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Episode 404: Hanif Abdurraqib’s Nod to Witnessing in ‘There’s Always This Year’
1.2k Plays1 year ago
Hanif Abdurraqib is poet, critic, and author of several books, including There's Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension (Random House).
In this episode we talk about his nod to witnessing, specificity, intentionality, making it, and LeBron James.
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Show notes: brendanomeara.com
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Transcript
Introduction & Sponsor Note
00:00:00
Speaker
AC and efforts, you know I like a good beer or several, and at times a tasty non-alcoholic beer scratches that itch when I don't feel like getting hung the hell over. If you visit athleticbrewing.com and use the promo code BRENDANO20 at checkout, spell my name right, you get a little discount. On your first order, I recommend the Free Wave and Athletic Light. I don't get any money, and they're not a sponsor of the show, but I'm an ambassador of sorts.
00:00:29
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And I just like to celebrate it, this frothy goodness.
The Pressure of Creativity
00:00:34
Speaker
Removing pressure from the work or the process is the only way to get anything productive done for me, be it running or baking or writing. I mean, no matter what it is, I think removing feelings of pressure from, you know, because I think this idea of producing a result is challenging for me.
Podcast Introduction & Guest Intro
00:01:05
Speaker
Oh hey, seeing an effort, it's the Creative Non-Fiction Podcast, a show where I speak to primarily badass writers about the art of telling true stories. I'm Brendan O'Meara, yep, I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. Wow, Haneef Abdurraqib is here.
00:01:25
Speaker
This pod is like more than two years in the making, man. When Little Devil in America came out, a book that earned Hanif a finalist sticker for the National Book Award, no bigs. We were in contact, then things got busy, then I found out he had this new book!
00:01:44
Speaker
There's always this year on basketball and Ascension, published by Random House. It's out this week, depending on when you listen to this. Maybe it's next week, maybe it's last week. I don't know.
00:01:59
Speaker
There's nobody quite like Hanif. His writing is so unique. He's operating on an entirely different frequency than the rest of us. But at least we get to plug into the machine when he drops a brilliant book of this nature about the dissension of time, mortality, making it, and the king, LeBron James himself.
Themes of Hanif's Book
00:02:27
Speaker
So we dig into intentionality, specificity, how he structured the book, sports fandom, and his nod to witnessing. Show notes to this episode and more at BrendanOmero.com, where you can sign up for my monthly rage against the Algorithm newsletter. It's a toe tap and good read. My toes tap.
00:02:46
Speaker
First of the month, no spam. So far as I can tell, you can't beat it. There are several who say you can, and who am I to argue? For now, keep the conversation going on Instagram or threads at Creative Nonfiction Podcast, and consider becoming a patron at patreon.com slash.
00:03:02
Speaker
CNF pot, and dude, I totally get it. Money's tight, and the joy you get from, say, spending four bucks on a coffee drink beverage or a kombucha or two kombuchas often is far more gratifying than, say, four bucks on your favorite podcast. But if you can, check it out. I just wrapped up a series of office hours, and it was great. I think everybody left with a bit of juice.
00:03:29
Speaker
You guys are working on some really cool things. It was pretty inspiring for me to hear as well. I'm glad this little podcast that could is a willing co-pilot for you on whatever journey you might be on. Speaking of that, podcast turned 11 this week. I know, right? It's like a pre-teen now. His voice is starting to squeak. It's kind of cute.
00:04:08
Speaker
a fortune for your disasters, poems. They can't kill us until they kill us, some essays. He's a man of many obsessions. Loves poetry, he's a poet. Loves music, he writes criticism. Loves eating french fries, what's not to love? He has a beautiful voice and he's a brilliant artist and a generous nurturer of talent and community in his native Columbus, Ohio, home of the Arnold Classic.
00:04:16
Speaker
Thanks for making the show possible.
00:04:36
Speaker
And it's my great pleasure to welcome Hanif Abdurraqib to the podcast with...
00:04:53
Speaker
Yeah, you know, it's interesting. You know, this time around, it feels like it's a bit more robust or there is more to do or more that is, you know, so there's an excitement around this book that I don't think has been present before for the others. And some of that is, you know, Little Devil in America was, you know, everything was virtual for that. And so to kind of be alive and present and in the world with this one is really exciting and
00:05:23
Speaker
It's a strange phase to be pretty much in book release month. It's a very unexpected nature of it, but all exciting. Yeah.
Writing Without Pressure
00:05:35
Speaker
Well, and I think coming out of the pandemic, but also your last book being a National Book Award finalist, and then you have a gig with the New Yorker too. You have a lot of momentum on your side going into this book too, I imagine.
00:05:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think so. I mean, I don't ever really think about that kind of thing. Although I know that it's, you know, I'm aware that it's real, obviously. But yeah, it's not something I spend, because I think I would get too caught up in that. But I also do think there's material results to that, right? Like, I do think that the last book gaining the acclaim that it gained has made it so that this book has some excitement around it.
00:06:17
Speaker
But I feel like if I started to think about that other than just the material realities of it, I would start to think a lot about the pressures of living up to what I've done before. And I don't know if that's a fair, that would be hard for me.
00:06:33
Speaker
Oh, for sure. And, you know, it's funny, kind of an undercurrent of what you're saying, too, is like this is kind of an entry point that I wanted to leap off of was, you know, up post, you know, several months ago, I had seen on Instagram where you were talking about your revisitation to long distance running.
00:06:51
Speaker
And there's a little clip, if you will, in your post where you wrote, like, what if, and this is big, I stopped caring about hitting mileage goals or pace or anything like that and just said, I've got two hours and I can make it anything I want.
00:07:08
Speaker
And you know you kind of go on to basically just say that what if we just divorce ourselves from like achievement and just go on go on feel and I think there's a lot of lessons to be kind of unpacked there when it comes to a writing career to where you just kind of surrender to what you have in front of you and let that carry you without the external externalities if you will.
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I find that removing pressure from the work or the process is only a way to get anything productive done for me, be it running or baking or writing. I mean, no matter what it is, I think removing feelings of pressure from, you know, because I think this idea of producing a result is challenging for me. And mostly I'm in pursuit of
00:07:57
Speaker
an expansive or expanded curiosity about the world or about my obsessions. And I don't think I can get to that if I am thinking, you know, how good of a product am I making? Especially not if I'm thinking that in real time, in the moment of the making. You know, it requires, I think, a bit more thoughtfulness from me and a bit more stillness and slowness in seeing what the process itself is informing me of.
Risk-Taking & Innovation
00:08:25
Speaker
Yeah it's kind of like you know maybe the the curse of let's say like a musician who has like a really good breakout initial album and then they're almost sometimes always being maybe unfairly compared to that and then they or they end up becoming just a cover band of themselves and.
00:08:44
Speaker
And that can be I imagine like as a as a writer too if you have like a successful run of books that you run the risk of just kind of kind of being a cover band of yourself so yeah if you can kind of like isolate that in a you know paddock that off then you can kind of a I don't know you can make forward progress in a way that isn't hampered by past success.
00:09:06
Speaker
Yeah, and I think, you know, at least in my case, in my situation, pushing myself to evolve and make something different every time, or at least attempt something different every time, to make something unique in stylistically, formally, to take risks, not to leave my work behind, not to leave my past work behind,
00:09:30
Speaker
but to say I have, through my past work, learned how to make something new. I've learned how to challenge myself and to make that a material thing, to show up, to really show up on the page as evolution, so that I'm not really, you know, in a way I'm building upon
00:09:49
Speaker
what I've made, but definitely not kind of being a cover band version of myself. I know a lot of people really love They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and I'm very proud of that book, but I'm not going back there again. I'm never gonna go back there again, at least not in that way. And I can say the same for every book I've made, I think. We're not going back there again.
00:10:13
Speaker
perhaps orbit those themes or those curiosities or those obsessions, but they're going to show up in a different way every time. Again, be it formally or in the name of experimentation or shifts in language, all of these opportunities that we have to expand upon our ideas and obsessions.
Book Structure & Narrative Tension
00:10:32
Speaker
I think we really owe it to them and do those obsessions and ourselves to push beyond what we've known in the past.
00:10:40
Speaker
Yeah, and given experimentation, I love how you structured your latest book, too, kind of in the vein of a basketball game in four quarters with time ticking down. And in a sense, that kind of creates an odd, even though there's no suspense tension, it created some sort of a tension where you realize that you're gonna reach some
00:11:09
Speaker
Some high some higher note as you're ticking down each quarter and it really created a An energy and a pulse to it that I really really enjoyed I wonder just like how did you arrive at that as a sort of structural motif? Thank you. Yeah, I think that um You know initially it was only gonna be in the pregame section I was just gonna play with play with that in the pregame section and then you know structure the book
00:11:35
Speaker
as it was the rest of the way, just as I would normally. But I really like this idea of reframing for myself what the book was about, quote unquote. You know, I don't think any book is ever about one thing. And I think that, you know, we do also owe it to ourselves as writers to perhaps do away with the myth of aboutness or the kind of, you know, I'm about the one or the book is about the one thing and that's it.
00:11:58
Speaker
The way that I did that, or the way that I felt most comfortable doing that was by having this time structure built in, that reminded me that I'm actually dealing with the descent of time. This book is operating in consideration of a descent of time.
00:12:16
Speaker
And the stakes of that, the stakes of writing in a container like that, where I know going into every section or quarter, in this case, what the time constraints are for me, that also adds a level of pace and pressure. Not bad pressure, but I think good pressure.
00:12:36
Speaker
to figuring out for myself what shapes the work is taking for me narratively and what where I can play and where I can kind of um another way to play with time I think is to kind of think about brevity of language and propulsion all these things that that I think were otherwise could otherwise have been
00:12:59
Speaker
hard for me in a general sense, if I were just writing this straight through, became a lot more interesting to me when I, you know, kind of got to say, OK, I'm going to mess around with this a little bit. I'm going to have some fun with this. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to experiment a bit and think about what it means to slowly say goodbye as the time takes away very tangibly in front of my face on the page.
00:13:23
Speaker
That dissension of time is very symbolic. It really goes toward, it really speaks towards mortality in terms of life, but also mortality in terms of an athletic career. And so many of the athletes you reference famous globally or famous locally. And you get a sense that
00:13:49
Speaker
Yeah, it is, in fact, very fleeting. Famously, I forget, it might be Mark Cram who wrote, like, Athletes Die Twice. And you kind of allude to that in a sense with LeBron James being something of a hook in this book of him being homegrown, leaving, and coming back, leaving again, too.
00:14:13
Speaker
This book was once a book that, in its original form, just began as me as a long meditation on LeBron James. But I don't really know if I am looking back or being honest or being thoughtful. That actually was not a... That was a meditation of very clear limits, it felt like. I could kind of see the limitations of that meditation. And to put an engine in that, so to speak, or to...
00:14:42
Speaker
expand upon it by putting some level of propulsion in it. I had to say, what have I been afraid of facing that is manifesting itself with this kind of obsession with LeBron James' aging? And of course it was the fact that he and I are similar in age and
00:14:59
Speaker
grew up in the same state at around the same time, in the same era. And there is, you know, watching him live and age, even though he is maintaining a level of greatness as he ages. It, I think, was pushing me to reckon with how short the bridge was getting between me and my newfound understanding of mortality. Because so much of the talk about LeBron James is about immortality and how he's immortal and
00:15:29
Speaker
He'll be how he is now forever because we've gotten so used to watching him be who he is. For some of us over two decades, for the larger world just over two decades or for some of us well over two decades, I think that I found myself or have found myself at odds with the kind of
00:15:54
Speaker
you know, the anxieties that a lot of people have with aging perhaps are a bit more material or some would say shallow perhaps. You know, so many of mine are simply rooted in the reality that I did not expect to survive past a certain age and then I have and that is
00:16:09
Speaker
something that I do think is a point of gratitude for sure. But it's also a point of bewilderment for me. I also feel confused about it to some degree. And this book helped me sort through that as well.
Reflections on Life & Mentorship
00:16:25
Speaker
If there's a certain age that you pinpoint that you felt like you might not live past and you get past that point, how did you metabolize that moment to be like, well, now I'm playing with house money, or am I gonna lean in and be like, oh, I didn't think I'd make it to here, but now I see myself thriving and pushing through that.
00:16:52
Speaker
For me, it's definitely not the latter. For me, it was 25. I didn't imagine I would live past 25. I didn't plan for it. My impulse was to say, if I am even alive towards the back end of my 24th year, there's a problem. That means I have not figured out the kind of math I need to figure out in order to exit this place that, for me, for many reasons, in many ways, was purely unlivable, impossible to live in.
00:17:19
Speaker
And, you know, I do think that once you get beyond that, yes, there's gratitude, but there's also, you know, sometimes confusion and sometimes frustration and sometimes a reframing, sorry, excuse me, a reframing the world based off of
00:17:38
Speaker
almost having a second childhood, not in a literal sense, but in a sense that you're starting a life over, you're starting your life 2.0. And that for me has been deeply confusing a lot. It still is confusing now. There's a part of the process of this book that is also steeped in real bewilderment, bewilderment for having made it this far or having made it at all. And then having to ask myself, well, what's next? What do I do next? How do I do these things next?
00:18:06
Speaker
You know, so it is almost like childhood is like learning to learning to walk slash run. I think this is maybe the book where I've most clearly crystallized that feeling or tried to crystallize that feeling because yes, absolutely. It's a point of gratitude to to be here, to want to to want to be here. But there's there's a lot of bewilderment and there's a lot of strangeness in that as well.
00:18:30
Speaker
Yeah, kind of to piggyback on a childhood 2.0, if your mother and your father were the first parents and you lost your mother at a very young age and then you reach the quarter life point and then a childhood 2.0, who might you point to as mentors or parents through that second childhood?
00:18:53
Speaker
I mean, in a lot of ways, I think I was, I parented myself or kind of, for better or worse, and a lot of times worse, you know, like learning to parent myself in a way, which simply means giving myself blueprints that I can use to survive, that I can kind of get from, not only get from point A to point B, but also just kind of
00:19:18
Speaker
learn my way through all of the things I did not know when I did not want to be here. But I mean, mentors, yeah, I mean, it's an abundance of people I've looked towards. And thankfully, you know, I came up writing, especially in Columbus at a time when there was an abundance of people to, you know, look out for me, the writer Scott Woods, the writer William Evans, the writer Rose Smith. You know, I had a lot of people who
00:19:41
Speaker
cared for me, not just cared for the writing I was doing. This is when I hadn't published anything. I was just showing up to open mics with stuff to read. And these were people who were thrilled to see me and thrilled to make space for me and all that. And then I got fortunate that I came into the world of writing at a time where I could look
00:20:06
Speaker
My peers and mentors weren't people I was only looking up to. I was looking alongside me and seeing people I admired, you know, be it Danez Smith or Sam Sacks or Franny Choi, Eve Ewing, Clint Smith, like the list is very long. And these are all people I can still look to and consider close friends. And there's something about that kind of mentorship where there is no real hierarchy or expectation other than the fact that we care for and we'll be looking out for each other.
00:20:35
Speaker
And we will set examples for each other when it comes to teaching each other how to navigate this kind of treacherous and exhausting world that we are orbiting together.
00:20:50
Speaker
Yeah, it's just what comes to mind and hearing you talk about that and talk about peers, you know, your own age and and writing it just in those circles is that the movie Don't Think Twice, that was written by Mike Birbigli about an improv troupe and like with the Keegan-Michael Key character, he breaks off and like he makes it to Saturday Night Live and the others are the equivalent of it.
00:21:15
Speaker
and the others are kind of left behind. And it kind of really speaks to the relationships among artists, the jealousies that we sometimes harbor and feel at others and then others at us. And is that something you've experienced too, especially as your profile has been elevated over the last dozen years or so? You know, like jealousy? Yeah.
00:21:44
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't pay attention. I wouldn't know, I guess. I think for me, there's a real opportunity to, I think, talk about Enzi, for me personally as a creator, as a writer, talk about Enzi in a thoughtful way.
00:22:01
Speaker
I sometimes think because there's not a lot of room to discuss envy or how envy lives within us, it presents itself in some displeasing ways. And for me, envy is a real sibling to awe, being in awe of someone.
00:22:19
Speaker
for me. That's how it shows up for me at least. And there's a way that I feel envy for things that I'm not yet capable of or things that I won't be able to achieve. But that envy doesn't push me towards rage or a manifestation of jealousy that turns outward
00:22:43
Speaker
towards the person who I'm in awe of. Now, I know that not all jealousy is due to that, but for me, it is. I know what writers I love are doing. I actually just finished reading the new Diane Seuss book and I'm deeply envious
00:23:02
Speaker
of what Diane was able to do with that book. And it turns me back towards gratitude. It turns me back towards a kind of gratitude that says, I can't believe that I get to be alive at a time that this person is creating something and that I get to be witness to it. Even if I know for sure that I can't achieve what that person's achieving,
00:23:26
Speaker
And that does leave a bit, because there's, I don't know if I would call it competitiveness, but something like that where I want to be good and I want to be as good as possible. And to know that there are people pushing boundaries that I don't yet have the ability to see or reach or have access to, that can be a bit, I don't know.
00:23:51
Speaker
maybe a little frustrating or a little heartbreaking in a way, but that never overrides or eclipses the gratitude I have for being able to bear witness to that. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I don't pay attention. If there is a level of envy that I have a relationship with, it is definitely the kind of envy that stems from being in awe of people who are working in a manner that I have not yet figured out how to reach myself yet.
00:24:19
Speaker
Yeah, earlier in my career, if you even want to call it that, I definitely had those burning feelings of resentment at times.
Managing Envy & Creative Pressure
00:24:28
Speaker
And over time, through primarily doing this show, this show is sort of a manifestation of trying to metabolize that frustration early on.
00:24:41
Speaker
You start to realize that other people you might envy, you don't get jealous for it. You realize the possibility it affords. You're like, oh, OK. Or absolves you of the pressure. Oh, they did that. They did that in that way. I don't even have to touch that anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we're all kind of.
00:25:03
Speaker
So much of this, so much of, you know, success or whatever people want to call it, you know, it's so arbitrary. There's no word not, at least for me, like I think a lot of us, I'm not sitting down and aiming to write anything that will win anything. If I were, I think the work would look different and feel very much, you know, perhaps less honest.
00:25:29
Speaker
And there's just kind of, we really can't control how our work moves people or how our work sits with people. The reason I kind of don't get caught up in
00:25:42
Speaker
I really just keep my head down and do the work. I'm not necessarily big on decoration, which I suppose is easy to say when you've won things, but I don't really go to award stuff. I really just kind of keep my head down and do the work. And I think that serves me as well.
00:26:03
Speaker
I love the degree of specificity that I find so often in passages in your work. Of the many notes I took through your latest book, there's one that I found particularly heartbreaking and symbolic of your grandmother sitting on the edge of her bed playing her numbers.
00:26:24
Speaker
And, you know, I just loved seeing that as brutal as it was to experience. And you wrote like with enough repetition, anything can become a religion. It doesn't matter if it works or not. It simply matters if a person returns. And it's just so charged and loaded with so much so much energy in such a tight, compact little passage. And I just how important to you is that degree of specificity that carries that heavy fastball?
00:26:54
Speaker
Oh, it's vital because that's what I think separates a narrative that feels like it can be for anyone to a narrative that feels like it could be for you, broad reader who perhaps has never played numbers or never even known anyone who's played numbers, but that specificity bridges that gap in saying, okay, well, you've known someone who's placed hope into something that has not worked for them. You have maybe placed hope into something that has not worked for you.
00:27:19
Speaker
And so now we're having this real conversation that is no longer about the playing of numbers. There's a real vitality there, I think. There's a real opportunity to story tell in a way that
00:27:35
Speaker
brings people into the room and makes sure that they understand that the language that I'm in pursuit of is serving a purpose. There are songwriters I love who utilize this. I mean, this is all because I grew up listening to songwriters that I loved who were attempting to in their work
00:27:56
Speaker
present a reality that could be potentially your reality or a reality you knew. Say like Free Fallen by Tom Petty, right? The engine of that song is not necessarily that you, listener, love a woman or have loved a woman, but it's like you could have. I don't have any, I've never had any kind of romantic
00:28:20
Speaker
I've never had any kind of romantic turning towards an Elvis-loving Christian horse girl, you know? But through the kind of articulation of anguish and longing in that song, I began to think, I've known a girl like this. Maybe I've lost a girl like this. Maybe I miss a girl like this right now, today. Doesn't matter if it's true or not. It matters if it's effective.
Sports Fandom & Emotional Dynamics
00:28:43
Speaker
that scene with my grandmother on the edge of the bed playing numbers, it's not really trying to get at have you reader ever played the lottery. It's trying to get at have you reader ever believed in something that has not come through for you and yet you return to it time and time again.
00:29:02
Speaker
which is both, I think, a romantic pursuit, and also kind of defines the relationship with sports fandom. 100%. Yeah. It really struck me as, especially, you know, watching how you articulate how painful it was, like, if she got, like, the first three numbers right.
00:29:25
Speaker
And to me that's like, to bring it back to LeBron, that's LeBron in 0-7 dragging that team to the finals. And it's like you got almost all the numbers. Like I had a schedule with a team that had no business being in the finals against the, I think the Spurs at that time. And it's like you got the numbers and then it just gets, then you just get crushed. Like it is sport, it is sport fanaticism like right there.
00:29:53
Speaker
It's sport, it's love. I mean, I think there's, there's something about, I think personally, well, maybe I don't like to speak broadly for the human condition, but, but I do think there's maybe something about the human condition that, that pursues an ability to be crushed because the other outcome is potentially magical in a way to say, submit oneself to a
00:30:18
Speaker
romantic relationship to submit oneself to romance is to do so knowing that the good money is actually on the fact that it will one day end either by
00:30:29
Speaker
as an emotional severing between the two or by one of the two no longer living. So the good money is on entering a romantic relationship, knowing that the chances are that it will end in heartbreak and not just that it will end in heartbreak, but the reality of it is that it will exact heartbreak upon you as you move through it. But that does not, for me at least, that does not make
00:30:56
Speaker
The reward of loving, having loved, having been loved, being loved does not diminish those rewards. That's also the lottery number. That's also the sports fandom. That is a large part of the human condition, I think, is submitting oneself to these potential bouts with anguish because the alternative is emptiness.
00:31:23
Speaker
Yeah, and it kind of gets to just the – it's just my interpretation off the cuff of even just the main title of the book that there's always this year and not looking to the next year as a play on there's always next year, which is something as like a –
00:31:40
Speaker
as an off-suffering Boston Red Sox fan. Before they won, I grew up in southeastern Massachusetts as a suffering Massachusetts fan of everything. We've since had a great turn of fortune in the last 25 years. But this notion of there's always this year, it kind of grounds you in the present for better, for worse, for pain or joy. It keeps you there in the moment and grounded, I think.
00:32:13
Speaker
It kind of adds an urgency to the belief. We are believing the good thing is coming now. We are no longer waiting for the good thing. We are manifesting the good thing, which that too, my pals do that all the time. Who among us does not manifest with, whether it's intentional manifestation or it is manifestation in the sense of wishing or saying a prayer, who does not, who among us does not manifest with some urgency?
00:32:34
Speaker
for sure. Yeah. Well, and it
00:32:43
Speaker
Well, and I know that in sport, sports fans are so funny, and I am among them, so I'm including myself in this language, because I think our tendency as sports fans is to give up as quickly as possible to save ourselves from any impending heartbreak. One of my, now granted, the Eagles did lose in the playoffs, but one of my absolute favorite tweets
00:33:06
Speaker
in the world that I sports tweets in the world. Who was it? Was it Lindsay Zolads? I think Lindsay Zolads, who's a writer that I enjoy reading and apparently an Eagles fan. I did not know she was an Eagles fan until the night the Eagles were in the playoffs. I forgot who they were playing. I don't know if all the NFL as much. Do you remember who the Eagles lost to in the playoffs?
00:33:28
Speaker
Oh gosh. I should know this. My wife's an Eagles fan. I got up. I don't know. Let me look that up real quick. But yeah. Continue with your thought. But I'll find the team right now.
00:33:42
Speaker
Whomever they lost to, they were playing. And Lindsay had this tweet that said, go birds. And then five minutes later, underneath that, there was another tweet in the thread that just read, it's over. And I laughed really hard at that. I still laughed. I just like, I screenshotted and showed all my friends. And I laughed, and we laughed about it. And then all of us who are sports fans are like, yeah, but I'd be like that too. You know what I mean? Like, I'm kind of like that too. Last night, I was watching the, I'm a massive Timberwolves fan. Last night, I was watching the Timberwolves.
00:34:11
Speaker
And I was like, oh, they're playing the Grizzlies. You know, Grizzlies are, you know.
00:34:16
Speaker
rosters diminish. Nobody's on the floor. They hang with this team with number one in the West. And the Grizzlies got out to like a 7-0 run. And I was like, I'm going to watch something else. They're up by seven points in like the first quarter. And I'm like, well, what else is on? And so there is something about the sports fan trying to delay bearing witness to the anguish that we believe is coming for us. The Timberwolves ended up winning handily, or somewhat handily, by the way.
00:34:44
Speaker
To say, I would rather not be in pain tonight watching this team I love. I would rather not be witness to this heartbreak and instead I will seek out something else. We all do that way too early in sport. And I think that we perhaps owe it to ourselves in life to, you know, if that is going to happen in sport and I know that it will.
00:35:04
Speaker
I think that we can maybe be a little bit more urgent in life. And so there's always this year to see that, to see that manifestation for the calves, to see them operating against what was believed about them at that time was really wonderful, I thought. And the Eagles lost to the Buccaneers. That's Baker Mayfield in the Buccaneers. Baker Mayfield.
00:35:28
Speaker
That was, you know what? So I, it's so funny. I used to be a very big NFL fan. And then I kind of, you know, like a lot of people, I just kind of digested around a certain time. And I remember it was like before the Kaepernick protests, but right before it, but I was a lifelong Bengals fan, like a very serious Bengals fan, you know, a couple of games a year, all that stuff. And they were always so heartbreaking. And then when I stopped watching, it was like, wait a minute.
00:35:55
Speaker
I remember the year they made the Super Bowl and I hadn't, I hadn't been paying attention at all. And someone was like, yo, the Bengals are in the Super Bowl. I was like, get the fuck out of here. There's no way. You know, like last time I saw the Bengals, they were like losing in the first round of the playoffs every single year. So, you know, it's one of those things where I thought I was, I thought, you know, because another thing I think sports fans do is we become a bit self-centered, I think, where it's like I was the curse, you know?
00:36:20
Speaker
Yeah, because I feel like, did they in the 90s draft Kajana Carter out of Penn State? They did draft Kajana Carter. They blew out his knees or something. Carson Palmer, he rips up his ACL. It's like, oh my God, this is like a cursed franchise.
00:36:37
Speaker
And then they had the, Andy Dalton had that great year. There was a year, Andy Dalton just had a phenomenal year and then he got hurt like right, right when it was time to go to a playoffs or maybe in the playoffs he got hurt. So it's, you know, for part of my divesting from football was sure, you know, they were like moral, logical reasons or whatever. But some of it was also like, I can only suffer, you know, I'm a Timberwolves fan, I'm a Newcastle supporter. It was kind of like, I can only suffer on so many fronts, you know?
00:37:05
Speaker
And if this is the one that it's easiest to go away from, then this will be the one. Yeah, it's funny. Speaking of lottery ticket, it's just like having grown up a New England fan of everything. And then we get Tom Brady in that Belichick run. I remember watching a game. You talk about teams like the Jets and the Bills who are just like, if the Patriots go up 10-0 in the first 10 minutes, they're like, this game's over. This is done.
00:37:33
Speaker
Yeah. Or even worse, if they're winning by 10 points with like five minutes to go, they're like, oh shit, this game's done. Brady's going to come back. And I remember watching a game with a Bills fan at a bar in upstate New York in Saratoga Springs. And it's just like the Bills were kicking their ass on a Monday night. And then slowly, Brady's just picking them off. And then sure enough, in the final 10 seconds, he just rips his heart out. And I just watched him slump over. I'm sitting there the whole time just thinking, just give him time. Brady's going to.
00:38:03
Speaker
he's gonna yeah he's gonna do this and it's something like a as a boston fans of anything just they were used to the ball going through buckner's legs we're not used to having an assassin like that and we had it for a while and it was like this is this is nice this is that i like this jacket yeah i mean it's you know those are perhaps the worst kind of losses to witness i think or to be party to if you are a fan the losses that come you know i'd rather just a blowout i'd rather just kind of
00:38:32
Speaker
You know, it's a very, I can deal a lot easier with a blowout than I can this kind of gradual, you already know that the loss is coming. And then in the last, in the fourth quarter or the final minute of the soccer match, it just happens. There's a certainty that I'm after. I think about this too. And in my writing where it's like.
00:38:54
Speaker
Yes, in my writing, I would rather drag you along and then at the last minute, offer you something different. But that's a different experience, I think, on the page than it is while rooting for a club.
00:39:06
Speaker
getting back to a moment in the book, too, you know, when LeBron's decision is so far that he goes to Miami, and, you know, people are burning jerseys and stuff of that nature. And then, you know, your witness to one person who was about to throw his LeBron jersey, like, in the fire, and then he, like, he holds it. He's like, maybe he'll be back.
00:39:26
Speaker
and I just I love that moment of like that there's that belief thing you know that maybe he'll come back maybe he'll win and he'll he'll bring that championship ethic back here and that was such a wonderful moment.
00:39:40
Speaker
Thanks. Yeah, I mean, I think that that was... I really do think that this is my most romantic book, right? I felt that this was the most romantic book that I could write at the time. So I don't know where that sits, but even that impulse feels kind of romantic to me. You know, my pal not wanting to...
00:40:02
Speaker
set fire to an old LeBron James jersey, even though he was angry at the time, even though he was like, I can't believe he left us behind. There was something in him that said, but if he came back, I would love him. I would find a way to love him the same. And that to me is somewhat romantic.
Grief's Impact on Relationships
00:40:21
Speaker
you fold in a lot of just great themes almost, I feel like seamlessly throughout the whole book that you seemingly go off on what would look on their surface to maybe be tangents, but they just seem one. And I always get a slight pulse of grief, especially through your last two books, your mother's passing when you were 12 years old or so.
00:40:46
Speaker
And, you know, you write in one moment in your latest book, like, in my dreams she never spoke, but I would understand the language being passed between us. Every faith has a relationship of the dead. And, you know, you seem to have, you always feel the absence of your mother, but you don't linger there too much. And I imagine that's intentional from you.
00:41:08
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I think as I as I write more books, I think too, I'm trying to explore the way my grief for the dead, my mother or my friends who have lost impacts my relationship with the living impacts my kind of the urgency with which I love that is due to almost a preemptive grief. You know, I've already imagined the world without all the people I love in it.
00:41:32
Speaker
I often joke or not joke. I mean, I even write it in this book, actually, and now I think about it. You know, if there were to be some kind of massive apocalypse of any type, like a station 11-esque kind of world ending scenario.
00:41:46
Speaker
I wouldn't want to survive that. One, it doesn't really look fun, quite frankly. But also, there would be so much absence and loss that I wouldn't be able to have the will to survive that.
00:42:04
Speaker
Part of the way that I think that I'm growing and writing about loss and grief is by not just inviting people into bear witness to whatever wounds exist for me,
00:42:21
Speaker
But to say, okay, how do these wounds impact my desire to tap into these grand urgent affections that I feel for the people I look upon and consider family, friends right now? Because there is a
00:42:38
Speaker
you know, there is a very short bridge between those two realities. You know, I think this book I wrote more about my father than I've ever written in any book or at all. And some of that is because I think I got to practice how to write affectionately through loss. And it's considering it allows me to consider how to write thoughtfully and affectionately about, you know, a person who's still here, who I
00:43:08
Speaker
who, yes, it's a different relationship. I mean, you know, the reality is my mother died when I was young. And that means in a lot of ways, our relationship never had a chance to complicate itself a whole lot. It got to really be steeped in affection and now kind of these nostalgic affections.
00:43:29
Speaker
And that's probably not the greatest. You really want to, for me at least, I want to, even the people I love and miss and long for, I want to render them as completely as possible. But it all depends on the point at which you lose someone.
00:43:43
Speaker
If you lose someone before you even are able to fully understand them as a full person, it took me decades to understand my father as a full person, say, and not just a parent. You know, when we are children or even like people in our teens or twenties or what have you, we still sometimes, I think, look upon our parents as
00:44:03
Speaker
that the relationship dynamic is still what it is or it can be depending on what your relationship with your parents are as someone who existed or perhaps still exists to meet your needs and not as someone who has a full life beyond you and who had a full life before you and so I you know
00:44:21
Speaker
I'm able to write as fluorescently and vibrantly about my mother and her loss because I never encountered the world of her as a full person, which means that our lives never really intertwine in a way that was steeped in complication. My father and I are not so fortunate because of the different lives that he had to encounter me being on, which were sometimes very troublesome, I think, for both him and me. And so it was good to have a book where I could
00:44:49
Speaker
I could express a lot of affection and gratitude for him.
00:44:53
Speaker
Yeah, and the book really starts with that, just a wonderful, warm description of being at the dinner table and watching the sweat beat up on his head, or just how you smelled the beard oil before you saw him coming into a room, and it's probably something that's left in the room as well, sort of that olfactory presence.
00:45:20
Speaker
And I love those little details, but also it speaks to that specificity again, but also it shows an attention to detail where you are kind of giving your father some due there in a way that you were kind of mentioning a moment ago.
00:45:37
Speaker
Yeah, it's just like a nod to witnessing. I'm able to see you in a different way now than I was before in doing that, the way that you were, the way that I was seeing you was much more clarified. It's affection and not just fascination. And I think that that is just also me coming to terms with my own aging and approaching a kind of... So much of this book is trying to kind of
00:46:08
Speaker
roll my mind around mortality and time. If I am becoming my father in some ways, then I think that it's important for me to at least illuminate the things that I remember really enjoying about him when I was young, because it allows me to have grace for myself.
00:46:32
Speaker
as you maybe feel yourself surrendering to the gravity of becoming closer to who your father is or was in certain, depending on what era you find yourself gravitating towards. What are some of the things that you find that maybe you bristle against or even embrace in him as you maybe gravitate towards him in that way?
00:46:59
Speaker
I think I find myself embracing, I mean, he seems, and Grant, I mean, we don't talk a ton now, but he's always seemed to me, and I think one thing that I'm really grateful for that I've taken from him is not only just relentless curiosity, but a comfort with his obsessions and kind of staying in one place, obsession-wise, which doesn't mean that he kind of is stagnant with, you know, but my dad would just
00:47:22
Speaker
pick up instruments and play instruments and learn them because he was curious and he would spend time with books and records because he was curious about that. He wanted to, you know, in these things that he would be in pursuit of, they wouldn't be like for work or for, you know, they were for him. And I think I find that, I find that happening with me where, you know, I go down these roads that satisfy me
00:47:50
Speaker
and they operate in a way that please me. And I get to take great pleasure in that. And so, yeah, that's really vital. And to get to see that coming to life, you know, get to see that coming to life for me now is really enjoyable.
00:48:06
Speaker
And there's a I read recently I think it was in the Columbus Dispatch where you said that in the book you try to deconstruct the reason why quote like making it is aligned with the idea of getting out of a place. And you know you said I've never wanted to leave Columbus. So you know what is it about making it in order to make it. You must leave the nest.
00:48:28
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think that's a natural, I will say, I think that's a very natural impulse to say, I've been in this place for my whole life for some people, and I am dissatisfied with the results of my being here. And even if, you know, sometimes making it does mean having the means or bravery to exit the place that is familiar to you.
00:48:53
Speaker
I do think I do think leaving and making a life elsewhere is is a type of bravery or at least I don't think it's without bravery. And that said, I also do think staying and making a life for yourself at the plate in the place that chose you and then choosing it back. That also that also involves some bravery. And so, you know, I think that I am more interested in the bravery that is familiar in a way.
00:49:23
Speaker
Um, not because I'm uncomfortable with change or what have you, but a part of it is because I love it. I genuinely love it here. And I feel like I have everything. My view on the world is so intensely shaped by the realities of my geography and the geography that I know and that is comfortable to me and the geography where I'm not, um,
00:49:49
Speaker
I don't necessarily feel under pressure to be someone I am maybe not here, which is that is vital to me. Um, I feel really a lot like, you know, this is just my community. These are my people. These are my folks. And they always have been, and we kind of treat each other that way. And that's really thrilling to me. And so, yeah, I mean, I don't rather, I don't ever feel like I, uh, I'm lacking or I'm at a disadvantage for,
00:50:18
Speaker
feeling like my version of making it almost requires me to make it in a place that I love. It would feel less to me like quote unquote making it if I had to go elsewhere to a place I maybe didn't love as much in order to do it. But that's just me. I think that everyone has their own realities when it comes to what it means to make it.
00:50:43
Speaker
Yeah, I think it would break my heart if you like move to Brooklyn or take your talents to Brooklyn. Yeah. Yeah. That's probably not going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. That's you know, I was I was lucky yesterday, just serendipitous timing that I listened to Harvilla's latest episode on Tracy Chapman for his 60 songs that explained the 90s. And I had no idea that you were going to be his his talk guest for that. I was like, oh,
00:51:11
Speaker
This is amazing. And what a great conversation you guys had about Tracy Chapman and you brought in Toni Morrison too as just great observationists and writers even taking in Chapman's intentionality of just
00:51:29
Speaker
not even being a lyricist but just the her writerness and uh and maybe just kind of explain i just kind of uh maybe articulate what the brilliance of her as a writer and how maybe that's informed that you know your take on on on words yeah well i mean chapin yeah she's one of one of the great
00:51:47
Speaker
narrators, I think, and just kind of, you know, I think about all of her works, like, almost like novels, you know, song by song, even, you know, there's perspective shifts, there's Volta that takes place in a song like Across the Wall, you know, that kind of thing, where there's kind of, or Behind the Wall, I'm sorry, there's kind of this, this urgency
00:52:12
Speaker
that all revolves around pace. She controls pace so well, you know? I feel really lucky to have gotten to witness her work early, you know, because in my house, she was, you know, there were fans of her in my house. And it was the first time that I remember feeling like work was coming, like music was coming to life in a way that informed me through storytelling, through all this stuff. And so, yeah, I mean, I have a lot of value. I think about her almost as a novelist.
00:52:42
Speaker
You know, I think about her as someone who sits back and observes and then renders a world for all of us. Yeah, and I loved when you were speaking with Rob also about assuming intentionality, that if someone, for example, spelled something a certain way on the page, you assume intentionality, that it wasn't a mistake, that it was intentional. I keep repeating that word.
00:53:12
Speaker
Just for you, how did you lock into that as an idea that you do have to be very deliberate and that you assume that from others, but you also pressure yourself to be as intentional as possible? Well, I think for me, some of it just comes with working with young writers. I spend a lot of time working with high school writers here in Columbus and it's important for them to be taken seriously in their work. The writers I'm working with are
00:53:41
Speaker
you know, a lot of young black writers who are operating, you know, their storytelling relies on uses of language that are definitely translatable and understandable to me, but that like say a teacher or an elder might try to correct out of them.
00:53:58
Speaker
But so it is important to assume intentionality just for the sake of restoring a level of humanity to the people who are creating. And if I'm wrong, you know, if it comes down and it's like, oh, you did not mean to do that, then we'll adjust it. But I don't ever want to tell someone.
00:54:16
Speaker
this is wrong or this word doesn't fit here because to them it might. And to also demand that kind of intentionality out of myself on the page means that I'm teaching people how to read me. I'm teaching people through a body of work how to understand the way that I talk and think about the world and the language I use and all of these things. I'm really encouraging people
00:54:41
Speaker
to believe that I know what I'm doing, which is important for me because I don't have the same kind of background that a lot of other writers have in terms of, you know, education or even experience or any of these things.
00:54:54
Speaker
Was that ever an insecurity that you had to get over that you're coming up through, let's say, just a nontraditional track of writerly publication and of writerly visibility that you didn't have that traditional way of moving through this? Was that something that you were self-conscious of ever?
00:55:18
Speaker
No, no, I don't really think about it. I mean, you know, it's I think maybe early on I felt that way, you know, maybe 2011 and 12 when I first started writing poems, I started I felt like I was just so behind that I could never make anything meaningful. But then I thought, well, that's the case and I'll be fine. You know, if I if.
00:55:37
Speaker
If that's the case, I'll live. You know, I don't think that I'm existing solely to make something meaningful, meaningful. At least back then, I was really just trying to learn, you know, I was trying to learn how to write, write poems specifically. And so yeah, I mean, I don't, it's not, it is certainly nothing I feel now. These are certainly not anxieties I feel now.
00:55:54
Speaker
And there are a lot of writers who exist like this, a lot of working class writers, a lot of writers who, you know, work shifts at a diner like I did in right in there, you know, in the time that is theirs. My mother worked, you know, worked nine to five and then sometimes worked another job on top of that nine to five and would come home and write on her typewriter. So these are the, these are the writers that I've known, you know, these are the kind of, this is what I understood the writing life to be. And so I mostly just feel like I'm operating in that lineage.
00:56:22
Speaker
Yeah, of true working writers in a sense where they have a public facing life in that sense and then maybe render it in a Chapmanian way in a diner booth or up in an alcove at home pecking away at the typewriter. For sure, for sure.
00:56:46
Speaker
Well, very nice. Well, Hanif, I want to be mindful of your time. I'm so glad we were able to extend our conversation a bit here, because this is really wonderful. And this is something I like asking guests at the end of the show. It's just like a recommendation of some kind for the listeners out there. And that can just be anything that you're excited about, a recipe, a brand of socks, whatever. So I just extend that to you, Hanif, as we close down our conversation.
00:57:13
Speaker
A recommendation, I think that I would simply recommend the making of playlists. I feel like making playlists teaches you so much about both yourself and if you start making playlists for other people, which I would encourage that, I think that just also enlivens a sense of unselfishness because you are maybe sacrificing what you love for what someone else might love.
00:57:41
Speaker
So find someone to make a playlist for and make a playlist for them. Oh, fantastic. Well, Anif, this was wonderful. What a pleasure to get to talk shop with you and get to unpack some of the themes of this latest book. So just thank you so much for the work and thank you for the time. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
00:58:02
Speaker
Maybe when the paperback of his book comes out, he can come back and we can drill down on maybe more of the writing practice element of his writerliness. But that was great. Thanks for listening, seeing efforts. You should totally subscribe to the show if you don't already. If not, I'm not going to twist your arm. Three and a half weeks to deadline, dude. Had a chat with my first editor and the big editor as well this week, hopefully. Trying to make the most of it the best of it.
00:58:32
Speaker
In terms of word count, we are down from 167,000 words to 153,000 words without losing a whole lot of story. I'm getting the bloat out of it. I'm like halfway through, so I have to at least get to 120,000.
00:58:54
Speaker
Yeah, at that point, we'll start necessitating some very tough decisions. I paid $2,000 to have the book edited, which is kind of a bargain, given how massive and bloated and altogether not fun this rough draft was to read.
00:59:11
Speaker
It's funny. I sometimes never know what to make of feedback. I'm grateful for whatever I can get. It's always a drag when you can tell you're pissing your editor off. When you get comments like, you keep doing this.
00:59:27
Speaker
No, and this is horseshit. And when you hear things like, I didn't think you were gonna pull it off, it's on the one hand kind of a compliment, but is it? It means there was massive doubt. Doubt that you should snub out because you've been writing for 20 years and you should know better by now, but then I think, how would I know better?
00:59:54
Speaker
at all my newspaper jobs. Nobody ever helped us with our work aside from like clean up these typos and just get it in on time. My first book didn't have an editor of any kind. It basically just went to the copy editor after submission. You know, so you go on instinct and learning and mimicking from what you've read and you try your best, even though your best often sucks.
01:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, do I feel good about the book? Not really. Do I feel good about myself? God, no. Self-esteem, cratered, self-worth, tanked, will to live, fleeting. But that's being a writer. How much better can you get at this racket after a certain point? I mean, after a certain amount of time, you are who you are, for better or worse, or often worse. I mean, you see with quarterbacks in the NFL all the time, they give them like two years. And then they're like, yeah, we kind of know who you are. We know the book on you.
01:00:49
Speaker
You're either here or you're not. You're either a backup or a starter. I've been sleeping like shit, going to the couch at midnight to 1 a.m., reading books to make me feel like a steaming pile of food waste, and then I stare at the blue light of our simply safe base station, kicking myself endlessly for disappointing my wife. Like, why hadn't she left me by now? Is anyone's guess? You know, disappointing my peers, my editors.
01:01:16
Speaker
for not getting it, man. Like, why can't you see it, dude? And I'm like, maybe because there are haves and have-nots, and you wonder how people have confidence, and you wonder what that must feel like to believe in yourself, and you can only articulate it.
01:01:36
Speaker
your insecurity and your lack of confidence in the privacy of your own podcast because if anybody heard you talking about it, they'd stab you in the neck. Who are these people with confidence? And can I have some? No? Okay.
01:01:52
Speaker
It's like what my demented mother, Jerry, told me a year ago, a little more than a year ago, when I wouldn't break her out of her care facility. She shook her head at me and said, you're not a fighter, you're a Jerry. And I started to cry, and she looked at me in disgust. So that's revising, dude. Stay wild, CNFers, and if you can do interviews, say yeah.