like, ugh.
Merlin: Like in 1990, did you think apartheid was going to end anytime soon?
Merlin: I just assumed apartheid would just always go on forever.
John: And so we were set against it, and when it went away, we just kind of turned whatever we were against about apartheid and turned it to something else, right?
John: We were always against the status quo, but never really articulated a future beyond...
John: Not what was right.
John: Just the future.
John: Our future version was like, well, not this.
John: And you still see that a lot.
John: You see that a lot in the in the left, which is like, not this.
John: It's like, well, then what?
John: Well, not this.
John: Not this is better than this.
John: And it's like, no, actually, something is better than this.
Merlin: But it has to be permanently.
Merlin: We're permanently 19 years old.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: That sense of being 19 and having that world weariness about everything that you've been through.
Merlin: But like, you know, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: You know, the millenniums, they're old souls.
John: Well, I don't know about that.
John: I mean, you know, I disagree with a lot of... Say what you will about the tenets of millennialism, but at least it's an ethos.
John: But it is an ethos.
John: And what I watch is a lot of Generation X people start to adopt millennium ethos
John: Because they never had – they never developed their own ethos.
John: And that's what makes – I'm so frustrated with Generation X because we have – we could be helpful now and we're not.
John: We're just paralyzed by the fact that we never came up with anything.
John: And so we're sitting around and it's like, oh, so now I'm the middle-aged one that's a problem?
John: That's not, I'm the ironic one with the backwards baseball hat.
John: And, and there's no, we don't have anything to stand, to stand for and say like, well, no, we're in favor of this because we never were in favor of anything.
John: All we were in favor of was like, you know, like more, like less distortion or whatever.
John: Like we didn't even like distortion, which was the thing we had invented.
John: Yeah.
John: I mean, not invented, but we perfected distortion and then hated ourselves for even that.
John: We made distortion scale.
John: Come on.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: Anyway, so here we are.
John: And now you still want me to think that Morrissey is good.
John: I mean, you know, dogs and cats sleeping together.
Merlin: Well, let's leave that.
Merlin: So you're playing with Ken Stringfellow.
John: Yeah.
John: I never met Matt Cameron in all the days.
John: Still.
John: I've seen him.
John: I've seen him.
John: He's walked past me a bunch of times.
Merlin: Look at a Kurt Block.
Merlin: Look at a Kurt Block.
Merlin: That guy's having fun.
Merlin: Kurt Block is having fun.
Merlin: He's having so... He can't stop jumping.
Merlin: He's having so much fun.
John: But here's the thing about Kurt Block.
Merlin: I cannot get... So Kurt and I hung out two days ago.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: You introduced me to him.
Merlin: It was one of the greatest days of my life.
Merlin: Yeah, I went over... It was all I could do.
Merlin: Not to just go all out about like, oh, man, still there's hope for everything.
Merlin: God, I love that guy.
Merlin: Oof.
John: He's one of the greats.
John: And he and I were hanging out and, you know, I've known Kirk for 35 years.
John: But I still cannot entirely get inside the head of Kirk Block.
John: I can get inside the hat of Jeff Ament.
John: It's a big hat.
John: It's a very large hat.
John: And I know what's in there.
John: I know what's in there.
Merlin: Kirk Block has a quality.
Merlin: He has a quality to him.
Merlin: He has a, one might say, childlike quality.
Merlin: But how does one say in a way that one won't mind being yelled at on the Internet later?
Merlin: But he has, let's say, a childlike quality.
John: He does, but also extremely perceptive, acute intelligence.
John: And so if you ever, if you ever like...
John: What what ends up happening with Kurt block is that he people underestimate him because they see him on stage and he's like wahoo Right, and they're like wow what a fun guy, but then he's also like got a lot going on He's a complicated man with a lot of smarts But he also is in touch with the side of himself that will wear
John: uh, that will wear kind of ridiculous sideburns for a while just because, because why not?
John: Because they're fun.
John: Why not?
John: And then he'll go through a phase where he's like, uh, you know, from now on, uh, when you ask me how I'm doing, I'm going to say zibbity zap.
John: That's what I'm going to say for the next month.
John: When you say, how's it going?
John: I'm going to say zibbity zap.
John: Zibbity zap.
John: Zibbity zap.
John: And everybody goes, Kurt Block, he says zibbity zap.
John: But then, you know, he doesn't.
John: If you come up to him a year later and say zibbity zap, he'll remember.
John: He'll be like, yeah, zibbity zap, but it's not what he's into now.
John: It's very, I admire it very much, but I cannot access it inside.
John: I cannot have that much fun.
Merlin: I don't know why.
Merlin: Another thing you're aware of that you don't have access to.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You seem very self-aware this week.
John: Well, you know, how do you learn to have access?
John: So my sister brought me a book, or no, I'm sorry, not brought me, gave me for my birthday a
John: get this, right?
John: Here it is.
John: It's my birthday.
John: It's my 50th birthday.
John: Here it is.
John: It's looming here.
John: What are you going to get me for my 50th birthday?
John: I'm a guy, it's hard to buy presents for me, right?
John: What are you going to get me?
John: You know, 50th birthday.
John: It's got to, you know, you don't give me nothing.
John: I'm feeling the pressure.
John: I'm feeling the pressure right now.
John: I got one of those coming up in my household.
John: Yeah.
John: You're going to give me a scarf.
John: You're going to get me a, what is it going to be?
John: You're going to give me a Derringer.
John: I mean, and so here's what my sister gets me.
John: It didn't arrive in time for my birthday.
John: It showed up at my door a couple of days later.
John: She got me a book, which happens to be a book that she likes, which is a self-help book.
John: Okay.
John: So right there, you're like, get someone a self-help book for their 50th birthday.
John: Kind of like buying somebody soap.
John: It's a little bit.
John: I think you'd like this.
John: It's a little bit like, yeah, buying somebody like a fragrance.
Merlin: I got you this because I love you.
John: And she got me a book called The Presence Process.
John: Okay.
John: Which she handed me or which arrived in the mail.
John: And then she explained, listen, the presence process is really hard to read because it reads like it was written for a five year old and you will hate it and be really frustrated by it.
John: But there's a lot of wisdom in it about living in the moment.
John: And so I received this book as a, I received this as a present, which feels not quite like a present.
John: So the presence process was sitting on the table in my living room.
John: And I would walk past and I would look at it and I would think about, this is a self-help book written for a five-year-old, but I need to read it.
John: I need to wade through it somehow to find the germ of an idea.
John: I feel like maybe if I just Googled the presence process and read the Wikipedia page.
John: Yeah, that's what I just did.
John: Right?
John: Solve the issue for me, not have to read it.
John: You can visit thepresenceprocessportal.com.
John: Yeah.
John: I'm not likely to do that either.
John: So my mom comes through.
John: It's lavender.
John: Yeah, it's lavender.
John: It looks like a vanity press box.
John: perfect bound book, right?
John: That somebody just printed off a bunch of Kinko's.
John: Okay.
John: So my, my mom comes through the room and she says, Oh, you've got the presence process.
John: Did Susan give that to you?
John: And I said, yeah.
John: And she said, oh, well, you're going to hate it.
John: And I'm like, yeah, I've heard.
John: And she says, yeah, but it's, you know, it's got interesting things in there.
John: It's just written for a five-year-old.
John: And I go, yeah, yeah, I've heard all this.
John: And so then the next day my mom shows up with a different book.
John: Oh.
John: And she says, this book is also a book.
John: difficult to read and you will hate it.
John: Eckhart Tolle.
John: Uh, no, let's see.
John: Uh, it's, uh, I don't, I don't have it right here.
John: Jonathan Livingston Siegel.
John: No, I've read that and I enjoyed that, but I, you know, I was 10.
John: Um, no, it was another book in the, in the same family
John: of the presence process.
John: Like mindfulness?
John: Something about mindfulness, right?
John: Something about mindfulness.
John: Oh, I'm dying to know.
John: And so my mom says, you know, you need to read this book and this will help you
John: Read the presence process because once you've read this book, then you will be able to.
John: So here I looked up the presence process and I'm looking at some books here.
John: The completion process.
John: Yeah, I saw that.
John: Alchemy of the heart.
John: Alchemy of the heart.
John: We've got loving what is.
John: We've got walking with the tiger.
John: No, waking the tiger.
John: Heart.
John: A New Earth, Awakening Your Life's Purpose.
John: That's your Eckhart Tolle.
John: You've got The Stillness Speaks, another Tolle.
John: Oh, he's written a lot of these books.
John: The Power of Now.
Merlin: The Power of Now is what I would have guessed.
Merlin: But now I'm guessing it might be something like a Jon Kabat-Zinn book.
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Or some kind of like one of the classic mindfulness books.
Merlin: A mindful book.
Merlin: Maybe a Pima Chodron.
Merlin: A Pima Chodron, sure.
Merlin: She's got two diureses in her last name.
John: I'll take two Pima Chodrons and a diureses to go.
John: Could I get a venti diuresis?
Merlin: And is that a Pima Chodron?
Merlin: At this point, you've got two books to read.
Merlin: You read one book so you can read the other book.
Merlin: Are you just hoping against hope at this point that somebody does not introduce a third book that you need to read before the one your mom gave you?
John: Well, I put the two books together hoping they would cancel each other out and create like a portal to another world.
John: It didn't happen.
Merlin: Self-help antimatter?
John: I was like... And then I could see through like a vibrating circle.
John: So then my mom sat down and she said, here's what you need to do, which is one of her favorite ways of starting a sentence.
John: Here's what you need to do.
John: She sells it though.
Merlin: she's not just some dingling coming along like she's she's she often has a plan well my sister too and i've heard them both lay out many a plan for me this is this is not a new one this is a we're revisiting a long-standing plan for me this is very unmindful to be trying to fix like how you were when you were 13 but well for sure so you should give them a book about acceptance
Merlin: But first you need to read this.
John: So I end up sitting.
John: I sit and I have to do that thing where I do not allow my eyes to unfocus because you can see when my eyes unfocus.
John: And when you become conscious that my eyes have unfocused, then it's like, am I boring you?
John: You know, I get this from my sister or my mom.
John: Like, am I boring you?
John: You get slightly slack-jawed.
John: You get slightly slack-jawed, too.
John: I cannot say you are boring me because a world of hurt will descend upon me.
John: So I have to keep my eyes partially enough focused that they appear to be...
John: listening okay but also i have to fly fly fly far far away over the mountains where i where my spirit can can live and not and not be too present not be like have this enforced presence yeah there's such a thing as being too present for sure so what my mom says is listen all those voices in your head and i'm like
John: that are telling you bad things and i'm like go on she's like the one that is telling you that you know that one day you're going to end up in the back of a cop car with a bag over your head yeah there's that one for sure i call him rudy and she's like shut up rudy you know the other voices that tell you that everything you've done is for shit and i'm like yep yep i got that one he's standing right next to oh you'll never do anything worth remembering
John: Never do anything worth remembering.
John: That's right.
John: Everything you touch turns to garbage.
John: All those voices.
John: And I'm like, yep.
John: She's like.
Merlin: It's like the world's saddest barbershop quartet.
John: And she's like, and then there's the voice.
John: You're gonna die alone.
John: Then there's the watcher.
John: And I'm like, yeah, I know the watcher too.
John: There's the watcher.
John: That's, you know, I like to, I like.
John: I like to think of him as Wolfgang, right?
John: He's Wolfgang.
John: He sits up in the chair.
Merlin: Well, Wolfgang the Watcher, sure.
John: Wolfgang the Watcher.
John: And she says, that's your real self.
John: And I'm like, oh boy, here we go.
John: Tell me more about my real self.
John: The watcher, you need to stand with the watcher and the one that's like worried about the bag over his head in the back of a cop car.
John: And I'm like, there it is again.
John: He's right there.
John: She's like, no, no, no.
John: The watcher is the one that knows that that guy is not the watcher, not the run.
John: And I'm just like, I'm so far away.
John: I'm flying with the eagle so far, so many mountains away.
Yeah.
Merlin: At this point, how were you selling it with your eyes?
Merlin: Were you still present in the room as far as your eyes were telling?
Merlin: Not really.
John: I mean, I wasn't doing the thing where I was looking over her shoulder at the clock.
John: Focus on one eyebrow.
Merlin: That's another good one.
John: Yeah, I was in there.
John: But here's what I know about my mom and sister is once I'm past...
John: the point where they're watching me carefully to see if I'm checked out, they get off into a reverie where they're actually not really paying that much attention to me anymore because they're expounding.
John: They're getting into expositional mode where I can actually start to – I can't look at my phone.
John: I can't really stare at the floor, but I can look away if I keep nodding.
John: If I keep nodding, I can look away.
Merlin: They're the apex predator, and you're the deer.
Merlin: If you just stay very still, you might be okay.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: If I make, like, affirmative mouth noises, like, oh.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: A little bit of, I do quite a bit of that.
John: I'm noticing, like, hmm.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: If I keep doing that, if I never go, like, well, if I never make that sound, like, mm-hmm.
John: Because that's when they pounce.
John: Yeah.
John: If you're like, yeah, they go, what, what?
John: That's like, no, no, no, I don't want that.
John: I do not want to engage on this.
Merlin: So you remember when she talked about the watcher and the watchers who you really are in the stack.
John: So I was driving today.
John: I was driving today and I did the thing that every once in a while happens, which is I go, I'm back to one of the candidate debates in the city council race from 2015.
John: And I'm sitting up at a dais.
John: This is my imagination.
John: I could be, you know, I could be sitting on a beach somewhere.
John: I could be flying over the mountaintops or I could be sitting counting all the money that one day I'm going to make.
John: But instead, I'm sitting at a dais.
John: three and a half years ago with a bunch of people quizzing me about what I'm going to do about the sidewalk.
Merlin: You're Billy Pilgrim.
Merlin: You're on Stuck in Time.
John: I'm stuck in time.
Merlin: Don't you think a little bit?
Merlin: You suddenly realize it's not that time.
Merlin: You go, oh, I got really deep.
Merlin: You might as well have been there.
John: I was absolutely there.
John: But I was revisiting the things that I'd said during the debate that I could have said more betterly.
John: And then all of a sudden the watcher is like,
John: I am the watcher.
John: You are not in a cop car with a bag over your head.
John: You are driving in a car many years later.
John: And I'm like, right, right, right, right, right, right.
John: Not relitigating that moment.
John: I'm back here.
John: I'm here.
John: I'm watching.
John: I haven't even read these books.
John: I haven't even read the book I need to read to read the book.
John: But you put them near each other.
John: I did.
John: Well, they're not near enough together that I could see the titles of them both.
John: I see the presence process is right here.
John: I'm going to reach for it.
John: Oh, I can't reach it.
John: That's okay.
John: You can go get it.
John: It's going to reach around.
John: It's got a little bit of a reach around.
John: The presence process reach around.
John: I'm just going to put in a ding here.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Squarespace.
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John: Ah, there it is.
Merlin: And we're back.
Merlin: I got it.
Merlin: You got it.
John: Got it in one.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Personal peace is not given to us by others.
John: It arises through our response to ourselves.
John: I'm not sure if that applies to what I was saying earlier, but...
John: Oh, Michael Brown is South African.
John: So that ties back into the South African reference you made earlier to apartheid.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: He lived a blissfully unconscious life.
John: I never had that.
John: So he already was ahead of me before he even started this.
John: because he was blissful he said he said leave it he says i don't want that bliss give me a different kind of give me a different kind of life i didn't have blissful unconsciousness so i feel like that's what i'm i'm striving for why did he not like it oh that's a lot of my day a lot of my day is seeking blissful unconsciousness he was impacted by an acutely painful neurological condition that's why that threw him out of his blissful unconscious okay
John: His only choice was to alter the quality of his experience or live in continual suffering.
John: Oh, I see.
John: So this is like he had he was motivated.
John: That must have been a tough morning when he realized that.
John: I mean, think about that.
John: You're sitting there.
John: You and I are just trying to achieve blissful unconscious.
John: And then we're struck by.
Merlin: Yeah, you get some kind of like super arthritis or something.
John: Well, it didn't say he was struck.
John: It said he was impacted.
John: I don't care for that.
Merlin: No, that's a weird choice of word.
Merlin: No, the only thing that gets impacted is teeth.
John: Don't use that as a verb.
John: And if he wrote that, then that makes me wonder about this whole, is that what they mean by written for a fifth grader?
John: Like he uses words like impacted weirdly?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: This is a trope.
Merlin: There's another one.
Merlin: There's a famous turns out book.
Merlin: That's actually not too bad.
Merlin: But there's a famous turns out book written by a guy who had a bunch of sort of revelations when he was recovering from terrible, terrible burns over most of his body.
Merlin: And it's one of the good turns out books because he realized that when in this case, because it's important, you got to have this story.
Merlin: This is like, we invented eBay for Pez dispensers.
Merlin: And his story, which I think I have no reason to believe is not true, was that he had discovered that his nurses, in trying to be nice to him and taking off his dressings, realized that the best nurses were the ones who took it off really fast.
Merlin: It hurt super intensely.
Merlin: And then he could get on.
Merlin: But he has all kinds of turns outs.
Merlin: I think his name's Dan Arietti, I want to say.
John: Well, you know, I am a total proponent of the rip the Band-Aid off.
John: Yeah.
John: Like, that's my number one philosophy.
Yeah.
John: Rip that Band-Aid off.
John: Feel it.
John: Hard.
Merlin: Oh, I know.
Merlin: And then get on.
Merlin: Scald those balls.
John: Yeah, that's right.
John: But where the fuck is the blissful unconscious that comes from that?
Merlin: Predictably irrational.
Merlin: Predictably irrational.
Merlin: The hidden forces that shape our decisions.
Merlin: Predictably irrational.
Merlin: You should read the other books.
Merlin: I feel like... You should read that Watchmen I sent you.
John: You should read Watchmen.
John: Every single girl that I've dated in the last 35 years shows up with a predictably irrational t-shirt on.
John: Predictably irrational.
John: Hello.
John: Oh, it's you again, huh?
John: I'll have a double Americano and whatever you're having.
John: What color lipstick is that?
John: Your hair is not naturally black, is it?
John: No.
John: What time do you get off?
John: Anytime I want.
John: So... How long before you can put a bag on my head and put me in the backseat of a car?
Merlin: Is that dress made of felt?
Merlin: Wait, I even did the joke wrong.
Merlin: Is that dress felt?
Merlin: Is that dress felt?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Is...
Merlin: This is why I can't get laid.
Merlin: Excuse me, miss.
Merlin: Is that dress made of felt?
Merlin: It would look better on my floor.
Merlin: Let me start over.
Merlin: So you're in your truck.
Merlin: You're in your truck.
Merlin: You're driving around.
Merlin: I was in the Jetta this morning, and I have to say... The watcher appears and says, this is just, you're the sky, not the weather.
John: That's right.
John: You're the sky, not the weather.
John: You're the, you know, be the ball.
John: See the ball.
John: Be the ball.
Merlin: It's hard to be the ball when you keep talking.
Merlin: Cinderella's story, tears in his eyes, I guess.
Merlin: Here he is at Augusta.
John: Anyways, wow.
John: So, yeah.
John: Well, so I was in the Jetta this morning, and I realized... Two-door or four-door?
Merlin: Four-door Jetta.
Merlin: Four-door Jetta.
Merlin: We got a Jetta wagon.
Merlin: No, no, no.
John: It's not a wagon.
John: It's a sedan.
John: That's what we have.
John: We have a wagon.
John: But it's got the hot motor.
John: But earlier this year, and I'm talking about in May...
John: The windshield wipers started to, the windshield wipers were trashed in May.
John: And I was like, oh, I got to replace the windshield wipers, which is an easy job.
John: All you have to do is pull over and buy some windshield wipers and put them on there.
John: But from May until the present, it has not in Seattle rained at all.
John: Such that through the entire period from May till now, I did not ever find cause to actually go change the windshield wipers.
John: Now, that is insane.
John: That seems pretty off brand for Seattle.
John: That is insane.
John: And so and all of us that that note the weather, which is to say all of us old people.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Right before the cops come and put a bag over our heads.
John: So I'm driving today and today it's the first real rain of the year.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And as it's the first real rain, I came around a corner today and there was a car which had skidded out and crashed into a barrier and was sitting there with the hood munched and steam coming up.
John: And I was like, oh, that makes me feel terrible.
John: Because that person was just driving like they've been driving every day to work since May.
John: Yeah, they're for the grace of God.
John: They took that corner at the same speed they've been taking it for months, and they forgot that when it first rains, the streets are very slick.
John: It liberates all that oil that's been sitting on the road.
John: It liberates the oil, and they crashed into a barrier, and it was like, as I drove past, I was like, oh, this day sucks for them.
John: And that feels bad.
John: It was a one-car accident.
John: It wasn't anybody's fault.
John: They just took the corner a little too fast.
John: Feels bad.
John: But so then I'm driving and I turn the windshield wipers on and I realize, oh, the windshield wipers.
John: I mean, it basically looks like a flappers dress now because there's so the windshield wipers.
John: They're so no, they're so frayed.
John: Yeah, it's basically like it's basically like a fringe jacket.
John: I feel like I'm in the birds or something because my windshield wipers have all these these feathers.
John: Yeah.
John: And, uh, and I'm driving along, so I'm like, well, I can't use the windshield wipers cause that's, so I have to, I put them on the setting where they went every like minute and I'm driving down the road and I'm thinking people are spinning out, uh, right and left and I'm, and I am driving with no windshield wipers.
John: Um, this is where I'm at.
John: This is where I'm at in life.
John: This is my presence process.
John: I can't afford to be thinking of being in the back of a cop car with a bag on my head because I am in a present emergency.
John: Yeah.
John: It's a minor, minor, minor league emergency, but it's requiring my full attention.
John: And that's what I have found lately is the solution.
John: And that's why that motorcycle trip was so great.
John: It was six straight days where what I was doing required my full attention.
John: Daniel Kahn recalls System 2 Thinking.
John: Now tell me more about System 2 Thinking.
Merlin: Oh, this is one of the great books.
Merlin: This is the guy who just invented or co-invented a ton of the stuff that has informed how we think today in terms especially of behavioral economics.
Merlin: But one of his basic bits is system one thinking and system two thinking.
Merlin: And system one thinking is kind of the automatic thinking that you do as you walk around day to day.
Merlin: Fast, automatic, frequent, emotional, stereotypic.
Merlin: System two thinking, slow, effortful, infrequent, logical, calculating.
Merlin: And that's like when you're really concentrated in something, you think fundamentally differently and you call upon different reserves in your mind.
Merlin: Yeah, it's true.
Merlin: And you can't help but be in the moment really in some ways when you're in system two thinking.
John: cuñada muntada i'm gonna send you a wikipedia page good for you and you but you were aware in the moment that you were in the moment i was in the moment and i was aware in the moment and i and i was basically saying like look out for the woman with the gray hair dig into your memory to recognize the sound oh you're like you're like you're like a neo you're like seeing everything
John: I'm like doing super kung fu's or kung fu, I guess.
John: Yes.
John: And I'm trying to think, like, how does one have system two thinking?
John: How does one stay on a motorcycle that one is not comfortable driving all the time?
John: And never be allowed to start like ruminating on all the things that one should have done back in the old days.
John: How does one do that?
John: How do you think fast and slow?
John: Is it Daniel Kahneman going to tell me about this?
Merlin: If you're asking me, you're talking about something that is far from silly up in the cloud stuff, which I would just summarize as remembering to remember.
Merlin: Most of us don't remember to remember.
Merlin: Most of us have, again, to bring in another term, monkey mind.
Merlin: Your mind just goes wherever it's going to go unless you make a practice of saying the most basic part of mindfulness is realizing that you're thinking something.
Merlin: Remember to remember.
Merlin: Well, I mean, yeah.
Merlin: I don't think it's that frilly.
Merlin: I think it's just developing.
Merlin: Everybody does it once in a while.
Merlin: You get shocked into it when you find that somebody died recently or something.
Merlin: But the mindfulness part is making a practice of realizing what it is that you're thinking.
Merlin: And then on some level, being able to regard it like a Watu the Watcher and look at it as this thing's happening.
Merlin: And that's not who you are.
Merlin: It's a thing that's happening.
Merlin: I think that's kind of what it comes down to.
Merlin: They might want you to sit down and meditate at some point.
Merlin: But the mindfulness part, I think a big part of that is they're remembering to remember.
Merlin: Just say to yourself, I am here.
Merlin: Remember to remember you're probably at this point.
John: You're probably a little bit overwhelmed with advice from your friends Well, I'm a little overwhelmed, but you know I'm trying to I do not understand because I always am remembering what am I remembering in Like
Merlin: When you're having that kind of thought and you're remembering a meeting from when you were running for city council, I mean, I'm going to put this very, like maybe a six-year-old, not a five-year-old.
Merlin: But like, is that a thought you enjoy thinking?
Merlin: No, no, no.
Merlin: I don't want that at all.
Merlin: Is it a thought that you think is useful to what you're going to do today?
John: Well, that's debatable, right?
John: I mean, how many times do you process?
Merlin: You should suffer.
John: Well, there's that.
John: But also like processing things that have happened is one of the ways that we learn and grow, right?
John: I mean, that's how I've always thought about it.
John: So all the times that I sit and run the city council race again.
John: See, I put my brain trust together again not very long ago for a dim summit.
John: And I sat him down and, you know, normally we sit and talk about how we're going to make a million dollars.
John: But this time I was like, hey, you know, we've never really talked about the city council run because after it was over, we just all pretended that it never happened.
John: Yeah.
John: But let's talk about it.
John: That's called the Cincinnati Gambit.
John: Let's just act like it didn't happen.
John: Let's just act like nothing happened.
John: We just spent like nine months all totally being beat up and tortured.
John: And now we're just going to pretend that everything is going on.
John: So I was like, did we do a good job?
John: And everybody went around the table and talked about like whether or not we did a good job and how it felt.
John: And, you know, a lot of the politics, a lot of running for office is sort of
John: predicated on whether or not you're going to keep running for office over and over.
John: And so a lot of this stuff, a lot of what came out of the conversation was we did a really good job in setting us up to run again.
John: Right.
John: And in deciding not to run again, all of that work kind of, I mean, it, it, we did a really good job at it, but if we don't run again, it didn't,
John: it's just didn't matter it's sort of like it's not it's not quite like building the framework of a house which you then just leave out in the weeds it's not like building the framework of it's not like building a burning man and then burning it let me ask if i'm if i'm interpreting this right that to to look at it in that way
Merlin: And then leave it there.
Merlin: How can I put this?
Merlin: It seems like it must be frustrating to you or feel antithetical to your ethos to leave that unexamined.
Merlin: But then when you do examine it, the upshot seems to be, well, you know, you actually did okay if you think of this as the thing that you're going to do next or again.
Merlin: If it's not the thing you're going to do again, then do you have to accept it as a failure?
Merlin: right kind of right well yeah exactly like what i want it's all the difference in the world depending on how you choose to frame it so if you tell yourself now well i'll definitely be running again and this will have been good experience that's very fundamentally different from like i tried this one thing and failed so now i'm a loser yeah what in a lot of these things i try i i hope
John: There are life experiences like, for instance, my walk across Europe where the result was inconclusive.
John: I did not walk across Europe and write, eat, pray, love afterward and become a successful married person.
John: Is it because you took that car ride?
John: No, no, no, no.
John: The car ride is like a – that's a separate problem.
John: You made your peace with that.
John: I did.
John: No, it's because I did not ever like – I didn't – I neither – well, I ate and I prayed, but I didn't love.
Merlin: That was the problem.
John: You saw that girl in the window.
John: I did.
John: I saw her in the window.
John: I saw that girl in that hotel in bad –
John: Bad Rolfenstein or whatever, the girl in the hotel where I knocked over the postcard rack.
John: You relive moments from your past?
John: What?
John: But I can appraise the walk across Europe because it is a discreet and bordered event.
John: It lasted X number of months.
John: There was a beginning and an end.
John: And I like, I do not look at it and say I would, that would have been more successful if I had continued all the way to Jerusalem.
John: Like I don't, I don't sit and dissect it that way.
John: I look at it and I go, I should have thrown those boots in the Elba and bought a new pair of boots there at the boot store in Elba, which isn't a place.
John: But, but I do not say like,
John: The only useful, the only utility of walking across Europe was that it be applied to something else, which I failed to apply it to.
Merlin: And so when I look at running for office... The kind of thing that you would put on, like, in a college essay.
Merlin: And it now has a functional component, which is, like, now I can use this for something specific.
John: Or it's like going to college, right?
John: I mean, walking across Europe is like going to college in that at the end, you are done.
John: And you can point to it, and in a way, no one can ever take it away from you, right?
John: No one can ever say...
John: you don't, we're taking your college away from you.
John: Like once you've done it, it's an accomplishment.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and, uh, and same with the walk across Europe, but with the running for office, there's that element of it, which is like, it is a success.
John: If only if you intend to be, uh, if you, if you build the next, it's like building, it's like building the foundation of a building that you don't build.
John: Did you do a good job on the foundation?
John: Yes.
John: Otherwise, it's just another unfinished building.
John: Yeah, you built the best foundation anybody's ever seen.
John: But without building the building, it's impossible to get a group of people together and say, are we proud of this?
John: Because you look at it and you're like... Oh, that's harsh, but I get it.
John: We did a good job on this foundation, I guess.
John: So yeah, high fives.
John: But we never built the house.
John: And so it's very hard for me to...
John: Um, because I do not want to run again like that.
John: I don't want to build on that foundation.
John: I intentionally didn't build on it in the aftermath.
John: And so now three years have gone by and I could, you know, if I started to run for office again, I could collect some of the energy that I put together, but I didn't do what I should have done, which is immediately take that, that big mailing list and all that name recognition and begin, um,
John: my next run for something.
John: And when I talk to people in the world about it, they're like, Oh yeah, you absolutely, you know, when are you going to run again?
John: You did a great job.
John: But it's all based on that.
John: Like, when are you going to run again?
John: Wow, so it just keeps hanging there, kind of?
John: It just hangs there.
John: It hangs there, and the only reason it doesn't hang there is that I felt so strongly about not wanting to run again.
John: At the end of the race, I walked out of that... I think very understandably.
John: Yeah, I walked out of that campaign event and said, that is actually not for me...
John: Isn't that funny?
John: Like, uh, if that is really good to know if I had gotten to the end of that race and thought, Oh man, this is for me.
John: Like it would have been, it would have been, well, I would have turned around and started, I guess, I guess what I was afraid of was I would get to the end and go, I don't know, maybe I should do that again, but I didn't like it, but maybe I should, you know, if I, if I was there, I would be in a lot of pain right now over not running.
John: not pursuing a life in politics, but I felt so definitive about it that I don't feel that like that, that cold hand isn't on my shoulder, but still there's no way to, there's no resolve of it.
John: I can never say like, like the whole idea, like, oh, it's like going to college.
John: You went, you ran for office and you didn't win, but who cares?
John: It was a great experience.
Merlin: I mean, in your point of view, if I could say, it's more like saying, well, I started college.
Merlin: Maybe you didn't even finish your first year.
John: Yeah, or I finished my first year and got great grades.
John: But who cares?
Merlin: Great grades in your freshman year.
Merlin: All you've taken is the basic distribution classes.
Merlin: Yeah, you need to build on that to get to where you can graduate.
John: Yeah, or something.
John: Or, I mean, yeah, anyway.
John: So that's just one of about 10,000 things that the guy with the cop with the bag over his head is trying to talk to me about while I'm driving.
John: Yeah.
John: You really should work on those windshield wipers when you get a minute.
John: Well, that's the thing.
John: Now it's the rainy season.
John: So Ben Acker, your good friend Ben Acker, was here.
John: this weekend, he, uh, he stayed here at my house last night and I said, uh, well, you know, in the, on Mondays we walked my daughter to school and he's, he was very good.
John: He was very good with Marlowe and we had breakfast this morning.
John: He made eggs for us.
John: We went over her homework and then we walked to school and, uh, we got, we got to school and she gave him a, uh, like a high five and then ran off with her two big back act
John: And, uh, and then Ben and I turned and started to walk back and it started, this was the beginning of the rain.
John: The rain started and it was this Northwest rain and we walked for a while and Ben said, what is this?
John: And I said, what?
John: And he said, well, the air is full of water, but there's no, it's not, I wouldn't call it rain.
John: Oh, hence your noise.
John: That kind of rain.
John: And I was like, well, this is what rain in Seattle looks like.
John: Kind of misty.
John: Yeah, he's like, but it's not rain, but it's like everything is wet.
John: The air is wet.
John: I was like, yeah, this is what they talk about.
John: When they talk about it raining in Seattle, this is it.
John: I'm just worried that he spun out on the way to the airport because he's not used to it.
John: Even the people up here, they can't keep their cars on the road.
Merlin: So she walks away with the backpack and you guys are walking in the rain.
John: He and I. Walking in the rain and the snow, but there's nowhere to go.
John: I was feeling like a part of me was dying.
John: You're looking for an answer and a rhyme?
John: Well, in his eyes, yeah.
John: Oh, God.
John: Oh, God, John, the things we do for love.
John: It's really terrible.
John: It's really terrible.
Merlin: How did we end up here?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I've written some things down, but I'm pretty confused.
Merlin: I think at one point we were talking about books.
Merlin: The you and I. Well, I felt like this is another classic case where I'm not real sure, but I felt like you were about to take your realization about rain windshield wipers and the sorrow of the crashed and then kind of pivot that back to something about the book.
Merlin: Oh, the book.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: It's your show.
John: I can't read books.
John: Like, like my, my psychiatrist, I think I talked to you about this.
John: Uh, my psychiatrist decided that, um,
John: He didn't want to recommend Eckhart Tolle or Michael Brown to me because he recognized that I would stare out the window silently, rolling my inner eye.
John: Your third inner eye?
John: My third inner eye, just rolling it.
John: He didn't want to do that.
John: He wanted to make it seem smart.
John: He wanted to be smart.
John: He wanted to seem smart, and he wanted it to be smart enough that he could trick me into reading something.
John: about self-help and about mindfulness.
Merlin: Oh, maybe make it feel like it's your idea, even.
John: Well, he was like, how do you feel about the Greeks?
John: And I was like, fine.
John: He said, the Greeks, like the Greek writers.
John: And I was like, I know what you mean.
John: I feel fine about them.
John: I call it South Macedonia.
John: South Macedonia.
John: That's one of those things where you make everybody mad except the Macedonians.
Merlin: Who the fuck does that?
Merlin: Hey, go change the name of your country.
Merlin: uh well you know it's it's like it it's like if you lived in if you were in uh south philadelphia born and raised yep yep yep uh and and your parents had gone on a week's vacation uh-huh if uh you still remember that you still remember the time you impressed that girl with uh just impress her oh
Merlin: But, you know, like what is... Listeners were frustrated that I did not encourage you to tell us more about the time you penetrated.
Merlin: Well, no, because I know that it makes you uncomfortable and they were having fun with that.
Merlin: I think everybody was having fun.
Merlin: I'm sex neutral.
Merlin: I would just prefer you do it somewhere else.
Merlin: Do you feel like you're sex neutral because I think... No, no, I'm sex negative.
Merlin: I'm sex negative for sure.
Merlin: You're sex negative.
Merlin: No, for sure I'm sex negative.
Merlin: I'm definitely negative about hearing people talk about it.
Merlin: You don't want to hear about it.
Merlin: You should just go have all the fun you want and just really keep it to yourself.
John: Just keep it to yourself or write about it in places where I don't have to see it.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: You can write about it.
John: Write about it on Medium.
Merlin: If you have fantasies about Sonic the Hedgehog being pregnant, I encourage you to put that on the page.
Merlin: Bird by bird.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Just get it on the page.
Merlin: Is that a fantasy?
Merlin: I guess it must be.
Merlin: I just learned about it.
Merlin: Now I can't unhear it.
Merlin: Rule 34, am I right?
Merlin: Yes, yes.
Merlin: Okay, wait, so I stopped you.
Merlin: You were about to drop some big science.
John: Oh, so, but what it was was, what had happened was, he said, well, what about, have you ever read Epictetus?
John: And I was like, no, I guess.
John: I mean, not specifically.
John: I know about the Stoics.
John: I know about the Stoics.
John: I've read all about them.
John: Is he a pre-Socratic?
John: Uh, he is, uh, he's like from, uh, from just about that exact time, right?
John: Okay.
John: He's, um, he's right about the, uh... Oh, he's a Stoic.
John: He was born a slave.
John: He's right post-Jesus.
Merlin: He was born a slave in South Macedonia.
Merlin: He taught philosophy as a way of life and not just a theoretical discipline.
John: South Macedonia, born and raised.
John: Yep.
John: Um, and, uh, yeah, so he's one of these guys where you pick it up, um...
John: You pick it up and you read it and it's full.
John: He's got nice little aphorisms, right?
John: He's got little aphorisms where he says things like, we have no power over external things.
Merlin: And the good that ought to be the object of our earnest pursuit is to be found only within ourselves.
John: That's right.
John: So this is stuff that we had access to in 55 AD, right?
John: It's all written down.
John: Um, and so, but, but so my psychiatrist, I think wisely thinks maybe if I, maybe if I
John: send him to Epictetus, he'll be like sitting in a cafe with his Epictetus and looking over at the girl with black hair and two red lipstick and going like, hey, what are you reading?
John: Oh, I'm just reading Epictetus.
John: I just learned it's all inside myself, whatever.
John: He's like a stoic, like a Greek stoic, but he's really helping me.
John: I don't like to talk about it, but yeah, that's what I'm doing.
John: But anyway, so what are you reading?
John: Oh, Eckhart Tolle.
John: Oh, yeah, you know, actually there's a lot.
John: These books have a lot in common.
John: What are you doing later?
John: You think that's what he's thinking?
John: Oh, do I look – do you think I'm a little old for you?
John: Well, I mean, age is just a number.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Not many of Epictetus' writing survives, but – Epictetitis.
John: They've got a cream for that now.
John: But Epictetus, it turns out, is one of these guys that is like really –
John: It's not quite like Sun Tzu, but he's one of the ancients that the guys around, you know, like Pentagon guys and smarty pantses that are... It's the presence process for the people that like to talk about Marcus Aurelius.
John: Oh, okay.
John: And so I saw through this ruse...
John: And, oh, and so I was looking at the books on his shelf, and I saw... It would be so cool if it was all old Archie comic digests.
John: It might have been, but they had... Isn't that the work of Jughead?
John: It's largely aphoristic.
John: They might have been like Archie comic digests, but they had the dust covers of the Greeks, right?
John: And so I was like, oh, you have some – you have Epictetus right here.
John: And he was like, oh, do I?
John: Oh, yes, I do, as a matter of fact.
John: And I was like, ah, I see.
John: Epictetus is one of five authors that you decided in the course of your many years of school that were going to be your – Oh, he's that guy.
John: Right.
John: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Yes, that's me and Heraclitus.
Merlin: Yes, I know.
Merlin: You get a pet.
Merlin: You get a pet Greek.
Merlin: And then you try to foist it on everybody.
Merlin: Go read Heraclitus.
Merlin: Shut up.
Merlin: Yeah, you get your pet Greek.
Merlin: Exactly.
Merlin: You could be into Parmenides, but you'd be wrong.
John: And then you decide that you're a Hemingway guy.
Merlin: Oh, Jesus.
John: Or you're an F. Scott Fitzgerald guy.
John: And it's like, stop it.
John: Don't do that.
John: Don't do that.
Merlin: I don't want to read Franny and Zoe.
Merlin: Quit talking about it.
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: Could you please stop talking about it?
John: Stop talking about Franny and Zoe.
Merlin: I think I have a book you would really like.
Merlin: It's called Franny and Zoe.
John: Have you ever read The Old Man and the Sea?
John: Oh, my God.
John: You're talking about The Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway?
Merlin: You know what?
John: I'm actually more of a Steinbeck guy.
John: You know what I mean?
John: But I'll definitely get with your – I'll read your Hemingway.
John: I'm just not that – I'm sort of more of a Bukowski guy.
Merlin: Yeah, well, I like it.
Merlin: I would say I used to be into that, but I'm really more into jazz and classical now.
Merlin: Is that right?
Merlin: Yeah, like Tower of Power.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Or Mauler.
Merlin: Mauler.
Merlin: I barely knew her.
Merlin: I prefer the Russians.
Merlin: Oh, the Russians.
Merlin: I like the films of Tartovsky.
Merlin: Have you ever seen the films of Tartovsky?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Oh, my God, you should watch The Mirror.
Merlin: It's so good.
John: Did you know that the sheltering sky is behind Sting's Tia Nessahara?
John: Yeah, that's true.
John: I'm kind of a Paul Bowles guy.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, I really feel like Tree of Life was so, I don't know, verisimilitudinous.
Merlin: Verisimilitudinous?
Merlin: Verisimilitudinous.
Merlin: It's Montegrean.
Merlin: Mondegreen.
Merlin: That's... Oh, yeah.
Merlin: I read that when I was in high school.
Merlin: I guess it's pretty good.