Ep. 364: "Why Are You a Bad Boy?"
John: I want to know how many people are here that can take a taste of alcohol!
Merlin: Okay!
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Oh, hey, Marilyn.
Merlin: Hi, how are you?
Merlin: Good, good.
Merlin: I didn't expect you here.
Merlin: I'm smiling.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Because it makes me sound friendly.
Merlin: Oh, it does.
Merlin: Doesn't it?
Merlin: It does.
Merlin: Where did you pick up this technology?
Merlin: I learned this from my mother, who was in real estate.
Merlin: She said that if you smile when you're speaking into the phone, you sound more friendly.
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: It's absolutely true.
John: You know, the same thing works in singing.
John: It works in singing.
John: Yes, if you sing with a smile.
John: Sing with a smile.
John: So it really translates to the quality of the recording.
John: It's why Eddie Vedder always has that kind of crazy grimace because he's getting the smile sound without smiling.
John: Lemon yellow sun.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Good morning, good morning.
Merlin: They say it takes fewer muscles to smile, but I've never really tracked that down.
John: That's what they say.
Merlin: Yeah, that's what they say.
Merlin: People say a lot of things, Sean.
John: It's a lot of work to smile.
John: Let's not kid ourselves.
John: Although, you know, being happy is its own reward.
John: Ha!
John: Is that right?
John: Yeah, sure.
John: Because what do we do stuff for?
John: Yes.
John: We do stuff for to be happy.
John: Yes, we're like little pigeons or monkeys just hitting that bar.
John: We're just trying to be happy.
John: That's why you go to the movies.
John: It's why you buy yourself a new pair of sweats.
John: But if you're just happy, if you were happy on your way there, you would already be happy.
Merlin: If you were happy, you'd already be happy, and that's its own reward.
Merlin: It's its own reward.
Merlin: Happy is its own reward.
Merlin: Did you have a sense of the, just roughly, give me a few more.
Merlin: Let's make just a quick list for our listeners.
Merlin: What are some other things that are its own reward?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Is it just happiness, John?
John: No, no.
John: I think exercise is probably its own reward.
John: Okay.
John: Kindness?
John: Kindness.
John: Kindness.
Merlin: Kindlingus?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Just really, there's so many nouns, and I mean, I know we have limited time.
John: I feel like, yeah, like kindness is its own reward for sure.
John: Okay.
John: For sure, because kindness...
John: is what you're doing it for.
John: That's why we do it.
John: We do it for kindness.
Merlin: It's like I say to my kid, we always brush our teeth, even though I skip it a lot.
Merlin: We brush our teeth, and yeah, in some sense we do it for others, but mostly we do it for ourselves.
Merlin: It's something we do for ourselves.
Merlin: It's a thing that we just do.
Merlin: It's its own reward.
John: Well, yeah.
Merlin: It's not really.
Merlin: That's bullshit.
Merlin: I don't really brush my teeth very much.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: Sometimes I just wet the brush in case my wife checks.
Merlin: Oh, does your daughter check on you?
Merlin: Does she say, you didn't brush your teeth?
Merlin: Oh, she's the hypocrisy police in every conceivable.
Merlin: She's looking for every loophole.
Merlin: Yep.
Merlin: And I get suckered into it, unlike a friend of the show, John Syracuse, who just says, because we're the parents and that's the rule.
John: Because of the wonderful things he does.
Merlin: Because I usually come up with some kind of, you know, liberal cuck reason for why that is.
John: Oh, sure, sure.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, no, I'm in the Syracuse family, you know, of saying –
John: Things are arbitrary.
Merlin: Life is arbitrary.
Merlin: Arbitrariness is its own reward.
John: Yes, that's right.
John: Brutality is its own reward.
Merlin: You know, I think maybe more things are their own reward than I realized.
John: I agree going down the list is very informative.
Merlin: No, it's really not going anywhere.
Merlin: I apologize for bringing up.
Merlin: What are the kinds of things that are not their own reward?
John: Anything to do with computers?
Merlin: Oh, God.
Merlin: That's been my whole morning.
Merlin: I've been doing computer things.
John: Anything to do with bills?
John: Actually, we talk about this a lot, you and I, but I'm really, really trying to interrogate the dread of doing things.
John: Even when the things are fun and don't take, don't require anything.
John: It's a thing.
Merlin: That's the problem.
John: Somebody, somebody, you know, I, I'm doing a thing tomorrow.
John: I'm, uh, I'm interviewing a, a choreographer by the name of Mark Morris.
John: He's a famous choreographer.
John: He had a Mark Morris dance group.
Merlin: I've heard of that.
John: I totally heard of that.
John: Yeah.
John: He does.
John: He's very, you know, he's, he's, um, he's spectacular choreographer, um,
John: And I was asked to be his interlocutor at an event for his book.
John: But I went last night to the ballet, the ballot, and it's called Hard Nut.
John: And it's a re-envisioning of the Nutcracker Suite.
John: Huh.
John: And it's sort of like Nutcracker Suite set in 1968.
John: Yeah.
John: but in like a suburban house okay and uh that was a tumultuous year for for for everybody not just the crackers tell you what tell you what i was born did i was born did in then uh but uh but so but it didn't require anything of me to go to this you know all i had to do was just go down there and go in and sit watch
John: But as the hour approached, oh boy, more and more, I was just like, oh God, you know, like almost to the level of having a stomach ache that I just had to, oh, I have to do this.
John: And it's like, you don't, you don't have to do it.
John: You could not do it.
John: Oh no, but I have to do it.
John: Well, what is the matter?
John: It's its own reward going to the ballot.
John: It's its own reward.
Merlin: That's one of the things about art.
Merlin: I don't want to go down a rabbit hole, but that's one of the things about art is that, you know, Ars Gratia artists, you know what I'm saying?
John: I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: But art for its own sake.
Merlin: Well, it's on the MGM.
Merlin: Oscar Wilde.
Merlin: It's on the MGM Lion.
Merlin: The only thing worse than doing art is not doing art.
Merlin: Yeah, that's right.
Merlin: Losing two seems like carelessness with art.
Merlin: Sure, sure.
Merlin: The thing we have to fear is fear itself.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, it was Eisenhower.
Merlin: So you went and you got through the stomachache and went to the ballot.
John: I went to the ballot, and the thing about it is I want to go to those every day.
John: I feel like it's not just should.
John: I want to go to some kind of cool, enriching,
John: Uh, event, um, all the time, but not every day maybe, but I want to, you know, I would like to have an enrichment, uh, as, as a component of my life.
John: Watch what other people make, you know, uh, uh, consume, uh, magic, find, find magic and consume it.
John: Um, and, uh, but, but the, but the feeling of just rather nodding, uh, Bartle being everything, um, and feeling, you know, I mean, but the thing is, you never get the feeling that Bartle B had any anxiety.
John: I mean, Bartle B didn't feel, it didn't seem to me that he, uh, when he closed the door, uh,
John: uh, was sitting there with a knot in his stomach.
John: Like he just preferred not to.
Merlin: He was very honest.
Merlin: That's part of the beauty of the character, I think.
Merlin: And what makes that such an enduring was a great phrase.
Merlin: And, you know, but I think part of what makes that so enduring is that we don't, we never really know why he would prefer not to.
Merlin: We just know that he would prefer not to.
Merlin: And I think in that Dr. Manhattan like way, uh, he becomes inscrutable to his manager, uh,
Merlin: Because the manager can't get a reason out of him, and that makes it even more frustrating.
John: It's very frustrating.
Merlin: But I would prefer not to do almost everything.
John: Well, I know.
John: I know.
John: And so it feels like... I'm going to California this week.
Merlin: I'm sorry.
John: I'm so sorry.
John: Well, you know, it's... You know one of the good parts, or...?
John: No.
Merlin: LA.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Shit.
John: It's going to be down there.
John: It's just a junket.
John: It's just a three-dayer.
John: Nothing really required of me, but everything's required for the course because it's all required.
John: And, you know, do I feel dread?
John: No, not really.
John: But I mean, I also feel like if it didn't happen, you know, if I woke up tomorrow and it was like, no, it's all canceled, I'd be super fine with that.
John: Super fine.
John: And this just isn't how this just isn't how one.
Merlin: smiles into the microphone you know what i mean i do i do i do smile into the mic it would be nice it would be nice to have um a zest for novelty change travel these kinds of things instead of some kind of uh feeling in the pit of your stomach and i just just real quick i go through this all the time because my um my wife whom i love i've been with her 20 years now she uh she likes to do things
John: Oh, yeah, she does.
Merlin: She loves to do things.
Merlin: She loves to plan things.
John: Oh, she likes to plan things.
Merlin: She loves to plan things.
Merlin: And then she likes to do the things that she's planned.
Merlin: I don't like thinking about things, planning things, or doing things.
Merlin: But here's the funny part.
Merlin: The kicker and the thing that I don't know why I cannot get this into my bones is that a vast percentage of the time, I end up smiling into the mic.
Merlin: My wife says, hey, we're going on a hike today.
Merlin: And I'm like, really?
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Here's a new season of Steven Universe.
Merlin: Can't we just watch TV all day?
Merlin: And she's like, nope, we're going hiking.
Merlin: And it's only like it's like a, you know, a two digit minute trip.
Merlin: Like we're just going to Marin or something like that.
Merlin: And then, of course, it's a two digit minute trip.
Merlin: And then I end up having a great time.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: I end up smiling into the mic.
Merlin: And then why do I never remember that?
Merlin: Yeah, why is that not enough?
Merlin: Is that your main?
Merlin: Is that your main?
Merlin: Because do you end up enjoying?
Merlin: Like in the case of the ballot, here's the nice thing about art also.
Merlin: When we say art, we're not just talking about going to see Archers of Loaf and saying, I hope they play web in front.
Merlin: We're talking about the somewhat more... Hey, they're good.
Merlin: It's somewhat...
Merlin: stuck a pin in my backbone.
Merlin: All I ever wanted was to be your spine.
Merlin: I'm not talking about that, although I would love to see them.
John: Sure, I know you'd love to talk about it, too.
Merlin: Ooh, and plan.
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Merlin: What I'm talking about, listen, what I want...
Merlin: What I'm talking about, though, is when you talk about going to the ballet or I mean, in the case of us going to see Hamilton, but that's something we've wanted to do forever.
Merlin: And I was looking forward to it and I cried and cried and it was great.
Merlin: But like the also the idea of art is it doesn't have to be like a Yoko Ono level of confrontation and challenge, but going in and seeing someone else's mise-en-scene.
Merlin: with the proscenium and other art words.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying, though?
Merlin: You go and you get the full Monty.
Merlin: You go somewhere, and it's a whole thing, and you let yourself disappear into that, and then you remember, God damn it, I should do this at least once a month.
Merlin: At least once a month, I should go somewhere and sit in a seat or interact with whatever it is, and I should be there for someone else's art experience because...
Merlin: I'm sure for the lofty reasons, but for the unlofty reason of this is part of what makes us special as humans, is being able to go and see a ballot with a Kraken nut.
John: It's 100% true.
John: There's a reason that we make unconsumed art.
John: And I feel like a lot of it is that it takes fewer muscles to smile.
John: And a big part of that is that it's better to...
John: It's better to love and love
John: It's better to love than be loved, as I used to say.
John: You think it's its own reward?
John: I do.
Merlin: I do.
Merlin: There's a huge gulf.
Merlin: It's like the way I pretend to brush my teeth.
Merlin: We love and we express that to other people because that's who we are.
Merlin: And it's good to do that as a human.
Merlin: That sounds corny in this day and in this economy.
Merlin: That sounds very corny.
Merlin: But I think that's the kind of thing where you have to decide what kind of person you are.
John: The gulf between like what I would describe as my philosophy and my practice is pretty wide.
John: And the gulf – the widest part of that gulf is right at the level of misanthropy and like –
John: Every day, I will make some comment to the effect that everybody sucks and fuck everything.
John: And on some level, they do.
John: Yes.
John: Well, absolutely.
John: It's undeniable.
John: Two things can be true at once.
John: I don't believe it in the larger – in the aggregate, right?
John: I believe that –
John: People are basically good.
John: I believe that the world is a hopeful place.
John: I think things are improving.
John: I want things to be better, and I trust that people do also.
John: I think that misunderstanding is worse than almost anything outside of outright graft.
John: I trust.
John: I love the people over the centuries who have thought hard about things.
John: I, um, I've thought hard about things and I think that that is not unique to me, you know?
John: And so on the one hand, if you, if you really like, uh, if you really push me, my, my feelings are all positive and that positivity is like, is like massive.
John: I believe in space travel.
John: I believe that, you know, I believe in technology and
John: And I, you know, and I believe that technology is an expression of the, of goodwill, but on a practical day to day level, uh, I don't give myself the, I don't give myself the power of, of trying to take that into my everyday.
John: You know, I, I think I robbed myself of
John: the strength of those feelings by saying at every turn, like, well, yeah, it's fine.
John: Uh, people suck.
John: This sucks.
John: This roads and, uh, the fucking politic or whatever.
John: Facebook, Facebook, my phone, you know, and that little shit, that niggling shit.
John: Like I, by focusing on it, by repeating it, by, by even, you know, by even enunciating it, I'm,
John: I'm stealing from myself the thing about my own life that is its own reward, which is this belief, this confidence that –
John: That positive wins, you know.
Merlin: And you're also rehearsing.
Merlin: You're doing a kind of emotional workout that's exercising.
Merlin: This is a terribly mixed metaphor.
Merlin: I just – I do think that whatever you do – I don't know, it was Aristotle.
Merlin: Somebody said this, that, you know, what you do frequently is who you are.
Merlin: Oh, no.
Merlin: Probably Eisenhower.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: He had the four quadrants.
Merlin: Right before he invaded Japan.
Merlin: The philosophical and industrial complex.
Merlin: But whatever we do habitually, what becomes automatic is who we are, right?
Merlin: And this is not even getting into the whole Daniel Kahneman, two ways of thinking stuff, although I think that stuff is real and important.
Merlin: The thing is that whatever you do a lot becomes who you are.
Merlin: And so if one finds oneself rehearsing a certain kind of
Merlin: nearly automatic emotional response, well, that tells the story.
Merlin: Can I kind of give an angle on this?
Merlin: You said something on Twitter the other day that I thought was really nice and thoughtful where you were talking about
Merlin: And roughly speaking, talking about kids that your kid knows who are not gender conforming in the classic way.
Merlin: And that's, you know, that has for so long stuff like that, stuff around gender and sexual identity has for so long been such a hot button issue.
Merlin: And like to me, like alongside how we feel about people of other races, just as an example, the big pattern there I feel like is what have you been exposed to?
Merlin: And then further to that, what have you been exposed to a lot?
Merlin: Now, in the example you give from your tweet of 9.03 a.m.
Merlin: December 4th, I completely agree with what you say, which is that for kids, this stuff is not complicated.
Merlin: It's very uncomplicated.
Merlin: There is not...
Merlin: It's shocking to me how much has changed.
Merlin: I know we're not there yet.
Merlin: I know we're not there yet.
Merlin: But it is so interesting to me how little kids just are not all twisted up about this stuff in the way that we are and we have been.
Merlin: And why is that?
Merlin: Well, one reason is their minds have not been habitually poisoned by decades of bullshit.
Merlin: But certainly another one is yet.
Merlin: Another one is exposure.
Merlin: Like when you're exposed to gay people, when you're exposed to trans people, and I'm not trying to virtue signal here.
Merlin: I'm saying this goes for everything.
Merlin: I'm saying this goes for black people.
Merlin: I'm saying this goes for Jewish people.
Merlin: Like when you spend a lot of time, let's just go with an easy one.
Merlin: What used to be called miscegenation, it used to be so rare to meet a couple of two different races, particularly a black person and a white person.
Merlin: And it was pretty shocking for a long time.
Merlin: When that's just a thing you see all the time,
Merlin: It seems so silly to look at it any other way than they're just the same kind of fucked up, terrible people as anybody else, but they're not fucked up and terrible because there are different races.
Merlin: Why?
Merlin: Because you're exposed to it.
Merlin: And that first order exposure, uh,
Merlin: It does tell a story, but there's another kind of thing, which is what we're talking about here, which is what are you exposed to that's not that?
Merlin: If you're only exposed to yourself and your opinions, or you're exposed to other people who share that same opinion, right?
Merlin: The music goes round.
Merlin: You're not smiling into the mic anymore.
Merlin: Now, whatever reckon you have about all of these others is just constantly reamplified.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And so I think that goes for the people you spend time with, and it definitely goes for being by yourself.
Merlin: Whatever thing you have banging around in that fucking bucket you have on the top of your neck, whatever's going around in your mind that you habitually turn over and over, that's going to become a more and more entrenched opinion or reckon just because you haven't gotten enough exposure to other things.
Merlin: Not that you have to change your mind, or that you should change your mind.
Merlin: Not you, but one.
Merlin: But that...
Merlin: That's the downside of this whole I don't want to go out or I don't want to do things.
Merlin: For me, when I go out and I do things, I get exposed to things, even if it's a fucking tree.
Merlin: And that is new information for me in a different setting, and it shakes me out of whatever bullshit I'm heavily involved in.
Merlin: But it takes beating the resistance of saying I should be exposed to other things, even if it's a tree or a trans person.
Merlin: Does that comport?
John: The thing that I can't measure is how much is this current – how much is my present state actually a product of the 20, 30 years, 40 years of that conversation?
John: You don't perceive yourself to be made –
John: by yourself.
John: You perceive yourself to be made by your experiences of others, by the, you know, by the, by your parents, by society, by your culture, by whatever, you know, you perceive yourself as a, in most ways, as a, as a, you know, passive, you've got yourself and yourself has integrity and
John: And yourself is constant, I guess, is one way that we sort of feel about our internal selves.
John: And we're buffeted by everything else.
Merlin: And your brain is wired.
Merlin: Your brain is absolutely wired.
Merlin: The pipes and wires in your brain are there to assure you that you've always been the same person.
Merlin: That's right, exactly.
Merlin: It'll fight any attempt to alter that feeling.
John: But everything that, you know, as you just described, right, everything that we've been telling ourselves for the 40-odd years that we've been telling ourselves things in our cases, and who knows back to what point – at what point I started telling myself things.
John: I had to have been four, right?
John: Mm-hmm.
John: Because the first time somebody says, why are you a bad boy?
John: I mean, you go, why am I a bad boy?
John: I have my reasons.
John: But how much of that and really who we are has to be in large part shaped by that conversation.
John: And so now, because what I do is I contrast my reluctance to go to the ballot right now
John: with those parts of those times in my life when I had zero reluctance to go to the ballot, when I went to dance all the time, I went to theater all the time.
John: And when I think about it,
John: Now I'm quick to say, well, I didn't have anything else going on.
John: I was poor.
John: I lived in the center of town.
John: I didn't have any responsibilities.
John: And I had access to the arts because I was a member of the arts community.
John: So I could go to things like dance and it didn't cost anything.
John: And I knew people in the production.
John: And so it was obvious why I was there.
John: But what's not obvious, because all that is still true, what's not obvious is why I'm now like, oh, God, I got to go to a dance.
John: And it has to be, 100% has to be a product of 30 years of kind of subtly and often as a joke even saying, ugh, people suck.
John: And it's a routine that we play here in Seattle and I'm sure in San Francisco and I'm sure all over the world.
John: Where it's a way that you, if you're talking to somebody at a party, you both agree that, that everybody sucks.
John: And that's a way that you like kind of jokingly make friends, right?
John: Like, Hey, how's, you know, how was your trip over here?
Merlin: The best way to bond with any person is to find something both of you don't like.
Merlin: Right.
John: Which is, which is really easy if you decide that it's everybody.
John: Everybody else.
John: Who do we not like?
John: Everybody else, including us, right?
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah, we're the worst.
John: And that's had a pernicious effect, but really has probably, and this is what you were saying, my mind doesn't want this to be true, but that I've built myself partly out of these parts.
John: And I don't mean them.
John: They started as sort of whimsically as when I first started saying, like, right on.
John: You know, like, I first heard myself say right on, and I was like, that's ridiculous.
John: I'm going to say that all the time.
Merlin: That's me with both the Eddie Vedder voice and the Paul Stanley voice.
Merlin: In my band, because we would listen to, you know, we were really into bootlegs and celebrities at the worst.
Merlin: But, like, when we started saying, all right!
Merlin: okay that's kind of funny the first time you do the first time you go yeah that's funny but then you just start doing it all the time is it still a joke is it because it's kind of like just just like you picked up a new curse word and now you just use it all the time without ever meaning to yeah that's right i mean that's it's it's how billy joe armstrong started singing in british how else will you find out if people like cool gin
Merlin: yeah all right Toronto God bless him God bless him all right
John: This comes from where venom comes from.
Merlin: I know it needs fucking strings.
Merlin: They gotta sprinkle some fairy dust on it.
Merlin: Colonel Sanders saying it's entirely different.
Merlin: All of these.
Merlin: John Wayne.
Merlin: I'm not talking for clapping.
Merlin: They're in my head.
Merlin: The fucking jerky boys are in there.
Merlin: There's just this whole sad theme park of things I never meant to learn, let alone quote.
Merlin: God knows how many emotions are like that.
Merlin: How many responses are like that.
John: How much your actual, what you look out of your eye ports and bring back into your mind and what room you put those...
Merlin: perceptions in you know every new experience it's like you have to put it into some file cabinet somewhere yes and the more file cabinets you build that are like eddie vetter voice it's like well and the order the older you get just to really reduce this i mean i however we got this way is how we got this way but one thing i feel fairly certain about is and i think this this ebbs and flows it wanes maybe you broaden a little bit in college or whatever because you're like oh wavy gravy
Merlin: But I feel like the number of places you have the energy or enthusiasm to file something gets greatly reduced.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And it's like, you go back, classic bit.
Merlin: You go back to Steve Martin.
Merlin: You meet the girl and she says, let's go camping.
Merlin: And you say, sorry, we're closed.
Merlin: That's us now.
Merlin: That's us.
Merlin: We have a filing cabinet and only about four folders that we use.
Merlin: And the fattest one is that this is bullshit and people suck.
Merlin: It's so easy to file into that folder.
Merlin: You could just throw it.
Merlin: It's like having a husky garbage can you could just chuck stuff into.
John: What was the movie where the little girl was driving herself from inside her brain and she had memories were marbles?
John: Inside out.
John: Inside out, right.
John: And that whole scene where...
John: there's just this endless uh field of dead memories that fall down into a hole or fall down into a wasteland yeah and you and you can go find them and grab i think grab one even though they're dead yeah but that the thing is all those file cabinets are in me still that that are from a long time ago like like this is amazing or i never saw that before
John: And it's just that I don't want to make the trip down the flight of stairs to find them then.
John: So you're right.
John: I'm just cramming everything in the five file cabinets that are right there in the, in the alcove, you know?
Merlin: Also, I mean, I can be, so in thinking about, in thinking about what with time travel, something maybe with Dr. Manhattan, I thought, oh gosh, you know, my favorite novel, sorry, I'm a child.
Merlin: My favorite novel is still, well, it's up there.
Merlin: Confederacy of Dunces and Slaughterhouse-Five are the books that I read the most and loved the most over my teen years plus.
Merlin: And it brings me back to reading Slaughterhouse-Five and listening to the book on tape read by James Franco.
Merlin: But in any case, so when I go and I read— Wait a minute.
Merlin: Slaughterhouse-Five on tape is read by James Franco?
Merlin: It sounds like something from Spinal Tap.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Dylan Thomas read by, you know, but so, okay, but here's the thing.
Merlin: So what do I do?
Merlin: Do I, do I return to the library to go find some extremely outlandish French speculative fiction from the 19th century about time travel or whatever?
Merlin: No, I,
Merlin: I return to the book I've literally read the most.
Merlin: So if I'm going to go find a bing bong in my memory pit, it's going to be one that's very familiar to me because that's the related thing to the filing system.
Merlin: So let's go back to your pal, Billy Joe Ding Dong.
Merlin: As soon as I hear a Green Day song, that makes me want to go listen to, what's the band?
Merlin: Never Fall In Love With Someone Should Have Fall In Love With.
Merlin: What's that band?
Merlin: The band from Manchester.
John: Yeah, Beulah.
Merlin: Oh, fuck me.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: They're one of my favorite bands.
Merlin: Mahavishnu Orchestra.
Merlin: No, you're talking about the Teenage Fan Club.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: Pete Shelley.
Merlin: Banana Hammocks.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I'm so angry with the Buzzcocks.
Merlin: My God.
Merlin: I'm going to edit this entire show.
Merlin: There it was.
Merlin: See what I'm saying?
Merlin: Or like, oh, put on some Interpol.
Merlin: That's great.
Merlin: That makes me want to go listen to Joy Division.
Merlin: Sure, sure, sure.
Merlin: Because, like, that's my sorting algorithm.
Merlin: Back to the sorts.
Merlin: Having operators in various cities call people when his breath smells like roses and mustard gas.
Merlin: I could practically recite that section.
Merlin: I've read and heard it so many times.
Merlin: I've heard it read by him.
Merlin: It's on Spotify.
Merlin: Not James Franco.
Merlin: But you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: That familiarity and that quest for...
Merlin: you know, the broken-in chair of emotions and memories is so much more attractive than I'm going to go leave the house and see a different take on Tchaikovsky tonight.
John: Well, this was what was so interesting about last night for me, because sitting in the theater, the lights go down, and the hard nut is this modern reinterpretation of the nut creditor.
John: And as the light...
John: As the lights go down and the curtain comes up, I realize a couple of things.
John: One, I have never seen the Nutcracker.
John: Neither have I. My family goes every year and I don't.
John: Yep.
John: My family goes every year.
John: I have no desire to see the Nutcracker.
John: But the thing is, no one ever took me as a child.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And it is not part of, you know, I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
John: Because it just wasn't a thing that – I mean I'm sure many times I was skipping through the channels and It's a Wonderful Life was there and I just kept going looking for something else.
Merlin: It was in black and white until it got colorized.
John: I mean if it was in black and white and people were shooting guns at each other, I would have stopped.
John: Sure, sure.
John: But it's just like – Keep the change, filthy animal.
John: What the fuck is this?
John: No thanks.
John: So I've never seen some of these iconic things.
John: So going in –
John: The curtain comes up and I'm like, oh, I don't know what the Nutcracker is.
John: I've seen Fantasia, but I don't know what...
John: This is.
John: I know that there's a nutcracker in it.
Merlin: Yes.
John: There's a sugar plum fairy.
John: And also I've heard the overture and half the songs because they're part of their cultural patrimony.
Merlin: There's a mouse and a Christmas tree and a girl and a nutcracker.
Merlin: And I know the music.
John: You know more than I do.
John: Yeah.
John: So I'm going in.
Merlin: I think it's an upsetting rat.
John: It's a rat.
John: I think it's a rat.
John: Um, there's a, so we go into the show and this is a re-envisioning of it and there are, there are jokes in it.
John: It's a funny production because it's, and some of the humor is, is, is broad.
John: Some of it is funny.
John: is referential humor to things that people know about the nutcracker that's fun they do that in the shrek musical too yeah it's like really it's fun but the audience is laughing and i am sitting there like very uh it's very appealing to me i'm very engaged and enjoying it but and i'm and i get the humor i get the broadness of the humor and i get i get some of the dance
John: humor i know you know i understand what a funny walk is they're doing some funny looks like some funny gender bending a ton of like the the some of the boy roles are played by girls some of the girl roles are played by boys everybody's everybody you know they're they're and and and what's amazing is that there are people of a lot of different sizes and body shapes in it it's not they're not ballerinas you know there are some people that are thick there are some there are
John: People where you're just not sure what the – it's the costume that's telling you what to think, right?
John: It's not the – you're not looking at their body and understanding the character.
John: It's the hat that's telling you what the character is.
John: But I'm sitting there and I'm going – like I'm – here I am.
John: Like I'm learning something and also –
John: I'm learning how much I don't know about this iconic thing.
John: I do not get what, why the audience just laughed.
John: And I never am sitting in a chair, not getting why the audience laughed.
Merlin: And I liked it.
John: That's probably telling, you know, I was just like, wow, what?
John: Wow.
John: You guys are all, there's like, there's 2,500 people in this theater that are, uh, that are consuming this in a different way.
John: Um, and I'm like,
John: like a foreigner, a foreigner.
John: And then I also realized I don't like the language of dance is an artistic language that I barely know.
John: I barely know the grammar.
John: Right.
John: And I feel like if I go and look at a, if I watch a movie, if I look at a painting, if I read a book or a play, if I listen to music, I, I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on,
John: The language that's being used, and I don't get every reference to everything, but I feel like I can look at a painting and give you a critical appraisal of it.
Merlin: The example for me that's analogous, to be honest, is if you ever hear lyric Italian poetry read in Italian –
Merlin: I mean, you can pick up little bits and pieces of what some of the words are, but you mean you're listening for the musicality, right?
Merlin: Our humanities professor, one of our professors at college used to read poems in Greek.
Merlin: Same effect.
Merlin: We were like, oh, God, that is so beautiful.
Merlin: I have no fucking idea what's going on, but I know it's good and I know it's beautiful.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: That's how I feel when I go to dance.
Merlin: Like if I get an exposure to, we used to, when my kid was really, really little, the first YouTube videos we watched for her were this ballet, this dance company that would put up these amazing videos of them like doing rehearsals and doing performances.
Merlin: And we would just watch it over and over and over.
Merlin: I mean, and I would appreciate the, the athleticism and all the things, but like, I can't even, I see, I don't know enough to know what I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I don't know what I'm missing in this performance because I'm just such a fucking dumb ass about it.
John: And that was really fun for me, right?
John: Like, I have no idea.
John: That seems hard.
John: But could you tell that it's good?
John: Well, that's the level of appreciation I had, was just like, whoa, that was tricky.
John: I couldn't do that.
John: And then I'm watching them do things that look simple, and I'm going, is this simple?
John: And looking at it more closely, like I saw Butoh one time, and it was some legendary...
John: Butoh performance from Japan that never left Japan.
John: And they came to Seattle one time for some reason.
John: I don't know what their flight got canceled or something.
John: No, it was a big deal.
John: You know, they were here and I went to see it.
John: And it was one of those things where at first.
John: Is Butoh, is that a style of theater?
John: It's a style of dance that's like super slow and super heavy.
John: And at first I was like, when are they going to start dancing?
John: When are they going to start prancing?
John: Like, what the fuck is happening?
John: But then as I sat there, you know, kind of like impatiently, I zoomed in on what was happening.
John: And all of a sudden I was transfixed, you know, because it was so otherworldly.
John: And so, you know, last night...
John: There were dances that were obvious, right?
John: And I don't mean obvious like cliched or boring.
John: It was just like, this is obviously amazing.
John: It's a spectacle, right?
John: There's 40 people on stage and they are moving really fast and they're doing incredible leaps and, you know, like amazing.
John: But there are other moments where there's just one person or two people on the stage and they're moving slowly and they're doing other things.
John: And I was just – obviously, I couldn't do it.
John: But also like I'm trying to find what's amazing about it.
John: It's all the type of thing that used to happen to me all the time where I would go out and just be –
John: Um, just be blown away by something that I didn't, that I didn't know.
John: I didn't know.
John: Yes.
John: And where along the way I decided that I knew everything already or that, um, you know, Oh, I gotta go to another dance thing.
John: I mean, I don't know enough about dance to be bored by it.
Merlin: you know what i mean i know exactly what you mean i know exactly well again that's the thing is we can watch something and even if we don't know a lot about it you can go like i can tell this is good or i can tell this is bad but i may not be able to tell you precisely why i don't know i don't know what is it i don't know enough to know why i'm bored well but also painting like i like when when i really think about it i don't know anything about painting who where where am i how am i sitting in a gallery and going nope
John: No, I mean, I'm having an emotional reaction and that's great.
John: And that's what art is about.
John: And I should sit and be with those.
John: That's why I'm there.
John: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: To look at the painting and you're there as much to look at a painting and go, no, as you are to say yes.
John: But that no isn't, it isn't, you're not blasé.
John: It's not, you're not dismissing it.
John: You're having a feeling about it.
John: And that's the reason that I go do things.
John: And that's a positive, you know, that's a thing that I, that's its own reward.
John: Yes.
John: Truly.
John: Yeah.
John: And trying to, trying to, it's not retain, although it is retain, but also regain the positivity that's in me, that's profoundly in me.
John: Because the thing is, if I'm out on the beach and I turn over a rock and there's a crab under there, I have no critical voice, right?
John: There's no part of me that's like, huh, another crab, right?
John: I'm down on my knees and I'm like, crab, crab, crab, crab.
John: Go, crab, go.
John: Oh, what happens, crab?
John: If a rock gets in your way, do you go around it?
John: Oh, ha-ha, he goes around it.
John: You know, like a worm in the dirt will transfix me
John: for 20 minutes, but somehow like a, like I'm too, I'm like, I'm over classical music or something.
John: Yeah.
John: So how to get back to that?
John: Like I just turned over, cause I'll go down to the beach and turn over rocks all afternoon.
John: Sure.
John: And, um, and yet there are people like right around me who are pouring their hearts into stuff.
John: And you know, you and I both know there's so much bad art and there's so many people pouring their hearts into things who should have just gotten jobs and
John: And I wish that they would stop.
Merlin: They should have been an early age.
Merlin: They should have been discouraged.
John: Somebody should have tested them.
John: Yeah.
John: Repeatedly in in primary school and directed them just very gently guided them.
John: Yeah.
John: To a lot of people repair.
John: Yeah.
John: Lifetime of servitude and toil.
John: No, I mean, even the even the automobile people are, you know, a truly gifted auto.
Merlin: Oh, God, yes.
Merlin: I believe they should be carried around on a litter covered with fruit.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, I didn't mean that dismissively.
Merlin: I spent more than that.
Merlin: Well, if you had a little boy, and you know it would be a boy, you had a little boy who just kept running into the wall, like just kept running his head directly into the wall.
Merlin: Eventually, you would say, it looks like you're having fun with that.
Merlin: Not sure where you're going with that, but you need to stop doing that.
Merlin: It's bad for you.
Merlin: It's bad for us.
Merlin: It's bad for the wall.
Merlin: I think you should do that with kids who make bad art, you know, at a certain age.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You should probably do, you know, up to 35.
Merlin: There's a lot of people who are 32 who should be talked out of their art.
Merlin: I really do believe that.
Merlin: And I don't, you know, because... We should be positive and smile into the mic.
Merlin: We should.
Merlin: But there's a lot of very, very silly stuff.
Merlin: And God bless the tolerant communities that just keep putting posters in the window for that kind of thing.
John: But it's just...
John: I feel like there are a lot of people making art who could be doing very important work elsewhere.
John: It's not that I think that they should stop doing art and go grab an oar on a Roman war barge.
Merlin: Not like Les Mis level of manual labor.
John: No, they should be doing something else with the energy that they feel like they're pouring into their art or to their mindfulness retreat.
Merlin: Should there be a government service, John?
Merlin: Should there be something like in England, they have all kinds of jobs program stuff to help you find the right kind of job.
Merlin: It's the kind of thing we're used to doing.
Merlin: Should there be somebody, and let's be honest, beyond a guidance counselor, no shade, no lemonade, but almost all of the advice I got from guidance counselors in high school was empirically terrible.
Merlin: I mean like uniformly empirically terrible and discouraging in a non-positive way.
Merlin: Like these are people who've been beaten by life and their advice was always join the Air Force.
Merlin: That was the extent of the advice.
Merlin: You would have been great in the Air Force.
Merlin: Do you think?
John: Yeah, I do.
Merlin: There's a time when the Marines were heavily trying to recruit me because I'd done very well on the ASVAB.
Merlin: And so it got to the point where the Marine guy would drive his government car to the house and pick me up to come in and watch movies at the recruitment station and drink coffee.
Merlin: At the time, I was just getting into coffee.
Merlin: So I would go in and watch movies.
Merlin: Have you ever seen a grown man naked?
Merlin: What I remember about that, I remember being very hot up on coffee with the Marines.
Merlin: But I also remember saying, oh, yeah, my friend Ricky just recently joined the Air Force.
Merlin: He said, well, you should tell that individual to buy some oil rags.
Merlin: And I don't know what that means.
Merlin: And I said, why would I tell him that?
Merlin: He says, to keep the ants off his candy ass.
Yeah.
Merlin: is what I remember from 1985.
John: That's what keeps ants off your candy ass, is oil rags.
Merlin: Hope Ricky got those oil cloths, whatever that is.
Merlin: Hey, Ricky, it's me.
Merlin: Oh, what's going on?
Merlin: Oh, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Merlin: Just, you know, I'm not doing much.
Merlin: I just want to pass along a message from the sergeant at the Marine Station.
Merlin: OK, I got to go.
Merlin: I'm still in training for the Air Force.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: To that point, he had a suggestion about your candy ass.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Candy ass.
John: I feel like a lot of the advice I got from guidance counselors was based.
John: You know, you and I both grew up in a time when all of the textbooks were leftovers from a period when we were still trying to beat the Russians to the moon.
John: We were still living in that stop, drop, and roll kind of universe where they just hadn't updated anything.
Merlin: I will make my annual reference to the government class that everybody had to take in 12th grade, which is called Comparative Government Americanism vs. Communism.
Merlin: ABC was literally the name of my 12th grade history course.
John: Yeah, Americanism.
Merlin: Americanism vs. Communism.
John: Who was our Karl Marx?
Yeah.
John: And our Karl Marx was Johnny Appleseed, Mr. America.
John: Played by Jimmy Stewart.
John: But that stuff, I mean, that whole like abandon your dreams thing was just based on, I think they thought it was positive because it was built out of the remnants of that idea that everybody could do better than their parents and there was always going to be
John: You were always going to be able to retire at 55.
Merlin: There was also a time when you could still, I mean, in the classic example, the now in retrospect somewhat false economy of Detroit in the 40s, 50s, 60s, was the idea that you could be a manual laborer in a union.
Merlin: who earned a, what is it you like to say?
Merlin: You try and get the income of a relatively successful dentist.
Merlin: You could, as an African American in Detroit in the 50s, get a fully middle class house buying income with benefits and retirement.
Merlin: as a manual laborer.
Merlin: Which I think you tell these kids today that, and they're going to be like, you've got to be kidding me.
Merlin: I do spreadsheets all day, and I can't afford rent, you know?
John: What kept us out of, you know, what the guidance counselors did to us was say, like, kill your dreams.
John: But we're in a different world now.
John: And I feel like some of the people I admire the most are the ones that are like, I like building.
John: And so I just built.
John: I build things.
John: That's what I like to do.
John: I build things and then I – and the making a living from it comes, right?
John: You have to hustle.
John: You have to hustle in whatever you're doing.
John: But the people that just completely abandoned the – and not abandoned, but just never walked into –
John: the whole universe of, well, you've got to take French if you're in a college preparatory path.
John: Yes, yes.
Merlin: And you have to take this, all of these courses that you're going to need for college.
Merlin: And then once you're in college, there's still so many distribution requirements.
Merlin: And if you don't hew to this very well-defined path, you're going to go need to talk to the guidance counselor about what your plan B is going to be.
John: Yeah, about joining the Air Force and getting some rags to keep the ants off your ass.
John: Yeah, oil rags, yeah.
Merlin: But I don't even know.
Merlin: I've got to find out what an oil rag is.
Merlin: Yeah, you're right.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I think in their mind what they said is practical.
Merlin: They are being practical.
Merlin: They're helping you with a path that is practical.
Merlin: And one reason it's practical is that it is realistic and
Merlin: and it is doable.
Merlin: Given the condition that you are in, this is something you can do.
Merlin: You can become good at this, but you know what?
Merlin: That other path, it looks like it's not for you.
John: Somewhere, I think, along the way, the idea that we all were, I mean, I've talked about this a lot, not just that we're all artists, but that we're all gifted.
John: But the American thing, one of the main things that differentiates it from the communisms
John: is that everyone in America is like our individuality is maybe our most important quality, our uniqueness, and we've laughed about it since the beginning of this show that everyone is a special flower.
John: But somewhere along the line, there was a period of our show where we talked a lot about the rise of people that were
John: that we're making artisanal... I mean, we haven't said artist anal in four years, but we used to say it all the time.
Merlin: I'm happy to say that one has achieved escape velocity.
Merlin: I think it's up there with Interrogate at this point as having achieved exit velocity from our particular... People who have never met us are saying it and have no idea where it came from.
John: Yeah, in Box Zero.
John: But 43-fold.
Merlin: It's been a long time since I've had 43 folders.
Merlin: No, I have like four.
Merlin: I have like four folders and one of them is very, very, very thick.
John: It says everybody sucks and everything sucks.
Merlin: Everybody sucks.
John: Yeah.
John: But that whole – what feels now like – I don't know if it was a brief moment or if it's just – if it's ongoing and it's just overshadowed by the fact that everyone is shouting now or whether it really has percolated into the culture at large.
John: But the idea in 2014 or whatever that what –
John: really made sense was to spend a lot of money on one jacket that you wore the rest of your life rather than buy a bunch of Chinese jackets, a new one every year.
John: And that was a philosophy that people were trying to grapple with.
John: And they were like, do I really believe that I should pay $300 for a coat that I'm going to live – that I'm going to wear forever?
John: Or do I want to just go to Nordstrom Rack and buy a garbage jacket every season?
John: Like where am I on that?
John: And there are plenty of people who are listening to this program who have a knife –
John: That is their life knife.
John: And they're wearing shoes that they got specifically because those shoes can be resold.
John: Now, whether or not they will ever resold those shoes, who knows?
John: But somewhere in that philosophy and that mentality is a dissemination of a different attitude toward work, a different attitude toward that's not just like becoming a craftsman or a craftsperson, but like
John: An idea that the word, and this is what I admire so much about chefs, in a way, chefs and dancers, because when a chef makes a meal and then you eat it, it's gone.
John: And there's no, you know, you don't go pop in the videotape and watch it again.
John: And if you did, it wouldn't matter.
John: It's not the same as eating it.
John: And unlike me or someone who's working on an app right now,
John: Who in some way believes that the work they're doing is going to live forever or at least is important and matters in some way beyond just its moment, its moment of creation.
John: Like if you're a cook, your food is only hot for…
Merlin: what five minutes it's it is by definition ephemeral it comes from these days if you're doing like some version of california which everybody is of course like it's the fresh local ingredients that are only good for so long that are then used to produce a dish that is necessarily ephemeral because it'll be gone in less than an hour but like why isn't that maybe true or more true or thought of as more true of all work
John: You know, you and I came up in a time when the work that we admired was like Melville, right?
John: Or Saul Bellow.
John: But it was all thought of as...
John: uh as stuff that was going to last yeah that was that was part of being in the canon like you wanted something that would be in the canon you got into it and it was it was it was going to be mean it was going to resonate it was going to be meaningful and maybe you know the the really lucky ones i was thinking about this the other day 30 years from now no one is going to remember eric clapton and that's crazy considering how you don't think they'll still be still be listening to layla
John: It might come on in a playlist that nobody knows.
John: But I mean, when was the last time you heard somebody talk about Jelly Roll Morton?
Merlin: I feel that way about Billy Murray.
Merlin: When you listen to old-timey music shows, there's some really good music from the early part of the 20th century.
Merlin: And there's a singer named Billy Murray.
Merlin: And he's on everything.
Merlin: He was huge.
Merlin: He did so many sides for all these different labels at the time.
Merlin: And he's one of those singers who sings like this.
Merlin: And he was like an Irish tenor, I believe.
Merlin: But he was everywhere.
Merlin: He was the Lady Gaga of his time, maybe the Adele of his time.
Merlin: Everybody loved Billy Murray, and he was huge.
Merlin: And when I said his name right now, I bet you almost every person in the audience said, oh, do you mean the guy from Caddyshack?
Merlin: Well, understandably, because that's the point.
Merlin: Nobody remembers Billy Murray.
John: The huge musicians of the 1920s, like the ones that we remember, are Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman came along in there.
John: But who remembers Fletcher Henderson or Cliff Edwards?
Merlin: These were big, big artists.
Merlin: Look at the 60s.
Merlin: How many people talk about fucking Oscar Peterson?
Merlin: Sit down and spend an afternoon listening to Oscar Peterson.
Merlin: I'm not chiding here because I do the same thing.
Merlin: Oscar Peterson, Charles Mangus, Thelonious Monk.
Merlin: There's a whole bunch of artists where you could sit down and in the space, for me, Richard Thompson, I'm always trying to sell people on Richard Thompson, go spend fucking half a day on Spotify just listening to their shit and you're going to have shivers.
Merlin: Any of those people.
John: The thing is that for you and me, right, the idea that there would ever be a moment, and we've been talking about this for a long time, I think, in a different way, which is just that I say a lot how much I don't feel like I'm in, this is a conversation Ted Leo and I used to have, that neither one of us really is fully in the indie rock canon.
John: We're a subset of a subset.
John: And bands like the bands that will define my era, the shins, the Decemberists, um, the new pornographers, death cab, death cab, uh, you know, in a way like death cab, it defines it to the point that they're kind of almost outside of it.
John: Um, um,
John: But the bands that are, you know, like, I always aspired to be at the level of the new pornographers.
John: I never will, you know?
John: And so when you extrapolate that to the music, the popular music that really defined us growing up, which is, of course, the music of the 60s, 70s, and 80s.
John: But the idea that somewhere along the line, the Beatles and the Stones...
John: will be the shorthand for our entire lives.
Merlin: Oh, in the same way that my daughter thinks the 90s are the 60s are the 70s.
Merlin: Like anything old might as well be 90s or 60s or 70s.
Merlin: That's right.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: There's no sense of the we have of, oh, this came after that.
Merlin: We know that Houses of the Holy came after Led Zeppelin, too.
Merlin: Not directly, but you know what I mean?
Merlin: We have some chronology of when things happened that is inextricable from the experience of the music in that case.
John: And it wasn't that long ago.
John: The music that my mom listened to...
John: When was the last time Vaughn Monroe came on?
John: I mean, she's one of those generations that's in between big band jazz and cool jazz.
Merlin: Very similar to my mom and dad.
Merlin: And they have that shared experience of, of course I didn't listen to rock music, to quote your mom.
Merlin: I thrived on being a grown-up and being seen as a grown-up.
Merlin: And the last thing I would do is listen to this ridiculous teeny bopper music from England.
John: Right.
Merlin: Nat Cole, Nat Cole Trio.
Merlin: It was a huge deal when he went solo and it was very controversial because he did pop stuff and people got mad at him.
Merlin: But there are these artists that at the time, I mean, people, okay, Bing Crosby, that's one that everybody knows, right?
Merlin: Because of White Christmas.
Merlin: But do they know like how huge he was?
Merlin: And you ask people, well, what decade was he, or Sinatra, you ask people, what decade was Sinatra really popular and how he kind of had two or maybe arguably three acts of
Merlin: in his career.
Merlin: And you're right, though.
Merlin: It's like there's this, again, this sorting algorithm where we end up with, I think your Beatles and the Stones things is probably really right on.
Merlin: Because the Beatles are our idea of what a good rock band is, and the Stones refuse to go away.
Merlin: Like, they are rock music to some people, probably.
John: Right.
John: And in the end, we'll be...
John: I mean, you and I could sit here and name 10 classical composers.
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: Probably between us.
Merlin: Maybe.
John: And what we don't realize, what we're not informed enough to know, is that those 10 classical composers, they actually represent 400 years of classical music.
John: And we think of them as being...
John: more or less contemporaries of one another, right?
John: Like, oh, sure, like, you know, there's Handel, and there's Beethoven, and there's Rachmaninoff, and, you know, and... Yeah, you're talking about centuries, Bach to Ives, or to Debussy, or whatever, is like, you're talking 300, 200, 300 years.
John: Yeah, right.
John: And that, and when our own time is... When our own time is condensed...
John: that same way.
Merlin: And it's like, sure, Louis Armstrong and the Beatles and... And you see it in the existing terrestrial radio that's still alive, you very much see this.
Merlin: Because at least places I've lived, there is a classical station, which is usually a...
Merlin: like an NPR station or similar, some kind of public media station.
Merlin: I don't know if it's NPR always, but like local public media.
Merlin: And it's a, it's a classical station.
Merlin: They call it classical music.
Merlin: Well, what do you mean by classical?
Merlin: You know, are you talking about romantic?
Merlin: Are you talking about like, which, which area are you talking about?
Merlin: Oh, I'm talking about the classical music station.
Merlin: Cause it's all, all of the music with violins and oboes is at 88.9.
Merlin: that's what i know about classical music and how and then so like only slightly less only slightly more subtle than that is the greatest hits of the 60s 70s 80s and beyond kfuk you know and it's right and it's like what the great hits of what i mean i have extremely strong opinions about like every rem album
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Let alone, like, do the zombies really fit in with, you know, the Cranberries singing a song about zombies?
Merlin: Those are two very, very different things to me.
John: Which all kind of gets to this idea that, like, there was something about our time, yours and mine in particular, and it's still present, where...
John: It's not just that we, it's not just that every person thought they were special.
John: It's that somehow our, our ambitions, our aspirations, what was, what was considered success was that you made something that, that, or contributed to something that persevered, that was part of the, you know, part of the tower we were building to the moon or part of the, you know, we were building the new future.
John: And if you think back to, you know, I don't know, before the 19th century, I mean, you know, it's kind of an 18th century idea, right?
John: That anybody's ever going to read these books beyond the popular market for them this year.
John: That you would be writing a book that people would continue to study many, many, many, many years later.
John: You know, we're so down on...
John: on like disposable culture now when really all culture is disposable ultimately.
John: And, and it all should be, I was thinking about this when, when, when I've thought about the fifties, my whole life, you think about the fifties from our, from our perspective, having been born after the fifties, you think about them as kind of locked in time.
John: And in that sense, they lasted forever and,
John: They lasted forever when they were happening, in my mind, right?
John: It was the 50s forever when it was the 50s.
John: So there was time, if you were living in the 50s, you had the time to experience all the 50s, to have...
John: been into Marilyn Monroe and also to have been into jazz and reading the New Yorker then, and also being living in a Levitt town and also, you know, being a pioneer in Alaska and, you know, like all of, and driving a big car with fins, but also being contemptuous of big cars with fins.
John: Like there was so, there's so much, we've spent so much time thinking about the fifties and processing them that it's hard to, it's hard for me sometimes to imagine that,
John: Some of those things that are now eternal about the 50s only lasted for a couple of months.
John: Think about the summer of love.
Merlin: Think about 1967.
Merlin: Three months.
Merlin: But when you when you went from there's some cool cats hanging out and smoking weed to heroin is destroying the community was less than a summer.
Merlin: It was basically you had basically a good six weeks and that's it.
Merlin: And then it was a lot of date rape and heroin.
Merlin: But we've been talking about the Summer of Love ever since.
Merlin: Exactly, yeah.
Merlin: And it seems like— The Summer of Love continued until disco.
Merlin: It really—I mean, the influence of that all through the self-actualization stuff.
Merlin: You know, all the hippie stuff and the sons and daughters of hippie stuff and the grandchildren of hippie stuff.
Merlin: And then all the way up to the revival in, like, 88, right?
Merlin: When the harmonic conversion stuff was happening and tie-dye got popular again.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's just weird that that's all based on this thing, just to your point.
Merlin: That's one thing that was actually good and interesting and useful, mostly, for a few weeks.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: That happened once, and that was in some ways only relevant in its own time.
Merlin: And now you're still seeing it.
Merlin: You go to the panhandle, you go to that McDonald's by the panhandle, or at the end of the panhandle right now.
Merlin: Oh, I know, I know.
Merlin: It's still...
Merlin: Utterly blighted.
Merlin: It's just different teen runaways and drug addicts than in 1967.
Merlin: But that has never gone away.
Merlin: Haight-Ashbury is like, it is by turns a tourist attraction and an urban blight.
John: It's incredible to imagine that.
John: San Francisco can be so expensive and so wrung out, and yet right up there, there persists an environment that doesn't even exist in college communities anymore.
John: There's no place like it.
John: Where is there still a place where there are acid casualties?
John: The last time I was in San Francisco, I saw some acid casualties and I was like, whoa, you guys.
Merlin: They're definitely still here.
Merlin: But like, you know, if you ever come to San Francisco, great town.
Merlin: Fly on in to our airport outside of town.
Merlin: It's really good.
Merlin: But be sure to go to Twitter headquarters.
Merlin: Nothing against Twitter, but it's really interesting to be standing under the Twitter sign and see so many people sleeping on the street next to human shit.
Merlin: Because you've basically found the corner that represents San Francisco so nicely.
Yeah.
John: But how do we – how do we – 50s.
John: You're talking about the 50s.
John: But I'm talking about like how do we ever get it into our heads that what we make only matters –
John: Now that, that anything that we do that isn't its own reward.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: How do we get like a chef, like a chef?
Merlin: It would be odd for someone to go through the training time expertise, you know, it's just, it's a tough, it's a tough job working your way up to being a quote unquote chef who will go through all of that and then still be able to say, I'm really bummed that people aren't still talking about the plate of food that I served them yesterday.
Right.
Merlin: That food is gone.
Merlin: My job was done before it was even eaten.
Merlin: Then it was eaten.
Merlin: And now I just go back to work and keep doing that over and over.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Why do they not celebrate that one meal I made that one time?
Merlin: That would be odd.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Wow.
Merlin: So you think maybe that's a good state of mind for all the things?
John: Well, you know, just sitting and thinking about like, what is its own reward?
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Everything has to be.
John: It has to be its own reward.
John: Because what else?
John: What are we doing?
John: You and I aren't like stacking up acorns for the winter.
John: And if we are, that had better be its own reward.
Merlin: Because Jesus Christ.
Merlin: Andy Goldsworthy had already got that covered.
Merlin: But I do know what you mean.
John: I don't even know what that is.
Merlin: He's a guy who does.
Merlin: He's a guy who makes art.
Merlin: Um, he basically just like goes out into the woods or the forest.
Merlin: You should check him out.
Merlin: He's got some stuff in the park here.
Merlin: That's just amazing.
Merlin: But yeah, he's a guy who makes art out of like what he finds at a location in nature.
John: Oh yeah.
Merlin: And it's, it's actually really quite striking.
Merlin: I didn't mean to derail you.
Merlin: But I think you're right.
Merlin: And I think this might be privileged.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But I try to do that in the sense of there's a lot of little shit that I do, not niggling shit, but definitely little shit, where it's not for me to throw up a proscenium and say, hey, everybody, look at my thing.
Merlin: It is the kind of thing like, I mean, for me, that's writing show notes for some of my podcasts, which is a very, it takes, you know, five to 60 minutes or whatever.
Merlin: And it's for a very small audience, but that's the thing I do.
Merlin: And then it goes away.
Merlin: Most people don't even know it exists, but you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You try and try and find some way to make your own art, even, even, or especially if it's not forever art.
Merlin: Right.
John: Right.
John: Right.
Merlin: You feel like you, you feel like you try to do that.
Merlin: Do you feel like you'd like to do that?
John: I mean, what do I... What do I make?
Merlin: Well, think about Colton.
Merlin: Think about Colton in, like, the... I don't know how much this is just the story, but think about, like, Song a Week.
Merlin: Like, what an interesting idea.
Merlin: He's probably not the first person to ever do that.
Merlin: Some weeks are better than others, and sometimes he did covers.
Merlin: But, like, that kind of launched his deal, was that he put out a song every week.
John: He's a lot different than I am at some, like...
John: And Flansburg is like this, too.
John: Like they they don't really.
John: They're not precious about their work.
John: You know, Flans just his his attitude is always focused on.
John: What's next?
John: What he's writing now?
Merlin: He seems very driven.
John: But it really is a lack of preciousness.
John: If he writes something and he doesn't like it, he throws it away and he doesn't mourn.
John: Okay, yeah.
John: God, that's so great.
John: He doesn't mourn the time and the work and the genius that went into it.
John: It's just like, nope.
John: And Colton is... He's certainly less like that.
John: He's more... He's more... But...
John: But he's a craftsperson, right?
John: He thinks of the things he's making as things he's making.
Merlin: Yeah, I mean, even his early songs are like beautiful pieces of furniture, the way they fit together.
John: But for me, and I think part of this is because my creative process remained...
John: magical to me.
John: I never got a set of tools that was in a little tool roll that I would unroll and look at and go, which all am I going to use today?
John: Every time I sat down to make a new thing, it was like,
John: I was in a loincloth again and was just like, ooga booga, how big rock go pow.
Merlin: You're back at the start of every level of Minecraft where first you have to make a bench.
John: First you have to make a bench, right?
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: And also, you know, and part of that magic was like, well, maybe this time I'll completely reinvent music.
John: Or maybe this time I'll rewrite Louie Louie.
John: Like, I don't know what is going to...
John: Happen anytime I sit down and Jonathan, you know, Jonathan has a degree in music and he knows what the pieces and parts are and he sits down.
John: And says, I'm going to write a song.
John: And what happens in his mind, I have no idea.
John: You know, with Flansburg, Flansburg has written so many songs.
John: I've been doing it for so long.
John: He sits down and I have no idea what his tool role looks like and which one he reaches for first and how much his process is like, I reach for that one first every time.
John: What if I reach for this one?
John: Or what if I, what if I take that tool I always use and I turn it around and use the handle?
John: And for me, it's just like, Oh, just pick up the thing and hit it.
John: And then, blah.
John: And on the one hand, that keeps it magical, but also it makes it always scary.
John: It always feels like a demonic possession, or it always feels like the last song could have been the last one I ever wrote.
Merlin: Especially if you feel like you don't have, in any way...
Merlin: Well, so sometimes you get something that I sometimes tell my daughter about how I really need momentum today.
Merlin: Like I need to we need to not be hung up.
Merlin: We need to get out of the house.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: We need momentum.
Merlin: We need to understand that we can and will put on socks and we're not going to talk about it.
Merlin: Do you know what I mean, though?
Merlin: What is it that kills momentum?
Merlin: Part of what kills momentum is a lack of momentum.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So like if you have to re like if I had to get up every day, like imagine I was 21 or 27 and had to take care of a kid.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: And you'd be like, oh, shit, it needs to eat.
Merlin: It needs to evacuate its bowels.
Merlin: It needs to be made clean.
Merlin: I don't know how to make those things happen.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: So when I'm running around in the morning and it's gotten easier over time.
Merlin: You know, it's frustrating sometimes, but I know it's doable and I can have a vision of how to get it done.
Merlin: Whereas like if it was the first time ever and it wasn't even my kid, I would be so fucking confused.
Merlin: And sometimes when you're making art, like whatever that is, you feel more like the 21 year old novice than the 50 year old expert.
John: Well, in particular, because whatever my standard is,
John: When I sit down and try to conjure up all the little – try and conjure up Pan's Labyrinth, I also am thinking that the standard is to make a song that people will listen to for decades.
John: Of course.
John: I'm never sitting down – and I don't think Flansburg necessarily has that.
John: I feel like... And the thing is, people will listen to their music for decades, but I don't think that is a motivator.
Merlin: But that's also the irony of how you come up with something like fingertips.
Merlin: The fingertips suite is something I would never do in a million years because the amount of effort that went into sounding each one of those...
Merlin: Very few second long songs.
Merlin: Think about, you know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: Like think about the effort that one went into like, you know, something got a hold of my hand.
Merlin: I didn't know this.
Merlin: And you're like, it's such a beautiful slice of 60s girl pop.
Merlin: And it's just a few seconds long.
Merlin: You had to do all the instrumentation for that and all of that work.
Merlin: And then the irony on top of that is I still have those songs, those little throwaway funny songs that
Merlin: Not throw away in a bad way, but like, you know, those little bagatelles, those little, those were still in my fucking head.
Merlin: They ended up being eternal and canonical to me.
Merlin: And I don't think they intended it that way.
John: Kick you in the head and I'll kick you in the head.
John: Leave me alone.
John: If you think about, if you think about the, like Chris Ballew, a longtime listener of our show, right?
John: He puts out a new Casper Babypants record every year.
John: And he also, and I think Chris has, Chris has a big philosophy that is attached to his creative process, but I think a lot of it, he reverse engineers.
John: I think he's got a creative process.
Merlin: He has insight in retrospect.
John: He put, well, because he, because he, part of his creative process, I mean, he's very, he analyzes himself, but he also takes a lot of influence from like Eastern thinking and, you know, and so he combines it all and he's, he can describe it to you
John: as a thought-out system.
John: I mean, he can tell you what he's doing.
John: But really, I think that that's all after the fact, right?
John: He is doing what he's doing.
John: And then he comes up with a
John: with a system to describe it that makes it seem like the system was operating.
John: And I mean, I think he may use oblique strategies or whatever.
John: I mean, it's not that it's – and he has a toolkit too, right, that he unrolls and has access to these handled instruments.
John: but like the lack of preciousness in the sense that he makes this music and in, and the making it is its own reward in some way.
John: And the performing it is it's, it's gratifying to him.
John: Right.
John: But he's not going back to the fifth order.
John: casper baby pants record and and like and saying like it's the 10th anniversary i'm gonna play it all the way through right you know like there's absolutely none of that self he's not he's not gonna let himself become a nostalgia act or re that's yeah that is that is so so interesting we talk about self self-mythologizing but really it's self-nostologizing oh shit dog oh fucking a yes
John: And that's something that I really do a lot.
Merlin: Oh, I try so hard.
Merlin: I love that word.
Merlin: I try so hard not to do that.
Merlin: I think it must be said that in this economy, it's understandable.
Merlin: It's understandable why you want to get more products of any kind onto Spotify, right?
Merlin: To get more plays, to make sure you bubble up in more different places.
Merlin: Like that's a strategy that for economic reasons makes sense.
John: The way to do that is not to give a shit about any individual.
John: One, you know, if we really are living in a world where product is king –
John: um or content is king shit i could make a new thing every day and i mean in a way we are making product every day uh content but but um because i think of myself as a content creator yeah we're making the shit out of it but like if i just if i just went like oh you know oh cool yep yep here we go ready
John: Making content.
John: Content.
John: Making content for everyone.
Merlin: Put that right out, right?
Merlin: I'll do the bridge.
Merlin: Every day I get out and make content.
Merlin: Every day I'm creating our content.
Merlin: Just for you.
John: It had a little thing, like it was a little post-chorus.
Merlin: It's got a Spanish punk rock thing to it.
John: Yeah, a little Spanish punk rock.
John: Well, that's my Billy Joe Armstrong.
John: Spanish punk rock S-Thaw bullshit.