Ep. 423: "Post-Medicine John"
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hey, Merlin.
John: Good morning.
John: How are you?
John: Wow.
John: Yes.
John: I'm swell.
John: That's terrific.
John: What?
John: Is this a robocall?
John: Hello.
John: What are you trying to tell me?
Merlin: If you would like to receive more of our calls, please touch one.
Merlin: That's terrific.
John: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm just trying to match your energy, you know?
John: Yeah, okay.
John: Okay, great.
Merlin: Yeah, you're there.
Merlin: Oh, my gosh.
Merlin: This is really different from the previous episode we did.
Merlin: uh which was more low-key oh sure sure sure we were all the way down and now we're like we're just right in the bright sunny day today question becomes which one is more insufferable
John: Oh, I thought you were going to say which one is more real.
John: But of course, they're both real.
John: They're both real.
Merlin: I'm fascinated that it feels like we used to be the voice in the wilderness, you know, about so many things.
Merlin: But we used to talk about introversion and extroversion.
Merlin: And didn't you have a word for the thing that you are?
Merlin: What did you call that?
Merlin: Oh, well.
Merlin: Mezzo.
Merlin: I'm going to call it mezzoversion.
Merlin: Mezzoversion.
Merlin: Sure.
Merlin: That's stupid.
Merlin: I'm going to use it, though.
Merlin: But anyway, I mean, I want to talk more about that because that was a really big thought technology for me when you got me first ruminating about what even is introversion and extroversion.
Merlin: And that was an extremely valuable series of conversations that we've had.
Merlin: And certainly it really slotted in nicely once the global pandemic started.
Merlin: And I think it's interesting that I feel like there's more people talking about some flavor of that.
Merlin: And they're interrogating that idea of what introversion and extroversion are.
Merlin: And I'm happy to hear the conversation happening.
John: Yeah, me too.
John: I had a conversation about it two days ago.
Yeah.
Merlin: Me too.
Merlin: My new neighbor.
Merlin: I was talking to my new neighbor about this.
Merlin: Yeah, same thing.
John: I had a play date.
John: The kids now are getting to have modified play dates a little bit.
John: And I had a play date and the mom of the little girl that had come over for a play date was somebody that I really enjoyed back in the old days.
John: I hadn't talked to her in a couple of years.
John: And we got to sit and chat.
John: And she's a lady who she teaches math at a community college.
John: I think a lot of people assume that she's kind of spectrum-y.
John: And she thought so, or she thought it was enough of a possibility that she actually went to an Asperger's, you know, a autism spectrum counselor and had herself evaluated.
John: No kidding.
John: And over the course of, I think, several sessions, they concluded that, no, she's not.
John: You know, this is the problem with that whole spectrum talk.
John: that started a half a dozen years ago.
John: There are a lot of people that, that present that way, but they're not actually.
John: And she was, you know, she was motivated enough to go, to go seek out this diagnosis, but she, um, discovering that she wasn't, you know, she had all this kind of other reckoning to do.
John: You may hear some, uh, some thumping sounds and it is because the dumb cat is,
John: has gone and is interacting with the other microphone across the table from me.
Merlin: Well, that's okay.
Merlin: We don't usually have guests.
Merlin: I prefer to be alerted about it before, but you know.
Merlin: Sorry.
Merlin: Guest star.
Merlin: That's fine.
Merlin: So anyway.
Merlin: Part of the problem with the spectrum thing, it strikes me.
Merlin: And again, I'm way over my skis on this, but I don't want to unintentionally hurt anybody's feelings or be unkind or ableist.
Merlin: But, you know, so it was a big deal when we said, okay, this is not digital.
Merlin: This is not a zero or a one.
Merlin: It's not that you're autistic or not.
Merlin: Hey, spectrum.
Merlin: But then there's this part of me that goes, well, okay, so cool.
Merlin: So now you've got an x-axis, but what if there's a y-axis and then you blow your mind?
Merlin: What if there's also a z-axis?
Merlin: Because I think that goes for introversion 100%.
John: I've changed my – I've modified my understanding of my own –
John: introversion because I had to come to grips or I had to, I had to account for the fact that I am not just very social when the, um, when it calls for it, but also very successful socially.
John: And you're curious, you like talking to your Lyft driver.
John: I do.
John: And, uh, and I go out of my way to, you know, I go out of my way to strike up a conversation.
John: But the emotional introversion, which is very different from the performance of being a person interested in the world, you know, the fact that it isn't just – and I think the girl that originally said about me that I was very introverted and began this whole process for me –
John: she was a very social person and we were both like theatrical musician, theater people.
John: What she was talking about was the, was my complete unavailability at a certain level, um, to be, uh, and it's not like a, it's not an unavailability.
John: That's, that's coy or precious.
John: It's like, it's the opposite.
John: It's I'm trying to make myself available, but fundamentally it's,
John: And emotionally just like completely internal solo, not interested or able to, I don't know what it is, you know, like connect with people.
John: Really?
John: I mean –
John: That's the wrong word, too.
John: Connect.
Merlin: It's that I don't want... Because you like... I mean, I don't want to... I'm not trying to do a bit, but you enjoy and seek out the opportunity to talk about relationships, even if they were 5, 10, 20 years ago.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's that kind of thing, but is that more about the...
Merlin: I think it was John Cleese or somebody in Monty Python who was saying that, you know, really almost all of their humor is about the human inability to communicate effectively.
Merlin: They probably put it funnier than that.
Merlin: But you go back and you watch Monty Python and it's really true.
Merlin: It could be something as relatively simple as like words are funny and words are complicated, you know, like they say in wordy rapping hood.
Merlin: but also that um but that sometimes we're talking about such different things and we don't even have the awareness that we're talking about different things so is it that you're interested in you i'm sorry i'm interrupting you but you you like talking about relationships but do you feel like you are there's a phrase i learned in the 90s that i hated at first but i now kind of like emotionally unavailable do you feel like you can be sort of or are sort of emotionally unavailable despite your interest in relationships
John: Well, that's the problem.
John: And it isn't an unavailability so much as it is a complete lack of comprehension.
John: That's the thing about it that makes it feel like a...
John: I don't understand what people are on about.
John: You know, like I don't get what they want and I don't get that I'm not doing it.
John: Oh, interesting.
John: You know, like it's a – and I still don't.
John: And a lot of the conversation I have about relationships and a lot of the – all of my songs and my whole progress through the world is kind of driven by this seeking –
John: an answer to like, what is it that I'm not doing that everyone, and because it's an emotional language and because it's, because it's, it's something that it's just like the way that extroverts assume that everybody is.
John: And so that's the world.
John: And introverts have had to carve out space for themselves simply by saying like, we exist.
John: It's not just that we fail at,
John: your world, it's that we are separate and apart.
John: And so like everyone in my life, whether they're, you know, whatever their personalities, it always comes back to the same feeling that they, that, that, um, they can't understand that I don't understand what it is that I'm not
John: fulfilling in a relationship context.
Merlin: That's not always one-sided though, right?
Merlin: Because again, but I see also Monty Python where, you know, and I'm going to use that phrase here, that phrase, I just learned crock pot.
Merlin: In a high-conflict situation, especially in that case, a divorce, there's this woman who wrote this book called High Conflict, and she says there's a phrase she uses now, which is crockpot, which is like when a couple's getting divorced.
Merlin: The woman wants to keep the crockpot because they got it as a wedding gift, and it reminds her of being a kid, and the guy wants it because he...
Merlin: She despises her and doesn't want her to have it or be happy.
Merlin: And so you spend $15,000 on a crock pot when it's really not about the crock pot.
Merlin: Another way to put it would be, I guess, kind of a MacGuffin.
Merlin: But sometimes we could both be talking about something and we think we're talking about a crock pot, but we're really not per se.
Merlin: That's what we're sort of stuck at.
Merlin: But, you know, I mean, like in relationships with everybody, whether romantic or otherwise, can be super complicated because we think we're doing whatever our priors, as they say, we think we're doing a good job at whatever this thing is.
Merlin: And we don't understand why the other person feels differently.
Merlin: And maybe it seems like they want something they can't articulate or let alone that it might be impossible for you to provide.
Merlin: But isn't it possible like some of the complexity is like we just don't have – we may not have the right language to talk about the thing we're really talking about?
John: It sounds like you don't have it.
Merlin: I know I don't.
John: One of the reasons that my relationship with Millennium Girlfriend ended up being so disastrous to me was that at that moment in my life, I had just started taking bipolar medicine.
John: I felt like a new man.
John: And I felt like a thing had been unlocked that maybe had been the plague.
John: You know, that...
John: Every time we have one of these new emotional thought technologies, there is that feeling like, oh, wow, I get it.
John: And I get it retroactively.
John: I'm an E N Q P, you know?
John: Right.
Merlin: And then, and then you have that like third act kind of sixth sense flashback where everything plays back and go, Oh, there it is.
Merlin: There it is.
John: There it is again.
John: And I had that with your failures flash before your eyes.
John: When I first got that thought technology, I was like, there it is.
John: I'm an introvert.
John: Thank you.
John: Like now I understand.
John: And now I can, I can go forward and, and I'm going to, I'm going to try not to have any regrets about not knowing this, this whole time, you know?
John: And with the bipolar medicine, it was such a dramatic change.
John: It happened so fast and it was so – there was so much new clarity.
John: Undeniable change in perception.
John: Yeah, just like – and I could look back and go, oh, sure.
John: It's like –
John: I was Shiva the destroyer for all these years.
Merlin: That was me in ADHD medicine where like nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing.
Merlin: And then suddenly, oh, I see.
Merlin: I can do something to have control of this.
Merlin: Or I have agency here.
Merlin: I have my hands around this in a way I didn't before.
Merlin: I don't feel like I'm being led around by whatever that particular Welsh troll was in my case.
Merlin: That like, oh, suddenly I have some executive function that just was not there before.
Merlin: And in my case, it was...
John: very much emotional.
John: Mm-hmm.
John: And then I met this very dynamic and interesting and... She's a pistol.
Merlin: She really was a pistol.
Merlin: You know, like, pistol, literally.
Merlin: I only got to see the upside, but the upside is, like, she was beautiful, she was charismatic, she was fun.
Merlin: She just seemed, like, almost like if you were gonna cast a manic pixie dream girl, this is the one with the purple hair who would, like, go on a journey with you.
John: Right, on a journey immediately, and also, like, just...
John: came from a world that I had never really had access to.
John: You know, there, there've been a few moments like that in my life.
John: Most of the people I've known and dated have been people from my own community who, you know, I met in a, in a context of music or theater or art.
John: And we were like, Oh, hi.
John: And off we went.
John: But there have been a couple of times, like one relationship I started cause I met a girl on a plane and I
John: She lived in a neighboring town.
John: And I got into a two-and-a-half-year relationship with her.
John: Met her on a plane.
John: It was like, hello.
John: And somebody I never would have ever, ever, ever encountered other than that we were put together by fate into neighboring seats.
John: And, you know, that's a thing that's not surprising.
John: That's not normal.
John: Uh, it doesn't happen often.
John: And for years I would get on airplanes and actually sit down and, and, and think like, what if somebody sits down next to me?
John: And this was an, it was an instance where I was sitting behind the exit row and, and I had tried to get an exit row seat and the, and the, the gate agent was like, sorry, the flights sold out or whatever.
John: And I'm sitting behind the exit row and there's an aisle exit row seat right in front of me.
John: And they close the doors.
Merlin: And the flight attendants are – they're like – Now you're in this – the strangest liminal space where you're like, don't even acknowledge that this just happened.
John: Don't jinx this.
John: Well, so what I – the doors were closed and they were like – started their thing.
John: And I just undid my seatbelt and –
John: went up a row, sat down and I said, hi, I know that you have an exit row and that you may have just, just briefly for a second here, breathed a sigh of relief and said, wow, there's nobody sitting in this seat.
John: I also saw that moment.
John: You know, I said this to her, like I'm a tall and I tried to get this seat and they wouldn't give it to me.
John: And so if you want this open and
John: I will go back to my assigned seat.
John: But if it doesn't matter to you, it matters to me to have this extra leg room.
Merlin: Just to be clear here, was the middle seat open?
Merlin: She was in the middle seat.
Merlin: Oh, what was the, was the bulkhead or the window seat open?
John: The window.
John: So she was there with her friend.
John: The friend was in the window seat.
John: She was in the middle.
John: I see.
John: And, you know, and I addressed them both.
John: And she said, you know, she was small, right?
John: Like her, not to say that her legs were, it's not like she was a comical girl with a lollipop where her legs were dangling, but she was a small person and she was on a giant row.
John: The, and in fact, it seemed that the exit row meant nothing to them.
John: They were like, Oh, is it an exit row type of thing where somebody like me, especially back then, before I started paying for the, for the wide seats, uh,
John: You know, Sean Nelson and I would race to the gate to try and figure out if we could get X-row seats.
Merlin: Sean Nelson is comic.
Merlin: I don't know if it comes across.
Merlin: You've seen photos or videos.
Merlin: But, like, he's comically not a good size.
Merlin: No, so big.
Merlin: For almost any plane.
John: And the other nice thing is that the person in front of you can't lean back.
John: Oh, right.
John: Anyway, so this person I met on the plane was like, huh?
John: No, that's fine.
John: You know, you're welcome to sit in the seat.
John: And I was like, and you know, they're kind of laughing at my little disclaimer.
Merlin: And so my only concern at that point would be that you potentially you'd be fine, but you also like, are they worried that you're going to be like a talker guy?
John: Yeah, exactly.
John: And so I just, you know, I, then I let them guide the conversation, you know, and just was there kind of,
John: um, once it turned out that they were animated, you know, and they were friends.
John: So they had the, you know, they had the power.
John: They had the advantage.
John: Yeah.
John: But I ended up in a two and a half year relationship with the person.
John: And, and part of what, what, what, um, part of what was so like incredible about it was that we had no cultural overlap.
John: There was no, we had no story of like, Oh, all of our friends always knew we would be together or whatever.
John: And it was, and it was always a kind of, uh, it was just, and it was never bad.
John: It wasn't a thing where we had a, we had a pretty wide class differential and it just never came up.
John: She was very independent person and, and, um,
John: And that was one of those like, huh, what happens if you get it?
John: It's not even an arranged marriage because in that case, at least your parents know each other.
John: This is just one where you throw a bunch of marbles into a bag and
John: How is it possible?
John: What would that be like?
John: Yeah, yeah.
John: And in the case of Millennium Girlfriend, it was a similar thing.
John: I was thrown into a scenario.
John: You were with me, or at least for the first part of the day.
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Is that the one where I got super drunk?
John: Well, no, you just punched out.
John: A side door.
John: Because we went to that party?
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: You punched out.
Merlin: I don't remember going home.
Merlin: That's pretty rare for me to not remember going home.
John: I didn't even know the door was there.
John: It was just like, we're in the middle of a giant warehouse.
John: I just operated.
Merlin: What was that whoosh that smelled a little bit like a vodka and cranberry juice?
Merlin: I think that was Merlin.
Merlin: How did he get out of here?
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Merlin: Yeah, and you tell me, you think Elon Musk was maybe there that night.
John: Oh, yeah, I think so.
John: I heard he was.
John: I mean, nobody introduced us.
John: But I did get introduced to this person.
John: And anyway, what, what had happened was that in that moment of my life, I was, as I looked back and was evaluating everything that had happened up to that point, one of the things, one of the bells that told in my life was this refrain from all the women I'd ever loved, including my family and friends.
John: That somehow I was the thing that stood athwart my own happiness.
Merlin: That might as well be like your family crest.
Merlin: Right?
Merlin: And it was not.
Merlin: John is very disappointing.
John: It was not that I had never met Miss Wright.
John: It was not that the situation hadn't this or that.
John: It was not that love was an illusion.
John: It was, you know, all these things.
John: It was just that at the moment that I should say yes, I always said punt.
John: It wasn't even that you said no, just to be clear.
Merlin: That you're not responding and then it's too late.
John: I just punted it down the field until I punted it off the field and down the long corridor and through the locker room and just kept punting all the way out into the parking lot.
John: And then, you know, there was a, there were, there were some American, uh, there were some Illinois Nazis in a, in a red Pinto who were like, this is Wrigley, Wrigley Field.
John: And I was like, punted it right past them.
John: Um, and so in this situation with this person standing in front of me, who's incredibly dynamic and that I wouldn't have met other than on this, the airplane of this, of this party, uh,
John: that Elon Musk was somewhere across the room eating lobsters by the half gallon.
John: Inventing the idea of holes.
John: And so I said to myself, say yes.
Merlin: Say yes.
Merlin: And you think that was partly the medicine talking?
Merlin: Or the John post-medicine John talking?
John: It was 100% post-medicine John talking.
John: Like, here you are.
John: You have a new lease on life.
John: Your brain is alive and electric.
John: You're no longer paranoid and depressed and anxious.
John: You're now, like, you're stepping into the world.
John: And if there's one thing everyone has always said to you, it is that you don't say yes when you need to say yes.
John: You punt.
John: In this case, say yes.
John: And Millennium Girlfriend said, here's what's going to happen.
John: And I said, yes.
John: And I did it consciously with full, like full awareness of what I was doing.
John: Like, yes, yes.
John: Right.
Merlin: And if you'd had 30 years of – how can I put this?
Merlin: But like it must have felt very foreign and new and you hadn't had enough experience with saying yes to that kind of thing to know that there were probably some things that you should say maybe or later to.
John: Right.
Merlin: Because you're fully – you're pot committed to this airplane, Elon Musk woman.
John: Because I had said maybe or later or – For my whole life up to that point.
John: And –
John: I said, yes.
John: And she said, well, great.
John: Well, then let me explain.
John: She whips out a scroll.
John: Let me explain who you are and who I am.
John: Let me tell you about the prophecy.
John: And I said, yes.
John: You know, it seems like you've got it figured out.
John: I never have.
John: All I need to do is say yes.
John: Apparently, that's what I've been told.
John: And now I'm just going to do it.
John: And I said yes all the way into a situation where I was
John: underwater and completely lost.
John: You know, I, I lost myself in that relationship in a way that, um, that was a product of saying yes, even in situations where I, where everything about me was like, well, no, this isn't what we do at all.
John: And, and again, I came back to, because that medicine was working so powerfully on me and in, in the best way possible.
John: And I kept saying, um,
John: Yes.
John: You have to keep saying, I said to myself, you have to keep saying yes because every relationship is hard.
John: Every relationship goes through hard periods.
John: That's not the problem.
John: The problem is that you didn't say yes through all the hard times.
John: It's not about saying yes the first week.
John: It's about saying yes a year and a half in when it's a struggle because you always get a year and a half in.
John: So here you are a year and a half in, and you have to keep the pedal to the floor.
Merlin: Because you thought – because why?
Merlin: Because you thought you would be undermining your progress and being untrue to your post-medicine job?
John: Because I'd never been able in a relationship to discern what the problem is.
John: Oh, back to that.
John: Okay, got it.
John: Things are coming apart in my relationship all around, and I'm in the center of it going –
John: I mean, I thought, I think it's fine.
John: Aren't we fine still?
John: And they're like, no, it's not fine.
John: And I'm like, it felt fine.
John: I still feel kind of fine.
John: What do you want?
John: I said yes.
John: You know, like, bah!
John: And that was what always felt, what always happened.
John: I never knew what the problem was.
John: And in this situation, it was clear that my life was on fire, but I still felt
John: Like, I mean, and in this case, it was not that I was like, what?
John: Everything's fine.
John: It was like, wow, everything is not fine.
John: But it was in such contrast to what I'd ever done that I, that I honestly asked myself all the time, like, well, is this love?
John: Oh yeah.
John: Like I didn't know what it was supposed to look like.
John: Maybe this is what it looks like.
John: And it was, I, and I walked right up to the edge of
John: some decisions that were going to mean that my life was on fire thereafter.
John: You know, I got right up to the edge where I had lost, I had lost a sense of where the ground was, what reality was.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and that was a product of me saying, saying and reflecting what people had told me.
John: It, it was always that it, it was always my boundaries that kept my,
John: my relationships from succeeding and kept me.
John: And like potentially hobbled the progress of the relationship.
John: Always.
John: It was my boundaries.
John: It was my, as, as, as people said many times, emotional unavailability.
John: That was the pro that, that, that, uh, that kept me from growing and kept relationship from succeeding.
John: All these wonderful people that I'd loved and, and had been loved by and always, you know, at some point,
John: They break formation.
John: And so I was going to be emotionally available all the way in.
John: And what it turned out was that I, that my insides just got scrambled and it took a long time to heal from it.
John: Still, I'm still probably am healing from it.
John: And when I can't, and I swear to you, when she left,
John: When she climbed aboard my Filson bags and rode off into the sunset, leaving my back door wide open on a spring bay.
Merlin: Oh, no.
John: My sister, upon hearing the news, raced to me to say, now don't let this turn you against love.
John: Like, don't go back into your shell.
John: Like, don't take this as...
John: You know, don't become emotionally unavailable as a reaction to this.
John: And I looked at her and I said, are you crazy?
John: That's exactly what I'm going to do.
John: That is 100% my reaction.
John: I was right the whole time.
John: And I said yes for a year and a half.
John: And look where I am.
John: A hot mess.
John: Everything.
Merlin: The door still opens.
Merlin: Just swinging.
John: Yeah.
John: Everything around me is on fire.
John: Are you crazy?
Merlin: Your bags are gone and you're vulnerable.
John: You're going to come back.
John: You're going to come and tell me.
John: What about your German underpants, John?
John: Did you ever get those back?
John: Never.
John: The German underpants are gone.
John: They're in the wind.
John: So many things in the wind.
John: And I said, I knew all along at some level that this was bonkers and didn't suit me.
John: And I said, yes.
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Merlin: For once, that's how they get you.
Merlin: It's just like it's the opossum, the opossum burglar all over again, right?
Merlin: One time, one time.
John: Yeah, the scratching in the wall the whole time.
John: And so, and so I, and realizing that,
John: um, that I had known the whole time and that there was a, that, that there was an authentic voice inside me going, don't agree to that.
John: Don't, why are you saying yes to that?
Merlin: And the reason you did not acknowledge or follow the advice of that voice is because you felt like that was a pre-Medicine John voice and you were kind of.
John: Exactly.
John: Exactly.
John: And that, and that was the pre-Medicine John voice that had been singled out, um,
John: by everyone in my life.
John: Yes.
John: In, in their attempts to solve my problem or, or, or, and the diagnosis was so often diagnosed, right?
John: Because it was so often true that I didn't think there was a problem.
John: And so they're not trying to solve my problem.
John: I felt like, you know, I still, I still feel like if I could see you for two days a week,
John: With a third lunch date, I would do it for the rest of my life.
Merlin: It's the living together, cheek to jowl proximity in part?
John: Not even that.
John: To see you three days a week with two lunch dates is too much.
John: Oh, I see, I see, I see.
John: I can't.
John: And that's the introversion, the mezzoversion coming out.
John: I don't know.
John: I don't know.
John: And that is the thing I can't solve.
John: And I think as I've grown up and grown older, it's the thing I'm less and less interested in feeling like is a problem or a thing to solve.
John: It is an obstacle to me.
John: Yeah.
John: Having long-term relationships is what it is.
Merlin: I just jotted something down a little bit ago.
Merlin: I'm going to toss out.
Merlin: This is a very early, unformed thought.
Merlin: But in thinking about, in my case, the XYZ axes of version –
Merlin: I mean, I think one way this stuff is complicated is sometimes it feels like there's, again, fresh thought.
Merlin: There's one kind of extroversion and probably 12 or 18 kinds of introversion.
Yeah.
Merlin: That's what it feels like.
Merlin: What it feels like is like you have no, one has, one may feel like one has very little problem describing what extroversion is.
Merlin: Like by our, I think our standard of the last couple of years, are you somebody who in general gains or spends energy from proximity to other people?
Merlin: Now, in my case, as I've said here, stipulated that for me, it's that like, I'm, I'm super quote unquote extroverted for a while.
Merlin: And then I need to go.
Merlin: I'm strong.
Yeah.
Merlin: My feet hurt too, Dad.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: That's the thing.
Merlin: And that's why these conversations are so interesting to me, just to really quickly pull back to the pandemic times, which is like, and now we're talking about people more, I do feel like I'm hearing more people talk about, oh, I know for sure I'm an introvert.
Merlin: And here's what that has meant for me.
Merlin: And this is what I face trying to go back to the way things were.
Merlin: And the interesting part about that is that it is really different for different people.
Merlin: And these aspects of what we historically think of as extroversion and introversion, well, there's not – I mean, there aren't that many things where there's just the one sort of axis to it.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like there are times – there are people who just – I think one bit of subtlety that you can tease out is –
Merlin: Which are the kinds of relationships or interactions that cost or create energy?
Merlin: Do you know what I mean?
Merlin: So, for example, there was a piece I ran across not long ago that was something like, and I'm ready to say it, something like, no social event should take more than two hours.
Merlin: And I was like, hmm, that's kind of an interesting idea.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: And she makes a good case for this.
Merlin: This is I think of this being a very Manhattan thing.
Merlin: Like, OK, we'll get together at two for Bloody Marys.
Merlin: And then I don't know, we'll go ride a ride a carousel and then we'll go pet a duck and then we'll have more drinks and then we'll have appies.
Merlin: And then, you know, it turns into this like 12 hour, you know, buildings roam on of fun.
Merlin: And it's like, I know Syracuse has heard me talk about this a lot, but this also kind of gets into my definition of what is or is not a vacation by my standards.
Merlin: To me, compulsory family fun, having to go somewhere to primarily be with family or important asterisk to have the constant threat of being with family is not a vacation to me.
Merlin: And I'll tell you what that threat part means.
Merlin: That threat part means like everybody's kind of roughly in the same area.
Merlin: John, nobody makes plans the way that I make plans, like let alone the way that I even just as a baseline need people to make plans.
Merlin: I don't want to know that we might do, might, number one, two, do something.
Merlin: Tonight.
Merlin: We might do something tonight.
Merlin: What the fuck does that mean?
John: I should say to our listeners that when you and I, because sometimes we like to push our recordings.
John: Love to push.
John: It's one of the great joys.
John: You schedule, but then you push.
John: Yeah, I write you a thing, a text that I say, you want to push?
John: And you're like, I want to push.
John: I love to push.
John: Sure, let's push.
John: But wait, I should say that you then send me a revised calendar update.
John: Yeah, sorry.
John: For pushing the episode 30 minutes.
Merlin: You change it in your calendar.
Merlin: I do.
John: And then it sends me a new update.
Merlin: It's a plan for the future and a log of the past.
Merlin: Yes.
Merlin: People don't get that, and that's fine.
Merlin: Nobody cares as much.
Merlin: So the reason I'm saying this here, and I don't mean to seem like I'm going completely off the rails here, but I think there's subtleties and gradations to all of these different spectra.
Merlin: I think there's I think there's a lot going on.
Merlin: And I think when we try to like even whether that is, you know, I mean, there's a PBS special I saw about autism in the 80s before Rain Man, where they talk to some of the people, including that one guy, Kim, I forget his name, but the guy who like most directly inspired Rain Man.
Merlin: And, you know, this seemed like, as it can be, a very, very difficult disability.
Merlin: But it was presented, I think, kind of mostly as a zero and a one.
Merlin: As like, well, you either got this diagnosis or you don't.
Merlin: It's very, very, very, very rare.
Merlin: It's probably because women are cold to their kids or whatever, as they once thought.
Merlin: There's all that stuff.
Merlin: But like, you know, just because there seems like...
Merlin: I bet there's lots of different kinds of extroversion, too.
Merlin: It's just that when you're in a restaurant and people are talking so loud two tables away and you're like, oh, my God, I wonder how many people you've given COVID to.
Merlin: I feel like I just clocked you.
Merlin: I just clocked you.
Merlin: Whereas I'm the kind of person where even when we went to Yosemite in, I want to say, August, we didn't want to go into the restaurant to pick up food.
Merlin: My daughter wears a mask in our automobile.
Merlin: Like, I think that's a kind of a flavor of introversion.
Merlin: There's a kind of, like, you get into this introversion-ish thing where you get a little bit close sometimes to, like, I want to say... God, I'm going to be in so much trouble for this.
Merlin: Almost like a little bit of a flavor of, like, OCD.
Merlin: Like, if you've ever met people with OCD who are totally obsessed with the idea that they've never bothered anybody in their entire life, and they've thought about everything way too much, and, like...
Merlin: I get that.
Merlin: Or as you say, I grok that.
Merlin: Like, if you're the kind of person that says, hey, we just met, you know, and this is crazy, but, you know, let's have sex and you don't need to wear a condom because I never wear a condom.
Merlin: Like, oh God, what made you so special?
Merlin: Well, you think you're Prince Philip?
Merlin: Jesus Christ.
Merlin: That dipstick's been in a lot of automobiles and maybe that's not the kind of thing you want downstairs.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I just feel like...
Merlin: It's all so contextual, and there's so many asterisks to understanding anything about, you know, me in words, not just our relationships, but our understanding of relationships, about the implicit rules of relationships, and about things like, I think that's going to come up with all the things we're talking about here, a word I love, boundaries.
Merlin: Like, different people have different boundaries.
Merlin: Like, you know, I'm not going to sit here and say that Bill and Hillary Clinton have the worst relationship in the world.
Merlin: I don't know what goes on in their discussions over the last 50 years.
Merlin: But I imagine they've had some pretty difficult conversations—
Merlin: made a certain kind of separate piece and kept things moving.
Merlin: If you could find somebody who you hung out with for three days a week with one and only one lunch date, I mean, Jesus Christ, people are polyamorous.
Merlin: There must be somebody who doesn't want to go out to eat that much.
Merlin: There must be somebody that will fit inside your spectra.
Merlin: Two days a week.
Merlin: Two days is not too much?
Merlin: No, two days is fine.
Merlin: Two days is fine.
Merlin: Three days is too much.
Merlin: John, should they be non-contiguous?
Merlin: Like the Harrison administration?
John: Absolutely.
John: I mean, you can do two days together, but then you need a week off.
John: Oh, see?
John: Classic introvert.
Merlin: I got to go plug in like Elon Musk, right?
Merlin: I got to go to the charging station.
Merlin: You can't even be at the charging station while I'm charging.
John: I don't think that – I think that Merlin of 2021 and people that have been listening to you for a long time since 2010 –
John: Probably have a picture of who you are and how you interact, but none of them know Merlin of 2002.
John: Oh, tell me about that guy.
John: What was his deal?
John: It's very hard to know about Merlin 2002 based on what Merlin 2015 says about himself.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Because you used to walk into a club like Don Magic Juan always.
John: like like freaking iceberg slim you would walk into coming in i'm doing an impromptu rap i'm taking flash photos i'm fucking shit up i'm stacking three drinks like i'm coming in i'm cock of the walk and everybody when when merlin walked in the door of the bottom of the hill or whatever everybody knew you were there and the thing is that you were you were uh you were
John: fluent in the language of indie rock of, of like indie pop in a way that you knew what the dress code was.
John: You knew what the level of engagement was, you know, you did.
John: And you knew you could see other fans in the crowd and know and gauge like how deep they were in rock.
John: And then you could get with them, you know, but you, and, and with your, with your, uh,
John: With your lovely then fiancé along with you who is also just a wonderful person to sit and talk to in a bar.
John: Like you just carved through those scenes and would have to – everyone in the place seemed like the most extroverted –
John: And, you know, somebody that wanted to be in the bar.
Merlin: Like I'm the one at the party where like I don't have the last one, but it's not until both of you have your PJs on and come out and literally yawn and turn out the lights.
Merlin: Right.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: That guy's not leaving.
John: And you were like, after the show, let's go to a restaurant.
John: Love the restaurant.
John: Let's stay up until four in the morning talking about all the things.
John: Watching Mr. Show.
Mm hmm.
John: And the first time that I realized – well, because you and I gravitated to one another immediately and I think it was also whatever, a recognition that like, yeah, we'll stay up until 4 o'clock in the morning for as long as you want.
John: Not a problem.
John: But there was some other thing, some other element that differentiated us from –
Merlin: I would sit around in my underwear with you and watch the British Office or Mr. Show.
Merlin: That's a damn sight.
Merlin: For me today, I look back on that and go, oh, man, that's the salad days.
Merlin: But do I want to go into a really, really loud place with a bunch of strangers?
Merlin: Maybe back then I would because you see I carved.
John: But there was a time, and I think I remember it happening at the –
John: What was it?
John: It was at the... MC Hammer Party?
John: No, it was at the Swedish American Hall.
John: Uh-huh.
John: Oh, they have very tall chairs there.
John: We were at a party where everybody was there, and it was, you know, Leslie was there.
John: We were just having our times.
John: And then you got a look in your eye that I recognized, which was, time to go.
John: And it was not it was not time to go because the party was over or it was bad.
John: It was great.
John: It was just time to go for you.
John: And it was you didn't say like time to go for us or time to go for everybody.
John: You were just like.
John: Time to go.
John: And I recognized it and I was surprised.
John: I was surprised that you needed to go.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I mean, here's the thing not a lot of people know about going to a buffet or as we see in Ohio, a smorgasbord.
Merlin: You don't have to eat all the food.
Merlin: Oh, come on.
John: I know.
Merlin: Well, it's one thing if you go to Vegas and you go to a Bellagio.
Merlin: I don't know if that's nice anymore, but it used to be nice.
Merlin: That's where my daughter took her first steps on her first birthday was at the Bellagio.
Merlin: But the Bellagio had a hell of a buffet back in the day.
Merlin: And especially their desserts were really great.
Merlin: But like there's a certain kind of the redneck in me.
Merlin: which is like, I'm going to stay here until I have extracted all of the value from these limitless plates of food, right?
Merlin: I'm going to go back to that carving station so many times.
Merlin: I'm going to fuck that.
John: Two slices of cake.
Merlin: Don't fuck that shit up, man.
Merlin: There's no clocks, baby.
Merlin: I'm going to be here.
Merlin: You know what I mean, though?
Merlin: But then you get a little older, and you're like, well, at least for myself, and I go like, you know, just because it's an all-you-can-eat buffet does not mean you have to always jam yourself with all you can eat.
Merlin: And a real boring, normie, middle-aged dad version of that is, well, you know, like they always say, start with dessert.
Merlin: You know, it's your treat.
Merlin: But, like, go get the stuff that you really enjoy.
Merlin: Make a little plate.
Merlin: You know, oh, God, this is so true on the cruise with all the gravies.
Merlin: But, like, learn the thing that you like.
Merlin: Get the thing that you like.
Merlin: And I feel like that, this is not a perfect analogy, but it's kind of like that with social events or like George Costanza, like, leaving on a laugh.
Merlin: You know, I'm out of here.
Merlin: Like, I think eventually... I wonder what it was that particular night.
Merlin: Sometimes I would just get overwhelmed.
John: Yeah, that's what it was.
Merlin: Were you guys playing there?
Merlin: I saw Death... I want to say I saw... Not Death Cab.
Merlin: It wouldn't have been Death Cab.
John: Sure, early days.
Merlin: I might have seen a Death Cab there.
Merlin: Leslie was there.
John: No, but that was a night, like, Vanderslice was there.
Merlin: I remember seeing Chris Walla by the merch table at Swedish American Hall once.
Merlin: But that might have been something...
Merlin: That's a pretty small club for them.
John: It was the night that Menomena opened for us.
John: Oh.
John: Before Menomena got big for the year that they were big.
John: They were opening for us and everybody came because it was like a bar souk night.
John: The bands were all together.
John: Oh, okay.
Merlin: That makes sense.
John: And then after the show, there was no reason to leave.
John: Nobody wanted to leave.
John: Nobody was telling us to leave.
John: And we just sat and everybody closed the bar down because it was
John: You just had to spend 15 minutes.
John: It was a thing where you had to spend 15 minutes with each person.
John: You couldn't just get away with spending three minutes.
Merlin: I thought the Swedish American Hall had nooks.
Merlin: I mean, Bottom of the Hill had the smoking area, which could be real cool.
Merlin: You go out to the picnic tables.
Merlin: But I always liked the Swedish
Merlin: Swedish American Hall had areas that were usually not officially closed or officially open.
Merlin: But there's that one sort of like overall, I want to say by a kitchen, like that beautiful sort of grand hall.
Merlin: There were orgies you could go upstairs.
Merlin: There were places you could go.
Merlin: I mean, Ditto in some ways is Great American.
Merlin: Places where you can go and like be away from the madding crowd.
John: Do you remember the roof of the bottom of the hill?
John: Like you'd go up on the roof.
Merlin: Oh, yeah, where the office was, the dressing rooms.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: And then I always remember.
Merlin: So you go to the smoking area and the table's in there, the steps, like up to like a little dirty room.
Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: Well, what, the dressing room?
John: Yeah.
Merlin: You or Vanderslice or somebody was there.
Merlin: I went up there once.
John: I definitely remember.
John: But I also remember the basement of the great American.
John: The first time you met Robin Goldwasser.
John: Meeting the Johns and meeting Robin.
John: Yeah, right.
John: Meeting the American Giants.
John: But the thing that has been crazy for me about the end of the pandemic and the talk that goes on right now around it is that the people that want...
John: It to not go back and the people that wants it to go back are in 85% of the time they split the way you would expect.
John: It's like, oh, right, you wanted to go back.
Merlin: So like if you had this general sort of personality, we'll just leave the adjectives out or nouns, but like if you had this sort of personality in January of 2020, you have pretty much probably the same, roughly the same sort of personality today.
John: Yeah, you could guess who didn't, you know.
Merlin: Like people you haven't seen since high school, you could sort of guess like what their approach was.
Merlin: Guess which one.
John: But there's some slice of it.
John: And I think of it particularly on the – as you were saying, there's 15 kinds of introvert.
John: There's some slice of it.
John: And I think I talked about this earlier in the pandemic where my friend and ersatz family member who is the – who's a librarian for the – well, she was Paul Allen's librarian.
John: I've talked about her before.
John: A very, very introverted person.
Merlin: She puts the –
Merlin: Puts the spray painted shoes into the card catalog.
John: Exactly.
John: She's the one that had 10,000 outtakes of the association all categorized.
John: Oh, nice.
Merlin: The band, the association?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Oh, wow.
John: Because Paul Allen had access to all those tapes that got lost in the Universal fire.
John: Right.
John: He's just a rich guy.
John: So he's like, I want every live version of of Never My Love.
John: Oh, my God.
John: That's a good song.
John: You know, I just want them all on these hard disks.
John: Right.
John: So this is what I would love to do that for the left bank.
John: I'd love to be the left banks librarian.
Merlin: Just go and find all like every version of Pretty Ballerina and Walk Away Renee.
Merlin: If you worked for Paul Allen back when he was alive, that would have been impossible.
John: RIP to a real one.
Merlin: Would it have a card?
Merlin: Would it say like Van comma Pearl Jam?
John: Well, no, because it was all on handheld.
Merlin: Microsoft computers.
John: Yeah, they were Microsoft iPads, whatever those were.
John: And they were on stands.
John: You know, you could wheel them around like a mic stand.
John: Oh, God.
John: Anyway.
John: I just found a new turn on.
John: Talking to her who could do her job completely digitally.
John: Yeah.
John: She would never need to be.
John: She could be in a hovercraft.
John: She could be on a helicopter.
John: You know, she could be in a Corvette flying through outer space.
John: And saying to her, like, wow, this must be incredible for you because and she's somebody who very seldom ever has anyone in her house.
John: She's got 45 to 106 cats.
John: She, you know, like.
John: She would be the classic.
John: She's very into the Star Wars extended canon.
Merlin: You hand somebody all these bullets and say, give me a sketch of this person with how they feel about going places and be around others.
John: And she's like, I can't wait to get back to the office.
John: Wow.
John: Do you know why?
John: Well, and so, of course, I quizzed her.
John: Yeah.
John: And she said...
John: You know, I have structured my entire life so that I can have alone time and be with myself and not overdose on people.
John: But my office...
John: I'm a librarian.
John: So by definition, people don't stand by the water cooler and talk about your sexual orientation.
John: You're a librarian.
John: People understand that you – when you look down at a thing.
Merlin: Yeah, and it's not like working at Walgreens where those poor bastards are constantly doing five different things.
Merlin: I always feel so bad for like –
Merlin: You're stalking.
Merlin: You're getting stuff out of the shaving cream jail.
Merlin: And then you got to, you know, say IC3, the announcement that means there's three people in line.
Merlin: You got to open another register.
Merlin: And the manager's got to go tear ass and do that.
Merlin: In this case, you see a librarian pushing their e-card around and, you know, they're doing work.
Merlin: So for her, like she has her life qua life, but then gets to go to this place.
Merlin: And it's not like she's being overwhelmed by – Right.
John: Yeah.
John: And that's where her friends are.
John: That's where her social life is.
John: That's where she gets energy from the world and where she can.
Merlin: Again, another one of these, like, not what you expected things.
Merlin: Yeah.
John: Right.
John: Because and she's like, I never want to have anybody in my house.
John: And now if I don't get to go back to work, I'm going to have to invite someone over just because otherwise I. All those cats.
Merlin: That's a lot of work.
John: I can't be that divorced from the world.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: And in my case, I was thinking about it, and I said this early on when we were talking about this in March.
John: I said, you know, the great thing about this is not just that I don't have to go to shows.
John: It's that nobody gets to go to shows.
Merlin: And again, just to go back, third verse, same as the first, you're not allowed to make extraordinary demands of me socially.
Merlin: The implicit demand from our family that we for shizzle need to go to Rhode Island this summer is the first time in a while that somebody's really put the arm on us to do something, and we were in a position where—
Merlin: You know, we weren't so sure for a variety of reasons that we wanted to.
Merlin: Well, I mean, one is just financial.
Merlin: I don't want to go make a bet on the summer at this point.
Merlin: I mean, we will because I bet it'll be.
Merlin: Oh, boy.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: You know, it'd be nice to see, you know, two days in a row where we got everything right.
Merlin: But anyway.
Merlin: But you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like that.
Merlin: That's for me.
Merlin: That's still such a huge piece of this is like if you made those sorts of demands of people in April of 2020, you were such an asshole and everybody would just collapse on your assholishness.
Merlin: You got to say, hmm, John's classic line.
Merlin: You got to say, like I call it back in my productivity, I call it the qualified yes, which is don't just say yes, because now that's your problem.
Merlin: But if you say maybe later, context, ours, you provide some boundaries to it, then you regain some control versus the digital decision of like, are you my friend or are you an asshole?
Merlin: I am going to greatly miss that.
Merlin: the temporary societal permission to say maybe and no to most things.
Merlin: I'm going to miss it so much.
John: The danger for me, the thing that threatens me the most right now is that I know there will come a time in the foreseeable future when all of my friends who have been building up this potential energy in show business.
Merlin: Jason Finn must be just bouncing off the bars of his cage at this point.
Merlin: I mean, he took me to a baseball game yesterday.
Merlin: But isn't he – would you say he's one of the one kinds of extrovert kind of?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: He's very entertaining.
Merlin: I know you make him sound like a monster, but it's a lot of fun to hang out with Jason Finn.
John: The thing about Jason Finn is he only wants to see his girlfriend twice a week and one lunch date.
John: Really?
John: Yeah, but it's not the same kind of introversion as I have.
John: No.
John: It's something else.
John: But he wants to go to a baseball game.
John: He just doesn't want to –
John: hang out with you after, and he really does not want a phone call from you.
John: That's a Hodgman-esque level of boundaries.
John: And he would not, he would not, I don't think, describe himself as an introvert, but he's like, he's got a lot going on over there.
John: Yes, yes.
John: My fear, and it's not just a fear, it's a full-on, you know, that Chad Criollo is sitting in his office right now, having been paid by AEG for a year and a half,
John: to keep kicking the can down the road about that big show that he booked.
John: Oh, right.
John: He had a meeting the other day with his staff, and he was like, I had a meeting with my staff, and I was like, oh, shit.
John: Is this Showbox?
John: This is Showbox Channel.
Okay.
John: And what that means is that Chad is going to send me a text or someone is.
John: The grand reopening, you got to come out and do a set.
John: That's right.
John: Or he's going to say, the cure with Echo and the Bunnymen is playing at the thing and you have, here's your backstage passes.
John: I'll see you there.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: And so everybody.
Merlin: I thought you had to wear a brown tuxedo to hang out there, but.
John: I have a brown tuxedo.
Yeah.
Merlin: You get to hang with Fat Bob.
Merlin: I've heard he's really nice.
Merlin: I've heard anecdotes that one-on-one that Robert Smith is extremely nice.
Merlin: Well, and I'd love him.
Merlin: Oh, my God.
Merlin: I would lose him.
Merlin: My daughter and I have been looking at YouTube tutorials because she wants Robert Smith hair.
Merlin: oh thank god well not not not not boys don't cry hair not you know on the one end nor like uh friday i'm in love hair but but really like caterpillar or the walk hair she's got the volume and she's ready to go the problem with that show though the cure could that be more tempting
John: But and also it's, you know, and it and Chad's like, oh, and it's going to happen at the show box.
John: And it's a it's a two thousand dollar ticket.
Merlin: Right.
John: Because they're playing in a one thousand person venue.
John: So it's like not only am I expected there, not only is is my whole social life going to be there, but it's also a once in a lifetime show.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's also a thing that.
John: Yes.
Merlin: who would give you a lot of pounds for that.
John: He's like, you don't want to go because you're an introvert?
John: You know, it just doesn't fly, right?
John: And that's the show that I fear the most because I have to go, and that's the end of the pandemic for me.
Merlin: That's when the door shuts on this little era we've had.
John: Yeah.
John: And, and it's because, and I can wear a mask at it and I can, I can only do one in 10 of those, but there's going to be the one and I have to go.
John: And then I don't get to, because it, and partly it is not
John: Because once I'm there, I'm going to love it.
John: It's going to be the greatest night of my life.
Merlin: Of course.
Merlin: That's my MO, 1,000%, which is, again, the classic is like Madeline, quote unquote, makes us go on a hike.
Merlin: And I'm like, meh.
Merlin: And Emma's like, meh.
Merlin: And then we get there and Emma's still kind of meh because she can't get a good signal.
Merlin: But we come back and I'm like, you know what?
Merlin: I'm really glad you, quote unquote, made us do that.
Merlin: Because I ended up having fun, but like I live with the – I'm sorry I'm broken inside, you guys.
Merlin: I'll spend two weeks mulling that over in my head in some cases, like in your cure in Echo and the Bunnymen double bill.
Merlin: But like I'll mull that over.
Merlin: I'm like, oh, fuck.
Merlin: I don't want to do this.
Merlin: I hope this gets canceled.
Merlin: I hope something happens.
Merlin: I hope there's a natural disaster.
Merlin: I hope there's the equivalent of a 54-year-old man's snow day because I would just love to not be dreading this right now.
John: And we, luckily, you and I both live in places where there's a 60% chance it's going to rain.
John: There's a lot that can go wrong.
John: Come on, let it rain, let it rain.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: So I don't want to go back.
John: I would love to go to baseball games with Jason Finn and Ben Gibbard.
John: I would love to go for long walks with my friends and have four people over to my house and I will make macaroni and cheese.
Merlin: Travis Morrison, come back, eat all your canned chili.
John: No, I'm not going to have Travis Morrison in his band.
John: Is he banned permanently?
Merlin: This is despite the Pitchfork problem.
John: He's permanently banned from your house.
John: He's always welcome.
John: He just can't bring his band.
Merlin: Oh, the other dismembers.
John: Yeah, the people that – oh, no, it wasn't Dismemberment Plan.
John: It was Travis on his solo tour and he had all these people that used to play with – I'm still mad at Pitchfork.
Merlin: That's too bad because I had a really, really good joke where I was going to make a pun on you are invited.
Merlin: I was going to say you are not invited.
Merlin: Anyone, any time.
Yeah.
John: All the people with the bingo cards playing along waiting for another reference are like, dang it, we were so close.
Merlin: I just see the name Pitchfork now and I get so fucking mad.
Merlin: Still, how many years has it been?
Merlin: And I'm still mad.
Merlin: You know Josh and Emily have got to be like the way I feel times.
Merlin: I don't even know how many.
Merlin: 0.0?
John: Really?
John: One of the great things about Travis, though, is that he is kind of, you know, in the same way, it's not perfectly analogous, but in the same way that Bean Dad just turned my whole trajectory in a different direction, Travis, his reaction to that 0.0 at a certain point, you know, a few months later was like, wait a minute.
John: This is either the worst thing that ever happened to me or it's the best.
Merlin: If it took that – if it takes that kind of thing to get you off social media, maybe it's a blessing in disguise as they say.
John: It changed his heart and it made him realize like, oh, wait, this isn't the whole world.
John: Like so many of us –
Merlin: That's me talking about Twitter, how everybody thinks Twitter is real because so many people think Twitter is real.
Merlin: And the number of people who think Twitter is real, I can't get this out of my head at this point.
Merlin: It's destroying everybody.
Merlin: Everybody's just broken inside right now.
Merlin: And it's because whatever that tone and approach on Twitter is has started to become, has started to seem real.
Merlin: And it's making people fucking insane.
Yeah.
John: It's a knowable number of millions of people that are on there.
John: It is not everyone.
John: It is not the world.
Merlin: That's even before you get to how many people actually post there, which is a very interesting stat.
John: Well, yeah.
John: I'm not even talking about registered users.
John: I'm talking about on a day-to-day basis who's there.
John: It is a knowable number, and it is not – and they're culturally engaged people, so it does feel real, but it's not real.
Merlin: It is so not real.
Merlin: I really want –
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I mean, in some ways, I feel like it's been interesting because the three members of my household form a very, I think a pretty interesting sort of troika in terms of the stuff that we think and feel.
Merlin: And just real quick, like, for example, like...
Merlin: You know, six months ago, I was like, oh, my God, is it really safe to send kids back to school?
Merlin: Well, you know, there's any variety of ways in which, well, first of all, there's a thousand answers to that.
Merlin: Pick 10 schools and there's 10 different degrees of confidence you can have about 10 different things.
Merlin: Not everybody can afford good ventilation, et cetera, et cetera.
Merlin: And, of course, I still obsess about the thing I've obsessed about all along, which is great.
Merlin: You made the destination safe.
Merlin: How do you make getting to the destination safe?
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: It's like, you know, there's all of that stuff.
Merlin: But for example, like we really want our kid to get, be able to go back to school.
Merlin: And she, there's elements of that where, you know, she, she doesn't, doesn't want it, but I'm not going to lie.
Merlin: It used to be time was like, we had to get her to the middle of town at like, she had to be there at like eight something in the morning.
Merlin: And now as much as it sucks, she just needs to be in her room at nine 30.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: Fridays are not super heavy for work.
Merlin: But it's excruciating.
Merlin: She hates it.
Merlin: She spends her whole day – I would never say this publicly, but I'm fine with her looking at her phone because the entire thing is just a six-hour call about Zoom pretty much.
Merlin: It's worse than you could fantasize.
Merlin: But then there's other stuff where it's like – I'm trying to get her used to this idea of like, look –
Merlin: I mean, for myself, I still wear a mask in public, even though I'm like a month into being totally vaccinated because I'm a liberal and I believe the theater of that is important.
Merlin: I think you need to still see because of people like my beloved family member who will never get vaccinated, even though I've been a good COVID boy, I keep wearing a mask because I want people to know and think that it's OK to wear a mask.
Merlin: It doesn't matter if it's a rule or not.
Merlin: It doesn't matter if fucking Tucker Carlson likes it.
Merlin: I do it because that's what I do.
Merlin: But she's even more into the mask.
Merlin: But I'm also saying to her, in order to really evolve as people, we have to get into this idea that it can't and shouldn't be this way forever.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: It's all so complicated, especially when you start bringing in other people.
Merlin: But my wife is like, you know, I don't really like – she doesn't want to commute 45 minutes each way to get to Mission Bay like over by the ballpark.
Merlin: There's days where it's 45 minutes each way to drive there.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's bananas.
Merlin: And she's like, yeah, you know, there's parts of that I wouldn't hate.
Merlin: I'm like, really?
Merlin: Like, do you really want to go like these terrible interminable Zoom meetings you have now?
Merlin: Do you really want to drive 45 minutes in dry, clean clothes to wear a mask all day?
Merlin: The mask part is, like, that's—we just ate out for the first actual real, super real time in however long it's been.
Merlin: We met my sister-in-law for her birthday, and we went and we ate outside, like, socially distanced and all of the things.
Merlin: And, you know, there's a lot of subtlety to that, but, like—
Merlin: I don't want to go to Gary Danko and wear a mask except for when I'm eating and drinking.
Merlin: Because also then everybody there is cheating.
Merlin: You're supposed to wear it the whole time you're not eating or drinking and they don't, which is fine, except see also a loose person with a condom.
Merlin: No condom.
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: And it's like there's just going to be this excruciating subtlety of slowly turning all of the circuits back on, which I have held for some time will be more difficult to do.
Merlin: than turning everything off.
Merlin: With everything off, you're on a downhill slope, and we all agree, like, there's all kinds of stuff we're going to give people a break.
Merlin: There's all kinds of things.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like, when we got to February, March, April, after the cruise, right, you come back, and, like, it's a slightly different world.
Merlin: We're realizing there's a bunch of stuff that has to happen, and the gravity or inertia eventually became, yeah, we got to do this.
Merlin: And now, extroverts notwithstanding, how do we turn all of this back on?
Merlin: And I think it's going to be hard.
Merlin: I think it's going to be complicated.
Merlin: And I predict, I guess like more and more people nowadays, that it's going to be really ugly.
Merlin: I read an article today about how herd immunity, which everybody has a different definition of, it will probably never be possible in this country.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: It's just, it's not gonna happen.
Merlin: And if you just, so what do we do?
Merlin: We just say, oh, it's okay.
Merlin: There's just going to be a bunch of vulnerable people who die or never leave their house because that has to be okay because we don't want to step on somebody's anti-vax beliefs.
Merlin: I don't know, man.
Merlin: I think it's going to be really complicated.
Merlin: I think it's going to get so ugly.
John: There are so many things in life where we take it as a given that some people are going to die from it.
John: What is it?
Merlin: A thousand people a week die from automobiles?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's something crazy.
Merlin: The risk people always point out is, do you know how many people die?
Merlin: Or the thing with the J&J blood clots, and you're like, you know how many people who have COVID die from blood clots?
Merlin: Believe me, the vaccine's going to be better for you.
John: Well, and that's – like a lot of things, that's an argument that's often used by the wrong people to make the wrong – to draw the wrong conclusion.
John: That's totally fair.
John: But it is also true that it is true.
John: And so – It is true that it's true.
John: What can you do?
John: Yeah.
John: You can't fight city hall.
John: I had one more weird just callback to our conversation about introversion.
John: Yeah, please.
Merlin: I could talk about this all day.
Merlin: I really – I think it's such a fascinating topic now that I've had a year to think about it especially.
Yeah.
John: In sitting with the mom and we were catching up and we were talking about our relative introversion and extroversion and our daughters were over there playing and they were having a great time.
John: My daughter's take on the two of them playing was –
John: I was like, did you have fun?
John: She was like, oh, it was amazing.
John: But she's really impossible to boss.
John: I was like, really?
John: And she said that as like, I mean, it's good and bad.
John: She's impossible to boss.
John: That's great.
John: But also, I mean, she's impossible to boss.
John: And I was like, yeah, right.
John: But sitting and talking to the mom, math teacher mom.
John: I said at some point, did you remember that thing that happened a couple of years ago when that person was talking to their friend and the friend was like, yeah, wouldn't it be great if you had a voice in your head that narrated everything like you see in movies?
John: And the other person was like, what are you talking about?
John: You do.
John: It's called your inner voice.
John: And the other person was like, I don't have one of those.
John: And it was like, what are you?
John: What?
John: Yeah.
John: And it kind of blew up.
John: In the world, it definitely blew up in my mind.
Merlin: It's the contemporary version of, do you see the same green I see?
Merlin: When you learn that somebody, like there are people who cannot think, have you heard that thing about that condition they're becoming more aware of of people who can't like, can't like imagine objects or, you know, there's all kinds of things like they don't have the imagination or the ability to like imagine things that aren't there right now.
Merlin: And you learn about all these things where you're like, oh my God, I had no idea this existed.
John: And it explains potentially so much.
Yeah.
John: As I was experiencing that revelation, I heard from so many people who were like, I can't see, I can, I have an inner voice.
John: I just can't see things in my mind.
Merlin: Right, okay, maybe you're the one who told me about that, yeah.
John: Yeah, I just can't differentiate between this and that or whatever.
John: And I heard, and all of a sudden I was like, because it was exactly this, except at a so much deeper level.
John: How are we living in the same world and interacting not just with each other, but like, how do you read A Catcher in the Rye?
John: And I read a catcher in the rye.
John: If you don't have an inner voice and I do, what are we even talking about?
John: Yeah.
John: And, and, and so I just, I described this to her and she was like, no, I didn't hear that because apparently, you know, she's not on Twitter.
John: She's not one of the 4 million people on Twitter.
John: And I, so I described it.
John: Let me send you a link so you can follow me.
John: She described, or I described it.
John: And, and you can see on her face, the same bells ringing.
John: And she said, I don't have an inner voice.
John: Oh my gosh.
John: And I said, this happens a lot.
John: And she's like, what is it exactly?
John: And the bell is going off because she's like, does this explain...
John: so much.
Merlin: And I was like, well, and just to, just to clarify it.
Merlin: So I know, um, and this is the person who thought that she might be on the spectrum, correct, but wasn't right.
Merlin: Okay.
John: Right.
John: And unrelated to that, cause cause honestly, you know, I know so many people of every stripe who are like, I don't have an inner voice.
John: I mean, when I, when this was, when we were talking about this a year ago at the Western state hurricane reunion and, uh, and I was talking about, so I guess it, it only happened a year ago.
John: And both Michael and Bo, bass player and drummer of the band, were like, we don't have inside voices.
John: If I need to say something to myself, I go in the bathroom and close the door and talk to myself directly in the mirror.
John: And I was like, wow, okay.
John: But Stephanie was like, I absolutely have an inside voice.
Merlin: And it's like, oh, okay, okay.
Merlin: Well, then you know people who have an inside voice that just never shuts the hell up.
Merlin: There are people who just narrate the entire time.
Merlin: Oh.
John: But anyway, in talking to this mom, because part of our conversation over the day...
John: had been like, yeah, I mean, having daughters and like trying to figure out how to be a good parent and all this stuff.
John: And her wife who, when we first met, they were in what seemed like a very unusual relationship because not unusual, just a normal relationship, but like, uh, one of these incompatible ones where her wife was, uh, super dynamic and super, uh, you know, and, and also like successful in business.
John: And she was this, um,
John: uh, math teacher who was, you know, who people were like, are you on the spectrum?
John: And so it was always like, wow, you guys are really odd fellows.
John: Well, they've since gotten divorced and it's been a challenge to like, Oh no, no, they're happy.
John: They're fine with it.
John: You know, they're like, they're, they've, they've made a good, they have good ongoing relationship, but their daughter has elements of them both.
John: And it's just like, how do you, what do you do?
John: Nature versus nurture.
John: Yep.
John: But as we're having this conversation, she looked at me with this profound look and she's like, I know my daughter does have a voice inside.
John: And I've never until this moment.
John: Understood.
Merlin: what that is and I was like yes it would be there must be something where it's a little bit like being colorblind we're or or having you know various kinds of like neurological not neurotypical stuff where it's like you don't have a name for it you're not having awareness of it like how would you know what you're missing if you have exactly like red green colorblindness you wouldn't even know what you're missing she calls her daughter over and
John: And I love the little girl.
John: She's just like a bright light.
John: She's the one that's hard to boss.
John: Yeah.
John: And she comes over and her mom says, do you have a voice inside?
John: And she gets a sly smile and says, yes, in fact, we were just talking.
John: Whoa.
John: And I looked at her and was like, I also have one.
John: And my voice and I were just talking.
John: And she has a look of just like complete confidence in it and like kind of a little, you know, a little smugness and kind of like, yeah.
John: And you know what?
John: I also have a sister named Alicia who, you know, what it lives in my head and her, and her mom said,
John: to her, do I have an inside voice?
John: And she went, no.
John: Wow.
John: She's 10, you know?
John: Wait, and she groks that about her mom?
John: Well, it had, the idea had never occurred to her until this moment, but it was something, it was just like asking a kid, like, do you like puppies?
John: And she was like, yes, of course.
John: And then she knows about her mom in answer to that question, which had never been posed.
John: It took her a millisecond to say like, no, no, no, no.
John: And
John: That was a level of perception that I struggled with in going through my life and saying, do you have an inner voice?
John: And watching as my friends went either yes or no and realizing like, oh, I can tell this.
John: I can go through my list of friends and pretty much be sure that I know who does and who doesn't.
John: It is evident.
John: It's just not anything I would have known.
John: If this thought technology hadn't been introduced.
Merlin: And, like, it seems part of this phenomenon in some ways that, again, as with what we used to just call autism, where it's, like, when we have a name for something – like, remember, like, in – of course you do.
Merlin: Like, you remember in, like, in public schools, there would just be what on The Simpsons is called the Brown Reading Group, like the special needs class.
Merlin: And if you think about, like, the people who were in that class, that room, there was a lot of –
Merlin: different kinds of profundity going on in there.
Merlin: You take it like my dad, people thought my dad was an idiot because he had terrible eyesight and dyslexia.
Merlin: And then we got a name, dyslexia.
Merlin: Oh, dyslexia is a thing.
Merlin: It's not that the kid's stupid.
Merlin: It's that the kid has this thing going, you know what I mean?
Merlin: Like when you get it, like labels, sure, can be terrible, but it also gives us access to a new level of understanding when we know that a thing exists that we didn't know exist.
Merlin: Especially like we're describing here with relationships.
Merlin: You know what I mean?
Merlin: Like somebody I know – I just learned this fairly recently.
Merlin: Somebody I know in trying to like figure out what their deal was has been going to like lots of doctors and getting treatments for things and they try things.
Merlin: And as you know, that can go various ways.
Merlin: But one of the things was they believe that this person – a lot of the symptoms of what this person has and the effects that that has on this person's life –
Merlin: are relatively classic PTSD.
Merlin: Now, this is interesting to me.
Merlin: I hope this ends up helping this person, of course.
Merlin: But the interesting part about this to me is they're able to make a preliminary, I don't want to call it diagnosis, but a guess that's worth exploring that this person has PTSD, but can you guess the kicker?
Merlin: Nobody involved knows precisely what the thing is that's behind the PTSD, right?
Merlin: So now you've got this whole new level of, you know, rabbit holes of going down.
Merlin: Like, what was this?
Merlin: Was it that?
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: Like, but I think that, I mean, I don't like to say it out loud, but there's a lot about how I am from the day you met me.
Merlin: You noticed this about me.
Merlin: Like, there's a lot about me that makes me feel like I feel like I'm stealing valor here.
Merlin: But like, I think I have something like PTSD.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: I could guess what it's about, but the more I read about PTSD, and my dad had it when he came back from Korea.
Merlin: He couldn't be around fireworks.
Merlin: He couldn't eat chicken or rice.
Merlin: I told you this.
Merlin: He definitely had PTSD before it had a name when it was just shell shock.
Merlin: But like I don't – there are things about my personality where I'm obviously not a therapist or a psychiatrist.
Merlin: But there's a lot of stuff about my personality that I bet I would start with something like PTSD, you know, alongside ADHD.
Merlin: But I would start with PTSD and then just try to sort of – what's the word they use?
Merlin: Like disambiguate.
John: Reverse engineer.
Merlin: Yeah, reverse engineer, disambiguate control for that.
Merlin: But isn't it interesting that you could have PTSD and you're not really sure what it was?
John: I believe it entirely.
John: And I think that you know what it was and I think I do too, kind of.
John: Interesting.
John: I'm going to pay you $400 an hour.
John: I'm going to do it.
John: You're looking for the triggering moment.
John: And that's what's crazy about PTSD because we all assume that a grenade went off and then there it is.
Merlin: Or it's the time that like you – I don't want to trigger people.
Merlin: But it could be like, oh, that is when you discovered a loved one's body or something.
Merlin: That kind of thing, right?
John: Or like when the priest took you in the booth or whatever.
Yeah.
John: It seems like with PTSD, there doesn't have to be a triggering moment.
John: And that's what's confusing is that you can you can get it over time or the triggering moment doesn't manifest itself until much later.
John: You go back and you go, oh, wow.
John: You know, like I was dead the whole time or whatever.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: All right.
Merlin: Well, you know, let's keep the show alive.
Merlin: Don't tell me yet.
Merlin: But maybe for our final episode, you could give me the conclusive diagnosis and then we'll know.
John: What was crazy about that moment with the mom, with my mom friend?
John: It was so fun a year ago to go down the list of my friends and say to them, do you have an inner voice?
John: And watch them go, yes or no.
John: And to be in the band practice space and go, of course Michael Schilling talks to himself in the mirror.
John: Of course I would never.
John: What was nuts was like the idea of standing in a bathroom talking to myself directly in the mirror and looking at myself.
John: Right.
John: Total horror.
John: Just a horror for me.
Merlin: But look at it this way.
Merlin: Let's take the bathroom further.
Merlin: Which is that I know that if I want to see what I look like, and I usually don't, I know that I can go anywhere where there's a reflective surface called a mirror and see what I look like.
Merlin: But I do need a mirror or a phone or whatever to do that.
Merlin: But imagine if there were people who knew the way that they looked without a mirror.
Merlin: It's kind of like, you know what I'm saying?
Merlin: It's like that level of like, wait a minute, how would you ever do that without a mirror?
Merlin: And you go like, I don't know.
Merlin: It's like my friend who says perfect pitch is the ability to hear a car horn and know it's an F sharp in the same way that you know this color is pink.
Merlin: I can just see it.
Merlin: I don't think you have to be a Marvel fan to find that kind of shit interesting.
John: what was nuts about this moment because we have over the course of the time of, of doing this show, we hear from people and they're like, you know, you said something, a bell went off and it really did change my life.
John: It changed my relationship with my husband or it changed, you know, how I think about medication or what, you know, it caused me to, to, to stop drinking or whatever, like something big, but watching this moment where a mother and her daughter, the introduction of a tiny thought technology was,
John: created what will be a lifelong new understanding and completeness in the relationship.
John: The mother is never going to have an inner voice and the child will never not.
John: Oh my God, yes.
John: But it's knowing it about the other that makes the other less of an other.
Merlin: I want to pay you a compliment and say not only did you just do a classic John Roderick and bring it all back around, whether you realize it or not,
Merlin: I'd like to assume that you do.
Merlin: But that is that kind of moment.
Merlin: It's like the moment a few months ago when I realized that sometimes for worse, but almost always for better, Madeline is all about forests and I'm all about trees.
Merlin: And like when I had that realization or like what I believe to be as a thought technology.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: But like I was like, wait, this explains so much.
Merlin: It explains why generally she's better than me, right?
Merlin: She's so uncannily good about just getting stuff accomplished while I'm still so wound around the axle about implementation details.
Merlin: But if we're about to go on a trip and I'm the one who realizes the proper order of operations, I get to be the hero, usually unthanked.
Merlin: That's fine.
Merlin: But that's what you're talking about here.
Merlin: Go back to that beginning.
Merlin: Go back to Millennium Girlfriend or whatever it was.
Merlin: We lack the vocabulary or insight that
Merlin: To even know that, like, oh, my God, you don't need a mirror to see what you look like.
Merlin: Or in this instance, I just realized we both now know that we have very different extant voices in our head and one of us not and the other very much.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: That could totally help their relationship.
John: Well, yeah.
John: And even define it.
Merlin: And what will that be for you?
Merlin: What comes along that takes this post-medicine John era in which we live?
Merlin: And like, what's the thing?
Merlin: What is your skeleton key for fixing everything?
John: I don't know.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Say something funny.
Merlin: See you next week.
Merlin: See you next week.
Merlin: Whatever.
Merlin: God damn it.
Merlin: That's it.
John: Yes.