This one goes deep.

Tom talks about watching, in real time, a family member’s final days.

Tim and Tom agree the topic is how to live life as if these moments- where real emotion and real connection- matter more than “day to day life".” Tim brings up the movie Equus and The Bacchae we both talk about the religious impulse that follows the moment our imagination and emotions connect and how that can lead to clarity and madness.

Timestamps!

00:00 - Tom starts talking about the imminent death of a family member by first talking about Pink Floyd, and what shared experiences mean

03:04 - The fabric of the shared world

08:16 - “What is it about human connections that is so powerful and important?”

11:22 - Tom talks about how his family member is dealing gracefully and wisely with the reality of their own death; and how they have never shied away from dealing with the death of other family members in the past

17:35 - “Nothing matters more than our internal world.”

20:35 - More about shared experiences and intensity; Tom mentions a Japanese comic strip, and Tim tells a story about Yoko Ono

26:50 - Tom gets the crux of the episode: the death of his family member (and the memory of when his mother was sick years ago) is throwing so much of his life and experience into intense relief that he wonders: How can we re-orient our daily lives to have these intense experiences more often? Is that possible?

28:00 - Tim realizes this is the perennial theme of the podcast; he tells a story from work, where the chance to break through to a human connection is almost always blocked

32:55 - Tim says that while we can try to be more meaningful and focused, the intensity of memorable experiences cannot be lived in all the time. Primo Levi, Anne Frank

34:11 - Tim talks about the humorous fears he experienced while attending funerals as a child

36:30 - Tom tells a story about wasps and horses from one of his favorite podcasts, The Blindboy Podcast, and playing with the experience of feelings in the moment.

41:40 - The topic of horses gets Tim to talk about how these ideas underpin Peter Shaffer’s play (and movie), “Equus”

46:35 - Tom responds to Equus by asking for ancient stories like it; Tim tells the story of Euripides’s play, The Bacchae --which again, focuses on how unable people are to live at peaks of intensity for long periods of time

51:30 - Tim talks about how Judaism deals with this, trying to hem in and control the intensity of experience with laws and ritual

54:10 - Tim talks about Equus some more (slightly misremembering details of it!)

53:30 - Tom closes the episode by talking about Justin Green book, Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary, and how Green ended up finding a way to control his own intense experiences by becoming a sign painter.

1:00:00 - For his reading corner, Tim reads some passages from Leon Wieseltier’s book “Kaddish,” about the year he spent saying the Jewish prayer for mourning following his father’s death

Hi there!

In this episode, Tom and Tim talk about loneliness, and easing it with AI friends. And the need for community and the seminal Post-Apocalyptic novel Earth Abides, and then Tim and Tom decide to start a bowling alley.

A gentle and wise conversation. Enjoy!

Timestamps!

00:00 - Tim talks about his old idea of loneliness

02:25 - Tim's revised thoughts about loneliness, after reading this article; is there a difference between old-school loneliness of people who love to be by themselves but are devoid of human contact, and those same people now turning to AI companionship?

09:05 - Tom responds; he brings in in-jokes as a way of thinking about belonging within groups and friendships; we all want to create worlds together

14:25 - Tom talks about (and reads from) Earth Abides, by George Stewart

18:25 - Tom would love a cool AI friend! But he doesn't trust the people who make them

19:28 - Tom talks about Jeannette Winterson's book of essays about AI and the lack of corporate (or other) regulation or ethics

22:30 - Is it too easy to watch/read or now have an AI friend, than to talk to a living person?

30:55 - Tom talks word-based video games

35:15 - Is the answer to live in simpler/enclosed communities of similar people?

37:45 - Back to George Stewart's Earth Abides; how does one group deal with their own meaning in the face of any other group's meaning?

43:08 - The essential ritual of social events, and Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone... and Tom's revelation that he basically grew up in a bowling alley!

47:13 - Tim's heavy heart about his antisocial neighbors

48:35 - Tim and Tom can solve the world's problems by opening their own bowling alley

49:13 - Tim's reading corner - from a novel called "The Astronomer"

Hi everyone!

Here is our podcast, episode #7. Tom wanted to talk about Taylor Swift, and how she’s the only hope for humanity against the scale of destruction we’re up against, but Tim brought up Walt Whitman’s words during the last 4 years of his life and we talked about that before we got to Taylor.

They are both classic Americans, in the same lineage, even, and probably love this country more than they should. Anyway, give it a listen!

Here are some timestamps:

1:00 Walt and "the trouble with most poems" (not in any way human.)

3:00 The New York Times obituary

5:00 Poetry/art vs "directness"

6:00 Walt in the hospitals

8:00 Walt bedridden for 4 years. Aging parents, wheelchairs and Autograph hounds

9:30 Walt's death final autograph

12:00 Who was he appreciated by? Oscar Wilde comes to visit.

14:00 Was he still writing? Chapbooks and poems about aging and dying.

15:30 Tom figures out Walt doesn't have a problem with his poetry, it's other people's poetry he has a problem with.

18:00 Poetry vs nursing, a false dichotomy. "All he wanted was companionship"

21:00 "He finally got what he wanted in those hospitals"

23 :00 Walt on his deathbed, spoke majestically about his work. "The book is set."

-----------------------

28:00 Taylor Swift

29:00 Taylor as queen or deity

32:00 Taylor as the single main force of creation on the planet right now. How do we comprehend so much destruction right now? Only Taylor Swift is possibly as large.

33:00 Ezra Pound on Finnegan's Wake; large scale audiences

36:45 Mainstream authors, artists.

38:00 Tim on female roles in typical mythology; Pericles praising the Athenian Women for not being seen.

40:00 Women allowed to write autobiography in country music

43:00 Taylor has transcended all labels and stories you put on her

44:00 As a creative person in a time of destruction, where do we find inspiration?

45:15 Taylor Swift's business decisions

46:30 The eventual end of an era

47:20 Final thoughts, kindness, generous, large force against destruction.

-----------------------

48:30 Tom's reading corner: Walt Whitman on Abraham Lincoln

In this episode, we talk about early creative days, including teachers and spaces where this felt safe and nurturing. Then we all talk about Tennessee Williams, , Nick Cave, Homer, Nina Simone and Lauren Weinstein and how they take out the garbage.

Tim reads from the biography of Tennessee Williams by John Lahr.

Here are some timestamps:

Episode 6 rough timestamps

00:30 - Early experience of being an artist. Showing or hiding our creative sides when in grade school.

04:30 - Early teachers

05:30 - Art room as sacred space, teachers, school spaces, English teachers

11:15 - Staying mainstream enough to not draw too much attention

12:20 - The maze if at the end there is a desk where I can do what I want to do

13:00 - Tim's bad 3rd grade art teacher who scolded him for drawing a pilgrim with blue hair.

14:45 - Learning to write.

16:00 Learning there was a difference between popular fiction and literary fiction.

27: Horror stories, horror in mythology and folklore and maybe violence and suffering being the basis of most common stories.

27:50: Why does a tornado go down the road?

28:35 Explanations for envy, revenge, pettiness. Trickster stories

30:20 Tennessee Williams . Her sister's impulses and his impulses. His plays were ways to work through desire and to explain .

34:45 More about Tim and Tom trying to remember what they've seen/read about Tennessee Williams

36:00 The Nick Cave's Red Hand Files, Cave on Kanye West, and great art by bad people

38:00 How does Homer take out the garbage?

38:45: Nina Simone and the highs and lows.

41:30: Tom on Lauren Weinstein's

44:00 Tim's Reading Corner: From the biography of Tennessee Williams by John Lahr

In this episode, we talk about biographies. About reading biographies that inspire, biographies that keep up from living our own lives, biographies we should have avoided, biographies we should have read, and then not living your own life like it’s a biography. Tim talks about Van Gogh, Tom talks about Steve Martin, Klaus Kinski and Ted Hawkins. Give it a listen!

We are graced with the voice of Ell Potter in this (and future episodes). Go visit the Ell’s temple of creativity here and here. Thank you Ell!

Here are some timestamps:

00:15 A friend obsessed with people's biographies. Are we living our own lives?

01:48 Young Tim surprised biographies existed at all

03:00 Van Gogh's biography. The shock of his unfulfilled life

04:40 Tom on inner lives of the past

05:15 Klaus Kinski's autobiography, and his sunflower

07:25 Emily Dickenson is too intense

8:45 Steve Martin's autobiography and why it's the last one Tom will read

11:12 What straight white men are sick of

12:15 Van Gogh again

15:55 "I have a lot of love to give"

17:40 Capitalism and rage and the suffocating of human gifts

19:00 Ted Hawkins

23:40 Where do you want to put your heart?

25:50 Tim's olds friends at Church who don't want to hear the gospel

28:43 No longer believing in the singular artist

31:00 Our work as a bridge or relics for our family and community

32:00 How awesome youth is and how boring old people are

33:00 Tom believes nothing matters anymore; Van Gogh doesn't matter, the Beatles didn't matter. Nothing lasts.

36:00 Approaching a life like it was a narrative or biography instead of just living it

38:30 Not forgetting your own private meaning.

40:00 - 44:00 Tom's reading corner: Klaus Kinski and the sunflower

In this episode, we talk about doing things badly, and about exploring the edges of the spaces that we’re supposed to stay inside, both in digital and analog worlds. Tom worries about AI, complains about business people, swoons over human voices reading to him and then Tim reads from The English Patient.

We are graced with the voice of Ell Potter in this (and future episodes). Go visit the Ell’s temple of creativity here and here. Thank you Ell!

Here are some timestamps:

00:12: “Drop the ball” - choose to do things wrong on purpose til you get it right, especially in art. Or don’t get it right. Try things that have never been tried by you03:35: Tim’s daughter wanting to explore outside the boundaries of the video game course. Playing video game golf and seeing how far off the course you could go.05:00: What do you say to people who come to school and want to be published the right way? 06:20: The value of Minecraft and other games that reward human curiosity. “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” and the random deer with its own will, wandering around video game L.A. 09:45: The joy of Google Maps / Street View11:00 Selling chocolate bars and art to strangers door to door.12:15: Kids selling drawings at a table. 13:50: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje. Tim’s history with the movie and the book in 1996. 17:00 Tim discovers the soundtrack to the movie18:30 None of these characters have kids!20:50: Tom remembers Tim’s reading of Araby by James Joyce21:10: The gift of voices that read fiction, and Tom’s favorite audiobook reader, Ell Potter21:50: Audible using AI voices, 10,000 new books next year, and Tom’s fan letter to Ell Potter23:00: AI taking over creative jobs, lack of legislation24:20: Who business people are. People with no mission or guiding principle or belief in anything25:20: 100 podcasts about organic gardening in one day26:00: The world is changing and the powerful are still in control and the artists still need to figure out who is paying27:15 - 41:46 Tim’s Reading Corner: The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

In this episode, we talk about the drawbacks of being curious, introspective people searching for meaning. We talk about strange people, lonely people and a bunch more. Tim reads the ending of The Stranger.

Here are some timestamps:

00:30: What are the drawbacks of being curious, introspective people searching for meaning?01:00: Tom’s answer (being overpowered)05:00 related, Tim on Mary Wollstonecraft, wishing to be left alone 08:22 Notes about Camus’s The Stranger09:10 Tim’s answer (not interacting)12:00 Studs Terkel, Kurt Cobain, the mundane parts of people’s existence13:30 Encyclopedic people, catalogers, translators, etc.14:00 Tom’s terrible memory and how to meet people in the moment instead17:00 “We don’t pretend we have the answers”17:15 Educated people in the Beltway, etc. 18:25 Where are the lonely people who don’t have white collar jobs?18:50 Lonely people are on Facebook19:50 Walkie-talkies and CB Radios. 21:00 Seek You by Kristen Radtke23:00 The lady with the birdcage that Tim saw at the store28:00 People who just do weird lonely things; the internet and capitalism keeping us from seeing each other’s delicate uniqueness30:40 Tim’s Reading Corner: The Stranger

In this episode, we talk about creative origins. Tom veers off into wanting a grand unified theory of everything, for any topic, and we talk about storytelling, how much it has created the time we’re in now. Wondering if people ever got along.

This episode hits its peak I think, with Tim’s reading from Jean Guéhenno, an writer/activist/diarist who kept an amazing diary during WWII from German-occupied Paris. It’s remarkable; here’s an excerpt:

I remember being deeply shocked by the inadequacy of creation and vowing to correct it. I toiled for 30 years.

I was hard and full of anger. I looked at my contemporaries as so many enemies every time I found them inclined to accept the world in which all I could see was poverty and injustice. … I strove to frighten people, as if that were a good way of persuading them…

I condemned as cowards those who did not commit themselves to the battle with the same heart. I wore out the best of myself and those battles. It was not enough. I almost forgot to live.

And then Tim talks about the “Ladies of Lockerbie”, who washed, ironed and packaged for return, all the clothes from the downed airliner in 1988.

Timestamps:

00:10 Creative origins, where people come from before they are famous 1:40 - Writing, reading and making maps3:50 - Timelines of History book8:45 - Grand Unified Theories12:20 Carl Sagan and superstition15:00 Humans telling stories17:25 - Confederate statues, beliefs, etc.22:30 - The history of Jews in other civilizations27:00 - Yugoslavia30:00 - The world is ____. What are you going to do? 31:15 - Pessimistic cycle31:55 - Political cartoons33:20 - Believing in America36:30 Prehistoric brains trying to solve global problems37:45 Passage from Jean Guéhenno, from Occupied Paris, WWII41:10 The "laundry ladies of Lockerbie"47:06 Connecting to smaller gestures and stories51:00 Reading corner: Tim gives an introduction to reads a poem about Mary Wollstonecraft.

Thanks to Tim for his wise thoughts in this conversation, and to you for listening.

Here is our podcast, episode #1. It doesn’t even have a title. Tim may post it with a different title.

We joke in the first moments that the podcast might be called “How to not be an incel a*****e” but really we just go on to talk about what moves us deeply in this world. And at least for me, at least, how it contradicts what I sometimes feel impulsively.

Here are some timestamps:

00:00 How we didn’t wind up incels03:18 Introspection, feelings, etc.05:10 The act of creating and understanding creation9:00 The love of horror novels, aggressive music 13:00 History and the long-term14:00 Models of adulthood and manhood involving story15:45 Internal space, following rewarding feelings19:20 Drawing Peanuts, emotions in boxes23:00 Navigating emotions through art, changing art forms31:15 Rock bands and poetry readings36:30 Tim on Mary Wollstonecraft, early feminist and mother of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley39:00 Tom on John Darnielle, author41:00 Salutations42:00 Reading Corner: Tom reads 8 minutes of Master of Reality by John Darnielle

Dear friends,

This blog/substack will be taking a detour; it will become a sort of podcast, in collaboration with my friend Tim Miller, whose podcast about myth, poetry and story saved my pandemic and has been a life line to real feelings in a time when everything seems

As a preface to that podcast, as yet unnamed, and unrecorded (but perhaps beginning here next week?) I am beginning to read aloud, John Darnielle’s stunning, gorgeous and sad book, Master of Reality. This is unofficial and unlicensed. This is 13 minutes of probably 1 or 2 hours. I will continue until it is finished.

Hoping my podcast about Men with Tim Miller, tentatively titled The Savage Amazement if we don’t call it, How To Not Be An Incel A*****e, will begin in the next few days…

Anyway, enjoy the first 10th of this fantastic book that had me weeping in the street when I first read it. Thanks to John for all his fantastic work up from the ashes.