On this solo episode to inaugurate the New Year of 2021, Mitch Hampton gets a little more personal than usual, plays some brand new piano music at his home Steinway, discusses his autism diagnosis, what he loves about his guests, some recent movies and more!

More on the episode from Mitch's notebook:

"Doing a solo episode in an historical moment in which I most assuredly have spoken less in four months than I normally would have in a single day in the prior means that I certainly feel out of practice in speech and thus more nervous than is usual for these episodes - ones in which I don't have the luxury of leaning on a guest. So I leaned on my piano instead.

Getting a little serious, I tried to have a "personal" touch in this episode. 

Another problem when I do a solo episode is that after making an enormous list of thousands of things I could possibly talk about I then have to decide which ones to eliminate - necessarily the majority of these -, both in the interest of time and the listener/audience's sanity. 

Then, when I finally commit to press the record button, after all is said and done I usually realize how nothing  ever turned out as I had planned. (John Lennon's definition of life).

"I forgot to mention that, and this, and that over there. How could I have forgotten all of that? I talked about that? What am I crazy? What are people going to say? I wrote it down. Now where did I put that piece of paper. I need to do that again." 

And so on. 

The most obvious omission would probably have to be my failure to mention that the company form which I was fired was one in which I kind of one of the people who started the damned thing and in which I had a comprehensive experience, including assembly line factor work, silkscreening bottles, talking to health food stores all over the U.S., sales, bookkeeping, and having to have regular conversations with the likes of Jerry Garcia when he called to place an order.

Of course every single work of art ever made, now and in perpetuity, is made as much out of absence and presence. 

And I fully embrace what I did for January of this new and hopefully, minimally decent new year much as I embraced the moment when I pressed play. 

I hope this ultimate commitment was communicated to my listeners.

Finally, there is the question of my interests, which are passionate, intense and diverse. I talked of MANK because it was fresh in my consciousness 

But I could have just as easily discussed  Never Rarely Sometimes Always, in every way the aesthetic opposite to Mank, but utterly qual in excellence, a "road" movie of two teen girls traveling from Pennsylvania to New York City to obtain needed medical procedure that has all but been banned in their rural town. 

Or I could have discussed the many, usually four or five books, I have been reading, since I can never read one book at a time.

Just as there is always more to say, in future episodes, these forgotten things might get said, or not, or transformed into things better off saying so that there is no longer any question. 

Such is the journey of our podcast, and art itself.