Ep. 370: "Tomorrow's Heart"
Merlin: Hi, John.
Merlin: Hi, Marilyn.
Merlin: How's it going?
Merlin: Ah, things are good.
John: Things are good.
John: Sorry I'm a little late, but...
Merlin: But, yeah.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: That's a lot of noise for a guy who's going great.
John: Rawr.
John: I'm a little dinosaur.
John: Rawr.
Merlin: You are a little dinosaur.
Merlin: I'm still waking up a little bit.
Merlin: Still waking up a little bit.
Merlin: Gotta be honest.
Merlin: Still waking up a little bit.
Merlin: Give me an example of what's going on.
Merlin: Things are going well here.
Merlin: I got a lot going on.
Merlin: I'm good.
Merlin: Good, good, good.
Merlin: I got a lot of projects.
Merlin: I'm sharpening the saw.
Merlin: You know, banging it for finishing nails.
John: A couple of guys our age, you know, having a lot going on is good.
John: Keeps us busy.
John: Well, it keeps the demon dogs at bay for sure.
John: It keeps us out of the kitchen.
John: It keeps us, you know, checking in the pen patch scripting outdoors.
Merlin: It's early.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I got a lot of technical projects.
Merlin: I got a lot of semi-technical projects.
Merlin: I got a lot of hammering.
Merlin: A lot of hammering and saws.
Merlin: Hammering and saws?
Merlin: Got a new mic set up here.
John: Are you talking about metaphorical hammers and saws?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Are you talking about real hammers?
Merlin: There's a guy in the productivity racket who says you have to set aside time to sharpen the saw.
John: You got to sharpen the saw.
Merlin: Yeah, sharpen the saw.
Merlin: Yeah, and the idea is, you know, good enough's not good enough.
Merlin: You need to keep getting better at the stuff that you do.
John: Keep sharpening that saw.
Merlin: Mm-hmm.
Merlin: If what you're doing is sawing.
Merlin: Yes, but it is in that sense metaphorical.
Merlin: Sure, I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: So you got a sharp saw.
Merlin: You got some finishing nails.
Merlin: I'm doing a lot of things to make myself more forward compatible.
Okay.
John: Have you been organizing your cable routing?
John: Yes, somewhat.
John: Things are routed differently.
Merlin: Yes, but I do that as part of a larger Weltanschauung.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: It's not just for its own sake.
Merlin: As they say in Glen Ross, what is this in service of?
Merlin: And I want to make sure I'm doing things in service of good things.
John: When you were in Bacon Ray, did you have, how many distortion boxes did you have or other effects pedals?
John: That's a very good question.
Merlin: Over time, I had, I always, ever since high school, I've enjoyed the rat pedal.
John: It's a great pedal.
Merlin: And the rap pedal also works well with, I learned from my friend Steven, how much two distortion pedals of differing settings can be real good.
Merlin: You know that trick, like for a solo and whatnot.
Merlin: You might have something kind of warm here.
Merlin: So yeah, okay, so what?
Merlin: Okay, I was a fan of that.
Merlin: I like the Ibanez Tube Screamer at a time.
John: Tube Screamer, great pedal.
Merlin: My main go-to, I mean, I had a small amp that I would put on a chair on stage.
John: Amp on a chair, yeah.
Merlin: I would go from a kind of crappy Gibson amp to a Softech cabinet.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Softech was like the PV of Russia, Nesterovia.
Merlin: So now wait, you had a head and a cabinet?
Merlin: I mean, I had this Gibson.
Merlin: I bought poorly.
Merlin: I always tried to economize in the wrong ways.
Merlin: Yeah, okay.
Merlin: What kind of Gibson head was it?
Merlin: It was an amp.
Merlin: It was like a dad amp.
Merlin: I had a Gibson dad amp, and then I would run that out to the SovTech, which didn't make a huge difference, but it looked cool.
John: Oh, did you bypass the speaker that was in the Gibson?
John: I think I might have taken the clip off.
John: I don't really remember.
Merlin: But I usually had something like a rat pedal.
Merlin: You know what I liked?
Merlin: This is so obnoxious.
Merlin: This is such a cheat.
Merlin: I liked that boss pedal, that orange boss pedal that could make fake feedback.
Merlin: The DS-1?
Merlin: Maybe.
Merlin: You're talking about the bus DS-1?
Merlin: You hold down the pedal, and it grabs somewhat arbitrarily the closest thing to a screaming harmonic, and then way overdoes it.
John: And sometimes it grabs the wrong one and goes, whoa.
John: Not a DS-1.
John: It was like a feedback or sustainer or something like that.
John: Something like that, yeah.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And then sometimes I would have, I was never a huge fan after the 80s, a huge fan of chorus, but I did have one of those giant Russian pedals that was a phaser.
Merlin: One of those really, really, you know what I'm talking about?
Merlin: An electro-harmonic.
John: Yeah, probably.
Merlin: It was made out of aircraft aluminum.
Merlin: Something like that.
Merlin: And I was mainly about the distortion.
Merlin: It made me feel strong like bull.
Merlin: One time I gave Lou Barlow a 9-volt battery and he wasn't all that grateful about it.
John: Well, you know, he had a lot going on in his mind, Lou.
John: Lots to think about.
John: You don't get hair like that by accident.
John: Did you spend time sitting on the floor?
John: Let me just paint a picture.
John: Did you spend time sitting on the floor of your practice space?
John: trying out different orders of those pedals where you put this one first and that one first.
Merlin: I did, I did, but you have to remember this is all at this point over 20 years ago.
Merlin: But what I recall was there was a pretty established order for how you wanted to do that.
Merlin: Where like a smarter guitar guy would look at your signal, what's it called?
Merlin: Signal chain?
Merlin: Signal chain, yeah.
Merlin: Yeah, look at it and go, hmm, I don't know about that.
Merlin: I don't know if I put the reverb before the...
Merlin: The distortion.
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: You wouldn't put the reaver before the distortion.
John: You know what I'm saying though, right?
John: Yeah, I sure do.
Merlin: In your signal chain, you've got a certain clarity you want at the beginning.
Merlin: And then you do a little bit of seasoning toward the end.
John: You put the smooch smooch over there.
Merlin: You keep the important stuff.
Merlin: But then also you have to account for things like, what if one of these things breaks?
Merlin: Some things break nice.
Merlin: And they keep working.
Merlin: Other things break nice.
Merlin: And then the signal don't go.
Merlin: And now you're not very rock and roll.
Merlin: when you're all spinal tap and trying to move, you know, your cables around.
John: You're not very rock and roll if the signal don't go.
Merlin: I want to hear what you have to say about this, because you've thought about this, I'm sure, more than I have.
Merlin: But yeah, we were a real, you know, we had pretensions for being a sort of jokey prog, but we played, you know, we liked rock music.
Merlin: We liked, you know, got to buy voices in Afghan wigs and stuff like that.
John: Yeah, sure, sure.
John: Rock music, famously.
John: I like rock music.
John: Famous Afghan wigs rock music.
Merlin: Yeah, but sometimes we'd have a funny little prog thing.
Merlin: It'd be a little bit of a breakdown.
Merlin: I recently returned with huge enthusiasm early to mid King Crimson, which is awfully good.
Merlin: They've got at least three records
Merlin: I would say Crimson King, Lark's Tongue and Aspic, and Red in particular are three albums that they're so different, but they still sound so modern.
Merlin: It's mind-blowing.
Merlin: Anyway, so yeah, that's me.
John: I saw them a couple of years ago, or not a couple of years ago, last year.
John: I saw them last year and they had more than three drummers.
Merlin: But see, if Bill Bruford is on the stage, and I'm sorry to talk about music here.
Merlin: I know it's controversial.
John: No, I don't think we need to talk about King Crimson.
John: I need to talk about games.
Merlin: I want to know about you.
Merlin: Okay, but are you telling me you've got a problem with Bill Bruford?
Merlin: No, no, no, no.
John: You've got Bruford beef.
John: I have none.
John: I have no problem with it.
John: I loved watching King Crimson.
John: What about Baloo?
John: You got any Baloo problems?
Merlin: Chris Baloo?
Merlin: No, I have no problems with Chris Baloo.
Merlin: Chris Baloo.
Merlin: He plays, what does he play?
Merlin: He plays an inner tube.
Merlin: What's he play?
John: Chris Ballou, he plays a bass with two strings.
John: Two strings.
John: Or he plays a guitar with three strings, or he plays a... I think he plays a ukulele with a half a string.
John: It's very confusing.
John: Oh my goodness.
John: That's very light gauge.
John: Yes, it is.
John: It only goes halfway, and then one end is held up by Ferris.
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John: Well, you know, I've been having band practice.
John: Oh.
John: For a band?
John: I've been having band practice because the Western State Hurricanes record releases this weekend.
John: Oh, really?
John: And I'm playing two live shows, two live crew.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And I haven't played two live shows with a rock band in several years, five years maybe, whenever that little tour we did, the Barsuk reunion tour.
Merlin: Oh, is this related to your photo with people in it, a guy that might be Ben Gibbard and another guy?
Merlin: Is that related to this?
John: Yeah, yeah, this is the band.
John: What was I looking at there?
Merlin: What is that?
John: uh who's the guy in the middle uh um oh oh oh you're talking about the three me and then ben on the one side smiling and i didn't wreck so i didn't recognize him yeah no that's carl newman that's ac newman from the new pornography that's ac newman in the middle yeah hang on oh my goodness look at him yeah he's a grown man now oh yeah he is he doesn't look like a spotty canadian
John: No, he's got a little child now who's eight years old.
Merlin: You won't respond to me online.
Merlin: Will you tell him I really enjoy his work?
Merlin: I will.
John: I will.
Merlin: It's really frustrating.
Merlin: It seems like he should be right in my wheelhouse.
John: I know.
John: He's very funny.
John: He's good on Twitter.
Merlin: Bill Janovitz finds the time to talk to me.
Merlin: Seems like Carl Newman.
Merlin: Somebody I've listened to Carl Newman for 20 years seems like the kind of thing.
Merlin: I did introduce myself to him when I was drunk once, but I don't think he remembers that.
John: The thing about Bill Janovitz is he's a real estate agent, right?
John: Hang on, who's a real estate agent?
John: Bill Janovitz.
John: Oh.
John: Did you not know this?
John: He is the Boston area's premier mid-century modern real estate agent.
John: Shut your whore mouth.
Merlin: And he wrote a book about the Stones that's very good.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Oh, and he did a 33 and a third, right?
John: He did.
John: He did one of those.
Merlin: He might have done a 33 and a third, but I think he, I mean, I've got his book.
Merlin: You know, it's so difficult when you buy cloud books because you don't really know the, I mean, I read so many cloud books.
Merlin: I read Bob Mould's biography that way, like autobiography.
Merlin: Like there's all these books about music that I get or the great Scott Miller book about music through time, which is a great book, RIP to a real one.
Merlin: But yeah, okay, okay.
John: I've never bought a cloud book, so this isn't a problem that I have.
Merlin: Good for you.
Merlin: All right, who's the bass player?
John: I don't have a TV.
John: I don't know if you know this.
Merlin: Oh, wait, you don't have a TV at all?
John: Wow.
Merlin: Well, I don't even have a house.
Merlin: Oh, that's so bougie to have a house.
Merlin: I know.
Merlin: Look at me.
Merlin: I can shit where I want.
Merlin: Who's the bass player?
Merlin: Who's the P bass with a striped shirt?
Merlin: Who is that?
John: Who are we talking about now?
John: Your latest Instagram.
John: No, no, no, no.
John: Oh, no.
John: Oh, so this is the Western State Hurricanes.
John: That's Bo Gilliland on the bass.
John: It's Michael Schilling, who you know, on the drums.
John: Sure do.
Merlin: Wait, is that Stephanie?
Merlin: Stephanie?
John: stephanie wicker slash now uh stephanie nay wicker i thought she was gonna be a no show for this she's in she showed shit dog i thought that was was that a question mark like a health thing at some point for a long time she postponed a surgery she's been undergoing she's been she had a guitar made for herself so that she can hold it you know she's a really good singer did you know that
John: I did know.
John: She said when she was coming in to Seattle a couple of days ago, the plane tried four times to land and had four times went around until everybody on the plane was barfing and screaming and crying.
John: It was one of these airplane experiences.
John: You get the drops?
John: It's the worst.
John: Oh, I hate it.
John: It was a big storm and the plane's bouncing around and they couldn't get it on the ground.
John: I didn't know that still happened.
Merlin: That's where the regular professional pilot, they couldn't get it on the ground.
John: Yeah, they just I don't know.
John: You know, SeaTac is a very modern airport and it has all the mod cons.
John: Yeah.
John: And I don't know what could possibly have been happening in terms of wind shear and whatever else.
John: You know, I don't know what I mean.
John: The runway at SeaTac.
John: At least the newest runway has embedded heating in it.
John: It's got floor heating.
John: Yeah, they turn the floor heat on and your feet are warm when you get out of the shower.
John: On the whole length of the runway.
Merlin: Viva Viva SeaTac is what people say.
Merlin: Viva Seattle Tacoma.
Merlin: Viva Viva SeaTac.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know what, but it sounded horrific.
John: She's okay now.
John: Yeah, she was okay as soon as we started playing because music heals.
John: Music is healing.
Yeah.
John: But yeah, it's the, it's the, the gangs altogether.
John: Wow.
John: And, uh, honestly, you know, I'm the weak link.
John: It's really, it's really a challenge.
John: Oh yeah.
John: I don't remember anything.
John: I'm just like, how, what chord is next?
John: I just, I'm staring at them.
John: Like, where are we?
John: And they're like, it's your song, man.
John: I'm like, I know, but I don't write songs like this anymore.
John: I haven't written songs like this in 20 years.
John: There are too many chords.
John: What was going on?
John: What was I trying to prove?
John: They were like, it's your thing.
Merlin: This era of songs, the songs have a lot of movement.
Merlin: There's a lot of fruity changes.
John: Things go, they stop, they go.
John: I was talking to Carl Newman about it at the show, and he was like, I still write songs like that.
John: And he does, but he knows enough to have, on a 10-song record,
John: Seven songs just chugle right along and they don't, they don't hurt anybody's feelings.
John: They just, you know, they get from the start to the finish.
John: They've got smart lyrics.
John: They have little parts.
John: It's good.
John: He reserves.
John: There's only three spots on.
Merlin: do songs that i'm gonna do these three songs that are really hard and by hard i mean like oh there's gonna be a time tempo change he's got some he's got some first of all he he the songs that he has written and i suppose some of the other guys too but especially on the early albums his songs sound like madness yeah i don't know if we ever talked i think we might have talked about this but you take something like uh like a slow descent into alcoholism or one of those or even even that nico case song with the letter from an occupant it sounds like madness and
Merlin: It sounds like somebody turned on some kind of like a Brian Wilson tap on full.
John: He does these wonderful things that I love to do, too.
John: He'll do a Tarantella.
John: He'll bring out a Tarantella.
John: He'll do that.
John: What is that, Tarantella?
Merlin: Oh, well, famously in, like, for example, in Godfather II, the guy who's not Clemenza goes up and says he wants to hear a song, and he wants to hear a Tarantella.
John: And he goes, dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun
John: But God, every single one of these Western State Hurricane songs has like three of those.
John: It's got what we used to call parts.
John: You got parts.
John: It's got parts, and my mind is just like, oh, I don't remember where it goes now.
Merlin: I'm guessing something like Unsalted Butter must be challenging, because that's got finger work on it.
Merlin: You got your... I don't know if that's your part.
Merlin: I'm guessing that's your part.
Merlin: We do an unsalted butter.
John: The challenge of... I mean, that stuff's just muscle memory.
John: The challenge is like, you know, you got a song.
John: A song's supposed to have verse, chorus, verse.
John: Arguably another chorus.
John: Then a bridge.
John: You don't do bridges.
John: Yeah.
John: And then after the bridge, you got either another chorus...
John: After the bridge, you got either a third verse, if that's what you're into.
John: Yeah.
John: If you're somebody, if you're fucking Bruce Springsteen or whatever.
John: Depends on what the song wants.
John: And then a chorus out.
John: Or you get a chorus out.
John: Or, you know, in some cases, modern people with their modern thinking, you go into a bridge and you just take that.
John: That becomes the C part and you go to follow that out.
John: Right?
John: But it's just, it's pretty simple, guys.
John: Verse, chorus, verse, chorus.
John: C part, or bridge, and then chorus out.
John: Baby wasn't down with the heist.
John: And for me, it's like verse, pre-chorus, chorus, second verse has a new chord arrangement.
John: Second verse is still identifiable as a verse related to the first verse, but now it has a different chord arrangement for some reason, making the bass line on the first verse not...
John: Not practical anymore, because now I've introduced some minor chord that didn't need to be there.
John: So now the bass line has to change in the second verse.
Merlin: Well, and I just want to say, I know it's not your favorite, but I'm going to say one thing I love.
Merlin: I love a band who can land...
Merlin: Especially like a mid-tempo pop song.
Merlin: But like, you know, when you get... I'm going to say it.
Merlin: Weezer.
Merlin: Weezer is very good at changing it up in the final chorus.
Merlin: Often with the bass line.
Merlin: And you know me.
Merlin: You know what I love.
Merlin: The thing that'll get me harder than Chinese algebra...
Merlin: is a nice chromatic descending walk down.
Merlin: So you could be doing like a 1-5-4 bullshit thing, and it's really working.
Merlin: And then at the end, you do like a little G, F sharp, E, D, C, and now daddy's at full mast.
Merlin: Country and western.
Merlin: Country and western.
Merlin: So you've got to remember all that, and then you have to sonically season it so that you go, hey, here's the pre-chorus, and that's a gain cycle.
John: It is.
John: The unsalted butter, what sounds hard is the picking, but what's hard for me is the fourth or fifth time that I change the whole structure.
John: I'm going to miss you so much.
Merlin: But, you know, they're talking about when it changes to I'm going to.
Merlin: So it's not there's not the usual.
Merlin: I'm going to see so much when you're gone.
Merlin: But then you get to the end and you start to rock a little harder.
Merlin: And now you're laying down how much how much you miss.
John: Chords and then more chords.
John: The classic the classic one is is the Western State version of the song Car Parts, which on the Long Winters records is a it's just like a
John: It's a rave up that was sort of meant to sound, I don't know, it's just like your basic pop song that still has very fucked up chords.
John: But it's just first chorus, you know, it does a little thing.
John: But in the Hurricanes, God, I throw 20 new chords at the last minute of the song.
John: And my, I don't know, my brain...
John: doesn't remember them or doesn't remember the order of them from from time to time so we play the song and i'm like okay okay got it got it got it and then we go and do it again and i'm like where what and it's because the other kids have uh you know the other kids in the long winters the um the young ones have uh have listened they they they learned the song by listening to the album over and over and
John: So they've done all this homework and they've worked out their kinks or whatever.
John: And I went into these band practices thinking like, I wrote these songs.
John: I know how all this stuff goes.
John: And now I'm like, really, the weak link in the practices, I'm just like, ah, fuck.
John: You know, I'm just sort of chang, chang, chang.
Merlin: It sounds like you're still necessarily operating.
Merlin: I don't overthink this, but you're still necessarily operating on a more intellectual, like manual processing level than you haven't found the pocket yet where you're like, oh, yeah, that part.
Merlin: Like it's not in your bones again.
John: No, I'm manually processing.
John: And part of it is, you know, as we were saying at the beginning here, the gain stages...
John: See, for me, I use a wrap pedal.
John: I use a tube screamer.
John: But I also use a clean boost pedal, a couple of different ones I've used over the years.
John: Compressor.
Merlin: That's real nice with a Fender.
John: It's nice, but right now I'm using a Vox amp now.
John: So the Vox amp has a master volume.
John: I'm dealing with a Fender guitar.
Merlin: Or that Rick.
Merlin: You can get a really nice, big, fat, ringing tone.
John: You can if your amp has the headroom.
Mm-hmm.
John: But then I have a new pedal.
John: A guy whose pedal company is called Lollygagger made me a distortion pedal that has all these different characteristics.
John: It's got lots of big fuzz, but it also has lots of boost.
John: And then our friend Ben gave me a Klon clone.
John: See, Klon's are these pedals that are very expensive, handmade by this guy.
John: And so the Klons are like worth, I don't know, thousands of dollars now.
John: John Vanderslice has one.
John: Klons.
John: I remember when you could get a Klon for $600, and I thought, who would pay $600 for a Klon?
John: Seems like a lot.
John: And now it's like $6,000 or something if you want a Klon.
Merlin: The Klon Centaur?
Merlin: Is that what I'm looking at here?
John: The Centaur, yeah.
John: Wow.
John: But then there was a guy that worked at Klon, worked for Mr. Klon, making Klon Centaurs.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then he left Klon and started making this clone of Klon.
John: There are a lot of Klon clones.
John: And I think maybe I, maybe I have this right.
John: Maybe not.
John: But I think Mr. Klon originally covered his circuits with beeswax or put a spell on them somehow, like put a, put some kind of a genie's curse on them.
John: So if you were a pedal maker and you took his Klon apart, you couldn't tell.
John: What he'd done, he hid the germanium.
John: He hid the germanium under a geranium.
John: Nobody would ever think to look there.
John: No, they wouldn't.
John: They'd look at it and they'd say, oh, he uses geranium.
John: And it's like, no, there's germanium under there.
John: All of this.
John: And so clons have this amazing sound.
John: Anyway, Ben bought this clon clone and eventually he got another clon clone that was more something.
John: And he was like, do you want this clon clone?
John: And so it's like a it's a clone of a clone clone.
John: I think that's what he got.
John: I think Ben got a clone of a clone clone.
John: I think I have a clone clone.
John: Anyway, it's great.
John: And in conjunction with the lollygagger, I have, you know, in conjunction with the.
John: all of them but the problem is you need these things to do different things right you need here's because i like it's one thing to have one pedal and it's another thing to have multiple pedals because they need to play well together they need to be in the right order and they need to not undo the good work of an earlier pedal you can't just do a thing where you're like here's pedal one and then sometimes i put on pedal two also and you have pedals one and two
John: And then you have pedal three on sometimes and you have pedals one, two, three on.
John: Now you can do that.
John: And I do do that.
John: But there's also the question of, well, what if you just want pedal two on and not have pedal one or pedal three on?
Merlin: What if you just want to use pedal three?
Merlin: Also, importantly, without having to go and turn knobs and fiddle.
Merlin: You don't want to fiddle.
Merlin: You could do that a little bit between songs if you're moving to something real different, but you want that, you want to have a little sharpie mark on there that doesn't move, right?
Merlin: Some guitar players...
John: Yeah, some guitar players are, I got nothing else to think about.
John: I don't know, they're sure as shit not singers, I'll tell you that, but whoever it is on stage that can play guitar and then bend down and monkey with their pedal settings,
John: In the middle of a song?
John: I don't know who those monsters are.
John: If you're not Charles Bissell, you should not be attempting that.
John: Only Charles Bissell should attempt that.
John: Well, and you do see it.
John: You see smart people doing it.
Merlin: Yeah, but there's a lot more singing.
Merlin: That's not really singing.
John: I can't even mess around with the volume knob on my guitar, or I'll get confused.
John: I'll get confused, and I won't know what's happening.
John: But the thing about three pedals in a row is that if pedal two is set so that it provides a nice boost...
John: when added to pedal one that doesn't necessarily mean that's the same setting that's going to work if you just turn on pedal two by itself and so you have to monkey with these settings to get them to work in different combinations and to work all by themselves to do different things and it's very challenging but but these songs these uh these western state songs they require that many different flavors
John: Sometimes you need a clean boost.
John: Sometimes you need it to be really fuzzy.
John: Sometimes you need it to be warm and punchy.
John: Sometimes you need it to be porm and munchy.
John: And so there's a lot of, I've spent a lot of time down on my, down on my knees in the last week in a room where I'm just unplugging cords and plugging them back into other, uh, and moving this to that side.
John: And what if this went here and how many, what if I, and it's very, it's very stressful.
John: Well, you know, it's just, it occupies,
John: all this additional space in the mind because i'm trying to remember the chord i'm trying to remember the part where i go next and also my feet are trying to play these different tones on the floor like and then this comes in and you know sometimes you're like i remember the part but then you hit the wrong pedal and it goes pow and you're like fuck no i had the part i just i just ruined the sound
John: Anyway, this is not stuff that I've had to think about in the last five years.
John: And now I have to think about it all at once.
John: And it's very exciting.
John: It's very exciting.
John: I think it'll come together.
John: Yeah, I hope so.
John: I think I'm at the low point right now.
John: The point where I feel like I've taken everything apart.
John: It's all strewn all over the place.
John: And now when I put it back together...
John: It's just going to go right back together, and there's not going to be any part left over where you're like, why is there still a nut?
John: Oh, I hate that.
John: You know?
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I'm going to tell you what I tell all my kids.
Merlin: You know, I know you know this, but the people who come to your show, they're there for a good time.
Merlin: They're there for a good time.
Merlin: They want to hear you play the songs.
Merlin: They're pulling for you.
Merlin: They're on your side, unless they're not, in which case you should single them out with the kind of banter that you do that people enjoy.
Yeah.
John: I don't think there's going to be any buddy at these shows that doesn't want them to, that doesn't want us to succeed.
John: Why would you come to a Western state hurricane show if you weren't excited about,
John: to see the band succeed.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: I agree.
Merlin: But then there's also, the other thing is, I forget, this might've been Lou Reed or Alex Chilton or somebody else.
Merlin: Uh, but, uh, all great rock and roll is on the verge of falling apart.
Merlin: Like it should have some danger to it.
Merlin: And like, if you're living that danger on stage, you're going to bring the motherfucking ruckus.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Especially with you.
Merlin: And you start into one of those solos where you fall down, your glasses hit the stage.
Merlin: I don't know if I can do that anymore.
Merlin: Oh, come on, John.
Merlin: That's what they're there for that.
Merlin: What was that?
Merlin: Was that Mimi?
Merlin: Mimi was the big ripper at the end usually, right?
Merlin: No, Nora.
Merlin: Nora, sorry.
John: Oh, sorry.
John: No, in fact, I got a letter from an old friend who said, I'm coming to the shows and you'd better not play the hard rock version of Mimi.
John: I want you to play the regular version of Mimi.
John: I was like, I'm not taking requests, especially not how I'm going to do the songs, but I am going to play the regular version of Mimi.
John: Because, you know, we used to play punk rock Mimi sometimes.
Hmm.
John: Which was just our way of saying we're just going to play this really hard, fast, loud.
John: But we haven't done that in years.
John: You got a lot to keep straight in your mind.
John: A lot of things.
John: A lot of people coming out of the woodwork.
John: A lot of stuff.
John: We got special guests.
John: Special guests are going to come to the show now.
John: Get up on stage with us.
John: Do a little song.
John: Do a little dance.
John: Make a little love.
John: Get down tonight.
John: We're going to do both of that.
John: So, whew, lots going on.
Merlin: When am I going to get my fucking album?
Merlin: What's going on?
John: Oh, it's on the way.
John: They're beautiful.
John: They're beautiful.
Merlin: I'm going to get the tracks at some point.
John: They're yellow vinyl.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, you get the tracks.
Merlin: When do I get the tracks?
Merlin: I want my tracks.
Merlin: I did pay for this, John.
John: Yeah, here's the problem with that.
John: The problem is that... So the project...
John: As per our discussion a couple of months ago.
Merlin: When it first launched?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And that's back when you weren't checking your email?
John: No.
John: Okay.
John: No, and my bad attitude and everything, it's all in play.
Merlin: They knew they were going to be dealing with a rock and roller, John.
Merlin: You don't owe anybody an apology.
John: But what I ended up doing was I took the... I said, there's two campaigns here, right?
John: There's the vinyl...
John: And the show and the vinyl release party and the whole event, the community building event.
John: You know, we're going to be playing live on KEXP on Thursday, I think.
John: What?
John: You'll be able to listen in on KEXP.org.
John: Big doings.
John: KEXP.org.
Merlin: Will that lady be sitting in the chair and you'll be in the dark studio room?
Merlin: I believe so.
John: I love that show.
John: I love that lady.
John: Yep.
John: Yep.
John: I think we're going to be, that's Cheryl Waters.
John: I think we're going to be maybe videotaped even.
John: I watch those videos.
John: I'll go watch those videos.
John: There's a bar in town that's like an all vinyl bar and we're going to go spend an hour there listening to the record and talking to people.
John: Lots of things, lots of events.
Merlin: You got to really make sure you're sleeping and drinking a lot of water.
Merlin: That's all I'm going to say.
John: On Saturday during the day, there's going to be a meetup that was arranged by some of the fans of this program and of Roadwork.
John: That congregate on Facebook on a page called Gary's Van.
John: Whoa!
John: Where they get together and share their experience, strength, and hope of listening to these programs.
Merlin: That's so cool.
Merlin: I didn't know that.
John: That's awesome.
John: So they said, you know, we would like to meet if possible.
John: There are people flying in from Sweden and Australia and all these places that are just coming to see the show.
John: And so I arranged to have lunch with them.
John: And that's going to be between the two shows, like a ton going on.
John: But one of the things that I did was I said, I'm going to do the digital side of this separately.
John: So although the people that bought the vinyl are all going to get digital copies of the album, you're going to defeat the pirates.
John: I want the digital to be like a separate, you know, the digital is not, not part of this record campaign.
John: And partly it is that, you know, there are a lot of people involved in this record, uh, in the production of the vinyl and in the, in the, you know, this big show.
John: But in the end, two years from now,
John: The only place it's still going to live is online.
John: And what I don't want is when people download this record in the quantity of five a month or five a year for the long tail.
John: I don't want to be in business with anybody about that.
John: You know what I mean?
John: It's not going to generate any money, but it's going to be there.
John: It's going to exist.
John: It's going to be part of my catalog.
John: So you're staggering.
Merlin: You're staggering a little bit.
John: Well, I just want those things in one place.
John: I intend to still make music.
John: I intend to put music out under the long winters, under my own name maybe.
John: Who knows?
John: And I don't want to...
John: I want to limit the number of people that I have to check in with to make sure that I'm getting, you know, that they're sending it on or whatever.
John: But the problem is I'm bad at project managing.
John: And so I have not yet 100%...
John: figured out how to put the music online in the way that i want it to be so that it's uh protected so today i'm having some conference calls with people where i'm like here's what's got i want to do this i don't want it to do that i want it to live here i don't want it to go there and um and hopefully i'll have all that done by
John: By Friday or by Saturday at the latest.
Merlin: Oh, you've got a busy week.
John: Yeah, a lot going on.
John: Then I've got to go to band practice.
John: Yeah.
John: Get your pedals straightened out.
John: It's very exciting.
John: Yeah.
John: It's very exciting.
John: It's...
John: I don't know.
John: It's exciting.
John: It's exciting.
John: It is exciting.
John: It's exciting.
John: It's cathartic.
John: Everybody's lived a lot.
Merlin: You've got a lot going on, for sure.
Merlin: And you've got a lot of moving pieces.
Merlin: But maybe it would be helpful to you, just as a break, for you to send me a zip file of all the tracks.
Merlin: Would be one way you could practice.
Merlin: You could practice zipping.
Merlin: You could practice sending.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: I would let you know if it came through okay.
Yeah.
Merlin: And then I would probably be able to listen to that.
John: Oh, I see what you're saying.
Merlin: If it would be helpful to you, you can zip those and send it to me.
Merlin: I see.
John: Zip them, just zip them right off to you so you could listen to them.
Merlin: I'm like a test patient.
Merlin: Be supportive.
Merlin: Well, I don't know if I'm supportive, but I would definitely be able to let you know if it came through as a file, okay?
Merlin: And if that would be helpful to you, that's a thing we could do.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Well, thank you.
John: That's very generous of you.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you by Health IQ.
Merlin: You can learn more about Health IQ right now by visiting healthiq.com slash supertrain.
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Merlin: Our thanks to Health IQ for supporting Roderick on the Line and all the great shows.
Merlin: I like music.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: I know you do.
John: I know you do.
Merlin: Well, a little disappointed in Carl Newman.
Merlin: I mean, I've kind of reached out to him a lot.
Merlin: I kind of feel like snobbed is too strong a word, but, uh, you know, if a realtor from Boston has time to think I'm funny, you know, it's interesting.
John: It's interesting.
John: There are still a few Twitter relationships that I have with people where it feels like the old days of Twitter where you're like, Hey, shouldn't we be friends?
John: And, and I've tried and, uh, we're still not friends and it's because you aren't, um, you're not recognizing me.
John: Yeah.
John: With Carl, I feel like he and I have a, we have a fine stable online relationship as we do offline, but there are other people, there are other people where it's like, Oh, we feel a little bit frozen out.
John: Well, or, uh, like for instance, uh, uh, Mary Coco, uh,
John: Mary Coco is a friend in real life.
John: Okay.
John: Mary Coco, she's a member of a social group of people, both in person, as she lives in between California and Seattle, both in person and online.
John: There's a lot of fun online happening.
John: And what I've noticed is that when people, Mary will tweet something and then people will reply to her.
John: And, uh, and then she'll write them right back and they'll get into these little zingers back and forth, back and forth zingers.
John: Yeah.
John: Now what Mary does with me when I reply, because she's very fast, she's very fun.
John: Well, I want to have a little zinger with her.
John: What she does is she faves my tweets tomorrow.
John: So I'll throw a zinger in there.
John: I'll get no zinger back.
John: I will not be I'm not invited to to some to any kind of back and forth.
John: But then the next day she faves it.
John: Now, I know that she's watching her tweets in real time because I know her personally.
John: I know that she's not doing anything else.
John: She's just sitting and looking at Twitter all day.
John: Okay.
John: No, that's not true.
Merlin: But she's not interacting.
Merlin: She's got a lot going on.
Merlin: She's not turning that around quite as quickly.
Merlin: She's not jostling with you.
Merlin: And then the next day, she favorites it.
Merlin: She points at you and says, LOL.
John: Yeah, the next day, but she never says lol, right?
John: So the next day she faves it.
John: So it's a very complicated game she's playing, which is she's not ignoring me.
John: No.
John: Because the next day she's, I don't know what, she can't possibly be going back and reviewing all of, because she's tweeting all the time, right?
John: She's not like...
John: She's living in the moment.
John: She's not living in the past.
John: But it's a very complicated message that I don't fully understand.
John: What is it meant to convey?
John: Right.
John: What category of Twitter person am I to her that she's keeping me?
John: She's saying, I saw it and I liked it, but I did not engage with you in real time.
John: Maybe she doesn't want to get into a whole thing.
John: Well, but she's getting into a whole thing with like 15 other people.
John: Oh, I see.
John: Like Andy Levy will say like, huh, that's weird.
John: And she'll say, thanks for noticing.
John: And he'll go, well, I'm just sitting here watching.
John: And she's like, you're the best.
John: But it's all sarcastic and fun.
John: Oh, that's fun.
John: Why can't you get a piece of that?
John: And I'm like, so then I reply like, yeah, and that's what she said or whatever.
John: And it's just like...
John: And sometimes Andy or somebody else will engage with me over a Mary Coco tweet.
John: She can't be bothered though.
John: But not if I'm in there.
John: No.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: I don't know what that's about, right?
John: Like John Worcester will tweet something.
John: If I reply to it, like 15 other people will join in on a conversation that I'm having about a John Worcester tweet, but he will never...
John: He'll jump in if anybody else, but he won't get in if I'm the one that's like, ha ha, look at me.
John: Nope.
Merlin: No, I get and give this.
John: It's complicated.
Merlin: It's a complicated business.
Merlin: I mean, a lot of times you do, you hit the star to say, I see you.
John: The star means I see you.
John: The star means I see you, I swear to you.
Merlin: Yeah, but sometimes you just don't want to, I mean, to me, sometimes you just don't want to get into a whole thing.
John: But the star means I see you, but what about tomorrow's star?
John: Tomorrow's star.
John: What does tomorrow's star mean?
Merlin: How did she know to go back?
Merlin: How did she know to go back?
Merlin: She can't.
John: She just keeps like a little, like a three by five card, like, oh yeah, tomorrow go back and fave that so he doesn't feel like I'm ignoring him.
Merlin: Oh, it's almost like a thank you note.
John: Well, or I don't know, man.
John: I don't know.
John: It's very complicated.
John: But then again, I will also sometimes go back and look at Twitter from yesterday and like fave a couple of people.
John: There, there are people that comment on everything and I want to, I want to support them.
John: I want to, you know, I, but I, the thing is I have a standard, right?
John: I'm not just going to fave something just cause you showed up.
John: You've got to have, you've got to have delivered something.
Merlin: I, uh, I, I, it's, it's real complicated.
Merlin: I, I do some, uh, some basic, uh, trimming and grooming, uh,
Merlin: Sometimes I'll go back around and see.
Merlin: A lot of times I start something because I want to be able to find it again.
Merlin: A lot of times it is to say, LOL, I see you.
Merlin: I saw you.
Merlin: I saw you when you did that.
Merlin: I saw you when I saw you.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: But I don't know, man.
Merlin: Sometimes I just don't want to.
Merlin: Sometimes I enjoy getting into a whole thing.
Merlin: And the irony for me is that it is sometimes the least celebrity-like people that I most enjoy engaging with.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, sometimes it's just nice.
Merlin: I mean, if people like your thing and they want to talk about it, my gosh, that's what we did.
Merlin: This is what we've been planning for.
John: Oh, sure.
John: It's wonderful.
John: It's wonderful.
John: I feel like, you know, sometimes Ken Jennings will reply to one of my tweets and his reply will get more faves than the original tweet.
John: And that feels weird to me.
John: Like, there are enough people that had to read the original tweet and recognize that it was the genesis of Ken's reply, but they didn't go read, or they didn't fave the original tweet.
John: Now, I understand you can't always fave the original tweet.
John: Well, I remember we came up with a term for this probably a couple years ago.
Merlin: Oh, what was it?
Merlin: The reach-around fave.
John: Reach around fave.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Where you go back and mop up where sometimes I will retweet or quote tweet or I'll, I'll, I'll, uh, uh, engage with the content.
Merlin: And then, but if I, but if I've repurposed their content for a funny and I forget to go back and star and say, lol, I see you.
Merlin: Then I'll go back and I'll give the reach around fave to say like, also, you know, here, here's that, you know, I think it's just polite.
John: Um, well it is, uh,
John: But...
John: Have you ever been ratioed?
John: Do you know what that is?
John: I do.
John: You try hard not to get ratioed.
Merlin: Do I?
Merlin: I do know what it is, and I have seen it many, many times.
Merlin: It happens a lot on political Twitter, and this is ratio is a term that Twitter people use for when a tweet, often a very stupid or poorly conceived one, gets tons more responses than faves or retweets.
Merlin: Is that correct?
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: And their responses are usually like, meh.
John: uh do people say or i mean i i feel like the i feel like there are so many um of those threads where the where i don't even understand what the responses are a lot of them are just responses where they've tagged someone else or something oh yeah oh oh no oh yeah then you get the canoe where it's just like six six ads in it and i'm like what what am i looking at here what is this wait wait wait why are you talking about me don't do that
John: I think I got I maybe got ratioed once, but it was because I said something about Captain America.
John: I don't remember what it was, but it was one of those.
John: It was it was one of those Marvel Cinematic Universe ratios.
John: It's really good.
John: I know.
John: I know.
John: I'm a huge Quentin Tarantino fan.
John: You know that scene where Mr. Pink is talking to Mr. Purple and he cuts off his nose and then the other guy's like, what, this cop?
John: And then shoots him and throwing gasoline all over.
John: Amazing.
John: So good.
John: And then, oh, you know, I made a Gimp reference just yesterday.
John: I was going to put Bo in a suit and put him in a footlocker.
John: Wow, it's David Ann Ableist.
John: Good job.
John: Wow.
John: So great.
John: So great.
John: Wow.
Merlin: Welcome to the 1970s, John.
Merlin: Get woke.
John: Yeah.
John: Shooting Hitler right in the face.
Merlin: They don't say Gimp anymore.
Merlin: Would you go back and kill Baby Gimp?
John: No.
John: No, no, no.
John: Baby Gimp is one of my favorite Star Wars characters.
Merlin: He's eating his bone broth.
Oh.
Merlin: This episode of Roderick on the Line is brought to you in part by Keeps.
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Merlin: Our thanks to Keeps for supporting Roderick on the line and all the great shows.
And
Merlin: Yeah, there was one the other day.
Merlin: Boy, sometimes you just hate to see it, but there's a guy who's such an idiot from CNN, and he said the stupidest thing, and I came so close to making a remark about it, and then I stopped.
Merlin: I didn't want to do it.
Merlin: He's such a fucking idiot.
Merlin: Now say that again.
Merlin: What did this guy say?
Merlin: It was so stupid.
Merlin: It was really bad.
Merlin: But no, but that's ratioing, and you don't want that.
Merlin: And Twitter claims that they're trying to do less of that, so they're introducing new features.
Merlin: The term they use, dunking.
Merlin: We don't want dunking.
Merlin: Stop dunking.
Merlin: Stop dunking.
Merlin: Stop dunking is what they say.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It doesn't have to be like that.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
John: Yeah, I do.
John: I do.
John: I don't want to get dunked, and I don't want to dunk.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: See, where's the dumb thing he said?
Merlin: It was really dumb.
Merlin: Boy, this guy tweets a lot.
Merlin: Which guy?
Merlin: His name is Chris Saliza.
Merlin: Chris Lizza?
Merlin: Is that one word?
Merlin: What a cool one word.
Merlin: It just basically sounds like bacon cooling.
Merlin: Yeah, it sounds like when your car loses its grip on a wet road.
Merlin: Chris Lizza.
Merlin: He's on CNN.
Merlin: Oh, oh, oh.
Merlin: He's that guy with the glasses.
Merlin: He's a little too animated.
John: I don't have a TV.
Merlin: Yes, okay, fair.
John: I guess I would see him on an airport or something when I was walking through.
John: Oh, right, because you do travel still.
John: If I had a universal remote, wouldn't that be amazing where you could turn off everything?
John: Can you imagine that?
John: Did you see the one yesterday I saw this where somebody had a little wheelbarrow that was full of cell phones?
Merlin: Yeah, that was cool.
Merlin: That was pretty fun.
John: That's some culture jamming right there.
Merlin: The notion is you get a kid's wagon, and you're dragging a bunch of Android phones around, and it looks like you're traffic.
Merlin: I'm traffic.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: And then Google thinks, it's a traffic jam, but it's not.
John: It's just a little wheelbarrow.
John: That's funny.
John: Have you been following this whole internal voice thing?
John: No, tell me about the internal voice.
John: What'd that mean?
John: Well, all right, see if I can get this.
John: So someone online was talking to some friend, I guess, in a text exchange.
John: And the friend said something to the effect of they were watching a movie and there was a voiceover.
John: And the friend said, wouldn't it be cool if in real life there was like a voice in your head that like narrated things that was going on, that was, you know, things going on in your life or whatever.
John: And the other person, the person that ended up making this public, replied, well, yeah, there is one of those.
John: It's the voice in your head that basically narrates everything.
John: And the other person replied and said, what do you mean?
John: What are you talking about?
John: Voice in your head.
John: That's nuts.
John: And then the person was like, you know, your internal voice, the one that when you're not speaking out loud is the one that's still speaking, but inside your head, the one where you talk to yourself.
John: That presumably everyone has, according to this person.
John: Right.
John: And then the other person said, I don't have one of those.
John: So the person that ended up making this public was like, what do you mean everyone has one?
John: And in the course of their discussion, um,
John: The person that didn't have an inner voice gradually made it known to the other person that, in fact, they didn't have one.
John: And when they're not talking out loud, they are not.
John: There is not a voice inside.
John: And so the person that our protagonist then went wider in their own circle of friends and texted a bunch of people and said, do you have an inner voice?
John: And...
John: Something as far as they could – among their friends, it seemed like 30% of the people reported not having an inner voice.
John: Well, this – our protagonist was astonished by this and so tweeted this out.
John: When I read it, I was –
John: also astonished that some people don't have that to consider that there are that there are people who are not talking to themselves that when they're not talking you know they're solving problems or you know they're they're like their mind is active and engaged in the world but they do not have a voice that they can hear inside that's talking things out or
John: And so I went around my little world and started asking people whether or not they had an inner voice.
John: And, you know, there are some people that clearly have one.
John: You don't need to ask my mom whether she has an inner voice, right?
John: Because she does?
John: Yes.
John: Okay.
John: But I – so I asked –
John: Michael Schilling, the drummer of The Long Winters, and he said, no, I don't have an inner voice.
John: When I'm not talking, there is nothing.
John: Silence.
John: Yeah.
John: And I said, well, if you want to say like, hey, Michael, you're doing good, or hey, Michael, you need to step it up, or if you need to say something to yourself, what do you do?
John: Don't you ever need to say something to yourself?
Yeah.
John: And he said, well, I mean, I'll go into the bathroom and I'll talk to myself in the mirror.
John: Whoa.
John: But he said, I also will talk to my cat.
John: Out loud?
John: Out loud.
John: He said, you know, I talk out loud if I need to say something.
John: Anyway, it has now...
John: So I have not gone back yet and tried to find that original tweet or find any supporting evidence or documentation.
John: I've just been doing firsthand experimentation, asking people, like, what's your story?
John: Do you have an inner voice?
John: And my feeling is that most people that have one will say immediately, like, yes, I have one.
John: There's a voice that I use to talk to myself in my head.
Hmm.
John: And the people that don't have one are confused at first what I mean.
John: And then gradually you kind of arrive at a place where they say like, no, I don't think so.
John: You know, like I don't know what you mean.
John: And then gradually.
John: But just that seems pretty profound.
John: And it's another example of the sort of the thing from the thing that 20 years ago when I was like, I think I'm an introvert.
John: And extroverts just didn't know what introverts were, right?
John: Because extroverts are dominant.
John: And a lot of my problem interacting with the world was that the world uses extroverted rules.
John: And they don't work for introverts, right?
John: But the idea that there's a significant proportion of the population of the world...
John: that doesn't have an inner voice, to me as someone that does have one, that's extraordinary.
John: And it changes how people should be interacting with each other.
John: How could we have failed to notice this before?
John: If it's true.
John: But I feel like I'm discovering it's true as I survey the people I know.
John: And it's an example of like people that have one assume everyone has one.
John: People that don't have one would never assume anyone did.
John: And all this conversation we have culturally where it's like, oh, I was saying to myself or I'm lost in thought or all this, that people that don't have an inner voice must be hearing those words and just interpreting them as meaning something else or just sort of like not – like is it possible, Merlin, that there's this –
John: There's this kind of polarity of experience and we've never acknowledged it before this one person tweeted their friend and like...
Merlin: Well, there's a lot to the interior world and to our experience of consciousness that's necessarily very complicated.
Merlin: I mean, I'm not trying to be difficult.
Merlin: I don't find it surprising that people have this or that people don't have this.
Merlin: How do you mean?
Merlin: Have a voice or don't have a voice?
Merlin: Okay, well, first of all, I mean, there's these ways where you can like phrase or frame these kinds of things that, I mean, because you say to a lot of people, like, okay, even if it's a minority, do you have like an inner voice that you could identify?
Merlin: And they say no.
Merlin: But like, I bet there, when you put it that way, I bet there are other ways to frame it where it does make sense.
Merlin: And it is situationally pretty different.
Merlin: What you may be experiencing is, how can I put this?
Merlin: So I'm trying to break this down.
Merlin: On the one hand- Yeah, break it down.
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: So there is a certain kind of part, there's a part of consciousness that we would call a voice that's not a voice.
Merlin: It's just, there's thoughts in your head.
Merlin: That I think of as like one of the most innocuous ones of those that I can imagine, but that I bet is real for a lot of people is similar to a commentator at a golf game.
Merlin: Except with that quote unquote.
Merlin: Yeah, exactly.
Merlin: So you could be like, okay, he's talking to John Roderick, but he's also typing a little bit.
Merlin: And he's thinking about what it is that John's saying.
Merlin: And he's making his approach to the green.
Merlin: And there's that sort of like, and now I'm doing this.
Merlin: And now I am holding spoon.
Merlin: Like, there's that kind of like just, right?
Merlin: When I make that noise.
Merlin: I'm walking around music, right?
Merlin: That's a kind of inner voice, I suppose.
Merlin: There's another kind that is closer to a classic narrator.
Merlin: And the difference there is that a narrator in your quote-unquote head, quote-unquote voice thing, the narrator is not quite commenting on what's happening, but is framing what's happening in the context of other things, right?
Merlin: So a narrator, so the golf commentator might be more like just a factual, like, John's taking out his nine.
Merlin: He's about, you know, he's got his nine iron.
Merlin: He's this far away from that.
Merlin: Pretty much straightforward.
Merlin: But then you could get into this deeper sort of narrator who's like, this is very similar to the previous time that John used the Nine-Niner, and it didn't go very well.
Merlin: Let's see how this turns out.
John: So somebody like the cowboy in the dude who's just like, well, dude.
John: Sometimes the bar eats you.
John: Yeah, the dude abides, yeah.
Merlin: But again, obviously, then this can go so much further.
Merlin: There's a voice that I previously referred to as the mean dad voice.
Merlin: And like, I think most people have a mean dad voice in their head.
Merlin: It could be mean mom, could be mean somebody, but whoever it is in your life you think is most, well, how can I put this?
Merlin: It's a, it's a, it's a notional voice in your head of someone who's pretty disappointed in how things are going with you.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I think that is a fairly common, like, well, bet you fucked this one up again.
Merlin: Yep, good job.
Merlin: You can tell that person doesn't like you.
Merlin: So my two angles on this are, number one, well, is it a voice that people do or don't hear in their head?
Merlin: I don't know if you put it that way.
Merlin: I think if people are not concerned or troubled by the quote-unquote voice in their head, they're at least less likely to acknowledge that it exists.
Merlin: I think the people who notice it are the people who have what I will describe as a negative voice in their head.
Merlin: that you are much, I think you are much more likely to be aware of that constant companionship, which you, I believe, have, well, I'm going to pivot.
Merlin: It's a little bit of a Welsh troll, right?
Merlin: You get the guy who's sitting there going like, who the fuck do you think you are?
Merlin: You think you're going to succeed at this?
John: Yeah, but the, what's standing out about this, at least in the reading that I've done and in the people that I've talked to, is the degree to which
John: The people that are responding that they don't have a voice are saying that they have no, they do not talk to themselves internally.
John: Even if you stand there and ask them, like, can you say to yourself right now in your head, like, today's going to be a good day, and right now I'm going to go across the street and get a cup of coffee.
Merlin: They neither hear a monologue nor participate in a dialogue.
John: Right.
John: They say, I do not have the capacity to speak like that inside my head to myself.
John: They don't hear their decision making in a voice.
John: They act, you know, they're like, I don't know how you would decide to go get a coffee and go get one without hearing a voice.
John: And that's what makes it profound.
John: That's so interesting.
John: Because they are like, well, I want a coffee, so I go get one.
John: I'm not talking about it.
John: And for me, there's nothing that happens where my experience at least is like, well, I should go upstairs and get a cup of coffee.
John: Okay, well, let's go.
John: Let alone...
John: as I drive down the road and go, I wonder when that building was built, whether or not people were still using... Oh, yeah.
John: ...a daub and waddle or whatever, you know, like... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: And so, like Michael said, when he's not doing something, there's just silence, like peace.
Merlin: Does that seem impossible or crazy to you?
John: I just can't fathom it because I have constant...
John: Well, just it's not even companionship.
John: It's just that I filter everything through.
John: It all happens.
John: It takes the form of a voice.
Merlin: Is the voice more dominant than your – does the voice dominate your consciousness or do you feel like you dominate the voice?
Merlin: Because it kind of sounds like the voice is dominant, that it is the one who you are turning to and listening to whether you want to or not before you act upon something.
John: It is consciousness as far as I can tell.
John: Is it you?
John: Yeah.
John: And that's what's astonishing to me that you could live in the world and not have it.
John: Because I can't imagine how you would have a you.
John: But you do feel you experience it as yourself.
John: Yeah.
John: Okay.
John: It's you talking to yourself.
John: There are a lot of other voices that are not me.
Merlin: No, no, no, I'm not trying.
Merlin: There's no trick here.
Merlin: I'm just trying to figure out like, because sometimes I do feel when I have the presence of mind to say one of my phony baloney hippie things to myself and, you know, catch myself having monkey mind, you know, I might find myself saying something like, well, you know, this may be what I'm feeling, but it's not who I am.
John: Right, but that would require that you have an inner voice to experience or to say all that to yourself, right?
John: To become aware of.
John: Okay, hmm, okay.
John: This is like pre that.
John: If you don't have any inner voice at all, it's way before like trying to like parse which voice is which or which thing is healthy or anything like that.
John: It's like, and I don't know.
John: The thing is, I don't know if this is true.
John: I don't, but in asking people,
John: Michael and Bo also, can they talk?
John: It's not, do you talk to yourself in your head?
John: It's, can you talk to yourself in your head right now?
John: I'm sitting across from you.
John: Can you talk to yourself in your head in an audible voice?
John: And when they say no, I don't know another way to say,
John: Ask them that question again.
John: Right.
John: To because because, you know, your reaction and I had this reaction from somebody else where they were like, well, it's probably just that they don't know how to or whatever.
John: You know, it's probably just the terminology or framing or something.
John: But like if you say to somebody, can you speak to yourself inside your head and not make a sound?
John: And they say, no, I don't know a way to frame it differently where it seems like, oh, yes, you actually are.
John: You just don't know how to describe it because I have a negative one.
John: And so I hear it all the time.
John: But even if that's true, the idea that that the amount of conversation that I have in my head is that the that the that the that the fine tuned overdevelopment of that conversation is.
John: is one that other people, when I'm sitting and talking to somebody, that they could have almost none of that.
John: We are effectively like a different species of people.
John: Their kind of consciousness, it's like some sort of avatar.
Merlin: The way they experience and process life, it feels like it must be very different from the way that you do.
John: Totally unrelated.
John: And yet, here we are, like we both, you know, we both like...
John: We both like re-watching The Sopranos, and we both are currently wearing like sports caps.
Merlin: But you have to go to their house because you don't have a TV.
John: Well, you know, I watch it on my phone.
John: Okay.
John: Wow.
John: And, you know, I sit in the bathtub, right?
John: I mean, that's why you watch movies on your phone, so you can sit in the bathtub and eat.
John: Hmm.
John: Anyway, so this is an ongoing investigation, obviously.
John: Sure.
John: But it's very curious to me, and within my own family, I'm starting to wonder whether there isn't an inner voice gap.
Merlin: An inner voice... Which gap, if it exists, might explain some things.
John: Yes.
John: Yes.
John: This gap, this gulf between...
John: between inner voice and non-inner voice people may account for some like fundamental lack of comprehension about process and, and just like,
Merlin: the the way that we that we struggle to understand how each each other's world works right you see this all the time with stuff like i mean not to be political here but like where you go like oh my gosh how could this particular politician keep doing these really really shameful things or to how do they compartmentalize their behavior in such a way that they could say these things that sound so hypocritical
Merlin: And it's like, well, I mean, when you look at something like that, you look at someone like that, there are some people who can't imagine getting off the couch because of the implications that they can imagine in their head of getting off the couch.
Merlin: And there are other people who have this very high-level compartmentalization where they can overlook these things and focus on these things, and that doesn't cause any kind of soul-ripping cognitive dissonance.
Merlin: I mean, to me, that's a similar example of something where you're like, how do you do what you do every day?
Merlin: That's so crazy.
Merlin: Because we think about these things so very differently.
Merlin: How can you not be seeing these things?
John: And it might just be that it's a whole different methodology of thinking.
John: Like, there are plenty of people I feel like when I have said to them, why don't you go reflect on this for a day and let's talk about it tomorrow.
John: And then the next day they arrive and there seems to have been no reflection of any kind.
John: And what it seems like is that they start thinking as soon as they start talking.
John: And their thinking is happening in the talking.
John: They're talking and that's how they're hearing.
John: I can relate to that.
John: Right?
John: Yeah.
John: When I say like, well, go reflect on this, what they are, I guess what they do is they go and I'm not sure what they think I meant.
John: But when I said to Michael, what do you think I'm doing when I sit and stare?
John: A spot on the wall for... Has he seen you do this?
John: Oh, well, he's been on tour with me.
John: We've known each other for 20 years.
John: He's seen some staring over time.
John: He was in the long winters for a very heady period.
John: Yeah, Chris shaved his head right in my kitchen window.
John: Just hair all over the floor.
John: It was really something.
John: Well, because everybody was... We were in Vietnam.
John: But Michael said, when you stare like that, all I know is to leave you alone.
John: And I said, yeah, but what do you think is happening inside?
John: And he said, I have no idea.
John: I mean, I never had any idea.
John: I just knew that that was when to leave you alone, which is very different from, well, I assumed that you were thinking about the band or about the, like the, the idea that I was thinking even was one that when I really asked him about it, he was like, well,
John: We were getting into this realm where I was like, I was thinking and he was not even knowing, not really even able to understand what I meant by that, that I was thinking, as opposed to, I don't know.
Merlin: I don't think you're the weirdo here, but I think you're not the weirdo.
Merlin: I think, I don't think, I do not feel this nearly as...
Merlin: closely as intently as you do i don't think is it okay can i interrogate the voice just a little bit can i speak with the voice yeah of course of course when the voice oh hello hello hello hello john's head i am from another town that's very interesting have you found a spot that you like to look at right now i am looking at a spot
Merlin: When you become aware of the voice, how is the voice speaking?
Merlin: Is the voice speaking in speeches?
Merlin: Is the voice speaking in making you aware of things?
Merlin: What is the voice telling you that John Prime might not be thinking about?
Merlin: You're talking about my own voice?
Merlin: Like when it talks to you, like for example, okay, here's a classic.
Merlin: A classic is, and I don't have this all the time, but as somebody who has depression and other issues, uh, as I've learned, there are sometimes a voice where I'm, it might be the mean dad voice, but it's the voice that goes like, you fucking idiot.
Merlin: Like you've, you've, you've,
Merlin: ruined another thing with action or inaction.
Merlin: Like, you're so stupid.
Merlin: Like, I do hear, I will sometimes catch that voice, and I do try to bracket that voice and go like, hey, who the fuck are you?
Merlin: But, because I'm like that.
Merlin: But, so I think there are certain kinds of strong voices that can come out at certain times.
Merlin: And it might be somebody saying, yeah, you got this, you can do this.
Merlin: There could be that kind of self-talk.
Merlin: But when you are aware of the voice speaking to you or speaking around you, is the voice speaking to you?
Merlin: Is it addressing you?
John: The primary voice that I hear is a voice that is always phrasing questions when I look out.
John: So right now I was trying to just look across the room and not think anything like I'm listening to you.
John: And the thing is, I think that, you know, I think this is my speculation is that this is why.
Merlin: NPR is so popular, it's why people leave the television on, is to have something- That's why you joked about the airports, but I have a theory that most people, including very much most American white men, are terrified to be alone.
Merlin: They're terrified to feel bored.
Merlin: They're terrified at the idea that there's not something that they could be paying attention to.
John: Well, we say that and qualify it as terrified, but it may also just be that there's nothing.
John: And so they fill it up with or there's just there's no voice there.
John: It's not that they fill it up.
John: It's that that that they're that they have space.
John: for reading and listening and watching that I often don't have space for because there's already so much happening.
John: There's already a lot going on in that space.
John: And so if you have space where you could listen to NPR and be intrigued and be gaining information... So anyway, looking across the room, I'm trying to...
John: and i realize oh there are all kinds of all all sorts of times of the day where i'm just looking at a thing and i'm not thinking about it i'm just i'm conscious of it i'm it's present to me i could go over and interact with it but i'm not thinking about it i'm just it's just there i mean i've been trying to i've been trying to understand this for the last few days like what would it be like to just be in places and be myself there but not
John: thinking about it in a voice and i realized that what my voice is doing is always asking questions okay like like what if that moved over there what if this what if that was made out of a different material who made that when was it made what is well who would go there what is that and of course all of that all of those questions aren't necessary in the sense that whatever my relationship to the object is
John: I don't need to know any of those things.
John: And none of those questions are necessary to operate the thing or to find a use for it or to ignore it or whatever.
John: I'm just – those questions are present all the time.
John: And they're not judgmental.
John: It's not – the questions are not saying like you suck.
John: Why have you failed so badly?
John: It's a – but the problem is that those questions are very –
John: Um, the voice that is there, the mean voice can seize on the answers to those questions all the time.
John: Like, Oh, well, I wonder if that was made by, you know, yield forefathers.
John: And then the voice is there to say like, well, they, at least they made something and you know, at least they have something to show for themselves.
John: And it's like, Whoa, that's where the mean voice comes in.
John: But the level of constant question asking isn't, and I, it's, I'm sure it has some natural selection advantage.
Um,
John: But it's actually not – it's not a higher level of operation.
John: I'm not thinking harder about the thing I'm actually doing.
John: I just have a – I just have one of those –
Merlin: live stream comment sections like when you're watching a youtube video but like nothing ever just happens right the has to has to get through the voice filter the questioning that's before you're going to act on something before you would even be aware of it that it's already there asking you questions right okay and if that wasn't there i don't think i would be
John: Any less functional, I might be even more functional, better adapted to doing the things that I do and just getting through life and being a productive, normal person.
John: And so in trying to imagine what it's like to not have an inner voice, I'm realizing that that inner voice more often than not is just...
John: It's just a running comment section.
John: It's not actually me sitting and profoundly reflecting on the nature of everything.
John: It's just like a 10-year-old sitting in the passenger seat.
John: Just a motor mouthing.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: No, that, that, that absolutely has, um, if this is too personal, tell me, but, uh, over time, as you've felt different ways, been different ways, been in different states, had maybe even different kinds of like, uh, medication, like, and, and, but, but in the context of, in the context of all that, being in a certain place, sort of mentally, emotionally, does the voice change much?
Merlin: Uh, has it changed much over time?
Merlin: Does it change from place to place?
Merlin: Or is it always just the, the, the clattering, you know, 10 year old commentarium?
John: But this is the thing.
John: How do we know?
John: The only way I could tell you what the history of my inner voices were was in the voice of one of my inner voices.
John: Really?
John: I can't imagine what it was like to be 10 years old in terms of what my inner life was like because there's no external...
John: way to gauge it you know like it's a it's one of these things wild this must feel i mean and but this feels normal right this doesn't feel abnormal to you the thing is watching borderline people uh of which i have a lot in my life and i have a lot of suspected borderlines happening yeah yeah realizing that what they are emotionally experiencing right this minute they cannot recall a time when they weren't experiencing it
John: And emotionally and realizing that like, oh, wow, you're really upset right now.
John: And when I say an hour ago, you weren't upset about this very same thing.
John: And now you are.
John: That seems crazy to you.
John: You don't you can't hear it.
John: Right.
John: And when I say an hour from now, you're not going to be upset about this.
John: That also seems impossible to someone that's having a borderline episode.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Oh, that's rough.
John: Um, and, but watching that and realizing like, wow, their subjective experience is that they are, that this is a constant state or that they never would have not been upset.
Merlin: Whatever they're feeling, whatever they're feeling intensely right now is what they've always felt.
Merlin: Is the realist thing in the world.
Merlin: Okay.
John: And so when I look at my own.
Merlin: So they don't have, they don't have any sort of, you feel like they don't have any sort of distance.
Merlin: From that feeling.
Merlin: That feeling is who they are at that time.
John: Yeah.
John: There's no distance, right?
John: And then when that feeling has passed and you go, remember an hour ago when you were really upset?
John: They kind of don't remember what that was like.
John: Wow.
John: But it's caused me to reflect on my own thinking and go, how can I possibly say that I know what I was thinking when I was 25?
John: Because the only way I have...
John: The only memory I have is the one that's being filtered through some form of thinking right now.
Merlin: And you, I think, at least in your own telling of this, somewhat famously, back when you were having drinks and drugs, like you've somewhat famously, you rarely blacked out.
John: Never blacked out.
Merlin: You would remember, like as much as you might have had a half rack of Bush, you remember what happened.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Or the voice remembers.
Merlin: Somebody remembers.
John: I mean, I never did anything in the morning that I couldn't tell you exactly what I did.
John: And nothing ever happened to me that in the morning I couldn't recall what happened.
John: You got a special thing going on.
John: That's fucking wild.
John: Well, yeah, but I can't fucking remember the chorus to the Western State Hurricane songs.
Merlin: Well, you know, it's, I mean, yeah, that's true.
Merlin: You got a busy week.
Merlin: Maybe you should table some of this until you're done with all the...
Merlin: you know, what would help you relax probably and get real focused is, um, if you sent me the, the digital tracks for the Western state hurricanes record.
Merlin: So then I could just, I would be helping you.
Merlin: You would be helping yourself and the voice would, would be helping both of us.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: I see.
Merlin: What are you thinking right now?
Merlin: What questions are you asking yourself?
Merlin: What, what questions are the voice asking you now?
John: Well, let's see.
John: The voice is saying, can I figure out how to send Merlin the zip file?
John: And is Merlin motivated entirely by an altruistic desire to get that zip file to help?
John: My goodness, what a cynical voice.
John: Or does Merlin have some other ulterior motive?
John: That is driven by his own love of music.
John: Does he have a connection on the dark web?
John: Right.
John: Exactly.
John: For example.
John: No, not that Merlin would ever let the let the tracks out, but just that, you know, is Merlin operating entirely selflessly here?
John: Entirely selflessly.
John: Yeah.
John: See, these are questions that my inner voice is all, that's just one of a thousand questions.
John: My voice is very, very cynical.
John: Very cynical.
John: Well, it is.
John: It is.
John: Rightfully so.
Merlin: I'm always offering help if people want to send me things.
Merlin: I'm happy to tell them where to send it.
Merlin: It's a tough place.
Merlin: It's a tough, tough place.
Merlin: Your hands are those meaty hands of yours?
Merlin: You're going to be working up and down that neck?
Merlin: You've got to sing.
Merlin: You've got to make sure your gain stages are in the right order.
Merlin: You didn't put the reverb before the rat?
John: Nope.
John: I got the Starcaster.
John: I got the Rickenbacker.
John: I got the Tele Custom.
John: I got a Tele with Paisleys on it.
John: Tele with Paisleys?
John: What am I supposed to do with that?
John: What am I supposed to do with the Tele with Paisleys?
Merlin: Tele with Paisleys.
Merlin: You throw it up in the air.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: While my guitar gently weeps or some such.
Uh-huh.
Merlin: I'm here if you need the help, and I'd love to help.
Merlin: If you want to send it, that's fine.
Merlin: I would listen to it.
John: Or we can wait till after.
John: Will you listen to it all the way through, or will you listen to it 30 seconds at a time?
Merlin: I'm pretty familiar with the song, so I could probably listen to the first maybe 10 seconds.
Merlin: I'm happy I can help.