Ep. 438: "Catch the Vase"
Merlin: Hello.
Merlin: Hi, John.
John: Hello, Merlin.
John: How are you?
John: Well, good.
John: I said that I was ready in it, and it turned out I wasn't ready.
John: Well, you're ready if you're Dave Roderick, it sounded like.
John: Yeah.
John: Oh, the other day, I made a sound that just sounded just like my dad, but I wasn't kidding.
John: I wasn't playing around.
John: I was just being myself, my normal self.
Merlin: Do you remember what the sound was?
Merlin: Could you share it?
John: Oh, I don't.
John: It was a guttural utterance in response to
John: Somebody threw me a ball.
John: It was exactly a sound that I would make on the show.
John: Something like that.
John: And it was like, oh, no.
Merlin: That's a really good all-purpose sound.
Merlin: Because it's also kind of like, hey, there's that guy.
Merlin: Yeah, there he is.
Merlin: Or, uh-oh.
Merlin: Could mean lots of things.
John: That's exactly right.
John: And if you start to use it as an all-purpose sound...
John: You know, you're on the way.
John: You're on the way to being your own father.
Merlin: You know what?
Merlin: You give me much to think about because I think, huh, this is straight off the dome, but I do feel like as you get older, as one gets older, you do develop or repurpose, maybe from somebody else, a certain bespoke old person sound.
Merlin: Uh-huh.
Yeah.
Merlin: Well, I think about – there's one my late mother-in-law used to make.
Merlin: She would do this a lot.
Merlin: Let's see.
Merlin: Oh!
Merlin: And that is one syllable code for Grandma Stinus in the entire family.
Merlin: Grandma Stinus is going, ah!
Merlin: And sometimes that's followed by, ah, darling!
John: Yeah, it could be somebody arriving.
John: It could be somebody brought something with them.
John: It could be somebody threw a touchdown pass.
John: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Ah!
Merlin: Ah!
Merlin: But the other part of this, I think, and boy, am I ever living this La Vida Loco right now, is as also you get older and maybe your hearing isn't so good, I think sometimes when you get your bespoke old person word or syllable, I think it's also something like, it seems like as people get older and their hearing is less good, they'll sometimes just make a noise like my, I had a lady friend whose grandfather would go, huh!
Merlin: A lot.
Merlin: And that was a sound.
Merlin: So we would get to hear that a lot when we were driving him around Tallahassee.
Merlin: And what he liked to do was he'd make that noise and then read a sign.
Merlin: Oh, sure.
Merlin: Read the sign.
Merlin: So he'd go.
Merlin: huh chinese buffet huh huh huh all state insurance what do you know yeah yeah yeah i i think i've you know i really i have so many ticks john
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
John: But I don't mind it.
John: I'm not complaining, you know?
John: No, no, no.
John: It's lovely.
John: I mean, your ticks are all lovely.
John: What do you know?
John: I've started to say, oh, boy.
Merlin: Oh, that's a good one.
Merlin: Oh, man.
Merlin: We should catalog all of these.
Merlin: Maybe we should license these.
John: The thing about, oh, boy, is it works for a lot of things.
John: You can say, oh, boy.
John: Oh, for sure.
John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: Anything.
John: Anything.
John: Here comes the food.
John: Somebody scores a touchdown pass.
John: You know, somebody shows up on your doorstep.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Oh, boy.
John: Yeah.
John: And you hear them reflected back because, you know, my daughter's at a spongy age and she's starting to throw my own mannerisms back at me unconsciously.
Merlin: Oh, God, no.
John: But also mockingly.
John: Of course.
John: And so I'm starting to see these patterns where, you know, why am I saying, oh, boy?
John: It's a little bit like the, huh.
John: Like, why am I filling the space with sound is another thing.
John: Like, you could just drive in silence.
Merlin: I think there's a lot of reasons.
Merlin: I mean, not that there's that many necessarily good reasons, but I don't think young people, younger people do that in the same way nearly as much.
Merlin: I mean, they might sigh or something.
Merlin: Ha!
Merlin: but but i think i think with us it's you know like yeah boy i'm gonna start you know what i'm gonna give myself a challenge i'm gonna start writing all these down yeah three by five card it huh huh yeah um i think i do that on this show a lot you'll and you do it too what are you talking about one of us will say something and the other will go huh
John: Oh, well, I don't like to talk about the show on the show, but.
John: I bet you somebody could do a super cut where it was just 10 years of us going, huh, huh, huh.
John: And then.
John: Well, now you've manifested it.
John: The coughing at the beginning of Paranoid.
John: Master of Reality.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah.
Merlin: Okay, first of all, I need to stipulate.
Merlin: My health is not good.
Merlin: I screwed up yesterday.
Merlin: Something happened.
Merlin: This is actually related to what we've been talking about because at some point, like early yesterday afternoon, I said this to myself.
Merlin: I said, huh.
Merlin: Because I noticed that my back kind of hurt as though, huh.
Merlin: And it wasn't the lower part where you'd expect it.
Merlin: It was kind of the middle part.
Merlin: So I figured I either got lung cancer or I slept wrong or both.
Merlin: And so I went, huh.
Merlin: And then by early evening, late afternoon, early evening, it had turned into full blown, like, I'm making noises like you can't believe it.
Merlin: Like every shift, you ever have a kind of pain?
Merlin: Of course you have.
Merlin: You're just a whole lot of pains.
Merlin: But every shift, I'm making an involuntary, like a Yelp.
Merlin: And my daughter thought that was funny.
Merlin: Because no matter how I move, I go to reach for my glasses, and I go, ah!
Merlin: And it's disconcerting to hear that in the room.
Merlin: um and she does that though she does she's uh well you know welcome to the age where now i mean my daughter now makes visual memes about me and what an old man i am and uh they're pretty funny so i don't mind them as much but there's plenty to make fun of in our house i every time i get up uh when my daughter comes in and says like will you come help me or come look at this that i built or whatever i every time i go
John: As I get up out of the chair.
John: That's a great sound.
Merlin: Is it getting longer?
John: Oh, yeah.
John: Yeah, it starts before.
John: It starts when I'm not even lifting yet.
John: I'm just leaning forward.
John: Oh, no, you've got to get yourself ready.
Merlin: You should get one of those robot recliners.
Merlin: It lifts you up.
John: Oh, God.
Merlin: Okay, all right.
Merlin: Okay, here we go.
Merlin: I was prepared for... I was prepared for being the sort of person who makes a noise when they stand up.
Merlin: I was a little surprised when I started making a similar noise when I sat down.
Merlin: So I was making noises...
Merlin: uh yesterday as you do and uh i don't know i did i made a bunch of poor decisions yesterday uh and last night especially but um i had a uh i took a pain pill uh for for that some some i took someone else's medication and my wife had some leftover medication from a dental thing like months ago and um
Merlin: And the thing is, though, I don't like taking a lot of stuff like that because, well, for lots of reasons.
Merlin: But one of the reasons is, ironically enough, it seems to me, I don't sleep very well when I've taken some kind of – I mean, sometimes, yes.
Merlin: But, like, I slept – and this is going to seem like a princely amount of sleep to you probably.
Merlin: But I slept for four hours last night, which is not a lot for daddies.
John: It's not enough for you, no.
Merlin: So here's what happens.
Merlin: And I mean, I know our constitution are very different, yours and mine.
Merlin: But one of my things is if I get up too early, like think about the kind of getting up where you got to make it to the airport for an early flight.
Merlin: Maybe you were up late packing or whatever.
Merlin: Or in my case, you know, like last night I watched like six episodes of Rome, which kept me up till really quite late.
John: It's really a wonderful television show.
Merlin: Everyone's seen it.
Merlin: Rome?
Merlin: Oh, I had no idea.
Merlin: Come on, get out of here.
Merlin: I started last week and I'm already halfway through the second season.
Merlin: I love that guy.
Merlin: I love what's his name?
Merlin: Titus Rolo.
Merlin: What's his name?
Merlin: You know, the guy, the guy that's in the Thor movies.
Merlin: I like him a lot or movie guy.
Merlin: You know who I mean, the other guy.
Merlin: Sure, sure, the other guy.
Merlin: You got Dr. Trainspotting from Grey's Anatomy and Trainspotting, right?
Merlin: And he's all sniffing his own farts, although he does seem to move up through almost everything very quickly.
Merlin: But then you got the dude, the dude who's getting whipped at the beginning.
Merlin: I love that guy.
John: Whipped dude, right.
Merlin: You know who I mean.
John: I haven't seen it in 10 years, or no longer.
Yeah.
Merlin: Really?
Merlin: Because this is before Grey's Anatomy.
Merlin: It's after Trainspotting and before Grey's Anatomy.
Merlin: I never saw Grey's Anatomy.
Merlin: That's okay.
Merlin: You're good.
Merlin: Don't worry.
Merlin: Don't worry.
Merlin: I'll tell you the one season to watch.
John: I was in New York.
John: There was this kind of unfortunate incident in the mid-2000s where I was in Seattle.
John: I was depressed.
John: I think you might remember this period.
John: I had grown my beard very long.
John: I wasn't confident that the Long Winters had any future.
John: Yeah.
John: I tried to make that ultimatum record and couldn't finish it.
Merlin: Oh, jeez.
Merlin: Is this when you went around and around with Tucker and trying to get him nailed down?
Merlin: Yeah, that whole thing.
Merlin: Oh, shit.
John: Yeah, that was a rough period for you.
John: It was bad.
John: And I spent six months in bed, pretty much.
John: It was the old mattress, but the old mattress was still perfectly serviceable at the time.
John: It was probably only five or ten years old at that point.
John: It's a biome, John.
John: It's not a mattress.
John: Then it was nice by the time we talked about it.
Merlin: That was when we went to that Chinese restaurant.
Merlin: Anyway, the point is I didn't sleep very much.
Merlin: Continue.
John: I do this thing where when I'm in trouble creatively or emotionally, I reach out to people looking for solutions.
John: It's very hard for me to
John: then go the next step, which is to accept the help.
Merlin: And this would be around the period you were working with friend of the show, John Hodgman.
John: No, this was before that.
John: Before that?
John: Oh, a long time.
John: This was 2005 or something, before I'd met any of those guys.
John: And I was talking to not-a-surf drummer Ira on the phone.
Merlin: Very handsome guy.
John: He's a wonderful man.
John: And he said, hey, guess what?
John: Daniel, bass player of Not A Surf, is – they lived together.
John: They shared an apartment in Williamsburg that was down one of those streets in Williamsburg that was just all butcher – like abattoirs 25 years ago.
John: And now, of course, it's all bars with neon under the tables and stuff.
John: Candle shops.
John: And the apartment they shared, it had a name.
John: It was called The Sitcom.
John: Because they felt like it was a sitcom-worthy apartment.
Merlin: It was a loft in a warehouse that had – Oh, I was going to guess that Ira brought the comedy and Daniel brought the situation.
Oh.
John: That's also probably true.
John: He seems very situational.
Merlin: He likes to lean back while he smokes a cigarette.
John: He does.
John: He's a great cook.
Merlin: Great smoker.
John: Anyway, Ira said, look, Daniel's going back to Spain.
John: He's going to be back in Spain for nine months or something.
John: Why don't you move to New York?
Merlin: Oh, shit.
John: You live in Daniel's room.
John: And, you know...
John: get your shit together out here.
John: You know, you can't be depressed in New York, lol.
John: Everyone's your friend in New York City.
John: And I said, you know, that's a great idea.
John: And like every time I've ever moved to New York, all both times, I threw a bunch of stuff in a bag and I was like, you know what, Seattle, here's to, you know, up yours.
John: Yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
John: I got on a plane, I flew to New York and it was winter, which is the absolute most cheerful time in New York.
Mm-hmm.
John: And I got there with my bag and my other bag and, you know, walk into the sitcom, put my bags down.
John: And Daniel comes out from around the corner.
John: And I was like, hey, Daniel.
John: And he's like, hello, John.
John: How are you?
John: You know, I'm Espanol.
John: And I said, oh, well, nice to see you.
John: And he was like, great.
John: Yeah.
John: How long are you here for?
John: And Ira said,
John: is in the background just kind of like looking at his fingernails.
John: I was like, Oh, well I was just, um, I'm just, you know, here for some amount of time.
John: And that night, you know, they made a bed for me on the couch and,
John: And I said to Ira the next day, like, did you, is he, did I?
John: And he's like, oh, he's probably, he's just, he stayed a little longer.
John: He's probably, you know, going to leave.
Merlin: But did you get the sense that, because the first thing that's weird is like, had you gotten the sense that he had talked?
John: to daniel about the the whole idea of you staying there including in his room did it seem like that hadn't come up and wasn't gonna come up all of these things are not knowable because it was awkward that's just so awkward i don't know what their communication is like they've been in a band for 20 years i don't know what they they've been roommates all this time you know ira is he's a beautiful man he's so charming and he kind of over the years has
Merlin: floated over the surface of the world a little bit like you know yeah i'm guessing he's got that john ham thing where he doesn't even have any idea how much he gets away with yeah yeah i mean not not in a bad way not not in a creepy way but just the fact that he he is so tall and gorgeous and talented you have to figure that he's probably i'm not you know every mo drummer's more problems like but still like he's probably i bet he gets away with a lot of stuff
John: Well, but he also does the thing that, God, I wish that I could do, which is...
John: Water off a duck's back.
John: Everything is.
John: Oh, God.
John: And the good part of that is water off a duck's back.
John: The bad part of that is there's a lot of conflict avoidance.
John: In The Long Winters, we had a famous story of Aira.
John: We were in Toronto or something.
John: Our two bands were playing.
John: And we got separated together.
John: Half of the Long Winters and half of Not A Surf were over here in this part of town and half of us were over here in this part of town and none of our phones worked because it was Canada at the time.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John: It was a different time.
John: We got to the end of the day and it was like, oh, wow, we're not going to meet back up with those guys.
John: And so we had a hotel over here and it ended up Ira was going to stay with us.
John: And, you know, and whoever it was in the Longwinners that was with the other guys was going to stay with them.
John: And we roll up into this hotel room, but we only have one.
John: And it's me and Corson and Ira.
John: And, you know, we're very impressed by Ira and impressed by not a surf like these guys.
John: They're the headliners, right?
John: They're talented and they're nice.
John: Right, both things.
John: And so we walk into the hotel room.
John: That'd be a hell of a three-piece right there, that hotel group.
John: Oh, yeah, right?
John: I don't think we didn't think about it.
John: Man.
John: But we walk in and I'm immediately, you know, band leader guy.
John: I'm calculating like, okay, well, Ira gets this bed.
John: Corson, you know, like what's going to happen with the other bed is basically what I'm thinking.
John: Like Corson and I are both too big now to share a bed.
John: I tried to get a second, you know, all this type of thing.
John: Right.
John: We walk in, door shuts behind me.
John: I'm, you know, moving bags out of the way.
John: I'm thinking and I say, well, OK, so Ira and I turn around and he has already laid down on the floor in the
John: The entryway of the room, alcove of the room with it and pulled his coat up over him.
John: And he says, if you can just throw me a pillow.
John: And I said, Ira, you are our guest.
John: You don't have to sleep in the door.
John: Come in and you can have one of the beds and we'll figure it out.
Merlin: It's not simply a reaction.
Merlin: It's like the water has never touched the duck's back.
John: That's amazing.
John: He waves me off with this cheery wave and he goes, oh, no, what are you talking about?
John: I'm a professional.
John: And Eric and I were like, I'm a professional.
John: I'm a professional, yes.
John: And we looked at each other and we were like, I'm a professional.
John: And he was asleep by the time we had even time to think about it.
Merlin: I needed more things where I'm envious of Ira.
John: Yeah, I'm a professional.
Merlin: Can you imagine that?
Merlin: You just lay on the floor and you do a wave and go to sleep?
John: With no, there's no like, oh, how did I end up like this?
John: Ah, this day ended up all screwed up.
John: You know, like, what the fuck?
John: He's not ruminating.
John: No, he's just like, I can sleep on the floor.
John: Yeah.
John: But in this situation where I'm standing in the living room with my two suitcases and Daniel is acting as though, first of all, in a super cool Daniel way, that it's perfectly natural for me to walk in the door of his apartment and say, hey, Daniel, and have him go, oh, hey, super cool.
John: But also clearly no one has discussed that I'm moving here.
John: And he said, you said, had you said for a month?
John: Is that right?
John: No, Ira was like, he'll be gone for nine months.
John: He was saying like, move to New York.
John: You can use my apartment as a jumping off point to get your own place and become a New Yorker.
John: Oh boy.
John: Oh boy.
John: Oh boy.
John: This was a big move I was making.
John: Like I had, we'd talked on the phone a bunch about it.
John: Like, yeah, I'm going to move to New York.
John: Fuck it.
John: You know, I've been meaning to do this for the last five years and now's the time.
John: because when I left New York in 2001, my intention was to go back to New York.
John: That's where I wanted to live.
John: And so this was like, and it was actually, it was only four years later.
John: So it made, this was the culmination of this whole thing.
John: I was going to move there.
John: And so I slept on the couch and then Daniel left for a few days.
John: And Ira said, you know, well, the bedroom's open.
John: Hmm.
John: And I moved up into Daniel's room and I slept there for a couple of nights, but you know, like definitely didn't unpack.
John: And then like three nights later, Daniel showed back up and I was back on the couch and Daniel very definitely said a couple of, you
John: Made a couple of declarations to the room like, well, this spring is going to be great in New York.
John: I can't wait to see New York in the spring.
John: Yes.
John: And I was – but kind of to the – he said it to the room.
John: And I looked over at Ira even looking for a kind of like shrug.
John: And Ira was just looking at his fingernails.
John: And so I stayed there on the couch –
John: For another four days, maybe just spiraling like so depressed.
John: And and at that point, you know what depressed looks like is I sleep till three in the afternoon.
John: So now these two guys have a guy on their couch that's asleep in the in the middle of the day.
John: And the vibe was very much like, when is this guy?
Merlin: That's a pretty long time to have a depressed tall man on your couch.
John: Not very fun.
John: So then one day I was walking down on the Lower East Side and it was raining and I was just like, wait, I don't have to be here.
John: I don't have to be in New York.
John: I can go back to Seattle.
John: It's no defeat.
John: It's no more of a defeat than this.
John: And so I did.
John: I went back to the sitcom, got my bags, and went immediately to the airport.
John: And they were like, where are you going?
John: I was like, oh, back to Seattle.
John: And they were like, okay, cool.
John: I was like, okay, well, great then.
Merlin: It was a little.
Merlin: No, that's just for myself.
Merlin: That would be very stressful to me.
John: Yeah.
John: Yeah.
John: It was it's it's I'm still a little stressed about it, actually.
Merlin: Well, I don't blame you.
Merlin: I mean, it depends on what it is that you seek.
Merlin: There was a time in the late 90s when what you sought for a variety of reasons, it seems to me, was to go to Europe and do a big project and let the world do what it will to you.
Merlin: And you were going to walk.
Merlin: I mean, this is just my estimation of that.
Merlin: But it's quite another thing to say, like, OK, I need to repot myself for a little while.
Merlin: And in so doing, if it were me, I would be thinking, oh, I want to go disappear into the city in this experience.
Merlin: And as rugged as you might be, and as my friend Mike likes to say about your experience in the sand, sleeping on the beach, sleeping rough, as they call it in England, that's a different thing from like I'm planning to have something like even just shallow roots here for a little while.
Merlin: The point of this is not to have –
Merlin: a week and a half vacation to get placed somewhere.
Merlin: And you, it sounds like if, I mean, again, if it were me, I would really feel like, wow, I never really got my legs under me in this.
Merlin: And I kind of just, it just made me, I feel bad in a different place now and it's not helping.
John: The, it's the, it's the, it's the, the feeling that you get a lot of the time where,
John: I mean, I wasn't very good either at saying, hey, let's talk turkey here, fellas.
John: Because I'm so used to feeling like I'm to blame.
John: And so in a situation like that, my sister or maybe a more assertive person would have said on that first night, oh, hey, we should have a family conference here because Ira said that I could come here and live in your room, Daniel.
John: but I assume you've talked about this, but rather than do that, I was like, Oh, awkward.
John: Okay.
John: Well, sure.
John: Yeah.
John: I'll sleep on the couch.
John: It'll all work out.
John: And I'm just, but I'm doing that thing where I'm thinking like, I'm the intruder.
John: This was a secret.
John: I don't want to out Ira.
John: I don't want to, um, I don't want, it's so often the thing where you're just like, maybe if I, maybe if they just don't notice me, this will be fine.
John: You know, I'll,
John: He'll go and I'll be there and we don't have to talk about it.
John: And then, of course, having not done that, then it's very hard to do it two days later.
Merlin: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Merlin: I mean, it was never – it would be one thing if they said, hey – I mean, I'm just repeating what you said or implied, which is like – it would be one thing for Ira to say, hey, look, I talked to Daniel about you can crash here for five days.
Merlin: Would that work for you?
Merlin: It's just more like you're just – you've got a big wad of uncertainty at a time when you probably would have sought something a little more decisive.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Not just for comfort, but just for like in the interest of the project.
John: Well, and also then I'm wondering, did I misunderstand Ira?
John: You know, it's always – It's always your fault.
John: Yeah, back to me, right?
Merlin: Back to my fault.
John: Merlin, there's something going on with me.
Mm-hmm.
John: Oh, sorry.
Merlin: Hang on.
Merlin: Just real quick.
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Merlin: John, is anything going on with you right now?
John: There's something going on with me that I've talked to Dan about a little bit.
John: But I need to address it here too.
Merlin: Oh, you want a second opinion?
John: Well, yeah, maybe.
John: Which is that for the last couple of weeks, now three weeks, it happened to me twice with Dan and now it's happened again with you.
John: I have been losing the thread of...
John: of what we're talking about.
Merlin: You mentioned this an episode or two ago that you had concerns, I think you'd said, I feel like you had said that you were concerned that you'd started dropping the thread a little bit.
John: Dropping the thread.
John: Yeah.
Merlin: Which is unusual for you, you feel like?
John: I've never dropped the thread.
Merlin: I don't drop the thread.
Merlin: I always have the thread, some trail of the thread.
Merlin: Yeah, you know, there should be ideally at least two ends to the thread and you can find one of them.
John: And so the anecdote about moving to New York is only useful.
John: It's a non sequitur, as so many of our stories are.
John: It's only useful.
Merlin: It's a non sequitur for now.
Merlin: I don't know how to say that in Latin.
John: A non sequitur for now.
Merlin: Yeah, you never know when it's going to come back.
Merlin: In the last two minutes, what ends up being the last two minutes, because you never know it's the last two minutes until the show's over.
Merlin: But that's when you tend to like, you know, you're like Quint out there with your big reel on your big rod, and you're going to pull that into the boat.
Merlin: And I forgot we're even in a boat, which is your gift.
John: But that only works if I know where the thread is.
John: And when I started the anecdote about
John: Ira, I said, even as I was talking, this is 15 minutes ago, I planted a flag and I said in my own head, ah, this is the new reality.
John: You're going to jump off into this thread.
John: It has to do with what Merlin was saying about...
John: our conversation just prior to it.
John: This story is going to illustrate something that Merlin was saying.
John: So plant this little down marker, right?
Merlin: But you tend to trust yourself that you're going to throw this vase, or as you say, vase, up in the air, and you'll be up there for a while, and then you'll probably catch it.
Merlin: You won't forget that there's a vase in the air.
John: Exactly.
John: And in this instance, I actually specifically said, remember where you are.
John: I went into the story about Ira.
John: I got involved in it enough to tell it.
John: Mm hmm.
John: I walked through the door out the other side of it.
John: And I think if you go back and play the moment when I finished the story and you were like, huh.
John: And I was like, I walked out the door and I had no idea how to get this crash.
John: I remember planting the flag.
John: Get back here, you know, or not get back here.
John: But like, here's where we're leaving.
John: And now I don't remember what you were talking about.
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: I'm not trying to help you because you did not ask for help here.
Merlin: But you were somebody who does a similar thing a lot of the time.
Merlin: And I make the crack about like throwing something in the air.
Merlin: But like that's a little bit about what we do.
Merlin: That's just our thing here and elsewhere is we tend to trust ourselves to jump boldly into something and hope, assume, or work toward that going somewhere.
Merlin: You entered into that Ira story on the heels of something having to do with noises or bodies or sleeping, and you went into it with your historical confidence that you'll catch the vase.
Merlin: But now here we are.
John: Now here we are.
John: And I don't want to make the story the story.
John: I definitely don't want to make the fact that I'm forgetting the story the story.
John: But this is uncharted waters for me.
John: And it had never happened.
John: It happened with Dan a couple of times.
John: And I felt like I could excuse it because I was, you know, I don't know.
John: No, I didn't even feel like I could excuse it.
John: It scared me then.
John: But now there's just no denying it.
John: Like I'm, I'm foregrounding it because I don't know, because I don't want to, I don't want to sit on this show and just be, um, living in a world that's only three minutes on either side of the present moment where I'm like, well, I started telling a story and now, well, here I am.
John: So it's, I guess I got to get to the end of this story.
Merlin: International house of pancakes.
John: How do you feel about that Merlin?
Yeah.
John: Southgate Mall.
John: No, it's like that's exactly where I'm at.
John: I'm reading the signs.
John: Just reading the signs and going, huh?
John: That's what I know.
John: And I don't know whether I need to start writing things down on 3x5 cards, but then I won't be able to read them.
Merlin: Oh, yeah.
Merlin: Well, it's like the OCD problem.
Merlin: Yeah, you know me.
Merlin: Where like when you've got OCD, the problem is you're feeding the monster in some ways where you say, did I turn off the iron, let's say?
Merlin: And you go back and you check and then the iron's turned off and everything was fine.
Merlin: But the thing is that only lasts for a second until you've left the house again.
Merlin: And now you're again wondering, well, did my going back to check on the iron somehow turn the iron back on?
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: It's hard to beat that all the way back down.
Merlin: Now, you have a concern here on the face of it for the quality of the show, which I appreciate and admire.
Merlin: Are you concerned of what this augurs about you and your mind?
Merlin: Yes, yes, very concerned.
Merlin: That's the deeper point.
Merlin: Obviously, it's very important that we have a good program.
Merlin: Thank you all for listening.
John: But it's the augury that concerns you.
John: And context for not being able to remember where I am.
John: Of all of your problems, this is not one, usually.
John: No.
John: No.
John: And I feel like my whole world is—this is the—
John: these are the metal studs behind the walls.
John: This is the architecture that allows me to be confident in many, many things.
Merlin: That's a good metaphor.
Merlin: You can't see it, but you know the walls aren't falling down because they're full of studs.
Merlin: Right.
Merlin: When someone says, well, that's not what I said.
Merlin: And now you're wondering.
Merlin: I can say, oh, yeah, that is what you said.
Merlin: You're wondering now.
Merlin: You never needed a stud finder before, but now you got one and you can't even find the stud finder.
John: So, I mean, I think I talked to my psychiatrist and,
John: who's prescribing me all these medicines.
John: And I said, you know, I don't know.
John: I had a little like memory blip.
John: And I think that that probably is scary when a psychiatrist hears that because they're like, ah, am I causing it?
John: Do I, is there a medicine for it?
John: You know, it's one of those scary things.
John: And maybe, maybe Merlin, it's an, maybe it's a blessing.
John: Maybe I'll be, maybe I'm gradually entering into a period in my life where, um,
John: My cares wash away because I just can't remember them.
Merlin: And I'll just be like, oh.
Merlin: That could be nice.
Merlin: As long as you don't have that niggling feeling that there's something different you should be worrying about.
Merlin: Because then that's my job and I'll thank you not to step on my bit.
Merlin: But obviously, you'd like to be able to enjoy a couple more good years and not find yourself drifting off.
Merlin: Now, another thing that my ex's grandfather used to say, and this is back when he was alive, obviously, and also when his late wife was alive, and he would launch into the oddest anecdotes.
Merlin: No, not an anecdote.
Merlin: He would make more like sort of a dinnertime announcement.
Merlin: And a classic one that we had a lot of fun with, and this is when they would have – they call it happy hour.
Merlin: So they'd have a Diet Coke and some crackers in the afternoon, and we'd hang out, my lady friend and her grandparents, with their little TV trays.
Merlin: They were adorable.
Merlin: But occasionally his wife's – what was his wife's name?
Merlin: I want to say it was – I think it was Adelaide or Adele.
Merlin: But he would say –
Merlin: The other day I had the most delicious slice of pie and it was a sort of pie that I had not had for some time.
Merlin: Add what kind of pie was that?
Merlin: And then she would always say, I don't know, Logan, it's your story.
Merlin: And which is funny because she was older than him.
Merlin: She was like, she was super old, but seemed younger.
Merlin: But like, I, I,
Merlin: I'm not sure what caused him, the man who would read the International House of Pancakes sign and go, huh?
Merlin: I'm not sure what would cause him to announce that he'd had a piece of pie and that it was a kind that he hadn't had in a while and it was good.
Merlin: And then I guess the crux of the conversation becomes that he can't remember what kind of pie it is.
Merlin: So he turns to his wife of 60 years.
John: But he wasn't trying to land that anecdote somewhere.
Merlin: it was unclear to me what it was in service of.
Merlin: And I didn't mind it.
Merlin: You know how it is.
Merlin: You always, your family bugs you more than it bugs other people.
Merlin: You know, you remember like being like, Oh man, your mom is so cool.
Merlin: And like, Oh, my mom's the worst.
Merlin: That kind of thing.
Merlin: So my, my partner friend lady would be driven crazy by this kind of, these kinds of antics.
Merlin: She was sharp as a tack and like I think much of her appeal was that she was, you know, very, very fast and very quick-minded and she didn't like being mired in a non-conversation about a sort of pie that somebody had not eaten in a while.
Merlin: But that's the kind of thing where like if you're going to hang out with grandpa, if you're going to hang with Logan, you need to be OK with the occasional sub anecdote about whether or not a kind of pie had been eaten recently and what the type was.
Merlin: Now, that's a territory.
Merlin: I don't think you're getting to that territory.
Merlin: Oh, thank you.
Merlin: Thank you.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: No, no.
Merlin: But, you know, but we all do things to like, you know, kind of dog ear a page in our existence.
Merlin: I sometimes write things down here because I, believe it or not, a thought goes through my mind that I don't want to interrupt, but I want to come back to this and I'll write that down.
Merlin: John, this happens to me all the time.
Merlin: And it's really happened a lot more in the last year or so.
Merlin: So I guess we could blame COVID, pandemic times.
John: It's only standing out because it doesn't happen to me, right?
John: I get it.
Merlin: I totally get it.
John: Where's the baseline?
Merlin: It's like me and my back.
Merlin: Me and my back.
Merlin: I'm sitting there enjoying the Emmys going, ah!
Merlin: Like, I don't want to be like that.
Merlin: That's not how I self-identify.
John: Yeah, except it's my mind.
John: And so it's confusing because, like, I hurt my back the other day in the creek.
John: Because I'd been fine for three months.
Merlin: That is, to quote John Mulaney, a very, very old-fashioned thing to say.
Merlin: I was down in the creek and I hurt my back.
Merlin: I was on the phone with Blockbuster Video.
Merlin: Or in your case, you hurt your back up in the creek?
Merlin: Is that where you were?
John: Yeah.
John: Last winter, I was out of town.
John: And I'd been working on the creek all last year.
John: You'll remember what this is coming back to, right?
John: Yeah.
John: And I'm going to try.
John: I'm going to try and get there.
John: And there was an enormous flooding event and it washed out all of the hard work that I'd put into the creek.
John: There was just – and I'd been working in the creek and there had been a lot of rain and everything that I'd put in there had held.
John: And as we discussed a long time ago, all the work I was doing in the creek was violating all of the stormwater –
John: Clean Water Act provisions that say don't mess around in creeks.
Merlin: Oh, is this where you ended up having to deal with the guy in the truck?
John: Yeah, the whole city of Normandy Park got involved and I was in trouble all the time with them and then I started working with the county and got some people in here and we've been sending letters back and forth for a year and now it's all recently been approved.
John: They're going to come in, they're going to take all the
John: like the whole team of people is going to come into my ravine and do all this work.
John: And they got the permits from the city.
John: They paid the fees and the fines.
John: Everybody's working together now.
John: I got a, somebody forwarded me a letter that some engineering firm had written to the city that said, not only do we approve this, but it's amazing that a citizen would care for
John: about these issues enough to initiate this process on their own.
John: You just got a civic blue ribbon, John.
John: I did.
John: And I was so proud I wanted to print that letter out and frame it.
John: Oh, hell yeah.
John: But of course, what this means is, you know, for months I've gone down into the creek and I've looked around at the wreckage of all the things that I'd built.
John: And I've just been, it's been sad, you know, because it's like, ah, it all got ruined and I don't have the heart of
John: to do it over again and I know I'm not supposed to technically even though I've read all the papers I know what
John: I know 65% of what a professional hydrological engineer would do.
John: The 35% that I don't know, which is the engineering, you know, come on.
Merlin: You've got a strong basis in hydrological engineering.
Merlin: Yeah, a little bit.
John: I read the first 15 pages of their paper.
John: And so the other day I was down there and I was like, look, the big team is coming in here.
John: They're going to be doing all this work.
John: there's going to be a big difference between what you can do down here the day before they arrive and the day after.
John: Because once they're here, then that's the new baseline.
John: And you can't just go down and drag a log into the middle of the creek after it's been surveyed by a team of 25 people.
John: So if you want this log that's up on the hillside, if you want to drag it down and put it in the creek, you've got to do it now.
John: And I've been looking at that log and I've been looking at that space in the creek for nine months going, really, if I had put that log right there, then all of that stuff wouldn't have washed away.
John: It's a little bit like closing the barn door now after the horse is gone.
John: And so the other day I'm down in there and I'm like, you know what, fuck it.
John: And I got up on the side of the hill and I grabbed this log, enormous log, and I pulled this log down the hill.
John: And it's, you know, I'm like,
John: Firemen carrying it or whatever.
John: No, I'm not doing that.
John: I'm like, I've got the log.
John: I'm trying to protect my back.
John: A log is a heavy thing, John.
John: It's a heavy thing.
John: I pull the log down.
John: I pull it down into the creek.
John: I set it up so that the water kind of goes around it and creates this nice little riffle and cleaning the gravel and the little waterfall and all this.
John: And in the course of pulling the log down, I tweaked my back a little bit.
John: Oh, no.
John: And now I'm, you know, now I'm Mr. Tweaky back.
John: But that, you know, that's just old man stuff.
John: That's just like, you know, when I was 25, I could have carried that log all the way to Seattle and I wouldn't have gotten hurt.
John: And even when I was 40, but, you know, 53 now and I don't stretch out.
John: And I shouldn't be carrying logs.
Merlin: Our parts are not as elastic in any way as they used to be.
John: But my mind, what you don't know about your mind, you only have, so I was talking to a friend of the show earlier today who's suffering from depression right now.
John: And I said, look, it's the change of the seasons.
John: We've had months and months of happy weather.
John: And now all of a sudden you've got this
John: you know, it's standing in bold relief.
John: The leaves are changing.
John: The sun is, is going down in the sky.
John: It's getting cold.
John: And so all of a sudden the passage of time seems very real.
John: All of your unfinished plans, all of your broken dreams, they're, they're very foregrounded because there's all this evidence that time is passing.
John: And so,
John: Of course, the way the mind works is you can always find a reason that your bad images are just reflections of the truth.
John: There's always 50 things that are full of shit.
John: It's just September comes and it's very easy to attach that melancholy to whatever unwritten emails you have.
John: But then when your mind tries to challenge it, you're like, no, no, no, I really do have all these unwritten emails.
John: And you can get into – and the problem with autumnal depression is that also autumn is beautiful and the falling leaves are beautiful.
John: So you kind of want to lean into it at the same time.
John: You're like –
John: You want to luxuriate in the melancholy.
John: But all we have is our minds to assess how well our minds are doing, right?
John: The only way he has to know whether his depression is real or whether he just has a clear-eyed view is by filtering it through his own mind.
John: And I have this problem with my current...
John: With these gaps, because at what point am I going to have – like I'm going to a sleep study on Thursday.
John: Oh, cool.
John: To try and address the sleep.
John: Is this just sleep?
John: Is it just a lack of sleep that I can't – that I'm scatterbrained?
Merlin: I think I get what you're saying, though.
Merlin: And it's something, I don't know, as you get older, I think a person thinks about more, not just because of problems with memory or anything, but just when you're young, you know, thinking about thinking is a very intellectual exercise.
Merlin: But as you get older, I think it's sometimes difficult.
Merlin: How can I put this?
Merlin: It's like picking up tweezers with tweezers.
Merlin: so to speak, like picking up the self-same tweezers with the self-same tweezers.
Merlin: Because your mind, like I'm just repeating what you said, but your mind is your brain, your mind, whatever you want to call it.
Merlin: I would say mind.
Merlin: Your mind is awfully good at certain kinds of external things and pattern matching and stuff like that.
Merlin: But there's something peculiarly crazy making about not being sure if you can trust what your brain is telling you about how it's working.
John: And I've always addressed that in terms of mood and emotion, right?
John: Because those were the unreliable things, my moods, my emotions, my emotional reactions to things.
John: But this isn't emotional.
John: This is just matter of fact.
John: And I don't know whether it's –
John: Whether I've had too much or too little coffee, or whether I have bovine spongiformitis.
John: You know, like, how does one begin to know?
John: What is the first moment that you go, oh no, I have a...
John: I have holes in my mind.
John: Because it's not my memory.
John: It's my extremely short-term memory, like two minutes ago.
John: At what point now am I going to need to be in a home, basically?
John: And will I know I'm in the home?
John: Or will I think I'm still piloting my aircraft carrier?
Merlin: Well, okay.
Merlin: Well, is that so bad?
Merlin: Is that so bad to be the make-believe captain of an aircraft carrier?
Merlin: There's worse things to be in life.
Merlin: No, you're right.
Merlin: You're right.
Merlin: You would love that kind of work, especially if it's in your mind.
John: It's good hours.
John: As I was walking the other day, I really did say, well, what happens if you become a very cheerful person that only lives in the present?
John: There are worse things.
John: In your own experience, there are worse things.
John: As long as you don't leave the stove on, you know, like you can't afford a live-in helper.
John: And you definitely don't want to rely.
Merlin: Everybody's always like, man, I don't want to get old.
Merlin: I don't want to.
Merlin: I'm like, man, there's so much about that that if I had the means...
Merlin: First of all, assistive devices?
Merlin: Yes, please.
Merlin: Anything that minimizes the amount of effort I have to expend on life would be welcome to me.
Merlin: Anything that makes the text bigger.
Merlin: Give me novelty-sized glasses.
Merlin: I don't care.
Merlin: Somebody who sits around and, like, feeds me soup while I stare into the middle distance?
Merlin: I'll take it.
Merlin: I mean, what am I going to run around with some kind of existential toupee on, acting like I'm 20?
Merlin: I'm lucky to be alive, man.
Merlin: Give me my goddamn soup.
Merlin: Turn this carrier around.
John: There are so many, I mean, really like getting old is very expensive.
John: Oh yeah.
John: If you want to do it in an environment that doesn't smell like pee.
Merlin: Yeah.
Merlin: Dignity is very costly.
John: Yeah.
John: And so, you know, trotting my dad around to all these different places where it was like, well, you know, yes, we have a spot for your dad.
John: It's only $6,000 a month.
John: And it was like, wow, we don't have $6,000 a month.
John: Oh, well then.
John: try the place down the street.
John: That's only $3,000.
John: I was like $3,000 a month.
Merlin: Nurse ratchet.
John: Yeah.
John: And it's like, well, if you can't afford $3,000 a month, then we're talking about the place down.
John: That's going to be on the other side of town.
John: So I'm not in a, I'm not in any condition to, to hire somebody to help me, but you know, you wouldn't know because I get along fine.
John: What I need is somebody to help me tell stories.
Merlin: Oh, you need a – would that be like a narrative Sherpa, do you feel like?
John: No.
John: You remember the lady in the Thomas Dolby, She Blinded Me With Science?
Merlin: I sure do.
John: If she were here – and she was doing other work, right?
John: She's writing on a clipboard.
John: She's doing science.
Merlin: You took the words out of my mouth.
Merlin: She's absolutely doing science.
John: Yeah.
John: So if she were here living with me.
Merlin: I don't think we know for a fact that she is the one that caused the titular blinding.
Merlin: Do we know that?
John: No.
John: No.
John: I think what she's doing is reporting on him having been blinded.
Merlin: I think a careless reader or careless viewer, a careless whisperer, someone would look at that and go, well, obviously, because, you know, we're all gay bones for these old school pronouns.
Merlin: Obviously, she's the one who is blinding.
Merlin: And we don't even know if it's Thomas Dolby.
Merlin: I mean, he was so blinded with science, he kind of invented the MP3 and there's nothing wrong with that.
John: Well, if you think about the voice that says, my goodness, Miss Yamamoto, you're beautiful.
John: It's the old man.
John: It's the guy that's waving his feathered pen in the air.
John: She blinded me with science.
John: If I had Miss Yamamoto, who was here, and then I started telling a story about going to New York or about, you know, whatever, flying an aircraft carrier.
John: And then you could see that my eyes were kind of starting to spin.
John: I could look over at her.
John: She would instinctively know that I was in trouble.
John: She'd look up from her book or from her notes, and she would go, you were talking about Merlin had a, you know.
Merlin: And if she needs to whack you with the clipboard, she'll do it.
Merlin: Yeah, and then I would go, ah, and then I would just, ah, ah.
Merlin: I see what you're saying.
Merlin: So it's kind of an existential stenographer.
Yeah.
John: Well, except also ready to do science, right?
John: I mean, she's not taking notes on what I'm saying.
John: She's doing her own.
Merlin: She was STEM before STEM was cool, for sure.
John: But she's also got one ear on the problem.
John: So she's listening to the story, you know, half-assed listening.
John: But she knows where I am.
Merlin: But when she gets enough exposure to you and your various, if we're being honest, disabilities, she's going to get a good feel for like – you know what I'm also thinking of?
Merlin: Is it Hyman Roth's wife, I guess?
Merlin: He has the young wife who brings him the food when he and Michael are going to – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Merlin: As he gets older, he likes to watch the ballgame on TV.
John: Yeah, sure.
John: He turns the TV up.
Merlin: She's kind of a little bit of a Yamamoto herself, but somebody like that who could be there to say, turn down that TV.
Merlin: Or whatever.
Merlin: But in this case also, I mean, there's all kinds of ways where like once you get to know somebody, sometimes you know when to hit somebody with a clipboard.
Merlin: Sometimes you know when to go easy on the cottage cheese.
Merlin: And sometimes you know when to say, I don't know, Logan, it's your story.
Merlin: You need a Yamamoto.
John: Well, and this is the – and again, we're back to –
John: we're back to the money, because if Miss Yamamoto, if her science is actually generating more income than my storytelling, why the hell does she care whether I'm landing my story or not, right?
Merlin: Oh, is it possible her science is also generating your blindness?
Merlin: Is that something, and I don't mean to be ableist here, but maybe part of the problem, do you think having her around has made you lazy with your storytelling?
John: No, I think it's the other way around.
John: I think my story... She keeps you sharp.
John: No, my stories are her science.
John: Your stories are her science.
John: Right.
John: So she's doing science, but I'm the science, right?
John: I'm the subject of science.
John: You are the science.
John: Right.
John: Okay.
Merlin: All right.
John: When she turns her eyes to me, right?
John: So she's turning her eyes to me because I'm the experiment.
Merlin: She can see just fine, science notwithstanding.
Merlin: She sees fine.
Merlin: She's not blinded by anything.
John: The problem with that is, does she want me to, I mean, is the experiment that I'm losing it?
John: In which case, she's not going to tell me where I was in the story.
Merlin: If you're a scientist, I'm not a scientist.
John: But I think like you're a ceramicist.
Merlin: I am.
Merlin: And I think in order to get the you know, I don't like to deal in shoulds and shouldn'ts.
Merlin: If you ask me, you're shouldn't all over yourself.
Merlin: In this instance, what I'm trying to say is I think if you're doing science and you would like the respect of people who you respect who do science, I think there's certainly an observer effect, but you would not want over much to put your thumb on John's scale, whatever that scale happens to be.
Merlin: If you're doing science...
Merlin: You know what I'm saying?
Merlin: You I think you're there.
Merlin: You're there to minimally affect the outcome unless that's part of your model.
John: That's what I'm hoping.
John: What I'm hoping is that she is the science that she's doing involves her helping me.
John: Right.
Merlin: And that I don't know that much about science either.
Merlin: Me neither.
Merlin: I don't even I mean, is it a carass?
Merlin: Is it a grand falloon?
Merlin: I don't know.
Merlin: But somebody somebody comes along.
Merlin: She rolls up probably in a nurse's uniform of some kind or a science uniform, a short science uniform.
Merlin: And it's going to be her ability to like observe and have a hypothesis.
Merlin: But then she could also warm up some soup for you.
Merlin: Wouldn't that be nice?
Merlin: Wouldn't that be nice?
Merlin: You know, I think that would be lovely.
Merlin: John, you've got to embrace it.
Merlin: What are you going to do?
Merlin: You can't fight City Hall.
Merlin: You can't fight entropy.
Merlin: You can't land on a fraction, you know?
Merlin: He's not a blind man.
John: He's not.
John: He's settling across the.
Merlin: Yeah, it's a pair of claws in a tiger cage.
Merlin: I can't make up any more dialogue today.
Merlin: I don't.
Merlin: Why is everybody turning into either Jerry Lewis or Popeye?
Merlin: What has happened?
Merlin: What has happened to my.
Merlin: Who is this everyone?
Merlin: What are you talking about?
Merlin: Somebody – well, I tried to do Marlon Brando and it came out as Popeye.
Merlin: Oh, I see.
Merlin: That's ridiculous.
Merlin: No, that's you.
John: And then when I do anybody else, it turns into Jerry Lewis.
John: You have two filters.
John: It's the Jerry Lewis or the Popeye.
Merlin: It's always two things with me.
Merlin: Everything comes out.
Merlin: You're absolutely right.
Merlin: Maybe this is what Ray Kurzweil is talking about.
Merlin: Maybe eventually you become your two worst impressions.
Merlin: Or impersonations.
John: What I want to ask you is if I can't remember where I was, if I launch off into stories, but it's clear that I no longer remember what I was talking about by the time I get to the end of the anecdote.
John: then what are we going to do?
John: There's got to be a new kind of... Roderick on the Line's got to become a new thing where I just do a thing, and then there's a pause where you're like, okay.
Merlin: This is verbal bebop, baby!
Merlin: You're fine.
Merlin: Now, you didn't ask for advice, but I'm going to be... I don't know if she's the titular Yamamoto, but I'm here to tell you as your science friend, it starts with you, and I know this is...
Merlin: difficult to impossible you gotta go a little easier on yourself because because here's the thing ask yourself when you're trying to remember something the more you stress out about it that if you stress out about it does it get better no here's a trick i learned when i was fucking 14 i'm gonna in fine in that end minutes in 10 i'm gonna stop thinking about this right now and in 10 minutes i'm gonna remember what this thing was
Merlin: And then the thing is, I usually even forget that I said that.
Merlin: So no harm, no foul.
Merlin: But in many instances, the only way – and this is true of procrastination.
Merlin: This is true of many things.
Merlin: You must reduce the amount of threat to yourself.
Merlin: Reduce that threat rather than trying to escalate that threat because unless it works for you, which it may, the threats against your own mental and emotional integrity –
Merlin: by you in particular, tend to not be that helpful.
Merlin: Our show will be fine.
John: All right.
Merlin: Maybe it won't be fine, but what are you going to do?
Merlin: What am I going to do?
John: What can you do?
John: What can I do?
John: I don't even remember the beginning of this show.
John: Which one am I?
Merlin: Oh, brother.
Merlin: See, I was writing it down to the fact that I had begun taking edibles sometime around the beginning of COVID.
Merlin: And I figured that's why I've gotten stupid and flighty.
Merlin: Like stoner ones or CBDs?
Merlin: Fuck that.
Merlin: No, stoner ones.
Merlin: No, they're very mild.
Merlin: They're super mild.
Merlin: But I've wondered.
Merlin: I've wondered.
Merlin: Because I feel like I dropped the thread.
Merlin: Not necessarily – I imagine I do here.
Merlin: It helps a lot that unlike –
Merlin: other people we do podcasts with, I would like to think it helps that I pay attention.
Merlin: And I do go, hmm, and I do go, huh, because that's how the show goes.
Merlin: And then maybe sometimes my talking is certainly a very annoying interruption thing.
Merlin: Sometimes and other times maybe it jogs your memory in a way that doesn't make you have to go, oh, you jog my memory.
Merlin: Because, you know, there's a story in there somewhere.
Merlin: But I do sometimes find myself –
Merlin: feeling like, well, straight to your point, that what I want to call my short-term memory, I don't mean that as a term of art.
Merlin: What I mean is, what was I just doing a second ago that was my passionate task a minute ago?
Merlin: And how is it that once I sit down with a piece of paper, I realized there are six different things I've started to do and just kind of fallen from one to the other without completing any of them?
Merlin: That does not feel wholesome to me.
Merlin: I'm not over worried about it, but it's something I'm trying to be aware of.
Merlin: And I think that is an instance for me of a phenomenon I call remembering to remember, which if we always remember to remember all the time, this is a very Daniel Kahneman thinking fast and slow kind of thing.
Merlin: But if we always remember to remember, we wouldn't have a problem.
Merlin: It's just that we think we're remembering.
Merlin: And we're often not because we're just going to the next thing.
Merlin: Because we're all, especially my wife, all obsessed with the future or stuck in the past.
Merlin: And the current moment can sometimes be pretty elusive because you're thinking about getting to the next thing.
Merlin: Whether that's, we've got to go get groceries.
Merlin: Okay, well, I've got to go to the ATM first.
Merlin: Okay, then we've got to get groceries.
Merlin: Then we've got to get home.
Merlin: Then we've got to put them away.
Merlin: And it's like everything's about the next thing.
Merlin: This is something I've been trying to make a study of recently is how much we obsess about the next thing rather than the current thing.
Merlin: And I'm not even talking about fucking meditation and shit here.
Merlin: I'm just saying, like, this is straight up 20th century psychology stuff of, like, I just want to remember that, you know, this is life, you know, the one you get to go and have it all, as MS Romano says.
Merlin: I used to love Schneider.
Merlin: Anyway, what was I talking about?
Yeah.
Merlin: Oh boy.
Merlin: Here it comes.
Merlin: Oh boy.
John: Oh boy.
John: Hmm.
Merlin: Huh.